Lectionary Meditation: Too much is never enough

Lectionary for this week.

Luke 16:19-31
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Amos 6:1a, 4-7

If ever there were a set of lessons to make the wealthy squirm this would be it. So what are we to make of it, we aren't wealthy after all. I don't know about you but I don't lay around my house in silk robes eating and laughing and doing pretty much nothing all the time. But then again, I'm not exactly Lazarus am I? I wrote this on a rather nice little Apple MacBook, sitting on my comfy leather couch wearing warm cloths and with some snacks near to hand.

It gets me thinking about perspective. I doubt any of us would count ourselves as rich, but very few of us are truly poor, probably none of us taken by the real standards of the world. And yet we worry about money constantly it seems. That is exactly what we shouldn't be obsessed with. The letter to Timothy is timeless. Here, we have a group of Christians caught up in money concern. The author of this one could have been writing directly to Empty Church (and a great many other places I imagine).

Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.

Wouldn't that be nice? If we could be content with having our basic needs met?

But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

And yet far too often it is money that captures our hearts. Not just as individuals, though that is harmful enough, but as organizations. My sister tells a story she heard from her Irish history professor. It seemed Ireland came late to the concept of capitalism. For a long time in a small town (similar to where I live) there would be a pub every few blocks. They were little family affairs and they did something peculiar. They all got together and agreed on a fair price for a pint. What could their neighbors afford, and what would give them a decent living? The idea that they might compete with one another, or undercut prices to attract more customers was entirely foreign. Anyone who tried it, far from gaining new customers, found themselves a social outcast. Their customers would abandon them for attempting to hurt the other pubs. And so the little family pubs served their customers fair prices and made a comfortable (but certainly not extravagant) living.

Capitalism is changing the Irish neighborhoods. Big business has moved in and is slowly driving those little pubs out with its desire for more and more and more. Just enough to get by isn't enough anymore.

The church isn't immune, certainly. Money has been wielded as an almighty weapon in many a vestry meeting. All decisions for some of our vestry members come down to money. Will the action bring more in? How much will it cost? The activities that draw the most member support are fund raisers, the results of which are applauded loudly in service the next Sunday.

But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called...

The letter to Timothy is pretty clear. It isn't the fund raisers we are called to be about. We are told to pursue a number of things: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness, but money or wealth isn't mentioned even once. Not even a hint. In fact we are told to shun the pursuit of wealth. So why then do our churches and our lives get so caught up in the capitalist pursuit of more?

We are inundated with the message that we need more. Bigger, better, faster, softer. From our vehicles to our homes to our waistlines we have bought into the corporate message. More is more, and we need more. We are rich, exceedingly rich. And there are a great many Lazaruses in the world, too many. They live in overcrowded refuge camps in Africa, they suffer in the slums of Rio, they fall beneath the dictatorial heel of military regimes around the world.

If we are brave enough to let go our need for more the story doesn't have to end as our gospel lesson. If we can accept enough as true bounty, we can begin to look beyond our own wants and see the needs of those at our very gates. If we can learn to trust that we truly have enough, even more than enough, then we can share with those who truly have nothing. We can begin to fill that hole that cries for more with God, with prayer and contemplation and companionship and blessing. And as we do it will become an overflowing font, creating more than we could ever need.

We are blessed with abundance, and we are called to share that abundance, to remake a world of not enough, and too much. It is our work, it is our call, the question is: are we willing?Lectionary Meditation: Too much is never enough

Lectionary meditation & desert wandering

Lectionary for this week.

The lectionary today doesn't start well. No matter which reading you choose it is doom and anger. Humanity fails again and again. I have been thoroughly and utterly uninspired by these readings. There are little glimmers of course. God even changes his mind in one of them, a human being gets into a debate with God and he wins! That's good, yes?

Jeremiah's description of a desert blasted by God might have described a place in my journey a few days ago. But I'm no longer convinced its a desert at all that I stand in, or if it is that the desert is such a bad place. After all, it was the wilderness where so many of the prophets met God. Where so many of them went in preparation for their own ministry. (And yet we all seem to fear the spiritual desert so strongly.) When seen that way it stops being such a fearsome or frightening place.

For thus says the LORD: The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. - Jeremiah 4:27

No, it doesn't sound good but there is always that caveat at the end with our God isn't there? No matter how dry, how alone I might feel there is always the promise that God is there ready for more. We all live in the hope of that promise for something more.

And the more of course crops up again in the Gospel:

Luke 15:8 "Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?

9 When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.'

10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

I love this image, of God as the frantic housewife. God who leaves no stone unturned searching for us (or remaking us once She has found us). God who rejoices when we are found, when the promise She offers is fulfilled. I can picture God down on her hands and knees in the dirt, fingers reaching back into the dark crevices of the universe searching for the little soul who has hidden itself away in fear and self loathing. There a glint of gold! And with a leap of joy She is out the door, little soul clasped in her hands, dancing and smiling and calling out our name.

I hid myself very well, preferring the darkest corner of God's house to being found and shaped and remade and sent out into the wilderness. But God kept at it, that's the amazing thing the one we can't get around. God kept after me long after someone else would have given up. And I could almost feel that leap of joy around me when at last I let myself be found. If the hills tremble at God's rage they dance in delight at His joy. If the mountains are shaken in his anger they quiver with ecstasy with his laughter.

I'm still waiting for the ecstasy to come back but the desert no longer looks so frightening, in fact its rather peaceful. Its preparation and safety and quiet and solitude. To think, I've been worrying and upset about this vast empty place and at the same time complaining to all and sundry that I can't get enough alone time. Yes Lord, I'm listening, I'm just a little slow sometimes.

(And yes, I do realize that here I am at the end of my meditation and no longer uninspired by the lessons, it always works out that way if I just buckle down and spend time with them.)

