A matter of perspective

In a movie watched long ago and whose name is long forgotten, a candidate for political office said, "What makes a living wage depends on whether you are the one paying it or the one receiving it."

Of course we know this to be true; it matters whose shoes you are wearing.  Or, in this case, whether you are the man in the ditch, or the traveler on the road.  It matters whether you consider yourself an important person, with an important job, with 'solid' moral standards and standing in the community, with a reputation to consider....or, if you are one of the anonymous ones, a person who would be painted in sepia tones, one of the folks whose name is never called out from the  podium for an honor.  It matters whether you consider yourself a person who gives to others, a source of charity, one of the generous ones.......or if you know yourself to be a receiver of the generosity of others.

It matters, although I don't think there is a definitive logarithm which can predict our behavior from bank balances or societal norms.  Sometimes the wealthy are generous and the poor stingy. But I think that what you think about yourself does matter when making decisions about strangers in a ditch.

So when Jesus spins the parable about the Good Samaritan*, we often feel hard pressed to explain the reaction of the priest and the Levite who chose to ignore the man in the ditch.  We might suspect that (quoting Dr. Seuss) that their hearts "were too sizes too small"**- although their lack of care and compassion might be chalked up to the bewildering need they met at every turn of the road (or standing at every street corner with a cardboard sign).  We are loathe to hold them too accountable for we have been them at one time or another, and for what we thought were good reasons.

Notice that Jesus doesn't condemn either because this isn't a story about judgment.

It is a story about mercy.
Not reason nor moral superiority, not use of wealth nor good 'up-bringing'.
It is a story about mercy.

Apparently mercy is the name of the road on which one discovers the 'kingdom of God'.

*the gospel of Luke, chapter 10
** How the Grinch Stole Christmas

What was the rich man supposed to do?

"So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God"  Luke 12.21


What is the rich man supposed to do?
He has too much grain.
His barns are not large enough to store it all.
He needs larger barns.


On the surface, it is a straight forward business problem.  Something about excess resources and not sufficient storage.  Leverage the loan for the new barns with a lien on the existing grain.  Get a low interest rate.  Not a hard problem actually.

Except that Jesus is not happy with this man and that causes us to pause and consider what the problem is exactly.

Was the man rich because he was a miser  toward all?
Was the man rich because hewas unscruppulous in business?
Is Jesus unhappy because the man is rich?

Or, was the man arrogant, parading his existing wealth and his new found luck in front of all the village people?
Was he the last man in the village anyone wanted anything good to happen to?
Is Jesus unhappy because the rich man is a serious pain in the neck?

Or, was the man so consumed by his own good fortune that he was blind to everyone and everything around him?
Was he a hoarder?
Is Jesus unhappy because this man is selfish and self centered?

Or, was the man so amazingly pleased with himself that he offered nothing to anyone, not even a word of thanksgiving to God for his abundant harvest?
Is Jesus unhappy because this man failed to praise God for this bounty that has fallen into his lap?

As much as we might look at this as a simple business problem, Jesus is very clear that this little parable is about greed.  Greed:  wanting it all for yourself.  Not just what you need, but whatever you can get your hands on.  Regardless of the needs of those around you.

Greed makes us blind: to others around us, to our own embarrassing behavior and to the God who gave us not just grain, but the opportunity to be a blessing to others.  This rich man squandered his chance to live out the mercy that our Lord so freely offered him.  He didn't even think about it.

As he lay there, dreaming of his brand new red barns, the undertaker was pulling up out front.  The opportunity was lost.  The barns were lost.  The money to be gained from the wheat was lost.

The rich man was lost.  I think, in the end, it was this that left Jesus sorrowing.

A little help goes a long way.........

Atheists know  the point of the parable of the Good Samaritan, even if they have no idea that the original story is biblical or what exactly a Samaritan is.  For the record, a Good Samaritan is someone who goes out of her way to help someone she could just as easily ignore - a stranded motorist, an injured animal, anyone in need.  In many states, Good Samaritan laws protect a benevolent individual from liability when in the end, they weren't exactly the perfect help at all.

