Sermon for August 11 at Emmanuel, Mercer Island

The week before last I was in Spokane.

I was helping my mother and sister combine households

                        and move in together into a new home.

As is typical with any move,

            we get to notice how much stuff we have acquired over the years.

                        Where did this all come from?

Any move give us the opportunity

            to reflect on our relationship with possessions.

We may notice how we tend to cart stuff around with us.

Sometimes the things we have don’t even get unpacked from the last move,

            but we keep bringing them along with us just the same;

                        we wouldn’t think of letting them go.

A prime example might be old photo albums – that’s personal identity stuff!

            even the old photos of ancestors 3 or 4 generations back now

                        whom we never did get grandmother to label with names

                                    before she herself went to join them at the cemetery.

And then there is all the stuff that might have a need someday,

                        probably the day after we get rid of it,

            or it might come back in style.

All of what we amass and possess is part of our personal identity.

Our treasures are there in all the stuff,

                        all the things loaded with associations, memories or hopes,

            we keep them all.                                    Or they keep us.

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

This last week I participated in a right of passage,

                        what inevitably an opera lover must do.

            I attended the 4 opera Ring Cycle of Wagner.

It is the most massive artistic and musical stage production ever created.

This tetralogy presented a whole new way of being and form for opera,

It is an original creative work.

This is the origin and source in popular mythology

            for so much that has become part of our culture.

Any fan of Tolkien would recognize where he got the basic plot line

                        for the Lord of the Rings trilogy,

            or where the Klingons came from in Star Trek.

Even Darth Vader is foreshadowed in the sinister character of Hagen,                                                                                                                                                 Alberich’s son.

It is a goldmine (pun intended) for Freudians and Jungian analysts.

Meaning of cosmic scope pours out through every measure of music.

Now, in the story the Rheingold is a treasure that is irresistible.

The dwarf Alberich lusts after it,

            and renounces love in order to possess it.

He forges a ring from it,

            a ring to control and have power and safeguard the hoard.

But Alberich is then tricked and has the treasure stolen from him,

            so he places a curse of death upon the gold

                        for any who would possess it or wield the ring.

The giant brothers, Fasolt and Fafner, then get possession of the gold,

            and immediately Fafner kills his brother to have the ring for himself.

And then in traditional fashion

            Fafner sits guard over the hoard and turns into a dragon.

The treasure possesses its owner.

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

In the Gospel of Luke

            Jesus has a most unconventional and contrasting response to treasure,

                        to gold, wealth, possessions that are amassed.

Last week in the Gospel reading

            Jesus told the parable about the rich man

                        whose land had produced a bumper crop

                        and who responded by hoarding it, building a bigger barn,

                                    so that he could have this wealth

                                    to see him through for a long time to come.

Unfortunately for the rich man his time was up.

Today in the Gospel we hear these words from Jesus,

            “Sell your possessions, and give alms.

            Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out,

            an unfailing treasure in heaven…

            For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Sell your possessions…

Come on now, does Jesus really want everybody to do that?

Can’t we just spiritualize what he said

            to mean something like holding lightly to our possessions,

                        or not forgetting to share

                        or being appropriately generous?

Nope.

Jesus said a lot of hard things

because this is the way to get across to people really important truths.

The thing is, the way we think about treasure is in terms of ownership.

Mine.

We possess things and call them our possessions.

Ownership makes up much of the subject matter of our laws,

            I once heard about 90%.

Consider this, that ownership is tightly linked with identity.

Our possessions give us identity in the community.

            They designate a standing or class in society

                                                based on the amount of value of what we possess.

            If we have a high school diploma or a college degree

                        that is a possession that defines us.

            The clothes we wear, the cars we drive are possessions

                        that present us with specific identity.

Our possessions mark us off as separate and individual from everyone else.

But ownership is delusional,

            and possessions are no guarantee of security.

We don’t get this.

Our whole economy system is based upon false security and denial.

If you think about this for awhile, you will see that it is so.

Jesus says sell all your stuff.

He’s got a different kind of treasure in mind,

            a treasure in heaven which has much greater durability.

And you don’t even have to work for this,

            because, he says,

                        “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

In place of ownership – possession - having

            Jesus would call us into discipleship with him,

                        to live as he did – that is, by faith.

Look at Jesus.

