The Eve of the Nativity, Year A

Isaiah 9: 2 – 7; Psalm 96; Titus 2: 11 – 14; Luke 2: 1 – 20
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2010.

“HUMBLE AND QUIET BEGINNINGS”
(Homily text: Luke 2: 1 – 20)

Perhaps it might be good for us to reflect on the ways in which God works, as we consider the very familiar passage we have before us tonight from Luke’s gospel account.

No doubt, many of us could recite from memory (maybe even in the King James Version) Luke’s account of Joseph and Mary’s trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus, his being wrapped in swaddling cloths, and the manger. We could also fit into our recitation the account of the shepherds in the fields, and the angelic host which said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men.”

As I have said on more than one occasion, sometimes I think that the pages of Holy Scripture tend to “flatten out” when we read them. Especially that might be true with a very familiar text that we hear again and again, such as Luke’s text tonight. The fact that the persons in the account were real people, people like us with hopes, dreams, problems, troubles, and challenges, often tends to get lost in our understanding of the meaning of the text. Put another way, the text often tends to lose its real, human dimension.

So, as the theme for this homily, allow some reflection on the ways that God works with people, allowing people who have been chosen by Him to be the agents of His will.

By reflecting on the people who are in tonight’s account, we can gain some insight into the ways God works, and we might learn something about the nature of God, as well.

We begin with Joseph.

We know from Holy Scripture that Joseph was a carpenter. It was a trade which his son would also take up as time went along. I think we’re safe in assuming that Joseph probably ran a small, family business, working with wood. What is certain is that Joseph worked with his hands. I believe we can be relatively sure that Joseph was not a member of the upper classes of society. Indeed, in the social strata of the time, he was probably closer to the lower end of things, than the upper end.

Of Mary’s stature, we know little from the pages of Scripture, though I think we can assume that she was of a similar station to Joseph. Usually, one did not marry too far outside one’s own social station in ancient times.

The community in which they lived, Nazareth, was apparently not well regarded. Recall with me Nathanael’s words to Philip, on learning that Jesus is from Nazareth, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1: 46).

So, despite the fact that Luke tells us that Joseph is “of the house and lineage of David”, Joseph is probably either a member of the lower class, or perhaps the lower end of the middle class, and he lives in a place that seems to be a little bit like “the other side of the tracks”.

Now, we turn to the matter of the shepherds in the field.

Most of us probably have an idyllic image of shepherds. Maybe the famous painting of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, carrying a sheep around His shoulders, influences our thinking. But the truth is that shepherds in biblical times weren’t well regarded. They were definitely of the lower and less desirable classes of people.

But it was through Joseph and Mary, who came from that less-than-desirable place Nazareth, and through the witness of the less-than-desirable shepherds, that God worked His will in bringing Jesus Christ into the world.

Hmmmm……

Why did God choose to work this way, through people who were of little or no account, at least in worldly terms?

Could this tell us something about God’s very nature itself?

I believe so.

Here, I offer some personal reflection (or maybe even a confession): Oftentimes, as I consider the problems and situations we face in the world today, and as I contemplate the challenges that are part of being a Christian in the year 2010, I often find myself wanting God to do something. Perhaps I ought to clarify: I want God to do something big!

My thoughts could be summed up in the following phrases:

“Come in and solve our problems, please,” is how I often find myself wanting to pray.

“Do it all for us, please.”

“Usher in a golden age for the world, and for your Church.”

“Solve the seemingly unsolvable problems, won’t you?”

Does any of this sound like your desires, as well? Maybe so.

I will admit to you that my hopes are often shaped this way, as I express them to God.

But what does the Christmas story tell us about God?

Just this:

1. God works with ordinary, fully human people to carry out His will. Joseph, Mary and the shepherds in the fields are all good examples of this truth.
2. More often than not, the beginnings of God’s great plans have humble beginnings that go unnoticed at first. Surely, the coming of Jesus Christ had humble beginnings (He was born in an animal barn), and His arrival was marked by very few people (Joseph, Mary, those who attended Mary at the birth, the shepherds, and perhaps a few others). Yet the great plan of God’s salvation began in just this quiet and humble way.

So, in closing, I offer some ideas for your own reflection, as God’s plan of salvation unfolds in your own lives, and in mine.

1. In what ways is God quietly working to bring us more and more into the image of God?
2. What humble beginnings can be found in our hearts and minds, in which God has begun a new thing?
3. How has God used people, ordinary people, to be agents of His will for our lives, as we interact with them.
4. How have we, as servants of Christ, been agents of God’s working in others’ lives?

May God bless our reflection, as we receive His only Son, Jesus Christ, into our hearts anew in this holy season. AMEN.

4 Advent, Year A

Isaiah 7: 10 – 16
Psalm 80: 1 – 7, 16 – 18
Romans 1: 1 – 7
Matthew 1: 18 – 25

A homily by: Fr. Gene Tucker
Given at: Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, December 19, 2010

“HARDSHIP, BEWILDERMENT, AND JOY”
(Homily text: Matthew 1: 18 – 25)

Hardship, bewilderment, and joy.

Each of these three realities are present in today’s gospel text, our very familiar reading from Matthew, chapter one.

Now perhaps many, if not most, of you, can recite the basics of this text from memory. Though it’s not as familiar a text that we hear at Christmas time as is the passage from Luke, chapter two (where we hear about the shepherds in the field, the angelic hosts saying “Glory to God in the highest”, and so forth), this text is still quite familiar to most of us. We can recall, for example, that it is here that we hear about way God informed Joseph about the events that were to take place via a dream. Indeed, if Luke’s focus in telling us about the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth is on Mary’s role, then Matthew’s focus is squarely on the work God had to do in getting Joseph ready for Jesus’ arrival.

So, let’s look at this very familiar passage from the perspective of: hardship, bewilderment, and joy, for all these of these realities are present in the text before us today.

Before we consider these three aspects of our reading, we should begin by noting an important aspect of the cultural situation that Mary and Joseph found themselves in.

We begin with the matter of pregnancy and betrothal. In the culture of Judaism 2,000 years ago, a couple who were bound for marriage first became betrothed to one another. In our terms today, we’d say they were engaged. This was a formal, legal arrangement, which could be broken only by undertaking a divorce. However formal the arrangement was, in contrast to our contemporary practices today, it did not permit consummation of the partnership, however. We’ll have more to say about this subsequently.

Now, we turn to the three aspects before us today:

Hardship: When Jesus’ arrived in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, the world was a harsh and foreboding place. There was no scarcity of hardship, especially for God’s people living in the Holy Land.

For one thing, there was the matter of the Roman occupation of the Promised Land. Brutal, oppressive and harsh, the Roman overlords exacted a high price for their presence among the Jews in blood, economic slavery and high taxes. Partly in response, God’s people reacted by asserting their uniquely God-given role as His people, putting a high priority on the strict observance of the Law of Moses, the place and priority of the construction of the Temple (which was ongoing by the time of Jesus’ birth for about 20 years or so), and on maintaining Jewish identity by erecting walls of separation between Jew and Gentile in matters of social custom and other transactions.

For another, it seemed as though God’s voice had grown silent. The last of the prophets had long ceased to be, and their voice, which had cried out in years past, “The word of the Lord came to me, saying,” was not to be heard in the land. Moreover, God was seen to be so remote and so unapproachable that it had become the custom not to be able to even utter the Sacred Name at all.

In short, times were tough, life was short and filled with hardship, and God seemed to be distantly removed from the struggles of everyday life.

And what of Joseph and Mary? Their predicament is even harsher, for they live in a small hamlet in Galilee known as Nazareth. Most likely, everyone knew them, and knew their circumstances. But Mary is pregnant, and most everyone would have known that no marriage had yet taken place between the two. Abiding by the demands of the Mosaic law meant death by stoning for Mary. This reality is in the background of Joseph’s consideration of what to do about this situation. Obviously, he cares for and loves Mary, and wishes to divorce her quietly, thus ending the relationship, and sparing Mary the awful consequences that her situation would normally bring with it. There is no shortage of hardship where Joseph and Mary are concerned. They have hardships in abundance!

Bewilderment: Into this very bleak landscape, breaking in as the first ray of sunshine on a golden morning, is the voice of God, delivered to Joseph via an angel in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

What now?

Perhaps Joseph might have wondered a couple of things at this point. (I will admit I am conjecturing here, for Matthew does not tell us what Joseph’s reaction was beyond his willingness to obey the voice of the angel who had appeared to him in a dream.) Perhaps Joseph might have wondered, first of all, just how it could be that a woman could become pregnant without a man to assist in the process. Joseph and Mary lived in a very traditional, honor-and-shame culture, a culture in which the procreation of children was reserved for marriage alone. That culture had what we would call “zero-tolerance” for any deviation from that expectation.

