The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

Luke 19:1-10

Why might this passage be of any interest to you? What in the world could you possibly have in common with Zacchaeus? Is your life anything like that of this first century Jewish tax collector? Is there anything for you to learn here that could possibly be of use to you?

Well, to begin with I want to dispel a view of Zacchaeus that has gained quite a bit of traction over the centuries, particularly in the last few decades. It may seem like a picky point, but I believe it is an important one. It is this; the scripture does not tell us that Zacchaeus is the worst of the worst of sinners. We have come to believe that not only was he a representative of an unpopular government (that being Rome), but that he also took advantage of his position as tax collector to line his own pockets at the expense of his fellow citizens. The take on Zacchaeus is that he was “the worst of the worst”. One of “those people”.

The translation of the scripture that we heard this morning points us in that direction. We heard, “When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today." So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house…”

The King James Version and the Greek read a bit differently. “And when they saw it, they all murmured, saying, that he was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord: Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, this day is salvation come to this house…”

So, it is not I will restore, but I restore. Not I will give to the poor, but I give to the poor. It is my practice to do these things. This is how I live my life. This is how I try to be fair in my work and to do what is good and right in my life.

He is not somebody who routinely rips off people. He is not someone who neglects the poor. He tries to live a righteous and just and fair life – even while being an agent of a repressive government. And Jesus says that he will come to his house – even before Zacchaeus has told him about himself, he says he will come to him.

Zacchaeus is not “the worst of the worst” of sinners. I think he is just an average Joe in many ways. He tries to do what is right. And Jesus comes to his house. Jesus enters, not just his house, but also his life, because even an average Joe or Jane loses the way from time to time – lost to him- or her- self and needs to experience the Good News that Jesus brings.

Now that, I believe, puts Zacchaeus pretty much in the same category of sinner that you and I inhabit. Not that any of us is the agent of a repressive government, at least to my knowledge.

What we have here is a cathedral full of people, who try to do their best. Try to be fair in their dealings with others. Try to remember and respond to the needs of those who are poor and in need. Try to live according to a code that honors our selves, our families, our community, our faith, and our God. We try to base who we are and what we do on what we have heard, and learned, and known, and believed about God’s way and God’s will for us.

But if we didn’t need to meet Jesus again and again and again to help us find and keep on the good path, the right way – what are we doing here this morning? Why would we be here?

I think we are here because we want to be visited by Jesus, to experience the Good News of Jesus in our lives. We are here because life is so hard at times, because life is so uncertain at times, because life is so chaotic at times, because life is so frightening at times, because life is so depressing at times, because life comes at us like water from a fire hose that beats us down, rather than gives us a refreshing drink.

A beloved dies. A job is lost. A marriage ends.  Life seems to have lost all options but one. A child turns away. Sickness, disease and disability strike. The money’s gone. We have lost God.

Who has not been so hungry for what we have heard about Jesus, who has not been in such need of what Jesus has to offer that we would not extend ourselves, even to the point of climbing into a tree to get a better glimpse of that goodness? If there is such a person here this morning that has not been there, then I say to you, “Just wait. Give it time. The world, life, circumstance, bad luck, fate, karma, call it what you will, it will at some point bring you to a time and place when you will do almost anything to have Jesus come to you, come into your life, to receive what Jesus has to offer.”

There are times when wanting to do and to be good are not enough. We just don’t hack it. They are not enough. And the good news of today’s’ gospel is that Jesus is seeking us, even before we know we are seeking him.

How do I know this? My name is Zacchaeus. I am Zacchaeus. I try to do and to be good. If I wrong someone, I try to make it right. I remember and respond to those who are poor and in need – out of a generous heart. But from time to time, I have been lost. From time to time, life has beaten me down. From time to time, I seem to have just run out of resources and I am at my wits end, depleted, empty, and I eagerly seek what Jesus has to offer. I might even climb into a tree to have Jesus come back into my life with healing and strengthening and direction and purpose.

As it was for Zacchaeus, so it is, I believe, also for Rick, and Joe and Jane, and Barbara, and Frank, and fill-in-the-blank with your name. So also to you and to me, Jesus will come and enter where you live, enter into your life.

And he will bring what we need, be it strength, or forgiveness, or healing, or direction, or meaning, or succor, or mercy.

I think we hold the humility of our humanity in common with Zacchaeus of Jericho. And as Habakkuk reminds us, we don’t ever want to lose the vision, the vision of what Jesus will bring when he enters into our life.

Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus. Eagerly I seek you. Enter into my house; come into my life – again. Let me catch a glimpse of your life-giving Spirit. Maranatha! Amen.

The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25C)

The Rev. Jerry Keucher

I’m Jerry Keucher, and I’m delighted to be with you today. I’m very grateful to Dean Pompa for inviting to work with the Cathedral this year on the annual giving campaign.

This week you will receive a mailing asking you to reflect on what you plan to contribute to the work of the Cathedral in 2011. Then two weeks from today, on All Saints’ Sunday, there’ll be a big ingathering of all the pledges and estimates that you’ll be making for next year. I’m here today to give you something to reflect on over the next two weeks.

I want to tell you a story about the first house we owned. We had it for three years before selling it for the place we’ve lived in ever since. It happened almost 30 years ago. Long before I was ordained, in June of 1980 we became urban homesteaders. We bought an abandoned house in a very iffy neighborhood on the North Shore of Staten Island. The large Victorian houses in the area had been converted into apartments and rooming houses by slumlords who had milked them dry, left them vacant, and then sold them to other people like us.

“Move-in condition” in the neighborhood meant that you could move in; it did not imply that any plumbing, electrical, or heating systems were operable. The man who sold us our house held a private mortgage because no bank would make loans in that area. The banks calculated that the value of the houses and lots was zero less the costs of demolition. The previous owner thought that the people buying his properties were fools.

By December I was wondering if he had been right because we could not make it. My partner, a priest and an artist, was not working as a priest and made next to nothing from his art. The wind blew against the sheets of plastic we’d stapled to the windows that we couldn’t afford to repair. The oil company demanded cash for its deliveries, so the tank was often dry. My job paid me once a month, so we were broke three weeks out of four.

I had already taken a second job as the organist at a parish in nearby Bayonne, but we still had to borrow money from a friend that month to pay the mortgage. Things were that serious. We were pledging what I thought was a generous amount, but we had fallen behind in our weekly pledge. It was just one more bill that we couldn’t pay. I had done all I could do, and it just wasn’t enough.

