A reflection on Proper 12C Luke 11:1-13, St. James West Dundee,IL on the Feast Day of St. James.
A couple of weeks ago I participated in leading Vacation Bible School for a local parish. The lay leaders
who organized the VBS were excited to have 34 kids registered. Of these 34 kids 18 of them were Japanese, and 30 of the kids were under the age of 4, with most of them being around 2 years old.
My assignment was to lead the daily opening and closing worship which was comprised of a prayer, some songs, and a brief discussion about the theme of the day.
I knew, even before we began, that this would be a challenge with such a young and diverse group of kids....
did I mention that the Japanese kids and their moms don’t speak English?
The first day, as we gathered, was the epitome of holy chaos – crying babies, running toddlers, significant language barriers, and a trial and error process of figuring out how to contain this group.
Clearly my work had to be basic.
So I taught them that the sanctuary, the space around the altar, was not a place to run and play. This area I said is a place to pray.
Then I said, when we pray we hold our hands this way.
Holding our hands in prayer became the symbol for becoming quiet and preparing to pray. Even the smallest of children could grasp the idea of holding hands and becoming quiet. We then prayed a simple prayer of thanksgiving.
The prayer was followed by some songs to familiar tunes including the old standby,“Jesus Loves Me.” Afterward the kids were off for their other activities.
We ended each day in a similar pattern of prayer and song.
Prayer anchored our time together at the beginning and end of each day.
Our Gospel reading this morning helps us understand the significance of prayer in our faith lives. In the reading Jesus has gone off to pray and realizing this one of his disciples asks Jesus to teach them how to pray.
Prayer, and in particular the Lords’ Prayer, is bedrock to our Christian faith.
Today’s story in Luke follows two other significant Sunday morning readings from this Gospel, each pointing us to understand, more deeply, a life of faith and discipleship.
Two weeks ago we had the Good Samaritan story and last week we had the story of Martha complaining about Mary. Combined with the reading today these three teach us something about discipleship and underscores Jesus’ primary teaching:
love God,
love self,
and love others.
Each of these, loving God, loving self, and loving others, weave in and through each other, creating the foundation of a life of faith – and the heart of discipleship.
We all know about the twelve disciples, the original followers of Jesus. One of them, James, is also your namesake. Today, July 25, we celebrate St. James and as such this is your “Feast of Title” day.
There were actually two disciples named James, one is known as James the Greater, and one is known as James the Lesser. This church is named after James the Greater. This James was the son of the Galilean fisherman Zebedee and his wife Salome, one of the women who followed Jesus to the cross.
Scripture tells us that James and his younger brother John were called to be followers of Jesus early in his ministry. Peter, James, and John were with Jesus during some important events, including the Transfiguration, the raising of Jairus’ daughter, and in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is believed that James did his primary mission work in Spain and therefore is the patron saint of Spain. He was martyred in the year 44, in Judea by Herod Agrippa I for being a follower of Jesus.
Like the other disciples James as not a perfect human being. He had a temper and is known to once ask Jesus who would be the greatest, who would sit at his right hand and his left, as if Jesus would one day be a wealthy king.
Initially James misunderstood the concept of kingdom as God and Jesus intend it.
Through the incarnation of God’s love poured out in Jesus we come to understand that God intends for human beings to participate in the unfolding of God’s kingdom, through acts of love and compassion, bringing into one, the diversity of human life.
As Episcopalians, grounded in The Book of Common Prayer,our prayer-filled worship is the place where we join our diverse body of people into one. To that end we believe that “praying shapes believing.” This is the title of a book written by a well-known liturgist and former professor at Seabury-Western, Lee Mitchell, and unpacks the significance of the Book of Common Prayer to shape our worship and our lives.
As Episcopalians our worship is grounded in prayer as a place that unites us, a vastly diverse group of individuals from a wide range of politics, ethnicities, cultural upbringings, and understandings of God and faith,into one worshiping body of Christ.
Each week for the 50 or 60 minutes when we gatherto worship God in song, and word, and prayer we are being formed as one body.
As we pray the Eucharistic prayer and share the body of Christ, the bread and the wine, we are being formed as the living hands and heart of Christ.
The most important element of this formation from prayer is to realize that the prayer is calling usinto a relationship.
We pray give "us" this day “Our”daily bread, not “my” daily bread.
It’s a relationship
with God,
with self,
and with others.
Sometimes we get hung up on the idea that prayer and church and worship and God is just about me, an individual.
But if we really listen to the words Jesus is teaching us we come to understand that it is about “Us” – you and me and everyone else.
The other important element of prayer, in addition to shaping how we understand who we are as the Body of Christ, is to build our relationship
with God.
And on that level prayer is personal.
As Christians we believe in a God of relationship, a God who is with us
through thick or thin, sorrow and joy. And the way we build that personal relationship with God is two-fold. The relationship builds through the support of a worshiping community like this one and through our own individual prayer life.
