At the Gates

Luke 16: 19-31

It’s a perfect sermon set up:
Jesus tells the story of a rich man – content, confident, comfortable – and sets up the contrast with the destitute Lazarus, so poor and ill that he can’t even resist the neighborhood dogs treating him like part of the furniture.  They die, and the poor Lazarus is given spiritual honor while the rich man suffers torment. 

Then we overhear a conversation between the rich man and the spiritual guru of the dead – the patriarch Abraham – that boils down to “follow God’s law while you’re alive, so you won’t be tormented when you’re dead.”  Give your money away, and don’t be rich, so that you will be rewarded in heaven.

It’s the perfect set up for a fire and brimstone sermon, or a money one, all about how you have to give your money away, or you’ll go to hell.

You may be happy to hear that I’m not planning to preach you that sermon this morning, but don’t breathe that sigh of relief, because I believe that this story is about something else just as challenging.

It’s not so much about money and hell as about hospitality.

More specifically, about a failure of hospitality.

Lazarus lay at the rich man’s gate, day in and day out. His excruciating poverty and illness were right in front of the man’s eyes, right at his doorstep, where you’d think the man could not possibly miss it.

But he does.

He misses the hunger and need right in front of him. Misses the guest at his gate, a guest who doesn’t need an invitation, a formal dinner, and a clean house, but just to share in the abundance already there.

It’s a failure of hospitality, and a failure of humanity.

Has that ever happened to you?
Have you ever been somewhere and felt like everyone ignored you? Been in a place that didn’t seem to care, or to notice you?  Had a hunger, or a need, that no one seemed to notice?

Did that happen to any of you in a church?

It does happen. All the time.

Even here.

For all the joy and energy, the food and the friendship, that make Calvary attractive,

there are guests we simply miss.

Guests who make it into our pews, but don’t feel welcome enough to return.

Guests who are practically on our doorstep, Monday through Saturday – people we see all the time, but don’t think about, and never invite to the table.

And guests who don’t even make it that far – people whose yearnings and pain we simply never imagine, who never make it on to your radar screen, or mine.

I’m thinking about this because our Thrive team has been talking about hospitality this month. We read and learned and talked about the ways that churches just like ours become intentionally welcoming:

Taking care to open our doors wide – and make sure we’re not blocking the entrance with our own conversations and concerns. 

Seeing each of ourselves as hosts, when we claim this place as our own, and therefore all paying attention to the comfort of any guest. 

Making the simple effort of ensuring that no one stands alone by the coffee pot, and that everyone is personally invited to the table full of bagels as well as the table of the altar.

And being ready to tell other people – the people on our Monday through Saturday doorsteps where our own spiritual support comes from.

It’s very simple stuff.

But it depends on a deep gospel truth, one highlighted in our story today.  The rich man’s sin isn’t simply having money. It’s not even precisely refusing to help.

The real problem is that he never even notices Lazarus is human.  Never recognizes his brother, or himself, in the man on his doorstep.

Before they die, we know that Lazarus sees the rich man, and longs for even the crumbs off his abundant table – but the rich man seems never to have noticed that Lazarus existed. Then when they are both in the place of the dead, he sees Lazarus only as a tool – a convenience to bring him refreshment, or to run a message.

That error doesn’t even require selfishness. Just expediency. And that’s the real problem.  The sin that makes true hospitality impossible.

Has this ever happened to you?
Have you ever considered another person more as an object – an inconvenience or an asset – than a brother or sister?

Ever –even accidentally – used a store clerk or telephone tech support person as a target for your frustration or a tool to get what you want?  Talked about “management” as a faceless nuisance? 

It’s easy, really.  Much easier to deal with a world of objects and faceless strangers than individual brothers and sisters.

Wealth – in any degree – insulates us, but so does poverty.  It’s as easy to label “the one percent” as faceless and far away - and especially as “not me” - as it is to label “the homeless.”  And incredibly easy for “Tea Party” or “Socialist,” conservative or liberal, to become faceless categories rather than neighbors, friends, and teammates – much less “us.”

I know I do this.  It’s a useful defense, it keeps me from bleeding to death in endless compassion. But it also has a great danger: the danger of ignoring the unexpected guest on my doorstep, or missing the human connection God offers me as a gift.

