For St. Francis, Jango the Praying Dog

Feast of St. Francis of Assisi

So here we are; another first Sunday in October, another blessing of the animals, another occasion to take joy in God's creation; and another opportunity to rediscover the death-defying passion of the saint behind all this.

Preaching to birds: literally stripping himself naked of all his possessions: walking right up to a wolf that had terrorized a village but promptly lay down at Francis's feet and became the village pet. Anyone who did these things today we would call crazy. But Francis we honor as a saint, perhaps the greatest of all the saints since the New Testament.

None of us are going to follow in every single one of Francis's footsteps. But in our own way each of us can follow his trust in the God who created all that is good in this world, even unto "Sister Death," as Francis called it. And in that trust, we can also share his calling to restore the House of God.

Restoring God's house is really what lay at the heart of God's call to Francis. After his disillusionment with his wealthy lifestyle and attraction to "Lady Poverty;" Francis began to frequent a Church in the country side that was broken down and in disrepair. But Mass was still celebrated daily by an old priest, and Francis would serve at the Mass. There also he would spend hours each day, meditating before the Church’s crucifix.

One morning, as he knelt there in prayer, Francis heard God speak to him—“Restore My house.” He initially took it at a quite literal level -- he went out immediately, found some of his Father’s most expensive fabric and sold it at market (this might be called theft) and took the money to the Church to rebuild it. This forced the public confrontation between Francis and his father in which Francis literally stripped himself of his father's wealth and walked away naked.

And so Francis started to follow God's call to restore the Church. How? By possessing nothing but the clothes on his and his fellow friars' backs. In this, they shared the experience of God-who-was with-us in Jesus Christ. And when people saw the Franciscans living in total trust that God the Father would give them whatever they needed, then the people would see Jesus Christ himself. In this total trust in God the Father, they mirrored God's Son as no human beings have since. They walked in Jesus's footprints as no one has since. And in this trust, they found the joy in all of God's creation, a joy open to all willing to trust God.

Even in death, Francis found joy. As he lay dying, his friends approached in tears, and yet he cut them off, as he began singing a new verse to his "Canticle of the Sun," which we know from our hymnal as "All Creatures of Our God and King" -- “Praised be you, My Lord, through our Sister, Bodily Death, from whom no living man can escape....” Death, for Francis, as life, was a time for trust in God, and praise in God, and joy in God, and a complete self-emptying. For what can you do before death but empty yourself.

Again, I don’t expect that any of us will imitate Francis’s radical trust in God. But Francis’s example continues to serve as a beacon of restoration for all of God’s Church 800 years later. We have a much smaller piece of the church and the world to restore. What miracles might God work through us if we but trust in God just a little? And what unimaginable joy might we find if we but trust in God just a little?

Inreach, Outreach, One Love

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another…My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends.” Ok, we get the point Jesus.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus’s commandment is clear. Those who believe in Him as the Son of God are to love each other. But are we not also to love the outsider? Does not Jesus also command us to go find the lost sheep, as we heard a few Sundays ago? Are we not to love the world that God made? In his Gospel, John chose to leave those questions unanswered. What Jesus insists on in John’s Gospel, is that the we the Church love each other.

Of course, we are to love the outsider. “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,” Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah, “because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor…freedom for the prisoners… to set the oppressed free” (Luke 4:18). When we distribute beans and rice to the needy, Jesus proclaims Good News to them through us. But we must not forget to love each other.

One expression of that love is the Rector’s Discretionary Fund, which is used only for the relief of necessity. It has been used to help the outsider needing help. But recently, it has been used more to help those in our Parish Family needing help. Jesus commands us to love one another “so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11). When I can help a parishioner, my joy is complete.

You can share this joy next Sunday, the first one of the month, in which all cash offerings and checks not marked for pledges go into the Discretionary Fund. When we reach in, and reach out, we find balance between the renewal of old love and the growth of new love.

Hell and Open Hearts: Sermon, 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time

There are gated communities all over. The fact that I was a teenage boy once kept me and my parents from being admitted into one by the homeowners’ association. A personal interview with me couldn’t sway them. I was not David Kendrick to the senior citizens of this retirement community. I was a 16-year-old boy who was likely to throw a rowdy party when the parents were away, or drive the car into the gate on a Saturday night. The members of that community couldn’t see me. In their fear of the community’s peace being disturbed, they saw their worst nightmares of teenage boys. But their blindness to me was nothing compared to the gated blindness of the rich man in today’s Gospel.

