Counting The Cost

Luke 14:25-33

This Sunday we came to the end of our summer survey of Jesus’ parables. The parables before us in Luke come up in the context of very sobering challenges to committed discipleship. In the passage as a whole Jesus says things that really set you back on your heels when you take them in. If they don’t set you back on your heels then you are not really hearing them with the force Jesus intended.

A disciple of Jesus must:

* hate father and mother
* hate his or her own life
* carry the cross
* give up all of his or her posessions



What does Jesus mean by all of this? Does the one who said love your neighbor as yourself really mean that one must embrace an asceticism that is equal to self-loathing in order to be a faithful disciple? Does the one who said that he did not come to contradict the law but fulfill it mean quite literally that one must hate one’s father and mother instead of honoring them? Is every person to take a vow of poverty in order to be Jesus’ disciple?

It is in the parables in this passage that we get some clues as to how to read rightly Jesus’ sobering challenges. New Testament scholar, T.E. Schmidt offers this helpful interpretive insight with regard to the parables before us and I paraphrase just a tad: ‘When trying to decide what Jesus means by counting the cost the crux of the issue does not lie in ‘counting the cost’ in order to make sure one has enough resources within oneself... the point is that no matter what calculus one uses, no matter what resources one believes one can bring to bear, those assets will be insufficient to secure one’s status before God. Alternative and decisive action is thus required for everyone....”

Schmidt’s insight is very helpful because he offers a framework whereby we can understand at once the seriousness of Jesus’ call to take up the cross and the fact that we cannot fulfill these demands without the grace that comes through “alternative and decisive action” (i.e. repentance).

So, when Jesus challenges his followers to renounce family, life itself, and possessions his goal is not so much to scare people away but to challenge people to move into a deeper and more genuine love of God through him. It is like a person who is so in love with another that they keep saying things like this to them: “I love you, I want to be with you forever, but I really wonder sometimes if you love me in the same way? I mean you seem like you love your family more than you love me; it seems like you love your stuff more than you love me; it seems like you want to keep your options open. When a lover says this to their lover, normally it is not to dissuade the beloved from committing. Rather, those hard words are said to them with the hope that they will respond in a deeper love that leaves no questions about the trajectory they want for the relationship.

Jesus says what he says here so that we understand what the stakes are in following him. To follow Jesus as a disciple we must learn to renounce idolatrous relationships to the things that this world offers us as identities to be assumed or as security to be clung to. Instead, we must look for our identity to be formed not according to what our culture offers us but according to what Jesus gives us as renewed human beings who belong to a new family and a new humanity.

What Jesus is saying is that we can relate ourselves to the resources that this life offers in such a way as to draw us away from a truly life-giving experience with Jesus by enslaving us to patterns of living that are ultimately idolatrous. Our relationships to family, material things, and “life itself” all offer plenty of opportunities for cheap substitutes for the life God wants for us. Let’s look at family first.

Jesus says unless you hate your family that you cannot be my disciple... well, what is going on here? In the social setting in which Luke recorded this strong teaching of Jesus, family ties were far more than sentimental connections that drew people together for holidays. Family honor was all important. One’s identity was drawn from one’s family. To walk away from family and to follow Jesus would have often been interpreted by the family and the friends of the family as an act of hating one’s family, particularly if the family did not approve of Jesus. The point is that even when the heart of the disciple has nothing but love for his or her family, the family might declare the disciple to be a hater of family and an embarrassment to the family, particularly if the family disapproved of Jesus.

Connections to biological family are still powerful in our socio-cultural setting. Let’s say that in your family growing up that the most important value in the family was to not upset the ‘honor’ of the family, even when the ‘honor’ was propped up at the expense of the truth. The power of this family dynamic may make it hard for you to even hear Jesus and the gospel when the gospel makes it clear that what is truly honorable in life is to confess that you have no honor apart from the honor bestowed on you as a forgiven sinner. In this way your relationship to your family’s honor may keep you from even being able to tell what Jesus is saying because you can’t imagine he would ask for that sort of honesty and humility. For example, the older son in the Story of the Prodigal Son cannot think of honor working in this way but the father points the way to how a true disciple thinks of family honor when he runs out to greet the son who had brought dishonor on the family.... talk about a different calculus at play.... the father in this story says, ‘I don’t care what the village thinks about honor’ - the father knew that true honor is when reconciliation happens no matter how dishonorable were the actions of the son.


Those of us who did not learn or see the gospel in our families (none of us did perfectly anyway), may find it very hard to truly and strongly yearn to have our identity reconstructed in Christ’s new family. Until we do, we will find ourselves repeating destructive patterns with our partners, spouses, other family members, children, or closest friends.

With regard to material possessions:

Jesus wants us to know that an obsession with material possessions, an obsession with keeping what we have or getting more can often become the negative energy that keeps us distant from the riches of his kingdom. This is very tricky because you don’t have to have much to be distracted by material things. Just the obsessive desire to have more can draw our focus away from our need to use the life we have to bless others. Addiction to having more just brings so much static into our lives that we can’t listen to God because our passions are obsessed by wanting to have that handbag we really can’t afford or that car we can’t afford but is something we must have at any cost.... or the extra nights of partying that don’t fit in our budget.... etc. But there are still other, more subtle, ways to allow an inappropriate relationship to money to distract us from faithfully following Jesus. There are some who choose under-employment for all of the right reasons and as a result of a wise process of discernment. There are others who, in the name of a simple life, choose to not work much or choose radical under-employment; in so doing they have become a burden on those around them. For these folks, they have allowed their frustration with the materialism in our culture to lead them into a life-style they have called holy according to their own ethic of personal comfort instead of really asking Jesus how they should live and work.

