Sermon Pentecost 13 Emmanuel, Mercer Island

Remember the old phonograph records?
Sometimes there would be a scratch on the record
and the needle would get stuck in a groove
and we would hear the same bit of music over and over and over.

When we examine our lives we can also find scratches
where the movement of life gets stuck,
and over and over again we find ourselves stuck
in life-inhibiting patterns, such as:
our spouse laughs or sniffs in a particular way we find annoying, and we react;
at times we drink too much,
or stay angry for three days,
or yell because someone is making us be angry,
or victimizing us in some other way.
We want desperately for something to work for our advantage
and we try to manage the situation each time,
and it never works.

We are stuck in grooves that keep us repeating old patterns
of being and doing and relating
that close us down,
and we can’t move on.

Someone has to come and lift the needle over the scratch into the next groove
so that the music can flow along in its freedom and beauty.
The old cycle of bondage in frustration and suffering is ended.

Jesus was in a synagogue teaching the crowd there,
and among those there
was a woman bent over and unable to stand up straight.

It was the Sabbath, a day of rest, sacred in its observance,
and Jesus sees her there in the crowd,
and knows she has suffered for 18 years
–a long time to suffer such a debilitating condition.

Yes, there is the commandment:
“You shall remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.”
How is it to be kept holy? by rest,
ceasing from work
Why? so that attention can be given to praising God.

The woman had not asked Jesus to heal her.
He called her to him,
brought her up in front of everyone there in the synagogue.
And he freed her, liberated her, loosed her bonds,
by the touch of his hands on her.

And suddenly she was standing up straight.
And what was her response? She glorified God; she praised God,
God the Creator who made the heavens and the earth in 6 days.

Jesus had created a new back for her, an straight spine,
a complete spine that was now capable
of allowing the woman’s head to be held high –
the act of healing is an act of creation.

Now the ruler of the synagogue, the leader,
the source person as the voice of authority in the synagogue,
has a problem.
This act of creation and healing and liberation happened on the Sabbath,
the no work day.

Yes, the woman was healed, but it’s the principle of the matter.
It’s a slippery slop.
An exception for a good dead today,
and tomorrow an exception to fit someone’s convenience,
and before you know it, no one’s keeping the Sabbath.

Washington State used to have a lot of “blue” laws when I was growing up.
They’re gone.
And there are soccer games scheduled for Sunday mornings,
and no more observance of the Sabbath.
Commandment # 4 made obsolete.

The man’s got a point,
but it just pales in comparison with what had happened
when the hands of Jesus touched this woman’s back.

There’s a connection that can be made between healing and repentance.
The literal meaning of the word, repentance, in its biblical sense is
turning around.

The woman in the synagogue was bound for 18 years with her face to the earth.
She cannot turn up.
Her world was empty of the source of light.
She had no power to help herself.

Then Jesus lays his hands upon her, and immediately she is made straight
and she praises God.

The text does not record her saying,
“Free at last! Now I can again look up at the sky and the sun.”
There is a turning that has taken place in her
that is more than the turn from facing downward.
She has been taken beyond herself and her self-concern to praising God.
Jesus turned her full around
and the Spirit of the living God poured into her.
It is the giving by the hand of Jesus of freedom from her bondage,
and the blossoming of the praise of God in her.

This is a biblical example of repentance as turning,
and its fruit, which is glorifying God.
The repentance, the turning, is an act of empowerment by God,
as it states in Acts 11:18.
And it is God’s kindness that leads to repentance,
as it says in Romans 2:4.

So repentance is not just for those who are bad, who have done wrong.
Repentance, we see, may work with power even in the not so bad,
those who are passably good,
all those trying to lead decent lives
who faithfully drag themselves to church on Sunday mornings.

But the power of repentance is blocked in those who attach to
external rules to define and achieve righteousness of their own effort.

There is the full repentance, the full turning about,
of God’s powerful action in our lives
that literally turns us around in our tracks.
And there is the self-generated repentance which is self-absorbed,
that says, I repent of what violates who I want to be,
whom I want others to think I am,
the regret and chagrin we feel in the failure to meet ego standards.
This is more like self-conflict arising from a fear of vulnerability
or from a sense of a depleted self-worth,
and the desire to be the creator of one’s self.