For another, perhaps Joseph wondered just who the Holy Spirit could be. God’s people had long had an understanding about the spirit of God, the one who had been present at the creation of the world (see Genesis 1: 1), but God’s spirit was regarded as being something that went forth from the presence of God. Their understanding was far different from our Christian understanding of the nature of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity. So, it seems possible that Joseph might have wondered about the identity of the Holy Spirit. Again, we are speculating, though it seems normal to suspect that Joseph might have had some of these thoughts. Nonetheless, that same creative ability that the spirit of God demonstrated at the beginning of creation is again present within Mary, for the angel says, “….that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.”

Joy!: But the news of Jesus’ arrival must have been an occasion for joy, as well.

Initially, it might have been an occasion of deep joy, mixed with hardship and bewilderment, for Mary and Joseph alone. Then, perhaps close family members and friends were also told about the dream Joseph had had, and perhaps Mary had related the visit of the Archangel Gabriel, too.

For hardships lay ahead: An arduous trip on the back of a donkey from Nazareth, in the north of the Holy Land, to Bethlehem, in the south, and this when Mary was nearly full term in her pregnancy. Then there was the plot to kill Jesus by King Herod, and the subsequent flight into Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath. And all the while, there were the suspicions of their neighbors back in Nazareth to reckon with.

But the central message of the announcement of Jesus’ birth is this: God had not forgotten His people, God’s voice was to be silent no longer!

The ancient prophecies were coming true, as Matthew takes great pains to confirm for us, time and again, in his gospel account. Matthew wants us to understand that God’s timeless plan was unfolding, that what God had promised centuries earlier was being put into reality, in the person of Jesus, the one who had come to save God’s people from their sins. (Jesus’ name in Hebrew (Yesh’ua) means “God saves”.)

And so, all three realities are present together, side-by-side, in Mary and Joseph’s lives, as God’s plan to save His people come to being through their agency.

All three realities: hardship, bewilderment and joy, are also present in our own lives today.

The world is still, for most of us, a dark, foreboding and difficult place, filled with more than its share of disappointment, loss and challenges.

Moreover, as we read the sacred pages of Holy Scripture, we might, as Joseph might have done, scratch our heads in bewilderment, asking ourselves, “How can these things be?”

And yet, we have cause for joy, tremendous, lasting, deep-down joy, for we know the entire account of Jesus’ life, His suffering, death and resurrection, and His eventual coming again in power and great glory. We know, as Mary and Joseph didn’t know at this point in their lives, the “rest of the story”, its power to save, its power to change lives, and its power to bring hope into hopeless situations.

And so, in this season of Advent, how are all of these three realities present in your life and mine? How do we experience hardship? How do we see bewilderment as we struggle to understand the mysteries of God? How do we find occasions of joy in what God has done in Jesus Christ, and continues to do?

For all these things, thanks be to God!

AMEN.

3 Advent, Year A

Isaiah 35:1-10; Psalm 146:4-9; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2–11
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, December 12, 2010.

“THE FRUITS OF IDENTITY”
(Homily text: Matthew 11: 2 – 11)

What a difference a week makes!

Last week, we heard John the Baptist say this about the Messiah: “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

This week, we hear John’s question, posed to Jesus through some of his own disciples. They come, asking the Lord, “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

The progression in John’s relationship with Jesus doesn’t seem to make much sense.

The first statement\ (which was made at the time of Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River) seems to show that John is quite sure of Jesus’ identity. As the scene unfolds following this statement, John seems to be aware of Jesus’ identity (at least in part), for John says to Jesus that “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

But the second statement, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” seems to indicate a desire for confirmation of Jesus’ identity, or perhaps even doubt on John’s part.

At first glance, John’s question is unsettling.

Upon further reflection, however, we can take a good lesson from John’s inquiry, making his quest to know exactly who Jesus is our quest, as well.

In due course, we will consider that quest.

However, we should take a closer look at the nature of Jesus’ response to John’s disciples.

Notice, first of all, that He does not give a direct answer. Oftentimes in the gospel accounts, we find that Jesus makes indirect answers, answers that often ask the questioner to do some work.

Here, as well, is an answer that requires the other party to do some work.

Jesus says, in response, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.”

A side note is in order here: Jesus’ statement is a summary of the miracles He has been performing in chapters eight and nine of Matthew’s gospel account.

What do all of these acts which are mentioned by Jesus have in common? Two answers pop into my mind:

1. They all operate on a personal level;

2. They all restore a person’s ability to come into God’s presence.

To expand on the two points made above, we should reflect on what we’ve just said.

As to the matter of the personal level of each of Jesus’ actions, we note that each of the miracles involve Jesus and one person. Even where two persons are healed (as in the healing of the two blind men in Matthew 9: 27 – 31), the interaction is still, essentially, one-on-one, Jesus and one other person. This point will be important to us in our consideration of the importance of today’s text to us.

Furthermore, each of the acts Jesus mentions removes an impediment to being able to worship God in the Temple. Recall with me that the Law of Moses (the Torah) made it impossible for a person with a skin disease, who was lame, or blind, or deaf, to enter the Temple. Jesus restores the individual’s place among God’s people, in essence. In addition, in biblical times, many regarded a person who was poor as being one whom God had abandoned for some reason or another (often, the assumption was that a person was poor because of some gross sin in their lives). (I guess it goes without saying that a dead person was also excluded.) So all of these are restored to an ongoing relationship with God.

Now, we return to the matter of our consideration of the importance of today’s text for us, as we live out the Christian life today.

First of all, notice the difference in John’s two statements. The first statement, the one about the Messiah being the one who will “clear his threshing floor,” seems like a large-scale description of the workings of the Messiah. No doubt many in Jesus’ day expected the Messiah to come in with a grandiose arrival (perhaps riding into Jerusalem on a white horse, his sword raised in triumph), a monumental plan of action, and a forceful demonstration of power. Perhaps many expected a new “golden age” of national prominence such as had existed a thousand years earlier under King David and King Solomon’s reigns. But notice the nature of the second one, the question which asks, “Are you the one?” This statement seeks clarity and confirmation. It may, as we noted above, have been motivated by some doubt.

But perhaps John’s question, asked later on, was prompted by the nature of Jesus’ ministry, a ministry that was unfolding in small, often unnoticed acts, a ministry that spread the kingdom of heaven one person at a time. Though Jesus’ popularity grew as His ministry progressed, and though there were, at times, large crowds who followed Him (we think of the feeding of the 5,000 as an example), for the most part, there is no great and grand scheme (by worldly standards) present in Jesus’ ministry.

Earlier in this homily, we made a remark about John’s quest to ascertain exactly who Jesus is. John’s quest serves as a model for us, for we are also called to be certain of Jesus’ identity. “Are you really the one?” we should ask.

How might we come to know that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ ?

We will come to know Jesus as Lord through the evidence of His working in our lives, and in the lives of others. We will come to know Him through the witness of Holy Scripture. As we compare the witness we find there with the witness of a changed life, we come to know that Jesus is the one who has come. There is no need to look for another.

Jesus comes, offering wholeness of being, which is the bottom line of the miracles He recounts to John’s disciples in our text today.

Restoration of a relationship with God is made possible through Jesus’ acts. The impediments which make a relationship with God possible are removed. Put into our contemporary context, we might say that oftentimes, it is hardness of heart, indifference, and sin that require the Lord’s healing today.

And where will we find the evidence of the Lord’s working? The answer is: In our lives, as God works individually with each one. For it is there that the mission field is to be found.

The kingdom of heaven is built, one person at a time. The kingdom comes slowly, sometimes imperceptibly. It can be seen in the changes which sometimes occur only over a considerable length of time.

But God’s working within us and through us bears an unmistakable stamp of divine power at work. Sometimes we see God’s power as individuals are freed from addictions that they themselves are powerless to conquer. Sometimes it is seen in miraculous healings which go beyond our human powers to achieve. (In this regard, I think of the miraculous healing of a priest whose eyesight was deteriorating, and whose circumstances no medical power could address, but who was healed through the laying-on-of-hands and prayer.) Oftentimes, it is seen in the uniquely divine qualities that shine through a person who has come to know that the answer to the question, “Are you the one?” is “Yes, Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God”.

May we continue our personal quest to ascertain with certainty that Jesus Christ is the “one who has come” to save us, and to restore us to right relationship with God.

AMEN.

2 Advent, Year A

Isaiah 11: 1 – 10
Psalm 72: 1 – 7. 18 – 19
Romans 15: 4 – 13
Matthew 3: 1 – 12

A homily by: Fr. Gene Tucker

Given at: Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, December 5, 2010

“JUST WHERE IS THE HOLY-OF-HOLIES?”

(Homily text: Matthew 3: 1 – 12)

Just where is the Holy-of-Holies, anyway?

I speak, of course, of the most holy place, a place where God can dwell.

To the Jews of 2,000 years ago, those who had come out to the Jordan River to hear John the Baptist preach his message of repentance, and to enter into the waters of baptism in the river, their answer would have been, “In the Temple in Jerusalem, that’s where the Holy-of-Holies is.”