What about lust? Well lust is especially tricky because Jesus makes it clear that the path that leads us to join our sexual desires with the kind of love that Jesus brings into our lives cannot be walked according to simply what we don’t do physically. We all remember his famous words about lust - you have heard it said that you must not commit adultery.... I say not to lust in your hearts. This teaching of Jesus shows us just how how easy it is to objectify others with our sexual passions without ever touching them; and a life consumed by such lusts - not interrupted by repentance - will, of course, lead us away from the life giving love of Jesus. Well, in those moments of life consuming lust, you turn to Jesus and say - give me your clothes - I repent of objectifying this person in my heart - I repent of wanting sex more than I want to be controlled by your life-giving love.

When we repent of our sins that relate to our desire for material things, when we repent of not breaking with certain family patterns that lead us away from the gospel, when we repent of the sort of lusts that lead us to a really unsatisfying and destructive life - when we repent in all of these areas we are kept on a journey of discipleship, a journey to wholeness... and a journey to human flourishing. In the end, probably the best way to talk about what Schmidt refers to above as “alternative and decisive action” is a life-style of thoughtful reflection upon the truth of one’s life, followed by regular repentance.

Questions for discussion:

1. Can you think of a pattern in your family of origin that has made it difficult for you to hear and live the gospel? Can you think of a pattern in your family of origin that has made it easier to hear and live the gospel?

2. Can you think of times when the desire for some experience that cost money kept you from something you should have been doing? For example, one thinks of Miroslav Volf’s simple observation that it requires effort for parents to make the time and resources to play with their kids and otherwise be good parents, given the plethora of adult distractions on offer in our culture.

3. If you had to put in a couple of non-prudish sentences why God cares about what people do sexually, what would you say? How would you inform your thoughts with the gospel - in other words, how would you say something about sex that could not be said simply according to the Old Testament?

When Self-Righteousness Goes Unchecked

Luke 18:9-14
Jesus’ parables sometimes paint a picture of what sorts of practices will be welcomed and what sorts are not allowed in Jesus’ kingdom. In the parable at hand we meet a practice that has no place in Jesus’ kingdom: the practice of self-justification coupled with feelings of superiority and scorn for others. In this same parable Jesus holds up an example of what sort of religious practice is welcome in the kingdom. The practice of humility that comes from those who know they are poor in spirit, those who know they are sinners and admit their sin; those who ask for and receive mercy - this practice is welcome in Jesus’ kingdom because it makes for human flourishing.

Some have observed that the two characters in this parable have two different images of God. “The Pharisee’s image presupposed a God who is impressed with pious acts and feelings of superiority towards others.” But the tax collector did not presuppose anything, so truly humble was he. Rather, he hoped for a God who met people with forgiveness when they sincerely asked for mercy.

What image of God do we project in our church or our community of friends, colleagues, or neighbors? In the way we approach our relationship to God and to others do we project an image of God that makes people feel as if church is a place where everyone has to have their act together, at least in a certain kind of way, in order to be welcomed and cared for? One commentator has suggested that the modern-day counterpart of the Pharisee would be welcomed into leadership in many churches today because of his outward piety, generosity with his money and reputation for clean living; no one would seriously evaluate whether or not the same person is unrepentantly prideful and scornful.

Clearly, the image of God that we should desire to project is the image of a merciful God who welcomes sinners, who exalts the humble, who meets us in the messiness and brokenness of our lives and grants life-giving mercy and forgiveness so that we can begin to be restored from our sin and brokenness and more conformed to the love of Christ.

So for you and for me this parable suggests that we should take stock of our approach to God and to others with regard to the sins of pride and scorn. Here are some questions for self-diagnosis:

* Do you find yourself taking a little bit - even if it is just a little bit - of satisfaction when you see someone suffering from the consequences of their bad choices, the consequences of their sin? Perhaps you had warned the same person of the likely consequences of their actions and now they are reaping the consequences.... do you feel compassion or a sense of self-satisfaction? If it is the latter, we must repent of our pride.
* Do you feel like no one has anything to teach you if they don’t know as much as you do about the scriptures or theology as you think you do? If so, we need to take stock and ask God to break us of our spiritual pride.
* Similarly, do you feel like no one has anything to teach you who does not have their life together according to how you define what it means for one to have their life put together? If so then you need to take stock and look at your spiritual pride and ask God to break you of that.
* Does your pursuit of God and the holiness of God lead you to want to push others away from you? Do you need to feel superior to certain sorts of people and distance yourself from a certain sort in order to feel safe and holy? Is so, you need to take stock of your spiritual pride.



In the abstract world of ideas perhaps self-justification can exist without the need to put others down. However, this parable and life in general teach us that self-justification needs comparisons to others like fish need water. If your security in your relationship with God depends on your feeling superior to others then your relationship with God is headed in the wrong direction. Our growth towards maturity can only happen in a community where we abandon the temptation to see ourselves as better than others and repent of that sort of pride if and when it rears its ugly head.

