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TODAY'S HOMILY

by the Rev. Michael Kreutzer

How does God talk with people? How does God speak with us? Some folks, both within and outside the church, seem to imagine a mysterious voice coming from the sky, or from somewhere deep within: a voice that told the biblical authors what to write and the biblical prophets what to proclaim.

But if we look at the experience of the prophets from whose words we have been hearing Sunday after Sunday these past few months, we find a very different approach to the word of God and to the ways of God. In general, the biblical prophets were not people detached from what others would think of as “the real world,” waiting for some voice from above. Instead, they were people who were very much aware of what was going on in the world around them and who were very much a part of the community’s and the nation’s daily life. And it was in looking at that life, in reflecting on that life in the light of the faith of Israel, that they were able to perceive the word of God for the people of their particular time and place.

Earlier this summer, for example, we listened to readings from the prophet Hosea. In his struggles with his unfaithful wife, he came to recognize that his own tragic experience was being repeated on a national scale. This was exactly what was happening in the marriage between Yahweh and his wife, Israel. And through his own pain, he came to perceive what God was suffering, and what God was saying to the people of Israel as well.

In a similar way, we have in today’s first reading the account of Jeremiah’s visit to his local potter’s shop. There he watches as the potter forms and reforms what he is making, sometimes getting to a point where it cannot be repaired. When that happens, he completely collapses the clay object and starts all over again. In that very ordinary setting and in the potter’s interaction with the clay, he recognizes God’s interaction and relationship with Israel, and ultimately with all human beings. “Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord.” (18:6)

Taken by itself, this passage paints a portrait of Israel, and of us, as completely passive while God makes of us what God chooses. That is the approach taken, for example, in the old hymn that begins:

“Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!
Thou are the potter, I am the clay!
Mold me and make me after thy will,
While I am waiting, yielded and still.”

That “yielded and still” approach is one that is consonant with the second of the two great stories of creation in Genesis, the one in which God forms a human being from the clay: an earthling from the earth. Yet the model given in the scriptures taken as a whole is more often one in which human beings are called to participate actively with God in God’s creation and re-creation, and in the molding, if you will, of us, of our lives and of our world. And the primary focus of the scriptures is on us, not as separate individuals, but as a people, as a community of faith. We together are partners, co-creators with God, re-making, re-forming ourselves and the world around us. That is how God has worked with and through human beings in the past and how God continues to work with and through us today.

That understanding of how God works in the world leads us to look forward and to ask the question: “What is God making of us now?” And part of that inquiry opens up further questions, such as: “What is God making of us, as a Church with a capital “C” and of us as St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, at this time in our history? And what is God asking us, as God’s co-workers, to consider, to explore and to become in the days and years ahead?”

In my article in the most recent issue of our parish newsletter, The Lion’s Tale, I wrote about the possibilities for new models of church and of the church’s ministry that our Vestry, together with the Vestries of two of our neighboring churches, has begun to explore. Changing times and changing circumstances lead us to reexamine what it means to be a church and what God might be calling us to be and to do in the years to come.

Changes can be unsettling and unnerving. At the same time, they can also be renewing and life-giving. Our Vestry explored the history of this parish at our most recent meeting as a way of better understanding where we have come from and where we are now. Among other things, our history shows us times when St. Mark’s Church has already made some significant changes in its life and ministry. We will be celebrating one of those major changes next summer as we mark the 50th anniversary of the move of the parish from Springfield Street to our current location.

Those who have led this church over the past 72 years have dared to make those changes, trusting not so much in themselves but in the one who is constantly at work in us “making all things new” (Rev. 21:5): the one who formed us in the divine image and who continues to transform us.

As we bring this summer to a close and prepare to begin next Sunday the 73rd year in the life of this faith community, we will be looking together at new forms of ministry, at new ways of being a church: forms and ways that can carry us and our work forward into the future. As we begin this exploration, none of us knows exactly what our life as a church will look like in the years to come. But, along with all those who have come before us and who have handed over to us the life and ministry of this parish, we do know that we are always in the best of hands. For we and our future are in the hands of the Master Potter who has formed us all and who will continue to re-form us all, re-making us more and more in God’s own image and likeness.

