Behind the Scenes

Luke 14:1, 7-14

For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.  –Luke 14:11

I have always preferred working in the background. Behind the scenes.  When I was in High School, I participated in a few musicals (we only did one every-other year).  But, I was never interested in being on stage.  I was a part of the audio-visual crew.  Lights and sound.  My senior year, I was chosen to run the master light board.  I sat up in the projection booth at the back of the theater and, though I was out of sight, I felt powerful behind that huge board that controlled, well, everything.  That was, until a fuse blew on opening night plunging everything into darkness.  I won’t repeat the words the director said in my headphones. 

Jesus’ words about humility at the end of this week’s parable have always confused me.  Humility is a good thing.  I get that. To be humble is to be who you are, nothing more, nothing less.  The word comes from the same root as “humanity.” To be humble is to be human in the fullest sense of that word.  It appears that those who aspire to the place of honor in the parable are anything but humble.  They seek the limelight.  They want to be at center stage.  They want the attention focused on them.  But, Jesus warns, the limelight can go dark as quickly as it shines.  It can be embarrassing when you find out that you didn’t get the lead role.  Better to stay in the wings and wait to be called. Right?  But then he drops this line about the humble being exalted.  It’s almost as if he is suggesting that humility is the correct path to take to the limelight.  But, if your end goal is to be exalted…  is that really humility?  If you’re hiding in the projection booth reveling in the power of your humility, the lights could still go out and leave you embarrassed.  Trust me on this one.

That’s why we need to keep reading.

True humility is not about working the angles to get recognized, repaid or lauded by your admiring friends.  True humility – true humanity -- is found in the realization that life is not about you.  We were all created in the image of God, not to be gods, but to care for one another, to care for the creation, and to tend whatever little piece of the world God has placed in our hands.  In this parable and the next Jesus teaches us to care for the “poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.”  In other places it is the stranger, the prisoner, the hungry and the naked. Jesus, through his own example, shows us that we are to welcome the prostitute, the tax collector, sinners, outcasts and even our enemies.  There are people all around us every day who need our care.  And there are people all around us every day who God will use to care for us…  if we let them.  And together, we are lifted up from the ashes to praise the One who was the most human of us all.  The One who rose from the dead to give us all life to share --whether we find ourselves on stage or working behind the scenes.  

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading.  Pray that God give you the vision the see those around you in need of God’s love, and the courage to care for them.

For the Bent and Broken

Luke 13:10-17

“Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water?”  --Luke 13:15

Why go to worship?  

Some, I suppose, go to be entertained.  Good music. A good speech that makes us feel good. Others, I suppose, go because of the people.  Friends.  Acquaintances. Maybe people we’ve known for years.  People who, basically, believe and think like we do, or at least that’s what we tell ourselves.  Some go out of a sense of duty.  (Though I think this reason is fading away fast.)  We gather around Word and Sacrament because we know that’s what God wants us to do.  It’s what God expects of God’s children.  

Why go to worship?

Have you ever gone to worship because you were bent?  Broken? Tied-up and yearning for a freedom that you haven’t been able to find anywhere else?  Release from whatever evils bind you?  Have you ever come to the church looking for a word of compassion, of healing, of hope from Jesus?  

That’s why the woman in this week’s Gospel lesson came to the synagogue on that Sabbath day so long ago. And, in Jesus, she finds what she was so desperately longing for.  She receives the healing she had been seeking for eighteen long years in spite of the leader of the synagogue who would have denied it to her.

The leader of the synagogue was so bound up in the rules and religious traditions (which, after all, had come from God) which he felt duty-bound to uphold that he almost got in the way of the very thing which God intended for this child of Abraham, this beloved child of God.  

But, before we judge him, we should probably look in the mirror.  The people of God have a long history of getting in the way of ourselves! Like the leader of the synagogue, we can get so wrapped up in “the way we’ve always done it” that we completely miss the new thing God is doing in our midst.  We can get so focused on doing it “right” that we resist and can even be found working against the miracles God is performing right before our very eyes. We forget what Jesus said during another of his many sabbath conflicts, “the sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27).  And, in the process, more than one bent woman… or man… has walked away from the church still stooped over.  

