Sabbath Justice

Sermon for Aug. 21, 2022

Isaiah 58:9b-14; Luke 13:10-17

So, with all the crazy things happening in the world around us, our readings this morning focus on the burning question, what’s the right way to keep the Sabbath.  Really?  Could it sound less relevant?  Sabbath-keeping may be one of the 10 Commandments; but in our culture at least, that requirement to set aside one day each week as God’s day might seem right up there with rules against eating shellfish or sewing old and new fabric together.  

When you hear “keeping the Sabbath,” what images come to mind for you?  From my childhood, I remember reading Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  In one scene, Laura and her sister Mary have to keep the Sabbath, which meant sitting in a chair all afternoon in their best clothes, maybe looking at their dolls but not playing with them – not doing anything as the hours dragged on, other than listening to Bible stories.  At the end of the scene, Laura yells out, “I hate Sunday!”  If that’s the Sabbath, I can’t say I blame her.¹

What does it look like to observe the sabbath now?  As you know, I really struggle with this part of my spiritual life, workaholic that I am.  In the past month or so, I’ve done better (though not perfectly) at following God’s direction to set aside a day for something other than my job.  Turns out, sabbath is a deeply loving gift that God’s given us by modeling on the last day of creation that it’s right and good even for God to take a rest.  Sabbath-keeping isn’t about restricting our life but giving us life, tending soil where new creation can blossom.  And I’m pretty sure we can even have fun as we keep Sabbath, and God won’t barge in and break up the party.

But what does make God grumpy about our Sabbath choices?  Well, first and foremost would be ignoring that fourth commandment.  If we really think our work is too important to set aside even for a day, there might be a deeper issue to straighten out about who is God and who isn’t.

Our readings today also give us some clues about how Sabbath-keeping can go wrong.  The reading from Isaiah asks the question, whose interests are being served?  If we’re “pursuing [our] own affairs,” we might be missing an opportunity to see the Sabbath in its full scope – not just as a day off but as a day on differently, a day to honor God explicitly and “satisfy the needs of the afflicted,” as the reading says (58:10).  I think the point there is to see the time not as ours but as God’s, recognizing in our offering of one day that actually all time is God’s and not ours.  So, a good way to remember that truth is to spend some intentional time loving God and neighbor – especially since that happens to be God’s bottom line.

Then we come to today’s Gospel reading, a different example of Sabbath-keeping that advances our own agendas.  Jesus is at a synagogue worshiping on the Sabbath, and he sees a woman whose spine is badly bent.  For 18 years, her condition has kept her hobbled, and Jesus decides to intervene.  Interestingly, that’s not based on any special attribute of the woman herself.  We don’t hear about her deep faith, or persistence, or anything else that other healing stories raise up.  She doesn’t even ask for healing; in fact, we don’t even know whether she knows Jesus is there.  She’s just bent and in pain.  So, Jesus calls her over and says, “[Y]ou are set free from your ailment”; and he lays his hand on her to straighten her painful spine (Luke 13:12-13).

But not so fast, says the leader of the synagogue.  Where Jesus sees a chance to meet a human need, the synagogue leader sees a violation of Sabbath law, which prohibited work on God’s day.  And on a certain level, the synagogue leader is right.  The Law did prohibit work on God’s day, and the leader’s role was to make sure people observed the Law faithfully.  Why?  Because being faithful to the Law was the primary way you lived out your identity as a Jew.  So, the synagogue leader correctly notes that “there are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured,” he says, “and not on the Sabbath day” (13:14).  Of course, Jesus notes the hypocrisy and asks whether that same strict construction applies to feeding and watering your livestock.  If you can untie a donkey to get a drink on the Sabbath, doesn’t this woman deserve to be unbound from her affliction so she can drink deeply from the water of life?

But here’s the bigger question I think Jesus is raising: What does it mean to be righteous, and how far must our righteousness extend?  “Righteousness” is one of those words we throw around like we know what it means, but it’s not just being good versus being bad.  Righteousness is about relationship – specifically, being in right relationship with God and with other people.  It can help to have rules, even commandments, to guide us in pursuing that goal, but the rules of righteousness aren’t the point.  The point is orienting our hearts, vertically and horizontally, so that Love guides everything we do.

Well, right relationship with God and neighbor demands that we actually see our neighbor.  And I think that’s where the synagogue leader fundamentally misses the mark.  He looks at the disabled woman, and he sees an object – a situation that calls for an application of Law.  He privileges the system over the person being harmed by the system.  On the other hand, Jesus looks at the woman and sees … her.  And he grieves that she literally can’t rise into the full stature of whom God has created her to be. 

