Tag Archives: other

On homes, humanity, and our hands…

17 Wednesday Jan 2018

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Yesterday, I attended the dedication of a Habitat for Humanity house for which our church had been a financial and volunteer sponsor.  As I watched the family celebrate, it struck me how everyone has a story.  Before becoming a priest, I worked at a Habitat affiliate in Delaware, and I remember that each homeowner’s story varied.  Some had grown up in poverty, and were the first to buy homes in their extended families; some had a health crisis that led to financial and housing problems; some were living in substandard conditions, while others had squeezed their entire families into a friend’s living room.  I do not know the full story of the Fletcher family, except that the matriarch has been working as a nurse for years, has three children, and could not afford to buy a home without Habitat.

What struck me about the Habitat event is how strong our common humanity is.  Get a new Habitat homeowner in the room with a wealthy, privileged person, and I suspect within ten minutes they will be sharing stories of their common humanity.  But get either of them outside of that room, and either person could be seen as an enemy:  someone who oppresses others and does not share their wealth or someone who does not work hard enough and relies too much on outside assistance.  Neither of these characterizations are fair – but we make them all the time.  We forget the story of each individual, and instead create categories that we can then use to generalize – to dehumanize.

I do not usually talk about politics on my blog, but our President’s recent characterization of other countries and their citizens, whom I love, has broken my heart.  The incident itself was not all that surprising.  What put me over the edge was how the comment was so brazenly said and affirmed by others, and how the comment highlighted the ways our country seems to have embraced the practice of dehumanizing others enough that they are able to say things that they would not otherwise say to another human if they were face-to-face.

Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, advocated for a preferential option for the poor.  Time and again, Jesus took the stranger, the outcast, the downtrodden, and healed them, helped them, and loved them.  In fact, “the other,” is a recurring theme in scripture that invites us to examine our own modern designations of “insiders” and “outsiders.”  Our country’s current practice of demonizing and subjugating the “other” is an action in direct conflict with Holy Scripture and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We are not living into our baptismal covenant promises of respecting the dignity of every human being, and seeking and serving Christ in all persons.

This week, I invite you to examine our current treatment of the “other” – those for whom Jesus had a particular preference and priority.  Whether you need to spend some time in prayer, have a conversation with someone unlike you, volunteer some time with a charitable organization, write to your governmental representatives, or donate your money to an agency that can affect change – do something.  Do not let your light be hidden under a bushel.  And then share your story with me here, or with a friend on the journey.  I cannot wait to hear how the Holy Spirit uses you.

Sermon – Mark 4.35-41, P7, YB, June 21, 2015

22 Monday Jun 2015

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A long time ago, we got on a boat.  We were not really sure what was going to happen while we were out to sea, but we got on the boat because we were curious.  We had an experience, or maybe multiple experiences with a man named Jesus, and something about those experiences compelled us to get on the boat.  Maybe the experience happened as early as Sunday School, maybe the experience happened when we were confirmed, or maybe the experience happened as an adult.  We may not even be able to articulate the reason why we got on the boat.  But all of us, at some point, step onto the boat, however tentatively or boldly, and we sail with Jesus to the other side.

The disciples have that same experience in today’s gospel lesson from Mark.  After a long day of preaching and teaching, during which Jesus pulls them aside and explains parables to them, Jesus says, “Let us go across to the other side.”  Now if the disciples had been smart, they would have asked some questions: “What is on the other side?  What if a storm comes?  Can’t we just stay here and get a good night’s rest?  This place is familiar and comfortable.”  And they should have asked questions.  The “other side” of that body of water is exactly that – other.  The other side is Gentile territory, the land of the Gerasenes.  Jesus is taking his first journey into what might be considered dangerous, and even inappropriate.  Jesus is beginning a ministry beyond just the Jews.[i]  “Let us go across to the other side,” is no “Hey, let’s mix things up this year and go to Cabo.”  Yes, the disciples should have asked a lot more questions.[ii]

But they do not.  Something about this Jesus compels them forward, stepping on and manning that boat without question.  That’s the funny thing about Jesus.  We too got on a boat because of him, probably having no idea what we were getting into.  Suddenly we find ourselves cooking casseroles, watering gardens, and bringing in men’s undergarments for our needy neighbors.  Suddenly we find ourselves getting asked by the Rector to serve on some committee.  Suddenly we find the news of the day is not so simple when we remember all those words we said in our baptismal covenant about seeking and serving Christ, loving our neighbor as ourselves, and sharing the Good News.  We really should have asked more questions before we got on that boat to follow Jesus.