Indeed, they were right.

That most sacred of places, the Holy-of-Holies, was located at the heart of the most sacred of places, the Temple Mount itself. The very presence of God was understood to be present in the Holy-of-Holies, even as the entire complex was seen by the people of 2,000 years ago to be God’s dwelling place. Its imposing size (even today, if you go to Jerusalem and see the mount itself, the massive platform that survived the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, the size and height of the mount is deeply impressive) signified that God was present with His people.

So, by its imposing presence, God seemed to be near, near to His Chosen People.

And yet, God was hidden, hidden behind the veil that separated the Holy-of-Holies from the lesser areas surrounding it. Only the priest was able to enter into the Holy-of-Holies, and then only infrequently.

For all of God’s nearness, seen in the physical presence of the Temple complex, God’s presence in people’s daily lives seemed remote. Or at least that’s the image we get from the New Testament.

We may be sure that the Jews of ancient days did all of the prescribed sacrifices, went to the Temple, having ritually cleansed themselves beforehand, and sought to apply all of the hundreds of rules and regulations that the Law of Moses required to every aspect of living. Rabbis of that time debated the ways in which that sacred Law was to be applied to daily life. Intense scrutiny was applied to each and every action. Leading this sort of minute examination were the Pharisees, who appear in today’s Gospel text, coming (we may suppose) to observe what John was doing there in the wilderness in the River Jordan.

“This is the way we draw near to God,’ they may have thought.

And yet, the picture drawn for us by Holy Scripture is one of nearness to God in the formal, rigid, legalistic sense, and yet God was removed, far removed from people’s hearts. As evidence of the godless condition of many in John’s day, we may point to the plot to murder Jesus which was hatched by the leadership of the Temple. That action was led by the “holy men” of Jesus’ day, who, outwardly at least, were righteous and holy in every respect. Yet inwardly, they were capable of crafting an evil plot to rid themselves of that pesky preacher from Galilee.

And so John the Baptist’s voice rings out, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near!”

Now, at first hearing, perhaps some in John’s audience might have said to themselves, “Why do I need to enter into the water to receive a baptism for the repentance of sins? I’ve already washed myself in preparation for my visit to the Temple, just the other day.”

We don’t know for sure, but perhaps some who might have thought that way needed a short course in repentance.

If so, then what might a short course in repentance look like?

It might look like this:

• The Temple which God seeks to occupy is located in the human heart: In the truest sense, it is not, cannot be, a physical building, no matter how imposing and glorious it might be.

• God cannot take up residence in a sinful place.

• The human heart, which is the Holy-of-Holies which God seeks to occupy, must be cleansed of all impurities, and it must be wholly dedicated to the sacred purpose of being God’s throne room, even as the Holy-of-Holies which was located at the top of Mount Zion in Jerusalem was cleansed of all impurities, and was set apart (consecrated) for sacred use.

Hence the need for repentance.

By confessing our sins, and by allowing God to wash them away in the waters of baptism, we allow God to do the cleansing and the consecrating. Both actions are necessary in order for God to become resident in our hearts.

By now, you’ve probably guessed that repentance is a key Advent theme. We hear it in our Collect for the Day today, as we ask the holy and merciful God to “give us grace to heed their (the prophets) warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer….”

The Collect sets before us the purpose of our repentance, for in addition to creating the cleansed and dedicated conditions that are necessary for God to take up residence within, these actions also prepare us to receive God’s only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, as He comes anew to us at the great Feast of the Incarnation (Christmas).

For the Lord seeks to relate to us in an intimate, ongoing, face-to-face relationship. To have such a relationship is to experience the relationship that Adam and Eve had in the Garden of Eden before their disobedience removed them from God’s presence. Such a restoration of intimacy is possible only through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, whose death on the cross makes possible the peace with God that He alone offers. We accept His sacrifice on our behalf, claiming its benefits even as we deplore and confess our sins.

Then, God comes to take up residence in a cleansed, renewed, and sacred space, our hearts.

AMEN.

25 Pentecost, Year C

Proper 28 -- Malachi 3:13 – 4:2a,5–6; Psalm 98:5–10; II Thessalonians 3:6–13; Luke 21:5–19
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, November 14, 2010

“REPAINT AND THIN NO MORE!”
(Homily text: Luke 21: 5 – 19)

Some years ago, a painter had been hired to repaint the old church that had stood for so many years on the edge of town. Its wooden sides were chipped and peeling, but it was a beautiful old church that everyone loved.

So, the painter set to work. Pretty much, he was all alone, working away. Since it was the middle of the week, there were very few people around, except for the occasional parishioner, and the pastor, who seemed to be preoccupied with many things as he passed by the ladders and scaffolding.

It occurred to the painter that, if he would just thin out the paint a little, it’d take a whole lot less paint to finish the job, and the savings that would result would be all his. “No one will ever know,” he thought to himself, since there would be no one to see him adding thinner to the paint.

So, thin he did. All seemed to be working quite well with the painter’s plan until, one day, a storm cloud suddenly appeared on the horizon. The painter, as well as everyone in town, seemed quite surprised by the sudden appearance of this dark cloud, since the weather had been so beautiful, clear and bright (much like the beautiful weather we’ve been having this fall).

And, as suddenly as the cloud appeared, it began to thunder, lightning and rain. Buckets of water came out of the sky.

As soon as the cloud had appeared, it also disappeared, but not before having washed all of the thinned-out paint off the church. The painter stood dumbfounded, gazing at the results. And as he did so, a deep voice came out of the cloud, saying, “Repaint, and thin no more!”

Now this little story (joke) has a lot to tell us about Jesus’ teaching, heard today, about the coming difficult times which await God’s people.

In particular, the setting for Jesus’ comments is the beautiful Temple in Jerusalem. It must have been an awesome place, even though it was still uncompleted when Jesus uttered the words we hear today.1
Hearing Jesus say that “the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another, all will be thrown down,” must have stuck His listeners as an odd statement. Much like the painter in our opening story, who must have thought that his work would last indefinitely, the Jews of Jesus’ day considered the Temple to be a permanent and enduring symbol of their work and their identity.

But the days did come when “not one stone was left upon another,” for the Romans destroyed the Temple complex at the conclusion of the Jewish-Roman War, in 70 AD. Even today, one can see in the stones of the recently excavated street which is on the southwest side of the Temple wall, the effects of the stones hitting the pavement below, as Roman soldiers threw the stones over the wall to the ground below.

The storm clouds of war came and swept away the work that seemed so handsome and so permanent.

God’s judgment comes, and Jesus describes the divine judgment in traditional, biblical language: “There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues, and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.” To Jesus’ original hearers, the message would – most likely – have been very clear: This is God’s judgment!

It comes swiftly, like a suddenly appearing storm cloud on the horizon. It is as if God’s voice rings out from the heavens: “Repent, and sin no more!” To this warning might be added another: “Be sure that your work will endure when the storm clouds appear.”

By now, we know that Luke’s original readers2 were already experiencing the events that Jesus foretold: The Temple had been destroyed, the result of the Jewish nation arising against the Roman nation. The resulting war brought plagues and famines (for a detailed account of the conditions in and around Jerusalem at the conclusion of the Jewish-Roman War, read the first century historian Josephus’ account of it in his work The Jewish War 3).

Moreover, organized persecutions had begun under the Emperor Nero: When the city of Rome caught fire in 64 AD, Nero decided he needed someone to blame, and he chose the Christians. Consequently, many were martyred. In succeeding years, many others would be dragged before magistrates to give an account of their faith.

Jesus’ words had come true.

If all of this sounds a lot like some of our Advent season themes, your assessment of the overall sense of today’s gospel reading and the themes of the Advent season is quite correct, in my estimation.

For Advent concentrates on Jesus’ first coming, which we commemorate at Christmas, and on His second coming, at which time He will judge the living and the dead (as the Creed says). During Advent, we also focus in the time in between the first and the second comings, that is, the time we are living in now. Traditionally, Advent is a season for repentance, as we consider our lifestyles and our sins, knowing that God’s judgment awaits us, both in this life, and in the life to come.

The Church, in her wisdom, ends the old Church Year where the new Church Year begins. To do so reminds of the cyclical nature of God’s working, and our relating to that work.

For, you see, Jesus’ warnings and the truth He imparts to us, are timeless. The truth of His word applies to the first century, as well as to the twenty first.

If the business of living was difficult for Christians in the first century, it will also be difficult for Christians today. Yes, the nature of the trials and troubles will be different, and they will be – we hope in God, at least – of a lesser sort than our spiritual forebearers endured.

But the temptation to cut corners spiritually and to take the easy way will always be there. After all, if we are tempted to do these things when the skies of our lives are clear and cloudless, what will happen when our work is tested by the storm clouds of life?

Even so, Lord Jesus, come into our hearts, that we may work diligently while we may, to the end that your truth may be grafted in our hearts, so that when the time of judgment comes, we may rest confidently in your enduring presence within.

