5 Pentecost, Year C

“A MATTER OF RELATIONSHIPS”
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois, on Sunday, June 27, 2010
Proper 8 -- I Kings 19:15–16,19–21; Psalm 66:1–8; Galatians 6:1–10,14–18; Luke 9:51–62

“When the days drew near for him to be received up, he (Jesus) set his face to go to Jerusalem. (Italics mine)

Today’s gospel reading begins with a sense of determination, singularity of focus, and direction.

“He set his face to go to Jerusalem.”

Indeed, many biblical scholars would readily tell us that the beginning of today’s text (verse 51) is the turning point in Luke’s gospel narrative. Jesus now turns His face toward Jerusalem, and toward His confrontation with the religious establishment that existed in His day. For the next ten chapters, Luke will spell out Jesus’ journey southward from Galilee through the region of Samaria to Jerusalem.

And along the way, Jesus’ responses to some who encounter Him shed light on his singularity of purpose and direction.

At one point, someone comes up to say, “I will follow you wherever you go,” to which Jesus replies, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” Essentially, Jesus seems to be saying that He has no home in this world, nothing to tie Him down, no bonds of location, and none of the attendant human relationships that go with having a home, to distract Him.

Jesus’ responses to these various encounters make it clear that He demands the same singularity of purpose in His disciples. To yet another, He says, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

“Put away all human relationships,” Jesus seems to be saying, using very harsh words at one point with respect to the matter of burying one’s own father: “Leave the dead to bury their own dead.”

Now, what are we to make of these words, words that are hard to hear (and perhaps, even harder to put into practice)?

Does Jesus literally mean for us to leave all our relationships, all of our ties to place and to people behind?

 The history of Jesus’ disciples might shed some light on the answer:

• At one point, Peter tells the Lord that the original disciples had “left everything to follow Him (Jesus).” (Matthew 19:27) So, it seems that some followers of Jesus did, indeed, leave everything behind: family, friends and worldly possessions, to be a disciple. One thinks of St. Francis of Assisi in this regard, a saint who left behind considerable wealth and family power to follow the Lord.
  
  
• At other times, however, there is evidence that family members did not forsake family, for some came along on mission trips. Writing to the Corinthian church, St. Paul says, “Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a wife, as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas (Peter)?” (I Corinthians 9: 5)

So, it seems that Jesus’ apostles and other disciples have followed two different courses as they followed the Lord: At some times and in some cases, followers of Jesus have left everything in order to follow the Lord. In other cases, family relationships and other ties were not abandoned.

Then, we should ask, what is the Lord telling us today?

Perhaps the answer is that the Lord is using the language He is using – this very harsh language - to wake us up to the issue of our relationships.

Put more clearly, Jesus is asking us to assess our relationships to God and to everyone and everything else.

He seems to be asking us to answer this question, “What is the most important relationship, the most important thing, in my life?”

Is the answer to that question some human relationship, or some possession?

Clearly, some of these things are quite important, aren’t they? Apparently, some of the original disciples thought so, for they took their wives along with them when they traveled.

But what is in first place in our relationships?

That’s the question, it seems to me.

Is our relationship to God, through Jesus Christ, in first place?

Perhaps that’s what our Lord is getting at.

If our relationship to God is in first place in all that we do, think and say, then that most important, most central, relationship will inform and color all the other relationships in our lives, the relationships we have with people, with places, and with things.

Our relationships with our spouses, with our family, or with our friends, are quite important. But God calls us in Christ to transform all of those relationships by the power of God to transform us. Once God begins to transform us, from within, then we can begin to transform and rearrange all other relationships we have in our lives.

So, if we might borrow a line from the comedy team Abbott and Costello’s famous skit “Who’s on First?,” we might apply that question to our own lives: Who is on first? Is it God, or something/someone else?

That’s the question, it seems to me.

AMEN.

3 Pentecost, Year C

Proper 6: II Samuel 11:26 - 12:10, 13-15; Psalm 32:1–8; Galatians 2:11-21; Luke 7:36–50
"SPIRITUAL MOBILITY"
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois, on Sunday, June 13, 2010.

Are you spiritually mobile?

Today’s gospel text has everything to do with spiritual mobility . . .

Spiritual mobility has to do with being able to see a change in our relationship with God. Or, put more clearly, to be able to come into a better and closer relationship with God.

Before we tackle some of the aspects of spiritual mobility, let’s take a moment to look at the incident that Luke describes for us today, which happened on the occasion of a dinner party that Simon, a Pharisee, had given, and to which, Jesus had been invited.

Some aspects of this event won’t make sense to us unless we unpack a little of the cultural setting of the times, so we should take a moment to look at these aspects of the account, in order to better understand how the actions that took place would influence our understanding of the matter of spiritual mobility.