I have been thinking about that boat a lot this week.  You see, some of our fellow disciples were murdered this week – nine to be exact, in Charleston, South Carolina.  They were praying and reading Holy Scripture – just like we do every Thursday.  They even welcomed in a stranger that night – like Jesus always tells us to do.  That very stranger turned out to be crazy, filled with racist rage, and willing to kill nine people before fleeing.  At least that was how I saw the episode at first.  At first, this was another instance of a crazy person, senselessly killing other people.  But then the prophets of our time began to speak.  The prophets reminded me that violence proliferates in our society.  The prophets reminded me that because we cannot agree on a reasonable gun policy, more and more people die in our backyards.  The prophets reminded me that our African-American brothers and sisters in this country experience very fragile and virtually non-existent safety – they cannot even be safe in church.  There was a part of me that wanted to stay on the shore this week and say, “Oh, Jesus, that was just an isolated event by a crazy kid with extremist views.”  But I had already gotten on the boat.  It was too late.  And a storm began to rage.

That storm for me was the storm of our time:  a storm of violence, racism, and suffering.  No longer could I contain each story:  Trayvon Martin, Ferguson, Sandy Hook, Baltimore, Columbine, Selma, Charleston.  One story bled into another, and as I was reminded of each one, I felt the buckets of water dousing my face.  As I thought about every conversation I have had about how racism is not dead, I felt the water creeping up to my waist.  As I thought about the historical shadow of the oppression of others in our country, I wanted to cry out to God.  And all I could think about was Jesus on that stupid boat, asleep on a cushion in the stern.  Who can sleep at a time like this?  Doesn’t Jesus care about us at all?  Why couldn’t we have just stayed on the shore in that comfortable, familiar place instead of getting on the God-forsaken boat with a man who does not seem in the least bit bothered by our suffering?

The disciples know that feeling.  They are experienced at life on a boat.  At least when they get on the boat, they knew how to manage a boat.  They know the dangers and the perils, and have learned to navigate them for the necessity of survival.  But even these experienced fishermen are scared.  They have tried to control the boat, they have scooped out as much water as they can, and they know they have met their match.  And so they go to their last resort.  They wake up Jesus and shout, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?!?”  When they got on that boat, this is not what they were expecting.  They were expecting the fulfillment of a promise – the fulfillment of a different life and a different world:  the kingdom of God here on earth.  Instead they were going down fast with a man who could not even stay awake and fight the good fight with them.

I shouted those words this week too.  Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?  Maybe we brought all this violence on ourselves, but surely you care?  Surely you did not lure me onto this boat – into this relationship with you – only to watch us perish?  Though I wanted more than anything to think this was an isolated event of a crazy person doing something ungodly, I could not ignore the storm swirling around.

I struggled to find hope today in our gospel lesson.  All I saw was Jesus scolding the disciples for their fear and their lack of faith.  And then I saw disciples even more afraid than before – which is saying something given the awfulness of that storm.  Straining for some strand of hope – some glimmer of redemption – I came back to that invitation from Jesus, “Let us go across to the other side.”  Jesus does not tell the disciples to go to the other side alone.  Jesus does not say, “Go to the other side without me.”  Jesus says, “Let us go to the other side.”[iii]  Whether the disciples felt like Jesus was with them during that storm or not, Jesus was with them.  That may not seem like much, but that may be the biggest miracle of all in this story.  As one scholar writes, “God’s power isn’t in the control of creation or of people, but in being in covenant and relationship with them.  [God’s power] isn’t in imposing the divine will or insisting on its own way but in sojourning with us as we fumble around and make our way in the world.  God’s power is not in miraculous interventions, pre-emptive strikes in the cosmic war against suffering and evil, but in inviting us to build a kingdom out of love, peace, and justice with God.  God’s power is not in the obliterating of what is bad in the world, but in empowering us to build something good in this world.”[iv]

A long time ago, we got on a boat.  We did not know where we were going, what we would see, or who we would encounter.  All we knew was that Jesus was inviting us into a different life, and we felt compelled by this passionate, nonsensical man.  Oh, we had clues.  We knew that the “other side,” was not a place we wanted to go.  We knew that going there might change us, and change our entire worldview.  We knew that getting on that boat would mean stepping away from the familiar, comfortable coastline, and sailing into something different and scary.[v]  But Jesus said he would go with us.  Jesus invited us on a journey with him and something deep inside us, despite the little devil on our shoulder telling us to stay put, told us to step onto that boat.