AMEN.

[1]   The entire construction project lasted about 64 years, and would not be completed until about 20 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
[2]   Many scholars date Luke’s writing of his gospel account to the years 85 – 90 AD.

[3]   Written in about 75 AD.

23 Pentecost, Year C

Proper 26 -- Isaiah 1:10–20; Psalm 32:1–8; II Thessalonians 1:1–12; Luke 19:1–10
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, October 31, 2010.

“WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU ARE IN THE PRESENCE OF HOLINESS?”
(Homily text: Luke 19: 1 – 10)

We begin this morning with a question that each of us ought to ask ourselves regularly: “What do we do when we are in the presence of holiness?

What did Zacchaeus do?

He climbed a tree, for one thing. For another, he repented of his deceitful ways.

I think it’s fair to say that when Zacchaeus first heard that Jesus was passing through Jericho, he was probably just curious to see Jesus. Maybe he’d heard about some of the things Jesus had done as He made His way into town. For one thing, Jesus had healed a blind beggar at the edge of Jericho (see Luke 18: 35 – 43). Maybe Zacchaeus had heard about that, and wanted to see something more like it take place.

We simply don’t know.

But we do know that there was an urgency to Zacchaeus’ desire to see Jesus….Notice that Luke tells us that Zacchaeus ran to get ahead of where Jesus was going to pass by. We also notice that Zacchaeus then climbs a tree to get a better view, since he was a short man.

At this point, we ought to stop for a moment. For to our 21st century sensibilities, neither action (the running and the climbing) seem to constitute anything at all unusual. After all, in our society today, adults regularly run (for fitness). Not many climb trees, however, since it is usually children who want to do those things.

But in the first century, a grown man risked ridicule for running, and more ridicule for climbing a tree. Neither action was likely to bolster a person’s esteem in the eyes of the community back then.

But Zacchaeus sets aside his pride and his social standing (such as it was, considering that he was a chief tax collector) in order to get a better look at Jesus.

At this point, we ought to pause again, and recall what the occupation of tax collector entailed in the first century.

Tax collectors are never most people’s favorite personages in any age. However, in the first century in occupied Palestine, most Jews hated them. The reason was simple: Many tax collectors were Jews who collaborated with the Romans by providing the Romans with the financial means to continue to oppress the Jews and to occupy the Holy Land. Moreover, the Roman system of taxation was rife with the possibility of graft and corruption, for the Romans contracted with a local tax collector, who paid the total amount of tax due in advance. After the payment was made, the tax collector then extracted payment from the residents of his district, and was able to pad the total amount due, keeping the difference between the taxes which were due and the money that was collected. Evidence of the graft and corruption which the system encouraged can be seen in Zacchaeus’ pledge to repay four fold anyone he’d cheated.

No wonder that tax collectors were lumped in with the prostitutes and other “sinners” in the estimation of many people. We hear this in the grumbling of the crowd as Jesus tells Zacchaeus that He will be staying with him that day. They say, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner!”

So, what do we do when we are in the presence of holiness?
This, of course, is the question we began with this morning.

Keeping this question in mind, let’s return to the text, and see what Zacchaeus does.

First of all, as we make our way through the sequence of events as Jesus greets Zacchaeus (who is still up in the sycamore-fig tree), let’s take the time to notice what is not said. The things that we might normally expect to show up in Luke’s recounting of this event are missing. Notice that Jesus never insists that Zacchaeus change his ways, for example. Not one word is reported to us about that. So far as we know, this important aspect of Zacchaeus’ change of behavior is missing entirely from Luke’s account.

Next, notice that Zacchaeus volunteers to do something: He will give away half of his goods to the poor, and he pledges to repay anyone he’s defrauded four fold.

In so doing, Zacchaeus lives out John the Baptist’s instructions (which can be found in Luke 3: 10 – 13) to those who were to give away half of their possessions (John the Baptist said that those who had two coats should share one with someone else in need), and to tax collectors, that they should not collect more than the amount prescribed.

In response, Jesus says that “Salvation has come to this house.”

What’s missing here? How did we get from Zacchaeus’ announcement of his intentions to live a new and better way to Jesus’ announcement that salvation had come to Zacchaeus’ house? After all, Zacchaeus didn’t make a statement of faith, nor did he admit (at least not openly) the mistakes of the past.

As I said a moment ago, I think what’s missing in the text is as important as what’s present.

Notice that Zacchaeus doesn’t say something like, “Lord, I’m sorry I’ve done the things I’ve done. I repent, and ask for God’s forgiveness.” No such statement – or anything like it – is to be found in the text.

But Zacchaeus’ actions constitute evidence of a new, inner reality.

For Zacchaeus’ actions prove that there’s been a change of heart. Maybe Zacchaeus’ conscience bothered him as Jesus came into his house. Maybe it bothered him a lot.

I know that if I’d been in Zacchaeus’ shoes, my conscience would be bothering me! Maybe you would feel the same way.

So, what do we do when we are in the presence of holiness?

Zacchaeus’ actions give us a good pattern to follow:

1. Be willing to set aside our dignity: That’s what Zacchaeus did by running to get ahead of Jesus, and by climbing the tree to get a better look. To get a better look at Jesus, we might just look a little bit like an idiot in the process.
2. Be ready to have Jesus address us personally, by name: Notice that Jesus exercises His divine omniscience to address Zacchaeus by name. Jesus singles him out for special attention. Jesus “seeks out and saves the lost” (see verse 10) as He calls Zacchaeus (and us) by name, each one personally.
3. Recognize the urgency in Jesus’ address: We hear the word “today” (as in “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.”) “Behold, now is the day of salvation,” we read in II Corinthians 6: 2b. A change in our hearts should begin today!
4. Evidence of a change of heart within is shown in the way we live: Certainly, there was a change of heart, a new way of living, that came to Zacchaeus that day. His willingness to change his ways was an outward and visible sign of the reorientation of his heart within.

May we, too, respond to the presence of holiness that Jesus’ presence among us represents, that we may amend our lives, that salvation may be ours.

AMEN.

Pentecost 22, Year C

Proper 25 -- Jeremiah 1: 10 – 19 – 22; Psalm 84: 1 – 6; II Timothy 4: 6 – 8, 16 – 18; Luke 18: 9 – 14

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, October 24, 2010.

“WAGES, OR A GIFT?”
(Homily text: Luke 18: 9 – 14)

Think with me for a moment about the difference between wages and a gift.

When we receive payment for work done, we call that payment “wages”. In Jesus’ day, a common day laborer was paid one denarius per day, that was the prevailing wage.

Today, we still measure – in most cases – wages in terms of time and money. For example, we say that the wage for a given position is “so much per hour”.

A wage is given in direct response to the amount of time that’s been devoted to the work for which it is paid. In the case of a wage, the wage-earner earns his/her monetary payment.

Now, think about a gift for a moment….A gift is something we do not earn. It may be given in response to some aspect of a relationship between two persons or between a person and a group, or between two groups. For example, we give gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, or when people leave a position and go elsewhere, to cite some examples.

We can’t earn a gift. Even if a gift is given in response to something a person (or persons) has done, there’s no direct correlation between the two. The gift is freely given. The gift can’t be demanded, for it isn’t a gift, if it is.

Now, keeping in mind the difference between wages and a gift, let’s turn our attention to today’s gospel text, which is the very familiar Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (tax collector). This parable is but one example of the treasure trove which Luke alone imparts to us. No other gospel writer provides this parable to us.

Here, we see the Pharisee, first of all, proclaiming his righteous deeds:

• “God, I thank thee that I am not like other men!”
• “I fast twice a week,”
• “I give tithes of all that I get.”

(Notice that Jesus says that the Pharisee is “praying with himself”! The message is clear: The phone line is dead! There’s no one (God) listening at the other end.

Now, contrast the Pharisee’s behavior with that of the tax collector. Jesus says that the tax collector wouldn’t “even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast.” Moreover, the tax collector “stood afar off”.

Finally, the tax collector says to God, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”

As we analyze the behavior of the two men, we see that the Pharisee is interesting in being paid, rewarded, for his work. That seems to be the clear implication of his actions.

Such an assumption is in keeping with the image that the four gospels paint of the Pharisee movement. We should remember that this group knew the Law of Moses, the Torah, backwards and forwards. They sought to ensure that everyone kept every one of its hundreds of precepts faithfully and religiously. They also seemed to be quite proud not only of their knowledge, but of their accomplishments in doing so. Think of the very unflattering image we have from Jesus’ lips about this sort of religious person: He says that they love to have the best seats in the synagogues and at banquets, they love to be greeted in the marketplaces by their titles, and they love to wear long robes.

On the other hand, the tax collector goes away “justified” in the sight of God, Jesus says.

Why?

The reason is simple: The tax collector’s prayer is the very prayer that creates a relationship between God and us. By praying the tax collector’s prayer, we admit our sinfulness, which separates us from God’s holiness. And, we pray for God’s mercy to be present upon us and within us.

