Sermon on Luke 10.25-37 — Audio

Here is the audio for my sermon on July 14, 2013 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Oakland.

You clicking the above link or clicking here should open a new tab/window for streaming the audio. The manuscript on which it is based is available here.

Sermon on Luke 10.25-37

The Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews

14 July 2013

Proper 10,C

Luke 10.25-37

           

The summer after my freshman year I worked for a non-profit called Alabama Rural Ministry. As are many summer camp type job experiences, it was one of the best, worst, and most transformative experiences of my college years. ARM is a non-profit in Alabama about mission camps and plugging youth and anyone else who desires into a meaningful way to serve. There are two sites that run, and one of them is only in the summer. ARM offers day camp for children in the communities it serves and home repair for people whose homes are in need of repair.

Youth groups, adult groups, whoever, come in and assist something of a skeleton staff each week during the summer. Some youth go to the day camp, others go to a construction site. The summer I served, our theme was “Love: the Unspoken Message.” We used the Prayer Attributed to St. Francis as a focusing prayer, and we used the story of the Good Samaritan as our focus text. St. Francis is said to have said, “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use word.”

            

Hearing this text, doing the same activities around it each week, doing the same foot washing, and hearing some awful examples of how we might be neighbors desensitized me to this text. It’s one that is read often enough and you’ve probably heard it myriad times. You may have heard the message boiled down to what seems self-explanatory from just the text, Juses’ admonition to “Go and do likewise.” Go do like the Samaritan did, go help your neighbors.

            

You may have heard it spun a variety of ways like why the priest needed to not touch the man because he would have become ritually unclean and wouldn’t have been able to serve the greater good. You may have been left with the question “How do you not help your neighbors? Who are those people you avoid when really you should be doing this great, generous kindness to?”

            

Now, that is certainly a valid tack to take on this text. It’s certainly worth pointing out that Jesus is baiting the elder of the law by having a Levite and a priest pass the man by, and then one of those awful Samaritans, someone outside of Judaism who surely couldn’t do anything right, help the man out. The elder of the law can’t even bring himself to say that the Samaritan was the man’s neighbor. The elder of the law can probably barely bring himself to say, “the one who had mercy on him.”

            

If you’ll look in your inserts, let’s look at the question and answer exchange a little more closely. The elder asks how to get into heaven, Jesus gives him an answer, and the man says he’s done that. Then the man says, “But who is my neighbor?”

            

In typical Jesus form, he doesn’t actually answer the question, he tells a story. Let’s pay attention to the end, though. Jesus says, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The elder of the law then replied, “The one who showed him mercy.” So if we take all of that story and back and forth it reduces to “Who is my neighbor?” with the answer not being “The person in need I help,” but “the person who helps me when I am in need.”

            

Do you see that? The man asks who his neighbor is. Jesus asks who the neighbor was. The lawyer answers the one who showed mercy. So instead of “We should all be helping our neighbors and not avoiding the panhandlers on the street” — which is certainly true — this text invites us to ask who the people who are helpful to us when we’re beaten and broken down. It asks us to think about those people who are our neighbors not because we reach out a hand of privilege to help them, but because they are with us and care for us when we are in need.

            

Taylor Burton-Edwards breaks down how clearly the Samaritan man was the beaten man’s neighbor by highlighting nine distinctive actions of the Samaritan man:

1.     He came near.
2.     He was moved with compassion.
3.     He went to him.
4.     He bandaged the wounds.
5.     He poured oil (a soothing agent) and wine (antiseptic) on the wounds.
6.     He put him on his animal.
7.     He brought him to an inn.
8.     He took care of him at the inn. All of this was what we (and Robert Lupton, in the book noted above) might refer to as "triage." These were things this man could not do for himself in his condition. So the Samaritan did.
 When he had to leave, he gave the innkeeper money to keep caring for him, promising to pay more if needed when he returned. This is a bit of triage, but also something more. The Samaritan wasn’t promising to come back right away and keep fixing everything for the man. Instead, he was making it possible for this man to have some kind of community, and supporting the basic support networks of that community, to get him back on his feet again.

Burton-Edwards points out that this is not ministry to, but ministry with. This is the bureaucracy of the incarnation — God coming to us and being in ministry with us in the person of Jesus. In this story on being neighborly, Jesus is inviting us to let ourselves be vulnerable to others’ help and to others’ hurt. On the cross Jesus modeled for us the ultimate vulnerability — not reacting to those crucifying him, but this was a culmination of his ministry of vulnerability where he shared his life with others. He didn’t have to give anyone enough information for them to betray him, but he did anyway.