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TODAY'S HOMILY

by the Rev. Michael Kreutzer

The Gospel according to Luke, from which almost all of our Sunday gospel readings are taken this year, is rich in images and stories. Unlike some Christians in succeeding generations who have tried to tie Jesus’ message down to a single image and to a set of clear-cut, unchangeable rules, Jesus knew that the reign of God can never be captured by any single set of words or by any one picture. And so he used a variety of images, parables and stories to try to shed light on different aspects of the kingdom, different characteristics of God’s reign. He used them to help stimulate our imagination so that we might see in our minds and hearts a new, a transformed reality. That approach has a lot of advantages.

It also creates some challenges. Sometimes, for example, St. Luke incorporates two related images used by Jesus into one, brief passage. The result can be that we find ourselves challenged to imagine ourselves in two different, contrasting roles almost simultaneously. Today’s gospel reading is one of those occasions. In the course of just eight verses, we are asked to envision ourselves as both guests and hosts.

At first glance, Jesus’ words to his host and to his fellow guests might appear to be no more than words of advice on how to get what you want by feigning humility. But the context of this teaching, namely a meal, reminds us that Jesus has something much more important is mind. For Jesus’ audience, a meal or a banquet was, among other things, a traditional and familiar image for the reign of God. And in the context of Jesus’ teachings about that reign, Jesus’ words about being a guest and being a host carry much greater import than a simple lesson in tactics or in etiquette. They remind us that we are both guests and hosts at God’s table as we work for and await the coming of God’s eternal banquet in all its fullness.

First of all, we come to the table as guests. I don’t mean just this table, although we come here as guests of God, too. I mean the entire table of all of God’s gifts to us. Sometimes when we find ourselves fed -- fed in a literal sense, fed with a loving home, fed with family and friends, fed with an education, fed with all the material things that we tend to take for granted – sometimes when we find ourselves fed, we assume that we have earned these things for ourselves. We fool ourselves into thinking that we can take the credit for all we have received. In reality, the fact that we happen to live in this country at this time, that we have had the opportunity to get a good education, that we have had good health enabling us to work, that we have had many people who have loved us and helped us along the way – all these factors have made possible those things that we supposedly have managed to obtain for ourselves. Ultimately, of course, the source of all these gifts is God. In his First Letter to the Corinthians (4:7), St. Paul asks bluntly, “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?” All that we have is a gift of God. All of us are guests at God’s table.

At the same time, because we have received so many gifts, all of us are called to serve as hosts: hosts at the table of God’s generosity and God’s love. And, like the host whom Jesus addressed in today’s gospel, we are called to invite to that table all sorts and conditions of people, sharing with all the gifts that God has poured out on us for the good of all.

That can be difficult to do at times. It challenges our natural inclinations, and it certainly challenges a very common strain in our culture. There is something in us that tempts us to make distinctions between those who we think deserve to share in what we have – that is, those who somehow deserve to share in what God has entrusted to us – and those who don’t quite measure up in our own eyes. We place ourselves as judges between God’s radical generosity and the needs of others. But, as Religious Studies professor Edward Machle has observed, “I know of no translation of the gospel that says Jesus told the rich man to sell all he had and give it to the poor as soon as they were ready to use it responsibly.” Jesus never added that condition. “Part of our stewardship,” he writes, “is the stewardship of risk, instead of safety.” Obviously, we want to use good judgment in choosing the most effective way to care for those in need, but we cannot allow our all-too-frequent excuses and rationalizations to stand in the way of responding generously to the needs of those who are less fortunate than we are. God has called us to act as fellow hosts with God at the table of God’s many blessings.

As opposite as they might at first seem, these twin images of guest and host that Jesus uses in today’s gospel are not two separate roles that just happen to emerge in the single depiction of a meal. For us, as people who have committed ourselves to living in the reign of God, they are intimately and necessarily related. Because we are God’s guests, we are, therefore, called to be God’s hosts: hosting, on God’s behalf, “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” of our time and of our culture. God calls on us all to give as generously as we have received.

Theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (cf. the Fall 2008 issue of Christian Ethics Today), who died at the hands of the Nazis shortly before the end of World War II, connects the two in this way: “Let none say, ‘God has blessed us with money and possessions,’ and then live as if they and their God were alone in the world. Possessions are not God’s blessing and goodness, but the opportunities for service which God entrusts to us.” “Possessions are… the opportunities for service which God entrusts to us.” That is why we have the things that we have.

The blessings that we have received as God’s guests have been entrusted to us so that we, in return, might now serve as hosts, using what God has entrusted to us to serve those who are in need. For it is in this way that we prepare ourselves for the ultimate banquet: the gathering of all people into the unending feast of God’s unending love.

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St. Mark's was pleased to have a substitute priest this morning, the Rev. James Larsen, who also happens to be the husband of our organist, Donna Larsen.  Rev. Larsen's sermon focused upon the many lessons we could learn from understanding the many layers of today's Gospel according to Luke and Jesus' act of healing the crippled woman on the sabbath.

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TODAY'S HOMILY

by the Rev. Michael Kreutzer

“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” In commenting on this verse and those that surround it, New Testament scholar and English bishop N. T. Wright has observed: “This Lukan passage is high on the list of Things We Would Rather Jesus Hadn’t Said.” It just doesn’t seem to fit in with our image of Jesus and his message, does it?

Not only that, it doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of St. Luke’s version of the Good News either. After all, this is the gospel that begins with Zechariah proclaiming the approach of the “dawn from on high” who will “guide our feet into the ways of peace” and with “a multitude of the heavenly host” proclaiming God’s “peace on earth.” And this is the gospel that concludes with the risen Jesus appearing to his disciples on Easter evening and extending to them the greeting “Peace be with you.”

So what is this message about Jesus bringing division and about conflicts even within ones own household? How does this reading make any sense as part of the wider proclamation of the gospel?

To begin with, Jesus’ hearers would have realized that his statement about the division even within households was a citation of words of the prophet Micah (7:6). They described the situation that the prophet faced in his own time, some 750 years before the time of Jesus. It was a time of turmoil, a time in which Judah was dominated by the power of a mighty empire: that of Assyria. It was a time of conflict and of division between those who followed the ways of God and those who refused. And Micah called on the people to pay attention to what was going on in the world around them, to see the signs of the times, and to turn again to God.

In a similar way, Jesus’ time was also a time of turmoil, a time in which Judea, Galilee and Samaria were likewise dominated by the power of a mighty empire: that of Rome. It was a time of conflict and of division between those who listened to and followed this greatest of the prophets and those who refused. And like Micah, Jesus also called on his hearers to pay attention to what was going on in the world around them, to see the signs of the times, and to embrace the new thing that God was doing.

Like Micah, Jesus and his contemporaries lived in a time of crisis. But, contrary to the way that we tend to use it, the fundamental meaning of the word “crisis” is not “an emergency.” At its most basic level, “crisis” means “a time of decision.” It is a time of choice: of choice between the ways of God and the ways of much of the world around us. And making a choice to follow the ways of God will cause divisions. It will cause conflicts, because the interests of God often run contrary to the interests of those who want to maintain the status quo. And they will resist it and fight back. So it was in the beginning, is now, and probably will be for ever.

Micah faced that reality in his lifetime. So did Jesus; in fact, he was mocked and beaten and crucified for it. So did his followers, many of whom were likewise mocked and ridiculed and beaten and even put to death for it. And that scene has been repeated over and over again, in various ways and to varying degrees, through the centuries among those who have dared to live as Jesus’ followers.

What about us? Do we dare to be his followers today more than just in name only? Are we willing to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth? Do we dare to make a difference? Or, as the old line puts it: “If you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

Both Micah and Jesus envisioned a renewed world: a totally different way of living from that which was accepted by and acceptable to those living around them. They envisioned a world in which all people were welcomed, in which all people were cared for, in which all people shared in the blessings that God had created to serve the needs of all. And both of them were rejected and ridiculed for their visions. They found themselves divided from and in opposition to those who had good reason to resist change and keep things the way they were. They were secure and comfortable with the way that things were and were afraid what might happen to them and their comforts if people came to take the words of the prophet, and of the even greater prophet, seriously. And so they fought back, and they have ever since. Living into God’s vision for the world, into God’s dream, can be a dangerous thing to do.

