Pentecost XIX - measuring tape

This is my measuring tape.

It comes from Europe, so it is slightly different than the ones you are familiar with. We have been using it a lot recently as my 6th grader is learning how the metric system works in her Science class. We have been measuring pencils and posters, furniture and stuffed animals, and even rooms. We now know that a regular pencil is more or less 20 centimeters long and that our coffee table is more or less 1 meter wide. She is also working on shifting from centimeters to inches… something that I’ve never really mastered.

Talking about measuring tape, I don’t know if you remember but in the Disney version of her story, Mary Poppins had a measuring tape too. She used it to measure the kids in her care, Jane and Michael, and the results of her measuring were out of the ordinary.

Michael measured “extremely stubborn and suspicious”

Jane measured “rather inclined to giggle. Doesn’t put things away”

And of course Mary Poppins measured “practically perfect in every way”.

We still use the phrase the measure of a man or of a person to talk about a person’s character. Of course, since we don’t have Mary Poppins’ clever tape, the “instrument” we use changes according to whom you ask.

For famous physicist and engineer Lord Kelvin, The true measure of a man is what he would do if he knew he would never be caught.

For English writer Samuel Johnson, The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Even J. K. Rowling tried her magic hand at measuring. She said that If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

And finally, one of my favorite, Fr. Robert South, who said that If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.

We all have different ways of judging other people’s character, don’t we?

And often the way we judge ourselves is wildly different than the way we judge others.

Be as it may, today we are confronted with how God judges humanity.

Once again Jesus is dealing with the very human Pharisees.

He has just told them a story with a difficult moral: “You cannot serve God and wealth”, he has said, and the Pharisees are making fun of him because - according to Luke - they are “lovers of Money”.

So right in the verse that precedes the beginning of today’s reading, Jesus tells them

“You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others,

but God knows your hearts.  

What is highly valued among human beings is detestable in God’s sight.”

And then he tells them the story of the poor man Lazarus and the rich man, traditionally known as Dives (which is nothing else but the word for “rich man” in the 4th century

Latin translation by Jerome).

Now, at a first reading we may start worrying about our own afterlife.

If the rich are going to be suffering the torments of Hades and the poor, the really poor

(not just those who cannot afford a fifth pair of shoes or tickets to the D-backs)

the really poor are going to be in the arms of Abraham or the angels, then we - all of us here today, I am afraid- have no hope of ending up in the clouds.

Because as far as I know none of us here is THAT poor.

But beware.

This story is meant to prove a point; Jesus is not after giving us a picture of the afterlife as he knows it. It is a parable. A parable meant for Jewish listeners.

First-century Jewish hearers of this parable would have assumed right off the bat

that the rich man was righteous and that the poor man was evil. Wealth in the ancient world was often viewed as a sign of divine favor, while poverty was viewed as evidence of sin. Just like sickness.

Remember how in the 9th chapter of John’s Gospel the disciples ask Jesus

who has sinned him or his parents that this man was born blind?

(John 9:2)

In that world, faith in God led to success: money, wives and children, land and health.

It’s pretty much like the prosperity gospel preached on Tv by the likes of Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar. I don’t agree, but this Christian religious doctrine maintains that financial blessing is the will of God for Christians, and that faith, positive speech, and donations to Christian ministries will always increase one's material wealth and success.

So in some circles things have changed but not that much.

Now I believe that in our story Jesus doesn’t care so much whether Lazarus is rich or poor but he cares deeply for his suffering. And I don’t believe that the rich man ends up in trouble because he is rich, but because in his earthly life he didn’t see Lazarus.

In spite of their proximity, in spite of the fact that Lazarus was there, hungry and in pain right outside his door day in and day out, the rich man is too busy congratulating himself on how well he is doing and celebrating with sumptuous feasts that he never even notices him.

Dives’ sin is not that he is wealthy, but that he is apathetic, indifferent to the plea of the poor. His wealth has distorted his vision.

When Jesus tells the Pharisees, You cannot serve God and wealth, he means you cannot focus your attention on both at the same time. If all our energy, all our care is on the task of making and administering our money to make more money and to purchase more than what we need while ignoring all others out there, far and near,

who can barely sustain themselves on 1 dollar a day, then there is something really wrong with our heart and with our eyesight.

And that is where Jesus is pointing the finger. That is what he is judging.

Those who watch the news and feel oh so bad for the poor and then go fix themselves another sandwich.

