Are You a Pharisee or a Tax Collector?

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

How many of you here have ever used Facebook?

I’m glad to see I’m not alone.  For those of you who do not use Facebook, don’t worry.  What I’m going to talk about was around long before it ever hit the internet.  In fact they were around long before the internet.

How many of you have ever taken one of those quizzes with titles like “Which character on the Simpsons are you?”  (I’m Flanders).  One of the latest quizzes going around is “Why is the inquisition after me?”  According to that quiz, I practice witchcraft.

Well, today we are going to take a quiz called “Which character am I in today’s parable?”  I am going to make a few statements.  All you need to do is keep track of whether more of them are true for you or more of them are false.  Here we go.

There is only one right way to do things.

If I study hard enough, I can learn the right way.

Some things cannot be forgiven.

Prayer needs to be done in a dignified manner.

Following the rules will make me closer to God.

Being a sinner will make God love me less.

I’m a better Christian than my neighbour who isn’t here.

If you answered true to more often than false, you are a Pharisee.  If you answered false more often, you are a tax collector.  I have to admit right now that I am a sinner because I envy those of you who can easily answer false to most or all of those statements.

I want most of those to be true.  It would make following in Christ’s footsteps much easier.

I would love it if all of my study could have taught me the “right way.”  I would love to have a list to follow that would guarantee my place in heaven and God’s favour on Earth.

Unfortunately that’s not the way it works.  The only real difference between the Pharisee and the tax collector is that the Pharisee cannot see that he is just as broken as the tax collector.

I am broken.  I am a sinner.  Sometimes I am a Pharisee.  I hide behind my knowledge.  I do all the right things and I believe that makes me better that those who don’t.  When I do that, I am wrong.  I am not better.  I am just as broken.  That is part of what it means to be human.

We – I need to learn from the tax collector.  “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

I’m going to make a few more statements.  Once again, keep track of your true / false balance.

It is possible to do things right.

If I trust in God, I can find the right way for me.

Some things are easier for me to forgive than others.

The way I pray feels right for me.

Following a set of guidelines makes it easier for me to feel close to God.

I am a sinner and God loves me anyway.

I am committed to trying to follow Christ.

Congratulations.  If you answered true to at least one of these statements, you are on your way to being a tax collector.

Being a Pharisee is easy.  It is comfortable.  It is not dangerous.  No one can hurt me when I know I’m right.

Being a tax collector is risky.  As a tax collector I have to put myself out there.  I have to invite others to attack me.  I have to expect that I will do it wrong much of the time.

I have to hope that at least occasionally I am doing it right.

Thanks be to God!

Evangelism is ...

I speak to you in the name of the God who made us, the God who nourishes us, the God who never abandons us.  Amen.

Just who are God’s people anyway?

The easy answer is us.

It’s true too.

We are God’s people.  We gather here in his name to honour him and to be fed through his holy mysteries.  We give of our resources of time and money to see that God’s work is done here in this community and throughout the world.  At the end of the service I will send you out to continue to live life as God calls you to live it.  Just before we share communion I even say: “The gifts of God for the People of God.”

We are God’s people.

But are we alone?  Are we God’s only people?

No.  It’s easy to see that there are more of God’s people around.  Some of you have even married them.  There are the United folk, the Presbyterians, the Roman Catholics, the Lutherans, the Alliance, just to name a few denominations.  They, and all who follow Christ, are God’s people too.

We Christians are God’s people.

But are we alone?  Are only Christians God’s people?

What makes someone one of God’s people?

Do they have to be free of sin?  Do they have to avoid working for Revenue Canada?  Not according to today’s Gospel.  Jesus kept company with sinners and tax collectors.  Jesus sought out those very people whom the “godly” avoided.

Do they have to be the right gender?  Or the right social class?  Jesus is quite clear about this too.  If anything, it is easier to hear God’s call if you are in some way disadvantaged.  The more elite you are in your society, the more distractions you have to pull you away from God.

Nothing we are or do makes us one of God’s people.  It is by the grace of God that we are named as God’s own.  Not only that, but we cannot break God’s love for us.  In our reading from first Timothy, we hear Paul’s voice telling us about God’s love.  “Even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence” … “I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief.”  Paul was not short of knowledge about Jesus.  He knew a great deal about him and believed very little of it.  Paul’s ignorance was of the vast scope of God’s love.  He believed that he was one of God’s people.  He found out just how much God loved him.