One of the most respected teachers and advocates for God’s dream in our time is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He, like Micah and like Jesus, dared to envision a renewed world, a changed world, and to work for the coming of that world. In his book titled, God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time, he describes that vision for which he has labored all of his life. And he does so by citing other words from the prophet Micah. Desmond Tutu writes: 
“I have a dream, God says. Please help Me to realize it. It is a dream of a world whose ugliness and squalor and poverty, its war and hostility, its greed and its harsh competitiveness, its alienation and disharmony are changed into their glorious counterparts, when there will be more laughter, joy, and peace, where there will be justice and goodness and compassion and love and caring and sharing. I have a dream that swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, that My children will know that they are members of one family, the human family, God’s family, My family.”

Here is a description of God’s intention, God’s vision, God’s dream for the world. This is the vision of the reign of God which Jesus proclaimed and for which Jesus lived and died. Is it your dream as well? Will you work to make it a reality in our time?

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TODAY'S HOMILY

by the Rev. Michael Kreutzer

New Testament scholar Douglas Hare has observed that: “One of the most noticeable characteristics of the human species is its proclivity to collect things.” We all seem to exhibit that characteristic to one degree or another. We here at St. Mark’s become increasingly aware of that fact each summer as we try to clear our houses of all the stuff that we have managed to collect but really don’t need, and bring a lot of it here to church as donations to our annual Yard Sale.

Judy went through that process at our house recently as she sorted through all the different games and toys and other things that relatives have given to Mark and Micaela over the years, but that they have since outgrown. That is one of those ongoing necessities when you have kids. But, whether we have kids or not and no matter how old we are, we all have a tendency to accumulate stuff. It is just that we adults tend to accumulate more expensive stuff.

Often, the things that we collect, the treasures that we accrue, tend to serve as status symbols. People in all cultures have a tendency to assign value to people, depending on what they own. In pastoral societies, for example, that treasure might be their livestock. In other cultures, it might be the amount of land that they control or the number of precious stones that they possess.

In our monetary culture, we do the same thing. We might not literally “flash our cash” as a supposed sign of our value, but we do like to show off the things that money can buy. A recently released study, for example, showed that the largest number of foreclosed homes in this part of Ohio were not the more modest homes of folks living within our core city but the more expensive, newer, larger homes in the suburbs of surrounding counties. Many people, it seems, tried to buy expensive houses that they simply could not afford. These were their treasures: signs of their supposed success, and maybe even of their own worth. In addition to our houses, our treasures might also include the type of cars that we drive, the organizations or clubs to which we belong, or the currently “in” clothes we choose to wear.

But sometimes our treasures, the things that we use as status symbols, are a bit more intangible that these physical items. They can also be things like the positions or titles that we hold, as though these labels in themselves somehow prove our greater worth.

One status symbol that seems to have risen to prominence, especially in the past decade, is the measure of how busy we are. I find it fascinating to listen to conversations among people who are competing with each other in the “I’m busier than you are” game. The implication and the assumption in our current culture seem to be that the busier people are, the more important they somehow are. And a lot of people take pride in imagining that they are somehow busier than everybody else.

It is curious, at least, to listen to and watch the variety of things that people try to make their treasures in life. There is quite an assortment. But there is one thing that all of them seem to have in common: none of them lasts. None of them succeeds in making us really happy for more than a brief, fleeting time.

Often over the years, especially in the stewardship sermons that seem to be a part of every church’s life sometime in the fall, ministers encourage people to a change in heart, to a change in attitude regarding the things that we own. The underlying assumption behind this approach seems to be that, if they can somehow move parishioner’s hearts, the people in the pews will contribute more generously and help the church balance its budget. The principle seems to be that, where our hearts are, our treasure will follow.

But notice, if you will, that in today’s gospel reading, Jesus says just the opposite. “Where your treasure is,” he asserts, “there your heart will be also.” Did he get things backward – or do we?

