Jesus Experienced and Understood that Animals Matter

Jesus Experienced and Understood that Animals Matter

a sermon based on Luke 19: 28-36

given at Palm Bay, FL on October 31, 2010

by Rev. Scott Elliott

On animal blessing Sunday, I usually preach what some traditions call a homily; that is a short sermon.

I sometimes wonder if the tradition has become so popular because the sermon is shorter, but then I see all the wonderful animals and I know they are the real reason.

God’s creation and spirit in such a variety of beings is touching and fun to be around (Plus they are all so cute!).

A long, long time ago there used to be a television show with Art Linkletter called “Kids Say the Darndest Things!”

I know it was a long, long time ago because some of the sayings of the children on that show are captured in a book by the same name – and that book was published the year I was born – a long time ago.

Every once in awhile when I want to have a smile or a chuckle, I read a page or two of the sayings from way back then.

I decided to turn to that ancient text again to see if I could find some words of wisdom on animals. I was not disappointed. I discovered that, “One boy [on the show] had a ready answer when…asked what breed of dog he had.: ‘Half male and the other half airmail.'”

Actually, Art Linkletter found that the subject of pedigree puzzled children in a way that led to imaginative answers.

“Like the time [he] asked a boy if he had any brothers or sisters.

‘One brother but he’s a cat.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Socrates.’

‘Does he have a pedigree?’

‘No. It died last year.'”

Another exchange went:

“You have a pet dog; is it pedigreed?”

“I think she lost her pedigreed last week.”

One girl was sure her dog didn’t not have a pedigree. When…asked why, she said:

“Cause he’s had his shots.”

Perhaps the answer that brought the biggest laugh…on the pedigree question was this exchange:

“Do you have any pets?”

“Yes– a cat and a dog.”

“Do they have a pedigree?”

“No we took them out!” 1

The book of Genesis (written so long ago I was not even around) indicates that pedigree is not a prerequisite to being a valued creation. In Genesis we are told that on the fifth and sixth day God made ALL the animals and saw that they were good.

In fact Psalm 145 (9) tells us that God is good to all and that God has compassion over all that God has made. So know this: ALL those critters out there today – and you – are under God’s personal compassion and care.

Jesus, of course, had no earthly pedigree. To the powerful, Jesus was nothing but an itinerant, homeless, expendable peasant; he matters not a wit to them.

But Jesus mattered to God and to his followers and to the people whose lives he touched then and all those lives he has touched since.

We tend to think of Jesus’ dealings in life relating only to people. While people were clearly important to him, it is also remarkable how many animals are remembered in one way or another connected to Jesus’ story in the Gospels.

Some of the animals in the stories of Jesus’ are implicitly there. For example, most of us cannot think about his birth narrative – the Christmas story – without animals in the picture.

Before Jesus was even born, we assume his mother rode a humble donkey to Bethlehem with him in her womb.

We picture camels carrying the Magi and their treasures as they follow a star to Jesus and kneel before him in the manger when they found him.

We know that the host of angels appeared to shepherds while they were watching their flocks of sheep by night and shone the glory of God on both shepherd and ram and ewe and lamb.

And the perhaps one of the most endearing Christmas images we have is of Jesus in that blessed lowly manger surrounded by the camels, the sheep and the animals in the stable where he was born.

In other words, before Jesus was even a day old, animals of all sorts are remembered as having already helped bring him and others to Bethlehem, and then shared in the birth and celebration of the newborn king, the very Prince of Peace, Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God, Christ.

God made sure to include animals in preparation for the arrival and the birth of Jesus. They were important enough to be there with Christ since the beginning.

Most of us have the animal images in our head for Christmas, but after that we seem to forget that animals were part of the rest of Jesus’ life too. We tend to forget that as Jesus prepared for his ministry animals are also in the picture then.

On the day of his baptism God comes to Jesus in the form of an animal. Do you remember which animal? The Holy Spirit descends as a dove and it is through the image of that gentle bird, a universal symbol of peace, that God speaks to Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

Afterward, Jesus goes into the wilderness for forty days. Satan tempts him there and angels wait on him, but no other human is there. He does have company though. Mark specifically tells us wild beasts kept Jesus company in the wilderness. Animals are with Jesus as he prepares for his ministry. How cool is that?

The Gospels report too that the first humans Jesus recruits into his ministry are those who spent a lot of time with, and made their living through, animals. Peter, Andrew, James and John were all fishermen. And Jesus calls them to be fishers of men. His first metaphor and pun relates not just to humans but fish, both of whom he symbolically compares to one another: Fishermen and Fishers of men.

In some of the Gospel accounts, Jesus himself is shown to be an expert on fish. He knows how to locate and catch them when other experts cannot.