Now, it would be one thing if Jesus had made his point in the language of abstract theological argument but he did not. Instead, he put human faces on the two practices we have been talking about. Clearly, the forceful teaching of this parable is that one practice is welcomed in the kingdom and the other one not. However, it is important, with this parable and all parables, to read them in light of the entire Gospel message. The whole counsel of the Gospel reminds us that there is a little, or a lot, of the Pharisee in all of us and we realize that it would be wrong to demonize the Pharisee, while thanking God that we are not like him! Instead we should realize that the distance between the Pharisee from the tax collector in the temple is the measure of Christ’s cross; Jesus’ love is for them both and for all of us. May the image of God that we project at Grace Chicago Church be a portrait of a God who is truly welcoming of all people.

1. When you feel yourself moving in the direction of self-justification what is usually behind that movement? What prompts that temptation for you?

2. Can you think of an occasion where you learned something profound about God’s love or grace from someone who, in your estimation, knew very little about God in comparison to you? Was this humbling for you? Did you learn something good from that experience?

3. If you feel compelled to express concern to someone about their behavior because you love them and want them to experience growth and human flourishing what guidelines do you put in place to help you do it in a way that is humble and loving?


4. If you distance yourself from someone because of their sinful behavior how can you discern whether your self-distancing is for a good and wise reason or whether it is simply because you feel self-righteous towards that person?




Addendum:
In our post 9/11 world we find ourselves thinking a great deal more, perhaps than we used to, about being secure. In some instances when we feel very vulnerable we think we would like to feel secure at almost any cost. The answer to the question how much should we invest in our security for our families or our nation is not an easy one to answer. Just last night, for example, we had an intruder in our backyard; I called 911 and stayed in for a while just to be relatively sure the situation had become safer before I finished my cigar out back. All the while we kept our 4 year old away from the windows in case the intruder was being chased by armed gang members. Now there are padlocks on the gates.....

I thought about this theme of security with regard to our parable this week as I considered how many Muslims or people who look like Muslims have suffered various indignities and suffering since 9/11 - all because so many Americans are now afraid of Muslims. Here are some remarks by Miroslav Volf along this theme - good food for thought, in my opinion. The following is excerpted from his opening remarks given at a Yale conference entitled, “Are We Safe Enough?”
http://www.yale.edu/divinity/notes/080923/smith.shtml

“As we observed these dimensions of the security situation in which we find
ourselves today across the broad spectrum of our life, we also, being at a
theological school, tried to take a look at religious faith and theological
traditions to see what they might have to say about security. And to our
surprise, we found very little reflection on such a fundamental issue as is
security. It’s not that we didn’t find primary religious statements on security in
the tradition and in the Scriptures in which our traditions are based. In the
Psalms of the Hebrew Bible (or as we Christians call it, the Old Testament),
for instance, the psalmist often prays to God, who is “my refuge.” What is the
talk of God as “refuge” other than relating security to God? Or take a look at the
very end of the Christian Bible—it ends with the image of the New Jerusalem.
And if you read carefully about this New Jerusalem, you find it is a city that is
utterly and completely secured that can never be undone.

Security is a very important theme in biblical traditions, but theologians have
slept through their reading of those portions of the Bible. They haven’t taken
up that issue of security, they have not reflected much on how what biblical
traditions say about security relates to our contemporary search for security.
So we thought it important for us first to reflect on our own about this theme
and then to consider what kind of contribution religious reflection might make
to the wider debate about security. That’s why security.

But why then vulnerability? Well, vulnerability is obviously the reason why we
pursue security. If we were not vulnerable, the question of security would never
arise. I’m a theologian, and presumably I can say with some degree of
confidence that God needs no security force to protect God’s throne. God is by
definition inviolable. Human beings are not by definition inviolable. We need to
have our existence and our well being secured. That is why those lights flash on
the buses when kids get on and off of them; that’s why we lock our homes at
night and sometimes also during the day; that’s why we have a police force,
and so on.

But vulnerability also touches on security in another way: human vulnerability
places a limit on the pursuit of security. It determines in part, or at least shapes
in part, the nature of what it means to be secure. For vulnerability is
fundamental to who we are as human beings. To be inviolable is to be divine; to
be human is to be, and I think is always to remain, vulnerable. You can almost
put it this way, that vulnerability is the essential condition of human life. No
vulnerability, no human life.

Now that has very important implications for what it means to pursue security
and, I think, places certain limits on security. We tend to think that the more
secure we are, the better off we will be. But can vulnerable persons ever be fully
secure? Can we ever create conditions of inviolability? Isn’t it the case that for
vulnerable creatures to be inviolable is a contradiction in terms? And if we could
create conditions in which we would be fully secure, would it be desirable to do
so? Would it be good to create a world of total security? What kind of world
would it be? What implications would it have for freedom and for
unpredictability, which is related fundamentally to our freedom? What
implications would inviolable security have for the interdependence of human
beings, which qualifies us as human beings? Wouldn’t inviolability be the
equivalent of being an individual fortress, a completely independent individual
or a nation? And given human nature, would we not as such precisely be a
danger for others? So these are some of the reasons we chose to deal with
vulnerability and the limits of security.