Those who read the papers and tell themselves that if they are so poor and so sick those people must have done something to deserve it.

Those who justify their indifference by telling themselves that the unemployed clearly do not want to work, but just to be a burden on society. Those who spend hours pouring over the pictures of Miley Cyrus twerking or trying to decide whether Miss America is indeed too dark skinned to be beautiful, but are way too sensitive to look at the faces of the suffering in Peshawar or in Nairobi.

I don’t know whether God has scales or if at our death we are neatly separated in rooms with different temperatures and levels of comfort.

I believe in a generous God, a God with an infinite amount of patience, a God who is ever ready to forgive even our worst crimes toward each other, when we repent and return to God’s path.

This is what I hear when Jesus talks.

But I know that if ever came a time when God took out Mary Poppins’ measuring tape

and called my name, I want to measure better than Dives.

I want to measure better than the Pharisees. And I am sure you feel the same way.

I am sure that deep in our hearts we all know what we would like to hear.

When and if God takes out the tape and measures me,

I want to hear something like this:

she does have many many faults and she definitely talks too much,

But she sees, and she gives, and she cares.

Amen

Ostracism and the Good Shepherd

In Athens, under the democracy, the Ancient Greeks had a procedure by which any citizen could be expelled from the city state for 10 years.

The procedure was called Ostracism.

The assembly would gather and every citizen would scratch the name of the one he wished to expel on a pottery sherd (ostraka) and put it in an urn.

6000 sherds with the same name guaranteed expulsion within 10 days.

In most cases this was not a punitive, but a preemptive procedure; a citizen was booted out not because he had caused problems, but in order to avoid potential trouble in the near future.

The property of the man banished was not confiscated and there was no loss of status,

but if he attempted to return before 10 years the penalty was death.

You have to admit that the Athenians had it right:

we are communal creatures, and the bonds of affection, the relationships that we form with each other are our most precious possession.

Expulsion from the group we belong to is the worst possible punishment.

No wonder the worst criminals are placed in isolation cells...

Our individual identity is so strongly tied into group identity that when we lose our community we lose ourselves, at least temporarily.

Nowadays we don’t use ostracism anymore, but we still have social rejection, which by definition is “any behavior in which a group or individual excludes and ignores another group or individual.” Social rejection happens to all of us at some point in life.

Unless we are extremely lucky, very naive, or totally unaware, sooner or later we find ourselves on the “wrong” side of some kind of wall.

It may happen at school, at work, in friendly or romantic relationships.

And it hurts.

If you don’t remember how much, ask any teenager you know.

As researchers have dug deeper into the roots of rejection, they've found surprising evidence that the pain of being excluded is not so different from the pain of physical injury. So when I say “it hurts”, I mean “it REALLY hurts.”

Rejection also has serious implications for an individual’s psychological state and for society in general. Social rejection can influence emotion, cognition, and even physical health. Ostracized people sometimes become aggressive and can turn to violence.

Human beings need community. It’s deep in the genes. We have a fundamental need to belong. Just as we need food and water, we also need positive and lasting relationships.

It goes back to the beginning of our evolutionary history, when co-operation meant survival and our instinct told us that the stranger was a threat.

As clever as human beings are, we rely on social groups for survival.

We evolved to live in cooperative societies, and for most of human history we depended on those groups for our lives.

A solitary human being could not have survived during the six million years of human evolution while we were living out there on the African savanna.

We still carry certain behaviors derived from our ancestral fears and needs.

Still we have to establish quickly whether someone we meet for the first time is friend or foe and nowadays we do that by figuring out whether the stranger we encounter knows somebody we know.

Watch people do it in any social context: “where are you from/What do you do”

are questions we ask to figure out not just whether we have something in common,

but somebody in common. The friend of my friend can be my friend too (even just the coworker, even the passing acquaintance).

I have lost count of the times I was asked whether I knew So-and-So in Italy

simply because I am Italian…

The triune God, eternally in relationship within the three persons of the Trinity

would never experience “social rejection”, but Jesus, God incarnate and made man,

knows and understands rejection and abandonment and all the feelings and the hurt that stem from there.

Through Jesus’ experience, God understands and shares the plea of the ones we call ‘the last, the least, and the lost’ those for whom nobody else cares.

And God cares deeply for those who are left outside of the circle, the ones the majority will work hard to forget.

In Jesus’ time it was the tax collectors and the sinners.