Jesus seems to have had intimate encounters and knowledge of animals in the wild.

We learn in the Gospels too that Jesus understood and believed that God values animals. He tells stories with God as a shepherd valuing the life of each sheep, and God as a mother hen protecting her chicks.

Jesus, in fact, specifically notes that while humans may undervalue animals, God values them. He says in Matthew: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” (Mat 10:29 NRS). The God of Jesus cares about animals.

In Luke, we are told again that Jesus pointed out that animals are of value to God, as well as under Divine care. There Jesus is reported to have said: “Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them.” (Luk 12:24 NRS)

Throughout the Gospels Jesus is described as having encounters with, or making references to, quite a number of animals, including wild beasts, donkeys, doves, fish, ravens, foxes, sheep, goats, camels, dogs, wolves, sparrows. moths and gnats.

The last type of animal – besides humans – that Jesus touched outside of Jerusalem, and the first to touch him inside Jerusalem is the same type of animal we imagine that carried him into Bethlehem while in his mother’s womb: a donkey.

As we heard in the reading this morning, Jesus needed that donkey. Jesus, THE LORD, needs a donkey colt and tells the disciples how to get one and what to say. And sure enough they get it and he is seated upon it and rides it into Jerusalem as the crowds cheer him on that first Palm Sunday.

The week that follows that ride, Jesus encounters what we might call asses of another kind; mean and cruel power-elites, human animals, who take his life. In the Gospels the only animal that mistreats Jesus in the man kind, the non-human animals in the Jesus narratives are blessings to Jesus and powerful images in his teaching and stories.

It is also no accident that two of the most powerful images that we have of Jesus are as shepherd and as lamb. In one, the shepherd we imagine him watching over humankind with care. In the other, the lamb, we imagine him as sacrificed by human powers for his efforts to watch over us with that care.

All of these references to animals in the stories about Jesus suggest that animals were a big part of Jesus’ life and that they matter not just to God, but to Jesus himself.

They surrounded him at his birth and the birth of his ministry.

They are remembered as carrying him on two of the most important trips in the Bible, to Bethlehem for the start of his life at Christmas, and to Jerusalem for end of his life and his resurrection to a new life during that first Holy Week.

A dove swooped in and announced Jesus ministry; and other animals soon after kept him company as he prepared for that ministry in the desert.

Perhaps the most telling verses on animals in the Gospels are those that indicate that Jesus knew and taught that God values animals, from sparrows to ravens to sheep to human beings.

The bottom line is that Jesus experienced and understood that all animals matter to God, and that they are a blessing from God.

May we all experience and understand that too, because animals have ever been just that, and are and always will be, blessings from God.

AMEN

ENDNOTES

1. Linkletter, Art, Kids Say the Darndest Things! Pocket Books, Inc. New York, (1957), 117-118.

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

God Speaks and God Succeeds

God Speaks and God Succeeds

a sermon based on Luke 18:1-8

given at Palm Bay, FL on October 17, 2010

by Rev. Scott Elliott

There once was a judge who went horseback riding with a young lawyer. They came across an open section of land with a lone tree. As they got closer to the tree they noticed an empty noose hanging from the biggest branch. The judge turned in his saddle to the young lawyer and said “If that gallows had its due, where do you suppose you would be right now?”

The young lawyer thought for a second and then answered, “Riding alone.” 1.

Someone once said the problem with justice is that it is no longer admissible in a court of law. 2. I am sad to say that my sixteen years experience as a litigation lawyer made me think on a number of days that that saying was not far from the truth.

When folks find out that I used to be a lawyer they invariably want to know why I left that profession. The positive part of the answer is that since I was a teen, I wanted to be a pastor but did not have religion so I had to wait until I found the wonderful God-soaked denomination of the United Church of Christ to be able to follow my true calling.

Like I said, that is the positive part of the answer.

The negative part of the answer is that being a litigation lawyer often did not set well with me.

I sometimes found too little justice in the justice system. Justice can and does happen there, but, more than I care to remember justice was delayed or avoided or ignored or sometimes even purposefully thwarted; which is not unlike what happens in today’s story about an unjust judge who had no respect for God or people or the law.

What I am trying to say is that I believe I met what seemed like this story’s judge’s descendants in court on more than one occasion.

Of course it wasn’t just some of the judges who seemed to side with injustice, some of the lawyers did too.

Don’t get me wrong there are a lot of good judges and despite the impression folks have about the profession there are a lot of good lawyers too – there really are – but my experience was there were some who did not seem very interested in justice.

I have thought a lot about it and, in my opinion, the problem with our justice system is that it has become for some just about wining. The result is that some lawyers take sides in a battle simply to win at virtually all costs, and some judges referee the contests with their agenda taking precedence. A consequence of this battle to win for winning’s sake and agendas over the law, is that truth and justice can get set to the side.

