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A sermon preached on October 28, 2007 based upon Luke 18:9 – 14, entitled, “Owning Up to Our Darkness and Light.”

For me, this is one of the truly tough parables to take in. Here’s what I try to do to make it more palatable:

The Pharisee, whom Jesus tells us went home from the Temple cut off from God, well, he must have been a stuck up, pompous ass. I imagine him with no sense of humor — no real friends. He’s one of the guys who conspired to get Jesus killed. Surely I am not the Pharisee. I tell jokes. I have friends. Jesus is my pal.

And then the tax collector — I picture him as basically a nice guy who has made some mistakes for which he feels sorry. He’s easy to be with; the kind of guy you’d love to have as a friend if you just got the chance to get to know him; basically misunderstood, but when you get down deep, just like the rest of us.

And I take comfort hearing that he came away from the temple justified, forgiven, okay in God’s book.

No. I don’t think so. The Pharisee is a truly honorable man. He lives a disciplined life that makes it possible for him to do a lot of good in this world; he gives away a good portion of his money to help others, he has never done anything overtly cruel in his life. He’s faithful to his wife. He keeps his word. You ask him to do something and if he says yes, you know he will do it. He probably has friends — lots of friends — and yes, he probably knows how to tell a joke.

And the tax collector: The comfort of his lifestyle has been built on the suffering of others. He has robbed the poor to make himself rich.

So here’s the thing. I want to imagine myself as being among those who come away from the Temple right with God, when in fact my life has a peculiar resemblance to that of the Pharisee, the one Jesus shakes up his listeners by saying he came away condemned.

It seems to me that this parable calls for a good deal of introspection, so in advance, I beg your forgiveness that I will be using myself as my primary sermon illustration, since, for better or for worse, my life is the one I know best.

Objectively speaking, I am one of the more honest people I know. I had a hard time when my kids reached a certain age and would ask me, “Tell me Daddy, is Santa Claus real?” because I was so uncomfortable with the concept of deceiving my kid, worrying that my kid would later conclude, “Hey, if Dad lied to me about Santa Claus, what else might Dad lie to me about?”

You can ask my wife: one of the ways I won her heart early on in our courtship was the manner in which I gave her a gift of a bracelet I had bought. It wasn’t the bracelet itself that touched her — as I recall, it was pretty cheap. Rather, it was the fact that I prefaced the giving of the gift by confessing that I hadn’t actually bought the bracelet for her. I actually bought it for another woman, but since my relationship with this other woman had broken off, I wanted her to have it instead. Now, given her own personal history with a previous relationship in which the man had played fast and loose with the truth, Sarah found my honesty about the gift so refreshing that she was utterly charmed by me.

Now I can’t say I’ve never told a lie, because that might well be a lie, and I try my best not to tell lies. I know for sure I’ve told plenty of what we call “white lies” — unfortunately I probably tell them pretty routinely, as do we all, but the point here is, as I said, objectively speaking, from what I can tell, I worry more about telling the truth than most people.

The last time I recall having stolen anything was when, at the age of maybe ten I found myself in a five-and-dime store in the company of some popular kids who gave the impression that they shoplifted there all the time, and so I pocketed something for which I hadn’t paid. Afterwards I was riddled by guilt, and later on when the same store short-changed me on a purchase I made, I didn’t complain, figuring I was just making amends.

I’ve never killed anyone. And I’ve never committed adultery.

Now, all of what I’ve just told you is objectively true. The question, then, is what am I to make of these “facts?” What do they mean?

Well, one possible response is to pat myself on the back, to pride myself in what a good man I am, and to look down on others who have fallen short of the standard I‘ve managed to keep, which, I can assure you, I’ve done plenty of in my life — especially when I’m under stress, which, unfortunately, feels like a good portion of life.

This, of course, was the reaction of the Pharisee in Jesus’ story, so the parable is, in fact, about me.

In my more reflective moments — in those moments when I give the Holy Spirit room to move in my inner thoughts — I realize that there is something quite self-deceitful about this self-righteous response, and that there are a couple of other things to consider in regard to what I have referred to as the “facts”.

First, we all are given by God the particular set of brains with which we find ourselves. Each brain is wired distinctly, with a unique combination of what we could call strengths and weaknesses which are simply there from the “get go”. We didn’t “earn” them, or “achieve” them, they were simply “given” to us. Call it DNA if you will. For better or for worse, God wired my particular brain with a certain hypersensitivity that leads me to readily tune into the feelings and reactions of others.

One of the good things about such a brain is that it lends itself to such qualities as honesty and fidelity, because my brain just doesn’t tolerate guilt well, and I will go out of my way to avoid feeling guilt.

If God gave me such a brain, in a certain sense, I have no right to take credit for it. To do so would be a little like someone who just happens to be tall feeling superior to someone who just happens to be short, as though tallness and shortness was some kind of achievement. Or like a naturally fast runner priding herself for being faster than someone who is just naturally slower. The pride has no basis in reality.

The same can be said about the blessings of having been given good role models in our parents or in our church. These aren’t things we can take credit for; there are simply things for which to give God thanks.

Brains like mine, however, have their down sides. Hypersensitivity can go hand in hand with timidity, and that too has been a part of my life. And so if I have avoided some of the sins of commission, there are sins of omission I’ve committed along the way as well, because that same hypersensitivity held me back.

Now the second thing to consider in regard to my ability up to this point to refrain from murder, stealing, adultery, and to a some degree, lying is to remind myself that it has been my good fortune not to be lead into the kind of severe temptations that would be, so to speak, pretty irresistible.