One of the key things that strike me about Jesus as he is presented in the gospels is his keen insight into human nature. He somehow knows exactly what makes us tick. I mentioned last Sunday, for example, the way that Jesus called people to follow him: to serve others in a direct, person-to-person, hands-on way, just as he himself was doing; because Jesus knew that it is only by living as a disciple, by acting like a disciple that we come to understand what it means to be a disciple.

In a similar way, Jesus, in today’s gospel reading, shows a deep understanding of how our human hearts are formed and transformed. He knows that a real change of heart, a real transformation, comes from our personal experience in life. What we do makes us who we are.

When we consciously place our treasure – whether we are talking about our money, our time, our talent, our focus in life – when we consciously place our treasure in those people and places where Jesus himself would place his treasure, then little by little, we will be changed, and our hearts will be transformed. When we allow our actions, guided by God’s word, to lead the way, our hearts will surely follow.

So often, we allow ourselves to be distracted by all the things that we accumulate, by all the things that we own, fooling ourselves into thinking – at least a little bit – that they will somehow make us happier. But in the end, all of them inevitably fail. As Jesus said in last Sunday’s gospel reading, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” There’s a challenge to our consumer culture if ever there was one!

Winston Churchill was born into a wealthy family, a family of privilege. He never seems to have lacked for anything in his life. But in the end, he reflected that his greatest happiness came, not from what he owned, but from what he had been able to do to in order to serve his country and the world. He summarized his own experience in this way: “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”

What are you trying to make: just a living, or a life? Where do you place your treasure? You need to know that; because: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

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TODAY'S HOMILY

by the Rev. Michael Kreutzer

In the part of the church’s Lectionary that we are currently using, the first and second lessons as well as the gospel are more-or-less continuing readings from particular books of the Bible. They do not necessarily tie in with one another. But once in a while, there comes a Sunday when one particular theme or element seems to connect two of our readings together. Today, for the first reading and gospel, that element is the first-person, singular, subjective-case, personal pronoun “I.”

In the gospel reading that we just heard, the character whom Jesus describes as a “fool” uses the pronoun “I” six times in just three verses – not to mention his use of “Soul” to address himself as well. Our reading from Hosea triples that by using the same word 18 times in its 11 verses. This simple and basic word seems to tie the two readings together, but the way that they use it clearly distinguishes from each other the fool speaking in the gospel and God speaking in Hosea.

It would be hard to find anybody who is quite so self-centered as this fool. He collects all that the land has produced to keep it for himself. He stores it for himself. He plans to gather and guard even more of it for himself. He thinks only of himself. He even talks to himself in deciding what to do with all that he has accumulated and in planning for the future – a future which for him, of course, never comes. His whole world revolves around himself, without any apparent thought for anyone else.

In contrast, we have the wonderfully moving image of God in our reading from Hosea. It is one in which God is portrayed as a loving parent -- probably a mother considering women’s role in caring for children at that time and in that culture – and it pictures Israel as God’s son. Here God likewise uses the term “I” over and over again. But, unlike the fool, this is an “I” whose focus and overwhelming love and concern is for the other: for God’s child, Israel.

The passage begins with Israel as an infant, captive in Egypt. “When Israel was a child,” God says, “I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But he always refused my love and continued to rebel against me. He didn’t care about the fact that I was the one who taught him to walk, who stooped down and picked him up when he fell, and who loved him and took care of him no matter what happened and no matter what he did.”

God then speaks out of anger and hurt and frustration. “Israel has refused everything I’ve ever done for him. He insists on defying me in everything. He clearly deserves to be punished. So he can go back to Egypt, Assyria can rule over him, his cities can be destroyed and he can suffer the consequences of his actions. I’ve had enough of him and his rebellions. And he has no one to blame but himself. I am done with him.”

But then, suddenly, God breaks down. And, almost in tears, God relents. “I can’t do it,” he says, “I just can’t do it. No matter what he has done, he is still my son; and I love him.” God’s love has, in effect, made God powerless to do what God has decided to do. God can do nothing but forgive. God’s judgment is trumped by God’s mercy.