I have been before very good judges who tried to apply the law and help justice along. I even worked for a year for such a judge, a very good judge, who applied the law fairly in an effort to obtain justice.

But there are judges, like the one in today’s story, who do not apply the law or the process fairly. Rules get ignored or bent in very weird ways.

I used to play a lot of softball and the best analogy I have come up with is that going to court was sometimes like playing shortstop, catching a hard hit grounder and making a great throw to toss the runner out at first, only the runner does not run to first, he runs to the pitcher’s mound and back home and yells “I scored.” And when you go to the ump for a ruling he says “I know these are not the rules but I am giving him the run; and just so you know, I will let you do that too.”

I found the practice of law in courts could be that crazy. Court rules and laws were broken or ignored or made up along the way by some judges and some lawyers.

It made me very sad, not to mention frustrated, to have litigation treated at times like a game where rules could be discarded at the whim of the players or refs. People came to court looking for justice and it could be hard to find.

So it was not all that difficult for me to leave the law once I found the God of love in the United Church of Christ and the old call to be a pastor returned.

And since God has a marvelous sense of humor, as a pastor I believe I have been a part of helping justice along – at least as much as when I was a lawyer.

Augustine defined justice as “that virtue which gives everyone his due.” That is how I understand justice; as a virtue that gives all their due.

I am not alone in agreeing with Augustine. The Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms defines justice as “the concept of each person receiving what is due…” 3.

That dictionary goes on to make this very interesting point on justice, it says:

Biblically, the emphasis is on right relationships and
persons receiving a share of the resources of society.

Concern is expressed for the oppressed and their
right treatment. Justice is related to love and grace.

My seminary ethics professor put is something like this, “Love is justice distributed. We cannot talk about love without talking about justice since justice is how love is embodied.”

My legal dictionary at first glance seems to have a little bit different definition of justice than me and Augustine and the Theology Dictionary and the Bible. It says that justice is the, “[p]roper administration of laws.” But if you read a little further, it goes on to say that it is the, “disposition of legal matters or disputes to render every man (sic) his due.” 4

So justice at it’s heart is meant to ensure fair distribution of what people are entitled to.

The Bible is not law in this country, but it was supposed to be the law when Jesus first told today’s story about the widow and the unjust judge. And Biblical law requires that judges and everyone else respect God.

And injustice was also thought to be the opposite of respect of God. 5

In the Bible, respect for God is the basis for wise decisions “Moreover, righteous judgment on the part of a judge is mandated by Torah.” 5.

Biblically speaking, judges were supposed to respect not just God, but other people; and they were to. “listen to the one wronged; and…not ignore the ‘supplication of the fatherless nor the widow when she pours out her story.’”5.

So it is clear that the judge in Jesus’ parable was the very opposite of what a judge was supposed to be. He does not follow the Biblical laws I just named. He is disrespectful, not doing his job, not caring about God or people or justice. People do not get their due in his courtroom.

Listeners of Jesus story when it was first told would have heard not just that the judge was unjust, but, specifically how he was not doing what he was supposed to do under Biblical law.

No doubt they would have likened him to the ruthless Roman system of government for which he was a stooge, a comparison Jesus may very well have had in mind when he told the story.

One commentator puts it like this: “The Parable of the unjust Judge reflects a world of bribes and brutality, a world of injustice for the poor– or at least justice delayed or gained only by force, which is injustice too.” 6

Jesus is a good storyteller and the unjust judge is a caricature of bad judges and a metaphor for the unjust justice system. He’s one of those characters you love to hate.

Jesus is not just a good storyteller but a funny one. The unjust judge is a foil to the poor widow who finds a way to win in the system that’s predisposed against her.

She may be a nobody to the culture and powers that be, but she’s wily and so maddeningly persistent that the unjust judge gives up and gives her justice, not because he wants to do right, but because she’s worn him down.

In other words, the judge has to do what is right so she’ll go away. “[H]e said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'”

To put it in the vernacular, the widow wins by driving the judge nuts.

That’s funny stuff.

A cultural nobody, lowest-of-the-low female widow bests a big powerful, bad hombre judge. The Roman Stooge is afraid of her.

The result is that justice is dispensed, the widow gets her due.

One way to hear this parable is obvious, that if a ruthless unjust judge will respond to persistent petitions surely our good and loving God will.

In fact, Luke notes that Jesus says as much at verses 6 to 8:

And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge
says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen
ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay
long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant
justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man
comes, will he find faith on earth?

It is easy to hear this as Jesus claiming that, with enough persistence, we can get everything we want in prayer, and people do often hear it that way – and it is preached like that too.

But that is not what Luke reports Jesus taught. The way Luke tells it, the story is about God getting us justice. Justice, where each person receives what is due. As we just heard verse 7 and 8 report Jesus saying: “And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.”

Listen again to what the Theology dictionary notes; Biblically, the emphasis is on right relationships and persons receiving a share of the resources of society. Concern is expressed for the oppressed and their right treatment. Justice is related to love and grace.

If we care to, we can choose to hear the parable as a little more sophisticated than being just about one outcast of one culture pestering one judge until he breaks down and metes out justice to one person.

We can hear the widow as the never-ending voice of God throughout time being raised in God’s people demanding justice from corrupt earthly powers.

We can hear it as God’s power working in history, even those in culture’s lowest of the low, in the Everywoman and the Everyman.

Not even those who wield earthly powers without regard to God, or people or justice can stop God’s never-ending call for the granting of justice, of what is due.

When it comes down to it, the powers that be in the world have rarely wanted to do what is just (to give all their due), but the heartbeat of God thump-thump-thumping for justice in the voices of his agents has a great track record of wearing them down.

We can hear the parable today as telling us that it takes time and persistence, but what is due will come. No petty power-monger people loathing judge or other power-elite can stop it.

There is great hope in this!

And it is not just hypothetical, we can see in history that it’s true. Little voices of cultural nobodies have spoken God’s Truth to the powerful relentlessly and the powerful have tried to ignore them, have evaded justice, but have in the end, over and over again, eventually caved in and said “I will grant justice so [they] may not wear me out…”

If we think about it, pestering the powerful has led to God’s justice being granted with respect to so many things that humanity is on the move closer and closer to a world where one day all will have their due.

We are not there yet by a long shot but we are a heck of a lot closer than we were when Jesus first told the parable we heard this morning.

The people of God have ceaselessly pestered the worldly powers for justice for two thousand years and when they have done so – when we do so – we are God’s voice that is ultimately victorious.

Even in downtrodden widows God speaks and God succeeds.

Even in downtrodden slaves God speaks and God succeeds.

Even in downtrodden women God speaks and God succeeds.

Even in downtrodden poor God speaks and God succeeds.

Even in downtrodden migrant workers God speaks and God succeeds.

Even in downtrodden people of color God speaks and God succeeds.

Even in downtrodden religious minorities God speaks and God succeeds.

Even in downtrodden disabled people God speaks and God succeeds.

Even in downtrodden LGBT people God speaks and God succeeds.

Even in us, EVEN IN US, God speaks and God succeeds.

Worldly powers have long held too little respect for humans and too little respect for God and too little respect for justice and what is due!

But like the poor widow in today’s lesson, God does not give up, through tenacity and persistence in the voice of God’s Children, history proves that justice will out, justice will be provided.

What God wants due to all will be given. That is the point of Jesus’ parable.

And that, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, is good news!

AMEN!

ENDNOTES

1. Hodgin, Michael, 1002 Humorous Illustrations, (2004), p. 209.

2. Hodgin, Michael, 1001 More Humorous Illustrations, (1998), 181.

3. McKim, Donald, Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms (1996).

4. Black’s Law Dictionary (Abridged 5th Edition) (1983).

5 Hultgren, Arland, The Parables of Jesus, (2000), 254.

6. Ibid. at 259.

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Turning To God

 

Turning To God

a sermon based on Luke 17:11-19

(THE MESSAGE)

given at Palm Bay, FL on October 10, 2010

by Rev. Scott Elliott

A couple of weeks ago, I trudged home from a long day at church. And after I stopped the car in the driveway my wife Nancy let our trusty dog Gwen out so she could enact her daily ritual of greeting me.

Gwen started her usual bigger than life waggly “Hello” but her eyes and ears were suddenly drawn to a distraction she could not resist. So instead of giving me her normal over the top welcome, Gwen ran off to check out a weird noise and presence in the garden.

I kept Gwen in sight as she stopped short of was a squawking medium sized raccoon.

I called Gwen back and put her in the house; and yelled out to Nance and Forest to come and see the critter, while I grabbed a camera. I thought my long day was ending with a nice little surprise, a cute little critter in the yard.

By the time I got back outside with the camera in tow, the raccoon had wandered down a narrow area on our lot. I stealthily followed it down that forested alley.

As an outdoors kinda guy I have stalked more than a few animals, including a number of raccoons. I crept up on this little masked fellow trying not to scare it so I could get a picture.

When my careful creeping got me 25 to 30 feet away, something happened that I have never encountered before. The raccoon turned in my direction and when it saw me, it squawked a very loud warning and then, like something from a horror film – I am not making this up – it charged toward me at full speed with dust flying everywhere.

I am not very proud of what I did next…I yelled as loud as I could “AHHHHHHH! Run! It’s chasing me! Nance, you all get in the house!”

We all went running. I ran away from the family and I will say this part proudly: I have not run that fast since track in high school.

I was motivated, I was sure the raccoon would soon be nipping my heels. Somehow though I managed to outrun it…or more likely it stopped chasing me.

Whatever happened, I do know this, I yelled for Nance to open the door when I got there. I darted to the door and rushed into the house, hot, sweaty and out of breath.

Was I ever glad to have avoided injury to more than my pride from that mean little critter!

We called animal control to report a maybe rabid raccoon and I went out and knocked on my neighbors’ doors trying to warn them.

I don’t know what happened to the raccoon, but it will be the last one that I consider cute before I get to know it a little better.

Even as my out-of-shape being was running that day, a voice in my head told me “This is gonna be a funny story, dude – as long as you don’t get bit.”

Let’s face it an old guy running in his dress clothes through his yard from a small masked varmit IS funny; but I did not know how to use this story in a sermon until I sat down with today’s Lectionary text.

We have discussed on a number of occasions how the word “Repent” means to change your mind or to turn around; and let me tell you when that raccoon started at me full throttle I sure “repented,” in both senses of that word.

I changed my mind that the varmit was a cute little thing that I needed to take a picture of; and, of course, I also turned around and I did not stop until I was out of danger.

That little adventure in my yard proves that repentance is a good thing, physically, in my case. But repentance is, of course, also a good thing spiritually.

A goodly portion of Christianity is about repentance, about changing our mind and turning around from human things toward God and godly things.

Lots and lots of folks have run away from harm or crisis, and turned to God in the midst of disaster.

That is a good thing. God wants to help and certainly encourages changes of mind that turn us toward the Divine at any time. God is good all the time, waiting for us to make any kind of turn to the Sacred.

We can hear how the ten lepers made such a turn in today’s lesson from Luke.

Lepers in Jesus’ and Luke’s day were outcasts. They were alienated and isolated by society. People lived in dread of them. Consequently people with leprosy lived in banishment “from their homes, from the loving touch of spouses, children, parents, from the faith community…They lived alone, away from community. Sometimes they banded together to become a small community of misery.”1

In today’s story, Jesus comes upon ten such men, lepers all. In desperation they turn to Jesus in the midst of disaster and pray to the Lord: ”Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

The ten lepers turning was, in a sense, like my turning when I ran from that crazy raccoon. They were in a desperate threatening situation and turning gave them hope of escape from that danger.

Obviously there was no humor in the ten lepers’ condition. Their plight was much graver and long term than my encounter with a raccoon, and the injury was not just threatened, but very real and already upon them.

And make no mistake about it, every one of those lepers turned to Christ and that turning (repenting, if you will) not only brought them into the presence of Jesus, but into Christ’s healing presence.

Moreover, the ten lepers did as they were instructed; they did as the Rabbi Jesus told them, as Torah commanded, they went off to fulfill the law to show themselves to the priests and be given the okay to go home to reenter the community no longer shunned outcasts, but full members of society.

God’s Grace through Christ was fully theirs, and in response they did what the rules and the teachings called for.

By law, the ten lepers did not have to do anything more to enjoy the blessing of healing and restoration to the community that Jesus bestowed upon them.

Many of us who go to church or find religion, turn to God in this crisis or that, perhaps many crises. The threat, or threats, turned us to God in prayer with something like “Jesus, master, have mercy on us!”

Our prayers too got an answer and our turning, our repenting, was a change of mind. We started or restarted going to church. We did what we understood we were told to do, supposed to do, what was required by the church or the Bible or a pastor.

Just like the nine who go off to the priest as they were told we went off to a house of worship too. This is a good thing, it can get us healed, just like the ten were healed. God is good all the time waiting for us to make any kind of turn to the Sacred and it cannot help but be healing.

But healing from a crisis, and going through the motions we are told is not The Way to salvation, as least not The Way Jesus taught us.

Yes, we may be saved from what immediately ailed us, but our whole being is not necessarily saved. We are not transformed, saved from the lesser self we are if we do not have faith and do not react to the Grace God provides with our heart. We need to react not as we are told, but as we are called; not because someone else or some book or some law tells us too, but because we want to of our own volition.

Deep meaningful whole repentance and soul transformation and salvation comes not from just turning to God in a crisis and responding by complying with rules or doctrines or laws or teachings.

We have to turn to God without threat or compulsion. Whole soul salvation comes when we go to Jesus because we want to, not because we have to.

Only one human alive today can persuade us to turn toward God on our own. That human is our self. When we turn to God on our own we do it through faith, not by rule or law or prescription – and it makes all the difference.

Listen to The Message paraphrase again. Notice what brings about salvation:

It happened that as he made his way toward

Jerusalem, he crossed over the border between

Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten

men, all lepers, met him. They kept their distance

but raised their voices, calling out, “Jesus, Master,

have mercy on us!” Taking a good look at them, he

said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” They

went, and while still on their way, became clean. One

of them, when he realized that he was healed, turned

around and came back, shouting his gratitude,

glorifying God. He kneeled at Jesus’ feet, so grateful.

He couldn’t thank him enough – and he was a

Samaritan. Jesus said, “Were not ten healed? Where

are the nine? Can none be found to come back and

give glory to God except this outsider?” Then he said

to him, “Get up. On your way. Your faith has healed

and saved you.”

The tenth guy does something different, doesn’t he?

And the result is he is not only healed but saved.

He turns to Christ with the others in a crisis, but

when he realized that turning in desperation had

been effective he then turned around and placed

himself in Jesus’ presence not out of desperation, not

to get a single thing, he does it to show humility and

honor and gratitude, to show trust and belief – faith –

in Jesus.

[W]hen he realized that he was healed, [He] turned

around and came back, shouting his gratitude,

glorifying God. He kneeled at Jesus’ feet, so grateful.

He couldn’t thank him enough…

The faith of all ten lepers leads to all ten getting

healed. But only the faith of the one who comes to

the presence of the Lord of his own accord leads to

salvation. The tenth leper turns to Jesus, not only

when danger is chasing him or eating his flesh away,

but: when he realized that he was healed, [that’s

when he] turned around and came back, shouting his

gratitude, glorifying God. He kneeled at Jesus’ feet,

so grateful. He couldn’t thank him enough…”

Turning to Jesus when we are in trouble is going to get us healed. It’s going to get us in God’s presence, because God is good all the time waiting for us to make any kind of turn to the Sacred.

But turning to God when we don’t have to, hanging in God’s presence without an immediate personal motive, with humbleness, honoring God with gratitude, that, that, is going to change our life. We are going to be transformed from who we were and what we might have been to what we are called to and have the potential to be – someone better.

Turning to Christ not only when there is a crisis, but also without a crisis at our heel, leads us to our better-self because when we come to Jesus without compulsion, we come voluntarily and with gratitude glorifying God. God is good all the time and the more we are in that good presence of God the better we are for it.

When we seek Jesus because we want to, not because we feel that we have to, we find ourselves not just being healed from the crisis of the moment, but saved from our lesser selves.

We find our self aware of the presence of Christ in our life more and more of the time, instead of just when things are chasing us.

Turning toward Christ when we have a pressing scary need is a good and fine thing to do. Christ – God – is good all the time waiting for us to make any kind of turn to the Sacred.

Turning toward Christ when we don’t have to – being in God’s presence more and more – that’s when we have time to let Christ’s presence save us right down to our soul, thereby making us whole.

The good news is that God is good all the time and always in our lives and loves us always, but God is also calling us to a better self. We alone decide if we are going to turn and answer that call.

The good news is all we have to do is decide to turn toward our always there, always good, God to be our better self. Christ – God – is right there waiting anytime, anywhere, any day.

May we turn to God more and more and more and experience the goodness that is God and bring that goodness into our lives and into the lives of others in all that we say and do.

AMEN

ENDNOTES

1. Buchanan, John, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol 4, p 167

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Being God’s Servant is Reward Enough

Being God’s Servant is Reward Enough

a sermon based on Luke 17:5-10

given at Palm Bay, FL on October 3, 2010

by Rev. Scott Elliott

A man once complained to Mark Twain that the Bible was all jumbled up, inconsistent, and filled with passages he could not understand.

To which Twain replied, “I have more difficulty with the passages I do understand than with the passages I don’t understand.” 1

I guess that means that Mark Twain would have had less difficulty with the verses we just heard, as they are very hard to understand.

Indeed, the Lectionary texts from Luke for the past few weeks have been pretty difficult as a whole to comprehend.

Three weeks ago we looked at the parable of the “Shrewd Steward” who gets fired and lauded for cutting his master’s debtors a deal on the way out.

Last week we looked at the parable of “The Rich Man and Lazarus” which depicts a role-reversal in the afterlife for the rich who do not tend to the poor.

Today we have the parable of “The Worthless Servant” one of the most difficult parables for modern folk to understand.

Some of the commentators on these texts warn that preachers often avoid preaching on them because they are so hard to get your head around.

In Bible study we have discovered over the past few weeks that these parables from Luke by-and-large have not been all that familiar to us.

Some of us did not recall hearing them preached on, others did not recall even seeing them before.

I suspect the unfamiliarity of these parables is due, as the commentaries note, to the tendency of pastors to avoid preaching on them.

And frankly, at least with respect to today’s text who can blame them?

This is some hard stuff.

Truthfully when I read today’s text a few weeks ago the first words that came to mind were “Yikes!

That’s a hard one.”

The story on the surface seems to be about a rebuke by Jesus of his followers for not having a tiny bit of faith, and then a story that suggests we are unworthy.

I spend a lot of time as a pastor debunking the notion that Christianity is about our being unworthy of love, and I also fight the notion that super-human faith is a requirement for salvation.

I tend preach the very opposite: that is, that the Gospel is about all of us being so worthy that no matter what God loves us, and that anyone can have faith enough.

The proof I lean on is throughout the Gospels, so my utterance of “Yikes” is not about being shown I am wrong, but, about wrestling with the text to figure out how it fits into Jesus’ message that we do all matter, and it does not take some sort of super-faith to be a good Christian.

About now I am guessing some of you may be wondering why I didn’t just run from the text, as the commentators suggest other preachers do? What’s the point of wrestling with this parable?

Good question.

I am not sure I have a great answer, but, nonetheless I will tell you why you get to hear this text and me preach on it.

It all started in seminary where I decided that when I picked classes for the coming semester any course with theological content that made me want to run, I would not run from but instead take.

I figured that if a theological thing evoked a strong response in me, I’d better learn to deal with it so when it raised a strong response at church I’d be familiar with it. And I did this. I regularly took classes that did not appeal to me. I did this as a spiritual practice and in preparation for the ministry.

Well, one thing led to another and somehow pretty soon I began to apply that logic to Scripture that I was facing. If I encountered a verse that made me want to run, I decided to turn and face it, and deal with it.

There is a quote by Martin Luther which reflects my thinking when these types of verses pop up. Martin Luther said “The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands it lays hold of me.” 2

The bottom-line is that I am convinced that if I do not turn and face difficult texts they are gonna chase me down and catch me one day anyway so I might as well deal with them now while I am still young and in my thirties.

Since I started this practice of facing difficult texts, I have discovered that the “Yikes” verses tend to make me work harder, but they also tend to help me understand God much better than if I had not wrestled with them.

All of this is to say that when I first said “Yikes!” after reading the text, and the first commentary I turned to on today’s text literally began “The Gospel lesson assigned for this Sunday may at first blush scare the preacher off…” I knew not only what my text was going to be, but that it was going to take some doing to figure it out. And sure enough it did.

So if you thought “What was that verse they just read about?” or “Yikes! That lesson is odd!” Don’t despair. I felt the same thing when I got to it a few weeks ago; and apparently so have a lot of other theologians and experts. It’s not an easy text.

Let’s take the first part of the text, the part about having faith.

Jesus’ closest followers, the Apostles – the ones he chose to be his inner circle and team – are having questions about the amount of faith they have.

The reason they have questions is in the preceding text Jesus has just told them not to be stumbling blocks to other’s and to forgive everyone for every slight all the time.

Jesus words to them are, “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come…So watch yourselves. “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”

Faith is needed to do that kinda stuff, this work Jesus sets out for his followers.

Trying not to be a stumbling block and learning to forgive all the time requires faith.

And we should take heart that even Jesus’ hand-picked followers, his “A team” had worries about faith. They ask Jesus to increase their faith.

And while folks often hear Jesus’ response as a rebuke, we can choose to hear it as a positive affirmation that only a little bit of faith is needed.

He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.

Jesus teaching is not a scolding, “Get with it guys and have a little faith.” His teaching is a gentle affirmation that they already have more than enough faith.

Columbia Theological Seminary Professor Kimberly Bracken Long puts it like this:

[What if] Jesus is not scolding the apostles at all?
What if he is not clucking his tongue and shaking his
head over their lack of faith, but speaking these
words in a voice of encouragement and love, as one
who would give up his life for his friends? For us?

If we listen again to this exchange with these new
ears, we hear Jesus answer the disciples with
kindness, and maybe even a bit of a smile. “Why you
do not need more faith, “he says. Even this much
faith (his thumb and forefinger pinching together
again) is enough. If we hear Jesus speak with the
voice of love, we hear him telling the apostles that,
in fact, they already have enough faith to do
whatever is required of them. 3

Faith is about trust and belief in God. Once you have faith, it establishes AN opening in your life for God to be experienced by you and in you and through you – by you and in you and through you. Faith establishes a place in your being where the power of God seeps in and does its wondrous work in the world.

And it is critical to understand that whatever power there is in faith, it comes from God not us. God’s power is all that is in the universe and then some and then some more. It is beyond our comprehension. God is called omnipotent, that means all powerful. For God to be powerful in our life all we need is a pin hole sized bit of faith, or as Jesus puts it “faith as small as a mustard seed.” Once we let God in, then power beyond our imagination is acting with us, present in our very lives, in our very selves.

Most of us have at least a pin hole size of faith. Even when I roamed about for twenty years without a church trusting only that God was love, believing in God and no doctrine, even then I had enough faith. Look what God did with that pinhole opening – blessed us with one less lawyer in the world, and created a pastor – all in one fell swoop!

I personally can tell you that I am still overwhelmed God did all that.

So the first half of Jesus’ lesson in this morning’s reading is, do not fret about the quantity of your faith.

God will work wonders through whatever faith you have, no matter how tiny. You see with tiniest bit of faith we open up enough room for the very power of God to sidle in and move mountains and trees! And transform lives and the world. Jesus did just that and in the story today he is trying to teach his followers, the disciples and us, how to do it too.

The second half of the lesson is a bit harder. It’s a weird sounding parable to us.

That’s because we do not live in a culture with servants like they had in first-century Palestine, so the meaning gets lost.

Plus Americans by and large are taught to value themselves and be proud of who they are. That’s a good thing over-all, but it pushes hard against the last line of the lesson where Jesus says: “[W]hen you have done everything you were told to do, [you] should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ “

We bristle at the notion of being “worthless servants,” which is not a bad thing in the context of doing work at home or in an office for a boss or business.

But this is not about what to expect at our jobs or at our homes from one another. It’s about doing God’s work, it’s about being agents of God in the world.

When we act for God we need to remember we are merely humble conduits of God’s powerful love. We are, in the scheme of things, pin holes of God’s light, a glorious thing, but small nonetheless in comparison to God.

Which means – to state the obvious – WE ARE NOT GOD!

Moreover, the work we do for God is not done for a reward as some would have us think, rather we work for God because it is our honored duty to do it as Christians, as agents of God, as bearers of the Light.

Today’s story is about keeping in perspective what it means to have God in our lives and what it means to do God’s work. We should not expect anything more in return than having served God, that ought to be honor and reward enough!

There is a wonderful paraphrase of today’s text in The Message by Eugene Peterson. Listen to how Rev. Peterson captures the meaning of the parable in the last two verses: “Does the servant get special thanks for doing what’s expected of him? It’s the same with you. When you’ve done everything expected of you, be matter-of-fact and say, ‘The work is done. What we were told to do, we did.'”

The parable is about doing our work for God without a sense that God owes us.

It’s about being a willing agent of God; not about claiming the power is ours, or that the pinhole we open for God to come in otherwise entitles us. We have faith and we do God’s work because that is what we are called to do.

The story turns on the logic of Jesus’ day regarding servants. Their daily job was to do work in the field and around the house. Jesus’ story is not an observation about the servant or slave systems of the day. “It simply uses the logic of the system to describe the nature of ‘what ought to be done,’” when we serve God. 4

The Message paraphrase captures not just the end but, the meaning of today’s entire text. Now that we some more of the context of the lesson, let’s listen to the whole thing as Eugene Peterson has rephrased it:

The apostles came up and said to the Master, “Give
us more faith.”

But the Master said, “You don’t need more faith.
There is no ‘more’ or ‘less’ in faith. If you have a
bare kernel of faith, say the size of a poppy seed,
you could say to this sycamore tree, ‘Go jump in the
lake,’ and it would do it.

“Suppose one of you has a servant who comes in
from plowing the field or tending the sheep. Would
you take his coat, set the table, and say, ‘Sit down
and eat’?

Wouldn’t you be more likely to say, ‘Prepare dinner;
change your clothes and wait table for me until I’ve
finished my coffee; then go to the kitchen and have
your supper’?

Does the servant get special thanks for doing what’s
expected of him?

It’s the same with you. When you’ve done everything

expected of you, be matter-of-fact and say, ‘The
work is done. What we were told to do, we did.'”

Can you hear it?

Can you hear the good news?

The good news in today’s lesson is that we all have enough faith, that faith leads to God’s very own power in our life, a power that can do anything.

That amazing power ought to humble us.

As a consequence, when we do God’s work we ought not to expect a anything beyond being humble bearers of God’s light – which clearly ought to be reward enough!

AMEN

ENDNOTES

1. Jones, G. Curtis, 1000 Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching, Boardman and Holden (1986), 28.

2. Rowell, Edward, 1001 Quotes, Illustrations and Humorous Stories, BakerBooks (2008) 17.

3. Long, Kimberley Bracken, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 4, 142.

4. Buchanan, John Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol 4, 143.

Copyright SElliott