It's not that the synagogue leader is a bad guy.  And it’s not that he oversees a bad system.  The problem is that that his righteousness is abstract because his interest in the Law makes him blind to the person in front of him.  His position gives him authority and privilege, so he privileges the system over the people living under it.  He can’t see individuals vividly enough to see that the rules aren’t working for them. 

And I think the way the leader and his system diminish this woman is what pushes Jesus’ buttons.  Yes, he sees the leader’s hypocrisy and calls that out.  But at the core, he sees injustice.  He sees a system working for some but diminishing the dignity of others.  The point of following the Law was to build one’s practice of righteousness, training people for right relationship with God and neighbor.  But here, instead, following the Law is leaving some neighbors out in the cold.

Of all the things we might have associated with Sabbath-keeping, justice probably wasn’t on the list.  But maybe this story about an archaic spiritual practice can help us see God’s justice with fresh eyes.

In our culture, justice is about fairness, as well as providing remedies when one party harms another – ensuring that “both the accuser and the accused receive a morally right consequence merited by their actions,” as the Cornell Law School puts it.²  As Americans, we’re wired to think this way: that justice means fairness among equal parties who share common, level ground.  OK.  But, of course, in the real world – in a world bent and crippled by sin – our ground may be common, but it’s not always level, as much as we might wish it to be, even as much as we aspire for it to be.  Life can be like a football game where the two teams don’t change direction at the quarters, meaning one team is always throwing or kicking into the wind.  That wouldn’t be just, so we make rules to ensure the game is fair.

In Scripture, justice has a more God-centered meaning – that the playing field and the conditions of the game must be fair not just because we value fairness but because fairness and right relationship are aspects of God’s own nature.³  So, in Hebrew, the word we translate as “justice” describes “the restoration of … equity and harmony … in a community.”³  In fact, in ancient Israel, those conditions that lead to “equity and harmony in a community” were seen as inalienable human rights given by God to all God’s people – conditions like freedom, security, and fair dealing.  So, justice in a biblical sense refers not simply to shared rules but to a state in which all are equally able to live into the fullness of whom God has created them to be.  

To realize God’s justice in the world, people like the synagogue leader – people who carry privilege within the system they inhabit – so, most of the people here today – they have to see the people whom the system misses.  They have to look past their interest in the system, sometimes even work against their interest in the system, to ensure that no one’s experience becomes invisible, lumped in with others who seem different to create that vast category of “them.” 

And I think Sabbath-keeping helps us remember this call to straighten out broken systems toward justice.  When we set aside time as God’s own and not ours, it helps us see that God is God, not us.  Having to remember that’s true, we also remember God’s priorities: to practice right relationship with God and our neighbors, seeing those who are bound by sin both personal and systemic.  And living out that daily practice of righteousness, working the muscle of our hearts, we build God’s kingdom within us so that we can reveal God’s kingdom beyond us – seeing those whom the system leaves stooped and bent, and calling that out, and together rising into the fullness of the stature of Christ.

1.       Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House in the Big Woods. Ebook edition, 2011; taken from the 1953 edition from Harper Publishers, New York. Available at https://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/wildersewell-woods/wildersewell-woods-01-h-dir/wildersewell-woods-01-h.html#chapter5. Accessed Aug.19, 2022.

2.       Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. “Justice.” Available at: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/justice. Accessed Aug. 19, 2022.

3.       Freedman, David Noel, ed. The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 3, H-J. New York, Doubleday, 1992. 1164. Internet Archive edition available at https://archive.org/details/AnchorBibleDictionaryVol11992.rocs/AnchorBibleDictionary%20vol%203%201992.rocs/page/n9/mode/2up. Accessed Aug. 19, 2022.

 

Love From the Bottom Up

Sermon for the feast of St. Mary the Virgin, transferred, Aug. 14, 2022

Luke 1:46-55

Today, we’re celebrating St. Mary, the mother of Jesus, whose feast day is tomorrow, Aug. 15.  Christians have been celebrating Mary on this date for centuries but not with precisely the same understanding of what they’re celebrating.  In the Roman Catholic tradition, it’s the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, honoring the belief that Mary didn’t die but was taken physically into heavenly glory, sort of like Elijah in the Old Testament.  In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, it’s the Feast of the Dormition of Mary, honoring the belief that Mary died but without human suffering, like falling asleep, and that she rose physically into heavenly glory after three days, like her Son.  For us Anglican Christians, specifically Episcopalians, it’s simply the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin. We don’t worry so much about the details of how she got to heaven, instead focusing more on her earthly story.