At an Advent Evensong at the church in Bayonne the rector took a liberty with the lectionary and preached on Malachi 3, beginning at verse 8, in which the prophet brings God’s accusation of theft against the people. “Will a man rob God?” the old language says, “Yet you are robbing me! But you say, ‘How are we robbing you?’ In your tithes and offerings!...You are robbing me…Bring the full tithe into the storehouse…and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts. See if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.”

I remembered my childhood. My mother had brought us up to tithe. I asked her once through gritted teeth, as I was putting ten percent of my allowance into the envelope for church the next day, “Why are you making me do this?”

“So that when you’re big you’ll tithe on your grownup income,” she said. “How do you know I’ll do that?” I asked, somewhat surprised that she could see the future. “I know you will,” she answered, “because ‘as the twig is bent, so the tree is inclined.’”

I’m not sure what I would have done without that sermon at that time and the memory of my upbringing. But that’s the great thing about God’s providence. God gave me the gifts of that sermon and that upbringing, so God gave me a way out of my financial difficulties in December 1980. My prayer is that God might be giving some of you a similar gift this morning.

“OK, God,” I said, “OK. I’ll put you to the test.” For the next few weeks I stopped thinking about the $15 a week that we were pledging. When I got paid at the end of that month, I wrote a check to our parish for ten percent of what I put into the bank. It worked out to more than twice our weekly pledge. I turned in the check and held my breath.

Nothing happened. That is to say, the windows of heaven did not pour money down on us, and our windows were still covered with plastic. However, something else didn’t happen as well. We didn’t go deeper into the hole. We paid back the friend the next month and still met our obligations. We were somehow, and I’m not entirely sure how, better able to make ends meet on 90% of our income that we had been on 100%.

In reality, everything happened, and it happened in us. Writing that check made me know and feel immediately that money is a tool: it’s just a means, not an end. And more or less of necessity, it raised my trust in God to unprecedented levels.

The gifts to the church are always the first ones I enter after the direct deposit hits the bank. (And — though this is just personal preference — our tithe is always on the gross. I figure if we’re not going to rob God, why chisel Him? And then the tax refund is free money that’s already been tithed on. But that’s just my preference. There’s no obligation here, just an invitation.)

I went back to tithing as an adult out of sheer desperation. But even if you’re not as desperate as I was, I think there’s still something you want. You want not to be anxious about the little things. You want a relationship with God. You want an experience of God. You want to get to the place where your will and God’s will are the same — where doing what you really want to do means doing what God wants. I think you want your heart to be with God. Why else would you be here?

So if you want your heart to be with God, here’s a way forward. Put your money where you want your heart to be. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Your heart follows your money, not the other way around. We think it’s the other way around. We think we spend our money on the things that are important to us, but those things are important to us because they’re what we spend our money on. Put your money where you want your heart to rest, and your heart will move there.

So stop thinking about what you give as another bill that has to be paid, or as a tax, or as club dues, and for heaven’s sake, don’t let it be just a tip that’s less than you spend on lunches or your commute.

Make your gift a first-fruits offering. Set a percentage in your heart, and give that percentage off the top whenever you get money. And don’t give at other times. Break the tyranny of the weekly envelope. If you get money once a month, give your percentage once a month, and don’t sweat the other weeks. If you’re self-employed and income is really erratic, then just give back to God when God gives to you. Don’t worry about the weeks in between.

I’ve told you the percentage I give, but I’m convinced that the percentage doesn’t matter. What matters is changing the pattern of how you give. If you give a set weekly or monthly amount, you’ve turned your contribution into a bill. You factor it in with all your other obligations. If you think about your money they way most people do, when you sit down to pay your bills, you add them up and then see if you have enough to pay them. This increases your anxiety about money.

If you give a percentage off the top, the pattern is different. First, you look back and see how much God has given you since the last time you sat down to deal with your money. Then you make a gift to God that is in direct proportion to what God has given you. Then you see how you and God will deal with your obligations.

The point is first, make your gift a percentage of whatever you just received; second, give it off the top before you pay anything else.

This will change your life. Percentage giving off the top means that each time you sit down to pay bills, the first payment you make is a thank offering to God that is in proportion to what God has given you. You may think paying your bills is the least religious thing you do. Percentage giving off the top turns paying your bills into an act of worship because you’re putting your trust in God. It changes how you think about your life and what you have. It’s the most powerful way to use the powerful tool that is your money in the service of your spiritual transformation. I’m quite serious. This changed my life. This will change your life.

Percentage giving off the top: that’s my sermon. Have you noticed what my sermon has not been? I haven’t said a word about how much the parish needs your money. I haven’t mentioned budgets or capital needs. I haven’t browbeat you or played a single guilt card. I haven’t said ‘should’ or ‘ought to’ a single time. Look, you’re all bright people. You know perfectly well that if the Cathedral is going to thrive, it isn’t all going to happen with other people’s money. If you all don’t support your parish, why would anybody else? So I’m not going to dwell on that, because it’s obvious.

My point is rather different. I know that you want this parish to thrive. I know you want it to be here so that future generations can meet God here just as you have. I’ll bet most of you wish that you could do more. Well, I’m here to empower you. I’m here to tell you, and to show you, and to witness to you from my own experience how you can be as generous as you’ve wanted to be. And one of the most powerful tools you can bring to your spiritual transformation is sitting in your bank account.

The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Good morning. I am guessing that you, like me, were entrenched, captivated, and fixated on the story of the rescue of the Chilean miners this week. What a story, and how refreshing for us to focus on good news when we so desperately needed an opportunity to focus on good news. What an amazing story, a real life story–the raising of the human spirit, the persistence of the human spirit, a group of miners trapped, gathering together in communion in desperate times. Once they were discovered, waiting, waiting, seemingly patient and seemingly calm, from this side of the earth. The stories are really quite amazing when you hear them, about how they ordered themselves to stay in communion with one another. Someone rose up and took leadership, they assigned chores, they worked, and they had a daily ritual. They took on roles.

Somewhere along the way after they had been discovered, one of the first things they asked for, it is reported, was a crucifix. Soon after that, they began to ask for statues of Mary and other saints because they had made themselves a chapel underground. Around that chapel, they gathered for corporate and individual prayer. Miner #21, Jose Enriquez, requested that 33 Bibles be sent because he wanted to lead Bible study. What a miraculous, miraculous story, and a miraculous focus on prayer. Some of the quotes as the miners were released, as I am sure that you have read, were quite amazing. One of them was quoted as saying, “I have seen the devil and God down there, and I reached out for the hand of God.” Another miner said, “There were 34 of us down there. God never left us.”