No where in the Gospels do we find anything to indicate

            that Jesus owned anything whatsoever save the clothes on his back.

He didn’t even have a home; he was homeless.

            Matthew 8:20

                        “Foxes have their dens, and birds of the air have nests,

                        but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

To  discover real faith one must give up the ownership thing.

Francis of Assisi did,

            and they said about him

            that possessing nothing the whole world was his.

It’s dangerous asking a Franciscan to preach on this Gospel text for today.

As a Third Order Franciscan one of the aims of my Order is to live simply.

To quote from our Principles:

“The first Christians surrendered completely to our Lord

and recklessly gave all that they had,

offering the world a new vision of a society

in which a fresh attitude was taken towards material possessions. 

This vision was renewed by Saint Francis

when he chose Lady Poverty as his bride,

desiring that all barriers set up by privilege based on wealth

should be overcome by love. 

This is the inspiration for the third aim of the Society, to live simply.”

Well, as you can see by now,

            the kind of sermon I am preaching is a stewardship sermon.

But it’s not the kind where you are encouraged to fill out a pledge card

            and up your giving from last year.

It is a stewardship sermon about examining our relationship with treasure

            and linking it with Jesus around the issue of faith and discipleship.

We can’t even imagine what no ownership is.

so typically we even want to try to own the process of faith

rather than living by faith,

            or more specifically to be lived by the process of faith working in us

            through the Holy Spirit, the Presence of the Resurrection Jesus in us.

For so many ownership is primary

            and faith is a category in one corner of our lives

                        that we also want to have ownership over.

We substitute ownership for faith.

But Jesus says, “Walk as I walk.

            I give you a spirituality, a way of life.”

The Church tends to want to hear about faith in the form of

            the definition given in Heb. 11:1

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

… and not hear about faith in terms of discipleship.

We want to own the process instead of living by the process of faith,

            or more accurately, to be lived by faith,

                        to know that we are being lived by

                        the One in whom we live and more and have our being.

Admittedly this is hard to get across.

To live by faith is to live in creation where ownership does not exist

            and to love in the way that is self-forgetting.

I can talk this way because of what I have discovered through meditation.

Meditation is a spiritual practice that employs non-ownership,

            so it’s a good way to become available to discovering how this is.

Meditation is non-ownership.

At the end of the 4^th opera of Wagner’s Ring,

            Brunnhilde represents the love

                        Alberich had renounced in order to possess the ring.

She returns the ring back to the Rhine from which it came.

It is the downfall, doom and end of the world.

Everything goes up in flames,

            including Valhalla, the stronghold of the gods.

The whole world order that lusted after possessing the treasure

                        dies in the purifying flames

            through the faithful, self giving of love

                        in the act of returning what cannot be possessed.

And the curtain falls

            as a new scene is revealed

                        of creation fresh and young springing green.

Sermon for July 14, 2013, at Emmanuel, Mercer Island

The parable of the Good Samaritan is so well known

            that the name, “Good Samaritan,” has become proverbial.

We name churches after the Good Samaritan.

We call those who help a stranger in need Good Samaritans,

            especially those who have nothing to gain personally

                        for the time and inconvenience caused them by their actions.

But notice that we have had to come up with Good Samaritan laws

            offering legal protection to people who give reasonable assistance

                        to those who are injured, ill, in peril, or otherwise incapacitated.

In some cases, Good Samaritan laws encourage people to offer assistance,             indicating that there is a duty to offer aid.

I lived in Minnesota for nine winters,

            and in the rural areas during those cold snaps

            if you came across a car by the side of the road

                        you stopped to see if everything was all right.

It might mean the difference between life and death for someone.

Yeah, everybody knows what a Good Samaritan is.

But in that very familiarity

            we are in danger of missing significantly powerful things

                        that Jesus is saying in the context for this parable.

There is much more than meets the eye.

I want to call your attention to some of that

            and see if that turns on a light bulb for you,

                        even at the risk of making things uncomfortable.

First of all, the occasion for the parable is a scribe, a Torah lawyer, a Pharisee

confronting Jesus to test him about his knowledge of righteousness and law.

He asks his question of Jesus in such a way

            to see if Jesus thinks the same way he does:

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What must I do for ME to get for myself eternal life?”