The first because they were doing something that no good son or daughter of Israel

would be caught dead doing, i.e. working for the hated Romans; the second because at the time sin was believed to be contagious in a very real way: consorting with sinners would render one impure and unfit for worship in the Temple.

Unfit for being close to God.

Jesus not only opened his arms of grace to them all, but went and sought them out, right there at the margins. Sharing time, empathy, food.

Today, social rejection affects the poor, the sick, the unemployed, the elderly

and also those who speak our language with difficulty or who dress, behave, think differently. They are ostracized by the majority, condemned to live at the margins of our circles of love, of our communities, of our society.

So the question that our Gospel reading poses for us today is: 

Who are the contemporary “good shepherds” who will go and meet the outcast on the way? Who is called to leave the comfortable and familiar behind and go out into the night to save the last, the least, and the lost from their very real pain?

Well, my brothers and sisters, you know it: that would be us - the Church.

Jesus calls US to acknowledge with gratitude how WE first have been welcomed in his circle, in his home, in spite of our many failings - that are well known to him - and to provide a similar circle of care, forgiveness, and love to others.

Jesus wants a missionary Church, a body that includes, that welcomes, that goes out into the broken world and brings the healing that only real acceptance and relationship can provide.

It is a tall order. It is a difficult call to put into practice.

Yet easy to understand and embrace when we remember how we were accepted first.

When we keep in mind that the good news for us and for the world is that God loves us first no matter what. It is totally doable (as my child would say), when together with Paul, the Apostle to the gentiles,we maintain the unshakable conviction

“that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

It is this conviction that gives us strength and joy in our mission in the world and to the world; this knowledge that pushes us out at there at the margins, where too many others don’t want to go. It is this love that makes us a community of healers, shepherds, and imitators of Christ where everyone, every single one is welcome.

Amen

Are you there God? It's me, Licia.

Weeks ago I preached a sermon on prayer. It is a subject that is very near and dear to my heart, probably because I have always felt that my prayer-life is lacking. To this day, when I look at the great mystics, at the monastics who devote their life to prayer, I can't help but feel that I will never be "enough".

This is the script I put together for my sermon, yet since I preached three times over the weekend, to three very different congregations, I ended up ignoring my notes and talking more about my experience.

I even shared how now I have set three alarms on my phone so that when they go off (mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon) I can drop everything and talk to God and, more importantly LISTEN. 

Very hard to write it a sermon a posteriori...this is what I "almost said"...more or less.

Pentecost X year C – Luke 11:1-13

Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe,

who sanctified us with your commandments,

and appointed us to be a light to the nations

and who gave to us Jesus our Messiah, the Light of the world.

Amen

Prayer is the most important activity in our lives.

It is the main way in which we develop a relationship with our Divine Parent;

it is a conversation with the whole Trinity,

a loving exchange, a communion.

According to a recent poll, only 50% of people in the US pray every day.

53% among mainline Protestant denominations.

I think this sad. And scary.

How can we keep our relationship with God alive, if we don’t talk to God?

Are we really that busy? Doing what? I mean really, what is more important?

Or is it that, like the disciples, don’t “know” how to pray?

That we are afraid we don't have the "right" words?

Well, Jesus seems to be pretty clear on how to pray...

We are to pray to our Father seeking intimacy, closeness with the Creator of all things

who is both transcendent (above all things)

and immanent (within all things...including us, who are made in the image of God).

We are to pray that God’s name, God’s role in the life of Creation be hallowed, sanctified, blessed

in our own lives, in our communities, in the world around us;

that God’s centrality in human life be understood, honored, and shared.

We are to pray that the Kingdom of God may come,

that we may be a part of God’s dream, God’s project for Creation.

That we may find ways to contribute to that project,

to cooperate with God so that the dream may soon become  a reality.

We are to pray for God’s Dream (with a big D) not our dreams,

because we tend to be limited in our dreaming, and in our asking, and self-centered.

So we’d better pray that God’s will be done, as opposed to our own,

because God wants for us more and better than what we can ever ask or imagine.

Also, we are to pray that our basic needs may be met. Yes, that’s perfectly acceptable.

God is interested and will listen to our little issues and to the large ones.

Because God cares.

God cares for the number of hair on our heads.

God loves us immensely and enjoys hearing our voice in prayer.

Even when the prayer is a simple “Thank you!” or “Help me!”

God is concerned about everything you and me are concerned about.

Just as I want want my child to to talk to me about anything she is worried about

(a broken nail...a broken heart),

so God wants to hear about the things we are worried about.

