Emmanuel Episcopal Church

Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

The Gospel - Luke 13:22-30

Jesus went through one town and village after another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, "Lord, will only a few be saved?" He said to them, "Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. When once the owner of the house has got up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, `Lord, open to us,' then in reply he will say to you, `I do not know where you come from.' Then you will begin to say, `We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.' But he will say, `I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!' There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out. Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God. Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last."

   

Homily by the Reverend John S. Ruef

Will those who are saved be few?

Those who hear Jesus ask the question, “Will those who are saved be few?” In the time of Jesus the question would have to do with the last judgment and entrance into the world to come. By the time Luke writes his version of the Jesus story, the Church thinks in terms of "being saved." Certainly there would be judgment, but when would the world to come arrive?

This preeminently Jewish notion of the world to come was translated into the notion which we know as heaven. It was the spiritual realm into which those who were worthy would go when they died. The predominantly gentile Church could not patiently wait for the world to come. So, there was the question of standards: who belongs and who does not?

We saw in last Sunday's Gospel reading how the early Church experienced the division of households on the basis of acceptance or non-acceptance of Jesus. What Jesus may have meant by "the narrow way" is hard to know. But, this saying has been attached to another which pictures those who did not accept Jesus crying out to "the householder" for mercy on the rather thin excuse that he had walked in their streets and presumably shared their food. "Not enough" is the judgment. You did not walk "the narrow way," i.e. you do not belong to the Church.

This harsh judgment does not fit well with the gracious acceptance by Jesus of those who were looked upon as beyond the pale by contemporary Jewish leaders. It did not take long, however, for Christian leaders to start drawing up rules to determine who belonged and who didn't.

We find ourselves in a situation not unlike the one reflected in today's Gospel reading. Look closely. Jesus does not answer the question of how many? Instead, he tells a story directed at those Jews who figured they were "in." Don't be so sure is his answer.

The Jesus who comes through this complicated piece of writing, faced today with the same question, tells a story which ends up saying, “You may be surprised.”

Homily for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

The Gospel - Luke 12:49-56

Jesus said, "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:

father against son

and son against father,

mother against daughter

and daughter against mother,

mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law

and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."

He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, `It is going to rain'; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, `There will be scorching heat'; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"

 

Homily by the Reverend John S. Ruef

A Way of Walking

In the early Christian community when one had to decide between the larger Jewish community which did not accept Jesus as Messiah and the people who did, one can see this split-up of households taking place. What is hard to imagine is that the reforming Jewish rabbi who spent his short life helping people would say these things. On the other hand, one can easily imagine them being said by an early Christian preacher who had experienced this division of households.

In the Jewish community, the thing which the rabbis stressed was "a way of walking," i.e. how God wished his people to comport themselves. It covered not only religious but also civil law. It is no accident that the earliest designation for the Christian community was "the way." Even today one of the criticisms leveled against some Christian groups is "pie in the sky," with no particular interest in what goes on in this world. The principal interest being in what goes on in the life to come, i.e. heaven, and how one can be sure of getting there.

It did not take long for this attitude to take hold among some of the early Christian communities. Eventually this attitude was modified by the Church. The mediaeval Church acting as one arm of the government guaranteed the heavenly outcome of one's life, providing one stayed within the bounds declared safe by the Church. This began to change in the late middle ages and is exemplified in such statements as that attributed to Elizabeth I, "… quite apart from their religious beliefs, the important thing is that the people in question are English.”

Our Puritan forefathers disagreed since the society of England did not live up to the newly minted notions of Puritan Protestantism. They moved to America where they established a social order which did. Our Virginian forefathers moved to America where they established a form of society which as closely as possible represented their traditional hierarchical society as permitted by the Church of England.

Looking back after two thousand years, the notion of "The Way," i.e. a Way of Walking, does not look so bad.

Homily for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

The Gospel -  Luke 12:32-40

Jesus said to his disciples, "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

"Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.

"But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."

 

Homily by the Reverend John S. Ruef

The Surprise of the Kingdom

We have mentioned before a certain waggish scholar who said that Jesus promised the Kingdom, but what we got was the Church. That certainly is the case. However, had we not gotten the Church we would in all probability not have heard about the Kingdom.

Jesus seems to have been most concerned that the disciples be ready for the coming of the Kingdom. There have always been those who take these concerns at their face value. They construct the kind of social setup of which they are sure Jesus would have approved and await the great day.

It is interesting that those with the concern closest to that of Jesus i.e. the poor, designated themselves as atheists and devised an inhuman system we know as Soviet Communism. On the other hand those who claim a kind of Christianity propose and support a system, which is supposed to work, but only for those who can afford it.

Is it possible that either system would work if those who ran it were not self-serving people? But greed and an overwhelming desire to control seem to have taken over. Many years ago the Catholic Church, still wedded to the literal meaning of the Adam and Eve story, invented the notion of original sin. While it certainly describes our situation, it does not begin to explain it.

Like Jesus, we are all caught in a system over which we have little or no control and which measures success in terms of power and material possessions. Jesus offered a life of service to others. Those who come to know the joy and happiness of following this wandering Jewish rabbi are usually taken by surprise as he said they would be.

When it is not caught in the same system which enslaves so many, the Church still cautions us to be ready for this surprise, the surprise of the Kingdom.

Homily for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

The Gospel - Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions."

Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, `What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, `I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, `Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, `You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?'

So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

 

Homily by the Reverend John S. Ruef

Storing up Treasures

We don't have to wonder what this passage is all about. The text reads covetousness, but we know it better as greed. In a conversation with a stock broker he explained to me that the stock market was governed by two principles: fear and greed. We will take his word for that.

The inquirer in our story wants Jesus to force his brother to divide the inheritance (presumably right here and now and it does not say whether the father is still living). Jesus states that one's life does not consist in one's possessions.

To illustrate this Jesus makes up a story (parable). The story states that, after all a man's successful efforts to accumulate possessions, thus affording him security, the man dies. Now, Jesus asks, who gets his possessions? There is nothing said about the request, which the inquirer has just made, but the parallelism is clear. Just to nail his point down, Jesus goes on to make the more general statement about possessions (riches): what is important in life is not what one owns, but how "rich one is toward God."

We do not understand this last, unless we know something about the Jewish tradition. Jewish tradition covered everything in life both religious and civil. Jesus summed it all up when asked to name the greatest commandment. His answer was Love God, and (he added) love your neighbor as yourself.

We speak glibly about following the teachings of Jesus. There is little about fairness in the teachings of Jesus. There is a lot about loving.