When we admit our spiritual condition, and ask for God’s mercy, then a relationship of love begins between God and us.

Such a love relationship is then created in which gifts flow between God and us.

So, Jesus’ point seems to be that we can’t earn God’s favor.

If the Pharisees and the Scribes missed that point, so too did some of the early Christians.

St. Paul takes pains to underscore the spiritual reality of the nature of our relationship with God when he writes in Ephesians 2: 9 this: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God – not because of works, lest any man should boast.”

We couldn’t state the formula by which we come into a right relationship with God any better – or more clearly – than that.

We are saved by grace, through faith. And this saving is a gift. We can’t earn it.

As time went along, other Christians also struggled with this reality. In the late 4th and early 5th centuries, a British theologian named Pelagius taught that human beings could respond to God through their own initiative, without God’s grace. Subsequently, others began to teach similar ideas, and we know this heresy by the name of its founder, Pelagianism.

The spirit of Pelagianism is alive and well today: For many think that they can work their way up into God’s grace and favor by their own means and by their own efforts.

Lifting up themselves by their own spiritual bootstraps might be a good way to summarize this sort of an attitude.

As more time went along, Christians during the Reformation era also struggled with the spirit of Pelagianism, as many reformers stood in opposition to the idea that human beings could better themselves in God’s eyes by their own efforts. Indeed, this thread within the Reformation movement was a major one. We would do well not to lose sight of the importance of this thread in the attempts of the reformers in the 16th century to bring the Church back to a right understanding of the nature of the relationship between God and us.

God’s mercy is a gift to us, something that we can’t earn at all (for we have nothing to pay for it with!).

And God’s continuing presence, guidance and support all throughout this life is a gift that continues to manifest itself as time goes along.

In response, we give God gifts. These may be gifts of time, gifts of our talents, devoted to the Lord’s work in this place and elsewhere, gifts of our monetary treasure (this could easily become a stewardship sermon, as we think about our financial support of our parish church’s ministries in the coming year).

Put another way, the basis for our relationship with God is God’s grace, first and foremost. In response, we come to God in faith, trusting in His goodness and mercy, and acknowledging our sinfulness, seen in the light of God’s holiness.

Now, the relationship can be established, for it rests on this foundation.

What follows, then, is an exchange of gifts: gifts that God gives to us, and gifts that we give in response.

There is no accounting measure in place as gifts flow between God and the people that He loves. No measure which might say “I gave you so many gifts, and you gave me so many.”

No.

For if we begin to keep count, then we are in the same position as the Pharisee, for we are demanding payment for deeds done.

May the Holy Spirit bring our hearts to life, that we may see God’s grace clearly, acknowledge our own unworthiness to ask for God’s mercy, and then receive that mercy.

May the gifts then begin to flow between God and us, uncounted, unaccounted, until we see Him face-to-face.

AMEN.

21 Pentecost, Year C

Proper 24 -- Genesis 32:3–8, 22–30; Psalm 121; II Timothy 3:14–4:5; Luke 18:1–8
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, October 17, 2010

“A PRIMER ON PRAYER”
(Homily text: Luke 18: 1 – 8)

“And he (Jesus) told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” (Luke 18: 1)

Our Lord sets before us today a primer on prayer. In it, we hear the Lord’s instructions about the importance of prayer, about the Father’s willingness to hear our prayers, and about the Father’s continuing care for, and responsiveness to, His people.

Throughout Luke’s gospel account, we read again and again about Jesus’ prayer life. We also have an account of Jesus’ teaching His disciples how to pray, as Luke reminds us about the circumstances of the giving of the Lord’s Prayer (see Luke 11: 1 – 4). The image we have from Luke’s portrayal of Jesus’ life is that He was one who was given to much prayer.

Today’s gospel account calls us to be people of prayer.

So, let’s begin by recalling the circumstances of the early Church to which Luke might have been writing. Let’s also remember our own circumstance as the Church in the 21st century. In my view, the early Church and the Church today face many similar challenges, especially in the area of prayer.

If biblical scholars are correct in their assessment that Luke may have been writing about the period 85 – 90 AD, then it’s possible that the Church to whom he was writing may have been wrestling with deep questions about their place in God’s eternal plans. By the time Luke may have been writing, many in the Church were questioning the idea that Jesus would return in glory very soon. It might have begun to occur to these early believers that Jesus’ return might not occur for some length of time. If so, then the question arises: “What should we be doing, if we (the Church) are going to be here on earth for awhile?”

In connection with this question comes another one: “Has God abandoned us?”

I think this question is a natural one, and it may have been on the minds and in the hearts of many of those early Christians. After all, by the time Luke is writing, some of the early persecutions had already occurred. Christians had paid with their lives the price of their faith. Life in general for Christians in the Roman Empire wasn’t getting any easier as time went by. “Had God abandoned His people?” It seems to be a fair assumption to make that this question was a major concern of those early Christian people.

It’s likely that Luke is addressing just such concerns as these by relating Jesus’ parable to us.

By now, it has been nearly 2,000 years since Jesus walked this earth and taught us about the Father. By now, Luke’s gospel account itself is about 1,900 years old.

Much has changed for God’s people in the interim.

But much has also stayed the same: Living the Christian life isn’t an easy proposition, even in a wonderful country like ours. For one thing, the culture we live in is a thoroughly secular one, a culture that seems to promote and value many of the same behaviors as were found in the Roman Empire. Though we American Christians aren’t paying with our lives the price of our faith, we are still finding ourselves swimming upstream against the current of a secular culture whose values are antithetical to Christian values, much of the time.
On the surface, it may not seem like God answers prayer, or that He is even present in our day-to-day lives.
“Has God abandoned His people?” we ask.
Today’s parable, generally known as the “Parable of the Unjust Judge”, provides an answer. It also provides encouragement, encouragement that we, like those first century Christians, are called to be a people given to much prayer.

Before we consider the aspects of what might constitute a healthy and active prayer life, let’s look briefly at the parable itself.

At first glance, the parable may not seem to make a whole lot of sense.

Jesus uses a literary device in the parable which is known as lesser-to-greater. This device allows the reader or hearer to identify with a common situation, in order to extrapolate the meaning from it and transfer it to the greater, larger situation. Here, then, Jesus uses the example of a judge who “neither feared God nor regarded men” to show that the judge was crooked, essentially. This judge apparently ignored all of the Old Testament requirements for a person to act as judge in legal matters. Regard for the sacred trust placed in judges apparently didn’t phase this unjust judge, not in the least. Concern for God’s sense of justice, and care for God’s people, didn’t seem to matter to this particular judge at all.

And so, Jesus then says that a widow sets her case before this unjust judge. We must recall, at this juncture, the plight of widows in biblical times. In Jewish culture, widows had very little legal standing. In fact, in order to gain legal protections, oftentimes widows would have to have a male relative present their case before a court.

So, it’s clear from Jesus’ parable that the widow has very little leverage with which to move the unjust judge to hear her case, and to grant her legal relief. All she can do is to pester the judge, which she does.

Jesus makes the point that, if an unjust judge will grant consideration to the widow’s request by virtue of her unceasing efforts, then won’t God – who isn’t unjust nor unhearing – grant our requests without pestering? This is the lesser-to-greater movement Jesus intends for us to make.

Exactly. God is much more willing to hear than we are to pray. God is much more willing to grant our requests than we are deserving of such an answer to our prayers. (We have a wonderful collect which expresses these two ideas beautifully: See page 234 in the Book of Common Prayer, 1979. This collect is prayed on a Sunday in early October every year.)

If we can accept the truth of God’s willingness to hear, and His willingness to grant our requests as they are in accordance with His will, then what about the matter of prayer? Are there misconceptions present in our thinking about the nature of prayer? And, for that matter, what might a healthy prayer life look like?

It is to these two questions that we now turn.

We begin with misconceptions that might be present in our attitudes and our approach to the important matter of prayer. Each misconception will be posed in the form of a question.

Where’s that in the book? The Book of Common Prayer is a wonderful tool to aid us in worship, and in prayer. Rich Anglican liturgical worship, which is based on the Prayer Book, can’t be beat for depth and richness of expression, and for a sheer beauty which values a sense of the majesty of God. But there’s a down side to having such a rich prayer resource: We can get so used to using it that we forget how to pray without it. Many longtime Episcopalians stumble when they have an occasion to pray, because they seem to feel they need the Prayer Book to do so.

Of course, the God who is much more willing to hear than we are to pray (as we said a little while ago), is also the God who knows our concerns before we ask (as the Prayer Book also says). These two truths should encourage us to simply give to the Lord our praise, our concerns, and our thanksgivings. So what if our first attempts at saying or praying these things are clumsy? In time, we’ll get better at praying extemporaneously. Practice does make perfect, in this case.

