Luke 11:1-13
In today’s gospel, the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray and he provides them with a very brief skeleton of a prayer that we recognize as the bones of the Lord’s prayer we pray in worship. But quickly he goes on to tell them a story and we know that the parables or stories that Jesus tells as he teaches use examples from everyday life to explain something about who God is.
Jesus reorients us so that the question is no longer “How do we pray?” which implies that there is a pattern or script that guarantees we can “get it right.” The better question is “Who is this God to whom we pray?”
A traditional reading of the parable casts God as the neighbor inside the house, and the disciples – including you and me – as the one who comes to the neighbor in the middle of the night. In an honor and shame culture like the one that existed in the first century, the unprepared host would have risked embarrassment if he could not provide for his guest. But the neighbor, too, if he had not eventually responded to the appeal for help would have been shamed for his failure. The best outcome for them both was what eventually happens in the parable: the neighbor rises and answers the need.
But, when I hear that interpretation of the text, I am uncomfortable with the idea that God is annoyed by our prayers and I bristle at the picture of God as one who has to be goaded or nagged into responding to us. I also object to the idea that God answers our prayers to prevent shame from falling on God. None of these images of God – annoyed, reticent, or prideful – is how I understand God to be.
Parables, particularly, invite us to wrestle with their meaning, so I invite you to join me in wrestling with this parable and what is says about who God is.
One possibility is that while we are drawn quickly into the story of the neighbors, we miss the way Jesus frames it because the NRSV translation of the Bible that we use in worship and another popular translation, the NIV, both translate verse 5 as “Suppose one of you has a friend….” When the Greek actually translates as, “Who out of you will have a friend….?”
It is a rhetorical question similar to those he asks later in verses 11 and 12. When Jesus asks, “Who among you?” the response would be a resounding, “No one!” In that way, Jesus leads us away from the stingy neighbor, and away from the father who gives a serpent instead of a fish or a scorpion instead of an egg, to the heavenly Father who gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask. (v. 13)
Another way of hearing the parable is offered by Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon. He suggests that our attention should be on the word translated here as “persistence”. Other translations call it “boldness”, “importunity” or even “impudence.” But the Greek translates as “shamelessness”. That transforms the image of the one knocking from someone who is incessantly nagging or begging to one who has surrendered. The one who has gone to the neighbor has surrendered any pretense of preparedness or control and placed himself at the mercy of the neighbor at whose door he stands, just as we stand before the cross, convicted by our sin and dependent upon God’s grace to rescue us. In this telling the parable becomes one of death and resurrection, and God becomes the one who meets us and restores us. We are called again and again to surrender ourselves – to die to our sinful nature, our desires and priorities – and live in new life with Christ.
Yet another way of hearing the parable is to re-imagine who we are and who God is in the story. What if, instead of being the person knocking at the door, you and I are the ones who are asleep in bed and awakened? What if it is God standing at the door, trying to get our attention and asking for us to respond to a needful person who has just appeared, raising us out of our sleep to feed the hungry traveler?
However you hear this parable, it is clear that when Jesus teaches about prayer he doesn’t demand that his disciples learn a particular form or script with specific words; instead, he urges us to pay attention to the relationship we have with the God who hears us.
Let us pray…
Holy God,
Thank you for Your Son Jesus who reveals to us Your character – loving and generous, not reticent or stingy;
And thank you for forgiving us when we become self-centered, busy or aggravated;
By the good gift of Your Holy Spirit, empower us to pray, confident of your faithfulness, and respond to a world in need when you call us.
Amen.
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Lectionary 16C/ Proper 11
Luke 10:38-42
This part of Luke’s gospel – the ten chapters that began when Jesus set his face to Jerusalem – is called a travelogue, a narrative that describes the encounters people had with Jesus on his final journey to Jerusalem, where he is crucified, dies and is raised. Many of the stories here are unique to Luke, including the one we hear today. Martha and her sister Mary only appear in Luke and then in John with their brother Lazarus.
Before today’s gospel, Luke told us that Jesus had sent the 70 out with instructions to accept the hospitality of others when they arrived in a town. And then, when he was teaching, Jesus told the story about a neighbor who showed mercy and loved generously.