Each day, Jesus said, pray these words: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”, the point being, we all have our breaking point. If we don’t think so, then we are those who, as the scripture passage says at the outset, for whom Jesus told this parable — people “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous.” (Luke 18:9)

Looking at somebody else who has stumbled, the only truly accurate response is to say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” I was fortunate not to be lead into irresistible temptation.

If I haven’t murdered anyone, (yet), thank God I haven’t been tempted more severely to do so. If I haven’t stolen, thank God I’ve never come to the point where I felt I needed to. If I haven’t committed adultery, well, you get the picture.

Just as an aside: When asked if she had ever been tempted to commit adultery in her marriage, Dr. Joyce Brothers responded, “Adultery? No. Murder? Yes.”

Implicit in all this is the fact that the potential for all these sins lies within all of us.

Jesus was making this point when, in the Sermon in the Mount, he said that if you have ever felt anger in your heart, then, in essence, you are no different from a murderer, and if you have ever experienced lust, well then you are, in essence, an adulterer.

Inside of each of us, a deep darkness lives. Those of us who aspire to be “good” are perpetually tempted to deny the presence of the darkness — to pretend there is only light inside us.

Jesus recognized that one of the primary techniques we use for denying the presence of the darkness within ourselves is by focusing our attention on the darkness we see in others. In that same sermon on the mount, he says,

“Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the long in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3 – 5)

When we don’t own up to our own darkness, then our darkness has a way of spilling out in ways we hadn’t intended, as in the hard heart the Pharisee develops that doesn’t let God get close.

Life is funny, though. The fact of the matter is that both characters in Jesus’ parable live inside all of us. There are times when, like the Pharisee, we impress ourselves, and in arrogance we look down on others.

But there are also times when we look at ourselves and our reaction is more akin to the tax collector: All we see is sin; all we see are our faults, our shortcomings, our hypocrisies. All we see is the darkness. And we are tempted to judge ourselves to be a worthless piece of cow dung.

This, too, is inaccurate.

There is darkness within us, yes, but there is light as well; a light that comes from being made in the image and likeness of God.

We human beings are truly amazing; full of mystery. We are constantly trying to reduce the mystery of who we are, and one of the primary ways we do this is by trying to fit ourselves and others into nice, tidy “black and white” categories of basically “good people” and basically “bad people.” Simultaneously, we all have capacities for great goodness and great evil. Inside of each of us there is a Hitler but there is also a Mother Teresa.

How does the Mother Teresa part grow stronger? By facing up to the presence of the Hitler. Trying to hide Hitler in the closet, pretending he doesn’t exist, doesn’t work. It just gives him more time to plot devious, insidious schemes for wreaking havoc in our lives and our relationships.

On the other hand, on those days when all we can see is our inner Hitler, know that there are great untapped potentials for good, for love and creativity placed within ourselves by God that we’re just not letting ourselves see. (This, too, is a kind of pride.)

Jesus finished his parable by saying,
“All who exalt themselves will be humbled,
but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14)

All who exalt themselves (that is, see only the light, refusing to face the darkness) — well, they will be humbled (which is to say, they will find that life has a way of forcing them to come face to face with the darkness within, whether they like or not.) But those of us who embrace life‘s humbling, (that is, face up to the darkness within) – we will find that beyond the darkness there is a light that no darkness can diminish… that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, including our own darkness.

A sermon preached on October 21, 2007 based upon Luke 18:1 – 8, on the occasion of the baptism of Isabella Katherine, entitled “Courage and Perseverance.”

There are two words that I would like to lift up in relation to child rearing on this morning in which we have baptized Isabella.

The first is courage.

Real courage is what we have when we are scared out of our daylights, but we go ahead and choose to do what we know to be right, in spite of the dangers involved.

If we really think deeply about what we’re getting ourselves into when we bring a child into this world, we can’t help but be terrified. If we weren’t terrified by what we were getting ourselves into when we decided to have a child, well then, what we were was stupid, not courageous.

But stupidity is not always a bad thing. Sometimes stupidity, like courage gets us to do what needs to done. More often than not, courage and stupidity come mixes together in this life.

The same can be said of choosing to get married. Couples come see me who want to get married, and they’ve got the “love-light” in their eyes, which is a wonderful thing, but generally speaking, they only imagine the joy of marriage without realizing how hard it will be — how much pain marriage will inevitably involve. Perhaps if they did, they wouldn’t go ahead and make those vows.

Choosing to bring a child into this world, like choosing to enter marriage requires courage because the decision to open our hearts to love necessarily means opening ourselves to pain. There’s no getting around the fact that love makes us very vulnerable.

If you don’t want to have your heart broken, the solution is pretty simple: Don’t love. Don’t care deeply about another person.

Debbie and Danny, I’m sure you already realize the truth of this in child rearing. With Isabella arriving in this world two months early, you didn’t get to relax and enjoy those blissful moments of lying leisurely in bed with your sweet new baby, which it would be wonderful if every mother, father and new born baby got to do.

Instead, you found yourselves immediately in crisis mode, with Isabella transported to another hospital in order to save her life, and you were forced to sit helplessly watching her struggle with various wires, needles and tubes as she valiantly battled to grow.

We see and touch this precious little body of our beloved child, and we can’t avoid the fact that there are an endless array of potential threats to this delicate body: illness, accidents, on and on.

We live in a culture that encourages us to be preoccupied with our bodies, as though keeping the body healthy and looking good were the secret to life.

But there is another aspect of the courage required in being a parent that isn’t quite so obvious, involving not the threats to our child’s body, but rather to the child’s soul.