This is the God who speaks in the book of Hosea: a God of judgment, but above all a God of boundless compassion. Here is a God whose very nature is so focused on others that, despite the pain that God suffers at our hands, God is always, as the book of Exodus puts it (34:6) “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”

In these two readings we have set before us polar opposites: the self-centered fool of the gospel story and the other-centered God of Hosea. Their juxtaposition on one Sunday morning seems so incongruous: as though whoever was putting these readings together just was not paying attention. But maybe, if we look a little deeper, we might find a shared message, one that is critically important for our own lives and for the lives of others.

Returning to the gospel: what is wrong with the actions of this character in the gospel reading? Why does Jesus call him a “fool”? At first glance, it seems that there is nothing wrong. His farming business has apparently done very well; so he plans prudently for the future. He is going to save what he has earned and invest it for years to come. In our terms, he has built up a good retirement or pension fund. He has invested his money in a 401(k), an IRA, some CDs and maybe a few stocks and bonds. He has planned very sensibly and practically for a long and comfortable retirement. So what is wrong with that?

Nothing, it seems: nothing except he fact that his entire focus is on himself: “I have all these things. I am going to save them for myself. I am going to use them for myself. And I am going to get even more of them for myself – all the while congratulating myself on how well I have done.” I. I. I. I. I.

In contrast, the portrait of God that Hosea paints for us is one of a God who is completely other-centered. Here is a God whose focus is on the good of others. Here is a God who leads out those who have been held captive, who personally stoops down to pick up those who have fallen, who is not afraid to get his or her hands dirty serving and healing the wounds of others. Here is a God who is truly incarnate: who is a direct and integral part of people’s everyday lives.

The fool and God: two contrasting examples, as different as can be. But whose example do we follow as individuals? Whose example do we follow as a church?

It is so easy for us, even as churches, to keep our distance, to focus first of all on our own needs and wants. Certainly we are all willing to give a few dollars or write a check from time to time to help those in need; and that is important; it is an integral part of our ministry. 

But what really forms us as Christians, as followers of Jesus, is doing what Hosea describes God as doing: doing what Jesus has done. It is in direct, personal, face-to-face, hands-on service to those in need that we come to know the mercy and love and compassion of God, that we share that mercy and love and compassion with others, and that we find ourselves transformed more and more into that God’s image and likeness.

“Come, follow me,” Jesus says. Not, “Come and believe these things.” Not, “Come and think in this way.” But, “Come, follow me. Come, do as I have done. Come, serve those who are in need in a direct and personal way, just as I did.” For it is in living as followers of Jesus, it is in doing as Jesus has done, that we become more and more like Jesus, that we come to live the life of the Spirit, and that we come to share the life of the God of infinite love and mercy and compassion.

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TODAY'S HOMILY

by the Rev. Michael Kreutzer

About a week and one-half ago, the day after baseball’s All Star Game, one of the networks rebroadcast Charles Schultz’s animated feature “Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown.” Judy had come here to church to sort items for the Yard Sale, and I was cleaning up from dinner, while Mark and Micaela sat down to watch the show. I walked into the room with them about halfway through the story, just in time to catch a scene in which the team was losing, as usual; and the players had gathered around their manager and pitcher, Charlie Brown, and were explaining to him that they thought they needed to pray. He stood by, just staring blankly at them. As soon as they returned to their positions, you could hear their individual voices begging, “Please don’t let the ball come to me.” “No, please don’t let the ball come to me.” “No, don’t listen to her: don’t let the ball come to me.” As he so often does, Charlie Brown listened for a moment and then lamented, “I can’t stand it. I just can’t stand it.” I think I know how he felt, and I’m sure many of you do, too.

The approach that many people in the world take to prayer is a very shallow and really childish one. They look on it as a sort of shopping list that we give to God and wait for God to fill our order. It’s like going online and deciding to buy something from a retailer like Lands End. You log onto their web site and pick out what you would like; you select the size and color and any special features, then you complete the required information and press “Enter.” You’ve decided exactly what it is you want, and supposedly need. You made your choice, and you expect the company to deliver exactly what you have asked for, using the method and date of shipping that you have chosen.

Many people approach prayer the same way. They are sure that they know what it is that they really need or at least want in life, no matter how mundane and trivial some of it might be. They look on prayer as the way of placing their order with God. And if God doesn’t deliver, in the way and with the timing that they think that God should, they question God’s effectiveness and God’s faithfulness. “How could God let me down?”