So we have some idea of what a Good Samaritan is, and since we Christians have some idea that we have a duty towards our neighbors, we expect that the point of the parable is our duty to be out there giving help to those in need.  And not just a little help, but extravagant help in dangerous situations and without regard to cost.

Thus is created a huge burden of conscience for many people of faith.  We are surrounded by people in need no matter where we live, which leads me to those folks who stand at the intersections of our major highways here in Syracuse with signs that read "A little help goes a long way...." If we choose to not help them out with some spare change or a sandwich, we usually drive away feeling at least a little guilty for doing nothing. Because we are supposed to, it is our duty, we are obligated.

So, with lightening speed, we manage to turn a parable of God's gracious mercy into a hammer of guilt.  We turn love and mercy into an obligation and God into a cosmic bean counter.  In this space where grace and mercy could bring life and healing, we have nothing because we know that we will not respond as the Samaritan did every time we come to the corner of 690 and Hiawatha Blvd.  We are left with only death: the death of our spirit and the hunger of the needy one.

So don't go there.  Don't start beating yourself up and making excuses and arguing with me from your desk computer.  We need to walk through this parable together and do it as people of faith, people who have come to know the power of life that is present in Jesus and available through the Holy Spirit.  The parables are not Aesop's Fables with a clearly stated moral at the end.  They are complex layered stories which are intended to challenge our thinking, provide a different point of view and lead us into a newer understanding of our complicated relationship with the Divine Creator.

A man was traveling on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho and he was robbed, stripped and thrown into a ditch, left for dead.  Probably not an unusual occurrence on that stretch of highway, and one of the main dangers of traveling alone.

Three men came upon this helpless victim in our story.  Two saw his plight yet chose to 'pass by on the other side.'  The third one stopped, gave aid, provided shelter and support until he was healed. It was an unheard of, extravagant act of kindness and has left people feeling guilty for hundreds of years.  Was that Jesus' intent?  Or was Jesus challenging us to see the world through different glasses, to shake off our egocentric thought process, to fully commit to God's point of view of love lived out in mercy and grace?  Are we being asked to see that stranger in the ditch with the same eyes that God sees us?

Just a few questions to get us started.  There is lots to talk about.  See you tomorrow.

You have got to be kidding me!

Let me introduce you to the Elder Son in this famous parable about an Outrageous Father with 2 sons. (Luke 15).

He is hardworking, out in the fields keeping everything running as it should.  He is loyal, living under his father's roof and caring for the family livelihood.  He is obedient (well, we don't have any evidence of that, only his word, but let's believe him.)  He sounds like every one's dream.

Yet he has a dirty secret:  there are calluses on places other than his hands.  It appears that all that diligent, loyal, obedient hard work has developed a callus or two on his heart as well.

When his younger brother decides he needs 'his space' and 'wants to find himself' he diminishes the family's wealth, and disrespects their Father.  Then he runs off to live the wild life, leaving good old Elder Brother to take up the slack.  Somewhere in all of this, he begins to resent his brother, and just possibly, his father as well.

Boy do we understand this Elder Son.  We get why he feels put upon; why he thinks he deserves a break; why he is a little bit annoyed at his father for being such a chump in the first place. We understand his sense of entitlement. So when he hears from a slave that his Father has thrown a huge party just because that ne'er do well son had showed up at his door, well, the Elder Son had reached the end of his patience.  Or perhaps his ability to forgive.  Or perhaps his storehouse of love.

We are outraged right along with the Elder Son.  Truly he deserved better than this, a little reward perhaps.  It truly isn't very fair and that Younger Son is suspiciously close to taking advantage of the Father's mercy.  The Father should understand that the Elder is the good son, just like we are good people, working hard, trying our best, deserving of a party, deserving of your love.

Oh my, oh my.  I have been guilty of this line of thinking more than once in my life.  The Father does all he can to persuade the Elder to join the great celebration of life, but the story closes with an angry man standing in a field feeling entitled.  An angry man who has disrespected his Father, treated him as a stranger, refused to take his position in the family....and who has decided that the love being poured out on the lost one was love stolen from him.

He has decided he knows better than the Father who deserves the Father's love and invitation to the table.  Often we agree with this Angry Son; something is not right with this Father.