Elsewhere in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says some striking words of warning where he tells us not to fear so much those who can kill the body; he says the real fear should be focused on the threats to our soul.

Here in Church, although we value the body and encourage folks to take good care of their bodies, we know that we are more than our bodies; that we are spiritual beings — that we have souls. CS Lewis put it like this: “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” It’s tough to precisely define what a soul is, but one thing is clear: it is the battlefront in which the struggle between good and evil takes place.

And the truly frightening thing requiring the real courage is the possibility of evil winning the battle.

We are a peculiar species, we human being. The Bible tells us that we were make in the image and likeness of God, which means that we have profound capacities for doing good — for love and creativity. But hand in hand with these capacities for good go profound capacities for evil as well — for cruelty and destruction; violence and hatred. You can’t have one capacity without the other.

I don’t think I’ve ever read this morning’s parable in the context of baptism before. Doing so, I hear Jesus speaking to us about child rearing.

There are two characters in this parable: the poor widow and the unjust judge. The widow is quite clear about the struggle between good and evil. She has seen evil and the suffering it has produced, and she devotes herself to trying to overcome this evil.

The judge, on the other hand, is pretty determined to be oblivious to the struggle. His life is all about his own comfort and convenience. He wasn’t the direct agent of the evil against which the widow is struggling. His guilt arises from his refusal to get involved on her behalf and take a stand for good against evil. In the end, he only acts because widow is such a persistent “bother”; an ongoing inconvenience to him.

As such, I think the unjust judge is a pretty good caricature of the way this culture encourages us to view life: Live is an amoral journey in pursuit of comfort, nothing more.

When we bring a child into this world, however, we are compelled to recognize that there is a whole lot more at stake. Our child has a soul. The overarching question of our child’s life is, will good, or evil, win the soul of our kid.

So the widow, it seems to me, represents all us parents.

At this point in the process, Debbie and Danny, I expect that all you’ve seen is the goodness of Isabella. She seems to be innocence personified. I hate to break it to you, but soon enough she will show you something other than pure goodness. And then the widow’s plight may seem all too familiar. Where is sweet, innocent Isabella? Where did this little demon come from? You’ll go knocking on whatever door you can to in seardh of sweet, innocent Isabella. Hey, you’ll say, I poured all my energy and time and money on this child, and what I get for all my effort is this little brat?! Where’s the justice!

And here’s the weird part. They’ll be days when Isabella will express that original goodness, and you will be moved to tears by the beauty of it, and then in the next moment, the little demon will reappear.

Which calls to mind another parable Jesus told. He said there was a field where good seed was planted. But the workers in the field were perplexed to discover that along with the wheat that grew in that field, weeds appeared as well. They asked the master of the field whether they should set to yanking up the weeds. No, said the master, for in doing so you might yank out the wheat by mistake. Let them grow together, and at the harvest I’ll take care of the separating.

And so now I give you the second word I wanted to lift up this morning about child rearing. (Remember, at the outset I said there were two words. Courage was one. Maybe you thought the other was stupidity. It wasn’t.)

The word is perseverance.

To be a parent in this great struggle is to sign up for the long haul. It’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon. Don’t give up. There will be countless days when you will feel like giving up; when you will feel like a failure as a parent. (Here’s a little secret: Every parent has days when they feel like a complete failure.) But you will get back up and you try again. You will keep knocking at the unjust judge’s door. You will hold out for the final harvest, trusting in the mercy of the Lord. For yourself, and for your kid.

A sermon preached on October 14, 2007 based upon Luke 17:11 – 21, entitled, “The Kingdom of God is Within.”

One of the fascinating things about Scripture which I keep rediscovering as a preacher is the way you can read a particular passage and, over time, keep hearing new things in it. For instance, take this morning’s story of the ten lepers whom Jesus encountered between Galilee and Samaria. I’ve been preaching for over 26 years which means this story has come up in the lectionary maybe nine times, not to mention at extra Thanksgiving services where this story fits nicely because it has the Samaritan returning to Jesus after he is healed to say thanks.

My usual interpretation of this passage has gone like this: Gratitude and praise are crucial to life. Whatever we have been given in life, if we don’t experience it in a spirit of thanksgiving, there’s a sense in which we might as well not have received it at all. And so I’d point out that there are lots of people in this world with all kinds of money who walk around feeling shortchanged and anxious, and then there are lots of people who have little more than their daily bread and yet experience their life as a gift, and so that in the truest sense, being rich or poor has more to do with the state of our hearts than with the quantity of our blessings.

I generally make the same observation regarding health; that often those of us with physical health take it for granted, not realizing what a gift it is. Ironically, sometimes it seems necessary for us to get sick before we come to appreciate what a gift and health and life truly are.

The same can be said for family and friends and all other good gifts.

And so the Samaritan leper experiences two levels of healing: Along with the other nine, his skin is cleansed and he is restored to his community. But apparently only the Samaritan entered into the deeper healing which is related to faith, wherein he experiences himself as truly blessed and empowered.

This interpretation of the story is, of course, a wonderful message, and it wouldn’t hurt to be reminded of it repeatedly, since we are so prone to take everything for granted.

But this time as I read this very familiar story I noticed a detail that either I hadn’t noticed before, or, had noticed but didn’t put much weight to since it didn’t seem to fit into the interpretation I knew I was already headed towards.

And the detail was this: Jesus gives orders to all ten lepers: “Go, show yourself to the priest,” which, apparently, all ten begin to do. The Samaritan, however, stops doing what Jesus told him to do when he discovers he has been healed, while the other nine continue to do what they were commanded. Jesus, however, praises only the Samaritan. The nine obedient ones are criticized by Jesus, while the one who is disobedient is praised, which is a somewhat jarring detail to notice if you think about it.