In contrast to such a shallow approach to prayer, Jesus offers his disciples and us the somewhat familiar prayer given in today’s gospel reading. I say “somewhat familiar” because Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer is not the same as the one given in Matthew; and neither one of them is the same as either the contemporary form or so-called “traditional” form that we have in our Prayer Book. But the history and evolution of the Lord’s Prayer is a story for another day.

The form that we have in today’s gospel is a very simple and straight-forward one. It is one that can help guide us as we consider what prayer ultimately is all about and the potential that it has to transform our lives, both as a community and as individuals.

The first thing to notice about Jesus’ approach to prayer, as opposed to the “shopping list” approach, is that it begins with God, not with us. It addresses God with the familiar term of “Father”; but notice that it is not “my Father” but “our Father.” This prayer is a prayer of the community of faith, and that community’s primary concern and focus is the coming of the kingdom of God. That reign of God is, of course, the ultimate goal of all reality; and our lives in Christ are directed to bringing about the coming of that reign. By beginning with that focus, rather than with ourselves, we allow ourselves as a people of faith to be drawn up into the very life of God and into God’s plan, God’s intention, God’s desire for all of creation. Instead of narrowing our focus to our own, personal, immediate needs and wants, prayer of this kind opens us up to the ultimate reality who is God.

It is within that spirit of openness to God that the Lord’s Prayer, simply and in a spirit of trust and confidence, then lifts up to God our deepest needs. “Give us each day our daily bread.” That petition is one that expresses complete confidence in God to know and provide whatever we truly need. As New Testament scholar Matthew Skinner puts it, “God gives us what is necessary and beneficial, not whatever we desire.” We then conclude by asking that God would forgive us our sins and save us from the time of trial.

Here, in this brief yet profound prayer, we open ourselves up to God and allow God to live in us and to transform us. Spiritual writer Gunilla Norris points out that “Petition and intercession have their place in prayer, but there is a difference between asking out of true relatedness to God and telling God how to run things.” At its heart, a prayer like the Lord Prayer is an act of adoration. And “Adoration,” she adds, “is like seeing a fine play or reading a fine poem. It enlarges our world and frees us from the need to be in control.” It is by opening ourselves up to God and allowing God to be in control that we find true freedom and true life.

German-born Jesuit priest, Karl Rahner, was one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century. Many of his writings are pretty obscure and pose a major challenge to anybody who tries to digest them. But last summer, I happened to come across the last book that he wrote, which was a book of prayers. I found some of them to be truly remarkable, both in their profundity and in their simplicity.

In one prayer, which appears to be the last one that he wrote before his death, the theologian provided a guide for the simple, trusting approach to prayer that Jesus himself offers us in the Lord’s Prayer. Instead of listing a set of requests and petitions that he wanted and then asking God to grant what he was asking, Karl Rahner turned a familiar phrase around. He concluded the prayer with the request, “Grant what you ask of us.” -- not “Grant what we ask of you,” but “Grant what you ask of us.” Like Jesus, he placed himself in the presence of the Father, opening himself up to God’s wisdom and love and to God’s priorities in the world. And he asked God to transform him, to show him the way that God wanted him to go and to provide him with whatever was necessary for that journey.

Here, in the words that Jesus taught us, we have, not only a model for all our prayer to God, but also a model for all our life with and in God. It is a model of Jesus’ own faith: a faith in which we let go of our illusion that we know exactly what we need, in which we let go of our illusion of control, and entrust ourselves to the loving God who creates, redeems and sanctifies us, giving us all new life in Jesus Christ our Lord.

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TODAY'S HOMILY

by the Rev. Michael Kreutzer

One quotation that I have used (more than once) in sermons over the years is Friedrich Nietzsche’s assertion that “Man made God in his image and likeness.” We easily succumb to the temptation to make for ourselves a mental image of a god who conforms to what we want God to be, who thinks and acts the way that we do, or at least the way we would like to do if we had the power.

In a similar way, people sometimes read and interpret biblical passages to say the things that they want them to say and to address the issues that they want them to address. Today’s story of Martha and Mary has certainly been used -- or maybe abused -- that way.