Two Debtors Luke 7:36-50

This recap is for the passage of Scripture taken up this past Sunday. The recap is in two parts: 1. Remarks at the Lord's table and 2. The Homily Recap. Additionally, there is a mini-excursus on justice in the homily recap portion.


Remarks at the Lord’s Table:

In Luke’s narrative before us this Sunday we found Jesus asking Simon a very pointed question - do you see this woman? Simon was looking at her but Jesus is suggesting that if he could really see her for who she was that life could be very different for Simon, life could take a dramatic turn for the better. Some see in what she is doing a picture of what Jesus will do later for his disciples, as she washes his feet. Clearly, what Jesus saw was a woman who had been forgiven showing her love in the best way she knew how; and in a very humble way. Simon could only see her as someone who he had put into an unchangeable category. To Simon, this woman was a permanent sinner and never to be a part of his community, let alone a welcomed guest in his home. One commentator has noted that Jesus’ ability to see people - not just look at them - is an invitation and challenge to each of us to desire to see every person as full of potential and to treat them that way. To see each person in the world as someone who God loves, forgives, and desires to experience forgiveness, will help us go a long way towards treating others as God would want us to treat them. When we come to the communion table we should know that God is not just looking at us but that he sees us through eyes that behold the vision of who we are becoming in Christ, as those who receive forgiveness. May we receive forgiveness and show love lavishly in the same way as the woman who washes Jesus’ feet.


Homily Recap:

Today we continue in our reflections on the parables of Jesus as we take up a very short parable. In order to challenge Simon’s vision of the woman in his house Jesus tells his dinner host a story about two debtors, one who is forgiven a great debt and the other forgiven a relatively small debt. He tells the story as a way of inviting Simon to be able to see God’s grace at work in the world from God’s point of view. Sadly, Simon, like you and me, has trouble seeing people the way God does.

Simon sees himself as good and the woman as bad. He sees Jesus as less than a prophet because in Simon’s estimation Jesus can’t see who this woman really is. Simon needs to be able to see everything differently if he is going to be able to understand rightly what God is doing in the world through Christ. At least three things are necessary for Simon to be able to see rightly.

First, he needs to understand that God is first and foremost about the business of forgiving people and calling them to experience that forgiveness through confession and repentance. For Simon, there would have likely been a list of things that God was most concerned about but desiring to bring forgiveness to every person in the whole world would not have been anywhere near the top of the list and maybe not on the list at all. Like many Pharisees in Jesus’ day, Simon likely located the Satan that Yahweh opposed in the oppressive Romans. The thought that God’s salvation of the world would begin with the renewal of sinful human hearts within Israel for the sake of Romans and everyone else would not have been in Simon’s program. How about you and me? Do we see God as being driven by a desire to forgive ALL people? Do we see our family, our group of friends, our neighborhoods, our work places as the spaces where God wants to manifest his desire to forgive all people? When we see the radical universality of God’s desire to forgive we come a bit closer to seeing things rightly.

A parenthetical thought or two about justice and the “day” of judgment:

But what about justice? Isn’t God mainly driven by a desire to make thing just? If we let love define our understanding of what justice looks like then perhaps so. But often what we imagine to motivate God in seeking justice looks something like a passion for retribution more than a passion to see people who do just things because they have been forgiven. However, if we think of justice as defined by love, then we can say that, in one sense, God is all about justice. He will not allow evil and injustice to go on forever and nothing evil or unjust will have a place in the shalom of the world to come. It is imperative, though, to remember that God’s logic and method for making this world into the new heavens and the earth is by populating it with people who have been forgiven and who learn how to love as God loves. God wipes out what opposes his shalom fundamentally through the process of reclaiming sinful people by forgiving them, not by wiping them out. In the end, those who use the dignity of their freedom to finally resist God’s forgiveness, make hell for themselves. That potential for human freedom remains to us but an abstract concept since we don’t know exactly how God deals with people in the end But as a concept it only serves to highlight that God’s way with the world is to keep pursuing people with his love, inviting them to be forgiven.

The second thing that needs to happen for Simon is that he needs to see himself as one who needs to be able to love like the woman loves. But to be able to love in that way he needs to see himself as one who needs to be forgiven in the same way the woman saw her need for forgiveness. Simon would not have seen it that way as is obvious from the narrative. But how about us? Do we measure how much we are approved of by God according to how good we think we are being in relationship to those who we think are not doing well at all? Now don’t get me wrong. When you see something that by God’s grace and through his empowering presence you have done that is good and beautiful you should be happy and thankful and celebrate. But we must take care to recognize that the love that gives birth to such goodness and beauty is always born out of our ongoing experience of being forgiven. To put it succinctly, we must learn to see our fundamental identity as that of forgiven people - not as people who are good or as people who achieve great things. If you see your identity as one who is forgiven, you will do great things. But if you see your identity as one who does great things you will be self-deceived and live a small life in the end. I wonder how many relationships would change for the better if each person in the relationship really understood their identity as one who has been forgiven much?

Finally, Simon needed to be able to see that every person is a person who God wishes to forgive; and he needed to see his community as a place of welcome for all no matter how offensive to him a person’s life and choices might have been. How about you and me? Do we see some people as being permanently off limits to our version of God’s community?