God wants us to pray in order to be in relationship with God.
God listens to us and invites us to listen to God in return.
I’ll be the first to say that at times this kind of prayer, the individual one, feels sort of futile. I often wonder, because I don’t get the things I want, if God is listening or cares.
Again, the saints of the Church,those faithful believers who have gone before us, like St. James, help us with this.
From them we learn that getting what we want is not the way God affirms to us that God is listening.
Prayer is not like a vending machine in which God dispenses “correct change.”
Maybe the question we need to consider is not, “How” prayer works but
“who” prayer is?
Prayer is God.
Prayer is a relationship with God, becoming the Body of Christ.
Through the Holy Spirit prayer enlivens God’s love within us.
Prayer is the community that forms when a group of Japanese speaking moms and their toddlers gather, along with a couple of English speaking middle aged white women, in a small Midwestern suburban church and give thanks to God for the gift of life.
(Portions of this sermon from notes on the text by Kate Huey UCC and David Lose at WorkingPreacher )
Religious and Spiritual
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
A reflection on Proper 11C, Luke 10:38-42, by The Rev. Terri C. Pilarski at St. Lawrence, Libertyville, IL
I happen to love making pies from scratch, crust and all.
I don’t remember how I learned to make pie crust. I think my mother taught me once, but back then I found the process tedious. Years later when I wanted to make a pie I had to use my “Joy of Cooking” to teach myself again. In those days, some 25 years ago, I always used lard for the crust, which makes it very flavorful and flaky, but is incredibly unhealthy.
Around the fourth of July I was watching Martha Stewart make pies crusts on her show – berry pies – and that got me thinking about a fresh blueberry pie. Mindful of Martha Stewarts’ instructions, as I began to make my pie crust, I chilled the shortening, the flour, the water, and the bowl and the utensils for mixing the dough.
Once everything was well chilled I began the slow and arduous process of cutting the shortening into the flour, the really old fashioned way, using two table knives. A friend of mine was over and she asked why I didn’t just mix the flour and shortening with my fingers? Oh, I said, the heat from the fingers would make everything too warm and it wouldn’t mix correctly, the pie crust would be mushy. So I continued cutting the shortening and flour until the combined ingredients were about the size of peas. Add water, mix and form a ball, and then put it back in the refrigerator until chilled again.
The next step is to roll out the pie crust. And here is where I encountered a bit of a problem. I didn’t have a rolling pin. I mean I DO have one, but at the moment its packed away and in storage....a minor detail I’d forgotten when I started to make this pie crust.
How to roll out a pie crust without a rolling pin? I suppose I could have put the crust back in the fridge and run out to buy another rolling pin. But I didn’t want to take the time, the berries were mixed with sugar and cornstarch, the oven was lit. So I had to improvise with what I had on hand.
After considering a couple of options I remembered that I had a Rubbermaid one quart container that was tall and cylinder shaped – a bit like a rolling a pin. I thought that would work. And, while it was a tad light and lacked the density of a rolling pin, it did manage to roll the crust out well enough. In the end I had to do a little smushing of the crust to even it out in the pie tin. As I filled the crust with blueberries and baked it I worried that it would be a disaster. But I have to say it was actually one of the better pie crusts I’ve ever made. Emeril Lagasse would call it a “Love thing” the labor of love that goes into making fresh food from scratch.
Making a pie crust, or any labor of love food from scratch, is definitely a Martha-like activity. In our Gospel this morning we hear the familiar story in Luke of Martha entertaining Jesus and his companions, working herself into a tizzy. She becomes frustrated with her sister Mary who instead of helping Martha, prefers to sit and listen to Jesus teaching. It’s unclear why Martha doesn’t just call Mary aside and say something to her; the story tells us that Martha complains to Jesus about her sister. In response Jesus tells Martha to leave Mary alone, let her listen. As we hear it today it almost sounds as if Jesus is chiding Martha, but that’s not exactly the case. Remember, Jesus talks and teaches in parables, which always have layers of meaning beyond the details of the story. One way we know that Jesus is not chiding Martha but pointing us to see a deeper meaning in the story is when we put this one in the context of the stories that come before and after it in the Gospel of Luke.
Just before this story we have our reading from last Sunday about the Good Samaritan, the man who was beaten and left on the side of the road to die, but was helped by a stranger passing by. And next week we have the story of Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray and talking about the ministry that comes out of prayer. Combined with today’s readings we realize that we are in the midst of some serious teaching. Jesus is teaching us how to be disciples, how to listen to Jesus, how to follow Jesus’ teachings, and how to be like Jesus, how to be his hands and heart in the world.