Some commentators in past centuries, for example, have claimed that Jesus’ words to Martha are a general assertion of the superiority of the contemplative life over an active life of trying to live the gospel. Others, in more recent years, seeing Jesus welcoming both men and women as disciples and leaders in his new community, have tried to push the text further to insist that it supports their 20th and early-21st century views regarding the roles of women in the church and in society. Still others try to find creative ways of making the text support the opposite of these two positions. Approaches like these are attempts to read into the story things that actually are not there. They tell us more about the interpreter than they do about the story itself as St. Luke recounts it.

When the story begins, Jesus has come into “a certain village.” He enters the home of a woman named Martha. Her sister, Mary, is present also, although the text does not tell us whether or not Mary actually lives there. This, by the way, is the only mention of the two sisters in Luke’s version of the gospel, and they are never mentioned at all by either Mark or Matthew.

Mary sits at Jesus’ feet, listening to him, while Martha scurries around, concerned with all the details of hospitality for her guests. Jesus does not criticize Martha as long as she is focused on her tasks. She is, after all, concerned with serving the needs of others. In fact, the word that Luke uses to describe Martha’s work is diakonia. That is an important word in Luke’s gospel and an important word for Christians, too; because, in Luke’s Last Supper narrative, Jesus describes himself as the one who renders diakonia: as the one who serves the others. Martha is portrayed as following the example of Jesus, as serving others, just as Jesus serves others.

The problem, the conflict, comes in when Martha leaves that service, at least for a time, to criticize her sister and, by implication, to criticize Jesus as well. Her work, like that of her sister, is important and valued. But now she is more concerned with criticizing what someone else is doing than she is in following Jesus’ example and serving others as best she can. She is, in effect, insisting that Mary’s form of discipleship be exactly the same as her own.

Contrary to many sermons that have been preached over the years, there is nowhere in this passage where Jesus pits one approach to life against the other, the contemplative against the active. But he does insist that both approaches keep their focus on the ultimate purpose of all that we do: living the life of the gospel. In short, Jesus values both sisters and the important work that both were doing. Both contemplation and action are important parts of a full, Christian life.

Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall, in commenting on the story of Martha and Mary, points out the fact that some Christians try to approach a life in Christ from only one approach, without including the other as well. Some, for example, act only like Martha: immersing themselves in a constant round of activities without stopping to consider what it is they are doing and why, and whether their efforts are actually contributing to the coming of the kingdom – or whether they are just making themselves feel good because they are doing something. They avoid the hard work of thinking their actions through, whether alone or with others, of considering how their actions fit in with the scriptures and with the goals that God has given God’s people to accomplish. Sometimes just doing things, without doing the hard work of reflecting on them, without thinking them through, is an easy way out. But then, as Henry Ford observed, “Thinking is the hardest job in the world; that’s why so few people engage in it.”

On the other hand, there are also people who immerse themselves solely in the “Mary” role in the story. While taking the time to sit quietly and listen and learn and reflect together is of critical importance, it can also be used as an excuse for not taking action and as a way to avoid living the gospel as Jesus calls us to do. Every issue brings a call for endless study and reflection, delaying and avoiding a need to actually do anything.

This brief gospel scene involving Jesus and the two sisters might be better understood if we look at it within the context within which Luke tells it. The story of Martha and Mary in the Gospel according to Luke immediately follows the story that we heard last Sunday: the parable of the Good Samaritan. You may recall that Luke concludes that narrative with Jesus telling the lawyer who was testing him, “Go and do likewise”: “Act like the Good Samaritan.” It focuses on action, on doing, on the living out of the gospel. Today’s story, by contrast, is one in which Jesus teaches his hearers the importance of stopping and listening to God’s word, of considering and thinking about and reflecting on what it is that we are trying to accomplish in God’s name: “Sit and listen and reflect like Mary.”

As biblical scholar and preacher Fred Craddock points out, if we were to ask Jesus which example we should follow in our own lives – that of Mary, who sits and listens, or that of the Good Samaritan, who goes and does – Jesus’ answer would simply be “Yes.”

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