I am still scared of the storm.  In fact, I am a little afraid of Jesus too.  But what brings me comfort this week is that Jesus is with us.  Jesus does not invite us onto a boat and let us sail alone.  And though Jesus may have an ability to sleep through a storm, with complete confidence in the direction of God, I also know that Jesus will wake up and respond to me when I call out his name.  He may not say what I want to hear.  He may leave me feeling more uncomfortable than getting soaked in a storm.  But he is here.  Jesus is here on our boat, and can make things right.  We just have to be prepared to go to the other side.  Amen.

[i] Beverly Zink-Sawyer, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 165.

[ii] This train of thought comes from Karoline Lewis’ writing “The Other Side,” June 14, 2015 as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3645 on June 18, 2015.

[iii] Lewis.

[iv] David R. Henson, “When God Sleeps through Storms (Lectionary Reflection for Mark 4:35-41),” June 15, 2015 as found at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidhenson/2015/06/1804/ on June 18, 2015.

[v] Lewis.

Sermon – Philippians 2.1-13, P21, YA, September 28, 2014

01 Wednesday Oct 2014

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Humility has always been one of the trickiest virtues for me.  I actually see myself as a pretty humble person, mainly because life has deflated my ego enough times that I learned pretty quickly to be humble.  In high school I was at the top of my class, and I remember how my classmates all thought I was pretty smart.  But when I got to college, everyone else had been at the top of their class too – and quite frankly, the workload was crazy hard.  Any ego I had started to build up in high school was immediately brought down to size.  Or, as I like to tell the acolytes, in one of my first Sundays as an ordained priest, I was serving the chalice.  We missed a latecomer, so I grabbed the chalice and rushed around the altar to serve them.  In my rushing, my elbow hit the side of the altar, and the wine splashed all over the stone floor.  The gasp from the choir in the chancel was audible.  For someone who holds the sacredness of liturgy dear, I was mortified; but there was nothing I could do.  So humility has never really been an issue for me.  But the weird thing about humility is owning the virtue.  As soon as you declare, “I am a pretty humble person,” haven’t you just negated your humility by bragging about your humility?

Of course, the quest for humility can go to the other extreme as well.  I have a friend who went through a phase of being a pretty fanatical Christian.  At some points I found talking with him to be so frustrating that I avoided him altogether.  He was so obsessed with being a humble Christian that you could never pay him a compliment.  I might say something simple like, “I’m so proud of how well you are doing in school.”  And his immediate retort would be, “Oh, well I had nothing to do with that.  All the credit belongs to God.”  There really is no good response to a retort like that without sounding sarcastic or rude.

But humility is what our epistle lesson today demands.  Paul addresses the community at Philippi with a letter from prison.  Worried that the community of Philippi stay on the right track, Paul tells them, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interest of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”  In three simple sentences, Paul’s instructions get harder and harder.  First, Paul tells the community not to let their egos get too big.  Paul wants the community to right-size itself by looking at their intentions and attitudes.  Second, Paul tells the community not just to be humble, but to put the needs of others above their own needs.  Here Paul is commanding the community not just to correct their attitudes, but to reorient their actions as well, focusing on others before themselves.  Finally, as if the other two were not hard enough, Paul takes his instructions one step further and tells the community to have the same mind as Christ Jesus.  Paul wants the community to be a humble as the man who sacrificed his own existence for the sake of humanity.  The more I read Paul’s letter this week, the more I wondered whether my fanatical friend had not been rooting his whole life in the mandate presented here by Paul.  Maybe my friend’s annoying, over-the-top humility was actually what Paul was suggesting.