It is surprising to none of us that in difficult times, we tend to turn to God, don’t we? Especially in difficult times, we tend to turn to God. But what a miraculous story, and I am using that word with intention, what a miraculous story of how, worldwide and in that place, under that ground, prayer became part of what would sustain, lift up, and hold up this newly-formed and unintended communion of people.

The scriptures today, particularly the Gospel, do, indeed, focus us on prayer. Particularly the story that Jesus tells, the parable of the widow and the unjust judge, is a message to the disciples that they must be persistent in their prayers, just like the widow who had worn out or was going to wear out the unjust judge. So, too, the disciples must be persistent in their prayers. Jesus knew that his disciples would have difficult times, difficulty being the living community that followed the teachings of Jesus in a hostile environment. Jesus knew that they would need to be persistent in staying connected with the holy.

Today we look at the experience of prayer. What do we say about prayer? Is there really power and purpose in prayer? How do we approach prayer? What is prayer and what isn’t it? Certainly, it seems, we have a modern and living-day example in the Chilean miners who were indeed persistent in their prayers. It is said that in those first 17 days, when they sat in darkness without food, rationing it out by the teaspoon, that it was their prayers and their stories that they told one another that became the communion of power and purpose, that literally kept them alive for 17 days. In the days that followed after they were discovered, it was the rituals that they encountered in community, prayer being part of that ritual, that kept them together and patient and hopeful in their days of waiting. A disciplined ritual of praying in that make-shift chapel, corporately and individually, became the fabric that led them day by day.

St. Augustine says this, “What can be more excellent than prayer? What is more profitable to our life, what sweeter to our souls, what more sublime, in the course of our whole life, than the practice of prayer?” Satchel Paige, who I have to quote in the midst of baseball season (he was a pitcher), “Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.” Abraham Lincoln said, “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”

Prayer…but what will we say, what will we say today about prayer, in our modern-day miraculous example? What will we say today if the miners had not been rescued? It happens, you know. Would they have been any less persistent in their prayers, and would God have been any less present, present to them, and they less present to each other? Would their prayers have been without power? Surely, I am not the only one who asks those questions. This leads us, I think, into what prayer is and what it isn’t.

Prayer…sometimes we approach it as if it is a whim, a whine, or a wish, and I have participated in all three in my life. You know, the prayerful whim: God please don’t let Roy Halladay throw one more pitch down the center of the plate to Cody Ross, whoever he is. You know, the whim prayer, God please let me get an A on my report. Please, God, don’t let me get stuck in this traffic. Prayers of whim.

Prayer of whine, and I don’t use this with any judgment. I am a full supporter of whining in appropriate times and places. Prayers of whine: Why me? Why me, Lord? Why did this have to happen to me? Why am I on such a bad luck streak? Why me? This is also called lament, and the scriptures are full of it. Why, oh, Lord, why? Of course, in an egocentric moment, we have to ask the question, well, why not? Why not me? Why not? It seems sometimes frivolous to say, but it is the truth. It happens to all of us. It is the gift of being human, the gift of having life, its triumphs and its challenges. Why not me?

I think the most difficult and challenging part that we sometimes see in prayer is the wish prayer: God, I wish you could take this away from me. Please take this away from me. Jesus, even in the garden, may have prayed the wish prayer. God, can’t you take this away from me? Can’t you please take away this pain, this loss, and why did it have to be at all? Can’t you please give me back what once was, my life as I knew it, the relationship that I have lost, my father who has died so suddenly? I wish, God, it didn’t have to be.

Our prayers are difficult when we ride the continuum of whim and whine and wish. But what is prayer, then? What is it? And where is its power? Søren Kierkegaard said, “Prayer does not change God, but it changes the one who prays.” Samuel Shoemaker, Episcopal priest and one of the founders of the AA movement, said that “Prayer does not change things for you, but it, for sure, changes you for things.” How many folks participating in a 12-step program have come to know the power of that statement? Prayer may not change things for you, but it, for sure, changes you for things. Henri Nouwen says that “Prayer is the bridge between our conscious and unconscious lives. To pray is to connect these two sides of our lives by going to the place where God dwells. Prayer is soul work, because our souls are those sacred centers where all is one and where God is with us in the most intimate way. Prayer is the invitation into sacred intimacy.”

We all know intimacy in that limited human way, but the gift that we get when we experience intimacy, a place of safety, a place of trust, a place of delight and passion, of vulnerability and courage, of a peace that surpasses all understanding, a relationship into sacred intimacy, is where our desperation is met with understanding. Our sadness and despair is met with a lap to put our heads in and a soothing hand running fingers through our hair, a light touch, wiping away our tears. That sacred place of intimacy is where our delight is met with unbridled joy, our courage is lifted up and emboldened, and our imagination is set free, where our deepest wounds and hurts that we often hide from the world are able to be shown, and they are accepted, and they even are embraced. This is where prayer leads us, into an unshakable communion with God.

The Lord be with you. Let us pray.

Listen, O Lord, to my prayers and hear my desire to be with you, to dwell in your house, and to let my whole being be filled with your presence. Let me at least remain open to your invitation to intimacy. Let me wait attentively and patiently for the hour when you will come and break through all the walls that I have erected. Teach me, O Lord, to pray.

By the way, the New York Times talked about the delivery of the miners in this way. “Miracle at the Mine” is what Good Morning, America called it, and said it was a nativity scene witnessed world-wide. We have witnessed a nativity scene, new life born out of deep intimacy with God. Amen.

The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

If today is the first day I have talked about Pee Wee’s Playhouse in a sermon, it certainly will not be the last. That Saturday morning kid’s show was a defining experience of my youth- it was a riot of color and camp and cartoons and talking furniture, and my brother and I watched it long after we had graduated from its recommended audience age, because it was unlike anything we had ever seen before in our short lives.

There were fancy cowboys and a lady with a big red beehive, a genie, a talking chair, pterodactyls, and in the middle of it all, a man-sized child in too short pants. Our favorite part of each episode was the word of the day- it was disclosed in a whisper at the beginning of the show, and every time it was spoken over the next hour, everyone had to scream as loud as they could.

It was a creative and fun way of building our vocabularies, and also of teaching us about concepts that were a little abstract for our young minds. It was really quite brilliant as a teaching tool.

I will not state outright that the scholars and theologians who devised the Revised Common Lectionary were fans of Pee Wee’s Playhouse, but the way a theme is chosen, and stated and restated and stated once again in the selected readings, particularly in these later Sundays in Pentecost, leads me to suspect they have more than a passing familiarity with some of the concepts.

The word for today is faith.

Walter Brueggeman, biblical scholar, tells us that “faith” in these readings has many dimensions and nuances, and cannot be reduced to one thing. It is honest sadness, tenacious remembering, performance of duty, a holy calling, and holding fast to sound teaching.