Summing things up....
This entire portion of Luke’s narrative hinges on this one question:
“Simon do you see this woman?” He was looking at her but he did not see her. If he sees her love as something he needs; if he sees her forgiveness as something he needs; then he will see Jesus as not merely a prophet but more than a prophet: he is the one who knows Simon’s heart and the one who can do more than a prophet can do. Jesus can forgive Simon’s sins.

How about you and me? Do we see her?

Questions for discussion:

1. Jesus demonstrates who Simon should welcome into his home and community by welcoming the woman and suggesting that she has shown better hospitality in his own home than Simon has. What does this make you think of with regard to your habits of hospitality? What about the hospitality of our church community as a whole? How can you apply this to your life situation?

2. Do you have trouble loving others? If so, have you thought about whether or not you are experiencing God’s forgiveness deeply and regularly through the discipline of honest confession and grateful repentance?

3. Part of what this parable teaches, in my opinion, is that how we see others impacts how we see ourselves and how we see God. Can you think of an occasion when you stubbornly refused to see someone as God sees him or her but then later came to see them more as God sees them? What was like for you?

4. Do you sometimes use your passion for justice as an excuse for not loving others or holding out grace them?

the Mustard Seed

Sometimes Jesus' parables are answers to questions whether they are asked out loud or not. The parable of the mustard seed appears to be such a parable. Jesus' had been performing miracles and saying things that made the faithful wonder about God's coming kingdom. When would it come in fullness? By what means would God establish his kingdom? What would God's power look like. Jesus was healing and forgiving sins but at the same time people were still sick and dying, Rome was still in power, and Israel was still under foreign rule. In the midst of all of this Jesus likens the coming of God's kingdom to the size and growth of the mustard seed: a small beginning will yield huge results!

I wonder if Paul thought about this parable as he wrote to the Corinthians about the foolishness of the cross. God's power appeared weak in the cross of Christ but the argument of the gospel is that, through the cross, will come the healing of the nations.

In our cultural setting we are constantly bombarded with images of what counts most for strength. Eros and material riches are often presented in advertising and other cultural mediums as versions of power to be celebrated in a way that invites the celebrant to perform acts of de facto worship, as he fantasizes about having more of that sort of power and what it might yield in his life. Also, as Westerners, political power and military might can become idols as well, tempting us to sideline and domesticate the meaning of Jesus' cross. Or, to think in terms of our ordinary, daily life: winning and argument or being right can many times be more important to us than loving others.

The parable of the mustard seed reminds us that God's ways are foreign to the ways of this world and that we must discipline ourselves to recognize God's ways as holding the ultimate and only true hope for our lives and the life of the world. But what does it look like to learn to recognize and put into practice God's ways in the midst of our mundane lives. Think about the last time you were really mad at someone in the midst of an ongoing argument or conflict. If we are honest with ourselves we will admit that sometimes in those situations we come to a place where our love for the person and our hope for their overall well-being has been put into the background of our concerns, while anger and perhaps loathing have taken over the foreground of our passions and concerns. In these settings we need to start with how God is building his kingdom in the world and work backwards to our mundane situation. We must learn to ask ourselves questions like this: is God really building his kingdom through Christ's work on the cross? If so, what does this mean to us in the middle of our conflict where our rage and self-righteousness have taken the driver's seat with regard to our concern for the one with whom we are angry? We must learn to look at each other through the cross of Christ, recognizing that the power of the gospel is God's power to redeem the world; the mustard seed will prevail.

Questions for discussion:

1. If someone were to ask you how God is at work in the world how would you answer them? Do you think that you might be able to work the parable of the mustard seed into the conversation?

2. We have suggested that the story of the mustard confronts our expectations and redefines the way we think about how God is at work in the world. Can you give an example of how you have changed your expectations of how God is at work in your life and/or the world based on a growing and deeper understanding of the gospel? What do you need more of in your life in order to think more rightly about how God is at work in the world?

3. How can you demonstrate your genuine love for someone while still being in disagreement with them? What sorts of things could you say or do to illustrate that your love for them remains more important to you than your disagreement?

The Sower - Part 1

We are beginning today a series on the parables of Jesus. One Pastor has put it this way regarding one reason that Jesus spoke in parables: “Jesus tells stories to break up the worldviews of his hearers and open them to a new way of life.”

Let’s stop and think about that for a second. I think all of us can relate to the idea that when we are left just to our own way of thinking about life that we can get pretty wrapped up in ourselves and can tend to imagine that our own way of thinking about things is the best way of thinking about things. But perhaps we meet someone or hear a story about something and get jolted. Then, for at least a period of time after hearing the story, we are challenged about how we think about the most important things in life. We stop, think, and become willing to challenge some long held assumptions and convictions; and we become open to the possibility that we may be wrong about some things.

Let me give you an example:
I can recall a friend of mine who held a certain set of convictions about politics and economics. He was very certain of how public policy should be made with regard to the poor. He basically thought that if someone did not have a job - like someone living in an economically challenged neighborhood like Austin or Lawndale in Chicago - he thought it was simply because they did not want one or had not looked hard enough. For a period of time we worked alongside each other in the Austin neighborhood. During this time he heard story after story from one unemployed person after another, stories of how hard it was for some people to extract themselves from multi-generational poverty. He heard the stories from the lips of those caught in the cycle of poverty. One day, my friend said to me, I am going to have to rethink how I approach policy issues that touch on these issues. I now see that things are not as simple as I thought they were. Now, if any number of people had tried to make a straight-forward argument to this person, trying to get him to at least be willing to call into question some of his most cherished assumptions about the chronically unemployed, not to mention some of his assumptions that undergirded his political and economic views relating to the poor, he would have not been very open to listening. But witnessing a story, an indirect form of communication, well this caught his attention.