This love is what makes a person one of God’s people.  Jesus makes it quite clear that everyone, whether they believe or not, is beloved of God.  There is not a single person in creation who is not one of God’s people.

We are all here because we have been called as Paul was called.  We have been shown God’s love in many different ways.  We are called to share that experience.  This is called “evangelism.”

When I was growing up, I spent considerable time with some of my cousins from Southern California.  Their parents attended Pentecostal churches.  They were capital “E” Evangelists and they called me their favourite heathen.  Their parents watched carefully to make sure that they didn’t start to believe the same things as I did and that they tried to “enlighten” me.  This is not evangelism.

Evangelism is sharing the good news of God’s love in the way we act, both inside and outside of these walls.  Evangelism is helping others to realize that God loves them too, that they are never alone.  Evangelism is about opening ourselves up and letting others see what God has done for us.

At the end of September, we will be celebrating together at St. Paul’s with a Dr. Seuss liturgy.  Evangelism is what this celebration is all about.  This service is a way of reaching out and showing that God’s love is for all and that our response can be expressed in different ways.

We are not having this celebration in order to bring in greater numbers, or to increase the offering in the plate.  It is not even about showing our children that we can be silly and have fun at church.

The Dr. Seuss celebration is about spreading God’s word in different ways.  It is about reaching out to say that no matter what your age or your background, God is calling you.  God loves you!

This is evangelism … spreading the good news, the Gospel, to all who have ears to hear it.  We are merely the planters of the seeds.  It is God who tends the garden.

If we can keep God’s love in our hearts and truly believe that God loves everyone, we will be a place where they want to come when they are ready.

Thanks be to God.

I Need More Oil In My Lamp -- Do You?

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit.”

God is calling us to be ready to serve at any time.  God is calling us to be watching at all times for the need.  God is calling us at all times to be aware of his presence.

I don’t know about you, but I find that everything I do takes some of my energy.  By the time I have done everything that I need to do I have very little energy left.

Always watching, always being ready to act, this could take up all of my energy all by itself.  How am I, how are we, supposed to find the energy to do this and to do everything else we have to do?  It’s hard enough to find the energy to plan some time for God each day, but God is asking us to devote all of our time to him, or at least to be ready to jump in when needed and be aware enough to notice the need.

I just don’t have the energy to do that.

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

God wants us to do this.  God wants us to notice when he is acting in our lives.  God must have given us some way to do this.  But how?

I think we need help.  I think we have two major sources of help.  I’ve talked about both of them before.  Does anyone remember what the word “church” really means?  It comes from the Greek word “kuriakos” which mean “of the Lord.”  Now this might seem like a good basis for our gathering here today, but it has almost nothing to do with this (hold up the Bible).  “Kuriakos” only appears in here twice; once talking about the Lord’s Supper and once about the Lord’s Day.

That’s where the word “church” comes from.  But it is not the only word we translate as “church.”  There is another Greek word, “ekklesia,” which has been translated as “church” since the time of the King James version of the Bible.  The earlier translation, by Tyndale, did not use “church,” it used “congregation.”  “Ekklesia” appears in here more than 115 times.  In ancient Greece, the ekklesia was the civil body of elected or “called out” individuals who met to make decisions on behalf of everyone else, otherwise known as a town or city council.

The definition I was given at VST was “a group of concerned citizens taking council for the greater good.”

Now, what does all of this have to do with finding the energy to keep that flame of awareness going at all times?  How does the meaning of “church” give us strength to remain vigilant at all times and to respond to God when we do become aware of God’s presence and mission around us?

“A group of concerned citizens .”  We are not alone.  What we cannot do as individuals, we can do as a community where we depend on each other.  Because we have each other, we don’t have to respond personally to every need we see.  If it is something that we know someone else would be good at, we can bring it to their attention.  If it is beyond any one of us, we can bring it to this ekklesia, this gathering of concerned citizens.  Together, we can remain vigilant.  Together we can respond to God’s call at all times.  Depend not only on yourselves, but also on each other.  We are a community.

As I said earlier, we also have another source of help.  --- God!

When we need help from God, what do we do?

Yes – we pray!

I think I know just the right prayer for to ask God to help us stay vigilant.  It is a song called “Give me oil in my lamp.”  I’m going to sing it a few times.  There are many different versions of this song, so even if you know it, please listen the first time through and then join in with me when I repeat it.

Teach:

Give me oil in my lamp,

Keep me burnin’

Give me oil in my lamp I pray – Halelujah

Give me oil in my lamp,

Keep me burnin’, burnin’, burnin’,

Keep me burnin’ ‘til the end of day.