We begin with two accounts of the faith of the Jews in Exile- first in Lamentations, where in vivid images we are presented with a desolate and destroyed city of Zion, her temple torn stone from stone, her streets empty. For the tribe of Israel, this city was the earthly incarnation of God’s love for them, Jerusalem was the tangible proof of the covenant God made with Moses. Now, in their collective mind, she is like a princess who has been turned into a slave; all who once loved her have turned against her, her friends have become her enemies. The city of God is described as a widow, weeping inconsolably over the loss of all who loved her. Yet her children, from exile, love her still- their faith in God is what sustains them, and keeps them certain that they will one day return to the streets they once walked, the place they called home, that they will rebuild the Temple that was destroyed, even if it is only their children’s children who survive to see that union with God re-established.

In the psalm, one of the most beautiful of the Psalter, I think, but also one in which grief, loss, is most palpable, we hear the displaced people of Zion crying out to God beside the rivers of their land of exile, with the plaintive cry- “by the Babylonian rivers we sat down and wept.”

Their captors, not content with destroying their homeland and moving an entire people to a strange land, now demand that they sing the songs of their faith in this unhappy and brutal place. Despondent, they beg of God to give them the strength of faith and heart to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land.

I think of all the readings for today, this is the one that resonates most with the modern reader. We are living in a season of loss, both in our personal lives and in our corporate life as a nation, and much like the exiled Jews, taunted by their captors to sing their hymns in a strange land, it is easy to feel abandoned, outcast, as people of faith in a secular world. We are surrounded by messages that run counter to our Gospel, values are emphasized in our television programs and films and media that are not really our values, we have to work twice as hard to instill our faith in our children, and often find ourselves divided even within our own churches.

Those who do not share our faith in God can sometimes seem aggressive, even combative. Those who claim to speak on behalf of our God can be more so. It is not an easy time in our history to be a Christian of faith and integrity.

But we carry on, we rely on our faith to carry us through the most difficult times, and in times when our faith is perhaps not so strong, we rely on our communities, on our rituals of prayer, our rhythm of worship, to sustain us until we find our footing in God once again.

And so it is up to us. Just as it was for the exiled Jews, to keep strong in our faith, to keep kindness and love in our hearts, even in the face of those who would mock or torment us. It is up to us to kindle the fires of our faith- a faith that is honest sadness, a tenacious remembering, faith that is a performance of duty, a holy calling, faith that holds fast to sound teaching- but in this faith we are never alone, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, but those who have come before us, and by our children’s children, yet to come.

AMEN+

The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

This is not an easy scripture lesson to hear, and it is not an easy one to get, to understand what it meant to Jesus and what it might mean for us.

Let me start by saying that it is the 4^th in a series of parables placed together in Luke. We have the story of a lost sheep, a lost coin, a lost son and then this story of a rich man and his manager. But what have they lost?

The rich man has lost his property and the good will of his people, and the manager has lost his own money and the good will of both boss and farmers. The rich man did not have safeguards in place and the manager seems to have squandered the money. It doesn’t say he did anything illegal, by the way. When he realized his plight he went to each of the tenants and gave them a reduced amount to repay, so they could pay it back as soon as possible, so that he could pay the owner. Basically, what was deleted was his commission.

What did each gain? The landowner gained more of what he was owed than he ever received before, he gained the good will of the tenants (which he never had because of what he charged them) for reducing their debt, and he gained a grudging respect for the manager. The manager gained the good will of the farmers and the commendation of his employer.

Does this ring true for the world economy we live in? Does it relate to the economy of God’s kingdom? Luke is unrelenting and adamant throughout his gospel that the kingdom view of property is that it exists for the benefit of all.

Today’s economists tell us that in the world’s economy, money that sits idly by is not a resource at all. Money is useful, they tell us, only when it is in motion. It is the movement of money that brings prosperity to those through whom it moves.

And the divine economists, we call them prophets and saints – and we call one of them by the name of Jesus – they tell us that wealth and property in the economy of God are for the wellbeing of all God’s creation, and when the kingdom is fully realized money and property will not belong to anyone, it will be a resource for all. There will be no debtors.

And if he did nothing else, this manager did relieve people from their debts, and he dedicated his personal profit to that end.

It is significant for us to remember to whom Jesus is giving this teaching. It is not to the tax collectors and other sinners. It is not to white-collar criminals, not to the Pharisees, Sadducees, or Scribes. It is not to the rich merchants of Galilee. He is teaching his disciples. He is preaching to the faithful about their faith and their life. The teaching is about how the faith of the disciples of Jesus, then and now, informs our values, ethics, behavior and relationships with God, people, and money.

Some have said that this parable is not as much about morality as it is about apathy.

“And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

There's a story about Henry Ford, the inventor of the automobile, who was visiting his family's ancestral village in Ireland. Two trustees of the local hospital found out he was there, and managed to get in to see him. They talked Ford into giving the hospital five thousand dollars (this was the 1930's, so five thousand dollars was a great deal of money).

The next morning, at breakfast, he opened his daily newspaper to read the banner headline: "American Millionaire Gives Fifty Thousand to Local Hospital." Ford wasted no time in summoning the two hospital trustees.  He waved the newspaper in their faces.  "What does this mean?" he demanded. The trustees apologized profusely.  "Dreadful error," they said.  They promised to get the editor to print a retraction the very next day, declaring that the great Henry Ford had given not fifty thousand, but only five. Hearing this, Ford offered them another forty-five thousand, under one condition: that the trustees would erect a marble arch at the new hospital entrance, and place upon it a plaque that read, "I walked among you and you took me in."

C. S. Lewis wrote about Christians, “Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us…”

So, what is it that the steward has done here?

The steward forgives. The steward forgives debts. He forgives things that he had no right to forgive. He forgives for all the wrong reasons, he forgives for personal gain, he forgives to compensate for past misconduct. It is this decisive action that he undertakes to redeem himself to be restored in his relationship with the farmers and with the landlord. He forgives.

So what's the moral of this story, one of the stories unique to Luke’s Gospel? It's a moral of great emphasis for Luke and for Jesus – forgive.

“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors…" That comes from Luke (11:4-5). Forgive us our debts, forgive us our trespasses, forgive us our sins… as we forgive. 

One theologian put it this way: “Forgive it all. Forgive it now. Forgive it for any reason you want, or for no reason at all. Why forgive the debts of debtor nations… Why forgive someone who's sinned against us, or against our sense of what is obviously right? We don't have to do it out of love for the other person, if we're not there yet.