Here, inside the church, those defenses may make us believe that we don’t want to embarrass people by putting them on the spot, or that someone else is better equipped to greet and welcome.  Our defenses declare that our own business or needs won’t wait, and that the people we don’t know well are just from the other service.

Those defenses might keep me from embarrassing myself, but they also keep me from meeting and welcoming someone that God has brought to us as a gift, and as a guest.

A friend and colleague observes that most people who come looking for church come in some form of crisis or hunger:
Death or illness has touched them personally. 

Loss or fear or some other emotional pain moves in.

Sometimes the hunger is a longing for community and connection.  Or a sense of something missing, something you can’t quite define, but ready to blossom in the right time and place.

Here, our table is overflowing, just like in the gospel story.

We have community and connection. 

We have comfort, and prayer, and companionship to heal grief, listening ears and sympathy to relieve lonely pain.

We have energy and joy and laughter, and work to share – fertile soil for the seeds so many of our guests carry.

When we are comfortable, happy, and connected, it isn’t always easy to share, but it’s very simple.  And it starts with welcoming the guests God brings to our doorstep, literally, at Calvary’s doors and pews and parish hall, and the guests God puts into your weekday life, and mine, who might not make it to the building at all without our truly seeing, then welcoming and inviting them.

Our table overflows, at Calvary.

And there are hungry people at our gate.

What do you suppose we will do?

It's Not About You

Luke 15:1-10

It’s lost and found Sunday in the gospel. 

So let’s start with a show of hands:

Have any of you here recently lost something important to you? Keys? Glasses? Phone? Child?  Something you searched for urgently and anxiously?

Did you find it?

Excellent.

This gospel story is not about you.

How about being lost?  How many people here remember a time when you were lost?

Do you also remember being found?

How did that make you feel? 

Excellent.

This story is not about you, either.

One more.  How many of you know someone who gets all the attention because she or he is always screwing up, getting lost or in trouble? Does it drive you crazy?
I’m sorry. 

And if you find yourself wondering if there’s any point in being righteous when God goes off chasing the screw up sheep all the time, you might have some sympathy for Jesus’ first hearers in this story, but it’s not about you, either.

I find it funny that Jesus tells this parable about something that’s a pretty normal part of your life and mine – the lost and found experience – when this story is really, profoundly, not about us.

It’s about God.

It’s a story about God being so joyful God can’t contain it.

So joyful that normal breaks down and we have a tremendous party to celebrate the smallest, most ordinary thing.

Jesus is telling us about God’s invitation to rejoice.

This is great news.

God’s joy is great news for any of us who have been found by God when we were lost. And it’s great news that God invites us to rejoice extravagantly with God.  But to accept that invitation, we have to know that it is not about us. That you and I are called, by this story, to step out of the center of our own lives and our faith, and open the space for God’s joy to pour through.

Does that sound easy?

Well, let’s practice.

Think about the worst screw ups you know.  The kid who is always in trouble, or the grownup equivalent. Think about God’s joy when that person opens her or his whole heart to God (which does not necessarily mean they quit screwing up).  Can you feel the joy??

Excellent.   You’re ready for the intermediate exercise:

Think about the people who absolutely drive you crazy.  The people who you can tell are clearly lost to all sense and reason – politicians, management, family members, whoever it is –  the people you least want to meet in heaven. Go ahead, and get them firmly in your mind.

I know when I do that, my shoulders hunch up, my teeth clench, and I frequently make a face.  My body is shouting out the opposite of joy.

So when you are face to face with those lost causes, can you feel God’s joy in being united with them?

At this level, to share God’s joy, I have to believe with my whole body and soul that it’s not about me. I have to get myself out of the center of the story, so the relationship between God and the other person takes center stage.  I have to really let go of whatever it is that drives me nuts, or to get over a fear and reach out to make friends, so that there’s room for God’s joy to fill that space.

I still need practice at this level. How about you? 

When you think of the people who can drive you crazy, what would it take to feel God’s joy in them?

Do you have to practice letting go of something?
Do you have to reach out and make friends?