We know some of his disciples traveled ahead of him, and we can imagine that news of what he was saying and doing reached the people in the towns there before he arrived in person. From his teaching, it was clear that following Jesus and being his disciple requires humility and self-sacrifice, a willingness to serve others first. As Martin Luther wrote in his essay “Freedom of a Christian”: [i]
With her outcry, she exposed her own brokenness, her self-centeredness and fear – her sin. Like a petulant child, she complained against her sister Mary who was sitting, actively listening to all that Jesus was saying. In contrast, Luke tells us that Martha was distracted by “her many tasks.”
The Greek verb that describes Martha is translated as “dragged around” or “drawn away.” For anyone sitting here thinking about your grocery list or what chores you need to do when you go home, you can relate to Martha’s predicament. There is work to be done – necessary and important work – and someone has to do it.
When Jesus answered her and told her that Mary had chosen the better part, he was not saying that Martha had chosen poorly in offering hospitality or that being attentive to the task at hand is bad. But Martha had lost sight of why she was serving. She became frustrated and resentful. Pride and anger turned her gaze in on herself where she could no longer see or hear her Lord.
Dutch priest Henri Nouwen taught that we spend much of our lives answering one question:
“Who am I?”
and he said that, often, we answer:
1) I am what I do.
2) I am what other people say about me.
3) I am what I have.
Nouwen preached that these ways of seeing ourselves are three lies of identity that we are told by the Enemy, demons or the devil.[ii] When we succumb to one or more of these lies, we no longer see ourselves made in God’s image and we no longer hear Jesus call us by name and tell us he loves us. All we see and hear are the lies.
In her distraction, Martha fell captive to the three lies that her identity was found in what she was doing – the works or the many tasks she had taken on; in what others were saying about her – that she was a generous host to her guests; and in what she had - a welcoming home where they were comfortable.
Like Martha, we get caught up with the everyday work of life, making our lists and checking off our tasks, and we become preoccupied, thinking about what’s next: “Oh, I need to make that appointment, pay that bill, run that errand; oh, and I have to go here or there….” And we busily fill up every space in our lives and are drawn away from Jesus. And when that happens, the background noise of life is so loud that we can’t hear Jesus anymore and we think Jesus must not care.
But when Martha complained that Jesus must not care, her corrected her and told her “only one thing is necessary” and the “one thing” was not her works, her hospitality or her home. It was Christ himself.
Martha saw herself as unappreciated and overwhelmed,
but Jesus gently turned her gaze from herself, her works and her needs to her Lord so that she could see herself as God saw her,
wholly loved,
a beloved daughter of God.
Nouwen preached, “What is said of Jesus is said of you. You have to hear that you are the beloved [child] of God.” When you know that Good News, “All that you do is nurtured by the knowledge that you are the beloved.”[iii]
Meeting Jesus invites us to encounter God’s Word in the flesh. Jesus invites us to listen and, as Nouwen taught, “hear again and again: “I love you because I love you because I love you because I love you.”[iv]
Let us pray…
Holy God,
We give you thanks for your Word that creates faith and sustains us with your promises.
We give you thanks for your Son Jesus Christ
who comes in flesh and shows us your mercy;
who forgives our sin and self-centeredness;
who lives among us in our lives and in our world today,
repeating the words, “You are my beloved.”
May the Holy Spirit lead us out into the world to share the Good News of your abundant love.
Amen.
[i] Martin Luther. “The Freedom of a Christian.”
[ii] Henri Nouwen. “Being the Beloved.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFWfYpd0F18
[iii] Nouwen.
[iv] Nathan Kline. “Identity Theft.” https://www.friendlyhillschurch.org/blog/identity-theft
This part of Luke’s gospel – the ten chapters that began when Jesus set his face to Jerusalem – is called a travelogue, a narrative that describes the encounters people had with Jesus on his final journey to Jerusalem, where he is crucified, dies and is raised. Many of the stories here are unique to Luke, including the one we hear today. Martha and her sister Mary only appear in Luke and then in John with their brother Lazarus.
Before today’s gospel, Luke told us that Jesus had sent the 70 out with instructions to accept the hospitality of others when they arrived in a town. And then, when he was teaching, Jesus told the story about a neighbor who showed mercy and loved generously.