The story of Martha complaining about Mary is meant to help us see that being in a relationship with God and becoming a disciple of Jesus is a both/and process – we need to be able to both listen and do. At first this may not be apparent, for it seems as if Jesus is saying that what Mary is doing it better than what Martha is doing. But we know from many other sources in scripture, including the story of the Good Samaritan that we heard last week, that Jesus places a high value on hospitality, on care for others, and that is what Martha is doing. We now know that Jesus also places a high value on listening and learning and growing into discipleship and that this process includes both men and women. This reading clearly indicates that Jesus supports the women who become his followers. They in fact become quite diligent disciples, think of the women who follow him to the cross and then go to the tomb to care for his broken and crucified body, the women are the first disciples to see the resurrected Jesus.
Ok, so let’s go back, for just a minute, to Martha’s complaining. Even as we know that Jesus places a high value on hospitality, what are we to make of Martha’s complaint in this reading? I think the point Jesus makes is that we are to care for others and offer gracious hospitality but not get anxious about it. We are not to work ourselves into such a frenzy doing and caring that we lose sight of Jesus, of God, of the people around us, and of what it means to love as God does. In other words we need to care for others as Martha does but with the spirit of Mary – a mindful, listening, caring, action oriented spirit. In a world of overwhelming problems: oil spills, weather disasters, economic failure, two wars overseas, civil wars and famine devastating countries around the globe, it’s hard to not become overwhelmed and worked into a tizzy.
Being both - mindful and action oriented - as we care for others - will be affirmed in our reading next week when we hear about Jesus going off to pray, taking time out from doing in order to regroup, listen, and move out in a mindful way. The teachings last week, this week, and next affirm that discipleship is a process that includes both listening and doing. Discipleship is about living into the charge to love God, love self, and love others. You might say, as we are practicing the art of discipleship, of balancing listening with doing, that it’s too difficult. But really, it’s as “simple” as pie, because it’s a love-thing.
I happen to love making pies from scratch, crust and all.
I don’t remember how I learned to make pie crust. I think my mother taught me once, but back then I found the process tedious. Years later when I wanted to make a pie I had to use my “Joy of Cooking” to teach myself again. In those days, some 25 years ago, I always used lard for the crust, which makes it very flavorful and flaky, but is incredibly unhealthy.
Around the fourth of July I was watching Martha Stewart make pies crusts on her show – berry pies – and that got me thinking about a fresh blueberry pie. Mindful of Martha Stewarts’ instructions, as I began to make my pie crust, I chilled the shortening, the flour, the water, and the bowl and the utensils for mixing the dough.
Once everything was well chilled I began the slow and arduous process of cutting the shortening into the flour, the really old fashioned way, using two table knives. A friend of mine was over and she asked why I didn’t just mix the flour and shortening with my fingers? Oh, I said, the heat from the fingers would make everything too warm and it wouldn’t mix correctly, the pie crust would be mushy. So I continued cutting the shortening and flour until the combined ingredients were about the size of peas. Add water, mix and form a ball, and then put it back in the refrigerator until chilled again.
The next step is to roll out the pie crust. And here is where I encountered a bit of a problem. I didn’t have a rolling pin. I mean I DO have one, but at the moment its packed away and in storage....a minor detail I’d forgotten when I started to make this pie crust.
How to roll out a pie crust without a rolling pin? I suppose I could have put the crust back in the fridge and run out to buy another rolling pin. But I didn’t want to take the time, the berries were mixed with sugar and cornstarch, the oven was lit. So I had to improvise with what I had on hand.
After considering a couple of options I remembered that I had a Rubbermaid one quart container that was tall and cylinder shaped – a bit like a rolling a pin. I thought that would work. And, while it was a tad light and lacked the density of a rolling pin, it did manage to roll the crust out well enough. In the end I had to do a little smushing of the crust to even it out in the pie tin. As I filled the crust with blueberries and baked it I worried that it would be a disaster. But I have to say it was actually one of the better pie crusts I’ve ever made. Emeril Lagasse would call it a “Love thing” the labor of love that goes into making fresh food from scratch.
Making a pie crust, or any labor of love food from scratch, is definitely a Martha-like activity. In our Gospel this morning we hear the familiar story in Luke of Martha entertaining Jesus and his companions, working herself into a tizzy. She becomes frustrated with her sister Mary who instead of helping Martha, prefers to sit and listen to Jesus teaching. It’s unclear why Martha doesn’t just call Mary aside and say something to her; the story tells us that Martha complains to Jesus about her sister. In response Jesus tells Martha to leave Mary alone, let her listen. As we hear it today it almost sounds as if Jesus is chiding Martha, but that’s not exactly the case. Remember, Jesus talks and teaches in parables, which always have layers of meaning beyond the details of the story. One way we know that Jesus is not chiding Martha but pointing us to see a deeper meaning in the story is when we put this one in the context of the stories that come before and after it in the Gospel of Luke.