And then there’s the advanced practice. The practice of learning to see the lost:

Think about who gets lost in your everyday life. Who is invisible to you?

People who produce the goods and the food you use?

The passenger in the stalled car ahead that’s causing the traffic jam that’s making you late?

People who work alongside you that you just don’t see?

Every work, every form of entertainment, every place has people who are lost: people who are invisible to many, if not most of us.

Look at football (since that’s what I’m planning to do in an hour or so.)  The Bears on the field are nice and visible.  The coaches and commentators and fans in the stadium, too.

But what about the guy whose job it is to patch the grass, walking the field carefully with grass seed and fertilizer and sharp attention? 

Or the people who take out all the trash after the game?  

What about the young men who’ve dreamed of being on that field, whose dreams were lost to injury or to a lack of funds to start them on the path? 

What if one of those young men went to Iraq instead, and now sleeps in the park beside Solider Field, but has to leave on game days because the noise and crowds trigger old injuries?

These are the people who are invisible, lost when we’re watching the game.  And I imagine it’s exactly those people God sees at the Bears game this afternoon.  Those people God finds, discovers, celebrates, with as much joy – maybe more joy - than Jay Cutler or Charles Tillman.

Can you imagine God’s joy when God finds those whom we can’t see?  those who are lost to us?

To be open to God’s joy in finding, and God’s joy in us, we need to learn to see the lost.  To see the world that’s not about us.

We need to practice looking for the cracks that God’s people slip into, or the cracks in our selves, and our world,  that hide others from us. Your life, mine, this world, are full of those cracks.

Cracks that people slip into because the resources they need just aren’t within reach.

Cracks in the media and our own perceptions that hide people who aren’t considered attractive or interesting.

Cracks that people are driven into by pain or loss, by legalized prejudice or by peer pressure.

Cracks that sometime hide us from ourselves.

If we learn to see into those cracks, to see the lost, we’ll certainly see need and pain, but when we see God’s joy in the person who was lost, it’s so much easier to find ways to meet the need and heal the pain.

So opening our eyes to those cracks, to the people we don’t see, opens up all kinds of space for God’s joy in our hearts, our lives, that heals our world.

So practice.  Practice sensing God’s joy in the screw-ups, practice letting go, or reaching out with the people who drive you crazy. And practice seeing the people who get lost, the invisible,

because opening up your life to the good news that it’s not about you can fill that life with God’s own overflowing joy. 

That can fill your ears and heart with God’s constant invitation to extravagant celebration: Rejoice with me. I have found what was lost, and there is joy in heaven.

Expensive

Luke 14:25-33

Last week my attention was caught by an internet article about areas where pastors are often unprepared for ministry.  This particular article was better than many of its kind, and it listed things like relational intelligence, dealing with critics and expectations, leadership skills, balancing family commitments, and handling a consumer mentality in the culture and church.

It’s true that all of these are areas that can be really challenging, and that a good leader and pastor truly needs to learn them. 

But this list pushed my buttons.

There is a fairly common complaint among pastors, especially in the first few years “They didn’t teach me this in seminary!!”
Does that ever happen in your field?

It’s true.  In seminary, they don’t teach;

- dealing with an overflowing toilet, bleeding a boiler, or managing insurance claims

- negotiating space use with the bridge club

- how to be a good boss

- moving furniture or choosing the color of the tablecloths without offending anybody

- talking the youth group into including the pastor as a roller coaster buddy when they decide to go to Six Flags.

- understanding bookkeeping

Some of it is rewarding, but all of it can be challenging.  And they don’t teach it in seminary.

But since I know they also don’t teach in school a lot of what you need to know to be a good lawyer, doctor, engineer, teacher, manager, parent, friend or spouse, this pushes my buttons. And I get self-righteous and snarky about how tempting it is to blame hard work or necessary challenges on someone else.

I was commenting on that to a couple of priest friends the other day, and then we pulled out our work on this Sunday’s scripture readings, and got face to face with Jesus saying:
“To follow me, you’ve got to hate your family, even life itself, you’ve got to carry your cross, and give up all your possessions. You’ve got to count the cost, be serious about the hard work, or you need to quit before you start.”

Oh.

You know what? They don’t teach this in seminary!