We could forgive the other person because of what we pray in Jesus' name every Sunday morning, and because we know we'd like forgiveness ourselves. We could forgive because we've experienced what we're like as unforgiving people… We could forgive because we are, or we want to be, deeply in touch with a sense of Jesus' power to forgive and free sinners like us. Or we could forgive because we think it will improve our odds of winning the lottery.

Pick one of the above or pick none of the above. It doesn’t make any difference.”

So, in the words of the Nike ad, why not “Just do it”? And if we do, I believe that you and I will find ourselves living a little more in line with the kingdom way that God showed us in Jesus.

The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

This morning I want to tell you about my brother and his wife. They are blessed, or my brother was smart enough to marry who he married, with acres of land just north of that little town we all grew up, in Jim Thorpe, on top of what is called Kattner’s Mountain. My brother was smart enough to marry a Kattner and, therefore, they are blessed. About two miles deep into the woods of the land which is theirs, they built a very humble cabin that has been there for 20-some years. Over the last 20 years or so, for their family, for our family, and for any who they invite, (the key word is invite), this has been a refuge. It has been a place accessible only by terrain vehicles. It is graced with beautiful hills and valleys, deep woods and brush, and two beautiful streams that, for those who fish, are a delight. They, themselves, have a routine, particularly when the weather is nice on Sunday afternoons, of disappearing into the woods, set upon a day to enjoy God’s grace and nature, to build a fire as the darkness comes on, over which to roast marshmallows and whatever might be caught in one of those streams. It is a delight and it is a blessing.

Some 10 years ago or so, when Felicia and I were still living in Virginia, my phone rang one Sunday evening. As the prayer goes, as the darkness of the day was coming upon us and the fever of the world was coming to a hush. My phone rang, and it was my brother on his cell phone asking me to pray because my sister-in-law’s niece, who was down at the cabin with them that day, had violated commandment #1 of going to the cabin. “Do not ever disappear into the woods by yourself.” Well, their niece, Keri, 11 years old, took a familiar path, a path she had been on many, many times as a child. In the delight of what was around her, she lost track of time and lost her way. She could not figure out how to get back.

If you ever visit that land, and it does come by invitation only so chances are slim, you will know that it is filled with laurel and deep brush, particularly around the streams. There are little walking paths that our Native American brothers and sisters once walked. In the midst of the summer, those walking paths become slimmer and darker. Keri kept going up, we learned, different paths, thinking she was on the right path, but then recognizing the path she was on went only into darkness. As the story goes, the search party was called, literally the State Police, the rangers, and any family member or friend who was willing, and they set out about the task to find Keri as darkness set in. We know, because you know how the story ends, from Keri that she became disoriented and the darker that it got, the more panicked she got. The more panicked she got, the more fearful she got. The more fearful she got, the more desperate she got, trying each and every path that she could find. She finally gave up and this young, 11-year-old just sat down next to what was becoming a very cold, cold stream under the darkness of the mountain laurel brush. She sat there, waiting, crying, and wondering, “Is anybody looking for me? Is anybody looking for me?”

Well, we learn from this story a bit about human nature. On Keri’s side, we learn (if we see this a bit as a metaphor), that we do sometimes get off on the wrong path. We do sometimes set forth in our journey in life assured that we know the way back. We do sometimes, on that journey, get confused and misguided, and we lose our way. We do sometimes get filled with anxiety and panic, and in Keri’s case, what sometimes happens to us happens when we violate the law. Don’t ever go off on your own. On the other side, for those who were desperate and filled with anxiety for Keri that day, for those who loved her, who were worried about her, who were angry at her, who were desperate in their anxiety --  we learned about human nature, didn’t we? 

This is the context that I lay out as we enter today’s Gospel lesson, a familiar one, I am sure, as Jesus indeed teaches us again and speaks in the midst of our human nature to reveal to us something about God’s divine nature.

There are three things we need to know about our context this day, three dynamics at play in this story. There is grumbling, there is searching and seeking, and there is rejoicing. The context today is that Jesus has been sitting down with tax collectors and sinners, those who, in the eyes of those looking through human nature, particularly the religious authority of the day, those who had broken the law, those who had set themselves apart, and those who had distanced themselves through their beliefs and their behaviors. Those who, at the very best or least, were unworthy of those in authority at this time and certainly, in their limited view of God’s divine nature, unworthy of God’s time. They are grumbling. They are unhappy. Who is this Jesus to sit down with these unworthy tax collectors and sinners? Jesus tells them, teaches them, through parables known to you and to me. Hear them, if you can, with the immediacy of the day.

In the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus looks at those in the day, giving them a parable of what they would know. Which one among you, if you were a shepherd, wouldn’t take the time to go and do all that you can to find one lost sheep? Because you know, better than I know, that is what you would do if you were a shepherd. You would go after that one lost sheep. You would take that staff, the tool that you have been given, and you would cut through the woods and the forest and the trees. You would kick out the debris from the roads. You would try to find the path that sheep has taken. Then when you saw that sheep, sitting there waiting, you would take the end of the staff and you would pull it in. You know that because just one of your flock escaped means that your very life, and your very way of life, is threatened.

Which one of you wouldn’t, if you were a woman who is keeping her house, count your pennies to make the mortgage, to pay the rent, to keep the lights lit, and to keep food on the table? Which one of you wouldn’t get the brightest lamp that you could find, put it in the best position in the house, and take the tool of the day – your broom – and sweep away every nook and cranny of dirt and debris so that you might see that shining coin again? Which one of you wouldn’t do that, grumbling, searching and seeking?

Jesus reveals to us, in our human nature, the divine nature. Would not our Father in heaven seek and search that piece that is lost, that piece of us that has wandered away? When he found you, would that not be cause for celebration? Would that not be cause for great celebration? Would that not be just the way our God is – the divine nature? You know the story goes like this. What is God like? God seeks and searches for the very least, seeks and searches for those who have gone astray, seeks and searches for you and me when we are lost, seeks and searches for those who we think are unworthy of our time or God’s time.

What is God’s character like when such a finding has been found? It is like a member of a search party who finds a little girl, sitting along the side of a cold stream, now in the darkness of night, afraid, crying, shivering, and wondering if anybody is looking for her. That’s what it’s like. It is like ushering that young child back up the side of that mountain to safety, to warmth, and to the embrace of her parents and family and friends. Oh, what a celebration! Oh, what a celebration for one who has been lost and now is found. Human and divine intersect.