Just before this story we have our reading from last Sunday about the Good Samaritan, the man who was beaten and left on the side of the road to die, but was helped by a stranger passing by. And next week we have the story of Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray and talking about the ministry that comes out of prayer. Combined with today’s readings we realize that we are in the midst of some serious teaching. Jesus is teaching us how to be disciples, how to listen to Jesus, how to follow Jesus’ teachings, and how to be like Jesus, how to be his hands and heart in the world.
The story of Martha complaining about Mary is meant to help us see that being in a relationship with God and becoming a disciple of Jesus is a both/and process – we need to be able to both listen and do. At first this may not be apparent, for it seems as if Jesus is saying that what Mary is doing it better than what Martha is doing. But we know from many other sources in scripture, including the story of the Good Samaritan that we heard last week, that Jesus places a high value on hospitality, on care for others, and that is what Martha is doing. We now know that Jesus also places a high value on listening and learning and growing into discipleship and that this process includes both men and women. This reading clearly indicates that Jesus supports the women who become his followers. They in fact become quite diligent disciples, think of the women who follow him to the cross and then go to the tomb to care for his broken and crucified body, the women are the first disciples to see the resurrected Jesus.
Ok, so let’s go back, for just a minute, to Martha’s complaining. Even as we know that Jesus places a high value on hospitality, what are we to make of Martha’s complaint in this reading? I think the point Jesus makes is that we are to care for others and offer gracious hospitality but not get anxious about it. We are not to work ourselves into such a frenzy doing and caring that we lose sight of Jesus, of God, of the people around us, and of what it means to love as God does. In other words we need to care for others as Martha does but with the spirit of Mary – a mindful, listening, caring, action oriented spirit. In a world of overwhelming problems: oil spills, weather disasters, economic failure, two wars overseas, civil wars and famine devastating countries around the globe, it’s hard to not become overwhelmed and worked into a tizzy.
Being both - mindful and action oriented - as we care for others - will be affirmed in our reading next week when we hear about Jesus going off to pray, taking time out from doing in order to regroup, listen, and move out in a mindful way. The teachings last week, this week, and next affirm that discipleship is a process that includes both listening and doing. Discipleship is about living into the charge to love God, love self, and love others. You might say, as we are practicing the art of discipleship, of balancing listening with doing, that it’s too difficult. But really, it’s as “simple” as pie, because it’s a love-thing.
Friday, July 16, 2010
A Helping Hand
The Rev. Terri C. Pilarski, Richfield Presbyterian Church, July 11, 2010, Proper 10C: Luke 10:25-37
The phone rang, it was a colleague of mine, she had something she wanted to discuss with me and wondered if we could talk over lunch. A few days later while we ate our salads, she told me about Dorothy, a single mom with a young daughter, living on disability and public aide. My colleague assured me that she had visited Dorothy; that her situation was legitimate and that what she needed was some assistance until her daughter was out of high school. Up to this point my colleague was providing that assistance but now she was leaving her church and moving out of state. She wondered, since the woman lived near my church, if we could help? I thought perhaps my church might want to help. I took Dorothy’s situation to our leadership team and we talked about it. In the end we agreed to help with monthly groceries and PACE bus passes. We held food drives and had people bring in chicken and hamburger, cereal and cheese, vegetables and fruit. Sometimes, when church members were really busy we collected a fund and I had PeaPod deliver her groceries. I ordered PACE bus passes and they were mailed to her house. We collected food for her Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter dinners. We gave her daughter clothing and school supplies. I even bought her daughter’s senior year high school year book. We probably helped Dorothy and her daughter for five years, maybe more. I liked Dorothy and her daughter and I was grateful we could help fill in the gaps between what she received on disability and what she needed to live on.
It wasn’t all great though. At times it was tiring work. There were days when Dorothy had needs beyond what we could give her. On those occasions she’d call me repeatedly at all hours wondering if I could help with one more thing. I had to lay down very clear limits with her. And whenever I sent a parishioner to her house I warned them: she will ask you for more. She will want a ride someplace or she will want money or she will want something. Her needs were endless. They were real needs, but they never ended. I told parishioners to just give her whatever it was they were delivering and tell her that this was all we could do right now. Over and over we had to place limits on what we could give her and when and how we would give it to her. That part was sad and difficult, but it was what we had to do in order to help her at all and not burn out.
Helping is a curious thing. It makes us feel good to have helped another. Helping can change lives and make the world just a little bit better. But helping can also burn us out, wear us down, and make us cynical. Sometimes the help is appreciated. Often the need for help in this world seems endless. And now today, more than ever, with the Gulf Coast oil spill, the economy that has crumbled, two wars overseas, famine and civil war in many countries around the world, children orphaned to AIDS and other disease. I could go on and on. In a world of so much disaster and tragedy it’s easy to understand why the Levite and the priest might walk on by. Maybe they had already helped too many people. Maybe they had overwhelming concerns of their own. Maybe they were cynical and burned out and tired. Maybe they were just in a hurry or didn’t want to touch someone who was beaten and dirty? Maybe they felt it wasn’t their problem.