For years there is a voice that has become immediately recognizable to me that I hear at night when I’m on a long car ride, spinning the radio dial, trying to fight off boredom and sleepiness. It’s the voice of a Bible teacher named “Brother Camping” and the most distinguishing aspect of his voice is how incredibly boring and tedious it is. He speaks in a dull monotone with very little expression. I’ve never once heard him tell a joke. And yet he’s always there, somewhere on the dial, omnipresent, answering the questions of a steady stream of callers.

Recently I discovered that not only is he always on the radio, but he also has his own cable TV channel, where you can see him sitting there in his suit, his Bible open in his lap. He is older than I realized, like 90 maybe, so I give him credit for plugging away so late into life. On TV you can see that there is a studio audience, people sitting in front of Brother Camping listening to his every word as he expounds on the Bible, their Bibles open in their laps as well.

And so I couldn’t help but wonder, what gives here? How does a guy this boring generate an audience so devoted that he succeeds in taking up so much airspace every night?

The answer, as I thought about it, seems pretty obvious. Brother Camping appeals to the desire in people for an absolute truth that takes away all the messy ambiguity of life and all the perplexing mystery. Brother Camping confidently offers up certainty, and that is why so many people are willing to overlook the fact that he is as boring as sin.

There are a couple of things I’ve noticed about Brother Camping:
1) He never says, “I don’t know.” He pretty much always knows.
2) Although his teaching gives a very exalted place to the Bible, he isn’t really encouraging people to read the Bible for themselves. The clear implication is that if you read the Bible on your own without Brother Camping there to interpret it for you, you’re pretty much guaranteed to screw it up. And 3) He never expresses any curiosity regarding the people themselves who call in to ask a question about the Bible. It’s as if the personal story of the caller is completely irrelevant. All that matters is the Bible itself.

It occurred to me that Brother Camping’s style of religion is found in the Gospels. The Pharisees preferred black and white answers to life’s questions, looking for them in the detailed laws of the Torah. They too were lacking in humor. And generally speaking, they didn’t get along too well with Jesus.

There is an interesting exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees that comes at the end of this morning’s scripture lesson. They challenge him as to what are the signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God. “When we look out into the world, what, Jesus, should we be looking for that will let us know the day is getting closer?”
In response, Jesus says an interesting thing. He says the kingdom of God isn’t something you will look for out there; instead, “the kingdom of God is within you.”
Hearing this directly connected to the story of the ten lepers also encouraged me to go in a new direction with my interpretation.

One way to talk about the difference between the Samaritan and the other nine lepers who get healed is to describe them as focused on external authorities. The cues for their actions are taken exclusively from outside themselves, in this case from Jesus, who tells them what to do.

Like the other nine, the Samaritan pays attention to the authoritative voice of Jesus that comes from beyond himself. But the Samaritan also pays attention to something else — he also pays attention to what is going on inside of himself, in his own soul. What he experiences there is a profound sense of gratitude and wonder which demands an original response from him: he turns around and heads back to Jesus where he falls at his feet to give praise and thanksgiving.

Where is the kingdom of God? It is within you.

There is something very challenging here. When we think about what a faithful life looks like, often what comes to mind is somebody who is obedient. “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey.” Follow the rules of appropriate behavior and make it a point to get along with everybody.

But when you look at the Gospel of Luke, the examples given of what faith looks like don’t really fit that image. For instance, there is that one, solitary story we have from the life of Jesus between his infancy and the start of his ministry at age 30. You know the story. It describes the 12 year old Jesus, and curiously it tells of disobedience rather than obedience. Jesus disobeys his parents, returning to the Temple when his parents had told him it was time to return to Nazareth. You might, however, say that the boy Jesus is obedient in that moment to something deeper than the external authority of his parents — he is obedient to the holy spirit from within to spend extended time in his “Father’s house.”
Now it would be quite wrong to picture Jesus as having been a little, rebellious hellion throughout his childhood. Luke makes a point of telling us that pretty much from that point on, Jesus obeyed the authority of his parents.

I, myself, have a 12 year old son, and I find it helpful to remember this particular story about the disobedience of the 12 year old Jesus. To say that Bobby gives me total obedience in respect to my parental authority would be, well, simply not true. Oftentimes I bemoan the fact that he doesn’t give me more obedience. But if I could wave a magic wand and suddenly transform Bobby into the perfectly obedient child, would that really be something to be desired? I don’t think so. You want your child to pay attention not only to the external authorities, but also to what is going on inside themselves. An inability to listen to the voice coming from within is responsible for a lot of evil in this world where people simply carry out orders, never listening to the still, small voice inside that would say, “No, this is wrong!”
The inability to listen within is also responsible for the fact that there are a lot of dead souls walking around who have no clue what it is they truly desire and need in life, because they never learned to pay attention to what their souls were telling them.

The people Jesus commended for their faith seem to have a lively capacity for listening to the nudges that come from within. Here’s a quick review of these people:

1) The four friends carrying the paralyzed man to Jesus. If they had simply obeyed the rules, they would never have torn the hole in Jesus’ roof.

2) The woman with the flow of blood, if she had obeyed the rules she wouldn’t have been out in public in the company of a rabbi, let alone touching the hem of his garment.

3) The Gentile Woman who invaded Jesus’ vacation to request a healing for her sick son wasn’t obeying the rules. Gentiles, not to mention women, were supposed to stay clear of Jewish rabbis.