Jesus’ parables, sometimes called indirect forms of communication, do just that. They create a thought world where certain things happen in a certain way. Sometimes the events of the story occur in such a way as to surprise or even shock the hearer. One thinks of the day laborer who is hired at the end of the day and receives the same amount of money as those who have been working all day. This story is clearly designed to shock and even offend a certain way of thinking. Sometimes the events of the parable occur in such a way as to simply cause the listener to question what they think they know to be true. One thinks here about the parable at hand, the parable of the sower. Only some seeds grow out of all the ones sown? The story is told to get a person to stop, think and question. How does growth happen? Jesus is ready to tell them how and more on this in a minute.

What seems common to a lot of the parables and to the one at hand today is Jesus’ intent to get the listener to stop thinking about God in his or her own wisdom and preconceived notions and to learn about God and God’s ways FROM HIM, through a discipleship relationship with him.


In this way Jesus is presenting himself in the vein of the OT prophet, confronting God’s people with their lack of sensitivity to God’s ways, their complacency towards his pursuit of relationship with them, their arrogance in assuming they know all they need to know about God because they fancy themselves to have already done and believed what is necessary - the card has been punched, so to speak. Jesus calls such people to repentance and renewal; and it seems that one of his preferred ways of taking up the mantle of prophet was through the telling of parables. Jesus, like the OT prophets, was pronouncing judgment on those who had become oblivious and hardened to God’s ways, while simultaneously calling forth a faithful remnant - even from among the hardened - of those who, in their response to God’s initiative, become the ones through whom God will make his appeal to all people.

Now, back to the sower. This parable asks us to reconsider our way of thinking about how God desires for us to relate to him. There is much to be said about this parable but I want to consider a couple of different applications from it in the time we have left today.

Jesus says that some seeds are choked out when suffering comes. Many of us, whether we would admit it or not, move away from God when suffering comes. Whether the suffering is because of being persecuted for our association with Jesus or whether it comes simply from the harshness of living in a fallen and sinful world, we often focus on the suffering and allow our frustration with suffering to distract us from God’s love for us and the way he wishes to be present with us and through us in the suffering we are experiencing. Sometimes when we suffer, we turn to the literal or metaphorical drug of our choice to drown out the pain; in so doing we not only block the opportunity for God to meet us at the point of our deepest ache and fear, but we also lose the opportunity to bring God’s love to others through our mutual share in the cross of Christ. Suffering is bad enough but allowing it to keep us from seeking God and bringing his love to each other in the midst of our suffering, well, that is certainly worse. Don’t get me wrong, when I visit someone in the hospital I struggle with doubt, cynicism, and a lack of faith. But I go to bring the love of the wounded healer (Nouwen’s phrase not mine) - the same love that rescues me when I am in the depth of despair.

Jesus says that some seeds don’t grow because the cares of the world are given priority over the priorities of God. What about the cares of the world, the lure of wealth, desire for other things? Well, instead of saying something silly, like trying to offer some formula that will ensure you are never distracted from God’s kingdom (e.g. you should never own a car that costs more than x percent of your income, etc.), I think it is is more to the point to ask of ourselves whether or not we imagine growth in God comes automatically to us as passive recipients, or whether we need to work at it like we need to work at anything that is worthwhile in this life. For example, is our attention to God and to actively serving him through our commitment to serving one another in the context of Christian community something that consumes some time and effort, or do we take care of it at the margins? Do we make regular worship at least as much a priority as recreation is to us? Is our commitment to serving and giving to the poor something that occupies an important place in our lives or is it at the margins? But what about grace, you say!? Well, to be sure the love and grace of God is always there for us, calling us to freely come and freely receive acceptance, embrace and forgiveness. God’s forgiveness is, to use the title of Miroslav Volf’s great book: Free of Charge. But the freedom of grace is meant to urge us to be active participants in God’s kingdom - not passive recipients who seem to imagine that what is important about God can be taken care of at the margins of our busy lives where everything else takes pride of place. In this story of the seed that dies because of the cares of this world, Jesus says that life would look different and infinitely better if we called into question and repented of the ways we marginalise our relationship with God. But now, on the other side of his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead we also know Jesus as the one who meets us in the margins, and gently but firmly calls us back to himself so that we might have life and life in abundance! May we respond to his call.

Questions for discussion:

1. Can you think of the last time you felt jarred out of what you later would realize was a period in your life characterized by complacency with regard to your relationship with God? What jarred you?

2. How can we guard against falling into complacency with regard to our relationship with God or other important relationships for that matter?

3. Does suffering cause you to distance yourself from God? What could help you, instead, to move towards God in the midst of trials or suffering?