Then we are to pray for God’s forgiveness,

because although we are the recipients of God’s grace through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ,

as we go about the business of life in community through the world,

we continue to miss the mark, to fall into meanness and selfishness,

and we need to be aware of that and be ready (with God’s help) to do better.

And we who are constantly forgiven, we who know what grace is,

need to learn to forgive others and bring God’s message of redemption to all those who live in despair.

Finally, we are to pray for God’s strength and support in times of trial - which in my case is everyday,

because I am fully aware of my imperfection, my many limitations,

and it is only thanks to God’s support

that I can stand here in front of you all today.

I know, sometimes when we pray it is hard to believe that God is listening.

It is hard to feel a connection with God.

Frequently, it is because we do a lot of talking and very little listening.

More often than not, it is because we pray to God as if God were 

the great “fixer” of all things.

Like a child with a broken toy we pray that God may fix what is broken

or change things to our advantage.

We pray that we may get the stuff that we want but really don’t need.

Or, out of our impatience, we pray for RIGHT NOW,

as if we had the right to expect God to ask “how high” when we say “jump”.

And yet.

God-in-Christ tells us that

no matter how we pray, what really counts is that we pray.

That we keep the conversation going, even when it seems to be one sided.

It never is.

What really matters is that we turn to God consistently, even impatiently 

and empty our hearts.

Because every time we turn ourselves toward our Creator asking for ourselves or on behalf of others,

in joyful thanksgiving, or in a cry of pain,

every time we appeal to God,

it’s as if we lit a candle in the darkness for ourselves and for all humanity.

There are no good or bad prayers; there are no wrong or right words.

Prayer is letting go.

Prayer is saying that we know that God is.

And that God loves.

Choices

Luke 12:32-40 - Proper 14C

Do you know how many hits you get if you Google:

“How to help teenagers to make good choices”?

Thousand and thousands.

Trust me, I tried.

I tried because all of a sudden I am the parent of a pre-teen.

[Boy, just saying it out loud makes me weak at the knees.]

A pre-teen.

Someone who is already beginning to face a multitude of choices.

Someone who is slowly but surely paying less and less attention to ME,

when she’s making her choices.

The adolescent years are filled with questions about everything...

what music to listen to and what media to follow;

how to spend their time and money;

how to deal with friends and with peer pressure.

Teens make daily decisions on how to handle and resolve interpersonal conflict.

And what about choices related to vocation and how they will spend their lives?  

Will I marry? Will I have a career? Will I have children? 

What role will faith play in my life?
The list goes on and on.

And we, the parents, the mentors, the adults they more or less look up to

are supposed to guide them, encourage them to make good choices, reasonable choices, and support decisions that (God willing) 

will keep them happy and healthy and whole for a long time.

We are all aware that children today are facing

an unprecedented array of attitude and behavioral choices

while growing up in a postmodern culture that says the final court of appeal is how

"I feel" at any given moment in time.

But the fact is that it is not just children. It is all of us, isn't it?

We all have to make choices every day.

"will I or won't I?"..."what should I do?"

And, just like our children, we are surrounded on all side by entities seeking to harass us into submission:

Peers, authoritative figures, media, trends...

even when we think we are making independent choices

the pressure around us is at times so subtle that we can’t be sure anymore, can we?

Not even about the fundamentals.

We live in a day and age where personal feelings and preference

have become the guides for living and deciding.

We are constantly bombarded with messages about what is beautiful,

what is right, what is powerful, what will make us happy.

And we want that, whatever "that" may be.

And we want it now, because if our next door neighbor has it

then it is a good and joyful thing and I should have it too!

So we end up spending a lot of physical and mental energy keeping up with the fads, the trends, and the Joneses...

And then, sometimes, we look back and ask ourselves why,

why we accumulated things we've used only once

and shoes that were too tight even when we tried them on at the store.

[that would be me]

Why we went on vacation to the trendy beach that is really not our scene,

why we are having dinner with someone who is boring us to death,

why we are in a career that is not really using our God-given gifts,

and is definitely not making the world a better place,

but hey, it’s prestigious and it pays well, and it seems like such a good idea at the time...

And the list goes on.

So, my Brothers and Sisters, take a deep breath and ask yourself:

Where is your treasure?

What is really important in your life?

What is your guiding principle?

That is where you heart will be.

That is where you will put all of your energy, all of your time, all of yourself.

You need to be sure that it is really YOUR choice.