We know some of his disciples traveled ahead of him, and we can imagine that news of what he was saying and doing reached the people in the towns there before he arrived in person. From his teaching, it was clear that following Jesus and being his disciple requires humility and self-sacrifice, a willingness to serve others first. As Martin Luther wrote in his essay “Freedom of a Christian”: [i]
A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.Explaining the apparent contradiction, Luther writes,
A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all…
Both are Paul’s own statements, who says in [First Corinthians], “For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all,” [1 Cor. 9:19] and in Romans, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” [Rom. 13:8] Love by its very nature is ready to serve and be subject to [the one] who is loved.So when Martha extended hospitality and welcomed Jesus into her house, she was showing her readiness to serve her Lord. But then, wearily and grumpily, she cried out to Jesus, “Lord, do you not care?”
With her outcry, she exposed her own brokenness, her self-centeredness and fear – her sin. Like a petulant child, she complained against her sister Mary who was sitting, actively listening to all that Jesus was saying. In contrast, Luke tells us that Martha was distracted by “her many tasks.”
The Greek verb that describes Martha is translated as “dragged around” or “drawn away.” For anyone sitting here thinking about your grocery list or what chores you need to do when you go home, you can relate to Martha’s predicament. There is work to be done – necessary and important work – and someone has to do it.
When Jesus answered her and told her that Mary had chosen the better part, he was not saying that Martha had chosen poorly in offering hospitality or that being attentive to the task at hand is bad. But Martha had lost sight of why she was serving. She became frustrated and resentful. Pride and anger turned her gaze in on herself where she could no longer see or hear her Lord.
Dutch priest Henri Nouwen taught that we spend much of our lives answering one question:
“Who am I?”
and he said that, often, we answer:
1) I am what I do.
2) I am what other people say about me.
3) I am what I have.
Nouwen preached that these ways of seeing ourselves are three lies of identity that we are told by the Enemy, demons or the devil.[ii] When we succumb to one or more of these lies, we no longer see ourselves made in God’s image and we no longer hear Jesus call us by name and tell us he loves us. All we see and hear are the lies.
In her distraction, Martha fell captive to the three lies that her identity was found in what she was doing – the works or the many tasks she had taken on; in what others were saying about her – that she was a generous host to her guests; and in what she had - a welcoming home where they were comfortable.
Like Martha, we get caught up with the everyday work of life, making our lists and checking off our tasks, and we become preoccupied, thinking about what’s next: “Oh, I need to make that appointment, pay that bill, run that errand; oh, and I have to go here or there….” And we busily fill up every space in our lives and are drawn away from Jesus. And when that happens, the background noise of life is so loud that we can’t hear Jesus anymore and we think Jesus must not care.
But when Martha complained that Jesus must not care, her corrected her and told her “only one thing is necessary” and the “one thing” was not her works, her hospitality or her home. It was Christ himself.
Martha saw herself as unappreciated and overwhelmed,
but Jesus gently turned her gaze from herself, her works and her needs to her Lord so that she could see herself as God saw her,
wholly loved,
a beloved daughter of God.
Nouwen preached, “What is said of Jesus is said of you. You have to hear that you are the beloved [child] of God.” When you know that Good News, “All that you do is nurtured by the knowledge that you are the beloved.”[iii]
Meeting Jesus invites us to encounter God’s Word in the flesh. Jesus invites us to listen and, as Nouwen taught, “hear again and again: “I love you because I love you because I love you because I love you.”[iv]
Let us pray…
Holy God,
We give you thanks for your Word that creates faith and sustains us with your promises.
We give you thanks for your Son Jesus Christ
who comes in flesh and shows us your mercy;
who forgives our sin and self-centeredness;
who lives among us in our lives and in our world today,
repeating the words, “You are my beloved.”
May the Holy Spirit lead us out into the world to share the Good News of your abundant love.
Amen.
[i] Martin Luther. “The Freedom of a Christian.”
[ii] Henri Nouwen. “Being the Beloved.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFWfYpd0F18
[iii] Nouwen.
[iv] Nathan Kline. “Identity Theft.” https://www.friendlyhillschurch.org/blog/identity-theft
Sunday, July 7, 2019
Lectionary 14C/ Proper 9
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
All three of the synoptic gospels include the account of Jesus sending his first twelve disciples out. But only Luke includes the sending of the seventy that we hear in this morning’s gospel.