And, of course, Jesus turns his question back on him:

                                                                                    “How do you read the law?”

The Torah lawyer answers with the comprehensive law

            of love for God with one’s whole being and love of neighbor as self.

Jesus says, “Right.  Do this and live.”

Now this man has the opportunity to display his scholarly expertise,

            his rabbinic discernment about the multiple guidelines

                        for love of neighbor in multiple circumstances,

            all the ways of fencing in the commandment

                                                                        to make it workable and achievable.

So he asks the question, “Who is my neighbor?”

Next comes the parable, and when Jesus told a parable to people,

            especially as they are related in the Gospel of Luke,

the story is not going to go in the expected direction;

            you can depend on something odd in the story that doesn’t quite fit.

What is that element here in this story?                          It is the Samaritan.

What is a Samaritan doing here, a Samaritan who comes from north of Judea,

            whose home is in a sort of buffer zone between Judea and Galilee?

What is a Samaritan doing here on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho,

                        a road no where near Samaria?

Now this road, I’ve got to tell you, is not a safe road.

I know.  I’ve been on it more than once, that road that’s been there for millennia.

The road down from Jerusalem to Jericho is about 30 miles long.

In that 30 miles the elevation goes from 2,500 feet above sea level

            to over 1,200 feet below sea level – a change of almost 4,000 feet.

The road hugs the sides of cliffs along steep wadis,

            and often passing under rocky overhangs.

It offers so many hiding places and points for easy ambushes

            that in the last decade the Israelis have actually

                                                plowed up and barricaded that ancient road

                        so that no one can get to Jericho that way anymore,

                        or get from West Bank Jericho up to Jerusalem either.

Then, at the time of Jesus, as now,

                                                it was not a safe road for anyone travelling alone.

So we have an unfortunate soul who gets ambushed, robbed,

            stripped of his belongings, including his clothes,

            and is beaten and left there lying by the road.

Two individuals come by, a priest and a Levite, clergy.

One might expect compassion.

But they would not, by law, touch a dead body, touch blood,

            look upon nakedness,

            or – here one might be cynical – would not delay their journey

                        especially on such a dangerous road

where this might be a set up for getting ambushed themselves

            (one could recognize this trick as old as the hills)

                                                            let alone complicating their journey

            for the sake of a man who,

                        if not dead already, would probably die soon enough.

Now, the non-sequiter:  the Samaritan,

            totally out of place on the road between

                    Jerusalem, where the Temple is, the heart of the Jewish religion,

            and Jericho, in an area of religious schools, desert holy men and prophets,

a Samaritan,

            of a people whose Jewish religious beliefs were considered

            greatly lacking, even heretical, by the good Jews of Jerusalem and Jericho.

Here he is with oil and wine and money, himself risking attack on this road,

and that he should take action to help the robbers’ victim

            is as unexpected under the circumstances

                                                                        as his being on this road in the first place.

But what bridges this gap is compassion.

All other issues of identity and purpose are set aside.

            There is no self concern, no closed heart.

Here is a pure demonstration of the way of life, eternal life or simply life:

            “I love you as myself.  You are myself, and I will care for you.”

How many barriers were crossed, were broken down here?

Barriers of distinctiveness of class and right belief,

            of ethnicity and historical antagonisms,

and of legalistic restrictions

                        about how Torah was read and interpreted and conscribed.

Notice: The priest and the Levite cannot act with compassion

            from within their religious identity.

So there is no neighborly link between them and the man naked by the road.

Who is neighbor?

    Not the one who fits the ethnic and religious lineage of the priest and Levite.

No, it is the body of a human being – in suffering –

            held within the mutual awareness of shared humanity,

                        this image of God, vulnerable in distress and need.

That is the actual and only focus of authentic compassion.

            This wakeful compassion is the channel for effective action

                                    in giving service to another in a truly life supportive way.

Jesus ends the parable with this question:

            “Which of these three, do you think,

                        was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"

The lawyer is compelled by Jesus to confess – the Samaritan,

            in contradiction to his own legalistic, ethnic and religious mindset.

“Go and do likewise.” 

Jesus calls this man to leave behind his own carefully worked out system

                                    of keeping the Torah law

            for this radical and counter-cultural way of service

                        through mercy and compassion and self-forgetfulness.