The challenge with trying to take on any spiritual discipline, like taking on the mind of Christ, or becoming more humble, is that we tend to fret so much over the discipline that we get lost in ourselves – which is, in fact, the very opposite of what Paul invites us to do today.  In focusing on our weaknesses or lack of humility, and trying to work our way into a more humble way of being, instead, we find ourselves alone, struggling with God, but separate from others who may actually be able to help us in our quest for humility.  The secret to mastering humility is not by focusing on the self, but instead by focusing on others.  One scholar describes this method by explaining, “One does not ‘self-empty’ by focusing upon oneself.  One is emptied of self to the degree one is overcome by the needs, pains, hopes, and desires of others.  When concern for others takes one utterly beyond self-interest, beyond obsessions with achievements and self-obsessing guilt over failures, beyond self, then one receives the comfort of an Easter ‘yes’ so overwhelming, unconditional, undeniable, and absolute that [the ‘yes’] is experienced as unfailing and forever – a yes more potent and enduring than any imaginable no.”[i]

When I did my year of AmeriCorps service, I arranged to clean and lock up the Episcopal Campus House in exchange for a free room in the back of the house.  Since AmeriCorps volunteers get a very modest living stipend, the free housing was a huge help.  But one day, at the end of a particularly physically grueling day of work, I was talking to one of the clients that the Food Bank served.  He lived in a group home and was trying to transition to independent housing.  We were talking about my housing situation and he marveled, “Man, I wish I could find a situation like that!”  Truthfully, I had taken my housing situation for granted – occasionally I even resented having to clean toilets and mop floors.  But after that conversation, every time I mopped those floors I remembered how incredibly lucky I was.  I needed that client to help me get to a place of humility and gratitude.

That realization is what Paul is hoping the community at Philippi will have as well.  Paul knows that setting aside the self is difficult.  That is why he pushes us to look at the needs of others.  Paul knew that when the community of faith began focusing on others, they would forget about themselves.  They would gain the perspective needed to help them on the journey toward humility.  And as the community turned more and more outward, they would be turning more and more toward the life of Christ – a life always oriented toward the other.  The work of building individual humility and having a mind like Christ only happens in the context of community.  The work cannot be done alone.

In 1974, poet Adrienne Rich was awarded the National Book Award in poetry, having beaten out fellow nominees Audre Lorde and Alice Walker.  When she gave her acceptance speech, she shocked the literary community.  She began, “We, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Alice Walker, together accept this award in the name of all women whose voices have gone and still go unheard in a patriarchal world.”  The three women had sat down together before the event and written the statement.  No matter who won that night, this would be the statement of the winner.  When asked about the statement, they “said they believed that by supporting and giving to each other they could enrich each other’s lives and work more than by competing against each other.”[ii]  What these three poets did was refuse to play by the rules of the game.  Instead of accepting that there must be one winner, they declared that they had all won – despite what the award givers were proclaiming.

What these women did is what Paul was hoping the Church community would do.  By working together, these women resisted the temptation to lose their humility.  If any of them alone had won, they could have become puffed up with pride.  Conversely, if any of them alone had lost, they could have spiraled into the depths of self-doubt.  But together, they were able to claim a humble acknowledgement that God was working through each of them to do great things.  That is the true nature of humility – one found and expressed through community.  We are blessed to already have in place the kind of community that can support and encourage one another in the development of humility.  Our invitation is to trust this community enough to uplift us, to challenge us, and to help us grow.  We cannot face the journey alone; but luckily, we are not alone in the midst of this community.  Amen.

[i] William Greenway, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 114.

[ii] Entire story told by Mike Grave, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 113.

Sermon – Exodus 1.8-2.10, P16, YA, August 24, 2014

27 Wednesday Aug 2014

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We know exactly where our story is going today in Exodus when the introduction says, “Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”  This introduction is ominous because to not know Joseph is to not know how Joseph saved Egypt from famine, making Egypt a world leader in a time of crisis.  But on a more personal note, to not know Joseph means that the warm welcome the Israelites once received in gratitude for Joseph’s service has also been forgotten.  This is how Pharaoh’s reign of terror begins.  Not knowing the formerly friendly arrangement between these two very distinct groups, Pharaoh chooses prejudice and fear.  Afraid that this foreign group will pose a threat, Pharaoh strikes preemptively.  First, he enslaves the Israelites, forcing them into labor for Egypt.  But that kind of subjugation is not enough to assuage Pharaoh’s paranoia.  So Pharaoh starts another campaign – he enlists midwives to kill any male newborns, in the hopes of reducing the number of men who can revolt against his new stratified system.  And when that campaign does not work, Pharaoh extends his reach and calls upon all the Egyptians, instructing them to kill all Hebrew newborn boys that they encounter.