4) If Blind Bartimaeus had been obedient to the crowd telling him to be quiet and not make a scene, well, he wouldn’t have gotten his sight back, or be commended for his faith by Jesus.

5) And Jesus himself in the little story we will hear next week tells of a widow who refused to obey the authority of the unjust judge, persisting on banging at his door until she finally gets justice.

And this morning’s Samaritan carries on the theme: “Jesus told me that I was supposed to go show myself to the priest, but right now I’ve got praise and thanksgiving in my soul and I just gotta express it!”

Now a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that every sermon, if it were the only sermon you ever heard, would be heretical. Sermons focus on a piece of the truth — not the whole truth. This morning’s sermon is a good example of this principle. If we were to suddenly make a habit of disobeying all external authority in deference to what our insides tell us, well, that would be pretty awful.

But the point here is that as we pursue “truth” in our lives, if we are only looking out there beyond ourselves, we’re missing something critical.

It’s a little like what it means to be a good patient. Some people might think that a good patient is one who strictly does what the doctor says, without asking questions. In truth, the patient is best off when the doctor and the patient form a partnership. “Hey Doc, please explain why you think I need this test or this medication. I’m not really getting it.” Or, “Hey Doc, my gut tells me we might be barking up the wrong tree.”

Some doctors might find this kind of input annoying, but I think the best doctors appreciate that a patient involved in the process does better than a patient who just sits there and nods obediently.

This is actually good Methodist doctrine. Where do we look for truth, asked John Wesley? Well, first we look in Scripture, but that’s not the only place we look. We also look at tradition, which is to say, we consider what wise people who came before us had to say about what is truth. But don’t ignore reason, Wesley said. The final component in the search for truth, said Wesley is our own, personal experience. It was John Wesley, after all, who experienced his heart as being strangely warmed when he finally discovered the great love that is God.

Discerning the truth requires a mysterious blending of scripture, tradition, reason and experience, Brother Camping, not withstanding.

Brother Camping represents a form of religion that would deny the significance of our own experience. But the secular world is quite capable of pressuring us to do the same. We are bombarded by messages from advertising and the media that pressure us to go along with the herd. The world is happy to take over the job of directing us as to what we are to think or feel or desire.

A sermon preached on October 7th, 2007 based upon 2 Timothy 1:1 – 7 and Luke 17:5 – 6, entitled, “In Times of Discouragement.”

A colleague of mine, a Methodist pastor, who I admire, told a story from her life this past week in a sermon she gave at a clergy gathering. She described having gone through a time of great discouragement in the past year, a time of apparent loss of faith, brought on by the general stress and fatigue of life and ministry as well as by the specific trigger of the sudden death of her beloved sister.

In some desperation, she took a day off from her busy schedule in order to travel two hours by car to visit a spiritual guide she had seen from time to time. She wasn’t sure what exactly she had been looking for in talking with this woman, but as she left her company, she had the distinct feeling that she hadn’t received it. Her parting words of advice had struck her as particularly banal and trite: “Pay attention to the signs of God’s presence in your life.”

Nonetheless, driving home, she found herself trapped on a highway incline between two tractor trailers, and there, directly in front of her, written in huge letters on the back of the truck were these words: “Are you hurting? God cares.”

The message made her laugh and to cry, having received the two by four to the head she had needed regarding a sign of God’s presence.

In our two short scripture readings, we are given two different metaphors to describe faith in a time of discouragement.

The disciples, feeling overwhelmed by the demands of the life they are being called to by Jesus cry out, “Increase our faith!” as though they are convinced they are without the faith necessary to do what Jesus is calling them to do.

He speaks of faith the size of a mustard seed — so small it is practically invisible — and the extraordinary things such faith are capable of bringing about in this world. In those days mustard seeds were the smallest of known seeds. They could lie dormant in dry soil for years and years, doing nothing, waiting for the right moment of torrential rain to crack open and sprout.

It is as if Jesus were saying, you already have the faith you need; trust it.

And in Paul’s letter to his friend Timothy, who has been his partner for years in ministry. If we read between the words, it is clear that Timothy is struggling as well. Paul speaks of the “faith that he is sure lives within him”, which would go without saying unless there has been some question in Timothy’s mind whether that faith is there.

And so Paul challenges Timothy to “rekindle the gift of God that is within you,” reminding him that “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”

Jesus used the metaphor of a seed; here Paul uses the metaphor of fire. From Timothy’s perspective, perhaps it seemed as though the fire has gone out, because the roaring flames he once knew in his life aren’t there any more.

But if the embers are still there, the fire remains, and all it needs is to rekindling. Anybody who has tried to start a fire in the woods without a match knows there is a big difference between having embers and no fire at all.

Our world seems designed to lead us into times of such discouragement. Stress does that. And although we have more materially than people could have imagined in generations past, in certain ways we have even more stress, contending daily with a far more complex world with its multiple threats of chaos and meaninglessness.

A newly published journal of the late, great Mother Teresa reveals that even she struggled with times of doubt and discouragement, and that is strangely comforting. It is the nature of being a human being to go through times of when God seems absent.

It is important in such times to keep in mind the subtle but significant distinction between faith that has simply gone underground for a time, and faith that has disappeared altogether.

I want to say a few words this morning by way of advice regarding things to consider when we find ourselves in these inevitable times of discouragement. How do we go about encouraging the seed to sprout, and rekindling the embers of the fire?

I don’t think there is a “one size fits” all prescription for what to do win our times of discouragement. The things I’m about to suggest may or may not speak to you. I offer them in the chance they might strike a chord with you.

