Being Rich Toward God

 Pentecost VIII, Christ Church, St. Joseph, La.

 

I’m pretty sure I’ve shared this story with you before, but it is so relevant again today that I can’t resist.

 

Every fall semester for years, I taught an advanced writing class to college Juniors. The first day of class I required students to complete a diagnostic writing exercise—in class. I gave them several topics to choose among, a time limit and an approximate word length, and set them to work. 

 

One of my topics was “The Last Speech.” For “The Last Speech,” they were to imagine they had six months to live and to write the farewell speech they would give in the waning days of their life.

 

Young people write some interesting things when presented with that particular challenge. I’ll share a few examples with you in a moment.

 

But for the moment, let’s look at the assignment Jesus gives in today’s Gospel lesson. And the first thing I notice is that it is much tougher than the one I give my students. I give my students 6 months to get their affairs in order and define their legacy. Jesus says, “This very night…” This. Very. Night. You must account for what you have done with your life.

 

Goodness, Jesus, that’s harsh! I mean, what happened to the Jesus of love and mercy and endless second chances? It’s almost as though he is upset about something.

 

So let’s go back to the beginning of the passage to look for a clue. What instigates this rather harsh “this very night” verdict from Jesus?

 

Turns out it’s what must seem to us to be a rather mundane request from a guy in the crowd: “Jesus, please tell my brother to be fair to me.” And it sounds mundane to us because we ask Jesus for mundane stuff all the time: Please, Jesus, get me that job. Please, Jesus, help my business prosper. Please, Jesus, get me out of this trouble I’m in and I’ll be good forever, I promise.

 

What’s the harm in that, right? Isn’t that what Jesus is for? To do the hard things for us? To get other people to be nice to us, to hire us, to give us another chance, and on and on?

 

I fear way too much of our prayer time is focused on asking Jesus to fix everything that’s wrong in our lives and every challenge we face.

 

But, no. That is precisely NOT what Jesus is for! Jesus is not our fixer! Especially not when what needs to be “fixed” is another person or a situation “out there.”

 

Notice that the guy who kicks off the story does not ask Jesus to fix himself. He asks Jesus to fix his brother. And that is so classically human as to be simultaneously sad and amusing. Do you see yourself in that? I do. Isn’t it typically the case whenever humans come into conflict or disagreement or whatever, it is the other person who needs to be fixed?!

 

Jesus is not our fixer. He didn’t come to fix the people we think need fixing. He didn’t even come to fix us. What he came to do is show us a better way to be in the world, a kinder, more loving, more generous, more forgiving, more compassionate, more merciful—in short, a more-like-him way of being in the world.

 

Jesus came, and comes again and again to us in prayer and through the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the only “fix” he has to offer is “love God and your neighbor as yourself.”

 

Most of Jesus’ teaching then expands on what it means and what difference it makes when we actually put love—love for God and, consequently, love for all of humankind—at the center of our existence.

 

The story he tells on this occasion has to do with priorities and he criticizes the human tendency to prioritize accumulating stuff—earthly treasures, and typically more than we need.

 

There’s an online platform called “Statista” that can provide a statistical answer to all kinds of questions. So, last night I asked it about the worldwide distribution of wealth and here’s what it told me:

         *75% of global wealth is in the hands of just 10% of the global population

         *the bottom 50% of the global population owns just 2% of global wealth

 

As Mahatma Ghandi once said, Earth provides enough to satisfy everyone's need, but not everyone's greed.

Earlier I promised to return to my students and their assignment. Over the years, students have written some remarkable things that I have taken to heart and remembered.

 

One imagined himself at the age of 46 with many regrets but determined to not waste his remaining time. No more passing up opportunities, he wrote, I’m embracing everything from here on out. He had long wanted to travel to Australia; at 46 and under sentence of death, he was pricing plane tickets.

 

Another had clearly felt some real pain is his short years. He thanked his parents, reminding them that he had had to wear the ill-fitting hand-me-down clothes of his older brother, their “golden child,” but also that they had also always been there for him. And I love you, he says. After noting a couple of other great disappointments —one at the hands of his best friend and another handed to him by his country—he ends with one word: Peace. He has come to terms.

 

A third young man lived his life in a wheelchair, and his last speech is a statement of courage and defiance. My disability does not define me. I define it, he wrote. That is what I want to talk to you about tonight. Doing the best with what you have and never looking back.

 

Jesus ends the story he tells in today’s Gospel lesson by admonishing us that storing up treasures on earth is in vain. And he offers instead the notion of being rich toward God.

 

There’s a meme that makes the rounds every so often. I’ve seen several minor variations of it. My favorite depicts a large number of diverse people gathered around a big table laden with food. Think “church potluck” table. The caption says, “When you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher wall.”

 

I’m pretty sure that would count as being rich toward God.

 

“This very night,” Jesus says. What is each of us doing, today and every day, to be “rich toward God”?  That’s the question.

 

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

 

Smashing Boundaries

 Pentecost V, Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La.

Boundaries are often good things. I’m talking about social boundaries, the kind that help us manage our human relationships.