So our question today, the question we ask as we engage the Gospel – where can I ask God’s grace to help me see past my human nature, to see where I have given up on another who is lost, one who I have judged as unworthy of my time and even God’s, one who I may be grumbling about, even on this very morning, even if it’s I? When I am found by God, or when that person we think of is found by God, can we imagine throwing a party for the sole reason of finding something that had been lost? What would that be, that thing, that person, that dream that had been lost? What would that celebration look like? Certainly, I hope, not a burning of books (couldn’t help that one). Perhaps a fatted calf, the finest wine; a relationship broken is now restored. A dream that has been dashed has been rediscovered and uplifted. A sense of newness in our own spirit and being has been reassured and reclaimed. A new-found hope for a broken world, reaching out across all faiths that might, indeed, build on God’s peaceable kingdom -- something

worth celebration.

Amen.

The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

September 5, 2010

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

Recently I spent some time at my parents’ house in Marietta, GA. For various reasons this was my first trip “home,” to the house I grew up in, in a little over a year. I think, because of that (for me) unusually long interval, I was able to look at this very familiar place with fresh eyes, and notice things that, though they may have been in place for decades, I simply had been too used to to note. It also helped that my visit, as my mother characterized it, was a lot like that of a college kid home for the summer, meaning most days I slept in, spent hours reading, watched more than my fair share of television, and probably wore pajama pants more than one should. This is my favorite sort of vacation, one with absolutely no schedule.

Anyway, as I was lounging around being lazy, I noticed that the mantel in my parents’ living room displays a series of misshapen, lumpy little bowls, and then I remembered the pottery classes I took as a little kid, of which these fine specimens were the fruit.

Starting at about 8, I was enrolled in a class at our local art museum, down in the basement in a little studio, given by a woman who adored children and was also a bit of a holdover from the late sixties/early seventies arts and crafts movement. She taught us how to use clay to make everything from coil pots to scenes from fairy tales to gifts for our parents. (My mom still has the teapot I made for her in the shape of a pig, despite the fact that it leaks water from the feet and is completely unusable for the purpose for which it was designed.)

Eventually we advanced enough in our clay skills to learn how to use pottery wheels, and I was flooded with these memories in reading the passage from Jeremiah today. I think that I was too young at the time to fully understand it, but I got something special from the experience of starting with a lump of clay and watching as a bowl emerged with the help of my hands and fingers. In that moment of creating something out of nothing, in a way, I was closest perhaps to the feeling God had, when he crafted this world, when he crafted us, at the beginning of time. I was surprised every time I was successful. The key to successfully making a pot is centering the clay exactly on the middle of the spinning pottery wheel, and this was quite a difficult skill to learn. Often it would seem that the clay was centered until the bowl or pot was almost done, its walls brought high and thin, only to see a slight wobble start and then watch as the whole thing spun out of control and destroyed itself. And then you just had to scrape up the scraps and start all over again. It was a little heartbreaking to a young child, to see my work self destruct after such a promising start, an experience that, I think, also brings one close to the mind of God, perhaps, as he watches his creation, his beloved creations, and muddle through, sometimes unsuccessfully.

In the passage we read from Jeremiah today, we see God in one of these moments, when the house of Israel has gained the upper hand in its never-ending struggles against persecution, and has turned into the persecutor. God explains, through the prophet Jeremiah, to the wayward tribe of Israel the fragility of its existence. Like a potter reworking a spoiled vessel, so could God destroy the House of Israel, and start fresh.

“At one moment,” God says, “I may declare concerning a nation or kingdom that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation…turns from its evil I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it…And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I intended to do to it…Turn now, all of you from your evil ways, and amend your ways and your doing.” This is a harsh warning from a loving God to a people who had lost their way, once again. Judah and Jerusalem were living in anxious times, uncertain, scared, fearing their neighbors, bracing for invasion or displacement, plagued by famines and economic hardships, looking for someone to blame.

We are living in anxious times, ourselves. Many of us are uncertain economically, with many still worried about keeping themselves housed, employed, fed, clothed. We are at war on many fronts. We are unsure, I think, as a country, of our place in the world, and that uncertainty and confusion can too easily turn into fear.

While home I watched a little more television than I normally do, and was surprised at the panic and the anger and the fear and cynicism I heard trumpeted by commentators of all flavors, from all points along the political spectrum- the language of doom and destruction and apocalypse tossed out easily, and it was terrifying. Historically, during times of economic downturn we as a people, as a human race, have given in to blaming the other, tightening borders and closing ranks in an attempt to create some sense of safety, of control. We have created scapegoats, have vilified members of other races, or religions, or nationalities. Cynicism leads to detachment, which leads the denial of the shared humanity that unites us all which leads to inaction. The bowl of our creation begins to wobble, ever so slightly, threatening to spin out of control.

But all is not lost; the pot can still be saved. We must remind ourselves that God’s hands are embracing us from all sides, continuing our formation even as we try to shake free.

And, we are reminded, if we hold tight to the Gospel, to the good news of Christ and to the new covenant he gave us: if we love our neighbors as ourselves, and above all else, love God- we have nothing to fear.

AMEN.

The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

My, wasn’t that a comforting Word from the Lord Jesus? I have always wondered what was the origin of that saying about the job of the preacher being “to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.” I think we have found it in today’s gospel passage.

Wherever happened to the Jesus who said in Matthew; “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Is this the same Jesus? The simple answer is, Yes.

So, what do you think is going on with Jesus here? Did he get out on the wrong side of the bed? Is he just having a bad day? Perhaps his biorhythms are off. Maybe like the flight attendant who jumped down the emergency chute and out of his job, perhaps he had just had enough with how things are, and was ready now for some radical change. Was there some specific event or circumstance around Jesus that occasioned this outburst? Or maybe if not Jesus, then maybe around Luke, that would cause him to highlight this dimension of Jesus and the world?

Do you remember what John the Baptist said about Jesus way back before the beginning of Jesus’ ministry? In Matthew 3:11 we hear John say, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

Is it possible that the world is such – that the human condition is such – that the breaking in of the reign of God will cause radical change, will demand radical change? Is it possible that the kingdom of God looks little like the world we inhabit, looks nothing like some of the uglier aspects of the world? Is it possible that the best of human community is but a veiled shadow of what God has in store for creation?

God has declared through his prophet Isaiah that “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

If that is the case, then it would not be surprising that the breaking in of the reign of God will cause some breaking of old habits, some rejection of ingrained patterns of living, some necessity to separate, to divide oneself from the evil powers of the world and from people whose behavior or mission is to hurt or destroy.

We affirm that truth whenever we baptize someone and welcome him or her into the household of God. “Do you renounce the evil powers of the world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?” “I renounce them,” we say. I remove myself from them, we say. I place a divide between who I am and what they do, we say.