Sing Hosanna,

Sing Hosanna,

Sing Hosanna to the King of kings,

Sing Hosanna,

Sing Hosanna,

Sing Hosanna to the King

Amen.

Making Time For God

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

Our world is a very busy place.  When I moved my family to Cape Breton from Vancouver I was hoping we would get away from that.  And to some extent we did.  At least here it was not frantic.  But it was still busy.  There was never enough time to get everything done.  I still heard the words “I don’t have time” far too often.

This business is a fact of life.  It is neither a good thing nor a bad thing.  It just is.

Many of the things that keep us busy are very important and truly need to be done.  We have to work.  We have to pay bills.  We have to see that our children get where they need to be.  And somewhere in there we definitely need to have some social interaction.

Life is just busy.

In our Gospel today we have the story of the Good Samaritan.  In this story, we have three people all passing a badly injured man.  All three of these people make decisions as they pass.  They look at what rules they have to live by and weigh their priorities.

For the priest and the Levite, the need for ritual purity outweighs the need to help the poor, the needy, and the sick.  For both of them, if they were to touch or even come to close to the man and he turned out to be dead, they would have to go through a long process to once again be ritually clean and to return to their jobs in the temple.

For the Samaritan, the priorities are different.  For the Samaritan, there is a long history of his people and the Jews being enemies.  He does not have the same religious reason to help the sick and needy.  Since he was traveling deep within Judah and had the financial means to help, he was probably a merchant.  He would probably know at least something about the Jewish rules of cleanliness.  For him, if the man turned out to be dead, it could mean that his profits for his current trip could be drastically reduced or he might even lose money.

All three passers-by had nothing to gain and much to lose by helping the man.  All three had to look at their priorities and make a decision.

All of the priorities that I have listed are personal.  They are all about how helping the man will affect their day to day lives.  What these priorities leave out is their relationship with God.

That’s what our Gospel today is really about: our relationship with God.

We don’t have the same problems facing us that the three men in our story did.  None of us is going to have our livelihood damaged by helping someone on the side of the road.  None of us will be kept from going to work because we came near someone who was “unclean.”

I think our problems today are even greater.  In our Gospel today, none of the passers-by had any difficulty seeing the need.  They all saw and they all made their decisions about how to respond.  Our problem goes much deeper.

We are too busy.

We are not just too busy to help.  We are too busy to see the need.

We have so much going on in our lives that we walk right past the need without ever noticing it.  We never even get to the point of looking at our priorities and making a decision.

We are just too busy.

I am going to put out a challenge today, both to myself and to all of you.

For the rest of the month, I challenge us all to make time for God.  I challenge us to do something every day which is not for ourselves.  It doesn't matter if it takes ten minutes or two hours, just that it happens every day.

There are so many things that we could do that it won’t be hard to find something.  It might mean spending some extra time praying for someone or something in need.  It might mean walking down the street and picking up any garbage that you see.  It might mean dropping in on a neighbour we don’t know well and finding out how they are doing.  It might even mean taking a walk and looking for things that remind us of the glory of God.

At the end of the month I’m hoping that this will have become a habit which we can’t break.  After all, we are all here today not because we've dedicated our Sundays to God but because we've dedicated our entire lives to God.  Let’s not keep God waiting any longer.

The Flying Pigs of Gerasa

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

And now for something completely different.

Possession.  Casting out of demons.  Flying pigs drowning themselves in the Sea of Galilee.  Oh, my!!!

For those of you who haven’t covered this passage in a Bible study, I’ll give you a bit of background for that last one.  – The city of Gerasa was about 50 kilometers southeast of the Lake, which we now call the Sea of Galilee.  Pigs, which have no sweat glands, would die long before they reached the sea by running.  They must have flown down the hill.

So we have possession, casting out of demons and flying pigs all in one short story.  This story seems to be completely out of our world view, and for the most part it probably is.

In Jesus’ time, most mental illnesses and some physical illnesses were thought to be caused by demons or unclean spirits.  These demons were eternal somethings (the word literally means minor divinities) looking for somewhere to settle down.  When they got into somewhere they weren’t supposed to be, for instance a human being, they caused all kinds of problems.  Casting them out would instantly fix these problems, but there were very few people who could do this.  Jesus was one of them.  This particular man was possessed by many spirits, enough so that they called themselves legion (which would make 6,000 of them).  Jesus was probably the only one with enough power to cast out that many.