This story is scary because the story is a bit too familiar.  Just in the past several months we have witnessed similar violence and oppression of “the other.”  The advance of ISIS in Iraq is so extreme that their violence is being labeled as genocide.  Whole communities of faith, both Christian and other faiths, are either being displaced, murdered, or sold into slavery.  And though the players and terrain may be foreign to us, genocide is not.  Whether through Pharaoh thousands of years ago, in the Holocaust seventy years ago, or in Rwanda twenty years ago, we know the devastation, trauma, and scars that genocide leaves.  Each time we pray, “Never again,” and yet, here we find ourselves again in Iraq.

A more complicated version of oppression can be found much closer to home – in Ferguson, Missouri, in Staten Island, and yes, even in Plainview.  Though the recent cases are about the racial tensions between police officers and African-Americans, the truth is that racism is a reality throughout our country and involves a system of oppression that benefits some over others.  I remember when I first met my husband, Scott, we had a conversation about racism.  As young seventeen-year olds, we came from very different backgrounds.  He was a conservative Republican (though I think he was a Republican mostly in defiance of the long history of liberal democrats in his family – but that is another story).  He grew up in San Diego:  a military town across the border from Mexico.  His peers were people of every race, nationality, and geography, and what he saw was a mixture of people who seemed to function without much prejudice.  I, on the other hand, was an idealistic Democrat, who saw a very different world in rural Georgia and North Carolina.  I was a part of an organization as a young woman who did not welcome people of color – a fact I did not realize until I wanted to invite my African-American girlfriend to join.  At my high school, there were threats of the KKK coming by to intimidate the few African-Americans at our school.  So when Scott and I first began to talk about racism, you can imagine that we had very different opinions about the role that race places in our country.

The scary part for me in our news lately is that genocide and racism are two different expressions of the same problem.  Both stem from the recognition of difference – of there being one group of privilege and one group of disenfranchisement – or “the other.”  Once an “other” has been established, judgments of value are next.  Through those judgments of values emerges prejudice – and in the instance of race, racism.  When taken to the extreme, that prejudice can lead to genocide – a complete annihilation of “the other.”  So genocide and racism are just markers on a spectrum of reactions to difference.

Now many of you may be thinking, “Okay, so we cannot help but notice differences among us.  And if we notice differences, and the next natural step is a judgment of value, then what are we supposed to do?  How are we supposed to change our natural judgments?  Obviously most of us are opposed to the extreme of genocide, but can we really do anything about racism?”  As a person who has attended many anti-racism trainings and programs, this is where many of us are caught up short.  When we enter into discussion about this issue, we feel guilt, frustration, helplessness, defensiveness, confusion, anger, and shame.  Though most of us can agree that we do not want a society where prejudice exists, truthfully, we just do not even know where to start or what to do.

That is why I love this story from Exodus today.  Though Pharaoh brings the ugliness of our current events into light, the women in this story show the way toward salvation.  My favorite women are the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah.  Pharaoh tells the midwives that as the Hebrew women are delivering their children, if they deliver any male children, the midwives are to kill the boys immediately.  Shiphrah and Puah have several options here.  They can run away – out of fear of Pharaoh, they can disregard their charge from Pharaoh and run for safety.  They can stand up to Pharaoh, refusing to kill others, but face the consequences of Pharaoh’s anger.  But what they do instead is genius.  Instead, they disobey, but they disobey with cunning.  The midwives play into the prejudice of Pharaoh – that the Hebrews are somehow different.  So they come back to Pharaoh with farcical story about why they did not kill the babies, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.”  You can almost hear the feigned innocence and incompetence in their response.  Though we all know that the midwives basically lie to pharaoh, Amy Merrill Willis calls this act by the midwives a “gracious defiance,” because of the way “it embraces life and blurs Pharaoh’s attempts to draw lines of distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ between Egyptian and Hebrew, between dominating and dominated.”[i]   Shiphrah and Puah show the world another way to respond to prejudice.  And their small act – their act of gracious defiance – changes the course of history.

What I love about Shiphrah and Puah’s story is that they basically teach us that we can all make a difference – in fact, we can all change the world.  Now I know that sounds idealistic or pie-in-the-sky, but think about this.  Shiphrah and Puah were of little consequence in their time.  They have very little power.  They work under Pharaoh and they are women in a time when women had even less power than they do today.  All they did in a little slice of history was disobey an order and tell a tiny little, but incredibly awesome, lie.  And from that small, tiny action, they save an entire people.