            

To follow that example, to be in ministry with people, we have to get to know them, like Jesus the God-man living with humanity. Vulnerability — like Jesus voluntarily showed on the Cross or like the beaten man had forced on him — is not something that is valued in our culture today. Instead fear and self-preservation are often motivating factors.

            

We learned last night, as Andrew Cohen at TheAtlantic said, “you can go looking for trouble in Florida, with a gun and a great deal of racial bias, and you can find that trouble, and you can act upon that trouble in a way that leaves a young man dead, and none of it guarantees that you will be convicted of a crime.”  

            

We don’t have to go to Florida to see that white privilege is a real thing. Friday night saw the premier of Fruitvale Station here in Oakland and around the Bay Area, a reminder that two white police officers held a young black man down and shot him at point blank range. This event from my senior year of college was much closer to home for those of you who lived here then and live here now.

Nor do we need to look only at Florida to see how vulnerability and interacting with one another work with and against one another — while not convicted of murder, that police officer was convicted of something. We may see through a glass dimly, but the Kingdom of God has come near

We see in the Cross, and in today’s gospel text, that it doesn’t come near in violence, self-preservation, or self-defense. It doesn’t come near in turf wars, in drive-bys, or pre-planned gun fights. And it certainly doesn’t draw near in fear or retaliation — fear of the Samaritan for not being good enough, so bad as to not be named; fear of the black boy who’d bought a pack of Skittles, or violent retaliation against a broken justice system that privileges people from charges to trials to verdicts to sentencing.

No, beloved, the Kingdom of God has drawn near in people who make themselves vulnerable to be in ministry with those around them, to assess needs from a built relationship and meet them as they are able, not because they are better than.

The Kingdom of God draws near as you help the Food Co-op, in helping the work of Senior Resources at St. Paul’s. Two instances where not only do people — you — show mercy to vulnerable, marginalized people, but those serving show vulnerability by letting themselves know the margins, by leaving their places of comfort to places of disease and discomfort. The Kingdom of God draws near when you stand at sites of shootings in this city and say that they are not okay — and when you work with perpetrators and victims for peace with justice.

The man in today’s gospel text was beaten to that place, and the one who helped him was dismissed because of his race. Jesus admonishes the elder of the law to go and do likewise, but only after he tells him that his neighbor is the one who opened himself to vulnerability. To whom are you being a neighbor in that way?

Sermon on Luke 10.1-11, 16-20

The Rev. Joseph P. Peters-Mathews

Proper 9, C

Lk. 10.1-11, 16-20

7 July 2013

St. Paul’s, Oakland

In the name of God in whose name we are baptized: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I have a secret for you, church, but it really shouldn’t be a secret, and it’s about who these passages are about. Yes, the lesson from the Hebrew scriptures is about Naaman and the lesson from Luke is about the 70. But with every passage of scripture proclaimed on a Sunday morning I like to use one of my step-dad’s tests when people come knocking on his door to try to recruit him: the so what test.

We’re hearing these texts on a Sunday — so what? Why? This season after Pentecost is used to strengthen disciples in ministries we learned about during Eastertide. So these passages are about…us. Every biblical text is about the story itself, and if there weren’t some timeless truth in it for us today the Church wouldn’t have made it a part of our timeless canon centuries ago.

Or Gospel lesson picks up where last week’s left off. Last week Jesus says that if you want to follow him, you have to leave your family, the dead have to bury the dead, you have to set your face to Jerusalem with him — prepared to die to yourself  — and put your hand to the plow and not look back. 

Today Jesus appoints 70 and gives him a simple message. These are the people who have left their families, have promised to try to die, and who are working to be like him. These 70 are us, the us who have waded in the troubled waters, been healed, and been gifted with the Spirit to do this simple, simple task — go to towns, say “the kingdom of God has come near!”, show that it is, and come back to report what happened.

Do you notice what Jesus doesn’t do? He doesn’t just take whoever shows up and expect them to be able to follow him, and he doesn’t send them out on their own willy-nilly. Jesus here knows what he’s doing — treating these new disciples like the youngsters, in following him, that they are. Jesus gives very clear directions: take this, not that; enter here, not there; when things don’t go well, move on — not in anger, but because it’s time to.

Jesus is sending out evangelists to tell the Good News, but he’s been teaching them what the Kingdom of God looks like for a while now. He’s made the difficulty of the journey clear by saying that it’s hard to follow him and forewarning them that it means dying to yourself. Even in the midst of admonition and direction about what they are to do, Jesus reassures them: “Know this! The kingdom of God has come near.”

The 70 go away for some period of time and come back among a changed and changing world. “Jesus! Even the demons submit to us!”