Some people help though, not out of a desire to assist the other, but out of a need to boost their own ego. “Oh, see, aren’t I a good person, look what I’m doing for YOU. I have so much and you have so little, and I’m so great because of what I am doing.” Of course the thinking behind this can be much more subtle while at the same time being more about boosting the ego of the person helping than it is about actually caring for the other. And sometimes helping takes on a kind of condescending attitude, an attitude of “oh you poor thing, here let me help you.”
Such is the premise of the book, “How Can I Help” by Ram Dass. Some of you might remember Ram Dass from the 1971 best seller, “Remember Be Here Now”? Well in “How Can I Help” he takes a deeply spiritual and rather profound look at the nature of helping. Through telling story after story of people helping others he points to the real depth and intent of helping - that the person doing the “ helping “ is almost always the one who ends up actually being helped, changed, transformed, in ways they least expect. But even more important is the reality that helping is a mutual act – each person participates in the helping and the being helped. In other words sometimes we have to allow someone else to help us. So, in reality, helping is about building relationships of mutual care and compassion.
This is part of what Jesus is pointing us to recognize in this story from Luke about the Samaritan and the man from Jerusalem who was beaten and left for dead. If we were to have heard this story in Jesus’ day from Jesus himself we would understand that the beaten man is one of us, you or me, beaten and left on the side of the road to die. Prestigious people in our community walk by but do not stop to help. Like the priest and the Levite, these prestigious people are too important to be bothered with a simple person and their suffering. We would anticipate, though, that one of our neighbors, one of our friends would come and help. But none come and no one stops to help. No one comes, that is until this stranger walks by, this Samaritan. For us, like the man in the story, the Samaritan would be the person we most despise and are most afraid of. And Jesus’ point is -just as the beaten man needs the compassion of the Samaritan- we too need those we despise or are afraid of to have compassion on us. Likewise we are to show compassion in return. Strong words. This is not a nice little story. It’s a tough teaching.
Our global community needs not only individuals to have and show compassion but groups of people, entire communities and nations, to have compassion for one another. The core of this reading underscores that such compassion begins when one person’s heart is moved to love the other, and from that whole groups of people follow. Jesus tells us that having compassion on the stranger is how we inherit the kingdom of God.
But what is the kingdom of God? Is it some reward that we are trying to earn in the future, in the life we hope to live after this one, if we are found worthy? Again, I think Jesus points us to see the kingdom of God in a richer context, as a place that is both here now and yet still to come in the future. The kingdom of God can be manifested right now –whenever the peace of Christ and the love of God – abide in and through us. It is also a kingdom that will never be fully realized in our lives, in this world, but will reach its fulfillment in the age to come. It is a both/and kingdom.
So, it’s a both/and kingdom; and we are invited, by the grace of God, and the love of Christ, and the ongoing action of the Holy Spirit, to be a part of the kingdom coming into fruition right here and now through acts of love and compassion.
The way we help others need not be grand. It need not be something that wears us out. And, while helping some one may make us feel good about ourselves and be a motivating side perk, feeling good about ourselves can’t be the primary reason we help, not if we want to help with the compassion of Christ. We don’t help with the intent and purpose of boosting our own egos nor to find our meaning in life. We help because that is what it means to be the hands and heart of Christ in the world. In a curious way we often find that in the end we, who were supposedly doing the helping, are in fact the one helped.
Helping, showing compassion and love for others, is what we are called by God to do. We do this because it’s how we build community, it’s how we create the Body of Christ, it’s how we bring forth God’s kingdom now and in the future. It’s a profound question we are to ask ourselves, “How can I help?” And the answer is simple, look carefully around you; you’re bound to see someone in the ditch of life. And when you do, offer them a kind word, a strong hand, a loving heart. Then again, don’t be too surprised if you are the one in the ditch.
The phone rang, it was a colleague of mine, she had something she wanted to discuss with me and wondered if we could talk over lunch. A few days later while we ate our salads, she told me about Dorothy, a single mom with a young daughter, living on disability and public aide. My colleague assured me that she had visited Dorothy; that her situation was legitimate and that what she needed was some assistance until her daughter was out of high school. Up to this point my colleague was providing that assistance but now she was leaving her church and moving out of state. She wondered, since the woman lived near my church, if we could help? I thought perhaps my church might want to help. I took Dorothy’s situation to our leadership team and we talked about it. In the end we agreed to help with monthly groceries and PACE bus passes. We held food drives and had people bring in chicken and hamburger, cereal and cheese, vegetables and fruit. Sometimes, when church members were really busy we collected a fund and I had PeaPod deliver her groceries. I ordered PACE bus passes and they were mailed to her house. We collected food for her Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter dinners. We gave her daughter clothing and school supplies. I even bought her daughter’s senior year high school year book. We probably helped Dorothy and her daughter for five years, maybe more. I liked Dorothy and her daughter and I was grateful we could help fill in the gaps between what she received on disability and what she needed to live on.