We may need to go even further than that. We may need to separate ourselves, to purify ourselves from some dimensions of our selves. What are my behaviors, my habits that are hurtful to others? Can I renounce them? Truly renounce them? What do I do that tears down, rather than builds up? Can I renounce them? What in my life keeps other people at a distance, keeps God at a distance, separates me from knowing the fullness of God’s love, God’s presence in my life, God’s power? Can I renounce them? What lives in the darkness in me that needs to be brought into the light? Can I renounce them?

What are “the false hopes, bad dreams, and reckless lies” that I love to love? Don Clendenin has come up with his partial list.

“* I deserve perfect health and the medicine to get me there, especially given how hard I work out.


* I'm entitled to all the passionate sex that the tabloids describe and the movies depict.


* There's a solution to every problem if I pray hard enough.


* I'd be happier in a bigger house in a better location, or in a smaller house with less upkeep. 


* I'd be happier in a newer house with fewer repairs, or in an older house with more charm.


* I wouldn't be such a mess if not for my family of origin.


* I'd find more fulfillment in a different job.


* My kids deserve straight teeth, the best universities, challenging jobs, financial success, and model marriages. And they should make me proud. 


* I will give a little more when I get a little more. Just a little more, enough to be secure.”

* … I expect "a front row seat in a life of miracles."


These are his, what might yours be? These are all false prophecies about how life is to be, about what one can expect, about what is of value. Jeremiah calls those who tout these false visions, those who sell these false visions of life, “false prophets”. Their words are not God’s Word. They promise what cannot be delivered. We read in Jeremiah, “Is not my word like fire, says the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”

What the false prophets hold out to the world is gossamer; it blows away in the wind, as in “It ain’t ever going to happen like that for you.” Or sometimes what they hold out can capture us and blind us to any other way of thinking or living or being.

And yet, Jesus tells us that there is another way. In last Sunday’s NY Times Business section there was a column titled, “But will it make you happy?” The opening paragraph went this way: “She had so much. A two-bedroom apartment. Two cars. Enough wedding china to serve two dozen people. Yet Tammy Strobel wasn’t happy. … she was, as she put it, caught in the “work-spend treadmill.” So one day she stepped off.”

She just stepped off. She broke away. That’s something like what Jesus was talking about. Sometimes living fully, living truthfully, living deeply into the reign and life of God requires us to move away from, to break asunder, to be refined in the fire of repentance.

And the good news is that it is possible at any time, it is possible at every time to make the break that is necessary to find healing and wholeness. The human story is the story of God’s redeeming work at any time and every time throughout history, and for each of us that redeeming work will be completed in God’s time.

As Dylan Breuer has written, “(The human story) is a story of pain and tears and brokenness, but it is a story of love, joy, and hope that ends in wholeness, in the world coming to know, and you and I coming to know, just how high and broad and deep God's love and blessings for Creation are,” including the part of creation that bears your name.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

So- how about these readings today? A little depressing, right? We have vanity (and vanity, and vanity) and greed and dying unaware, all in spades.

We are warned again and again in Ecclesiastes and the psalm of the sin of greed, of the risk of prizing things over relationships with each other and with God. We are shown, in the teacher character form Ecclesiastes, exactly how gloomy and fixated and anxious one can become when getting is all that we think about. Everything else loses meaning, and we find ourselves, bitter and jealous, sitting alone on a pile of money, terrified of who might get it once we die. That, truly, is vanity!

But then in Colossians, we are reminded that behind the sin of greed, there is an even greater sin- the sin of self-sufficiency, of believing that we can ever have so much stuff that we no longer need each other. In Jesus, we are reminded, God offers us another way.

I have a confession to make. I am a saver. For me, saving money is like a sport- when most of my friends were buying their first new cars, I was starting an IRA, I buy things for full price so rarely that I can pretty much remember each occasion in the last five years, and I get a thrill when I find a bargain online. Even as a little girl, when I came into money, whether a dollar from the Tooth Fairy or $5 in a birthday card or a quarter I found in the sofa, I squirreled it away somewhere, and saved it. My mother tells stories of finding little pockets of change and dollar bills folded ever smaller around my room, and my older brother constantly coming to me with “investment opportunities.”

All of that back story is to explain why, when I got a statement from the Social Security office in the mail earlier this week, it had the impact on me that it did. I was pretty excited to find out that I’ve finally worked enough units or whatever they call it to be a part of the program. I felt good about that, I liked the idea of having some security in that murky, hazy future, still so many decades off, when I am told I get to retire.

And then I read the sheet called: What young workers should know about social security. After detailing all the reasons the program will be vital in my eventual old age, it posed the question so many folks in my generation have been asking for a while now: will social security be around when I retire? I don’t think I will spoil it for you when I tell you the official answer was somewhere between probably and maybe.

Anxiety took hold as I looked at the graphs of how saving x amount of dollars now at y % would mean z in savings in forty years, and my chest got a little tight and I eventually had to just go do something else altogether because I was getting a little freaked out.

We all carry our false gods with us in life, and I realized, once again, that I had made something of an idol out of financial security. I know that I am not alone when I identify with the man in today’s Gospel who has worked hard and focused on the future and pinched and planned to insure his comfort and security, and in the process has lost sight, a little, of all those other important aspects of life.

We have felt the false peace of the farmer in Luke, relaxing, finally, with the feeling that we have saved enough, we have done enough, we have made the right decisions, and now we are assured of happiness and security. Except, like the farmer, we can too easily lose sight of the bigger picture. Because just as we say to our souls, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years, [now] relax, eat, drink and be merry!”, we realize that life is unpredictable, and none of us knows when its final day might come, and if we’ve staked our entire being on having enough, we have very little support when we find that we are lacking.

To quote Walter Brueggeman, theologian, we have been caught in the foolish destructiveness of self-sufficiency. Luke’s parable, Brueggeman says, portrays a fool who is a great accumulator and who imagines that his vast possessiveness adds to his well being. In the end he is talking only to himself, he is isolated, and his self-satisfaction is interrupted by death.

The message, as always, is that balance is key. Of course we should all live with an eye towards the future, we should all save and practice sound financial stewardship, but we cannot let that future security become an obsession- we must also live in the present moment, not become so attached to things and money that we squirrel them away, like my young self with my tiny folded bills, without enjoying them - we have to come to a place where we recognize that those bills are a means to an end, and that end is a life that includes the joy of charity, the pleasure of pleasures, and keeping ourselves open to the community we live in.

We know that greed is a way of worshipping the wrong gods, but it is easier to forget that security itself can be a false god, an attempt to wrest control from the hands of the God who made us.