Don’t we need a church? Here, we confront another common attitude: We can only pray in the church building itself. Prayer, according to this attitude, should be an activity that we do when we’re in church. However, I get the impression that we might feel that we don’t need to pray at other times.

In contrast to this attitude, Jesus’ parable, heard today, calls us to be people of prayer, all the time, and in every place. Prayer ought to suffuse our daily lives.

“Father, please pray for me”: Another common attitude is that the clergy have some sort of a “hot line” to God. Coupled with this attitude is one which says that God hears the prayers of clergy more than He hears other prayers.

Nonsense.

For one thing, if we clergy believe that God hears us more than He hears others, then we are in the same spiritual boat as the Pharisee in Jesus’ Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (which we will consider next week). If clergy think they are somehow closer to God than others are, then the truth is that those same clergy are actually farther away from God than others are.

Clergy don’t have a “hot line” to God. All of us have such a “hot line”, and it is available to us 24/7/365. Today’s parable encourages us to make use of our connection to the Father.

One thing that clergy might – and ought – to be doing is to be about the business of prayer. So, we might say that clergy might possibly engage in more prayer that some people do. That would be the only possible difference between laity and clergy: the amount of time and effort spent in prayer.

Now, how might a prayer life be characterized as a healthy one? After all, we don’t want to get into the habit of treating God like the business end of a spiritual ATM machine. You know, the sort of attitude that says, “When you need God, you go, put your prayer access card into God’s ATM prayer machine, put in (the amount of) your request, get it, and drive on with life!”

Unfortunately, many people treat God just that way. They make it seem like the only time prayer is important is when they need or want something, and once they have it, they forget God until the next time some need or difficulty comes along.

But today’s parable calls us to be people of prayer.

How, then, can we maintain a healthy connection to the Father in prayer?

As we suggest to our Junior High youth in our New Beginnings Retreat, here is a recipe for a healthy and balanced prayer life.

It is known by the acronym A C T S L.

A – Adoration: We adore God for who He is: wonderful, awesome, majestic, eternal. This same God also desires to have an ongoing, personal and deep relationship with each and every one of us. So, we adore God for who God is, awesome in power and majesty, yet very near and very present with each individual believer.

C – Confession: We confess to God the ways in which we have fallen short of His standard of holiness, in thought, in word, and in deed. We open our hearts to Him, knowing that He knows us thoroughly and deeply already. We come, seeking forgiveness and amendment of life.

T – Thanksgiving: Here, we remember the many reasons for giving God thanks for the gift of life, the gift of faith, for providing our basic needs on a daily basis, and so forth. (This part of the formula is especially important, for giving thanks to God is often forgotten.)

S – Supplication: We offer our needs and our desires to God, not only for ourselves, but for others whose needs are known to us.

L – Listening: Prayer is a two-way conversation. Oftentimes, we forget to listen, as well as to speak. Listening for God’s voice comes in the quiet and silent times (an important aspect of prayer), and also in regular reading of Scripture, and in the voices of others in the Church. These are just some of the ways God speaks to us.

Finally, our whole lives can be a prayer: We can be a people given to much prayer, prayers that are offered verbally, prayers that are offered silently, short and concise prayers, prayers that are no more than one word or thought, quickly offered, prayers that consist of acts of love and kindness which reflect God’s love and kindness toward us. All of these are ways we can live lives of prayer.

Jesus told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.

May God’s people ever be people of prayer, people who do not lose heart, knowing that God hears the prayers of the faithful, and God abides with His people until the end of time.

AMEN.

20 Pentecost, Year C

Proper 23 -- Ruth 1:1–19a; Psalm 113; II Timothy 2:3-15; Luke 17:11-19
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, October 10, 2010

“SAINT MAKING”
(Homily text: Luke 17: 11 - 19)

Ever think about how a saint is made?

I’d be speaking, of course, of the making of the major, "capital S” saints, people like St. Peter and St. Paul. I’d also be speaking of the "little s” saints, people like you and me.

Here before us today is an event which results in the making of a saint, a Samaritan man who’d not only been healed of his leprosy, but also came into a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us,” they cry out.

Before we get into the process of the making of this Samaritan saint, let’s take a moment to notice a couple of things about the encounter between Jesus and this group of ten men.

First of all, let’s correct something in our Revised Standard Version’s translation. Today, we read “On the way to Jerusalem, he (Jesus) was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers.” The better translation of “ten lepers” would be “ten leprous men” or “ten men who had leprosy”. This is an important distinction, I think, and something we will come back to in a moment.

Second, let’s notice how often the verb “see” is important to the exchange between Jesus and the ten leprous men. Luke tells us that “When Jesus saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests’.” And then, “One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.”

Third, we would not be giving Luke due notice if we didn’t take note of the fact that it is the most unlikely of the ten men, the despised Samaritan, who comes back to thank Jesus for his healing. In this respect, the event before us today is very similar to Jesus’ parable about the Good Samaritan.

Fourth, the ten men are outsiders. They are unclean by virtue of their condition.

Now, let’s go to the nature of the encounter between Jesus and these ten men who were afflicted with leprosy. For in the encounter itself, we can learn a lot about the business of the making of saints.

As Jesus enters the village, He is met by the ten men, who (most likely) have seen Him coming.

They may also have heard something about Jesus, for they call out to Him by name.

What they do not do is to do what the Book of Leviticus requires them to do, which is to call out to anyone who is nearby “Unclean, unclean.”

We can speculate about the nature of their greeting, though we can’t be sure why they said what they did. Perhaps they’d heard that Jesus had been healing others, and had not been afraid to come into contact with them.

Or perhaps, as one commentator suggests, they were merely asking for money, since, due to their condition, they were unable to work.

We can’t be sure about the reason(s) for their actions.

But we can be reasonably sure, I believe, that they knew that Jesus could help them somehow, for their appeal is quite personal. It is addressed to Jesus directly.

So, the saint-making begins. It begins with the appeal of the men in need to Jesus, who is the source of help.

Now, we come back to the issue of the ten men with leprosy, or, as it would be correctly translated from the Greek, “ten leprous men.”

Let’s remember that the ten men are men, human beings. They are not merely objects, that is, lepers. Jesus sees the men as men, as human beings, who are worthy of consideration, care and help.

Jesus’ attitude with regard to the ten men differs sharply from the attitude of the Jewish elite of His day, who would have taken great care to avoid the ten men, for fear of becoming unclean themselves. In this respect, the practices of many pious Jews in Jesus’ day would be analogous to the actions of the priest and the Levite in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the two men who pass by the wounded and beaten man on the other side of the road. Pious Jews of 2,000 years ago would have avoided any contact with the ten men. Here again, the issue of one of being clean, or unclean.

And so, the saint-making continues: Jesus presents the ten men with a test of faith: “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” He says. Of course, Jesus’ instruction is in keeping with the provisions of the Book of Leviticus. A priest had to certify that a person had been healed of their condition.

But notice that no healing has yet taken place!

Luke reminds us that the ten men set off to see the priest, but they are healed only while they are on their way. The first move – made in response to Jesus’ command – belongs to these saints-to-be. They must take that first step in response to Jesus’ command.

Now, the saint-making is complete as the Samaritan – the most unlikely of the ten to act properly (at least by the standards of the Jews in Jesus’ day) – comes back to thank Jesus for his healing.

And Jesus confirms the importance of the role of faith in saint-making, as He says, “Go your way, your faith has made you well.”

What lessons are there for us in today’s Gospel reading?

Perhaps we might reflect on our own saint-making process, as a good place to begin. Recall the steps with me, as we apply them to our own recollection of the saint-making process:

1. We recognize our need, and our inability to help ourselves: We come, like the ten men, calling out to the Lord, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”

2. Jesus sees us as human beings, and responds: The Lord sees us as men and women, boys and girls. He does not see us as objects. The conditions that are part of our lives do not mask our humanity to God. For example, if a person is one who shoplifts, we tend to call them “shoplifters”, while God would tend to see that person as a person who shoplifts: steals. God – through Christ – is willing to enter into a personal relationship with us, recognizing that no condition that might be present in our lives is beyond correction and healing.

3. We respond in faith: It’s important to put our foot forward, responding to God’s love and mercy which precedes us. Doing so is an act of faith, for the evidence of God’s saving and loving actions may not be noticeable at all, at this point.

4. The relationship is complete as we enter into a deep and personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

We are now saints!

Now, having done these four steps, we are equipped to assist God in making more saints,
sharing what God has done for us in our lives with others.

The saint-making continues!

Thanks be to God.

AMEN.

19 Pentecost, Year C

Proper 21 -- Habakkuk 1:1–13, 2:1–4; Psalm 37:3–10; II Timothy 1:1–14; Luke 17:5–10

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, October 3, 2010

“OTHER DUTIES AS ASSIGNED”
(Homily text: Luke 17: 5 – 10)

Let’s reflect on the gospel text before us this morning, just briefly.

And as I did so this past week, the phrase that kept running through my mind was “other duties as assigned.”

