Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Forgive us our debts - Sermon at the Church of Christ the King, Stone Ridge NY, 9/22/2013


I’m glad to be here with you.  Thank you for welcoming me.  But I suspect a plot.  Trying to make sense of this parable may explain why Alison took vacation this week.  The parable of the unjust steward, or the dishonest manager, has long been one of the scandalous stories told by Jesus.  Generations of people have scratched their heads to understand how the master could commend the manager for giving away what belonged to the master.  If Jesus is trying to teach us about faithful stewardship, he has a weird way of going about it.
In fact, though, this parable goes to the heart of Jesus’ teaching about God and about how we should live our lives.
Jesus has been talking to the Pharisees about God’s preference for the lost, those called “sinners” by the respectable crowd.  He tells them about the lost coin, and the lost sheep.  He tells them the story of the prodigal son, and of the son who cannot forgive his brother.  And then he tells this parable.
It’s no accident.  This is a story about forgiveness.
The manager is a sinner.  No doubt about it.  And he’s been caught.  Now he is called before the master.  And he knows he has no defense.  He cannot justify what he’s done.  All he can do is cushion the blow when it comes.
How can he do that?  He knows other people who are indebted to the master.  He calls them in and forgives them their debts.  Not all of them, maybe - that’s not up to him alone - but he lessens their burden.  And lo and behold, he is forgiven as he forgives others.
But why would the master approve this behavior?  Isn’t the manager taking what isn’t his?  In our world, of course, that’s how property works.  I may make friends by sharing stolen goods, but I wouldn’t expect the rightful owner to approve.
But the owner - that is, God - sees that the manager is learning an important lesson.  He’s learning that relationships matter more than money.  By forgiving others, he is building relationships that will sustain him when the money runs out.
It’s telling here that Luke uses the same word to describe the debts in this story as he does in the Lord’s Prayer.  That’s why some churches say “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”  Relationships sustain us, and relationships require forgiveness.
In our society, this is a lesson we have forgotten.  Over the past century we have become more and more reliant on our own resources, and less and less connected to one another.  Extended family networks have become strained as generations live far apart from one another, and neighbors are often just people whose cars we see in the street.  We do not expect help, and we do not expect to help.  We expect to pay our way.
But the truth is that none of us can earn our way into the places that matter.  We are all indebted to the Source of Being.  We all fall short at times.  We fail one another, even as we try to serve.  We all need a little help with our bill.  And the way we get it is by cutting the bills of others.
Elsewhere, Jesus tells the disciples that whatever they bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever they loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.  This is not the prerogative only of the clergy, though we have an important role to play in speaking for the church.  Any of us, any member of the church, has this power.  And all of us, as Jesus tells Peter just afterward, have the obligation to forgive.  Over and over.
  Let me read you another version of this parable, as told by Eugene Peterson.  After describing the manager’s action, Jesus says:

“Now here’s a surprise.  The master praised the crooked manager.  And why?  Because he knew how to look after himself.  Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens.  They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits.  I want you to be smart in this same way - but for what is right - using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.”

Really living means going beyond good behavior.  And it means going beyond socially sanctioned ways of living without regard for one another.  It means letting go of our love of money and control.   Really living means recognizing our need for one another, and admitting the ways we let one another down.  It means forgiving debts of all kinds.
Now, we don't usually do this until we're in a corner.  Forgiving always feels like loss at first.  But as we do it, we find that we gain so much - reconnecting, ease in our hearts, trust.  Holding on to a grudge or a debt in fact keeps us impoverished.  We may have the IOU, we may be entitled to satisfaction, but we aren't going to get it until we let go.  We can serve money, and fear, and our rights.  Or we can serve God, who longs for reconciliation and relationship.
The problem with the "children of light," the good students, the achievers, the righteous ones, is that the richest parts of our lives are lived outside the box.  Like the older brother of the prodigal, the children of light can be blinded by their own rules and sense of justice.  I don't mean that justice is unimportant.  I mean the sense of justice, especially of my own rightness, will not carry me into the presence of God.
The dishonest manager has learned that wealth cannot protect him. Mercy, forgiveness, creativity, connection - these are the lifeblood of our relations with God and with one another.
In God's world, everything is upside down.  We gain by losing.  We receive by giving away. Hoarding, what looks prudent from the standpoint of the society, turns out to be foolishness in God's world.
We cannot pay our debts.  But we can ease them by forgiving one another, making others' debts lighter.  Let's start today.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Lost and Found: Sermon at the Monastery, 9/15/2013


Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now I’m found,
was blind, but now I see.