So if the Father in the parable is intended to give us a picture of God the father of Jesus, then what are we to do?  As much as we want to rely on God's mercy when we are in need, do we not also want to be entitled to God's mercy the rest of the time?  God's desire that all should come to his table and know him and the life that he offers is somehow perverted in our minds to mean......just us?  Somehow it isn't as open an invitation as we sometime pretend.

We are fairly certain we didn't bargain for a God with a love that is as big as all that.

An Outrageous Father and a Ne'er do Well Son

So, the Prodigal Son, better named the Outrageous Father, is a story about a father with two sons.

The younger one is an upstart, full of himself, confident of his own ability.  He asks for and receives his part of the inheritance (effectively saying to his Father, "you are as good as dead to me") turns all that cattle into cash and takes a trip to a  foreign land where he immediately spends all his money. Then there is a famine and no one knows him and no one will help him.

He gets a job feeding pigs.  Think about that for a moment:  a Jew feeding pigs....and he is so hungry he is tempted to eat the pig food.  "Aha! he exclaims."' My Father treats his hired hands better than this....I will go home, apologize profusely and offer to work as his servant."

And so a plan is hatched.  He rehearses his speech before he arrives.  "Father I have sinned against heaven and before you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son."  You have to admit, it's a very good apology.  This young man is repentent and humble, a very good combination for getting our sympathy.

We are more than ready to make a path back into the family for this son.  Perhaps a few years of difficult work.  Perhaps he will always be a hired hand.  Perhaps he will have to take his meals at the 'kids table' in the future.  But we can see a way back for this son.

So can the father.  He sees him far off and runs to meet him - throws his arm around him and does everything but dance a jig. " Hurry! he calls. "Kill the fatted calf.  My son has returned and we must celebrate."

So if God is the Father in this parable, then we can well imagine that God has enough love to welcome back the younger son, even to throw him a party.  It gives us comfort to encounter this God because we want a God who has enough love to cover us when we act like idiots and wander off into our equivalent of pig country and find ourselves stuck in the mud.

We are grateful for a God whose love is this big because this is the God we want to encounter as we prepare our repentent cries and seek the Lord's favor.  We want to face a God who has room in his heart for a broken person, especially one who is repentent and humble.....as it should be, especially for those who are working very hard to be good. These are exactly the kind of people God's love should cover.

If only Luke had stopped there, we could have twisted this little parable into any number of interpretations that require the broken ones to work their way back to the Father.  We could have rested easy with a God who loves the occassionally lost one.

The problem is there is one more son, and his is an entirely different story....that, and on any given day, we are either one of the two.

40 years or 40 days, same old battle

"Trusting in God is hard work.  It requires that you lay down your point of view which is grounded in the past and assume God's point of view which is grounded in the future.  An unknown future.  No matter what is promised, there is no certainty about how the whole thing is going to play out.  So the only thing left is to trust in this God, God's love for you, God's good intentions, and God's ability to give what God has promised.  It's either that or whining.  Stuck in the wilderness, Israel whined their way to the promised land for all 40 of the years."

That was yesterday's meandering thoughts around the 40 years that Israel spent in the wilderness trying to find their way to the promised land.  Well, actually, they were trying to find their way to the place where they could trust God.  That place is the promised land for all of us.

But today we consider Jesus' 40 days in  the wilderness, sandwiched between his baptism and the temptations of the devil.  What kind of transition is at play here?  Are 'the temptations' not so much a destination but a playing out of the challenge of wilderness survival and trusting in God?

When you look at the whole scope of the story of Jesus, you can see that the baptism is the signal that Jesus is moving from whatever he was doing before (in Luke this includes the infancy narratives) and what he is being called to do as the Son of God.  He is anointed by the Holy Spirit - an ancient indicator of God's pleasure and calling, and simultaneously, an empowerment for the tasks ahead.  That same Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness; apparently it is time for Jesus to prepare for what lies ahead.

What lies ahead is temptation by the devil.  Now the devil generally represents that which challenges our devotion to God.  Certainly this is often 'evil' but it often simply starts out as just a convenient choice or a self-serving decision not some gigantic evil done to another.  That is exactly  how it starts out in the Lucan account of this encounter.  'Heh, Jesus, you're hungry.  No one is going to fault you for turning these stones into bread.  Really, it's no big deal.'  That was the devil's first ploy.