This is a phrase that one encounters in job descriptions. For example, a job description might read something like “The person who has this position will do ____, and ____, and _____, and other duties as assigned.”

Jesus paints a picture the good and faithful servant who does one task that the servant is assigned by the master, only to the n be given a totally different task.

Maybe Jesus is telling us that we have to be flexible!!!!

He might ask us to do one thing, and then another, something totally different.

At any rate, let’s consider some of the implications of what He has to say.

The first thing we might consider is the nature of our relationship with the Lord….it is one of mutual servanthood. In Luke, chapter 22, we hear Jesus say that He has come among us as one who serves. So Jesus comes as servant. Of course, He is also Lord. So, if we are to be comprehensive in our understanding of who Jesus is, we need to understand that He is, first of all, the Lord. But he is also the Lord who voluntarily sets aside His lordship to some degree, in order to come among us as a servant.

For us, then, the Lord models servanthood. We are not asked to do anything the Lord hasn’t already done Himself.

Secondly, Jesus describes one set of tasks, that of plowing a field or keeping sheep, tasks which are done outside. But then He says that, once those tasks are done, then we might be asked to do something else which is entirely different. The second task has to do with serving someone at table. (Notice that table fellowship – or eating (and drinking) – figure prominently in Luke’s gospel account. Here, we see yet another example of this.)

Third, when we respond to the Lord’s command to do something, we are only doing what our status as servants tells us we are to do. Notice that the Lord says, “So, you also, when you have done all that is commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy servants, we have only done what was our duty.’”

Finally, let’s consider the connection between Jesus’ first comment, which has to do with the things that faith can accomplish, and His ensuring comments, which have to do with the tasks that lie in front of us. Jesus says that faith can uproot trees and move them to the most unlikely of places: the sea. What connection does accomplishing the impossible have to do with the tasks we are to do?

I think the answer is that the tasks that we do, while seeming to be small and insignificant, are exactly the means by which the impossible is accomplished.

Sometimes, I think we think that the impossible happens when God moves to act in some spectacular way. Usually, I think, our perception is that that is the only way the impossible is accomplished.

But many times, faithful people will set themselves to a task, only to look around afterward to see that they’d accomplished the impossible, one step at a time.

By being a servant of the Lord’s, we surrender our welfare in order to advance the welfare of the master. Doing so gives us the flexibility to undertake one task which might seem pretty mundane (or even distasteful), and then another. We do so because we know that the master knows better than we do what it will take to accomplish the tasks before us, even the impossible ones.

AMEN.

18 Pentecost, Year C

Proper 21 -- Amos 6:1–7; Psalm 146:4–9; I Timothy 6:11–19; Luke 16:19–31

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, September 26, 2010

“AND HOW MANY WILL BE DINING?”
(Homily text: Luke 16; 19 – 31)

“And how many will be dining today?”

This could be the essential question which the parable which is before us today seeks to pose.

Put another way, we could say it this way: “Will you be sharing your table (and your food) with anyone else today?”

The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (or, as it’s also known “The Parable of Dives and Lazarus”) continues a long train of thought that has occupied Jesus’ mind and His teaching since the early chapters of Luke’s gospel account.

Significant themes which resonate throughout Luke are to be found here, including:

• A reversal of roles: The rich become poor, and the poor become rich (with the Lord’s favor)
• The mighty are cast down, and the lowly are lifted up (see Mary’s reference to this in the Magnificat, Luke 1: 52)
• The hungry are filled with good things, and the rich are sent away empty (Luke 1: 53)
• There is eating and drinking (as there are in so many places in Luke’s account)

So many possibilities of meaning present themselves in this parable. Indeed, it can truthfully be said that our Lord is a master storyteller: His parables resound with meaning and with depth. Their applicability to our daily lives in the 21st century is just as fresh and as urgent as was the applicability to the lives of Jesus’ original hearers.

What would be Jesus’ essential point in this parable?

Is Jesus giving us a theological treatise on the nature of salvation? (That is to say, is He making the point that the poor and the downtrodden in this world are assured of having a place in God’s kingdom once they pass from this life to the next?) I would say the answer to that question is “No”.

1. Jesus seems to be making a point about how we live our lives today, however.
2. He is also making a point about the urgency of doing the right thing, here and now, before it is too late.

I think those two points are the main ones He wants us to understand.

That said, we now turn our attention to the parable itself.

The drama of the parable unfolds in three acts:

• Act I: The earthly situations of the rich man and Lazarus are described. (Verses 19 – 21)
• Act II: The two men die, and their roles are reversed. (Verses 22 – 26)
• Act III: The rich man pleads for his brothers.

As we begin the drama, we see that the rich man and Lazarus (who is the only named person in any of Jesus’ parables, by the way) are separated by quite a few things: their social status, their wealth, their health, their mode of dress and by the wall which surrounds the rich man’s house (notice that Jesus refers to a gate).

Hunger is also a factor which separates the two men. The rich man has enough to eat so as to be able to use pieces of bread to wipe the grease off of his fingers, bread which is then thrown on the floor afterward. Jesus tells us that Lazarus would love to have had some of those pieces of bread to eat.

Instead, Lazarus is as unclean as the rich man is clean, for Lazarus is being kept company by the neighborhood dogs, who are his only friends, and who clean his sores by licking them. Associating with dogs indicates that Lazarus is unclean, for dogs were considered to be unclean animals in biblical times. By contrast, the rich man is finely dressed, and presumably, is also clean, physically and ritually. We can just imagine the rich man’s daily baths, taken with fine oils and perfumes.

The rich man is securely isolated from the world around him, and from its problems. He is isolated by virtue of the wall and its gate, which keep the world’s problems from encroaching on him, and he is isolated by being able, financially, to avoid those problems, as well.

The rich man’s isolation will play a role in the last state in which he will find himself, for in Hades, the rich man’s isolation from God will also be complete, ensured by his own selfishness and by the gulf which will separate him from Lazarus and from the Bosom of Abraham.

Now, we turn to Act II of the drama: The rich man and Lazarus are taken away to their eternal reward. Lazarus’ name now proves to be prophetic, for it means “God helps”.

Just as in life, the two men can see one another. Recall with me that Lazarus could see the rich man eating, and longed to have just some of the crumbs which were under the rich man’s table. Now, however, the tables are turned, forever.

But the rich man still expects Lazarus to be his errand boy. He says, “Send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue.” But Abraham responds by saying, essentially, “Lazarus’ work is done.”
Moreover, the states the two men now find themselves in are permanent. “There is a great gulf fixed,” Abraham says.

The point of this comment is simply to say “The time for changing the situation is past, over and gone.”

Now, we turn to Act III.

Here, for the first time, the rich man begins to think about someone other than himself. He thinks of his five brothers, and wants to warn them to change their ways before it is too late for them, too.

But Abraham responds by saying, “They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.”

With this comment, Jesus makes a searing point in the parable: He points out that the rich man also had access to Moses and to the prophets, whose wisdom would have served to change the rich man’s ways, had he any inclination to pay attention.

But Jesus now turns the matter of spiritual blindness into a wider issue: An unwillingness to pay attention to the sacred writings (Holy Scripture, we would say) can also lead to an equal unwillingness to pay attention to the one who arose from the dead, Jesus Christ.

By this final comment, Jesus points the way forward into the late first century situation in which the early Church found itself: Those early Christians encountered Jews who could not see the connections between Moses’ writings (known as the Torah) and Jesus’ identity as the one risen from the dead.

We said at the beginning of this homily that Jesus’ parables continue to have an impact on our daily lives as 21st century Christians.

How so?

What may we take away from the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus?

May I posit the following points, in the hope that some of them might spur your own reflection?

• Where are the walls of separation which prevent us from doing what we can to alter or reverse the circumstances of those around us who are in some sort of need? Those walls can be made of pride, selfishness (which is the root sin of the rich man), arrogance, or a sense of our own superiority before God, either morally or spiritually. We are called to identify such barriers, which prevent us from caring for those in need among us.
• The time for action is now! Death ends our ability to act in accordance with God’s will. Once death intervenes, it’s too late to change our record before the Lord.
• What we do in our daily lives has eternal consequences. Not only is our moral character formed by our actions and our attitudes, but our spiritual character is also formed by such actions and attitudes.
• The moral imperatives of the Torah remain. We find an example of the moral imperative of helping others in Deuteronomy 15:7, which reads “Do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.” The early Church affirmed these moral imperatives by living communally in the early first century: People who became Christian believers sold what they had and brought the proceeds to the Apostles, where it was put into a common treasury, in order to meet the needs of all in the community. Though we no longer live this way as Christians, we are still under obligation to do all we can to improve the lot of those around us

One final thought comes to mind: One barrier to action might be a suspicion that a person who seems to be in need really isn’t in need at all. They’re might be “working the system” to gain a benefit they don’t really have a need of. In today’s society, the reality of such deception is real, and this reality imposes upon us the need to be as “wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10: 16). I think, in this regard, that Jesus is referring to helping a person (or persons) who are in genuine need. I take His description of Lazarus’ condition as an indication that Lazarus was in such bad shape that he could not work. Therefore, Lazarus’ need was genuine.