Jesus says, “Yeah, they do, but don’t get too excited about it. I’ve given you authority to do that, but be happier not that you can work wonders, but that you have done the work I have given you to do.”

All of that is exciting and wonderful…but so what? What does that have to do with us? Well, I told you that we’re the seventy, right? So…we’re supposed to be going out, proclaiming that the Kingdom of God has come near, showing that it has, and then coming back to report it. How well do we do that, both as a congregation and as individuals? Have you seen that the kingdom of God has come near in the last few weeks? Have you told any of your friends about it? Any of your church people about it?

Maybe you have, but our American Mainline Protestant institutions don’t really prepare us to be evangelists. For so long we’ve assumed that everyone around us is Christian, that they’ve heard the Good News so we don’t need to be telling it.

That’s just not true anymore.

We may not be trained to be evangelists, but we have been trained to be witty and make signs. I saw a flyer on the Episcopal Church Memes Facebook page on Friday that made me cringe. Let me paint you a mental picture. The background is grey, but it’s got a white boarder. It opens with, “Think you already know enough about a Christian to not want to be one? THNK AGAIN!”  Below this opener is a picture of Rodin’s Thinker. Below that the flier says, “Think about a church…where God’s inclusive love is available to all; where the focus is on justice, not judgment; where the family values we preach value ALL families. Think about The Episcopal Church!”

There is then an Episcopal shield and our tag, “The Episcopal Church welcomes you,” with tiny copy, “Whoever you are, and wherever your find yourself on the journey of faith there is a place for you in The Episcopal Church. Come and see, and join us as we work together to make God’s love tangible to absolutely everybody.”

Those are a lot of good words, but yes, it made me cringe. For one, I’m a communicator and it had way too much text on it. No one has time to read this much on a bulletin board. The graphics weren’t the best arranged, and the shield and welcome didn’t follow style or font guides established by The Episcopal Church for use of the logo. Those are pedantic critiques, though and barely what made me cringe.

There is no mention of the Kingdom of God drawing near. There’s no mention of Jesus. The focus of what we’re doing today deals with justice, but we’re here to worship and be sent to work. Lots of words for people who already aren’t here — and probably aren’t going to be persuaded to reject their atheism, their agnosticism, or their suspicion of religious institutions because of a flier an anonymous person put up in a coffee shop.

With not just a Church, The Episcopal Church, but a whole faith tradition, Christianity on decline, commentator Taylor Burton-Edwards says, “The institutional solutions all presume we are primarily those who COME to worship and other activities, and that those activities (worship, education programs, and outreach or mission projects we create) are what makes for faithful Christian disciples.
Jesus’s approach is to SEND disciples in ministry in his name, with no programs, no ‘big show worship,’ and little more than an unwavering faith that the gospel is true: God’s kingdom has drawn near, and we can see that happening and participate in it everywhere.”

Here at St. Paul’s you are a people who are working to make the Kingdom of God’s nearness clearer through your participation in SAVE Oakland stand-ins and your advocacy for LGBT people. I’ve seen the kingdom of God come a little closer in the last two weeks with the overturning of Prop 8 and DOMA — and I’ve seen it going a little farther away with the overturning of the Voting Rights Act and a possible end to affirmative action in educational admission. I saw it at the press conference about religious affirmation of marriage equality when women and people of color were shown supporting marriage equality and calling the church to keep working to eradicate the sins of racism and gender discrimination.

You might say, “But Fr. Joseph, those are all just bureaucracy, what does that have to do with the Kingdom of God?” If we let “bureaucracy” mean “working through systems” then the Jesus who we follow engaged it completely from the process of maturing in the womb and being birthed to working his way through a fallen, failing “justice” system before his crucifixion. Jesus the incarnate God lived in our bureaucracy and told us to know that the kingdom of God has come near.

Jesus didn’t send out the 70 to post fliers hoping new people would come back to him. He sent them, like our deacon will do in a few minutes, to proclaim good news to real, live, people they encountered. To share their testimony of how God was changing the world, and to come back to strengthen others with what they saw. This season after Pentecost is about strengthening disciples to proclaim the Good News of the Resurrection, and I’m with you for six more weeks or so of them.

I was just coming into The Episcopal Church when Gerald Ford died; this prompted my Southern Baptist mother to ask me in a joking form, “What’s the one thing an Episcopalian won’t share with you?” I said I didn’t know. Her punch line was “His faith.” I was incensed then but now wonder if this might not be too true.

The kingdom of God has drawn near! Where have you seen it? Who are you telling? Are you sharing everything you have with others except your faith?