It is often said that the devil is in the details and so it is here.  For Jesus there is no such thing as 'no big deal' when it comes to choosing satisfying his comfort versus listening/following God's call.  Everything is important because God is all in all.  There stands Jesus with one foot in the local Subway shop and the other in the temple.  So the first temptation is to count some things 'no big deal.'

The devil ups the ante.  Now the temptation is about showing off how smart/ powerful/ beautiful/ blessed you are.  Just a little demonstration for the folks.  It will make it so much easier for the masses to believe you are the Son of God, Jesus, if you give them a little show.  So possibly the second temptation is to prove to others just how 'good' you are, how faithful you are, how compassionate you are.  It will make it so much easier for them to see you as the good Christian you are (or at least call you a good person at your funeral).

So the devil lays it out before Jesus.  You don't know what God has in store for you; grab the power now and enjoy yourself while you can.  We know what God has in store for Jesus and grabbing power while it is offered certainly looks like a good idea.  Except it is not God's idea; it is not God's plan; it is not the way to which Jesus is called.

The temptation for Jesus is the same as the temptation for us: to choose our wisdom over God's which is, in the end, to turn away from God.  Jesus pulled an A on this exam.  We never will.  Perfection will never be ours.

Except through Jesus....which is why we are eternally grateful for God's mercy and Jesus' faithfulness.

Mercy and grace.....grace and mercy

Jesus announces the inauguration of the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom of Mercy and Grace.  

What does this means?  Let me get you started:

Mercy:  you do not get what you rightly deserve

Grace:  you get what you would never in your wildest dreams deserve

Certainly there are justice and judgment as well.  Without justice there could be no mercy.  With justice there would be less need for mercy.

Likewise judgment.  Judgment is the mirror into which Grace looks.  Without judgment, who would ever figure out that what they were receiving was grace?

Mercy and Grace are just two words to help define Jesus who was Love Poured Out for the sake of the world.  That's the Kingdom of God at its core.  Still interested?

And it's still Christmas

Who can measure the energy unleased by children tearing through wrapping paper on Christmas morn?  After that it gets harder, navigating a special meal and sometimes too difficult relatives. It either goes by quickly or not quickly enough.

And yet it is still Christmas.

In Syria, folks are very busy killing one another.  In war zones, children suffer the most because they have the least power to improve their situation or protect themselves.  They cannot persuade government officials to open borders for them so they can seek refuge.  Their young bodies cannot withstand the physical abuse that comes with war.  One 3 year old Syrian boy was reported to have said, just before he died,  'When I see God I'm going to tell him about this.'

And yet it is still Christmas.

Terrorism has come to Russia as a train station and a trolley car are targeted and lives are lost.  In our major cities young men are targeting each other for purposes unknown.  The long term unemployed are about to lose their benefits and food stamp recipients receive less food.

And yet it is still Christmas.

In the gospel of Matthew, just verses after the birth of the Christ child, King Herod is so terrified of the coming king (Jesus), so jealous and protective of his own power, so frightened of a world where he was not the Top Dog, that he ordered all the boys under the age of 2 in the town of Bethlehem killed.  The church calls this event The Slaughter (or Martyrdom) of the Innocents.   It probably didn't actually happen that way (although Herod was ruthless enough to have ordered it)....it probably isn't fact....but we all know that it is true.

And yet it is still Christmas.

Jesus did not come to toss some glitter on a broken and wounded world.  Jesus came to stand in the midst of the war and hunger and pain and dysfunctional families to shine a light on a better way of being with and for one another.  Jesus came to heal, to bind up, and to make whole.  He makes possible the impossible: that we would lives of grace and mercy. and he did that through forgiveness.  Jesus is the gift of Christmas, the one who rules with mercy and grace.

It is not easy to tackle the conundrum of a world torn apart with violence and crushed with poverty and the soft glow of our Christmas remembrances, but that is exactly what Jesus calls us to do.  The gift of the Christ child only has meaning when it has meaning in the harsh light of the world in which we live.