Generally speaking, there is the need to simply recognize that we have entered into a more difficult time of struggle, and to name it as such. If we don’t face up to the situation, in all likelihood the embers will simply burn down further, and the difficulty of rekindling the fire will grow larger.

There is a need to step back — to stop, for a moment at least, all our activity, and to reflect and pray, to ask, what has lead me into this time of discouragement? As in the case of my colleague, generally speaking there will be multiple causes: the effect of chronic stress, losses that need to be mourned, some nagging fear or resentment.

Sometimes there is a need to be alone for a time. At others, there is a need for the company of others. Discernment is necessary regarding whose company would be helpful at such a time. There are some people in your life whose company will simply add to the sense of discouragement.

But some people resonate with a faith that you can absorb. Paul refers to the fact that the faith that lives in Timothy was passed on to him through the company of first his grandmother Lois, and then his mother Eunice. So ask yourself, whose company could feed my soul at this particular time of need?

In some instances, there will be need for an extended time of rest and retreat — a time to remove oneself from toll taken by the ongoing stresses of this world so that you can begin the process of rejuvenation. Some will find getting outside in the sunlight and fresh air for walk does wonders.

Sometimes it isn’t so much inactivity that is needed, as choices regarding the right kind of activity. In my life, it often can feel like there is this ongoing struggle with the forces of chaos, expressed in the very first verses of the Bible, where the dark, deep waters of the primordial chaos are pushed back by the creative word of God that brings light into darkness and order into confusion.

Sometimes when the problems of life both big and small seem unmanageable, and the sense of chaos overwhelms, it is helpful to identify a small piece of the clutter on which to focus where there is potential for immediate results in regard to bringing order.

Last week I found some help in a time of discouragement turning my attention to the chaos of my garage. I didn’t have it within me to fix the whole world or even write a sermon for that matter, but I did have it within me to clean the garage, and with two hours of effort the order I had brought to my garage was gratifying. It gave me a feeling of having traction under my feet; that having made a dent in the disorder I was ready to take on something else.

There is the old story of the man walking along the ocean during a time of discouragement. He notices another man coming towards him who, every fifteen seconds or so, is stooping down to pick up an object, and then tossing it into the ocean. As it draws near to the man, he realizes the objects the man has been picking up are starfish. “What are you doing?” he asks the man.

“It’s high tide, and these star fish that have been left on the beach by the waves will die if they don’t make it back to the ocean.”

The man in his darkness replies cynically, “Don’t you know how useless that is? There must be millions of starfish that will die today. You can’t do anything about that. What difference does it make?”

With that, the man stooped once more to pick up another star fish, pausing to say, “It makes a difference to this one,” tossing the starfish into the ocean.

The problems that plague the earth can seem pretty overwhelming. It is important to avoid the temptation to give up; to find that creative act that makes a difference, no matter how small the scale.

Heifer Project International has that quality. I cannot personally end world hunger, but it is within my power to provide assistance to one family, and that a real difference is made. (We are in the process of collecting $500 through the offering of our dollars during worship that will purchase a cow to send to a poor family. The children named the cow Bessie. Bessie will make a real difference. In two weeks we’ve collected $78.)

With a little traction we come to realize that we really can make a difference in this world, that with God, mountains can be moved. Surprising possibilities for doing good are present that I could not see in my time of discouragement.

We are about to share in holy communion, this ritual that links Christians all over the world. The metaphor here, the eating of a bit of bread and the drinking of a bit on wine, reminds us of the simple truth that we are frail beings who need sustenance, both for body and soul.

Be gentle with yourselves. Know that the faith you need is there within your soul, even when it seems altogether absent. In the company of your fellow pilgrims, aat a little break, drink a little wine, and together we will witness the dawning of the light; the coming of the kingdom.

A sermon preached on September 30, 2007 based upon Luke 16:19 – 31, entitled “Saving the Rich Man’s Soul.”

In 1928, an unusual case came before the courts in Massachusetts. It concerned a man who had been walking on a boat dock when suddenly he tripped over a rope and fell into the deep water of an ocean bay. He came up sputtering and yelling for help and then sank again, obviously in trouble. His friends were too far away to get to him, but only a few yards away, on another dock, was a young man sprawled on a deck chair, sunbathing. The desperate man shouted, “Help, I can’t swim!” The young man, an excellent swimmer, only turned his head to watch as the man floundered in the water, sank, came up sputtering in total panic, and then disappeared forever.

The family of the drowned man was so upset by that display of callous indifference that they sued the sunbather. They lost. The court reluctantly ruled that the man on the dock had no legal responsibility whatever to try and save the other man’s life.

Legally, the man was without guilt, but morally, we instinctively feel that he carries great guilt. He had the ability to save another person’s life, and he chose not to exercise that ability, and that was just plain wrong.

A person who stands aside and does nothing while another is drowning is repugnant to us.

One of the arguments put forth for belief in God arises from this observation that there is such a deep-seeded sense of morality in human beings. Though we may often fail to live up to this sense of right and wrong, certain behaviors have so consistently been recognized as good and others as bad, that we can’t help but feel that this belief arises from something far deeper than mere social convention, and that “something deeper” is the God who created life in this context of good and evil.

Put another way, if there is no God, than what we call “right and wrong” is, in the final analysis, nothing more than the majority position at any given moment of time, subject to change should the dissenting point of view pick up a few more votes in favor of their opinion of appropriate behavior.