You can imagine the scene: while a group of twelve fits around a long table, this group of disciples is about the same size as our worshiping congregation. Addressing his followers Jesus adopts the language of harvest, saying "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few….” (Luke 10:2a)
Bringing in a harvest isn’t a task that anyone can do alone. Today I’m not even talking about the hours of labor that go into sowing seed in acres of land or protecting the crops against pests and weather. At harvesttime, before mechanized equipment, a farmworker could expect to hand-pick 100 bushels of corn in a day if the conditions were good. [i] Whole families would begin at dawn, trying to get the first “50 bushels, 2,800 pounds of corn, before lunch, and another 50 bushels in the afternoon, often harvesting until dark.” And it could take weeks to get it all picked. [ii] It was rigorous, exhausting work that seemed to go on forever.
And Jesus was describing not just one small corner of the world but all of it. The people listening to him had to be wondering, “How much can two, or twelve or even seventy of us do?”
Then Jesus says, “therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.”
The very first instruction that Jesus gives is to pray.
Pray for the harvest, remembering it is God’s work and God is Lord of the harvest, not us. And then pray for laborers to be sent into the harvest.
Jesus doesn’t say, “Pray for more church members” or even more Lutherans, but for more laborers, co-workers who will bear God into the world just as we are called to do.
The Lord’s harvest is about being open to God’s timing – a kairos time that doesn’t follow our human wants or demands – to tend to those whom God has prepared; those who can hear the Good News of God’s love and see God at work in the world.
The twelve were sent with “power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, … to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. (Luke 9:1-2) Here Jesus goes into more detail as he prepares the next group to go out. He sends his followers out, not to proclaim our expertise or our superiority, but with humility and vulnerability. Jesus asks us to bear God’s peace into the world and receive the hospitality we are given, without criticism or judgment.
Often, when we talk about going out into the world, in local service or international mission trips, we make our lists, plans and preparations and the people we intend to help become objects of our attention. As well-meaning as that is, here Jesus tells his followers to go out empty-handed, dependent on the provision of others, and be fully and peacefully present with people where we find them. It is a model of accompaniment, and relationship-building, that is focused on the person and not on a project or a job to be completed. Sometimes, that will mean taking a risk, being uncomfortable, and going places that are outside of our familiar routines and hangouts.
At the beginning of this gospel, Luke says, Jesus sent the seventy to “every town and place where he himself intended to go.” (Luke 10:1) In Luke’s gospel, that includes the synagogue and temple, but more frequently it includes places where demons inhabit adults and children or disease has withered and defeated people, places where people have been declared unclean and unwelcome; and it includes both deserted places and places crowded with hungry people.
Although Jesus tells us to go out and says he is sending us “out like lambs into the midst of wolves” (Luke 10:3), he does not send us alone.
Jesus sends us with authority. We have received authority because in Christ, God comes to us, and gives us all that the Son has, and the Son takes all that is ours. We no longer live as ourselves but as God’s people. We empty ourselves and become vessels to bear God’s love and grace into the world, and through our words and actions, we proclaim, “The kingdom of God has come near.” (Luke 10:11) Not because of our human presence but because the God who saves is with us.
We are given authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and power over the enemy, but too often, we forget that we have this authority. The enemy is the one who tells us that we don’t have enough people or money or children and the Church is dying. The enemy is the one who defeats us when we are asked to do something new and are afraid. The enemy is the one who tells us God’s Word isn’t for us.
But the Good News we have from Jesus is that God’s Word is for us –God speaks the promise of forgiveness for our sin and promises the Holy Spirit is with us, here and now. These instructions that Jesus gives are not just for the seventy appointed on that day two thousand years ago, but for each one of us now.
Let us pray…
Holy and forgiving God,
We give you thanks for Your Son Jesus who sows seeds of peace and bears our burdens, freeing us to proclaim your nearness;
Take away our arrogance and our fear.
Give us courage and help us remember You have given us authority and power over the Enemy.
We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus.
Amen.
[i] https://www.tnfarmbureau.org/how-much-corn-can-you-harvest-day, accessed 7/5/2019.
[ii] https://www.tspr.org/post/how-much-corn-could-you-pick-hand-20-minutes, accessed 7/5/2019.
All three of the synoptic gospels include the account of Jesus sending his first twelve disciples out. But only Luke includes the sending of the seventy that we hear in this morning’s gospel.