The ruler of the synagogue in this story believed that
repentance was within the scope of self-management.
The rules are to be kept.
Such thinking would keep us unaware of
the constant and all inclusive creativity of God
at work outside of our rules.
The ruler of the synagogue, and those of us like him, get hung up on the rules.
But the ruler of the synagogue had no spiritual power to liberate others from the physical, mental and spiritual bondage they suffer.

Such hypocrites are good at taking care of their own
- and here I implicate all us clergy -

good at taking care of their temples, their vestments, their salaries,
their presumptions of legal, moral and institutional righteousness all in the Name of God.

What shall we say? How about this:
We are good enough.
We know the rules well enough.
We avoid harm and evil rightly enough.
We take care of ourselves pretty well, well enough.
We do NOT like to hear it said that, as we are, is NOT good enough.
Good enough, but we are not THIRSTY enough
thirsty for the fullness of life, for complete healing and liberation.

We may not understand why, at times we drink too much,
or stay angry for three days,
or yell because someone is making us be angry,
or victimizing us in some other way.
We may not know why it is that we trivialize the Love of God
to feel good about ourselves,
and so overlook the terrible freedom and the transforming intimacy
that God constantly reveals even in our suffering,
precisely in our suffering.
We are stuck in grooves of life-inhibiting patterns of suffering.

And so we turn half way;
our repentance is incomplete because of our own self-management of it.
And we resist, in fear and self-idolatry
being turned all the way around by the Holy Spirit.
We are not thirsty enough.

BUT will you let the hands of Jesus touch you and turn you
so that you can look into the source of your light?
Will you let him lay his hands upon you,
even though the rules say it is the wrong day or the wrong way
to repent and be empowered for a holy life?
Will we, who have been baptized by Jesus for initiation into his life,
turn by his turning all the way around and drink?

Sermon Pentecost 10 Emmanuel, Mercer Island

Today’s Gospel is on a theme that Jesus often addressed,
the stewardship theme of our relationship to wealth and possessions,
and it may not be easy to listen to.
Nevertheless, it will be life-giving.

Now, to give you an idea of the warped sense of humor I have,
at one time in another congregation I told a parishioner
(when I was in a particularly wicked mood)
that this parable of the rich man
is a story about what will happen to you
if you don’t keep your pledge current!

Well, here is a story about financial security
and its relationship to Jesus,
with whom nothing is secure for very long
if we are seriously open to his Spirit at work within us.
…financial security and its relationship to Jesus…

Let us note the collect for today. We prayed:
“Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church…
because it cannot continue in safety, in security, without your help…”

We open the door to Jesus, and this becomes an invitation into the heart
and before we know it, it is taken as carte blanche
for some major spiritual renovations by the Holy Spirit.

In the case of the story Jesus tells,
this would be particularly challenging for Pharisees,
or for any of the good “church-going” folks of that day.

You see, the current theology, the popular belief system of that day
was that prosperity was an indicator
that you had been blessed by God,
that you were doing a good job in being a righteous person.

We could make a comparison with the Protestant work ethic,
(you’ve heard of the Protestant work ethic?)
and we can see that belief reflected even today,
where one might find a preacher promising that those who follow Jesus
could expect to come into “abundant living” as a sign of God’s blessing.

This is the theology that says
that God blesses those who do what is good and right,
and economic prosperity and a long life
are therefore signs of being blest by God.

This is a trap, a subtle perverse twist of logic
to justify our continuous acquisition of material wealth,
until we accumulate for ourselves way beyond basic life necessities.

So Jesus warns about greed; he tells the crowd:
“Be on your guard against all kinds of greed;
for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

Greed, we can say, is a form of idolatry
in which we have forgotten what our life consists of.

You see, Jesus is operating out of a very different economy
than the one of his culture,
a very different economy than our culture.
His economy is the economy of the Kingdom of God.