4. So, we’re assuming there is no one-size-fits-all formula for making sure God and the affairs of his kingdom take their rightful place in our life. How then, can you and I gauge whether the cares of this world are taking too much of our time, energy and resources?

more reflection on the doctrine of the Trinity

As we prepared to receive communion this past Sunday I shared the following quote:
Rowan Williams: “if salvation is for any, it is for all…. The ‘return’ to the lost, the excluded, the failed or destroyed, is not an option for the saint, but the very heart of saintliness. And we might think not only of Jesus’s parable of the shepherd, but of the great theological myth of the Descent into Hell, in which God’s presence in the world in Jesus is seen as his journey into the furthest deserts of despair and alienation. It is the supreme image of his freedom, to go where he is denied and forgotten…. He comes to his new and risen life, his universal kingship, by searching out all the forgotten and failed members of the human family.”

Someone asked me after the service what Williams meant by the word, myth. Here is Webster’s definition of myth: “a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon”. I think what Williams means when he talks about the great theological myth of Jesus’ Descent into Hell is that Jesus’ descent into hell, referred to in the New Testament and attested by the earliest of the creeds of the church, gives us a glimpse of what it is like to be God and so it should should shape our practice of “returning to the lost”.

I offered that quote before communion as a follow-up to some of our meditations on the doctrine of the Trinity. At the heart of God’s being is love given and received between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. What God desires is to draw others, the lost, the failed, the destroyed, and the excluded, into that very love. This must always be our lead story about God when we represent him to the world in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Everything else that we know about God must be subordinated to our passion to express and live in his love as best we can to all people.

In the homily I addressed the question of how we are to share in God’s self-giving love in a way that helps us draw others into discipleship relationships with Jesus in the name of the Triune God? I offered a couple of suggestions that were by no means meant to make it seem that they were the only or the best - but a couple of good ones none-the-less.

1.
By being a community that says to the world by how we relate to each other that we do not worship a God of monolithic force who at his core is one who wishes to wipe out his enemies. Rather, we must communicate by how we relate to each other that we worship a God who is a community of self-giving love, who calls forth a new humanity, a new community of people who are learning to live in this very love.

As the church, we are a community of people who are very different from each other but who have come to love each other not because of naturally occurring affinity but because of our common experience of God’s love. Many times, churches, over the years, develop what I will call, “heart trouble”. The community’s arteries clog because of years of unresolved frustrations, bitterness and judgmental attitudes that characterize the relationships of many within the church. The caution for us, and for every church that is called forth to live in and represent God’s self-giving love in this fallen world, is that we must first make sure that we are living in God’s love with each other. We must strive in the Spirit’s power to ensure that we are being forgiving of one another, kind to one another, seeking the best for each other, and not simply for those with whom we share a natural affinity. Our basis for this sort of affection is not more or less than our common friendship with Jesus. Profoundly, our model for this sort of commitment to unity is drawn from God’s triune life, his unity of persons. Let’s note well that many visions of community in this world are based on monolithic expressions of power. For some you have to have certain clothes or a certain style to be accepted; for others you have to be a certain class or ethnic group; for others you have to be morally acceptable on their terms before you are welcomed at their version of Jesus’ table. But the new humanity who experiences the power of self-giving love will welcome all, will welcome the other, and will seek relationships based on God’s love of all people. This new community will draw its life from the love given and received between Father, Son and Holy Spirit and consists of people who are patient with each other and open to dialogue with each other when they disagree; moreover, this community will be a place where people value being in community with each other as much, if not more, than any one individual values being regarded as absolutely in the right.

2.
By being a community where we model to each other the truth that sacrificing for others should be more deeply satisfying than being defined by the consumerist mentality of the spirit of our age. David Brooks, NY Times Columnist, recently wrote a piece in the NYT about the phenomenon of Kiki Ostrenga, the teenage girl from Florida who found stimulation, attention and fame on the Internet by posting pictures of herself online and gathering an enormous following. Sadly she did not realize that she was entering into an online world where eros and violence dwell together in an unholy alliance and where people quickly become objectified configurations of pixels that are used in whatever way the consumer wishes to use the objectified persona. Her fame quickly brought her unwelcome advances, threats and violence. In a Rolling Stone article, a traumatized Kiki, who is now living with her bankrupted parents in her grandmother’s home, is quoted as wanting to know how people actually connect in life: "How do you even meet people?" Kiki asks. "Like, how do you connect with people? In person, it's just so weird, no one talks to me." Even online, surrounded by hundreds of fans, Kiki feels alone. "I feel like a butterfly in a jar," she says. "They'll watch me. And they'll take from me. But no one ever connects." In commenting on this sad tragedy, Brooks writes as follows: “some young people seem to be growing up without learning the distinction between respectability and attention. I doubt adults can really shelter young people from the things they will find online, but adults can provide the norms and values that will help them put that world in perspective, so it seems like trashy or amusing make-believe and not anything any decent person would want to be part of themselves. Kiki’s story is not only about what can happen online, but what doesn’t happen off of it.”

Well, I don’t know about Brooks’ assertion that these sorts of terrible interactions don’t happen offline but the question he raises is provocative: how do we teach our children where true value is found, how good and right relationships can be formed? I would suggest that one of the best things we can do for our children is to pattern for them and for each other a way of life wherein we feel and learn, over time, to be deeply pleased and satisfied by loving and serving others. We must cultivate a discipline of living for the sake of others whereby we become trained to feel and sense that this pattern of living is fundamentally true, good, and right - that this pattern of living reflects the life of the Trinity.