You can’t be giving all your heart to something just because it is expected,

just because everyone else does it, or because it has a cute commercial.

If you ask me, of course, I will tell you that our treasure is the love of God,

the Good News of Jesus Christ.

That following Jesus is the priority we all should have.

That imitating Christ ought to be our guiding principle.

The problem is that the Gospel is not sexy.

And on Superbowl day, Jesus doesn't have a funny speaking animal,

or a scantily dressed blonde to represent him.

And the Holy Spirit doesn't have a popular jingle.

How can we expect to hear the still small voice of God

with all other voices screaming in our ears?

Voices that are becoming louder everyday.

Every day more distracting.

Jesus promised to walk alongside all of us, 

while we walk the difficult journey of life.

Jesus life is our example.

Scripture can be our decision-making guide.

But we need to pay attention.

We need to stay awake.

We need to turn off the world’s influence and focus.

The light of God's Word illumines all of life and each choice we make.

God has something to say about matters of honesty, integrity, character, work ethic, sexual behavior, substance abuse, vocation, time, dating, and so on.

We just need to listen.

Find God’s voice in the Biblical text,

in the words of the Saints of God that preceded us or that are around us.

In the actions of all those who are already making good choices, Godly choices.

So, my brothers and sisters, for God's sake and our community's I have to ask you:

Where is your treasure?

Whose voice are you willing to listen to?

To whom are you going to give your heart?

On what we can learn from THEM

A man sees another man on the street.

The latter is in distress, in pain.

While others avert their eyes or even cross the street so as not to get too close, our guy has mercy, he lends a hand, he goes the extra mile to help.

There shouldn't be anything particularly shocking about the event.

Except, if you will, the fact that among those who do NOT help there are representatives of two categories of great importance in the Jewish world: a Priest and a Levite.

Men who have a special role in society: models of behavior, teachers of righteousness.

The message of the story is immediately clear: if you want to be a good disciple, if you want to 'inherit eternal life', show mercy, lend a hand to the ones in need, go the extra mile even for the stranger on the street.

Yet Jesus chooses to open an extra can of worms by making the helpful guy in his story a Samaritan.

Now, as you all recall, by the time of Jesus, Jews and Samaritans had hated each other for a thousand years. Jews looked with utter disdain at the Samaritans, barely believing they existed in the same world.

So making the merciful one a Samaritan bore the implication that a merciful heathen had better chances to 'inherit eternal life' than an Israelite who didn't show mercy.

And THAT was shocking. THAT was a major subversion of the rules.

After all, in the world in which Jesus lived, the people of Israel were the chosen ones - far superior to anybody else - every Jew knew that!

“Well, Jesus is saying, don't hold on too tight to your beliefs about what's right and what's wrong, because in the Kingdom of God sometimes the bad are good...or even better.”

Maybe if we want to bring about the Kingdom of God, a world characterized by God's justice, peace, and forgiveness, a good first step would be to get out of our comfort zone and find out what the Samaritans in our lives are doing. The ones we tend to consider heretics, dissidents...you know "those people"... may have something to teach us.

You know me, I have strong opinions about...well, everything.

I know what is right and what is wrong - and I have a number of well respected authors, bloggers, and opinion makers who agree with my theological and political opinions...thank you very much!

I also have a tendency, as I imagine most of you do, not to hold in high esteem those OTHER convictions or the people who hold them [hey, I am only human!]

Yet Jesus in this very story is showing us that if we only pay attention to those who agree with us, if we only surround ourselves with allies, with people who never challenge our worldview, we will never be able to grow out of our tiny little boxes, and we may even end up following the example of the wrong gurus.

Jesus points to the actions of the Samaritan to show the inquisitive lawyer that he needs to look for wisdom ALSO in the unexpected places, among people who typically provoke his contempt, his disdain.

Love, grace, and humanity can be found everywhere, if we make the effort of seeking them.

Look at the Samaritan, the Muslim brother, the representative of THAT party you will never vote for.

Listen to the Christian extremist, read the controversial author, open your mind and your heart to the one who never got a high school diploma and discover that God is speaking to you through them.

Bishop Desmond Tutu once said: "If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends, you talk to your enemies." Well, peace is one of the main signs of the Kingdom of God, a distinguishing feature of ‘eternal life’.

So let’s go out into the world and for the sake of Kingdom mix and mingle with the Samaritans, we may be surprised - no - shocked, by what they have to share.

Amen