FILL MY SOUL WITH JOY, COURAGE AND STRENGTH[1]THE REV. JOHN E. KITAGAWA ____ THE ELEVENTH SUNDAY
AFTER PENTECOST ____ ISAIAH 1: 1, 10-20 HEBREWS 11: 1-3, 8-16 LUKE 12: 32-40
PO VOICE: 520-299-6421 FAX: 520-299-0712 E-MAIL: WEB SITE: WWW.STPHILIPSTUCSON.ORG |
This morning’s Scriptures
offer us three different opportunities to reflect on faith and faithful
living. Initially, Isaiah speaks
strong words of judgment against the people of Israel. They are going through the motions of
honoring God, while worshipping false gods.
Isaiah has strong words for those who make sacrifices in order to
curry God’s favor (Isaiah 1: 11). He
informs those who engage in the trappings of worship that God will no longer
listen to their prayers as long as their hands are stained with blood (1:
12-15). In today’s parlance, Isaiah
accused the Israelites of “talking the talk” but failing to “walk the
walk”. Isaiah prophesied centuries
ago, but he speaks to anyone attempting spiritual shortcuts, or to trying to
curry favor with God; or, who exhibit outward signs of religious fervor while
living in contradiction to God’s holy ways. All is not lost. In the later verses, Isaiah offers a way to
escape God’s wrath. He reveals God’s
grace. God will take them back when
they cleanse themselves and amend their ways.
God will embrace them when they “cease to do evil” (Isaiah 1: 16);
when they take concrete actions, grounded in the God’s ways; and, when they
“seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow”
(Isaiah 11: 17). As strong, vivid and
consequential as Isaiah’s language is, I do not sense the same urgency as in
Luke’s words. Using the metaphor of
the servants waiting for the master who could return at any moment from a
wedding banquet, Luke speaks to the issue of spiritual readiness. In classical Christian theology, this story
is interpreted as spiritual readiness for the Second Coming of Christ. Author Barbara Brown Taylor writes about a
professor who told her “how the second coming of Christ was an idea cooked up
by some church father with only two fingers.
The truth, he said, is that Christ comes again, and again, and
again—that God has placed no limit on coming to the world, but is always on
the way to us here and now. The only
thing we are required to do is to notice—to watch, to keep our eyes peeled”[2]. So, one issue is about being spiritually
ready to discern when God in Christ comes, and what he reveals. Few of would disagree with
the idea of being spiritually ready.
Truthfully, however, few of us have a sense of urgency about it, so
many easily let it slide. In this
context, I have thought about the six Utah miners. I have no idea whether they are people of
faith. But I wonder what was the level
of their spiritual readiness when trapped or killed by the accident. As a pastor, I am invited into the lives of
parishioners who receive difficult, potentially life threatening medical
news. That is how life is. We do not know from moment to moment what
will happen. In my experience those
who focus on their spiritual formation and development face the most
difficult moments with a measure of serenity and hope. The second issue is
related. Jesus admonishes his
listeners to sell all possessions and give to the poor. This is not the first or last time Jesus
focuses on personal possessions. In
fact, Jesus is recorded to have spent the most time (a sixth of his Gospel
teaching) talking about—not prayer or forgiveness or peace or heaven or
sacrifice—but the proper relationship to material things. More than a third of his parables deal with
this dilemma[3]. In today’s passage, Jesus says, “Where your treasure
is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12: 34). Later in Luke, Jesus
astutely observes, “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either
hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the
other. You cannot serve God and
wealth” (Luke 16: 13). It is not that
Jesus objects to material things, or possessions, or even to wealth. The issue is what the stewardship of our
possessions reveals about our fundamental loyalties, about our motivations,
and about what gives direction, meaning and purpose to our lives Today’s Epistle offers a
helpful description of faith (Hebrews 11: 1): … faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of
things not seen. Taken literally, we can see why some people think religion is “pie in
the sky” and a lot of “hocus pocus”.