For Jesus, compassion always supersedes the rules.  For Jesus, an opportunity for healing always outweighs upholding tradition.  For Jesus, mercy always transcends judgement.  (Good thing, or we’d all be lost.)  Holding to these values of grace and love got him nailed to a cross.  The power of these life-giving values were unambiguously demonstrated when he rose from the dead three days later.  

Why worship?

Because we who have been freed cannot keep ourselves from joining our voices with the woman in our text who praised God for her healing.  We come together as bent and broken people to pray for all those who haven’t experienced the healing power of Christ that we have come to know.

People are still coming bent, broken and tied up, yearning to be released from the evils that bind them. Will we who follow in the Way of Jesus respond to them with rules and traditions…  or with the compassion of the one who freed us from our bondage to sin, death and the devil?

Peace,

Bishop Mike  

  

Pray for all those who live bent over by the evils and oppression that binds so many in our world. Pray that we respond to them with Christ-like compassion.  Thanks for reading.

Uncomfortable Truths

Luke 12:49-56

“I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed.” 

Luke 12:50

More than ten years ago now, I received some sobering news from my family physician.  I had just finished my first physical in a number of years.  I was overweight.  My blood sugar was high.  My blood pressure well above normal.  My triglycerides off the charts.  The doctor sat me down and said, “If you don’t do something about your health right now, you are not going to live to see your grandchildren.”

He spoke an uncomfortable truth and it was not good news.  

Throughout Luke, chapter 12, Jesus is preparing his disciples for the coming judgement.  He is preparing them for the coming difficult days in Jerusalem that will lead to a cross and for the challenges of the mission they will be given following Pentecost.  He speaks an uncomfortable truth, and it doesn’t sound at all like good news.  For Jesus’ disciples, these words are prophetic.  For Luke’s community, they are descriptive.  Living in the Way of Jesus has never been easy.  Jesus’ inclusive vision of the Kingdom, and his welcome of those the world would reject – lepers, sinners, tax collectors, demon possessed, Gentiles, prostitutes, outcasts, the “unclean” and others – caused division and conflict.   Making a commitment to Jesus’ Way of love, grace, forgiveness, mercy and compassion will inevitably get us cross-ways with the ways of the world.  That does not sound like good news.

But, maybe we need to look again.

My doctor’s uncomfortable truth was a wake-up call for me.  Over the next six months, I started to lose weight, changed my diet, started a meager exercise program and began to get my health under control.  The good news is that, today, at 58, I’m probably healthier than I was at 40.  

The division caused by Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom got him nailed to a cross.  He was rejected for his supposed blasphemy.  Executed as a criminal.  Forsaken by everyone.  But, in order to prove that there truly is nothing that can separate us from the love of God, not even death itself, he rose again on the third day, crushing the world’s system of division, oppression and death under the rock of the broken tomb. And that is good news!

Today, we still live in a divided world.  We still live in a world where people are rejected and cast aside.  We still live in a world where it is difficult to interpret the times, or know how things will turn out.  But we do not face the terrors of our world with no hope.  We do so empowered by the vision of an empty tomb and the peace, the shalom, the wholeness, and the LIFE it represents.  

And so, we become good news in a divided world.  

When we live in the Way of the Risen Christ, we become the presence of God’s love, grace, forgiveness, mercy and compassion for the stranger, the poor, the powerless and the suffering. For the children and the vulnerable and all those the world would turn away.  

That can be uncomfortable. But at the same time it is also blessed work.  For when we care for the “least of these,” we know that we are, in fact, caring for Christ. 

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thank-you for reading. Please pray for the immigrant, the refugee, the stranger, the homeless, the rejected and all those who desperately seek for a place to call home.