So, who was Mary?  Certainly, the mother of Jesus; but some Christians also give her titles like Co-Redemptrix or Queen of Heaven, highlighting her stature and significance in God’s kingdom.  At the other end of the spectrum, my liturgics professor in seminary insisted on calling her simply Mary of Galilee – a teenaged nobody, called into God’s service in the most shocking draft choice in history.

What do we remember about her?  When you think of Mary, what image comes to mind?  Maybe Mary “meek and mild,” as the hymn says. That’s the image many of us hold: Mary the submissive servant, the model for millennia of women … and, by the way, handy for keeping women from aspiring toward too much, in the eyes of the men in charge. 

Or we can pick up on what Scripture says about Mary reflecting on Jesus’ birth, the shepherds’ visit, and the angels praising the newborn King.  Luke says Mary “pondered [all these things] in her heart” (2:19) – so we might see Mary as a contemplative, spending hours in prayer.  That one seems to make sense.  If I’d been visited by an angel and given birth to God’s Son; if I’d witnessed his ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension – I’d probably spend time in prayer, too, trying to understand my place in that stunning story … and what might come next.

But I also imagine that Mary must have been a fighter.  After all, when we first meet her, in the annunciation story, Mary is strong enough to question the angel Gabriel when he delivered the news that she would bear God’s Son: You’ve got to be kidding; “how can this be?” she asked (Luke 1:34).  So, Gabriel explains she’ll be filled with the Holy Spirit to conceive this child – and I think that strength sustains her and empowers her from that moment forward.  When Mary says to the angel, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word,” I don’t hear that as passive acceptance.  I hear her embracing her power: “Yes, I’ll serve.  Bring it on!”

Then Mary goes to visit her relative Elizabeth, who’s herself six months’ pregnant after spending decades making peace with the notion that she couldn’t have children.  Mary travels all the way from Galilee, in the north, to the Judean hill country – about 90 miles,¹ with no mention of her father or Joseph or anybody else coming along to take care of her.  The Holy Spirit tells Elizabeth the good news Mary is bringing, that she’s carrying the messiah; and Elizabeth blesses Mary for believing the angel’s unbelievable news.  As Elizabeth’s baby, John the Baptist, jumps for joy in the womb, Mary and Elizabeth understand God’s using them to change history.

And then we hear Mary speak for herself – or, actually, sing for herself – in today’s Gospel reading, as her voice rises on behalf of everybody who needs deliverance from the powers that oppress them.  And what exactly does Mary exclaim?  

She says, “My soul,” my spirit, “magnifies the Lord” (Luke 1:46).  Think about that.  Does God need magnification?  You’d think God could break into human experience with as much shock and awe as God likes.  But instead, God enters human experience needing nurture, needing care, needing leadership and love.  And for those spiritual gifts, God chooses someone with absolutely no credentials, a nobody oppressed in a backwater of the Roman Empire.  That’s just shocking, that God would use the spirit of a nobody to magnify God’s presence and power … but, of course, in God’s kingdom, nobody is a nobody.  

Instead, from now on, Mary sings, “all generations” will see how I’m blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me (Luke 1:48) – and for all who come after her.  So it is for those who offer themselves before God with awe and reverence, that God would have mercy and do great things for them.  In fact, Mary continues, God displays this immense power in the last way the world would expect, showing those who trust in themselves that their power is all in their heads, fleeting as a breath, soon to pass away.  In fact, Mary sings, the powerful will be brought low, and the lowly will be empowered.  For those who are hungry and thirsty and in need, God will fill them and make them whole, while those who are rich in the world’s eyes will have only their own power to rely on, coming away empty when they come before God.  

And God will bring this deliverance to the world through Israel – the lowliest of nations, not even a nation, people run over by one foreign power after another.  God’s king will come from this nothing nation … why?  Because God made that promise, Mary sings, and God is faithful to God’s own word. For generations, these people have found themselves homeless, powerless, even faithless sometimes, but never hopeless; for God has said, over and over again, “Be not afraid, for I am with you.”  So, Mary sings, “Yes!  I will give myself to that God, the God who comes up from the bottom to rule as King.”