It wasn’t all great though. At times it was tiring work. There were days when Dorothy had needs beyond what we could give her. On those occasions she’d call me repeatedly at all hours wondering if I could help with one more thing. I had to lay down very clear limits with her. And whenever I sent a parishioner to her house I warned them: she will ask you for more. She will want a ride someplace or she will want money or she will want something. Her needs were endless. They were real needs, but they never ended. I told parishioners to just give her whatever it was they were delivering and tell her that this was all we could do right now. Over and over we had to place limits on what we could give her and when and how we would give it to her. That part was sad and difficult, but it was what we had to do in order to help her at all and not burn out.
Helping is a curious thing. It makes us feel good to have helped another. Helping can change lives and make the world just a little bit better. But helping can also burn us out, wear us down, and make us cynical. Sometimes the help is appreciated. Often the need for help in this world seems endless. And now today, more than ever, with the Gulf Coast oil spill, the economy that has crumbled, two wars overseas, famine and civil war in many countries around the world, children orphaned to AIDS and other disease. I could go on and on. In a world of so much disaster and tragedy it’s easy to understand why the Levite and the priest might walk on by. Maybe they had already helped too many people. Maybe they had overwhelming concerns of their own. Maybe they were cynical and burned out and tired. Maybe they were just in a hurry or didn’t want to touch someone who was beaten and dirty? Maybe they felt it wasn’t their problem.
Some people help though, not out of a desire to assist the other, but out of a need to boost their own ego. “Oh, see, aren’t I a good person, look what I’m doing for YOU. I have so much and you have so little, and I’m so great because of what I am doing.” Of course the thinking behind this can be much more subtle while at the same time being more about boosting the ego of the person helping than it is about actually caring for the other. And sometimes helping takes on a kind of condescending attitude, an attitude of “oh you poor thing, here let me help you.”
Such is the premise of the book, “How Can I Help” by Ram Dass. Some of you might remember Ram Dass from the 1971 best seller, “Remember Be Here Now”? Well in “How Can I Help” he takes a deeply spiritual and rather profound look at the nature of helping. Through telling story after story of people helping others he points to the real depth and intent of helping - that the person doing the “ helping “ is almost always the one who ends up actually being helped, changed, transformed, in ways they least expect. But even more important is the reality that helping is a mutual act – each person participates in the helping and the being helped. In other words sometimes we have to allow someone else to help us. So, in reality, helping is about building relationships of mutual care and compassion.
This is part of what Jesus is pointing us to recognize in this story from Luke about the Samaritan and the man from Jerusalem who was beaten and left for dead. If we were to have heard this story in Jesus’ day from Jesus himself we would understand that the beaten man is one of us, you or me, beaten and left on the side of the road to die. Prestigious people in our community walk by but do not stop to help. Like the priest and the Levite, these prestigious people are too important to be bothered with a simple person and their suffering. We would anticipate, though, that one of our neighbors, one of our friends would come and help. But none come and no one stops to help. No one comes, that is until this stranger walks by, this Samaritan. For us, like the man in the story, the Samaritan would be the person we most despise and are most afraid of. And Jesus’ point is -just as the beaten man needs the compassion of the Samaritan- we too need those we despise or are afraid of to have compassion on us. Likewise we are to show compassion in return. Strong words. This is not a nice little story. It’s a tough teaching.
Our global community needs not only individuals to have and show compassion but groups of people, entire communities and nations, to have compassion for one another. The core of this reading underscores that such compassion begins when one person’s heart is moved to love the other, and from that whole groups of people follow. Jesus tells us that having compassion on the stranger is how we inherit the kingdom of God.
But what is the kingdom of God? Is it some reward that we are trying to earn in the future, in the life we hope to live after this one, if we are found worthy? Again, I think Jesus points us to see the kingdom of God in a richer context, as a place that is both here now and yet still to come in the future. The kingdom of God can be manifested right now –whenever the peace of Christ and the love of God – abide in and through us. It is also a kingdom that will never be fully realized in our lives, in this world, but will reach its fulfillment in the age to come. It is a both/and kingdom.
So, it’s a both/and kingdom; and we are invited, by the grace of God, and the love of Christ, and the ongoing action of the Holy Spirit, to be a part of the kingdom coming into fruition right here and now through acts of love and compassion.
The way we help others need not be grand. It need not be something that wears us out. And, while helping some one may make us feel good about ourselves and be a motivating side perk, feeling good about ourselves can’t be the primary reason we help, not if we want to help with the compassion of Christ. We don’t help with the intent and purpose of boosting our own egos nor to find our meaning in life. We help because that is what it means to be the hands and heart of Christ in the world. In a curious way we often find that in the end we, who were supposedly doing the helping, are in fact the one helped.