If we were to keep on reading in Luke’s Gospel
after this parable of the Rich Man and his barns full of wealth,
we would read these words in the next verse:

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life,
what you should eat,
nor about your body, what you shall put on.
For life is more than food,
and the body more than clothing.
Consider the ravens:
they neither sow nor reap,
they have neither storehouse nor barn.
and yet God feeds them.”

This is obviously a different sort of economy.
It is an ecological, organic way of looking at life.
And this fits with how we also talk about the Body of Christ.
There is an organic wholeness and unity to life
in which all belong and no one is separate.
No one and no thing can stand alone from the rest; all are interrelated.

And so we can then begin to see how this person in the parable Jesus tells
is setting himself up for disaster.

He has been successful.
He has so much that he can retire early and live a life of ease.

However that night he is due to have a massive heart attack,
or a stroke, or get hit by the proverbial Mack truck.

Being self-sufficient, self-contained in providing for one’s own needs,
won’t be of any benefit to him then.

He was self-sufficient regarding his own needs,
but separate from everyone else and from their needs.

You see, having the opportunity to do good for the benefit of others,
but not doing it, was considered to be a sin.
This is the sin of omission.
St. Francis of Assisi said that this was stealing from the poor.

I once read this gospel in one church I served
where many of the parishioners were immigrant farm laborers.
When the rich man got the word that he was going to die,
their response was to say that divine justice was being done,
for he was hoarding, a sin in that cultural group
where whenever someone was in need,
the rest banded together to help.

So this person in the parable is standing convicted before God,
not for being successful,
but for neglecting the opportunity he had for helping others in need.

Now get this. This is the important point.
His life was forfeit,
because he had cut himself off from community with others
by neglecting the chance he had to be of benefit
to his own human community.

There with his appetite for financial security
which had become idolatry for him,
and which had turned his attention away from connection
with the organic whole of all living beings,
his very life was forfeit.

“So it is,” Jesus was saying, “with those who store up treasures for themselves
but are not rich in God.”

Jesus would shake us loose from our idolatry,
turn us back out of our illusions of ownership and security
to the basic and fundamental reality of our existence
as a part of the whole ecosystem, (like the ravens)
back where we then are challenged with radical trust in God
to provide the essential needs of life, so that we can be rich in God.
Jesus doesn’t make it easy for any of us:
he is challenging us to the extent of radical trust in God
to provide the essential needs of life.
“Seek first the Kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you.”

These might be scary thoughts, disquieting,
and they ARE meant to stir up some reflection in us.
We need to ask ourselves: Is this parable a mirror for my own condition?

So Jesus was being hard on that person who wanted him to arbitrate
in the dispute with his brother about the family inheritance.
Jesus was being hard on those in his culture who were prosperous.
Jesus was being hard on everyone
who had divided loyalties between wealth and God.
Jesus is being hard on us, who, in comparison
with most of the rest of the human family on this planet,
are rich beyond measure.

But it’s not because we are particularly wicked or sinful or hard-hearted
that Jesus is saying these hard words to us,
but because of his immense compassion.
He sees through the closed heart,
and looks at us with the agaph Love of God.

His mercy is there in his toughness,
a severe mercy because it is for our sake.

Would that we would let go of our fears,
that we would quit investing our wealth
in what has so many fears associated with it.

Would that we would be aware
and not neglect the opportunities for generosity,
generosity that is life giving for others.

Would that we would let go of our fears
and instead become rich in God.

Sermon Pentecost 8 Emmanuel, Mercer Island

The ministry of hospitality –
It was very important in OT times
as the story of Abraham and the 3 visitors indicates
It was very important in the time of Jesus
as seen in Martha working hard at providing hospitality
for Jesus and his entourage
and it has importance now
in how we offer hospitality here at Emmanuel.

Offering hospitality seems to come with some rewards:
for the congregation, we think about how
our lives would be enriched by guests who come and stay.

This would be a little different than in our homes
when we hope that the guests will go back to their own homes
after an appropriate length of time!