Jesus is actually calling him into discipleship.

“Go and do likewise.” 

This is much more than simply doing good deeds

            where motivation comes from within the limitations

                                    of our individual moral judgments.

Action in no way impeded by any thoughts about worthiness,

                                                            how deserving the one in need is.

Who is neighbor?

            Who is NOT neighbor?  Can anyone possibly not be neighbor?

If we are to take seriously the call of Jesus into discipleship,

            then we have to exam how that will take us beyond our self-interest

                                                                                                            and even our morality.

Compassion knows no boundaries of worthy or unworthy, clean or unclean,             friend or enemy, family or stranger.

Jesus would take us into circumstances

            where there can be only self-forgetfulness and no self-interest.

Can we do this on our own?  No.

That is why Paul, as he writes to the disciples in Colossae,

            prays in today’s epistle reading:

For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

The Eye is the Lamb of the Body

"The eye is the lamp of the body.  So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”              Matthew 6:22-23

After two weeks of recuperation filled with the loving attention of family and friends and the prayers of so many, my eye is now well into healing.  The amazing gas bubble the surgeon put in the eye to hold the retina in place while it was reattaching has now been absorbed and has disappeared.  I no longer must keep the head down facing the floor.  And today I even was able to drive my own car again.

I am so thankful for such a wide spread support network of friends.  My life is blest with all these relationships in which love is expressed in both word and deed.  I also am so thankful for the skill of surgeons and nurses and medical technicians. 

But most of all I am grateful to God for the gift of grace and faith which carried me through this experience.  I believe that I was given a state of equanimity just before the eye incident, and in it a sense of balance and trust that saved me from any issue of anxiety or fear.  As I watched the field of vision in my left eye gradually diminish over a period of a few hours, I considered how this would either get fixed or it wouldn’t.  I would either recover or go blind in one eye.  If I lost the sight, then I would face changes in life style and habit patterns.  I also considered the possibility of losing sight in both eyes, and what changes that would entail.  There was such grace and trust present so that even if the outcome would be the worst, I would still be able to adapt and accept whichever reality I would be left with.  And I am very clear that this equanimity is not anything I can claim as my own accomplishment.  The source is the presence and love of the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus.

One thing that has been very clear to me throughout the last two weeks face down is that I would rather be physically blind than to be spiritually blind.  To lose one’s spiritual sight would be far worse.  There are so many references in the Bible to sight as a way to speak about spiritual insight.  John 9 relates the story of the man born blind whom Jesus healed, and how he talked so clearly with the religious leaders about his healing, but they could not see what did not fit their belief system, and so the seeing ones were blind spiritually.  All the references to light and having eyes to see and ears to hear cannot be missed.  In the Greek of the New Testament there are at least five different words for seeing, and at least one of those words indicates seeing as perceiving deeply in such a way as to “get it.”  How does one see an idea?  And yet when we come to understand something, we say, “Ah, now I see it!”  This kind of seeing represents a leap in perception.  What was a mystery before suddenly becomes clear.  The light bulb above the head of the cartoon character lights up.  It is this kind of seeing that I value most. 

May we always see with the eyes of the heart, with the eyes of faith, and may our prayer be the our eyes may be opened just as the Risen Lord opened the eyes of understanding for the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. 

And I will see you all at the meditation groups at St. Dunstan Sunday evening, and at Emmanuel Monday morning and Tuesday evening!

Keep meditating!

            Beverly

Keep on meditating!

Life is full of surprises.  Over the Memorial Day Weekend while I was enjoying being with Amma, the famous humanitarian and hugging saint of India, I ended up with a detached retina. After emergency surgery Tuesday morning I am now at home for at least two weeks keeping my head face downward while the retina reattaches and heals.  I feel so blessed to have a good support network of brothers and sisters in faith, and I am particularly thankful for a very dear daughter, Elizabeth, who hopped on a plane and came to take care of her mother the last few days.

For all those in my regular meditation groups, please keep meeting and meditating together until I can rejoin you.  I will be meditating at home during the same time, so we will be together in spirit.  

I am reminded of instruction in how to pray from the Philokalia, about keeping the chin against the chest.  It is a very humble pose.  My heart and my head both bow before our Lord, and I know his mercy is abundant beyond my comprehension.

Keep meditating.