In this view, faith is divorced from the realities of the world. Karl Marx famously called religion “the
opiate of the people”—drugging |
people
into submission, allowing the exploitation and oppression of people hoping for
better in the next life.
The truth is that a life of faith can have a
significant impact on our ability to deal with the realities of life, and can
lead to significant life-transforming, even community-changing moments. The writer of Hebrews hammered home this
point by choosing examples from the Bible.
It was “by faith” that Abel (11: 4), Enoch (11:5), Noah (11:7), and
Abraham (11:8-12) were able to live their lives in accordance with God’s
will.
Throughout the ages, there have been
examples of people who struggled to embody faithful living. I met one such person while visiting a
parishioner a few months ago. He shared
this profound story of faith. After
retirement, he decided to tutor at a local elementary school. He enjoyed this work and apparently developed
good rapport with students. One day, he
was asked to shift to a special needs class.
After the first day, he went home, feeling he had not connected with any
of the students, and that he was completely untrained and personally ill
equipped to respond to students’ profound needs. He was ready to quit. He wanted to go back to the classroom where
things had worked so well. But, he
thought, there was a reason he had been asked to take the new assignment, so he
decided to pray and meditate. What
happened changed his life. He heard
this: “… just as you did it to one of
the least of these, you did it to me …” (Matthew 25: 40). He went back the next
day, for years after that, and loved it.
I think of the following as a more current
expression of the Hebrews definition of faith:
Faith
is a commitment to a reality we cannot prove, but which we know by experience[4].
What
is “the reality we cannot prove?” Can we
prove God is the creator, redeemer and sustainer of the world? Yet, we know by glimpses given us by
experience. Can we prove God’s love,
mercy and grace? Yet, we know by
glimpses given us by experience.
Biblically, “the reality we cannot prove” is often referred to as the
Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of heaven.
Jesus uses parables to teach about this reality. Rather dictating definitions, Jesus offers
metaphors. Most of them start, “the
Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven is like …” The Hebrew Scriptures appropriate the image
of king and kingdom to convey God’s sovereignty over all creation. The Christian understanding of kingdom is not
about dominance or governance. It is a
vision of God’s creation as God would have it be. It is at once a vision of the “future whose
implications are pressingly present”[5].
At the very beginning of today’s Gospel
text, we hear Jesus say,
Do not be afraid … (Luke 12: 32)
These
are familiar New Testament words. They address
what the New Testament considers to be the greatest obstacle to faith, and
the
root of all evil. It is fear which makes
[human beings] selfish, it is fear which makes them hate, it is fear which
makes them blind, it is fear which makes them mad. Fear casts out love, as love casts out
fear. Which of the two therefore [are
we] going to choose?[6]
Gordon Cosby, Pastor of the Church of Our
Savior, Washington, D.C. is a good example to follow. He got in touch with his fear, and understood
its limiting and atrophying effect upon his faithfulness.
When
I am afraid, I am miserable. I play it
safe. I restrict myself. I hide the talent of me in the ground. … When I am afraid a tiny part of me holds
captive most of me which rebels against the tyranny of the minority. When I am afraid I am a house divided against
itself. So more than anything else I
want to be delivered from fear, for fear is alien to my own best interest or,
to put it positively, I want to give myself generously, magnanimously,
freely—out of love.
Behind these insights, Cosby clearly has faith. He has seen the vision and made the
commitment to a reality he cannot prove, but which he knows by experience. He knows the difference Jesus makes in human
life. Years of focus on and practice of
spiritual formation and development make it possible to see Jesus coming,
healing and transforming lives. He has
experienced Christ’s love casting out fear, and empowering people to live more
and more faithfully.
I conclude this
morning with a deep expression of faith in the form of a prayer by Edith Stein,
written before her death at Auschwitz:
Oh
my God, fill my soul with holy joy, courage and strength to serve you. Enkindle your love in me and then walk with
me along the next stretch of road before me[7].
AMEN.