As it is, the spirit of our age sends us many siren songs that tell us that we are only happy, or are at our happiest, when we are being entertained, pleased or titillated. I am not recommending some sort of sectarian/ascetic withdrawal from enjoying the pleasures of culture, good food, good wine, good music, theater, TV, etc. What I am saying is that if we only feel our happiest when we are consuming or being entertained then something is wrong. And if we are yet to find deep pleasure in sacrificing for others then we need to beseech God’s spirit to intervene in our lives. Jesus said famously, where your treasure is there will your heart be also. Similarly, if we begin doing things for others born out of our conviction that this way of life is patterned after the very love of God, we will become the sort of people God intends us to be.

We must ask ourselves what is strong enough to capture the imagination of a young teen with the power of the Internet at his or her disposal; what can compete? It will not be an appeal to live decently and modestly based on religious and moral maxims about the virtues. It will be seeing love in action, the self-giving love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit taking shape in our lives as adults, communicating with our lives THAT self-giving and sacrifice are truly life transforming experiences. May what Jesus said of himself be said of us: “I am among you as one who serves.”

Questions for discussion:

1. Does Williams’ quote about God seeking the lost, the failed, the excluded.... help you think about how you might portray God to those who do not know him? If someone were to say to you, I can’t believe in a God who likes to send people to hell, how would you respond?

2. Do you value being in a church community with people who do not agree with you about everything you believe to be true about God and his world? Do you value being in a church community with people who are learning to be patient with you as you are learning be patient with them? Have you thought much about how this sort of church community is an advertisement for God’s love towards humankind?

3. Have you thought much about how learning to live in God’s pattern of self-giving love can benefit your life over-all? In other words, do you see how this pattern, when it takes hold, leads you better and better choices of what you do with your time and resources? Do you buy the idea that a pattern like this is only learned with practice and is necessarily learned in community?

Trinity Sunday

Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us
your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to
acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the
power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep
us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to
see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with
the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever
and ever. Amen.

Today is Trinity Sunday. We, together, with Christians all over the world acknowledge in our worship in a focused way that we worship the mysterious one God who exists in three unique and distinct persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Since the early church, preachers and theologians have noted that at the heart of the gospel is the movement of God in redemptive love towards the world he has made and that this movement is a movement of one God in three persons. Today we will consider why this is important. Why is a confession of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit crucial to our understanding of the Gospel?

The mystery of the trinity reveals to us a God who is who is who he is as he pours his love into the other. Before he poured his love into creation, love was given and received perfectly between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Daniel Migliore of Princeton Seminary puts it this way: “that God is the power of self-giving love.... this is the deepest meaning of God’s triune life-in-relationship. This is what decisively marks off the living God from the dead idols. They cannot give life because they cannot love. They cannot love because they cannot enter into communion with and freely suffer for another.... The coming of the Son of God and his sacrificial death on the cross are neither chance happenings nor emergency measures nor out-of-character actions on God’s part. The self-giving love of God is grounded in God’s eternal triune being.... God’s liberating and reconciling activity in the world is the free-outward expression of God’s own eternal life of self-giving love...... “

Let me put it to you this way: what Jesus does, how he lived, how he died, why he died, God’s resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the reasons for that - the entirety of God’s redemptive work in Christ is what the love that God shares perfectly within himself looks like when it goes to work on our behalf (this is what Migliore means when he talks about the quintessence of God’s self-giving love as the ability to freely suffer for another).

On Trinity Sunday the lectionary points us to the creation narrative, the psalmist’s reflection on it in Psalm 8, and Jesus’ great commission in Matthew, thus reminding us that the same love shared between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, before the foundation of the world, is the love that created, the love that makes a new humanity in Christ, and the love that renews the fallen creation. Moreover, and staggeringly, God has made us to share in this very same love. He has, in the thoughts of Psalm 8, made us to be queens and kings of creation as we receive and give God’s love on his behalf for the sake of the whole world. In the 8th Psalm, when the Psalmist ponders, who are we that God should take notice of us, he does respond by saying that we should sit around and feel good about ourselves because we have been made in God’s image. His answer is that human beings have an awesomeness because, as God’s image bearers, we have been given a job to do and work to share, with each other, and with God. As God’s apprentices, if you will, we are to do God’s work in this fallen world. Other preachers have said what I am about to say before - they must have all had toddlers when they were thinking in this direction - our three year old is really in the “wants to help” stage of life - oh may this continue into the teenage years! There is not an egg to be cracked, a dish to be washed, a floor to be cleaned that she does not want a part in. She beams with pleasure when she has been co-pilot of whatever project has been undertaken. May we respond to God with the same awe and joy as we ask him for an even greater desire to share in his work as the bearers of his image.

Questions for discussion:

1. If someone were to ask you to give them an example of what difference it makes to believe in the Trinitarian God what might you say to them? Does Migliore’s point about God’s ability to share love in his nature help you think about this?

2. Do you think much about the dignity you inherently possess simply because you are made in God’s image? Do you think of this enough when you think of other people?

3. Is there value in thinking about creation and redemption in that order? Does thinking about the fact that the God who created all people help you think about how to start a conversation with someone about Jesus in a different way than you might have otherwise? If so, how?