At church can we be honest about whether or not
we really want all guests here to stay?
What if that guest is someone different from ourselves?
What if that guest challenges us
and the extent to which we are willing to offer hospitality?
Be careful!
This difficult guest will most likely turn out to be Christ in disguise, a kind of pop quiz regarding our intentions and dedication and devotion.

In the Genesis story today hospitality is rewarded.

The three guests are angels of God,
or indeed the Divine Presence in Triune form,
as the famous Russian icon of the Trinity
at table under the oaks of Mamre.

The reward here is a healing for Sarah
so that she and Abraham will have the long promised son.

But now the hospitality story in the Gospel reading…
This story is odd; it doesn’t fit regarding hospitality
- as per much of what we read in the Gospel of Luke.
There is often an unexpected twist in these stories
from what one would ordinarily expect.
With Jesus something radical often happens,
and this case is no exception.

Martha has invited Jesus to her home,
and along with Jesus comes his disciples,
and if word got out around Bethany - and it most likely did -
then others show up.

Hospitality was the #1 social rule; it was sacrosanct.
In being properly hospitable, one must provide food, of course,
but also the other amenities – to provide for the guests to freshen up,
to wash feet … and hands and face…

I get the feeling that Martha actually would rather have been
just spending time with Jesus.
Quite possibly she was feeling resentful
because Mary was doing just what she wanted to do:
sit at the feet of Jesus and just listen to him, to be near him.

But instead Martha is running around seeing to hospitality needs
for all those guests in her home,
doing what was good and right, and not like her slacker sister,
so Martha was only able to listen to Jesus with one ear in passing,
as she went about carrying out this important duty of hospitality.

So she appealed to the obvious authority that Jesus has
for him to tell her sister to return to her proper place
in this obligation of hospitality, of serving and service.

But in this situation to serve while everyone else is sitting and listening
is to have a divided attention.
You really can’t give your full attention to the listening.
It’s trying to do some task while listening to someone talk to you.
You know, if that someone is your children, they usually call you on it.
They want your undivided attention.
and they aren’t hesitant to tell you so. Mine weren’t!


Jesus responds to Martha by addressing her own divided attention.
“You are anxious about many things,” he says.
And the Greek word for “anxious” means literally to have a divided mind.

Of few things is there a need, or just one, he tells her.
Mary has chosen the good part,
the single focus,
not the divided mind of both serving
and trying to catch bits of the Word Jesus is speaking.

Martha is to learn from Mary about the one thing necessary,
even more necessary, or especially more necessary,
than that culture’s #1 priority.

Too much of the Church’s ministry
of diakonia or service and the ministry of hospitality
is done with a divided mind,
with mixed motives, and without sitting and listening to Jesus.

Service flows from sitting and listening first,
from the relationship with Jesus that results in the realization
and deep knowing of our identity through baptism in Christ.
True serving
can only come out of first realizing on a very deep level
our relationship to Jesus,
and then service and ministry will flow and be unstoppable.
It doesn’t really work the other way around, in the reverse order.

If we want our service, our ministry, and hospitality
to be authentic and effective,
then we need to do what Mary was doing.

There is such a history of human good intentions about serving others
that ends up causing more harm than good,
that is patronizing and demeaning, that is manipulative,
that is done for the benefit of feeling magnanimous
rather than truly looking at what the recipient needs or wants.
We need to do what Mary is doing first.

What is it, then, to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to what he says?

Let me suggest to you that it is exactly that: Sit and listen.
I know something about this.
For me – if I am to be a spiritual leader worth my salt,
I need to do some serious listening.
For too many years I went just on memory,
what I learned in seminary
and what bits and pieces of hearing Jesus I had experienced
throughout the years.
But the time came when my inner spirit finally got through to me
with the truth of my spiritual condition:
Sit down, shut up and listen.
That’s when I started meditating.

You know, I took off 2 years from active ministry
for an extended sabbatical just to sit and listen.

Essentially I did nothing but meditate 6 – 8 hours a day and read the Bible,
There is a lot to this process of sitting and listening,

But here’s the thing –
after I had sat for 15 months straight,
I was sent back out into a new ministry of active service.