They don’t teach you how to preach “sacrifice everything for Jesus; count the cost in hard work” at the same time that you’re trying to point out that helping on the altar guild or in children’s and youth ministry is fun and rewarding.

And they definitely don’t teach in seminary how to give up your possessions, carry a cross, and ditch your family.

This teaching really is incredibly hard for any Christian, and many of us actually find out just how hard it is long after we’ve signed up, or committed.

How many of you read this list of Jesus’ before you were baptized, and seriously counted this cost?

No? Perhaps you did that calculation before confirmation? Or before you brought your children for baptism?

Yeah, me neither.

So it wouldn’t be unreasonable if you listen to Jesus describe the incredible challenges of being his disciple and think, “hey, they never taught me how to do that in Sunday School!” (or even from the pulpit!)

Because we can’t teach that.

We can only live it.

Or not.

So first, the good news.

You don’t actually need to give up all your possessions or ditch your family in order to be welcome at Calvary.  And if you’ve signed up to be a Sunday School teacher – or vestry member, worship leader, or anything else – you don’t have to teach everyone else to manage that sacrifice.

Church is different from discipleship, but in the church, we do try to practice discipleship together. And there are habits that can help make the life of discipleship a little simpler: leaning in to your prayers, embracing change, loving others.

And you don’t actually have to pick a fight and break up with your family to follow Jesus, though you do have to be willing to put God’s will and Jesus’ work ahead of the deepest loves in your life.

I hope that’s good news to all of you. Because then there’s the other news:

Following Jesus is the most expensive thing you will ever do.

There will be immensely difficult choices and actions.  For most of us, it won’t involve literal death on a cross, but it will often mean taking a risk that big and scary.

People will criticize you, or mock you. Because you’ll be standing up for people that no one else wants to stand up for, and you’ll publicly claim beliefs that other people find silly or inconvenient.

You’ll struggle uphill every day against the consumer mentality of our culture – and sometimes within yourself.  Because you’ll have to say “no” to the idea that happiness comes easily, or with new possessions, food, a certain body weight, or sports loyalties.

You’ll be deeply torn in decisions about your family.  Because loving God and following Jesus sometimes means getting back into painful relationships – and sometimes means letting go when you want to hold on.

Following Jesus means so many of those things they don’t teach you in seminary (or med school, college, technical school, Lamaze classes or Sunday School).

It means being able to lead people who don’t know they want to be led.  Building and maintaining real, dependable relationships with people you wouldn’t have chosen to hang out with.  Staying grounded in the face of criticism, and managing demanding expectations.  Knowing you can’t do it by yourself, and doing it anyway.

You’ve got to do all of that when you’re following Jesus, and there’s no class that will prepare you. There’s only other disciples, and the grace of God.

Have you all left, yet?

If you’re still hanging in there, will you believe me when I tell you that all that impossibly hard stuff is actually good news, too?

Not because it’s ever easy.

But because all those things we risk, all those things we have to give up when we’re seriously, deeply following Jesus - possessions, choices, life plans, family comforts – all those are things we risk every day, anyway.

Fires and floods, economic variables, illness, accident, even stupid misunderstandings, can yank those things away.

It’s the relationship with God which Jesus models for us that will endure through and beyond and in spite of the loss of everything else that we hold dear.

And that’s discipleship.

Giving all your heart to that Jesus-like relationship with God that is stronger and longer and more real than anything else you love.  Giving all your soul to the gift that can’t be broken by any loss or risk or disaster.

Oh yes, it’s hard.

And there isn’t a class on this earth that can prepare us for it.

The only way to calculate the cost is to measure the worth of your own heart and soul.  And that is the only thing that makes it worth it.

Because your heart and your soul are priceless in God’s sight.

Jesus tells us that God is not cheap.

But neither are you.

And God will never ask for a refund.

Change Your Seat

Luke 14:1, 7-14

Sometimes, Jesus is a really lousy dinner guest.

In the story we heard today, he’s already made a point of provoking the Pharisees he’s eating with by working on the Sabbath (spiritually and morally offensive to those who take their faith seriously), and now he’s making remarks about how everyone is seated (no more polite then than now).