And so we intuit a God who creates us within these two poles, good and evil, with the intention that in the course of our lifetimes we would make our way towards goodness. From this we further extrapolate that there must be another life beyond this one in which the wrongs of this world are righted — where there is some final justice. Otherwise, to be designed with such a strong sense of good and evil, only to have those who suffer from evil’s cruelties never finding any ultimate compensation, would seem to render life into some kind of cruel joke on the part of the creator.

The story we just heard this morning spells out that ultimate justice that is beyond this life. The poor man, Lazarus, who got such a raw deal in this life, is rewarded with sumptuous blessing in the life to come. The rich man who was given so much in this world, but did not use any of what he was given to help others in their desperate need, is punished in the afterlife.

The story provides comfort for all those in this life who get a raw deal, but for those of us who consider our lot in life to be closer to that of the rich man than to that of poor Lazarus, it can be quite disturbing. The story goes out of its way to portray the eternal torments that are in store for those who fail to show mercy and compassion. We all know that we could have done more to help those less fortunate than ourselves. At what point, we can’t help but wonder, does the rich man’s punishment become our fate?

What are we to make of this Bible story?

It has been said that every sermon is heretical, in the sense that given the limits of time and the need to make certain points clearly and strongly, every sermon contains only part of the truth, not the whole truth. Every sermon drives home a point, and in doing so, neglects the points that would come under the category, “And yet on the other hand…”

This story gives the sermon that drives home the point that God cares deeply for the poor of this world and that we have an obligation to care for the poor as well. (I think that under the category of “poor” we can also include all others who seem to get a raw deal in life as well — people, for instance who suffer from early on with brutal physical and mental illnesses.)

This sermon needs to be heard, but there is another sermon that also contains a part of truth that tells of the shepherd described just one chapter earlier in Luke’s Gospel — a very good shepherd who goes out into the wilderness seeking out the one lost sheep, searching, searching, searching, never giving up, until — not if — until he finds that one lost sheep. And though the rich man eating sumptuous meals in his comfortable accommodations may not initially recognize himself as such, he is in fact a doomed, lost sheep if ever there was one, and there is hope for him in the knowledge that the good shepherd doesn’t give up the search for him as well.

But let us save that sermon for another day, and listen to what this story would have us hear, which is that the poor are precious to God, and we are to share God’s concern for them in their plight. That despite what the world may lead us to believe, the poor truly are of equal value to the rich in the eyes of the Lord.

We live in a celebrity-obsessed culture. A lot of these celebrities, despite possessing the coved fame and fortune, live out lives that I can say with some confidence always end up being pretty miserable. (Think Brittany Spears or Kobe Bryant.) Our Gospel story tells us that those to whom much is given, much is expected.

“Brittany and Kobe, you weren’t put on this earth just to bask in your own glory — and whoever led you to believe that this was your sole purpose did you and the millions that emulate you a great deal of harm.”

There are, fortunately, a few celebrities who have used their fame and fortune to help others. Unfortunately, it seems to me, they are few and far between, and these celebrities need to be lifted up so we can emulate them rather than Brittany and Kobe.

One of these celebrities is the rock star Bono, lead singer of the band U2. This guy is major cool, and, get this, he’s very publicly a committed Christian who has devoted himself in recent years to helping the plight of the poor in Africa. A couple of years ago Bono was invited to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC at which President Bush was present. He started off by saying,

“If you’re wondering what I’m doing here, at a prayer breakfast, well, so
am I,”

describing the whole setting as extremely weird. But what he went on to say was quite remarkable, and I want to quote portions of his prophetic speech:

“Look, whatever thoughts you have about God, who He is or if He exists, most will agree that if there is a God, He has a special place for the poor. In fact, the poor are where God lives.
Check Judaism. Check Islam. Check pretty much anyone.
I mean, God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill. I hope so. He may well be with us as in all manner of controversial stuff.
Maybe, maybe not. But the one thing on which we can all agree, all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor.
God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.

Bono went on to point out that…

“It’s not a coincidence that in the Bible, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It’s not an accident. That’s a lot of air time, 2,100 mentions. (You know, the only time Christ is judgmental is on the subject of the poor.) ‘As you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, (he said), you have done it unto me’ (Matthew 25:40).”

Bono went on to point out that…
“Sixty-five hundred Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store. This is not about charity, this is about justice and equality…
“There’s no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa and, if we’re honest, conclude that deep down, we really accept that Africans are equal to us. Anywhere else in the world, we wouldn’t accept it. Look at what happened in South East Asia with the tsunami: 150,000 lives lost… In Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month. And it’s a completely avoidable catastrophe.”

Last week I talked about how the great lie of our society is that money brings happiness. It doesn’t. Life can’t be lived without a strong sense of purpose and meaning — without a strong awareness of the purpose and meaning God has knit into life, and eventually this fact becomes all too clear. Life becomes unhinged. Eventually hell gets experienced right here on earth.

It falls apart in shallow relationships where everybody is ultimately looking out for number 1. It falls apart when the body beautiful that the culture placed on such a pedestal begins its inevitable deterioration. It falls apart in the anxiety that descends in the awareness that nobody gets out of this life alive, and no amount of money and comfort can alter that fact, and in a panic leads one on a desperate search for the meaning of life beyond all the glitter.

To the rich man, Lazarus at his door step appears like an inconvenience to be avoided in his quest for pleasure and comfort, but what the rich man doesn’t realize is that the poor man, is, in fact, his salvation, for he represents the meaningfulness and purpose of life that he has avoided recognizing. To truly encounter Lazarus is to encounter the savior: “If you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it unto me.”
“This guy with his wounds licked by the dogs matters!
And my life finds its meaning as I embrace the call to do
something to relieve his burden.”