But this time with a whole new experience of faith and self-understanding
and context of compassion and integration in the whole being
of what had only been glimpsed at in the head previously.

So now I instruct others in how to sit down and listen, too,
because this is so crucial for doing any sort of ministry.

So what about here at Emmanuel?
Not everyone is going to run off and spend a year meditating in a convent.

But for all there is some form of spiritual practice,
that, when engaged faithfully and over time,
will facilitate sitting down and listening,
so that then your ministry can be transformed in its effectiveness.

Being here on a Sunday morning is good;
it’s a move in the right direction.

But how much time do we actually spend sitting and listening
during the liturgy?


We listen to scripture, you listen to me yammer,
but that can all go by quite quickly
with little or no time to absorb what you heard.

During communion is a good time for sitting and listening,
if we use that time intentionally for that.

You could come early and sit in silent prayer before the service.
You could stay after.
You could come to a meditation class.

What I am saying is that we need more than one hour on Sunday morning.
We need to practice this listening to Jesus daily.

I’m available for individual consultation regarding
figuring out a spiritual practice for sitting and listening,
or for assisting you in a spiritual process you are already doing.
I encourage each person to look intentional
at just what is your spiritual practice.

And follow Mary’s example first and foremost.
Then watch what happens to the ministry, service, and hospitality
that flow from it.

This is where the reward for hospitality is in the Gospel reading –
in getting to sit at Jesus feet,
getting to be with him…
What could be better?

SUMMER RETREAT – A Time to Live the Prayer of the Lamb
“Pray without ceasing.” 1 Thessalonians 5:17

July 5 – 9, 2010
Change of Location!
Emmanuel Episcopal Church
4400 86th Ave SE
Mercer Island

We will now be meeting at Emmanuel in the meditation room set amid flowering gardens and trees in a quiet neighborhood.
Full handicap accessibility.



Daily periods of group meditation,
scripture study and teaching,
with time for personal reflection.
Celebrations of the Supper of the Lamb
and generous spaces of silence.



We will meet daily 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM,
and share preparations for a simple lunch.

Each day will include five periods of silent meditation for a total of three hours, with an early morning meditation period optional.



Cost: Suggested donation $100
Scholarships available

Registration will be limited to 15.
Call 206-713-5321 or email PrayeroftheLamb1@mac.com with inquiries and to reserve a space.

Sermon Pentecost 3 Emmanuel, Mercer Island

Today we have some really terrific scripture readings
with really important spiritual teaching
and I would love to preach on everything there
but I will restrain myself reluctantly,
even though the feast is so rich.

But before we can get to that
I have to go to the one place in all these readings
that is most likely to hang us up,
the place that jars our sensibilities
and tends to sour our receptivity to all the rest.

It is the matter of the baby.

The words are hard to take.
Nathan tells David:
Now the LORD has put away your sin;
you shall not die.
Nevertheless…
the child … shall die.

One might well ask,
What kind of God is that who will let the adulterer and murderer off
but punish the innocent victim with death?

Let’s look at this first,
so that we can then be able to be with the rest of the lessons
and see the spiritual truth ready to be revealed to hearts open in faith.

Think for a moment about the situation and its political ramifications.
The king has played fast and loose with his royal power.
He has a faithful and trusted servant in his army general Uriah,
a man who is from outside the nation, a Hitite,
but who shows his loyalty by scrupulously following
the customs of the people among whom he has come to live.
Uriah shows his devotion to the king
by staying with his men in their encampment
instead of going home and sleeping with his wife
which would have given the king a covering for his adultery.

And so by his own uprightness Uriah dooms himself
and he sets things up for David to further sin
by deliberately causing his death in battle.
Uriah dies for his adopted country, a war hero, but needlessly.

Well, something like this can’t be kept a secret.
People can count.
Bathsheba produces a son for King David
in an amazingly short time after their marriage.
But no one is going to say anything about it around the king.

No one, that is, except Nathan, the prophet,
who risks his life to bring such a message to the king,
but it is essential to make the king, the Lord’s anointed, accountable,
for David’s sake and for the sake of the nation.

Adultery and murder at the heart of the government
is a travesty to the Covenant between God and the people.