May God enable us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to break down the walls which prevent our response to those in need. May the Holy Spirit enlighten us to see the urgency and the need to act. May the Holy Spirit assist us to meet people’s needs according to their true needs.

“And just how many will be at our table today?” Answer: “Surely more than one!”

AMEN.

17 Pentecost, Year C

Proper 20 -- Amos 8:4–12; Psalm 138; I Timothy 2:1–8; Luke 16:1–13
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, September 19, 2010


“Don't Be Like This Guy, OK?”
(Homily text: Luke 16: 1 – 13)

“Don’t be like this guy, OK?”

That could easily be Jesus’ message for today, as He tells us the Parable of the Dishonest Steward.

Now I will admit to you that this parable can be very confusing.

There’s a lot going on in it. So perhaps we’d better begin by trying to put ourselves into the situation as best we can, in order to see more clearly what’s going on.

As Jesus tells the story, here’s what we know:

1. The dishonest steward, who is a manager of the rich man’s estate, has been caught being dishonest.
2. The rich man demands an accounting of the steward’s actions.
3. In haste, the steward calls together some of the rich man’s debtors, and reduces the amounts they owe as sharecroppers to the rich man.
4. The dishonest steward creates an “unholy alliance” with those whose debts he reduces, by making them complicit in his actions, and by creating a future obligation to him once he is dismissed by the landowner.

A few comments about some of the details in the story shed some light on the circumstances that Jesus uses to illustrate the matter of stewardship.

1. The amounts of oil and of wheat that are owed show that the farming operation involved is a large one. 100 measures (in the Greek: batos = baths) of oil is about 900 gallons of olive oil. 100 measures (in the Greek: kors) could be anywhere from about 650 – 1200 bushels of wheat. The large scale of the operation will be reflected in Jesus’ comments, heard a little later, when He says “He who is faithful in very little is faithful also in much.”
2. What is going on with the reduction in the amounts owed? People have struggled with that aspect of the parable over the years. Three possibilities offer themselves as the dishonest steward reduces the amounts owed:

a. The steward is simply cheating his master out of what he is owed,
b. The steward is merely taking his commission out of the amount owed (an amount that was already figured into the total),
c. The steward is removing the interest that was figured into the debt. This last point needs some explanation: Deuteronomy 23: 19 – 20 forbids the charging of interest on a debt. In order to get around that requirement, people in Jesus’ day would pad the total amount owed, including in it the actual amount expected, plus an additional amount, which was really the interest. However, the agreement would show that there was no interest charged on the amount, only the total amount. In this way, the requirements found in Deuteronomy are shrewdly avoided.

I will leave you to choose which of the three ways the dishonest steward is using to guarantee his future.

Whatever the steward’s means, the intent is quite clear: “You owe me for the favor I did you by reducing the debt you owed my boss” is what he’s trying to do. By changing the amounts owed in writing, he also obligates his boss to honor the written documents.

“He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much,” Jesus says.

But the converse is also true: “He who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.”

Jesus is getting at the issue of integrity, and at the matter of stewardship.

We would do well to unpack each of these concepts as they apply to our walk with God. We begin with the matter of integrity:

Integrity can be defined in this way (a way that fits the circumstances of the story quite well): Integrity is when we do what we would do if everyone could see what we were doing, when no one is looking. Put another way, we could say that we act the same way, with the same honesty, in every situation, whether people know about it or not.

As to the matter of stewardship, we are reminded by today’s parable that to be a steward is to take care of someone else’s property. We don’t own it, we are simply tasked with managing it for the welfare of someone else.

Applied to our faith walk, the matter of integrity means that our insides must match our outsides. What people can’t see must be the same as what people can see.

Applied to our faith walk, the matter of stewardship asks us to realize that all that we have: our time, our talents, and treasure, are all gifts from God, to be used for His purposes in advancing His kingdom here on earth. We don’t own any of these gifts, we are simply the managers of them.

For the Church, whose purpose is to be the bearer of the kingdom of God in this world, the matter of integrity affects the Church’s ability to witness to the world. When the Church’s leadership, or its members, do not act in ways that match the words they say, then integrity is destroyed, and the Church’s witness is also destroyed.

Small wonder then, that the Parable of the Dishonest Steward has often been applied to the Church’s leaders down through the years.

“He who is faithful in a very little, will also be faithful also in much, and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.”

AMEN.

16 Pentecost, Year C

Proper 19
Exodus 34: 1, 7 – 14
Psalm 51: 1 – 11
I Timothy 1: 12 – 17
Luke 15: 1 – 10

A homily by: Fr. Gene Tucker
Given at: Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, September 12, 2010

“THE ECONOMY” (Homily text: Luke 15: 1 – 20)

Let’s talk about the economy this morning, shall we?

As I say this, I can just imagine the thoughts that are now running through your head. Maybe they’re something like this:

1. “OK. The economy’s not very good right now. It’s about all we hear about on the news these days.”

2. “Yeah, my personal economy isn’t too good, not at all. I could use some extra money.”

3. “Oh no, here goes our annual stewardship sermon! Father’s gonna give us a pep talk about giving to the church.”

No, by using the word “economy”, I wouldn’t be talking about the economy, meaning money, not at all.

What I am talking about is God’s economy, God’s plan for you and for me, personally, each one of us.

Perhaps I’d better explain my peculiar use of the word economy.

You see, the English word economy comes from the Greek word oikonomia, where it means “management of a household, a task, or a work.” In theological terms, it is used to describe “God’s plan”.

So, what we are talking about this morning is about God’s plan of salvation, God’s plan to seek and to save everyone of us who respond to God’s seeking with faith.

(A sidebar is in order here: In recent weeks, we’ve heard a series of very tough, very challenging gospel texts, in which Jesus clarifies the high demands of being His disciple. This morning, though, we get a welcome break from such demanding texts. Instead of laying before us the high costs and demands of discipleship, this morning we are shown a glimpse of God’s reaching out to us with love.)

Now, back to the issue of economy.

In today’s text, we hear the reaction of the Pharisees and the scribes, as they mutter to themselves, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”

Put into economic terms, the Pharisees and the scribes are saying that these tax collectors and sinners are “worthless currency”. They are like counterfeit bills, in essence. They are as suspect as three dollar bills, and just as useless.

In response, Jesus doesn’t answer the comments of these Pharisees and scribes directly. Instead – and as is typical of His teaching – He responds by giving two parables, which are known today as the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Lost Coin.

Both parables turn our normal, human expectations on their heads, for both point out the extraordinary steps that God will take to seek out just one person, one individual.

In normal, economic terms, these sorts of actions don’t make any sense at all.

Normally, we attempt to protect as many of our assets as possible. We seek to minimize our potential losses and to maximize our gains.

Not so with God.

In God’s economy, God’s plan, every single person is of inestimable worth.

God will take unbelievable steps to go after us, seeking us out.

That’s the point of Jesus’ two teachings.

You see, salvation – that is, God’s ability to save us from our sins, and to guarantee our presence with Him in this life, and in the life of the world to come – is both a very personal and a very corporate matter.

Today, we hear a text which assures us that God cares deeply for each one of us, each one of us. No matter how insignificant we may seem to be to society, no matter how worthless we might feel we are, God loves each of us, God cares deeply for each of us, and God seeks to establish with each of us a personal and ongoing relationship.

This last point is well worth saying again: God seeks to establish with each of us a personal and ongoing relationship.

The relationship of which I speak is deeply personal, a matter of a one-on-one, intimate relationship with God.

If we think about that relationship for just a moment, it can easily become an awesome, God-filled moment to realize that each individual, human person is of infinite worth in God’s economy, and that the God who created all that is, the God who sent His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to be the offering for our sins, is also a God who wants to be in a close, ongoing relationship with you and me, personally and individually.

The cosmic nature of this relationship is echoed in Jesus’ comments, heard today: “Just so,” He says, “I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

But the corporate nature of our relationship with God is also seen in the first parable we hear this morning: Notice that the body of the sheep is mentioned. The one who’s strayed from the flock is still a member of that flock, just one of the flock of ninety nine.

Just so, we are all members of God’s flock, the body of Christ, the Church. Each one of us, collectively and together, make up that great company of the saints who are those who have been redeemed by Christ, and who have been presented to God the Father as a sweet offering.

So, what’s your worth?

In your own estimation, how much are you worth? (Be honest with yourself!)

How much are you worth, in God’s economy?

Today’s gospel text says you’re worth a whole lot, worth seeking out and going after, a prize that cannot be evaluated for all of its great worth.

That ought to be great, good news, to know that, in God’s eyes, we are worth a whole lot. We are worth the effort to be found by God.

Thanks be to the God who seeks us out, each one of us!

AMEN.