Today we don’t blame sickness on demons, at least not usually.  We do still have the rite of exorcism available to us in the Anglican tradition.  And from historical accounts, some of which are quite recent, exorcism sometimes works.  Though I’m not sure when it was last used in this diocese.  There is no cannon or policy on its use.

But as I said, we don’t often blame sickness on demons anymore.  So how do we make sense of this reading in our current world view?

Today’s version of this story would be about faith healing.  We have our own legion of demons to choose from: cancers of all varieties, depression, cerebral palsy, dementia, addiction.  The list goes on and on: diseases and conditions which are difficult or impossible to cure or even to manage with medicine.

We hear story after story about people traveling around the world for treatments which are not medically proven.  Some of these people get better.  Many don’t.  This is a type of faith healing.  This healing is sometimes medicine which just hasn’t been proven yet, but more often than not it is healing that happens because people believe so strongly that it the treatment will help.  They have faith in the medicine.  The power this kind of belief has over our bodies can be awesome and unexplainable.  This is not the kind of faith healing that this story is about.

Placing that kind of absolute belief in God is transformative.  It can sometimes accomplish the same type of physical healing, but that is only a side benefit.  The healing that comes from faith in God transforms our lives in other ways.

If we look at the man healed in today’s story we see a man who has been cast out of society in just about every way possible.  Jesus comes and the man kneels at his feet, acknowledging his power.  Jesus transforms this man.  Healing him of his afflictions does not make him just another ordinary citizen of Gerasa.  No – he returns to a city which is terrified of him because of the extreme change.  He goes back to a city where there is no real Jewish presence, where there are no followers of Jesus.  He goes back to that city to proclaim a message which will leave him separated from the rest of society in a different way than before: just as isolated but with a real purpose to his life.

Modern examples of faith healing are everywhere.  The most common examples are probably twelve step programs for addiction.  A key step in these programs is acknowledging that we can’t do it ourselves.  We need help from God.  People who are successful in these programs are not cured of their addictions, but their lives are transformed in a way that can only come from God.

Faith healing is like this.  Our body may or may not be healed – our souls are.  By putting that kind of faith in God we are healed.  Our demons are cast out.  Even the ones we never realized were there.  We all have them.  We all have the power to give them to God.

Thanks be to God.

Justified By Love Not By Law

May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

Whatever is Paul talking about?  That is one of his more convoluted arguments.  I think it needs a bit of unpacking to have any idea of what he means.

Paul uses a few very key words in our reading today: justified, the law, faith, Christ, and grace.

That first word, justified, means to be made right or proved to be right with God; in other words, to be shown or made to be righteous.  Being justified is the core of what Paul is talking about.

How do we become justified with God?  … How do we become righteous?

The Bible is full of rules.  Can anyone think of a set of rules in the Bible?  How about the Ten Commandments.  Or how about the summary of the law.  The Galatians ask Paul if we are made right with God by following all these rules.  What do you think he answered?  … “No one will be justified by the works of the law.”  That’s a pretty emphatic answer.  Has anyone here read “The Year of Living Biblically?”  A. J. Jacobs did a very good job of showing just how impossible it is to follow all of the laws all of the time.  I thank God that this is not the way to be right with God.

Paul even takes it one step further that Jacobs did.  Paul reminds us that Christ himself broke the law: “is Christ then a servant of sin?”  On several occasions, the Bible makes a point of telling us that Jesus is breaking the rules set down in God’s law.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all talk about Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners.  This is important because it breaks the ritual purity laws.  All of the Gospels talk about Jesus breaking the Sabbath.  He heals and does other work on the Sabbath and makes the point that the Sabbath (and other laws) are made for us, not the other way around.  That is extremely important.  The law is given to us.  We are not given to the law.

Back to the question: how do we become justified with God?

“And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law.”

This is where grace comes in.  Being righteous is about knowing that God loves us and responding to that.  It is about faith.  All it takes for our relationship with God to be right is for us to truly believe that we have a relationship with God and that God loves us.  God became human and walked among us to show us what this relationship looks like and to prove that love to us.

So if the law does not make us right with God, why do we have it?  Does it matter at all?

Absolutely!  The law is very important.  All of those rules show us how people throughout history have felt God’s call.  When we look at them either individually or as a whole, they show us what is important to God.  There are rules about taking care of ourselves.  There are rules about taking care of the poor and the sick.  There are rules about respecting each other.  There are rules about respecting and honouring God.  There are rules that show us where society was going wrong.