In a way the advice he’s giving is about how to avoid social embarrassment, and how to get on the good side of heaven – topics that may not sound terribly Jesus-y, or holy.  But to achieve those rewards, he’s telling us to voluntarily do the most embarrassing, humbling, awkward thing you can do, whether you’re invited to a meal or throwing the party:

Choose the worst and lowest place, or invite the most awkward people possible over to dinner.

Humility is a virtue, and it comes easier to some of us than others, but humility is not quite what Jesus is talking about. He’s talking about humbling yourself.

Being bumped to down to a lower place at a first century meal is not unlike being told your performance was terrible and being sent home on a reality TV contest.

It’s public humiliation.  And it stinks.

“Humbling yourself” is deliberately choosing public humiliation; inviting mockery and disrespect. 

That’s very like Jesus.  But it is nothing like easy for most of us.

And Jesus treats it as a matter of course; as the normal behavior of the people of the Kingdom of God.

So I want to try a little exercise with you now.

Will you please stand up, if you are able, and go to the worst seat, or to the lowest place in our church.

Go ahead.  Take this challenge seriously, and find the worst seat or the lowest place at Calvary.

Why is this the lowest place?

What would it mean to you to give up your accustomed place and worship from there?

People moved to the very front or very rear, to the columbarium, to outside the doors, hidden seats in the choir loft, to the priest’s seat, and metaphorically, to the kitchen.  These were the worst places because they cut you off from community, or from participation in worship, they meant a lot of work, or meant that everyone is watching you and judging you.

Thank you. You have a choice now. Finish the worship service where you are.  Or go back to the seat you chose when you first came in today.  (only 4 people stayed in the new seats.)

It’s not quite the same to move to a different seat for worship as to really take the lowest place in the world.  But it does shift your perspective, doesn’t it?
And that’s important.

You see, when we embrace the lowest place – the seriously worst place – with all its difficulties and humiliations, we have a chance to see some of the truths of God’s kingdom with new eyes.

In that lowest place, you get to see what the view looks like from every seat in God’s kingdom. 

Because in God’s kingdom, there aren’t any places where you can look down on others, not even accidentally.

And the view from the bottom is the only view that gives us a real chance to appreciate the truth that God doesn’t measure us against others.

God doesn’t judge us the way we expect.

God doesn’t believe in our judgment of ourselves, either – whether you’re drowning in doubt or completely confident, whether you’ve worked hard for self-respect or constantly feel like a failure.  God doesn’t use our measures.

We can’t win honor or promotion or glory from God. 

The only choice is love.

That’s why Jesus is pushing us to take the lowest place.

Is there a lowest place at your work?  A job that is almost invisible? Or a role that everybody loves to hate or mock?

See if you can do a little bit of that job this week – fetch the coffee, fix the copier, empty the trash – without being thanked for it!  See how it would be to look at the people and the place from that point of view.

Some of you already do that, every day.

So pay attention, too, in the stores where you shop. 

Or in your family. 

Many families have a least-respected member, for one reason or another.  Can you walk a mile in that person’s shoes this week?

I’ll warn you, this is complicated.  It’s hard to take just a little bit of the lowest place. But if you can’t go completely “Undercover Boss,” you can still pay attention this week to what the world looks like from the lowest place.

You could go to the library and get a copy of Barbara Erenreich’s Nickel and Dimed.  Or do a little research on just what it would take to try to get by in Lombard on the minimum wage.   Try to find a story that will show you daily life in the midst of Syria’s civil war, instead of the politics of bombing.

Because you can’t see what God sees without changing your perspective.  And the cracks in our society and our selves, the burdens people bear, and the power of love, are most visible from the worst seat in the house.

Jesus has been there, and done that. And that’s why he tells you and me and the Pharisees that there’s glory in it.

The lowest place can make you bitter, miserable, or oppressed, especially if you’re forced to it.  But when we choose that place and make it our own, all the ordinary measures of our selves and others break down, and we get a chance to see what God might see:

That honor or promotion or popularity can’t heal the cracks in our world or in ourselves. So the only choice is love.

And nothing is more glorious, in the end, than opening ourselves completely to God’s love.

So change your place this week.  And see what happens.