A while ago I read a book about being wrong.  The starting point was the author’s recognition that we can never take in being wrong.  We just can’t.  We can see how we used to be wrong, even one second ago; but we cannot, in this second, coherently say or think, “I am wrong.”  Every statement is an affirmation.  “I am wrong” means “I know this much; I’m wrong.”  So even saying “I am wrong” amounts to saying “I’m right about my wrongness.  I know my wrongness.”  I can’t really know that I’m wrong until after I’ve left that wrong place for another place I take to be true.

If this is true, it makes the work of being lost and found much more confusing than the hymn suggests.

You might think some lostness is obvious.  People who are killing themselves with alcohol or drugs surely know they’re lost?  Not necessarily.  Part of addiction is denial, which is another name for lostness.  Until that moment when our vision changes, we cannot see ourselves as seriously lost.  

It’s especially hard to see our lostness when our way is rewarded by the world around us.  When we’re making lots of money, when we go to the best schools and can send our children there in turn, when we succeed in our goals, when our houses are big and well furnished - how could we be lost? 

Ah, but we who come to the monastery know better.  We come because we know, somehow, that those values are not the measure of the world.  We can see the lostness behind the achievement and the material wealth.  
Likewise, those who enter ordained life are able to see the limits of those choices, to see the lost souls in our congregations.  

Aren’t we lucky to be so smart?

We go to church regularly, and serve on its committees, and share in outreach - surely we aren’t lost?  And if we’re ordained, and shepherding souls, and praying regularly - aren’t we lucky to be found?  And we monastics, who have left everything to follow Christ - aren't we blessed?

There are so many ways to be lost.

I remember two conversations that send me back to reality, to God.
I remember Brother Scott saying, “If the Church is a hospital for sinners, then the monasteries are the ICU.”
I remember my former spiritual director saying that God called him to the priesthood because standing in the front of the class was the only way to be sure he’d get the message.

Those two conversations remind me that I am not here because I’m right.  I’m here because I’m not all there.

When I felt the call to the priesthood, part of my despair was my awareness that I must not be as healed and whole as I liked to think. 

I was already a nun, and I knew a lot of priests.  They were gifted and caring, and mostly lost.  I knew that my sisters, likewise, were not wiser or holier than those who came to us for help.  We were mostly there because we were lost.

So being here today, whether for life or for the weekend, does not make us less lost.
We may be righteous, we may be living good lives and loving God, and still be lost.
That’s who Jesus is talking to, after all.  He’s talking to the religious leaders, those doing their best to follow God’s way.  Their lostness shows up in their certainty about themselves, and their judgment of others.

We should notice here that Jesus is not talking about whether we’re sinful.  Sinning is one way to be lost.  But the problem for some of us is that  we are lost in our righteousness.  We can’t see the limits of our practices and our understandings.   

The righteous form of lostness is not, I think, intrinsically worse than other forms of lostness.  It is, however, more dangerous.  
The first danger is that others will be harmed by my judgments, that I might cut them off from human community.  
The other danger is to myself.  I cut myself off, from others and from God, and put an idol in God’s place.  I am so deluded that I offer myself as a guide to others, and lead them astray in turn.

It’s partly because we can’t know our lostness that we need community.  Sometimes I am so certain I’m right I just can’t find my way out.  Someone needs to come and get me.  I give thanks every day for Elizabeth, my sister in Christ.  I say something that seems obvious or given to me, and she’ll say, “Really?  That’s not how it seems to me.”  And because I trust and respect her, I find myself looking for where I might have left the path.  I look around and see if I can see God from where I am.  If I can’t, or if the God I’ve got in my sights doesn’t look quite right, I need to turn back and retrace my steps.  I need to start over.  

Fortunately, God does not have to wait for us to figure out that we’re lost.  The woman searches for the coin and rejoices, even though the coin is not thinking anything.  The shepherd rejoices to find the sheep, even if the sheep is thinking, “Put me down!”  God is so hungry for us that she reaches past our blindness and touches us.  Those moments when we realize our lostness do not precede the grace of God; they are gifts of God.  God searches for us and rejoices when we turn back.

And yet, even here, God does not insist.  

We are not sheep, or coins, to be grabbed.  We are created with free will, and God honors that.  God will call, and whisper, and even stick out a foot to trip us up, but God will not insist on our turning back.  So how much more does God rejoice when we, of our free will, return the love that is offered us?

Being lost and found is not a one-time event.  It is a constant dynamic in our relationship with God.  And just when we’re certain we’ve got it, we can be pretty sure we’re lost again.  It’s time to turn back.

So I want to propose another verse for Amazing Grace:

Amazing grace, come search me out,
come save your wandering sheep!
I’m lost, I’m found, I’m lost again,
please don’t give up on me.