Andy Andrews wrote a book called The Butterfly Effect, in which he argues that each of us makes decisions every day that have a ripple effect on others, and that simple, courageous efforts can have an extraordinary impact.[ii]  The possibilities are endless:  the teacher who encourages a student who later befriends another student who is going through a rough patch; the grandfather who volunteers to read at the local elementary school who instills a love of reading in a child who later becomes a prolific writer; the parishioner who makes a sandwich for a client of the INN, who is no longer so hungry and disheartened that he cannot care for his struggling family; the young woman who helps a mom load groceries into her trunk who is then encouraged to be much more kind and patient with her rowdy, sometimes frustrating children.

The point is that when we talk about the world’s ills – racism, prejudice, or genocide – we often feel overwhelmed and incapable of affecting change.  But the truth is, we can be a part of changing the world every day.  The choices we make impact others and ripple out in much larger ways that we can imagine.  Sometimes our choices are bold and courageous, but sometimes they are small, often unnoticed choices.  But our choices have the potential to impact greater change than we know.  Thousands of years ago, Shiphrah and Puah were the gracious defiers who quietly and cunningly stood up to a bully and tyrant.  This week, you can be the gracious defier who chips away the world’s injustice.  The choice is yours – and the potential for goodness is great.  Amen.

[i] Amy Merrill Willis, “Commentary on Exodus 1:8-2:10,” as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching. aspx? commentary_ id=972 on August 19, 2014.

[ii] David Lose, “The Butterfly Effect,” as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=1599 on August 19, 2014.

Sermon – Luke 16.19-31, 1 Timothy 6.6-19, P21, YC, September 29, 2013

05 Saturday Oct 2013

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Today’s scripture lessons are a bit uncomfortable.  The gospel and the epistle lesson really hit the rich hard.  We hear that familiar tale of the rich man and Lazarus and we almost sympathize with the rich man.  As he blindly goes about life ignoring Lazarus, we want to shout out to him, “Pay attention to Lazarus!  Take care of the poor!”  Of course, our reaction is much like the rich man’s once he realizes how doomed he really is.  He begs Abraham to send Lazarus or anyone from the dead to warn his brothers.  But Abraham responds with a deafening, “no,” and the silence at the end of the lesson is heart-wrenching.  This stark judgment is only heightened by our Epistle lesson, which boldly proclaims, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”  The writer does not simply say that wealth can be dangerous, but instead declares that the desire for wealth drives people to ruin and destruction.  There is a little bit of grace at the end of the lesson, which declares that the rich can somehow mitigate this fate by not being haughty, by setting their hopes on God, and by doing good, being rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.  Not all hope is lost, but we are also clear that the rich have a lot to worry about and a lot of work to do.

The biggest challenge about our lessons today though is not just the judgment of the rich, but the fact that we do not think of ourselves as being rich.  We can think of hundreds of thousands of people who are in better financial positions than we are.  Many of our members are struggling to get by – either because of fixed incomes or unexpected situations.  And even if some of us are making all our bills, we still have to watch our budgets – perhaps spending less on leisure, clothing, or the foods that we might like.  The last two parishes I served had a one and two million dollar budget respectively – we could easily look at our budget and the last two years of deficits and say that St. Margaret’s is not a place of rich people.  All you have to do is look around at our come-as-you-are culture, and assume that our parishioners in jeans and t-shirts do not have much money.

Of course, all of this is false.  All of our rationalizations and mind-games can never erase the fact that based on worldwide standards, simply by living in this country, we are rich people.  These lessons are not about “those people.”  These lessons are about us.  That is what makes them so hard.  We secretly want them to be about other people, but at the end of the day, we are the ones in danger of stepping over Lazaruses everyday and we are the ones who must struggle with our own love of money.  We are the rich in today’s lessons.