 

When I finished my Bachelor’s degree at the University of Iowa in the spring of 1980, I went straight to graduate school that fall. I had decided I was called to teach at the college level, and as an Iowa farm girl, I figured  that I really needed to diversify my own experience of the world. So, of the several graduate programs that offered me admission and a graduate assistantship, I chose the University of Pennsylvania—not for its academic reputation but because it was situated in Philadelphia—a major city known for its racial, ethnic and class diversity.

 

I was right! I had many experiences in Philadelphia that taught me about social boundaries and how they guide our behavior in interaction with other human beings. In fact, I found it so interesting that I made that a significant part of my graduate study.

 

One really rather mundane lesson that I still laugh about today actually happened in church. I chose a lovely church full of lovely people near the Penn campus. They were very welcoming.

 

But one Sunday after leaving coffee hour, I got to thinking about the fact that although I loved the worship and thought well of the people, coffee hour was always a bit uncomfortable.

 

Now at that church, coffee hour came after the principal service. It lasted about 20 minutes, and we did NOT sit at tables as we do here. Rather, we stayed on our feet, coffee cup in hand, and mingled.

 

So, after a few weeks of reflection and sort of “studying” my own behavior, I realized what was happening. Basically, I—from small town Iowa—was accustomed to much closer social space than is customary in a big city. I was quite literally backing people around the parish hall and into corners by standing too close!

 

They’d take a step back, and I’d take a step forward. They’d take another step back, and I’d close what was to me a “gap” between us. And on it went. I literally had to learn to plant my feet on the floor and resist with great discipline the impulse to step into their preferred private space.

 

Boundaries. They help us keep our social relationships on track. And they come in all forms. Here’s a verbal one I also had to learn: When the convenience store cashier, with whom you have never done business before, calls you “baby”… if you’re in the Deep South, you smile and say “Thanks, Hon.” If you’re in the north, Yankee Land where I’m from, take a step back and get out of there as fast as you can!

 

So those are some funny examples, but boundaries are also serious business. I think it important to know that many people with autism have difficulty understanding and navigating social boundaries. They often struggle a lot to interpret social cues and to recognize nonverbal communication, and so they are often not sure how to make their own interactions “fit in.” They’re often not sure what is appropriate to say or do in any given situation. It is exhausting and anxiety producing.

 

Cultures also shape boundaries—not just rural vs. city culture, but cultures based in race, ethnicity and social class shape our perception and use of social boundaries. These can become particularly difficult and even deadly boundaries.

 

And that leads me, finally, to today’s Gospel story, in which Jesus is in the business of smashing boundaries.

 

Open Heart by Cromwell Ngobeni

To talk about the boundaries Jesus smashes in this story, I’m going to dwell for a moment on the guy in the ditch.

 

Who was he? Was he a Jew? I’m guessing that’s the common assumption. But in this story, which is ALL ABOUT who people are and the social boundaries they live within, Jesus says not a word about who the guy in the ditch is. It’s almost as though.. it really doesn’t matter! Right? He’s your neighbor. That is all.

 

Jesus also doesn’t answer any of the questions we might ask, like what did the guy do to contribute to his fate of getting robbed? Was he flaunting his wealth? Was he dressed provocatively? Was he careless? You know: What did he do to provoke the attack? All questions we might well ask seeking to justify our lack of desire to help.

 

It is particularly ironic that the religious guys—the priest and the Levite—do not help the guy in the ditch. Loving God and your neighbor as yourself is NOT a New Testament idea. Jesus did not make that up. He was quoting Hebrew scripture when he said that, and the priest and the Levite surely knew it. (Leviticus 19)

 

It is more than ironic, it is positively egregious when Christians today use Jesus himself to build boundaries between themselves and their neighbors—not only the ones who don’t worship Jesus, but even those who do worship Jesus but who perhaps don’t believe all the right things about him, or who don’t live by the right moral standards, or who have decided that Jesus sides with one political party over another, or whatever. Using Jesus to create deep and angry political divisions between people and nations seems to be a favorite past time these days.

 

 Author Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, said this: The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor. (Holy Envy)

 

See, this story of the Samaritan is not the only time Jesus smashes boundaries. Jesus smashed boundaries all the time. He dined with sinners. He hung out with low-lifes, like tax collectors. His smashing of boundaries is precisely what got Jesus into trouble with the good church people of his day over and over again.

 

So today I invite us to consider how we justify ourselves, what kinds of boundaries we use in deciding who is our neighbor and how we should respond to them. We are very invested in determining who “deserves” our help and who doesn’t. I think we are quite good at coming up with justifications that allow poverty and injustice to thrive in our society, and that defend the status quo, which just happens to benefit us!

 

Maybe it’s time each of us spends some time doing an inventory: What are my boundaries, especially when it comes to people who are very different from me? How do I use those boundaries in shaping my interactions with such people? Or do I have boundaries that prevent me from ever having to interact with people outside of my comfort zone? Which of my boundaries might be overdue for smashing?

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.