Lectionary meditation

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

1 O LORD, you have searched me and known me.

2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.

3 You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.

4 Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.

5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.

13 For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb.

14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.

17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!

18 I try to count them--they are more than the sand; I come to the end--I am still with you.

The gospel just didn't speak to me on Tuesday when I read through the lectionary, neither did the other two readings. This doesn't happen often and when it does I usually wait for S's sermon on Sunday and just write a meditation/response on that, she always manages to trigger something for me. But on a whim I read the psalm for this week and immediately copied it into a blogger draft post. I had no idea what to do with it, but I knew I had to do something with it.

This psalm could sum up the ride I've been on.

O LORD, you have searched me and known me.

Is there any doubt? I can't seem to get away from this God. I have done a good job of hiding and hiding myself, but it doesn't work. God is always searching always discovering my latest hiding place. And always asking me that original question, that first hurt. "Where are you? Why are you hiding?" Why? What a question. Why wouldn't I?

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.
...
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

I know what the psalmist means when he says God has hemmed him in and placed His hand upon him. God is inescapable, omnipresent. But that hand is not hard or oppressive, it is not something I fear. Because this is a psalm about wonder. The psalmist might have been a doctor, a scientist so exquisitely he describes the body and creation. As the words roll off my tongue my mind feels the lift and fall of my chest, the steady wonderous beat of my heart. Flex your hand, feel the thousands of tiny precise movements to fold and extend those fingers. Twist your wrist and an organic machine so complicated we still cannot duplicate it moves with flawless, effortless precision.

The microcosm of creation in a sheath of muscle and tendon and bone. And the macrocosm. There is a movie, I've forgotten which, where a human fetus hangs superimposed on a field of stars, and nebulae. A human forms before our eyes amid the vast fire of creation.

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Creation is infinitely large, impossibly grand and yet the act of our own creation and formation is as infinitely improbable. The same atoms that make up the stars knit together, in us, for something utterly different and equally divine.

The psalmist knew, all those years ago, something we still struggle with today. God is beyond our comprehension. God is not trapped in the sky, does not sit far off in heaven. God is woven through creation itself. God is present in the nuclear furnace of a star, and the womb where we grew and became. God is present in our breath, the flow of blood through our veins. Miles of blood vessels, thousands of miles of nerves, millions of muscle fibers. Creation's infinity captured within us, and down to our last atom, infused with the presence of God.

Of course hiding did not work. Of course God found me:

I come to the end--I am still with you.

There is no ending. As the universe in its infinity curves back upon itself so there is no way to outrun God who is present in it. We can find no end where there is no God, nor beginning. There is no place to hide and that is fearful, and wonderful knowledge. Amen.

Storm prayer

Gracious and loving God, we give thank for frustration and bitterness. For times when we do not understand. Our lives are tossed on rough waters, the rocks of disappointment and fear loom large. We fear failure, we fear loss, we fear separation from one another and from You. Remind us, Heavenly Mother/Eternal Father that our lives belong to you. Give us the strength and the courage to release them into your care and to sink deep into your presence when trouble appears. For without you we are rudderless and lost. We pray in your name, Gracious Father, Loving Mother, Creative Power, Inspired Word, Savior from before time, Name that cannot be Named, God. Amen.

Yoga

Lord in movement,
God in stillness.
Spirit touched
by trembling hands.
Hold a body in stillness,
and the mind follows
breathe into the vast
emptiness of Truth.
I resist the moment
filling time with loud
clamoring uselessness.
You call me back,
to stillness.

Prayer to the unknowable

Lord we thank you for questions and uncertainty. We who are small and finite struggle continuously to understand you who are infinite and undefinable. Help us to revel in the struggle, to cherish our insights and glimpses of Truth and to always know that you are ever greater than we can dare imagine. In your infinite goodness protect and keep us that we might always be at play in You. In your holy name we pray, Amen.

Sermon response 9/2/2007

Luke 14:1, 7-14 - 14:1 On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. 7 When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. 8 "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; 9 and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. 10 But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11 For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." 12 He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

What an odd lesson. The first part reads like a book on table manners. Very WASP, do the proper thing to save face, to look good. It just didn't seem like something Jesus would say. The mark of a good sermon is always a new way of seeing a familiar passage. From that sermon: hospitality is at the heart of it, if we look beyond the seemingly self serving words.

What does it mean to take a low place but to make room for another? Instead of thinking only of ourselves and grabbing that comfortable seat we pause, turn and take a less comfortable, less honored, seat to leave room for another. When we step onto a half filled subway car, do we race toward one of the free seats or we we grab a hand hold and stand, knowing that we are strong and young and someone who needs more "honor", who needs that seat, may come along.

Move over, make room. We're not good at it. We tend to think of ourselves first, others are an afterthought. We take that subway seat and then we grumble inside when we see an elderly woman enter at the next stop. We stand up and give her our seat but do we do it in our heart?

Hospitality is becoming the thing I care about most in the church. When it comes down to it there is nothing else quite so important as radical hospitality. When we get past the bloody politics, the fights over liturgy, over tradition, over whatever divides us that day, what really matters to me is that each of God's children is welcomed with the love of Christ. That each and every one sees love, acceptance, Christlight when they look into my eyes. That I see Christ in theirs and offer them service in His name. Not expecting anything in return. True love, true giving expects no thanks, no response. It does simply because it has no choice.

We leave that seat empty, hoping that a tired Christ will take it. We hug a friend, hoping only that a sorrowful Christ will be comforted. We offer a stranger a smile as we pass, hoping only that a lonely Christ will be touched. Hospitality. Move over, and hope Christ will sit down beside you on the softer cushion.

Now the harder part... Look, and see Christ when he does. Amen.