What the rich man needs is face up to the fact that he was put on this earth for something far greater and more wonderful than merely stuffing himself. He was placed here to bring the compassion of God to bear in a wounded world.

I read that Paris Hilton came forth from her brief stay in prison with the desire to travel to Rwanda to help call attention to the plight of the people there. Who knows what God may do next?

On a web site about the philosophy of Victor Frankl, I came across the following social commentary that struck me as insightful. We pick up as the author is describing vacuum of meaning that is the common experience of people in our culture:

And when does this vacuum open up, when does this so often latent vacuum become manifest? In the state of boredom.

Boredom is the main symptom of this illness. To see if society is sick one has just to observe how deeply boredom – in its many forms and manifestations – overflows peoples’ lives. Sometimes it becomes unbearable, and then its companions: addiction, depression and aggression, become the threat not only to the individual but also to society as a whole.
Just a glimpse of the state of boredom among Americans – a significant segment of American society – does not leave any doubts that the crisis of meaning has overwhelmed this great nation.

Robert Kaplan (1994), a noted American journalist gives a vivid picture of the existential vacuum that has engulfed America:
When voter turnout decreases to around 50 percent at the same time the middle class is spending astounding sums in gambling casinos and state lotteries, joining private health clubs and using large amounts of stimulants and anti-depressants, one can legitimately be concerned about the state of American society. We have become voyeurs and escapists. Many of us don’t play sports but love watching great athletes with great physical attributes. It is because people find so little in themselves that they fill their world with celebrities. The masses avoid important national and international news because much of it is tragic, even as they show an unlimited appetite for the details of Princess Diana’s death.

An important symptom of the sickness – and it can be observed not only in America – is the willingness to give up self and responsibility, which Robert Kaplan even sees as a “sine qua non for tyranny.”

Perhaps tyranny is not something that threatens America today. However, the most serious problems in America, that haunt the nation, are direct consequences of that boredom triad.

*Addiction to illicit drugs is one of the most pressing problems in America today. President George H. W. Bush, in 1989, called drugs “the gravest domestic threat facing our nation.” Later, President Clinton termed drugs as Americaís “constant curse.” The street cocaine market in the United States has been stable for years and totals over $35 billion a year. Approximately 1.5 to 2 million people is regular cocaine or crack cocaine users. Although, in percentages, the numbers of ethnic minority drug users are higher, the market itself — and that is what is important even if one only wants to stop the spread of drugs — is sustained mainly by whites, middle and upper-middle class whites.

America has spent and continues to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to stop the supply of illicit drugs. But it is the demand for drugs that makes the problem so serious. In fact, it is the problem. Naive attempts to curb the demand, like the Just Say No to Drugs! Campaign launched in 1986 by the then First Lady Nancy Reagan, have miserably failed.

Gambling – through numerous state-supported lotteries, and legal and semi-legal casinos spreading in America like mushrooms after rain – is pandemic. Other forms of addiction, among them the addiction to video and computer games (especially among children), and to the Internet, are also wide spread.

*Depression has reached the proportion of an epidemic in America. Some 20 million people suffer from depression. It has been accepted as something unfortunate but natural. One in five children meets the government criteria for mental health help. And depression among children grows at an astonishing rate of 23% per year!

In 2001, three million American teenagers thought about committing suicide, and one million actually attempted it. According to medical authorities, in most cases the leading cause was depression. The use of Prozac and other psychotropic drugs skyrockets. The pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly makes on Prozac over $1 billion annually. And no voices are heard even hinting on the possible existential causes of this epidemic.

As for *aggression, it finds its realization in proliferation of violence – both in the media (movies, TV, video and computer games) and real life. It is a general belief in this country that Hollywood deliberately engulfs America with violent movies. But it is, again, the problem of supply vs. demand.

Why do people like and want to watch these kinds of movies and TV programs? The reason is exactly the same as that, which, two millennia ago made the Roman mobs pack the Coliseums where gladiator slaves killed each other, or were thrown to wild animals. This reason was and is boredom.

A powerful factor that also feeds aggression in America is the proliferation of firearms. It is now threatening normal life in our cities and towns. In my view, the desire to “bear arms” is not so much a result of Americans’ deep-laying mistrust of government as a potentially oppressive institution, but as a response to high level of the boredom-born aggression in American men – a vicious circle.

All segments of our society have been penetrated by the existential vacuum. Frankl also calls it “frustration of meaning.” This sickness, rooted in the meaning of one’s existence, is nearly universal: as the post-industrial revolution spreads worldwide, it infects affluent societies, welfare states, and even the poorest countries.

In America the crisis is exacerbated by the fact that our education does not help people to overcome the infection, but rather enhances its toll. Our younger generation is the victim who suffers most from the crisis. The use of illicit drugs by youths and juvenile crime are steadily on the rise in America today. Their cause is almost without exception the meaninglessness in the lives of our children.

In fact, the very foundations of the American philosophy of life have been threatened. The American Dream – the dream of affluence and success – does not seems to promise happiness anymore. Acquiring wealth and success does not add meaning to life: among the drug users there are more affluent than poor…

The quintessence of this devastating crisis has been expressed in a statement by International Network on Personal Meaning:
In modern society, several forces and trends are converging in creating a crying need for meaning and spirituality. Prosperity without a purpose leads to disillusion and emptiness. Progress without a spiritual direction results in confusion and uncertainty. A winner-take-all economy contributes to conflict and injustice. Violence, conflict, addiction, depression, and suicide reflect an existential crisis. The paradox of prosperity without happiness reflects an unfulfilled spiritual hunger. The intense competition of the new economy results in an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots.