Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
November 10, 2019
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
It all started when I climbed up on the step stool in front of the hot stove.  Grandmother Taliaferro gave me an oversized apron, a long handled wooden spoon, and put me in charge of stirring the gravy.  She kept it on low, and while she cubed loaves of white bread and chopped celery and onions, I stood sentinel, assuring that the simmering brown goodness thickened, but did not stick to the bottom or sides of the pan.  Even talking about it brings back the smell of memory.  Her kitchen was spotless and efficient and I loved that I was the only one allowed in her domain.
 
That started a life-long love of cooking that I have nurtured and studied ever since childhood.  My mother says the cooking gene skipped a generation, and through the passing of generations, I have become the marshal of our Thomas family feasts.  What this means in this season is that requests for the Thanksgiving menu have started to come my way.  With a vegetarian daughter, a brussels sprouts loving wife, a corn pudding loving son, an oyster dressing loving mother, and a growing guest list of attendees from all corners of our tradition, the planning requires careful allocation of casserole dish assets, precious oven time, and the age-old question as to how to and when to cook the turkey.  Brine and baste? Deep fry and crisp the skin?  Stuffing or dressing?  And then, there is the procurement and preparation of the best Virginia ham (and that is another whole sermon).
 
The one unifying and absolute constant is my grandmother Thomas’s icebox yeast rolls.  While everyone has their favorite dish, the rolls bring it all together.  And that smell, that heavenly scent, is the perfect harbinger, the sweet incense of all kinds of goodness and memory.  And yet, the rolls are the biggest challenge.  We use the recipe from the stained and spotted index card written in her own hand.  It calls for a ball of shortening about the size of an egg, sugar, warm water, yeast, and flour.  The exact proportions, proving, and cooking times are a matter of constant debate and experimentation.  The quest to get as close to what she produced with such ease and regularity throughout her life is illusive at best. Her light arthritic touch may have had as much to do with the perfect product as anything.  We can imitate, and get pretty darn close, but we will never duplicate exactly the perfect browning of the outside and fluffy light insides.  Be that as it may, no one requests biscuits or cornbread.
 
Remembering is a key feature of this approaching season.  Like all families, we are complicated and evolving, but the steady stream of sweet yeasty memories is like glue that attaches us across time.  Like so many memories, the arguments and tensions of growing up and apart fade into the constants of a table gathering.  So, we strike out again this year with hope and anticipation in quest for a more perfect yeast roll despite our distances and differences.
 
When we gather here each week, we do much of the same things to bring constancy and steadiness to the vicissitudes of our lives.  We tell connected parts of God’s story in relationship to all of us through time and space.  And today we opened with a peculiar and odd ancient tale: back in the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, when the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai.  Haggai is not a prophet we know so well.  His book is really short and stuck near the end of the Old Testament.  For context: the great and glorious Temple had been destroyed, they had been carried off into slavery and exile in Babylon, and generations later, they have been allowed to return to their land and have sought to rebuild and reshape their common lives and faith.  It would be like coming home after years to find your old home place in ashes and rubble with only a few charred objects to remember former greatness.
 
In this setting, Haggai delivers an important pep talk.  He them that God is still their God and that same God of their remembered glory is on the move among them.  Haggai tells them not to dwell on the past with mournful regret, but to expect God to do a powerful new thing among them.  In hindsight, we cannot help but hear this as foreshadowing the living God in Jesus Christ who is to come, and will transform the power and presence of God from being confined and located in a particular time and place, like a Temple, to a living and powerful force of love and grace that transcends time and space.  That is a lot for an ancient Israelite to get their minds around, but there it is.  The lesson is paired with a psalm of praise and hope, again, envisioning God acting in ways we cannot predict, contain, or, even, comprehend fully. 
 
The clear message is that we are not completely and fully equipped to understand God and God’s ways of constant and persistent creation.  All we can do is watch and wonder.  When the Psalmist tells us that God’s ways are not our ways and our ways are not God’s ways, it is an understatement.  And while we would like to understand and know as God knows, that was never part of the guarantee. 
 
It is often said that life is lived looking forward, but better understood looking backward.  The lessons for today from Haggai, from St. Paul, and in Luke’s gospel are all about that.  When the Sadducees challenge Jesus about the woman who was married seven times and ask whose husband she will be in heaven, they are trying to play the game of applying earthly standards to a completely different plane of existence.  Their literal demand is a trick question and stands in the way of their embrace of mystery and promise.  Naturally, Jesus points to God being a God of the living: a living that extends beyond what we see and experience in the here and now, into what ancient Christian mystics called “the cloud of unknowing.[1]”
 
All of these texts are the stuff of memory.  They represent encounters with big questions at key moments, none of which make sense to those standing at the edges of something completely new and different.  When we look back on them, we see a bit more clearly, but not completely.  As we consider our own place and circumstance in history, it helps to look back to help make sense of what might be and what is to be revealed in time.
 
Remembering is at the heart of sacramental living.  As faithful people, we gather around the table of the Lord and affirm the feast of life.  We tell the story of sacrificial, self-giving love that unites us in the ongoing life of Jesus among us.  What we do is more than memory, though.  In holding on to the essentials, the biggest of the big picture is affirmed.  It is impossible for us to know completely what the present means and what God will do with what is happening now, but we know from looking back that God is always making things new, and God is always at work in God’s faithful people.  Once again, we remember.  We get around the table.  We break the bread.  We pass the cup.  We do this to affirm the present presence of God, to quiet our fears of unknowing, and lift up our lives to hope.  Amen.


[1] Thomas Aquinas has a lot to say about this in his Summa Theologica and I commend his exploration of embracing what we cannot know as a lens to deeper relationship with God.

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
November 3, 2019
The Feast of All Saints
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
Today is a day for hagiography.  You know, hagiography.  Ok, well, it is sort of like biography, telling the story of a life, but in specific, the lives of saints.  Hagiographers are those who write and tell of great good people through whom God’s light has shined brightly.  Today we transfer and celebrate the Feast of All Saints, it is a good time for some hagiographizing (I think I just made up that word).
 
We can all name some saints, I am sure:  St. Paul, he is a biggie and we read from his epistles most every week.  He was a former persecutor of Jews who was knocked off is high horse, literally, and blinded by a great light.  As his story goes, Jesus spoke directly to him and transformed him from professional persecutor to chief promoter of following Christ’s Way.  St. Francis, we remember, came from a rich Italian family and just when established forms of money and property ownership were being codified, he renounced all of it and formed a group of folks to live together, serve the poor, and as legend has it, even the animals recognized his pure goodness.  St. Nicholas, of course, is Nicholas of Myra, another rich man who gave it all away was rumored to have put money in the shoes of poor young women so they would have enough dowry to marry.  That story is just a legend as the real Nicholas was an imprisoned and persecuted bishop in the mid-300s, but he is remembered for personal generosity, and that spawned a tradition we carry forward as stocking stuffing.  In a cultural mash up, with help from the Dutch, an American poet, and Coca Cola, we get Santa Claus, the jolly elf we are already see in store blow ups and commercial advertisements for months to come.
 
Almost all of the old school saints got to be called saints just because people remembered them and told their stories long before the printing press.  The Church being the Church, felt the need to codify saint making around the 10th century.  All of a sudden, a saint had to become a saint through someone making application, verifying something miraculous that set the person apart, and then there was an investigation and hearing and the final saint making decision was reserved for the Pope’s final approval.  Then, over the years, the Church set aside specific days for remembering each saint until the calendar ran out of days, and then books of saints were compiled and the list grew and grew.
 
The more superstitious iterations of Church used to hold on to relics of saints believing that they held some sort of physical connection to holiness.  Thus, bodies were displayed, bones and organs were preserved and embedded into church architecture, and all kinds rites of prayers and remembrance were developed to honor their legacies.  This is where we get patron and matron saint of this and that:  Simon and Jude for lost causes, Anthony for lost items, Joseph if you want to sell your house, Fiocre for gardeners, Amand for bartenders… the list is long.  Catholic Online lists 1,776 of them.
 
Prayers to and through saints resides mostly in Roman Catholic Theology and when the Reformation came about, Protestants eschewed such practice as excessive and tending toward idol worship, believing that prayer to God in Christ is all sufficient and a more direct line anyway.  Even so, if you want to sell your house, you can purchase a little statue of Joseph online complete with directions as to where to bury him in your yard for luck.
 
The Episcopal Church, being both Catholic and Protestant takes a middle way with respect to saint making and honoring such people.  We do have a process and a way to lift up lives well lived for remembering.  We have a book called Lesser Feasts and Fasts with some great stories and prayers.  The official line is this: Christ makes it possible for us to be saints as we share his life. We are washed, sanctified, and justified "in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor 6:11).  On this Feast of All Saints, we dig into this, and recognize that all people, all of us, are saints in the making.  It is good to remember particular examples and thank God for them, but really, we are all a mixed bag of holiness and messiness and it is not a bad idea to affirm and celebrate when some of us get it right.
 
However well intended the saint making process is, the practice of hagiography, saint story telling is such a better idea.  Rob McSwain, a friend of mine who is a priest and professional theologian has just written a book called Human Holiness as Divine Evidence: The Hagiological Argument for the Existence of God.  That is a mouthful, but made more simple, he argues this:  The fact that people can do great and good things in God’s name shows us that God is real and present.  While we make much or sin and its ravages, and while most of the news we consume is about chicanery and misdeeds, we honor God as we tell the other side of the news and recognize God’s light shining, even through the cracks of our own brokenness.
 
God is breaking into the world in such moving and life-giving ways all of the time.  The fact that we have to process saint making shows that we can be a little slow in taking notice.  I have come to appreciate the last segment on NBC’s evening news broadcast because it is, generally positive.  They call that last report “For what it’s worth.”  I watch that news show precisely because that last word somehow helps redeem all of the mess that gets reported before it and give a little hope in humanity.
 
In that broadcast and others like it, I remember the young boy whose classmate had cancer and lost his hair to chemotherapy, so he and his buddies shaved their heads so he would not feel so weird.  I remember a woman named Osceola McCarty who took in washing for most of her life and managed to save $150,000 which she, in turn, gave to the University of Southern Mississippi to fund minority scholarships.  I remember 94-year-old Shirley Batchelder from Franklin, Tennessee who saved up all of her bingo winnings and bought five seconds of network television air time to say three words: “Love one another.”  And, she said it fast enough to be able to say it twice.  “Love one another.”
 
This past week I began listening to a new podcast about Dolly Parton.  The series is called Dolly Parton’s America and I commend it to your listening.  There I have come to know her genius, her generosity, and amazing capacity to forgive while succeeding in the cutthroat music industry.  Did you know that her song, “I will always love you,” has been a number one hit in each of the past three decades?  Did you also know that Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library provides free books, one a year, to children from birth to age five?  To date she has distributed more than 126 million books.  So, Dolly now goes on my list too and she centers herself on a deep faith to boot.
 
Mark Twain once said: “I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and all His works must be contemplated with respect.”  This is an apt reflection for this day.  We may not be perfect, but we are being made perfect in the One who creates us, redeems, and makes us holy.  God’s great art is creation and created humanity has such capacity for beauty and love and creativity.  If we seek God, we might want to do some hagiography.  When we doubt God, we should do more hagiography.  In the end, we cannot prove that God exists, but we can tell stories, and that is more than enough to believe.  Amen. 

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
October 27, 2019
Proper 25, Year C
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
Anusha was one of my high school students many years ago when I was an Episcopal School Chaplain.  She was a second generation Iranian-American as her family had fled a fundamentalist Islamic regime after the fall of the Shah of Iran.  Her family was highly suspicious of all religion, having seen its darkest side swallow their country, and deal harshly with any moderates or dissenters.  Nevertheless, they enrolled her in an Episcopal school because they liked our academic program and inclusive atmosphere.
 
When she came to my first Theology class, she told me she was not religious, certainly did not need a Chaplain, but would do whatever she had to do to make a good grade.  This was my favorite kind of student.  Pretty soon, she was a leader in class discussion, a keen critic of theological inconsistencies, and a regular hanger outer after class.  I remember Anusha being so forthright in her estimation of Christianity’s embrace of weakness, and so suspicious of any purpose or point in Jesus’ death.  All the while, she began to trust me because I affirmed her doubt as honesty and did not try to convert her.  And, over time, she shared some personal struggles with her family’s high expectations and her friendships that were so very high school.  She would always say: “I don’t get you Rev, but I like you ok.”
 
In the Spring semester of that year, Anusha signed up for a school exchange trip to South Africa, mostly, she said, to spend a month somewhere far away from her parents, and to get her community service credits.  Our school partnered with a struggling school in an all black township outside of Johannesburg.  It was an incredibly poor sprawling community, underdeveloped through decades of Apartheid.  The school provided a path out dire poverty through education and job training where unemployment was over 75 percent.  The way they raised money was in forming partnerships like ours, traveling to the US to perform their own traditional songs of faith, telling their personal and inspiring stories of struggle and hope.
It is so Episcopal School for an Iranian American Atheist to go to make friends and forge connections with Christian South African blacks and see what happens.
 
When Anusha returned, she bounded into my office, saying, “I get it Rev.” “Get what” I asked.  And in an incredible outpouring of self, she told me that she had expected to go there and help these poor people become more like us, seeking success and affluence through achievement.  Then she explained that over the course of her visit, she found he counterparts to be so joyful in loving one another and working together, that she left wanting to be more like them.  During the visit, Anusha and her fellow students joined in the singing and storytelling, and in that shared rhythm, found kinship and communion.  What she got was that we are all connected and that when everyone thrives, we all thrive.  What she got was the power of love, pure and simple.   
 
 
When Jesus tells parables of God’s Kingdom, I do not think of large mega churches full of like-minded people that look like a segmented consumer focus group as much as anything.  Rather, I think about my former students in South Africa singing new songs.  I think of them working shoulder to shoulder, building homes with people far less advantaged but much more joyful.  I think of places and opportunities where divisions among people dissipate and community is made.
 
Today’s Gospel comes from the Kingdom parable section of Luke’s storytelling.  It is a parable of obvious tension.  There is the one Pharisee who comes to the Temple to pray.  By all counts, he is a good man.  He follows the rules, fasting twice a week and giving a tenth of his income.  It is hard to deny his commitment.  The Church needs folks like him.  We might even seek to be like him ourselves.  But the judgment of others… not so much.  And then there is the other guy: the tax collector.  He is a traitor to his people and a sell out to the Romans.  He doesn’t even come inside the Temple; rather, he is on the fringe, looking down, and asking God to be merciful to his sorry self.  Jesus uses this example to say that the tax collector is the more honest and humble in seeking God.  We need to remember that it is religious zealots that are trying to bring Jesus down, and this is a cautionary tale of misplaced piety and self-assuredness.  We do not fast or tithe to be better than others, we fast or tithe because it makes us more humble.
 
This is not a conversion story.  The tax collector does not get a new job and forsake his ways.  The Pharisee does not have that “I get it” moment in seeing that he is in need of God’s mercy just like his fellow human, cowering in the shadows.  This is just a portrait of two extremes to drive home to point that all of us fall short and all in need of grace: the unmerited yet abundant and ever present love of God.
 
Like many of you, I followed the celebrations Representative Elijah Cummings’s life and the various tributes made this past week.  As the son of sharecroppers and a tireless worker for dignity and equality under the law, he was the first ever African-American lawmaker to lie in state.  While there were a few bad actors, as humans are wont to be, by and large, it was a time of affirmation for the best of our communal aspirations.  Even bitter political rivals praised Cummings’s integrity and humility.  The reason they came together is because in the end, they knew one another as fellow humans: friends, and colleagues. 
 
We need more mutual affection in this world.  We need more humanity and less dismissive labeling.  None are righteous, none are pure, and all are in need of mercy.  If we seek good news in this fallen world, we saw a glimmer this week and celebrating a life well lived.  This is not a political thing.  This is a Jesus thing.  As our Presiding Bishop says over and over: “The way of Jesus is the Way of Love. And the Way of Love can change the world.”
 
Anusha is still out there, finding her way as a young adult now.  We saw one another at a wedding not long ago and she still struggles with faith like the rest of us.  Together, we laughed and told stories and remembered her flash of kingdom love some years back.  Memories are good for finding our way forward.  As we seek God and a deeper life with God, we do well to find the flashes of goodness breaking in all around us.  Where divisions fall away, friendships deepen, and joy abounds, God’s kingdom is at hand.  Thanks to Anusha, Elijah, and so many others, sometimes, we get it.  Amen.

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
October 13, 2019
Proper 23, Year C
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
Self-help is big business these days.  Google it and you will get four billion results in less than one second.  Four billion.  And that is just a listing of articles, books, seminars, programs, quotations, and tips.  Searching the term “self-help industry” and you get another 536 million results in less than a second.
 
Back in the days of the old west, there were salesmen who went from town to town peddling various oils and potions to help with everything from rheumatism to melancholy.  The practical and pragmatic people in of old west learned quickly that these itinerant marketers were mostly frauds and hucksters.  They called them snake oil salesmen, and pretty soon, everyone got wise to the medicine show scams.
 
Apparently, the internet has opened up a whole new frontier and snake oil sales are booming.  By industry calculations, self-help is a 13 billion-dollar self-help market that is completely unfiltered and unregulated, competing for our affection, attention, and purchasing power.  Contrary to their claims, psychological data and qualitative research find more harm than good in so-called self-help as most of it trades on feelings of shame, inadequacy, and quick fixes.  This analysis tells us something about ourselves, and I am not sure it is good news.  This is not to say that being and becoming better, more whole-hearted people is an unworthy pursuit.  This is to say that like the old song goes, we are “looking for love in all the wrong places.”
 
Ten lepers meet Jesus on the road, asking him to ask for help.  They beg Jesus to have mercy on them, but Jesus does much better showing mercy. Jesus heals them.  Then, he tells them to go and show themselves to the priests.  In their day, leprosy and other skin issues were thought to the highly contagious and many were, and only the priest could certify a person with skin diseases to be cured, and therefore, safe to live in the community again. (This is one job I am glad I do not have as priest!)  And as the story goes, only one of the healed lepers came back to Jesus to give thanks.
 
This story is an old chestnut with clear implications about how much God does for us, and how daft and inconsiderate we can be, even in the presence of enormous blessing.  It has some ethnic tension in there too as the only one who came back was a Samaritan and the Samaritans were seen as uncouth and unclean, yet even a Samaritan, of all people, recognized God’s power in Jesus.  All of my googling this week started when I googled the lesson of the ten lepers, searching for a commentary I once read.  Instead of that, guess what I found?  About half of the hits were all about self-help resources pointing to the benefits of having an #attitudeofgratitude: all one word.  That is a thing.  On the one hand, it is a positive thing.  Even snake oil salesmen can appreciate what is true and good and valuable, but as with most things solely self oriented, it focuses only on the individually resulting happiness in gratitude, and leaves out the absolute value of living, playing, and belonging in community.
 
Part of what we come to Church to re-remember is that we are not in this life alone and that real growth lifts up those we love and serve.  When the writer and theologian C. S. Lewis was coming to faith in his later life, he remarked that “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’”[1]  In knowing that we are not alone, and that are we are not made whole flying solo, we are open to God working in and through our lives.  There were ten lepers in the gospel story because they shared the difficulty of disease and isolation together.  Rather than wither away alone, they found community, and their best idea of seeking Jesus arose from their common need.  That encounter saved their lives.
 
The problem with #attitudeofgratitude movement is that it is thought apart from action.  And though the slogan is catchy and rhyming, it is only a place to start.  I can have the attitude of being a marathon runner; I can get the right shoes, the best exercise watch, some running magazines, and I can even enter a race.  But the only way to run that marathon is to get out there and pound the pavement, practice, and develop the necessary endurance.  And even if I fail at marathon running, I can get more fit and closer to the goal than sitting around with all the right gear, reading about it, and cultivating a runner’s attitude.  Likewise if we need a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant, we need them not just to have an attitude of being expert, we need them to practice what they profess to know.
 
As we begin our stewardship season, we have to begin at the heart of the thing.  It is not hard for all of us to agree that giving to God’s work in the world is a good thing.  We have this physical space, this beautiful setting, and the stuff we use in worship because most among us, and those who have gone before us, have been givers of time and ability and money.  What we do together going forward depends on that giving to continue and grow.  Through I do not know how much people give, or have given in the past, I know how many have done so, and it represents a vast majority us all.  People of Emmanuel have shown more than an attitude of generosity, the people of Emmanuel have put that belief into practice through giving.
 
When Janice and I sit down to make our financial pledge to Emmanuel for 2020, we will do so with prayers of gratitude and prayers for God to stretch our horizons.  We will consider all of our resources and set a percentage of those resources as our stewardship commitment.  Our goal in giving is ten percent.  While we are not able to do that, we are practicing to make it so.   We will donate to other things as we are able.  But what we give for the work of our parish will come first as it is the ground and source of our life in community.  While we have not been here all that long, you all are our people and the Church is our extended family.  Above all, we trust that giving to Emmanuel is wise, worthy, and helping support its work is our part in loving God’s world in a tangible way.
 
There is a great prayer in our prayer book that begins with this phrase: “Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves.”[2]  That is a good one to keep in front of us as we face a world that promises all kinds of self-actualized foolishness.  We come to Church to grow up together.  We come to Church to touch the mystery that is God.  We come to church to know and feel the abundant love God has for all of us, and all creation.  The best, most appropriate, and most genuine prayer we can say is “Thank you.”  The best, most appropriate, and most genuine thing we can do is practice our thanks.  Amen.


[1] C. S. Lewis The Four Loves, Harcourt, Brace, 1960.

[2] Collect for the Third Sunday in Lent, page 218.

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
October 6, 2019
Proper 22, Year C
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
My bizarre sense of humor has deep familial roots.  I will spare you the commentary on by gone generations, but my older brother and I share an odd fascination with the odd, the ironic, and the twisted wherever we find them in life.  As we live 2,865 miles and three time zones apart, the ubiquity of texting has fueled our connective sharing with threads reading more like Monty Python skits than communications between family members.  When people who know him meet me for the first time, they almost always comment that we have the same weird sense of humor.
 
Christmas and Birthday gifting is always a pleasure in our brotherhood.  Mostly, we find random and unique objects from our travels to give: sometimes Elvis themed kitsch, or t-shirts with bizarre college mascots (Like the fighting Okra of Delta State or the Banana Slugs of UC Santa Cruz) or shirts with pithy, if not questionable, slogans.  Some of these gifts are not suitable for public display, so we wear them when vacationing together where nobody else knows us.
 
By far, one of my favorites is a shirt he gave me early in my time as an ordained priest of the Church.  It shows a church full of spotted dogs sitting in the pews and one dog in vestments at the pulpit saying: “… And He said unto them, bad dogs!  No. No.”  Underneath reads the caption: “Hellfire and Dalmatians.”  I wore that one out.
 
I love that shirt because it pokes fun at the all to human tendency to transfer its own short-lived mercy for others to our miscast image of God.  It rolls us back to some bizarre childhood picture of God as angry man with a white beard hurling lightening bolts at hapless sinners.  Or, it harkens back to some am radio preacher whose sole motivational theology is built around shame and blame.  Only when we put dogs in the pews, do we see how silly it all looks and sounds.
 
“Lord, Increase our faith!” The disciples and followers are seeking special righteousness once again in our Gospel telling.  But with the analogy of the tiny mustard see that yields a prolific bush, Jesus sets the straight that they have what they need, they just need to accept, understand, and leverage faith’s power to grow itself.  Faith is not a quantifiable store housed thing that puts one person’s amount ahead of another’s.  That would make one human inherently better than another simply because of a commodity of faith.  In this way, faith is a lived out thing that can and does start with an inkling, a hope, or a promise, growing from there under God’s steam of creation.
 
To drive the point home, Jesus uses the most problematic and troubling example of a slave doing the slave’s duty first because that is what he or she is supposed to do.  There is no translation or spin that can rescue this image for modern ears.  Its use is more than troubling when considering the human tragedy of American slavery and all of its repercussions.  We do well to try and hear it for what it intends to convey rather than explaining it away, or carrying the metaphor beyond the scope of its intent.  Nevertheless, it is there, reminding us that we are not the ones with the power in the grand scheme of things.  For that we look to an abundantly loving God working in and through us.
 
All of this increased faith seeking is so problematic for an American narrative of lifting ourselves up through deliberate intent and ambitious goal setting.  This reality for some is a myth for others because playing fields are not even and inequality of opportunity is more and more prevalent.  This is not to say that good old hard work is not a virtue, but that we must be careful not to fall into the trap of the so-called prosperity gospel where God is always on my side, concerned with my goals, and materially favorable to the most righteous among us.
 
If you are on any form of social media; Facebook, Instagram, or the like, you might come to believe that the world is loaded with righteous people (#blessed) who are happy, successful, beautiful, vacationing constantly.  While we may try to keep our looks into other people’s lives balanced and realistic, we do compare ourselves to those drinking wine on a tropical island in perfect harmony with their perfectly dressed-all-in-white extended family posing for the family photo.  Or we believe the skinny and ageless faces on the covers of those magazines at the checkout are real and unretouched.  It is not a giant leap to translate those images to be reflective of some sort of blessedness or wholeness that we seek and desire.
 
But keeping it real and in perspective, nobody puts out pictures of their D- paper, their kid getting cut from the team, or their last day in a job where they have been downsized and let go.  I continue to fantasize about starting a news feed called “Realgram” where you are only allowed to show the foibles and fumbles of life: unflattering pictures, burnt casseroles, and the grandkid hitting into a double play.  While “Realgram” would crush the illusion of looking ‘just fabulous’ that we seek to cast, it might help us feel a little better and, certainly, more real.
 
What the disciples seek from Jesus today is some secret, some leg up, some way to get ahead.  And when we are honest, we would love some of that secret sauce too.  If only God would sanctify what I want for me, this would show that my faith is increased.  This is a dangerous calculus.  It sets us up to believe that if we do not get what we want, God must not be listening, or worse, God doesn’t care.  This was never the promise.  The Gospel story hinges on the absolute human rejection of love in person, and even at that, God is all about coming back towards us.  Nothing depends on us completely.  Everything depends what happens next.  That is redemption.  As mother Thesea once said: “We can do no great things - only small things with great love.”  The greatness is God’s.
 
We have to be careful in life not to buy the lie that our story is tragic.  Life is hard, then we die. Sin ruins, and death plays for keeps.  This is the setting where fear, shame, and blame thrive and consume hope.  Instead, our story is the Gospel story.  It is all comedy, because in spite of the worst we do to God, God shows up again.  God comes back to us gain and again not with vengeance, but with love.  We do not need more faith.  We need a great and holy sense of the humor and joy in all as God intends.  Thus, I propose a new and more appropriate t-shirt than the one my brother gave me.  It will read: “And he said unto them Good dogs.  Come on home, and I will feed you forever.”  Amen

​Woke to Jesus
Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
September 29, 2019
Proper 21, Year C
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
Are you woke?  The call for wokeness traces back to the late sixties and was coined as slang for getting conscious, getting hip, getting aware in that day of the radical racial inequality.  The term woke then went to sleep, but its use has made a strong resurgence in the last few years as so many other inequalities have dragged it back into popular parlance.
 
There are so many issues to we are asked to be woke to now.  Of course, we need to be woke to classism, racism, and sexism.  We need to be woke to climate change, white privilege, and the socioeconomic roots of opportunity and achievement gaps.  We need to be woke to cultural hegemony, exclusive language of all kinds, and gender fluidity.  Wokeness has also given rise to slogan driven declarations: Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, Me Too, Pride, and many things LGBTQ+.
 
If our heads spin around all we must learn and appreciate to be so woken, now, some who employed the term originally, calling attention to race issues now resent its more widespread application as a watering down of its singular urgency.  So then, we need to be woke about not over appropriating idea of being woke.
 
Warning: we could get so wrapped around human peculiarity and particularity as mediated in such dizzying lingo that we reduce important conversations to dismissive labeling or resent whoever the other is because we feel put down as ignorant or unaware.  All of the issues and ideas driving conversations of justice and equality deserve a deeper dive into understanding and appreciation.  But when we become overwhelmed and threatened, we tend to shut down, shut out, or just shut up.  And yet, as a matter of faith, and a cornerstone of our baptismal covenant, we are to seek and serve Christ in all persons loving our neighbor as ourselves.  There is no asterisk there.  We are not excused even when doing so is hard, complex, or controversial.  We can disagree without being disagreeable.  But we cannot look away from the bedrock that is the Gospel of Jesus.
 
Today, we encounter one of those lessons that sends preachers scrambling.  In one of many of Luke’s commentaries on the impossibility of serving God and wealth, we hear the story of the rich man in hell and the poor man in heaven.  The set-up is stark.  The rich man spent his life in purple Gucci and gourmet feasting, while the poor man sat on the floor with dogs licking his sores.  When they die, the poor man is carried into healing heaven, and the flames of torment now lick the rich man.  As the story goes, he asks father Abraham who is the poor man’s companion in heaven, to have the man bring him a cool sip of water.  When Abraham tells him the chasm between them it too great, the man tells him to send the poor man to his five living brothers (to his people) to warn them of their potential fate. And with the foreshadowing of Jesus returning from the grave to bring life for all, Luke’s not so subtle joke and jab at those who do not get it is intense.
 
It is no wonder lectionary preachers all over the Church are trying to put a softer filter on this disturbing picture.  If we can speak in more metaphorical terms, perhaps we can get through this stark challenge, and keep our Jesus gentle, meek and mild.
 
Sorry.  This image is a two by four hitting us - especially us - between the eyes.  While we are a small denomination of Christians, we are among the most affluent in the world.  While we are shrinking like all mainline denominations, statistics tell us we are among the most educated, most resourced, and most physically secure of all segments of the world population.  This is not to say that most of us are super rich, Gucci laden, senseless consumerists.  But we do enjoy safe drinking water, access to decent nutrition and healthcare, and the protection relative peace and opportunity.  On the scale of economic reality we are much closer to the rich man than poor Lazarus.  If we take Jesus seriously, we have to live with awareness of our position, steward our abundance, and respond to the deep chasm between having much and having little to nothing.
 
In saying all of this, the preacher could be accused of going to meddling: of spouting socialism, communism, or some other form of wealth redistribution.  But that is not the point, nor is poverty and wealth gap a simple calculus with an obvious solution that some externally imposed force, tax, or shame can fix.  The problem for the rich man is not that he has all of that wealth; it is that he never seizes the chance to leverage his resources to help even the guy sitting under his table.  And even when he is fanning the flames of tormented selfishness, his response is to seek relief for himself, and to order Abraham and Lazarus to do his bidding.  “Me” and “mine” is the vocabulary that deepens the chasm.  “We” and “our” is the language that moves us toward healing and help.  Jesus goes on record over and over, reminding us that we are in this life together with all creation.
 
This last week, Netflix released a three-episode documentary about Bill Gates, the world second richest man.  While amassing his fortune in the tech boom, Gates was relentless, tireless, and visionary.  His business became so dominant that others in that sector dubbed his company, Microsoft, as the evil empire, gobbling up any and all competitors.  He was sued for anti-trust violations and shamed in the courts and the media.  He could have gone sour.  He could have leveraged his immense wealth to exact revenge, buy into other markets, or just floated around on an enormous yacht.
 
But something happened.  It is not clear what exactly, but with business stable and prospects abundant, Gates turned over daily operations of the business to someone else.  Then, he and entered into another absolutely equal partnership. He and his wife now devote almost all of their time and energy to this mission: “Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives.  His billions are working to eradicate polio, develop clean energy running on nuclear waste, and solving the massive problem of converting human waste into clean water and harmless byproducts.
 
Given the events of just this past week, with national and world leaders engaging in the blood sport of division, dissention, and personal and political vendettas, it is good to shift the narrative to something better, the work of those who value every human life.  We do not know Bill Gates’s heart or faith, but we can see his effort and energy doing something generative and life giving. 
 
We may not have his scale of wealth at our disposal, but we do have resources.  We may not have Gates like organizational machines, but we do have minds to think, hands to serve, hearts to love, and our Church’s work to get behind.
 
So again, are you woke?  Given all of the divisions that need to be helped and healed, I am not sure it possible to be so thoroughly woke.  Life is complicated, and an issue driven existence simply feeds anger, blame, frustration.  Folks, what we proclaim here is that we need only one kind of awakening: a grounded identity in Jesus.  Looking to God’s eternally creative presence, to Christ’s self-giving love, and the Spirit’s unbounded power guide us, we can tune into the ONE wokeness that covers all of the bases, fulfills our calling, and leads to all peace.  Get woke to Jesus, and all else good and right and just will follow.

​Enough
Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
September 22, 2019
Proper 20, Year C
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
The University Maryland, Baltimore County.  Mascot: Chesapeake Bay Retriever named Fever.  On March 17, 2018, USA today described UMBC as “having no football team and chess is their best sport.”  On March 16, 2018, you may remember that they beat a certain local sports team in an historic basketball tournament upset. Unfortunately, I was there with lots of other UVA fans.  It was not pretty.
 
Walking back to the hotel that night on the sad and nearly silent streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, I remember discussing Coach Tony Bennett’s future with the University of Virginia.  We reflected that most coaches in his position would have the moving truck on standby for the next day because coaching college basketball is not a forgiving business.  But Tony Bennett is more than a coach.  He is a program builder and an invested leader.  He about building relationships more than building a résumé.
 
 After that the crushing defeat he said: “if you play this game and you step into the arena, this stuff can happen. And those who haven’t been in the arena or in the competition, maybe they don’t understand that. But there’s chances for wonderful things to happen, but when you’re in the arena, stuff like this can happen and all those who compete take that on. And so, we’ll accept it…  They played well and we did not.”
 
We all know what happened.  A year later, having common adversity as motivation, Bennett and the Cavaliers went from the agony of defeat to the thrill of victory.  That made the championship that much more sweet.
 
Fast forward to last week, exactly eighteen months after legendary defeat, Bennett signed a contract extension and instead of taking the monster raise, he asked for those resources to be given to the other coaches and to enhance other programs.  Then, he pledged five hundred thousand dollars of his own money to a career development program for his players past and present.  At the press conference has said this: “I have more than enough”
 
Over the past several weeks the predominant sports headlines have been all about money.  Certain players have received record high salary contracts.  One bad boy receiver in the NFL lost his multi-million-dollar contract with one team, only to be given another multi-million-dollar contract with another team, all amid serious allegations of felony misconduct.  When seeking respect and adulation, the operative phrase for most in the sports business is the old line from the movie Jerry Maguire: “Show me the money.”
 
We need to pause here.  Sure, Bennett is a local hero.  Sure, we may be a little biased in our love of the winning coach, and he is a human like the rest of us, but his words are prophetic, countercultural, and, to my mind, historic. “I have more than enough.”  That is real, servant leadership.  And it is in short supply in all areas of public life.
 
In an odd way that I do not accept as mere coincidence, the Gospel appointed for this week is all about the tension of serving God in a world that ascribes big money as the measure of success.  It starts with a parable of a man called the dishonest manager.  His boss has catches him squandering the company assets and tells him he is about to be fired.  The manager seeks to soften the blow, realizing that he is too old to work, and too proud to beg.  He calls in all of his vendors and tells them to cut their invoices in half and collects the money.  Strangely, the boss is complimentary of this tactic rather than being enraged at his shrinking bottom line.  And that is where the parable ends.
 
This is not a cut and dried morality tale with clear lines of good and evil.  Because the man is called the dishonest manager, it is clear that his reputation is not sterling, and must have been cheating people in business for a long time, putting his thumb on the scales and skimming the profits all along.  But finally, the boss’s suppliers are doing an honest deal.  Only when the hapless manager faces losing his position does he wake up to the he is going to need some friends, and he needs to set his relationships right.  The boss sees the bigger picture and even though the man is dishonest and desperate, he is delighted that he has begun the see the light.
 
As we see the metaphor for what it is, it is not all that flattering as to our place in the story.  We are children of a material world and we are consumed with having and being enough.  The story reminds us of the folly of false loves and the great idols of material security.  It reminds us that our motivations in life are not always so pure.   Using people and loving stuff leads to a false economy of true value.  In the end, our relationship with God and with one another is worth all of our attention, esteem, and effort.
 
Taken as a whole, the lessons for today urge us to seek the light even though there is plenty of darkness out there.  Jeremiah laments human corruption and faithlessness.  The letter to Timothy urges us to lift up our leaders in prayer that they may be “saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”  Bless their hearts.  And finally, it is laid out clearly that we “cannot serve God and wealth.”
 
When Coach Bennett made his case for sharing the resources of good fortune this week, we were given a gift that is a rare find in the public arena.  In saying “I have more than enough,” and then giving of his own resources to boot, I see a challenge and opportunity for all of us.  The leadership that needs following is that which values people: our lives, our future, and our deep joy.
 
Remember where this sermon started.  UMBC, the 16 seed in the regional bracket, delivering an historic upset.  Coach Bennett’s response was not blame and shame, it was acceptance and rededication.  His world has not been all success, sunshine, and adulation.  He is a flawed human like the rest of us.  And yet, he kept the main thing the main thing: gratitude for any and all success and respect for the players who take the court to grow through the challenge.  Win or lose, it is hard not to be a fan of this way of being.  That is leadership worth following way beyond the courts of play.
 
When we are honest we have to admit that we try and fail often in making our life reflective of God’s unlimited love.  We succumb to anxiety and worry as we listen to the voices of secular insecurity that tell us we are not enough and we do not have enough.  What we are here to tell the good stories and the cautionary tales.  We are here to remember and affirm that God draws us out of the human mire, showing and telling us that all is not lost and that God’s world is not past redeeming.  God so loves us that he becomes Jesus, staying lively among us in His Spirit.  In loving people first of all, we love God most of all.  And that is more than enough.  Amen.  

Bless Your Heart
Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
September 15, 2019
Proper 19, Year C
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
Growing up in the Deep South requires fluency in more than one language.  We might all argue about how deep the South can get, but the Deep South of my rearing involved heat, humidity, sweet tea, and turns of phrase that are well known code words to soften the harshness of reality.  It is often said of Southerners that we do not hide the strange or bizarre, rather we dress them up and sit them on the front porch with the rest of us.  I suppose there are other places in the world where families are normal and people speak clearly and directly, but I suspect that they are rare and more or less deceptive in nature.  Where I grew up, there were things people said… then, there was what they meant.
 
​For example, they would talk about cousin Jane and it went something like this: ‘Janie is such a bird!  After she went to that school up north, she only shops at that natural food store and makes macramé belts for her boyfriends.  Translation: Cousin Jane came from a grew up in a good family like the rest of us, but she left home and lost her way.’  Or Uncle Billy: ‘Billy is such a homebody.  When his friends went off to school, he stayed home to take care of Big Mama and now he is sacking groceries over a the Piggly Wiggly.  They were good to give him a job.’  Translation:  Billy is an underachiever.
 
Such things are rarely said with malice, though there is always a tinge of judgement and wonder in how they were presented.  Learning to understand this second language describing human behavior is essential in Southern culture.  Learning to speak it is essential in learning how to behave.  Most of us were taught that if we do not have something nice to say, then we should not say anything at all.  Thus, the best and safest things to say to others in the messes of life is “Bless your heart.”
 
That one statement is not only useful and kind, it is so theologically sound.  Part of growing up in a culture where family is just what it is, and strange is more normal than not, is a certain theological realization that humans are, by nature, a big ole mess.  While there are plenty of questionable theological shortcuts in popular parlance, like “everything happens for a reason” or “love the sinner hate the sin,” “bless your heart” cuts through the pretense of purity or righteousness and accepts the basic anthropology of human nature.
 
When Jesus hangs out with notorious sinners, his critics give him hell.  Of course, they are looking for anything that will ding his reputation or dissuade his followers from following because, what Jesus knows and makes clear is that all of us fall short of the Glory of God.  For the hyper religious Pharisees and the law worshipping scribes, there is this only black and white: clean and unclean, righteous and unworthy, good and evil people.  When Jesus sees the potential for good in everyone, he hits too close to home, challenging power which they believe is derived from their pharisaic purity, their scribal piety, and their inherent belief that they are just better than other people.
 
Rather than feeding the fire of human puffery, Jesus turns the conversation toward two parables.  One is about the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep in search on the one lost one, and the other of a woman who stops everything in her household to clean up and find a lost coin.  Instead of giving power and credence to human machinations, Jesus points to our generous God, a God who takes both male and female form, a God who seeks and searches and finds and rejoices in what is found.
 
As a reset and a conversation changer, these parables appreciate that all of God’s people are a mixed up and confused bunch.  We are capable of such idiocy and destruction, but we are also capable of great love and unlimited creativity.  The Pharisees and scribes propagate a self-styled faith-based privilege system in which they believe good people staying away from those who are not as good as they believe they are.  It is not that they are indifferent, rather that they start with erroneous assumptions about themselves and others.
 
We see this played out in modern religious expression all of the time.  The prosperity gospel movement, which is widely and commercially popular, works on the principle of the holy scoreboard.  This game depends on some people living more rightly than others and, thereby, earning more holy favor.  Accordingly, the reward for such goodness is made evident in material success, public adulation, and pious notoriety.  But such moral high ground is impossible to hold.  People fail, fumble, and fall. 
 
In seeking the lost and the least, Jesus kills the power to the scoreboard, ascribing all power to the Loving Source.  We do not do the will of God to curry favor and earn points.  We do the will of God because of our delight and amazement in what God is already doing for us.
 
The great author, writer, and Christian theologian, C.S. Lewis, was found alone on his knees and weeping in the Chapel of St. John’s College, Oxford, where he lived and taught.  One of his colleagues came along side of him and asked what was the matter.  Lewis then told his friend of his companion, a woman with whom he was very much in love, and her recent diagnosis of incurable cancer.  The colleague, attempting to comfort Lewis, told him that surely God would hear his prayers, the prayers of a such a dedicated Christian apologist, and heal his love.  Lewis is reported to have said: “I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God. It changes me.”
 
Lewis would go on to marry the woman and care for her young son.  In later life he wrote more about his grief acknowledging that his experience of that love was a glimmer of the depth of God’s love for us; a blessing mixed in the messiness of life, saying: “The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.” [1]
 
While we are apt to default into thinking of our relationship with God is a transactional business, Jesus lives and shows God’s love as an abiding force, not a conditional matter.  We come to Church not to hang out with the righteous elect, but to know and feel the heart of God beating in ours.  The message of the Gospel is not that we are any better than everyone else, just that we have a clue as to where to turn for help, and whom to thank for all we have been given. We are here to pray because we can't help ourselves.  We are here to pray because the need flows out of us.  We do not pray to change God. We pray to change us.  Bless our hearts.  Amen.


[1] For an excellent story of Lewis’s life and love, see the movie, Shadowlands, whence these quotations are collected. 

​The Cone of Shame
Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
August 25, 2019
Proper 16, Year C
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
Calvin was not himself, and needed pastoral care.  Calvin is our nine-month old Golden Retriever and he had undergone some scheduled minor surgery.  The whole procedure went perfectly, and the vet reported that he was one of the most agreeable surgical candidates she had ever seen.  Maybe she says that to every pet owner, but really, he is a pretty great dog – along with his eight-year old big brother, Gus. 
 
At first it was comedic.  He was still a little woozy from the anesthesia.  And to keep him from chewing at his stitches, he had been fitted with an Elizabethan style collar.  If you have seen the movie Up you know it as the “Cone of Shame,” and it is a dog’s worst nightmare.  He banged his way up the steps and into the house.  He was thirsty, but could not get his head in the water bowl.  When he tried to move around, he ran into walls and furniture.  It was hard not to laugh.
 
What started out comedic became pitiful.  When he walked around he could not see from side to side and he kept his head down, as if in shame, and finally, he just stood completely still.  He did not move.  He did not sit.  He did not lie down.  No matter how much we coaxed him, Calvin just stood there, for almost an hour.  Finally, we could not stand it.  We vowed to watch him carefully and removed the “Cone of Shame.”  And being a puppy, he acted as if he had been granted complete clemency from all fears, woes, and concerns.  He padded around the house joyfully, picked up toys, drank water, and snuggled with us, and his brother, Gus.  And if he even made a move to lick his wound, all we had to do was pick up the “Cone of Shame,” and show it to him, and he stopped immediately.  He was supposed to wear the cone for two weeks.  He wore it for less than two hours, and that was enough.
 
People can learn a lot from dogs.  They are so able to love unconditionally, forgive so readily, and find joy in the smallest of delights.  Yes, they are messy and slobbery and sometimes demanding, but so are most people I know, in one way or another.  But the up side of their love and loyalty is so amazing and instructive as to how we might live in present joy.  It is no wonder that people who live with pets report that they are happier, and studies show that those same people live longer and healthier lives.[1]  Not only do pets keep us more active and meaningfully connected, even the microscopic dirt they bring into the house helps boost our immune system.
 
While this not a symposium on human longevity, faithful people are all about being fully and completely alive in the Spirit of our Creator.  And this is a central theme Jesus presses on all of his followers again and again in his Gospel life.  While the world and all of its challenges are real, Jesus shows us how to label and eschew that with stands in the way of joy and lively growth.
 
As he taught in the synagogue on the sabbath, he encountered a woman who was all hunched over and unable to stand up straight.  And Jesus laid hands on her and proclaimed her well.  Immediately, the text tells us, “she stood up straight and began praising God.”  Jesus’ miracles can be problematic if we get wrapped around the technical details.  I am not sure the point is that Jesus uniformly cures osteoporosis.  More to the point is that, with Jesus, the woman is brought from only looking down and left and right, to being able to see up and out.  For the first time in eighteen years, she can look her friends in the eyes, she can see the sky, and see her world anew.  Unlike many of the stories of healing and help, this woman does not beg or even ask Jesus for anything, she simply shows up and in the presence of the life giver, and the miracle happens.
 
There is a lot in here for us.  We might consider how our own vision and perspective is limited, crippled through fear, anger, blame, or guilt.  There are so many matters about which we perseverate, and on which we ruminate.  If others would just do what we want them to do and see things as we see them, we believe the world would be more to our liking.  We play that “if only” game with ourselves: if only I had this much more money, if only this person were not so difficult at work, if only my children or parents were more like me… you can fill in those “if only” blanks and lose a lot of sleep and peace.  The movement of this story invites us to drop our self-limited look at things, stand up a little straighter, and see up and out. 
 
The woman, healed, immediately praises God, and her praise is a form of realizing her blessings.  Gratitude is a good start to seeing things anew. We might be grateful that we have financial resources.  We might be grateful that we have work.  We might be grateful for family and friends even when being in those relationships require us to let go and grow differently.
 
Of course, Jesus has his naysayers.  The leader of the synagogue is unhappy, (clearly, he never owned a dog), and he is bent around the particulars of rigid religiosity.  He rebukes Jesus for healing the woman on the sabbath because he sees what Jesus did as work.  But Jesus will have none of it.  He appeals to the bigger picture of what God wants for all of us.  And, as the story goes, the entire crowd rejoices in the wonder of it all.
 
Wider bigger and faithful vision will meet resistance.  While we spin around in the “if onlys,” others may give us the “yes, but…” beat down. As in:  Yes, but we never did things that way, yes, but what will other people think, or yes, but you cannot risk failure of looking weak.  These temporal ‘what other people think’ matters are wrapped up in insecurity, codependence, and the preservation of personal power.
 
What Jesus shows, and the Gospel invites us to accept, is that none of the perceived power we purport to martial is ever ours to wield in the first place.  The self to which we cling is not all that important in the context of belonging with God.
 
When we are stuck, bent over, looking down, saying “if only,” or hearing “yes, but,” Jesus tells us to stand up straight, to lose the cone of shame, sin, and self-centeredness to be God’s people of possibility.  And to make a right start, we do well to praise God and rejoice in all God is doing in our lives – to love unconditionally, forgive readily, and find joy in the smallest of delights – not unlike our dogs.  Amen.


[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-16118-6
 

​If Jesus Came to my House
Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
August 18, 2019
Proper 15, Year C
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
One of the joys and hazards of moving is finding things you never remembered that you had.  As relatively mobile empty nesters, we have been fierce ‘weeder outers’ of clutter and all manner of items for which we no longer have use.  Apparently, there is a whole self-help movement happening out there, coaching materially laden people to let go and lighten the load, only keeping that which brings joy.
 
Being an avid reader, a constant student, and the child of an academic historian, I have had to come to terms with how to handle books.  In the end, downsized space, frequent moves, and waning back strength have helped motivate me to retain a small proportion of all the books that have passed before my eyes.  I was proud to bring only two boxes of books (albeit two large boxes) to my Emmanuel office, but lo, there are spacious bookshelves in there, and they will be filled in no time.
 
Most of the volumes I brought are Bibles, prayer books, and reference books, but sandwiched between the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church and the United Methodist Hymnal, I discovered a worn children’s book: If Jesus Came to my House.  It is inscribed as a gift to me from my mother when I was a very little boy, and apparently, it has been in my traveling library for many years. 
 
According to my mother, If Jesus Came to my House was part of my early theological instruction.  It features a young boy imagining Jesus coming over to play, including how he would behave and what they would do together.  Clearly the protagonist is British, not only because he is illustrated wearing plaid shorts, a red shirt, and what look to be Mary Janes with no socks, but also because he entertains Jesus for tea and takes him flower picking in his garden.  Nevertheless, the story’s denouement comes when boy accepts that that Jesus may not come, in person, to play like he imagines, but still, he can be kind and good and generous to other friends as he would be to the boy Christ.  And so the last stanza reads:
 
And though he may not visit me
as I have wished he would,
yet even so He’ll bless my house
if I am kind and good.
 
Now my sainted mother, one who very keen on a God of grace, and one who is appropriately wary of a theology of works righteousness, edited the last line to say not: “IF I am kind and good,” but, instead, to say “WHEN I am kind and good.”  Apparently, I grew up with an expectation of holiness and righteousness that was not optional, thus I am that much more grateful for the unlimited mercy of God.
 
All childhood memories aside, the central question of the children’s book is not a bad one to consider.  What if Jesus – in person -- came to our house, to our lives… to our Church?  Would it change our behavior, what we do, how we speak, and how we act?  Given his penchant for loving children, the outcast, and the poor, would he challenge our stewardship of things and of all of our considerable resources?  Given that he possessed almost nothing and changed the world radically, how might he challenge us to seek and hold fast to what matters most?
 
To be sure, human culture has grown more and more material with its focus on what we have, how we look, what we can produce, acquire, and leverage for our own status and privilege.  Legions of books and websites focus on self-actualization and improvement, replacing what is perceived as outmoded religion, with highly marketed products yielding wholeness through spiritual (but not religious) wellness.  Of course, none of this is working out for us as anxiety and depression are more prevalent than ever, and the culture of busyness has become a competitive measure of value and worth. And then, religion itself is coopted at times as so-called right belief becomes a litmus test for righteousness, and when paired with political machinations, such pseudo-faith can become its own form of idolatry.
 
In a number of ways ways, both gentle and, as we see today, not so gentle, the disciples of Luke’s Gospel are warned not to see or affirm themselves as the source of righteousness.  Jesus reminds them that their desire to be in the know -- to be the “in-crowd,” --  to appear closer to Jesus and thus, holier than the rest of everyone else, dulls their compassion, clouds their vision, and dilutes the radical nature of what Jesus comes to proclaim.  When we hear that loving Jesus might bring division even into our own family, it is chilling and challenging.   When I hear this as the Word of the Lord, I am less apt to say, “Thanks be to God” than I am to say, “Wait. What?”
 
Today’s segment of this Gospel is not a sweet story of redemption or an attractive parable of the imminent Kingdom of God.  Instead, it reveals the business end of our Shepherd’s staff, nudging us to wake up, pay attention, and remember that we fall short of the glory of God just like everyone else.  Further it tells us that accepting and embracing Jesus’ Way may well threaten our status quo and our own personal comfort.  There are times and places when standing with Jesus means standing against others, even those closest to us, when the cause of love is at stake.  Coming to terms with societal and personal sinfulness means breaking with societal norms even if that means going along to get along is no longer a tenable position.  Sometimes, greater peace only comes at the cost of a lesser one.
 
Today, we are brought to into a very real tension in balancing the fact that we are all beloved children of a merciful God, and owning the fact that we, as my children say, are not “all that and a bag of chips.”  While I would like to believe that I am a reasonably faithful person who committed to the Church and its ministry, I am just as capable as anyone of being pretty rotten, clay footed, and self-centered.  You all need to know that about me right up front.  And I am not unique in that capacity.
 
To live in this tension is to be honest as well as faithful.  And to return to the book my mother read to me as a child, a reasonable devotional thought is to imagine Jesus coming into our lives, living, working and playing with us, asking how we ought to respond, behave, or even, change.   And here is where her little theological tweak has legs.  Perhaps it is best not to imagine IF Jesus came to our house, but to know that WHEN Jesus comes into our lives, we are the best version of our selves, being and becoming what God is growing us to be.  All of the other stuff of life is just baggage.  And with Jesus, present and alive in our house, really, we are at home.  Amen.