It's not that the people of Israel were better than anyone else.  In fact, Luke’s story doesn’t even say that Mary was better than everyone else.  There’s no explanation for God’s choice.  As one commentator writes, “God’s beneficence is a gift and is not tied to notions of just desserts.”²  Mary’s song isn’t about how great she is, or about how great her country is.  Mary magnifies the Lord, so her song is about how great God is.  It’s that gift we routinely call “amazing grace” without really considering how amazing it is.  God raises up Israel, and raises up Mary, and keeps raising up folks who’ve hit bottom because that’s just who God is.  Love is like that. 

Of course, God’s amazing grace for the folks who’ve hit bottom begs the question, “What about the folks at the top?”  Honestly, that’s most of us here throughout most of our lives, especially in comparison to those struggling across town and around the world.  When I hear this song of Mary, I can’t help but feel haunted by the suspicion that I’m among the powerful who will be brought down from their thrones and the rich who will be sent away empty.  I don’t know how we can hear Mary’s song and not come away thinking God wants to see change.  What do we do with that?

Yesterday, about 25 of us came out for our second Connecting Community event at St. James United Methodist Church.  I spent the day in the laundry, talking with people who’d come for Loads of Love.  Others of you offered school supplies, or food, or diapers to families from our partner schools, and St. James’ partner schools, and the surrounding neighborhoods.  When we do this work, and all our Outreach ministry, we’re saying that we, too, are dissatisfied with the way things are.  We don’t just want a family to eat well over a weekend; we want them to eat well over a lifetime.  We don’t just want to offer a load of clean laundry; we want to offer a glimpse of the dignity borne by every child of God.  We don’t just want some students to have some school supplies; we want a city where all children are nurtured and educated to achieve their potential. 

So, how does that change happen?  Some will say through legal reform.  Some will say through educational reform.  Some will say through police reform.  Some will say through government programs.  Some will say through private enterprise.  Some will say through family empowerment.  I will say, “Yes.”  Welcome to the Big Tent.  For under that tent are hearts united in the dream that Mary was singing.  The lowly need lifting up.  The hungry need good things.  Even in a nation as divided as ours, deep down we get that. 

So, then what?  I don’t think God’s intent is that, because “the lowly” (1:52) need change, the powerful need punishment.  I think God’s intent is that the powerful need to be instruments of the change God seeks.  And they need to do it not just for the well-being of the lowly but for themselves, actually; because we the powerful need to experience amazing grace just as much as anyone else.  We need to know in our hearts the love that crosses boundaries, and invests us in one another, and makes us see we have a stake in our neighbors’ well-being.  We need to live the truth that we’re bound together by the Love that loves us all.

When I talk with people who have little by worldly standards, and ask them how they’re doing, I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard people reply, “I’m blessed.”  I’m blessed.  I may be doing my laundry at a laundromat with someone else’s quarters, but I’m blessed.  That is the song of Mary: that today’s struggle looks to tomorrow’s victory, that today’s sadness looks to tomorrow’s joy, that today’s shortfall looks to tomorrow’s bounty.  For God is faithful, entering into our experience through the least likely person in the world and saving all God’s beloved children from the bottom up.

1.      https://aleteia.org/2017/01/24/biblical-travel-how-far-to-where-and-what-about-the-donkey/

2.      New Interpreter’s Study Bible, 1853 (note).

Face to Face With God, Like a Friend

Sermon for Transfiguration, transferred, Aug. 7, 2022

Luke 9:28-36

As some of you know, I was gone last Sunday.  My son, Dan, and I went to San Francisco, continuing a tradition of summer travels that we’d shared with my father before he died.  Among the highlights of this trip was a drive north of San Francisco to Muir Woods National Monument, a preserved stand of coastal redwoods.  The trees are stunning, of course, especially the aptly named Cathedral Grove, home to the oldest and tallest trees in the park. 

We had decided to take the long version of the nice, flat trail through the redwood valley; and I was doing fine with it, old man that I am.  But about a half-mile in, we came to a turnoff for a different path, one that headed up the bluff – the Canopy View Trail.  The short option was 2.7 miles, and the sign described it as “climbing steadily” and with “steep sections.”  But I was not about to tell my son that I wasn’t up to this, so off we went.

Huffing and puffing up the trail, I was hoping for the payoff of a breakthrough view, some grand vista of eternity where we could take in the towering trees and the ocean all at once.  No such luck.  Instead, the higher we went, the more obvious it became that there was just more mountain to hike.  Even the one “breakthrough” view offered trees and … fog.  Not that the trees weren’t gorgeous, because they were.  In fact, they were absolutely astounding all on their own, symbols of encounter with a reality so grand and so vast that I could never hope to take it in all at once, regardless of how high I’d climbed.  So, I found myself simply grateful for being immersed in it, finally letting the experience be what the experience would be.  Plus, thankfully, the journey from there was down the mountain.