And the great thing in this story is that David sees his sin and repents.

But, the wording of the passage tells us,
“the LORD struck the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David,
and it became very ill.”

The child dies.

It was actually a mercy that the child did die.
Think of it.
This son would always bear the burden of the events surrounding his birth.
His presence would be a continual reminder.
The culture and political climate into which he was born
would not tolerate that, and that is what killed him.
David would spend the days of the child’s illness
in prayer and fasting and weeping.
He saw the death coming and mourned.
And when the baby actually dies,
he gets up and washes his face and eats and resumes his work.

Yes, it is tremendously hard for a parent to lose a child.
That is the worst kind of loss that can happen, I believe.

And David suffered that not once, but twice,
again when his handsome son, Absalom, started a coup
to take over the throne from his father.
David gave explicit instructions to his military generals
that when captured, Absalom’s life should be spared,
but that did not happen,
because it couldn’t happen in that kind of political system.

And again, one might say, David bore the consequences of his sin
in the death of this second son.

It’s a horrible outcome all around.
We know that we have to live with the consequences of our actions
whether we are a king or not.
In our common shared humanity,
there is so much we just cannot get away with
without some kind of repercussion,
most especially in creating alienation in our closest relationships.

Now maybe our hearts can be open
so that we can look at the main issues in all these passages:
repentance, forgiveness, love and faith.

So let’s turn now to the gospel lesson.
Jesus is having dinner at the home of Simon, a Pharisee.

As a Pharisee, Simon would have been a good, upright, law-abiding man.
He probably was also well aware
that Jesus quite frequently had been critical of Pharisees
and quick to point out hypocrisy among them.
Simon was not entirely hospitable then in having Jesus as his guest,
for he had neglected to offer one of the typical services
of water to wash the road filth off the feet as he came in.
That was being taken care of by the tears and kisses of a disreputable woman
who had somehow gotten into Simon’s house.

The parable Jesus told said it all.
This woman knew she was a sinner
and somehow had come to the realization of forgiveness
and that this was directly linked with the person of Jesus.
Now she was showing him great, extravagant love
with the expensive alabaster jar of perfumed ointment –
a huge contrast with the restrained welcome Jesus got from Simon.

And then Jesus says to the woman:
Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.
Your faith has saved you.

Repentance, forgiveness, love and faith.
A very wise person once said to me,
“Faith is too important for God to leave it all to us.”
“Faith is too important for God to leave it all to us.”

That is the point of the epistle reading from Galatians today.
Paul is saying something very important,
and if you don’t hear anything else,
I would hope that you hear this.

The faith that saves us, that makes us justified before God,
is not our own faith produced by our own effort,
but the actual faith of Jesus.
Paul, speaking to us in the first person, states the union he experiences,
which we call our baptismal identity in Christ.
Translating literally from the Greek, Galatians 2:20 reads:
I have been crucified with Christ;
and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
And the life I now live in the flesh
I live by the faith of the Son of God.

It is his faith in us, the author and source of any faith we claim as our own,
that is the keystone, the linchpin, the cornerstone.

This is Jesus drawing us all to himself from his elevated place on the cross.
This is the gift of repentance, the gift of forgiveness, the gift of faith
in the lavish outpouring of love he shows to us
which draws us all into the outstretched arms of his embrace.

This is what the woman kissing Jesus’ feet had experienced.
This is what David had experienced,
so evident in the psalms he wrote,
the psalms that poured out of him
in response to the forgiveness he knew had been given to him,
a forgiveness that is the removal of alienation among the people.

And this is available for us too,
wherever we are in our realization of our need for being forgiven.

Moral Pharisee or blatant sinner, can we see that any sin is pernicious
and will lead to death – physical death or relational or spiritual death?

The adulterer and murderer gets off
and the innocent victim is put to death,
the holy child, the Lamb of God, no victim as we would think of as victim,
but self giving to the greatest extreme,
that the sinner may live, that we may live.

How much do we love him?
a little or a lot?
Does that say anything about how much we perceive that we are forgiven?

How much do you love Jesus?