You can imagine the scene: while a group of twelve fits around a long table, this group of disciples is about the same size as our worshiping congregation. Addressing his followers Jesus adopts the language of harvest, saying "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few….” (Luke 10:2a)
Bringing in a harvest isn’t a task that anyone can do alone. Today I’m not even talking about the hours of labor that go into sowing seed in acres of land or protecting the crops against pests and weather. At harvesttime, before mechanized equipment, a farmworker could expect to hand-pick 100 bushels of corn in a day if the conditions were good. [i] Whole families would begin at dawn, trying to get the first “50 bushels, 2,800 pounds of corn, before lunch, and another 50 bushels in the afternoon, often harvesting until dark.” And it could take weeks to get it all picked. [ii] It was rigorous, exhausting work that seemed to go on forever.
And Jesus was describing not just one small corner of the world but all of it. The people listening to him had to be wondering, “How much can two, or twelve or even seventy of us do?”
Then Jesus says, “therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.”
The very first instruction that Jesus gives is to pray.
Pray for the harvest, remembering it is God’s work and God is Lord of the harvest, not us. And then pray for laborers to be sent into the harvest.
Jesus doesn’t say, “Pray for more church members” or even more Lutherans, but for more laborers, co-workers who will bear God into the world just as we are called to do.
The Lord’s harvest is about being open to God’s timing – a kairos time that doesn’t follow our human wants or demands – to tend to those whom God has prepared; those who can hear the Good News of God’s love and see God at work in the world.
The twelve were sent with “power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, … to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. (Luke 9:1-2) Here Jesus goes into more detail as he prepares the next group to go out. He sends his followers out, not to proclaim our expertise or our superiority, but with humility and vulnerability. Jesus asks us to bear God’s peace into the world and receive the hospitality we are given, without criticism or judgment.
Often, when we talk about going out into the world, in local service or international mission trips, we make our lists, plans and preparations and the people we intend to help become objects of our attention. As well-meaning as that is, here Jesus tells his followers to go out empty-handed, dependent on the provision of others, and be fully and peacefully present with people where we find them. It is a model of accompaniment, and relationship-building, that is focused on the person and not on a project or a job to be completed. Sometimes, that will mean taking a risk, being uncomfortable, and going places that are outside of our familiar routines and hangouts.
At the beginning of this gospel, Luke says, Jesus sent the seventy to “every town and place where he himself intended to go.” (Luke 10:1) In Luke’s gospel, that includes the synagogue and temple, but more frequently it includes places where demons inhabit adults and children or disease has withered and defeated people, places where people have been declared unclean and unwelcome; and it includes both deserted places and places crowded with hungry people.
Although Jesus tells us to go out and says he is sending us “out like lambs into the midst of wolves” (Luke 10:3), he does not send us alone.
Jesus sends us with authority. We have received authority because in Christ, God comes to us, and gives us all that the Son has, and the Son takes all that is ours. We no longer live as ourselves but as God’s people. We empty ourselves and become vessels to bear God’s love and grace into the world, and through our words and actions, we proclaim, “The kingdom of God has come near.” (Luke 10:11) Not because of our human presence but because the God who saves is with us.
We are given authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and power over the enemy, but too often, we forget that we have this authority. The enemy is the one who tells us that we don’t have enough people or money or children and the Church is dying. The enemy is the one who defeats us when we are asked to do something new and are afraid. The enemy is the one who tells us God’s Word isn’t for us.
But the Good News we have from Jesus is that God’s Word is for us –God speaks the promise of forgiveness for our sin and promises the Holy Spirit is with us, here and now. These instructions that Jesus gives are not just for the seventy appointed on that day two thousand years ago, but for each one of us now.
Let us pray…
Holy and forgiving God,
We give you thanks for Your Son Jesus who sows seeds of peace and bears our burdens, freeing us to proclaim your nearness;
Take away our arrogance and our fear.
Give us courage and help us remember You have given us authority and power over the Enemy.
We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus.
Amen.
[i] https://www.tnfarmbureau.org/how-much-corn-can-you-harvest-day, accessed 7/5/2019.
[ii] https://www.tspr.org/post/how-much-corn-could-you-pick-hand-20-minutes, accessed 7/5/2019.
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