Helping, showing compassion and love for others, is what we are called by God to do. We do this because it’s how we build community, it’s how we create the Body of Christ, it’s how we bring forth God’s kingdom now and in the future. It’s a profound question we are to ask ourselves, “How can I help?” And the answer is simple, look carefully around you; you’re bound to see someone in the ditch of life. And when you do, offer them a kind word, a strong hand, a loving heart. Then again, don’t be too surprised if you are the one in the ditch.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Ordinary God
A reflection on Proper 9C: 2 Kings 5:1-14; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20, St. John's, Burlington, WI
A few months ago I drove from Tucson Arizona north through southern Utah and then east to Chicago, over 2000 miles of driving. Along the way I visited family and places where I have an ancestral connection. My family, on both sides, were pioneers who travelled west in the late 1840’s to settle Salt Lake City and northern Utah. One of these, my great, great, great, great, great, grandfather was named George Washington Hill. He was born in Ohio, moved to Missouri where he met Cynthia Utley Stewart, and after some time asked her to marry him. She refused telling him that she was a Mormon and reportedly said, “You don’t want to marry a Mormon.” He persisted and finally she relented and married him. He later converted and then led his new family on the journey west in 1847. Cynthia and George had nine kids – so somewhere out there I have a lot of cousins. A few of them have written biographies of George, which can easily be found and read on the internet if you Google him. (He’s not the George Washington Hill that shows up in Wikipedia who earned a fortune in the tobacco industry)....
The drive through Arizona and southern Utah takes one through some desolate land, of sand and rock and not much else, land that is now, sadly, Indian reservation. George fought against moving the Indians to reservations, or so the story goes. He loved them, worked closely with the Shoshone and Nez Perce tribes. Knew their language, and according to one family journal I’ve read, he created the only translation guide for English speaking people to learn the native language. Family lore has him baptizing thousands of Native Americans. His pale skin and red hair, a family trait inherited by my mother and my brother, earned him a special name, Inka-pompy, which means “red-beard” in Nez Perce.
I don’t know if it’s accurate but many of the stories from the mid-1800’s, when the Mormons and the Native Americans lived together in northern Utah, describe a shared life. According to these stories theirs was not the life of cowboys and Indians fighting over control of the land. Instead, it seems they worked together to build community. One of the primary ways my great grandparents participated in building community was through prayer, in particular healing prayer. Building community through the power of prayer is one of the fundamental ways we human beings manifest the peace of Christ in our lives and the world around us. Prayer is also fundamental in the transformation of those who come to know deeply the love of God. Our scripture readings this morning from 2 Kings and Luke focus on these themes: the healing love of God and the power of the peace of Christ to transform lives.
In 2 Kings Namaan is a powerful general and like many people of his stature he is a bit full of himself. Even when he is ill with a horrible skin disease he remains prideful and arrogant. It’s a bit surprising then that Naaman listens to the voice of an unnamed young slave girl as she directs him to Elisha, toward a source of healing. Less surprising is Naamans response to Elisha’s cure – bathing in a muddy river – who in their right mind would want to do that? But, eventually Naaman is persuaded to bathe and he is healed. This story reminds us that God’s healing and the peace of Christ come to us in unexpectedly ordinary ways – like a young girl and every day mud and water.
This story points us to look at how God speaks to us in ordinary ways – so ordinary that they are unexpected and perhaps overlooked if we aren’t being careful. The readings ask us to consider how God is reaching out to us through others, in ways we least expect, and how these people reveal the peace of Christ to us. The readings also ask us to ponder how we might be that love of God and peace of Christ to others.
The heart of the Gospel reading this morning conveys to us a similar idea – of transformation through the love of God and the peace of Christ in the ordinary. Jesus speaks of sending his disciples out - and today those disciples are you and me – sent out to share the Good News, in ordinary every day ways. Sent out too love generously, to help, to share, to grow in relationship with one another; and if what we offer is rejected our task is not to judge, but to let it be, shake the dust off our feet, and simply continue to share God’s love and the peace of Christ as generously as we can.
Our Gospel reminds us that the kingdom of God is an unfolding process – one that begins here in the life we live on this earth – and then continues into the life that is to come. The kingdom is a both/and kingdom which calls us to be attentive to the now while keeping an eye on the future. It’s a kingdom that requires us to not become stuck in safety, comfort, pride, or arrogance.
Soon the youth of this parish will travel to South Dakota to spend time working on an Indian reservation. The work there will be hard but the kids will learn a great deal. There will be a sharing of gifts – what the kids bring in terms of labor and hope to the people on this reservation – and what the Native Americans share with the kids in terms of their powerfully organic understanding of life and how everything is connected – earth, sun, life, God. It will be a time of mutual sharing of gifts – what the kids bring and the Native Americans offer – each learning and growing from the offering of the other. The love of God will prevail and all will be filled with a new sense of the peace of Christ. And, all of that gifting and growing and transforming from just being together and doing simple ordinary everyday things together.