In the aftermath of the crisis of the Kenyan Westgate Mall Terrorist attack, an article surfaced about the media’s treatment of the crisis.[i]  In the first days of coverage, the mall was described as “being popular with ‘wealthy Kenyans, expatriates, and diplomats.’  It was also referred to as an ‘upscale mall’ ‘frequented by foreigners.’”  On the face of things, the description seemed relatively accurate and harmless.  But what the author of the article noted was that the sentiment that began spreading was that maybe the rich were getting their due, being terrorized in ways that the poor feel terrorized everyday.  But by the second day of reporting, the language started to change.  People began to see that not just the rich were suffering in the attack – ordinary people were being injured and killed too – in fact, even Muslims were being killed, despite the fact that the attack was committed by the so-called Islamist terrorists.  As pictures emerged of Kenyans helping internationals, and Muslims helping Christians, the vulgar labeling of “otherness” had been put to shame by the people’s common humanity and decency.  What I appreciated about this article is how the author saw our tendencies to not see ourselves in the other – how quickly we want to remove ourselves from judgment instead of seeing ourselves in the sinfulness of the world.  What happened in Kenya is not far from what happens every time we open our wallets and decide that we are not the rich man in our gospel or epistle lesson today.

Seeing our own culpability in our lessons today, what can we do from here?  There are two gifts in our scripture lessons today.  First, by watching the story of the rich man and Lazarus unfold, we get the benefit of what the rich man wanted for his brothers.  We are reminded through Abraham that the warnings are all there for us.  Though the rich man’s opportunity for repentance and renewal is gone, ours is not.  We have Moses, the prophets, and even Jesus himself rising from the dead as our reminder that our wealth is gifted to us to use for good.  Second, the hope of the epistle lesson is our hope as well.  We too can be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.  Even when we feel like we have nothing left to share, all we have to do is remember that our sharing is our active relinquishing of the power that the love of money has over us.

This week, a priest friend of mine was featured in a story in Chattanooga, Tennessee for the bold move his church is taking.  Another church in town erected three 100-foot crosses on their property at the cost of $700,000.  On reflection, my friend and the Episcopal community of faith that he has gathered began to wonder how else they could spend $700,000.  In response, the community established the Southside Jubilee Fund.[ii]  They will raise $700,000 themselves in order to give all the money away.  Considering the call for Jubilee in Leviticus, the requirements for receiving money from the funds will be biblically based – any group doing work feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing those in need, caring for the sick, loving your neighbor, forgiving your enemies, honoring widows, or healing the land can receive from the fund.  Who knows whether the church will be able to raise the full $700,000, but that kind of boldness is the kind of boldness our epistle lesson calls for today.

We at St. Margaret’s are embarking on some of our spending.  We are finally fixing a long-term water problem that has been plaguing our undercroft.  As we repair the years of damage, mold, and old asbestos tiles, and as we restructure our outdoor drainage, we will also be reconstructing a space that not only holds our social events, but facilitates education and formation for adults and children, welcomes support groups, and perhaps can become used for more community gatherings.  This kind of expense may feel like the expense of the rich – but I actually think this kind of spending is a bit like the kind of spending the epistle encourages.  We will have to be both generous to fund the project, but also use the space for good works and share the space with others.  And if we are really embracing the call to share, perhaps we can consider some sort of matching program – matching the dollars we spend on our building with the dollars we spend on outreach.  That matching might not be dollar for dollar like in Chattanooga, but the invitation for boldness is there.

But the invitation for boldness is not just for St. Margaret’s.  The invitation for boldness is for each one of us here.  I would like us each to take a moment and pull out our wallets.  Look at how much cash you have in there.  I want you to make a mental note of that amount, and then I want you to watch over the coming week or weeks how you spend those dollars.  I want you to watch where the dollars go and what your spending says about your relationship with money.  Even if you cannot be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share those specific dollars, perhaps you can spend the next month watching the ways you do and do not share your other dollars and what that says about the power that the love of money has in your life.  If you find that those dollars are not being used boldly for good works and generous sharing, perhaps you and your family can consider how you might live differently:  how you might, as our epistle says, live the life that really is life.  And as you make those observations, I hope you will share that experience with me and one another – so that we might encourage one another on the journey toward bold living.  Amen.

[i] Charles Onyango-Obbo, “Nairobi Westgate Mall Terror Attack, And The Folly Of ‘Otherness’ – What Al-Shabaab Revealed About Us,” as found at http://nakedchiefs.com/2013/09/24/nairobi-westgate-mall-terror-attack-and-the-folly-of-otherness-what-al-shabaab-revealed-about-us/ on September 26, 2013.

[ii] As found on http://southsideabbey.dioet.org/ on September 25, 2013.