We should begin by noticing that the woman who spent so much time bathing Jesus’ feet with her tears isn’t considered to be an intruder necessarily. In biblical times, it was the custom for people who weren’t invited to a dinner party to come and watch those who were. If the dinner party took place in an outside courtyard, then they could watch the proceedings there. But, it seems as though they could also come into the house and observe. Today, of course, we would regard anyone who hadn’t been invited to be a “party crasher”. Not so in biblical times.

Next, we should notice that the meaning of the woman’s actions as they would have been seen in the context of the culture of Palestine 2,000 years ago….

For one thing, a woman would not have let her hair down in public. Nor would she have uncovered her head in public.

For another, the woman touches Jesus’ feet. In the culture of the day, such an act had sexual overtones. (Apparently, the woman was able to touch Jesus’ feet because He was reclining on His side, eating with one hand, while His feet were stretched out, away from the mat on which the food would have been placed.)

Perhaps it’s this last point that leads many scholars to think that the woman was a prostitute, though Luke never explicitly tells us that that is the sin of which she is guilty.

It is safe to say, however, that the woman’s actions bring disgrace upon herself, on Jesus, and on Simon, the party’s host.

That Jesus would have tolerated her actions would have heightened the sense of indignation that Simon and others who shared his convictions would have felt.

Now, let’s turn our attention to the matter of spiritual mobility….

And we should begin with Simon, the Pharisee…

The New Testament gospels don’t paint a very flattering picture of the Pharisees. The image we get is of a group of people who were rigid and judgmental. They seemed to go around, sizing people up, trying to figure out if they were “in” or “out” with God. Of course, they themselves, were definitely “in” with God. It seems as though they thought they were really “in” with God. If they thought of themselves in that way, they probably did so because they tried to be so diligent about keeping even the very smallest aspects of the Law of Moses.

We see some aspects of the attitude that many Pharisees has of others in some of the thoughts that Simon had about the woman…He reminds himself that, if Jesus had really known what sort of a woman this was who was misbehaving so badly, He would really be the prophet everyone thinks He is.

It seems clear that Simon thinks he knows everything there is to know about this woman: She is a sinner, pure and simple, and she will always be a sinner.

Simon has no place in his scheme of spiritual understanding for mobility. His is a spiritual caste system, in which people are where they are in his estimation of how God sees them, and they will always be in that very same place.

Put another way, Simon seems to think that God is incapable of forgiving a past misdeed, of moving people up the spiritual ladder.

Of course, Simon probably didn’t apply that rule to himself, or to other Pharisees, or to others who scrupulously tried to keep all the laws that the Mosaic covenant demanded. No, it might be safe to say that Simon thought that he could lift himself up by his own spiritual bootstraps. Therefore, Simon might have thought that he was spiritually mobile. Too bad that he, and many of the Pharisees, didn’t apply that same degree of generosity to others.

But Jesus did extend His generosity to the woman. We can see this in His response to her actions, for He did not stop her from doing what she was doing, even though it made Him unclean to come into contact with her (by the standards of the Law of Moses), and even though those actions brought dishonor to Him and to her (by the cultural standards of the day).

As I reflect on it, I think Jesus’ forgiveness of her sins, and His acceptance of her, began with His reaction to her, and that would have been awhile before He told her verbally that her sins had been forgiven. Jesus’ knew the true meaning of the woman’s actions, for He went beneath the surface appearance of those actions to the motivations that undergirded them.

In this regard, Jesus is entirely different from Simon. Simon looks only on the outward appearance, while Jesus looks on the heart. Simon sees the scandalous behavior that only seems to confirm his already-formed opinion of the woman, while Jesus sees a willingness on the woman’s part to make a fool of herself for the sake of seeking forgiveness and acceptance.

Now, let’s return to the question with which we began: Are you spiritually mobile?

As we consider that question, I think we might begin by assessing our own attitudes toward our past life. We might ask ourselves these questions:

1. Do we have an attitude that seems to tell us that we are unacceptable to God because of something in our life up to this point that fails to meet God’s standards of holiness? If so, we are in league with Simon, the Pharisee.
2. Do we underestimate God’s power to forgive and to accept? If so, then we may be thinking that our sins are more powerful than God. If so, then we, like Simon the Pharisee, are putting some aspects of our life beyond God’s power to deal with.

If we come to the conclusion that we have been thinking in the ways that these two questions indicate, then how do we adopt a different attitude toward God, so that we can accept God’s forgiveness, God’s acceptance, and God’s love?

Two steps are necessary, and we see them both in our gospel text for today:

1. We must demonstrate our willingness to seek forgiveness. That was the true motivation of the woman’s actions, as Jesus makes clear near the end of the account before us today.
2. God extends His forgiveness, even when we may not be aware of it. At least, that’s what I make of Jesus’ acceptance of the woman’s behavior. His forgiveness is apparent, it seems to me, long before He ever forgave her verbally. His willingness to be embarrassed, along with her, confirms His acceptance of her.