Like the youth of this parish and their mission trip to South Dakota, the kingdom of God asks all of us to stretch ourselves in love and for the love of God...and in so doing prepare the way for the peace of Christ to come into the world anew this day, every day, in simple, ordinary ways.
A few months ago I drove from Tucson Arizona north through southern Utah and then east to Chicago, over 2000 miles of driving. Along the way I visited family and places where I have an ancestral connection. My family, on both sides, were pioneers who travelled west in the late 1840’s to settle Salt Lake City and northern Utah. One of these, my great, great, great, great, great, grandfather was named George Washington Hill. He was born in Ohio, moved to Missouri where he met Cynthia Utley Stewart, and after some time asked her to marry him. She refused telling him that she was a Mormon and reportedly said, “You don’t want to marry a Mormon.” He persisted and finally she relented and married him. He later converted and then led his new family on the journey west in 1847. Cynthia and George had nine kids – so somewhere out there I have a lot of cousins. A few of them have written biographies of George, which can easily be found and read on the internet if you Google him. (He’s not the George Washington Hill that shows up in Wikipedia who earned a fortune in the tobacco industry)....
The drive through Arizona and southern Utah takes one through some desolate land, of sand and rock and not much else, land that is now, sadly, Indian reservation. George fought against moving the Indians to reservations, or so the story goes. He loved them, worked closely with the Shoshone and Nez Perce tribes. Knew their language, and according to one family journal I’ve read, he created the only translation guide for English speaking people to learn the native language. Family lore has him baptizing thousands of Native Americans. His pale skin and red hair, a family trait inherited by my mother and my brother, earned him a special name, Inka-pompy, which means “red-beard” in Nez Perce.
I don’t know if it’s accurate but many of the stories from the mid-1800’s, when the Mormons and the Native Americans lived together in northern Utah, describe a shared life. According to these stories theirs was not the life of cowboys and Indians fighting over control of the land. Instead, it seems they worked together to build community. One of the primary ways my great grandparents participated in building community was through prayer, in particular healing prayer. Building community through the power of prayer is one of the fundamental ways we human beings manifest the peace of Christ in our lives and the world around us. Prayer is also fundamental in the transformation of those who come to know deeply the love of God. Our scripture readings this morning from 2 Kings and Luke focus on these themes: the healing love of God and the power of the peace of Christ to transform lives.
In 2 Kings Namaan is a powerful general and like many people of his stature he is a bit full of himself. Even when he is ill with a horrible skin disease he remains prideful and arrogant. It’s a bit surprising then that Naaman listens to the voice of an unnamed young slave girl as she directs him to Elisha, toward a source of healing. Less surprising is Naamans response to Elisha’s cure – bathing in a muddy river – who in their right mind would want to do that? But, eventually Naaman is persuaded to bathe and he is healed. This story reminds us that God’s healing and the peace of Christ come to us in unexpectedly ordinary ways – like a young girl and every day mud and water.
This story points us to look at how God speaks to us in ordinary ways – so ordinary that they are unexpected and perhaps overlooked if we aren’t being careful. The readings ask us to consider how God is reaching out to us through others, in ways we least expect, and how these people reveal the peace of Christ to us. The readings also ask us to ponder how we might be that love of God and peace of Christ to others.
The heart of the Gospel reading this morning conveys to us a similar idea – of transformation through the love of God and the peace of Christ in the ordinary. Jesus speaks of sending his disciples out - and today those disciples are you and me – sent out to share the Good News, in ordinary every day ways. Sent out too love generously, to help, to share, to grow in relationship with one another; and if what we offer is rejected our task is not to judge, but to let it be, shake the dust off our feet, and simply continue to share God’s love and the peace of Christ as generously as we can.
Our Gospel reminds us that the kingdom of God is an unfolding process – one that begins here in the life we live on this earth – and then continues into the life that is to come. The kingdom is a both/and kingdom which calls us to be attentive to the now while keeping an eye on the future. It’s a kingdom that requires us to not become stuck in safety, comfort, pride, or arrogance.
Soon the youth of this parish will travel to South Dakota to spend time working on an Indian reservation. The work there will be hard but the kids will learn a great deal. There will be a sharing of gifts – what the kids bring in terms of labor and hope to the people on this reservation – and what the Native Americans share with the kids in terms of their powerfully organic understanding of life and how everything is connected – earth, sun, life, God. It will be a time of mutual sharing of gifts – what the kids bring and the Native Americans offer – each learning and growing from the offering of the other. The love of God will prevail and all will be filled with a new sense of the peace of Christ. And, all of that gifting and growing and transforming from just being together and doing simple ordinary everyday things together.
Like the youth of this parish and their mission trip to South Dakota, the kingdom of God asks all of us to stretch ourselves in love and for the love of God...and in so doing prepare the way for the peace of Christ to come into the world anew this day, every day, in simple, ordinary ways.
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