I wonder what the disciples were expecting on their hike up the mountain with Jesus.  He was heading up there to spend some quiet time with his heavenly parent, but what about Peter, John, and James?  Were they looking for down time?  Or prayer time?  Or face time?  The reading today doesn’t tell us whether they were hoping for a mountaintop experience or just figuring they’d experience the mountain.  

Either way, what they get is far more than anything they could have planned.  Jesus’ face and clothing change to a “dazzling white” (Luke 9:29).  And suddenly they’re joined by the Jewish Law and the Prophets in the flesh: Moses, through whom God had overcome Pharoah and led the people to freedom; and Elijah, through whom God had deposed unrighteous kings and defeated competing deities.  And Jesus is standing alongside them, taking his place at the top of Israel’s pantheon of heroes. 

Then, as if this isn’t stunning enough, God thunders onto the scene, descending in a storm cloud, enveloping them all in darkness and lightning.  Maybe Peter, John, and James remembered the stories of Moses on the mountain with God.  Scripture says God spoke to Moses “face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11).  Well, if this is a friendly conversation with the deity, they’re thinking, I don’t want to see the angry version.

I don’t know how it works for you, but when I go looking for experiences of the holy, for encounters with the divine, that’s when I can pretty much be guaranteed that I won’t find one.  Like my hike up the mountain, I can look too hard for what I think I’m supposed to get, trying to manage the experience instead of experiencing it.  So, when is it that those rare moments of encounter with God do come?  It’s when God takes hold of my reality … and usually when I least expect it.

But to help bring that about, I do have to make space for the holy to happen.  It can happen in all kinds of settings – certainly in this beautiful space, as we offer ourselves to receive God’s Word and Christ’s Body, grateful for the sustenance God always provides.  It can happen in a conversation with someone you love as you let the Spirit connect your hearts.  It can happen in a walk in the woods, as you drink in the majesty of God’s creative genius and give thanks simply to share in it.  It can happen in an opportunity to serve, as you offer yourself as an instrument of Love and a vessel of blessing even for someone you don’t know.

As it happens, there are three very different opportunities for us to bring ourselves into God’s presence here in just the next couple of weeks.  In the Jewell Room today, you’ll find information about how you can make a difference for a student at Gordon Parks Elementary School.  You can start by giving $25 to provide a student’s uniform for the new school year.  But you could also consider making a difference face to face by volunteering at the school, mentoring a student or helping in a classroom.  Or here’s another chance for connection: Next Saturday, we’ll serve alongside members of St. James United Methodist Church in another Connecting Community event.  Families at our partner schools, Gordon Parks and Benjamin Banneker Elementary, as well as families at St. James’ partner schools, have been invited to come for school supplies, as well as food, diapers, lunch, and laundry.  Look in the bulletin or Messenger to volunteer for a shift.

Offering ourselves in service is a great way to ask God to come down from the mountain and meet us face to face.  Of course, so is offering ourselves in prayer.  And on Saturday, Aug. 20, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., you’re invited to learn more about that in a contemplative mini-retreat in the Jewell Room.  Mtr. Rita Kendagor will teach about centering prayer, a form of Christian meditation; as well as the practice of lectio divina, or sacred reading – a way to engage Scripture at a deep and intuitive level. 

For God to “speak to us face to face, like a friend,” we have to set aside our lives and ourselves long enough to hear that still, small voice and see God where we least expect.  That act of giving our time and attention is a sacrament, a sign of the larger pattern of self-giving Jesus calls us to embrace.  I think that’s what God’s talking about in this morning’s Gospel story, with the one line the sovereign of the universe gets.  God says, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him” (Luke 9:35).  OK, what are we supposed to hear?  Jesus has had nothing to say through the whole story – so what message are his followers supposed to take away?

Well, the last thing Jesus had to say before today’s story came when Peter named him as the Messiah, the anointed king.  Peter was saying that Jesus is the one they’ve been waiting for, the one who’ll deliver God’s people from the oppression of Rome and bring them fullness of life under God’s own reign and rule.  Jesus heard Peter proclaim that, and he said, “Yes, but….”  The path to glory isn’t the path you’d imagine.  The path to glory is a path up the mountain all right, but it’s the mountain of Calvary, the way of the cross.  “If any want to become my followers,” Jesus had said, “let them deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.”

So – what have you got to lose?  Well, how about a few hours in service or in prayer, to make space for God to show up and lead you just a little higher up the mountain.