To quote Brueggeman once more, this teaching is urgent in our society, not only because of the perennial seduction of greed, but because we live in an era in which credit and tax law and advertisements all seek to make greed into a civic virtue. We know better! We may choose against preoccupation with getting and having, and instead choose a life centered on compassion, on kindness, on humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness- we can choose a life centered on a new self, the one baptized into Christ.

Let us pray:

Lord, help us to relax.
Take from us the tension that makes peace impossible,
Take from us the fears that do not allow us to venture,
Take from us the worries that blind our sight,
Take from us the distress that hides our joy,
Help us to know that we are with you,
That we are in your care,
That we are in your love,
That you and we are one.
AMEN.

The Eighth Sunday After Pentecost

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

In Thanksgiving for The Rev. Cn. Charles Shreve 
and "Ralph Davis"

Luke 10:38-42

As Jesus and his disciples went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

On this hot Sunday in late July of the hottest summer on record, I thought I would tell you a couple of parables and along with trying to engage you, at the same time try to entice you into a little personal reflection later on, not about what you do, but about how you do what you do.

The first parable.

Almost 40 years ago, I went to Christ Church, Corning N.Y. as the Associate Rector. Christ Church is a very large church, about like this cathedral in building and in membership. I had a very big job, and I became very busy doing God's work. As clergy do when we come to a new parish, I spent a lot of time visiting with my new parishioners. And I really had to hustle from visit to visit.

Finally I was getting down to the less active members and it came time for me to visit a man I will call Ralph Davis. He was about 85 years old. Been retired from railroading for some 20 years. He lived in the house he grew up in, and it looked as if it hadn't had a coat of paint since the day he was born.

I knocked on his door and the door swung slowly open. I called out, “Hello, Mr. Davis?” A muffled reply came back, “In here.” I proceeded to the parlor. I walked into the darkest, dingiest, dankest, dirtiest, dustiest, disgusting-est living room I had ever seen. And there was Ralph seated in his chair...his foul smelling chair...in the middle of it all.

“Who the (expletive deleted) are you?” “I'm Rick Cluett from Christ Church.” “You must be new. I always get the new one. Well, you needn't bother. I got along fine before you, and I will after you.” A great beginning. I said, “Mr. Davis, I'm very busy. I have people to see, places to go, and work to do, now if you don't want me here, I will be glad to leave.” (Hoping against hope, he would end this unpleasantness.)

“Well, all right you might as well sit down seeing as you’re here, but be quiet so I can finish my show.” Ten minutes of his show, and I was gone. Back to work; on to another parishioner for a visit. I did go back to Ralph, but only on the highest holy days to take him the sacrament, for which I turned off the TV, and immediately afterward turned it back on again, so that I wouldn't have to talk to him and I would leave.

Another parable.

You long time members of Nativity will remember Canon Charles Shreve who served this cathedral faithfully for a number of years, when he and his beloved wife, Patti Pickens, retired to Bethlehem. For those who didn’t know him, Charles’ ministry had taken him into the company of the powerful, the elite, the luminary and famous, corporate and political leaders, talented artists and artisans, and to the great cathedrals in Paris and San Francisco.

One day in this cathedral pulpit many years ago he told this story from his time as canon and bishop’s chaplain, an important and powerful post, at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

He was very busy in his office when his secretary called him to come out to help her "deal with" this man who had come to ask for mon­ey.

Charles saw a man who was an obvious street drunk – his body was dirty, he was unkempt, wearing filthy clothes. Charles invited him into his office, anyway. The man told him a well-rehearsed story of his descent into his pre­sent condition. He just wanted money for food, he said. Charles asked him, "Isn't there anyone in this world who you could look to for help."

He said that there was no one; except his son whom he had not seen for several years, since his graduation from Stanford, and he had no idea where to find him, or even if it was worth find­ing him, given his present condition. When he mentioned that the son had graduated from Stanford, a possible way to trace the son crossed Charles’ mind. He asked the man the name of his son.

The name he gave was the name of a young man Charles knew. This young man was a kind of golden boy, a rising star in the corporate world, active in cathedral life and ministry. He was young, handsome, well educated, well employed, had a winning personali­ty and made a good buck.

Charles asked the man if he would come back the next day at 12:00 noon, and said he would try to locate his son. Reluctantly he agreed. Charles then called the son and told him the story of his father. The man said that he hadn't seen his father since his graduation. His mother had divorced his father because of his alcoholism. He had lost track of him. But with a rather reluctant “yes”, he said he would come to the cathedral at noon.

The old man arrived first and Charles invited him to wait in his office. Shortly afterward the son came in. Dressed in a beautiful, double-breasted Cashmere overcoat. The old man stood up and said, Hello Son. The young man said, Hello Dad. And he went over to him: this dirty, grubby, disheveled, drunk who was his father. He took off his coat and placed it around the shoulders of his father - wrapped him up in it - and drew him into a warm embrace of love. Tears began streaming from three pairs of eyes. It was a moment of reconciliation and the beginning of the redemption of a human soul.

To finish the first parable.

One day I brought the sacrament to Ralph, and for the first time, somehow it truly became the bread and wine of Holy Communion. Afterward Ralph asked me not to turn the TV on again. Instead, he said, “Sit down,” and asked, “How are things going down at the Church? Where'd you grow up? Tell me about your family.” And so on. He also told me details and anecdotes about his amazing life.

After two years of visiting him in which I never really visited with him, he made me sit down and engage him – relate to him. And he was tenacious. I would get up to go, and he would ask me a new question. I would say what I thought, he would ar­gue, and he would probe, and probe and probe -- deeply. I felt a lit­tle like Jacob wrestling with the angel. We wrestled, we wrangled, and in the end we both won.

For when it finally came time for him to go to the hospital for the last time, he told me he wanted me to take him. So I cleaned him up, dressed him, took him to the hospital in my car, sat with him, helped him die, buried him, and mourned his loss ...and gave thanks to God for him and for what he taught me about dignity and courage and faith and patience, and compassion -- and something about what the good part really is, where it is found, and that it is of God.

Now what was it that Jesus was saying in this gospel story of Mary and Martha?

Becoming whole persons, holy persons, depends not so much upon changing what we do but in doing for God and those around us what we or­dinarily do for ourselves. This Gospel doesn't deal with com­petition between action or contemplation, faith or work. It has every­thing to do with living deliberately, intentionally and attentively in relationship by God's grace.

God didn't create us to fill some role, do some job. God made us for relationship and for love -- to be loved by God, and to express with our life and our welcome of others how we see God loving the world.