There was a rich man who feasted sumptuously every day." Imagine if you had enough money to eat at Sebastian’s every single day of your life. Would you? This man could. But who is this rich man? We are not told his name. He may be the richest, most powerful man in town. Maybe the other villagers follow this man around, hoping he might occasionally throw a little bit of money their way. Or maybe they avoid this man, fearing what he could do them with his wealth and power. But either way, Jesus doesn’t even think that he’s important enough to have a name.

On the other hand, "there was a beggar named Lazarus…" He may be the man that all the neighbors shy away from and ignore because they’re disgusted by the smell of his unwashed skin covered with oozing sores. Jesus, however, considers him important enough to have a name, unlike the rich man, who sacrificed his true identity as a child of God by refusing to acknowledge another child of God.

And at this rich man’s gate lay the poor man named Lazarus." Or more accurately, Lazarus was laid at the rich man's gate. And there he stayed, day after day, too sick and too weak to move. At this rich man’s gate the villagers laid him. There was no welfare, no section 8 housing, no Medicaid, no food stamps. But there was this rich man, who at the very least could throw Lazarus the crumbs from his sumptuous feasts.

But the rich man’s gate befitted his station. It was palatial. It was a wall that surrounded him. It protected him from the riff-raff. It isolated him from the rest of the human race. It blinded him to Lazarus. He couldn’t even see when Lazarus had died and at least bury him. Note that Lazarus died and then was carried away by the angels. Jewish law required that any Jew who passed a dead man on the road was obligated to bury the person. That’s how blinded and isolated by his wall the rich man was. And so we come to the other half of our story, with Lazarus in the heavenly arms of father Abraham, the rich man in the torment of Hell.

The road to Hell is very clearly laid out before us today by Jesus himself. It is blindness to the suffering of others. It is the gates we erect, on our land, or in our hearts, that starts us on that road. On the other hand, turning around and getting on the right road is so easy. It doesn’t matter how much money we have or how much we give, since none of us could ever pay enough to ransom ourselves from the consequences of our sin. It doesn’t matter how virtuous or upright we behave, since no act of virtue on our parts will ever undo the consequences of our sin. All we have to do is open the gates of our hearts.

What are the obstacles to open hearts? Helplessness at not being able to put an end to the physical suffering you see? God doesn’t ask us to end the suffering. The beans and rice we gave yesterday won’t feed its recipients forever. But it will feed them for a few days. God doesn’t demand that we do more than we can do. Whatever you do today is enough for today. Do you feel helpless at the sight of someone’s emotional suffering? It may be that all they need tonight is that you listen and hold their hand. In one of the novels by a favorite author of mine, the lead character summarizes his purpose in life very simply: “listen to people, see how they stick themselves into the world, hand them along a ways in their dark journey and be handed along.”

None of us has enough power by ourselves to save another human being. Only God can, and will do that. But God is recruiting us to be his partners in that salvation. And our partnership begins when we break down the gates that we think are protecting us, but are only blinding us. Our open hearts are enough.

Who's Dishonest Now? Sermon, 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Luke 16:1-13

So, what do we make of this strange parable? Even the most learned scholars have struggled to interpret Jesus's meaning, and some have just thrown up their hands. Take Jesus's statement, "And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly." Even John Calvin could say of this passage only that, " it is obvious that if we were to find a meaning in every minute circumstance, we would act absurdly." So, are we to just dismiss one of Jesus's sayings and move on?

As strange as this parable of the unrighteous, or dishonest manager sounds to us today; hopefully you will see that Jesus' Good News is not some pie in the sky far above our everyday struggle to do the right thing amid those who look out for themselves and no other. Jesus knows that we live in a broken world, surrounded by those who would cheat us in the blink of an eye if they thought they could get away with it. He understands the compromises we make every day when it come to the managing and sharing of our scarce resources. Jesus does not condemn us for doing the best we can. He only asks that we not choose our friends solely on the basis of what they can do for us.

The story he tells today is one with which His disciples could easily identify. And so can we. "There was a rich man who had an overseer." An overseer was charged with managing the property for a possibly absent landlord. He would rent parcels of the land to sharecroppers, then take a percentage of the value of their crops as a commission. With the rich man absent, the overseer had a great deal of power. But he didn't have security, because the land wasn't his. Managers in this position were caught between rich landlords who wanted more profits for themselves, and laborers who wanted more wages for themselves.

"And charges were brought to him that this overseer was squandering his property." Hmm, who brought the charges: laborers who thought he was claiming too much of his commission? Tenets who thought the overseer was overcharging their rent? And does Jesus say that the charges are true? Maybe the overseer had gotten greedy with his commissions. Or maybe the workers got greedy for more of their fair share. So said the rich man, "What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your work, for you cannot be my overseer any longer." Whatever the truth or falsity of the charges, the rich man chooses to accept them.