Keeping Captive Audiences Captive

A few weekends ago I went to a pretty good presentation that talked about ministry of leadership in changing times. The presenters were very hospitable and knowledgeable, and they’d come from far away to talk to people in the Dioceses of California and El Camino Real.

When one of the presenters saw my name he said, “Aren’t you changing the world?” I was taken aback and asked for some more information about what he meant he said, “Young, fabulous, and trying to get the church into the 21^st century.” I said that, ha, sure, yeah I fall into that category and that’s me!

A few minutes later I got to talk with the other presenter about some of the things I am doing in the Diocese of California and some of the things I hope to be doing in the next year or so. It was a great little conversation and I felt really good about what I’m doing and what I want to do. It built on some feedback I’ve gotten from congregational leaders this week too.

Before we started though, I had a surprising interaction with one of the facilitators. I asked if someone had the Wi-Fi password for the church hosting us. The presenter said, “We do. But we aren’t giving it out because people will do other things during the presentation, so we’ll give it out at the end. Nice try, Joseph!”

This facilitator echoed some concerns that had been raised at Episcopal Communicators in early April. If people are looking things from the sermon up as preachers are giving it then they may know what the preacher is saying that isn’t accurate. This already happens. My mom’s pastor has been reading his sermons from a website the last two years. My mom googled a phrase and found out and now she follows along. Every week.

Rather than fearing that people can do that, this access to information challenges preachers (and all kinds of presenters) to be better at what they do. I don’t think that it’s always a good thing for everyone to be online all the time. I do think that avoiding access so that those in leadership aren’t accountable is a worthy defense, though.

Much earlier this year I went to a presentation where our presenter asked us to put our computers away because we wouldn’t need them. She lied. Her presentation was awful, and yes, I wanted to escape her awful presentation into my work email or the Twitterverse. Should I have stayed engaged? Yes. Should she have been better prepared and less hokey? Totally.

The presenter wouldn’t give me the Wi-Fi password on Saturday for fear that people would do other things. He had a captive audience that he didn’t want to escape. That was an unnecessary fear and anxiety though — his presentation was great. I was (clearly) really annoyed by this — the presentation was on the church changing, and I’d just been complimented for the work I’m doing that involves electronic communication, but he didn’t trust me to stay engaged…and he took the choice away from me.

What do you think? Is having outside access a good or bad thing? How do you navigate this in your ministry setting?

Daily Mass on the Parable of the Sower

My sermon on Mark 4.1-20, at the Grace Cathedral daily Eucharist on 30 Jan 2013.

Since college the parable of the sower has presented a challenge for me. Up until that point the point of the parable of the sower seemed so obvious based on how it had been preached to be: You need to be the good soil that receives the Word and bears fruit, thirty, sixty, or a hundred fold.

I grew up Southern Baptist, and in that tradition there is a strong emphasis on the role of the individual in salvation, so sermons on this focused on you. What do you do? How are you bearing fruit? How are you avoiding being rocky soil, not having root to endure? The emphasis was always on us individually and how we were being good Christians.

Then I got to college and the absurdity of this parable was pointed out to me. Even if you haven’t done much farming, some of the things in this story make sense: seeds can’t grow that well on 101 or in the middle of a desert. Seeds need life and a helpful habitat to grow in short, good soil.

But if you’ve tried to grow things you know that for the most part, seeds need a lot more than good soil actually, and that’s part of where this parable gets absurd — and loses its focus on how we ourselves are soil to fix on our own, what I grew up with: striving to be the good soil. If you’ve tried to grow things you also know that you probably wouldn’t throw seed on California Street or on the Great Steps. No, you’d throw it into soil where it would grow.

This is a shift in looking at this passage: rather than looking at what we’re doing ourselves, we’re looking at the sower who sows the word, God who shares Good News and sends Jesus to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. In Jesus God has come into the whole world, to the rocky soil, the trampled paths, the scorched earth, and the good soil to share the Good News, over and over again.

This text, while not an invitation to make ourselves better is an invitation to do things better. Rocky soil doesn’t just turn into good soil, and a trampled path won’t automatically be made into something on which seeds can grow. These plots don’t have to be stuck as they are, though. While this passage speaks to God’s generosity — which we experience in grace at the font and the table, in the prayers and the word — this text is also an invitation to us.

Rather than thinking about how we can fix ourselves, I think this text invites us to think about how we can get rid of the rocks in the soil, how to cultivate and form people so that they have a root and endure for longer than awhile. This text invites us to be community to those on a spiritual path and teach them about Jesus. The best way to do that is by loving them and loving those around us. More actively, though we can tell them our stories of Jesus’ change in our lives and invite them to share theirs.