One final thought: It’s difficult to say which action comes first: Our willingness to seek God’s forgiveness, or God’s willingness to forgive.

Nevertheless, Jesus’ entire life and teaching demonstrates that God sees each of us as spiritually mobile persons, who are capable of being received into a more intimate and loving relationship with Him, through the work of Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. For we serve and love a God who is far more willing to hear than we are to pray, and who is far more willing to forgive than we are to ask for forgiveness.

Thanks be to God!

AMEN.

2 Pentecost, Year C

"THE GIFT OF A CHILD, THE GIFT OF LIFE”
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois, on Sunday, June 6, 2010
Proper 5: I Kings 17:17–24; Psalm 30:1–6, 12–13; Galatians 1:11–24; Luke 7:11–17

“And he gave him to his mother.”

Those are the words that struck me as I read and reread this morning’s gospel text.

They describe the aftermath of Jesus’ raising of the only son of a widow in a town called Nain (which is located southeast of Nazareth, and southwest of the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Galilee).

With the coming of this season of Pentecost, we return, in this Year C of the three year lectionary cycle, to the third gospel, that of Luke. We will spend the remainder of this Church Year with Luke, until the end of November.

So, let’s turn our attention to this miracle, the raising of the unnamed son of an unnamed widow in a small town called Nain.

There is much going on under the surface of this account, and it is our intention to dig into the depths of the event, taking into consideration the cultural facets of it which will shed light on “what’s really going on here”.
First of all, we ought to note the parallels to the raising of the widow’s son as we hear it in I Kings this morning. The parallels are obvious.

These parallels would have been obvious to the Jewish crowd and to Jesus’ disciples as they witnessed the raising of this son, for I think we can safely say that everyone in the crowd, and among the disciples, would have known the account which comes to us from I Kings. They would have known it intimately and in fine detail, most likely.

But, there are differences, as well….In I Kings, we hear Elijah calling upon the Lord three times to bring the child back to life. However, Jesus simply speaks the word, “Young man, I say to you, ‘arise’”, and the man comes back to life. Moreover, the return of life to the child in Elijah’s case comes in an upper room, while, in the case before us today, the raising of the dead occurs in full view of the crowd and of the disciples.

But, the impact on each mother is the same: They regain their child, and they regain their life.

It’s worth repeating this last statement: Each widow regains their child, and they regain their life.

The point seems to be: Jesus restores life, and gives hope, in the process.

You see, in ancient Israelite/Jewish culture, being a widow was the worst state of life that one could come to.
For, outside of the practice of Levirite1 marriage, life after the death of a husband entailed economic hardship and deprivation.2 Being a widow was a hard and unforgiving life, for the culture of the time was male-dominated, and few economic opportunities were available to women outside of marriage.

So, it is in this context, that Jesus’ raising of the son of this widow spells new life and new hope for the mother in today’s account.

Luke seems to have two goals in mind in relating this event from Jesus’ life. (Recall with me that Luke is the only one who records this event for our benefit.) They are:

• Jesus is the prophet who not only fulfills all the prophecies of the Old Testament prophets, but He is greater than a prophet: Jesus not only does what Elijah did, but He does it “one better”. He simply says the words, “Young man, I say to you, ‘arise’”, and the man is raised to new life.
• Jesus comes to offer new life, new hope: If we take into account the cultural setting3 of today’s scripture, then we can see that Jesus’ actions offer new life and new hope to the unnamed widow in today’s account. Her son not only signifies the continuation of the family name and the family line, but his continued life equates to economic salvation for his mother, and the restoration of hope.

We would do well, before we leave consideration of this event, to consider its effects on our own lives.

So, consider with me:

• When has new hope arisen, just at the time when there seemed to be no hope, in your life and mine (or in the lives of other Christian believers you have known)?
• Jesus comes, offering life. Has there been a time in your own life when there seemed to be no life at all, no hope at all, as you looked into the future?
• Have you witnessed miraculous healing (either physical, mental or spiritual) that medical science could not account for?

All of these things still occur. They are all precursors of the final resurrection, of which Jesus Christ is the “first fruits”. (See I Corinthians 15: 23).

For Jesus Christ comes, offering new life, new hope, for this present life, and for the life of the world to come.

Thanks be to God!

AMEN.
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1) See Deuteronomy 25:5–10, where the practice of marrying a sister-in-law upon the death of her husband is described. The intention was to “raise up children” for the deceased brother. The name “Levirite” comes from the Latin, whose root word means “brother-in-law”.
2) The economic consequences of widowhood extended into the New Testament period. A check of a good concordance will reveal how many references were made in the early Church to the care of widows.
3) Theologians use a technical term (which comes from the German) to describe the cultural settings of the biblical accounts we read. This term is “Sitz-im-Leben”, meaning “setting in life”.