And now our hero has a big problem. "I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg." He's not a laborer, he's a numbers guy. "But I know what to do so that, when I am dismissed as overseer, people may welcome me into their homes." Living in a world ruled by the law of, I scratch your back-you scratch mine, the overseer knows how to obligate others to himself.

"Then he [the manager] asked another, 'How much do you owe?' He replied, 'A hundred measures of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill and make it eighty.'" And the rich man, who left the managerial details to his manager, may sense that the bills are off, but he can't prove it. And besides, does he want to shake down the laborers whose favor he curried by firing the overseer? What else could he do but "commend the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly"?

"For the children of this age are more shrewd in their generation than are the children of light," Jesus said. We children of light must live among the dishonest that hide their true intentions. We bask in the early morning light today. Tomorrow we will get up and go back to meet those who try to be more shrewd than we are. How shrewd will we have to be to protect ourselves? The overseer may not have been dishonest at the beginning. But in order for he and his family to survive, he had to become "dishonest." But how virtuous was the rich man for just accepting the charges against the manager at face value? And how honest were the sharecroppers who defamed the overseer?

Jesus doesn't take sides in the story he tells. He doesn't try to tell us who is honest or dishonest. Maybe that's because He wants all of us to acknowledge our own dishonesty. Most important, Jesus doesn't want his disciples to get hung up on who is to blame. "Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth," Jesus teaches his disciples, "so that when you fail they may welcome you into an eternal home." Who are those friends? Surely it's not the dishonest who welcome us into the eternal homes. Is it those whose backs we scratched? Or will it be those to whom we give without any expectation of a Return On Investment? Who are your "friends" to whom you are called to give without the expectation of receiving anything in return?

At the end of this physical life, cliché though it is, it bears repeating here that you can't take it with you. We will all die poor. So, who will welcome you when you are poor?

Sunday's Sermon: The Rough Draft

Courtesy of wordle.net

Losing, Finding, Risking

Today in our Adult Sunday School, we begin to examine the teachings of Jesus through Phyllis Tickle's compilation of His sayings in The Words of Jesus. In the teaching of Jesus that we just heard from Luke's Gospel, we didn't hear Tickle's introduction to this teaching of Jesus. To introduce His two metaphors of being lost and found, Tickle inserts verse 9 from chapter 19 of Luke's Gospel, which is the boiled-down essence of Luke's Good News about Jesus Christ: "The Son of Man has come to seek out and to save the lost."

Tickle also gives this headline to today's teaching moment: "The "Importance to Heaven of every repentant convert." So as we hear Jesus speak to is of lost sheep and lost coins, I would suggest that we should ponder what it means to be lost, and found; what we might need to risk and with what might we need to get reacquainted.

Two metaphors. One involves leaving, the other involves staying. In the first, a shepherd takes a risk, leaves his familiar field, his regular pasture, and ventures into unfamiliar territory to find that which is lost. Perhaps the shepherd might get lost himself. Or he might run into the same predator that has already eaten the lost sheep. So, perhaps the shepherd is risking as much as the sheep by his leaving the ninety nine sheep to search for that one sheep who wandered away. Indeed, it seems that in order to find the lost sheep, the shepherd must assume the same risks as the wandering sheep.

In the second metaphor, we are on familiar ground. We are in our own home, secure in our treasure of silver, or at least enough to get us through about 10 days. But do we really know as much about our home as we think we do? There are always unexplored corners, into which small coins fall. Which we take for granted until we can't find them. And so we turn our settled home upside down in order to find what is most important. And in finding our silver coin, who knows what else we might find, that we had forgotten we had, and can appreciate anew?

So one question that Jesus's first parable raises is about risk. What might Jesus be calling me, calling you, calling us, to risk so that those who are lost might be found? His second parable raises the question of reacquaintance. What nook, what corner of this house, the church, do we need to rediscover? What silver coin should we be looking for.

Jesus, it seems to me, calls us out into an unfamiliar territory, to find the wandering sheep. Maybe they've wandered away from here. Maybe they've wandered away from some other church field and need to find a new home -- maybe ours? Jesus also calls us examine our own house. Is there a silver coin that we've lost? What is that coin? Is it a part of our tradition that we haven't used for so long that we've actually forgotten it?

And if we are serious about our tradition, what riches might we find in our found silver coin? And if we are serious about our mission, what riches might we find in our found sheep?