All of these rules are important.  All of them can teach us something about God.  Many of them require us to understand the people who wrote them for them to mean anything to us today, but they are all important.

Jesus told us that of all the laws, if we follow two specific ones, we have understood the heart of the law.  I believe those two laws are impossible to break if you are truly living by faith.  We call them the summary of the law.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

God calls us to love.  First we are to love God.  Next we are to love ourselves and everyone else equally.

If we follow the other rules but break these we are being ruled by the law.  If we follow these two rules we are living by faith.  If we break any other rule in order to keep the laws of love, we have understood God’s gift of the law to us.  We are justified.  By the grace of God, we are right with God.

Thanks be to God.

A Simple Story From The Old Testament

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

It’s wonderful to have such a nice, simple story from the Old Testament to preach on.  I’m tired of all of these deep, confusing stories.  What a wonderful change.

So here we have a story about Elijah bumping into a widow who was gathering sticks for a cooking fire.  This story takes place in the middle of a drought so the widow, who would already be poor, does not have enough money to feed herself and her son.  Elijah reaches out to her and, by the power of God, provides for her and for her son throughout the rest of the drought.

A nice simple story about our duty help the poor, and in the Old Testament, especially widows and orphans.  Well, that’s it.  I’m done with this one.  We have a duty to provide what we can to help the poor.

But wait a minute.  Why were they having a drought anyway?  And what does that have to do with our story?

King Ahab and Queen Jezebel (and many of the Israelites) were worshiping Baal, the Canaanite god of fertility and storms instead of the God of Israel.  As a punishment for this Elijah decreed a drought.  When Elijah talks to the widow, she says “As the Lord your God lives.”  She follows the God of Israel, not Baal.  Because of this, God provides for her in the drought.

So obviously this is a story about the dangers of idolatry.  If we turn from God and follow false idols, all that we have of true value will wither and die.  If we follow God’s call, the least we have will become a great treasure.

Or it’s a story about our duty to the poor.

But wait a minute.  If this were just a story about idolatry, God would have filled her jug of oil and jar of meal as soon as Elijah and God knew that she followed God.  But they weren’t.  Elijah sent her to make food for him first.  If she made the food for Elijah, then her jug and jar would not run out.  She had to prove her faith.  She had to believe that if she gave her last crumbs to Elijah, she would still have enough for herself and for her son.

So obviously this is a story about the power of faith.

Or it’s a story about the dangers of idolatry.

Or it’s a story about our duty to the poor.

So much for a simple story from the Old Testament.  I guess nothing in this book is truly simple, is it?

Before I leave our simple story about Elijah and a widow, I want to share one more layer from it.  And I think this one might be the most important (though all of them are important).

I think this story is about the grace of God that we see when we are good stewards of the gifts we have been given.  What does it mean to be a good steward?  Well, the simplest meaning is to take care of the gifts that we have been given.  But as this story has shown us, simple just doesn’t cut it.  There is much more.

Does anyone remember the parable of the talents?

That simple meaning of stewardship would be like the servant that buried what he was given to make sure that he didn’t end up with less.  This type of stewardship is not favoured by God.  It doesn’t do anything to make the world a better place.  It doesn’t further God’s kingdom.

The next level of stewardship would be like a conservative investment.  We take what we have and invest it in safe, stable, traditional ways.  We get some return and still have almost no risk.  This is marginally better, but it still isn’t the type of steward God is calling each of us to be.

No, God is calling us to be sacrificial stewards like the widow in our story.  Because of her faith that God will provide, she is able to give more of her gifts than she can really afford to give.  Just as she gave her last crumbs, we are called to use all that we have and all that we are to make the world a better place.

She also gives us another important message about stewardship.  Stewardship is not about money!

That’s right.  Stewardship is not about money.  It is about gifts.  Everything we have is a gift from God.  There are many gifts.  We are given gifts of talent, gifts of time, gifts of inheritance, and yes, gifts of money, and many other gifts.  A good steward in God’s eyes gives of their gifts as they can afford and even more.

And the grace of good stewardship, the grace of sacrificial stewardship, can be seen time after time both in this book and in our lives and the lives of everyone around us.  When we are generous with the gifts we have been given, when we give as much or more than we can afford to give, we are blessed with even more gifts from God.

This is the true message of stewardship and of this Old Testament reading.  The gifts that God has given us are meant to be used.  When they are used, they bear fruit.  When they are horded, they wither away and die.

Or is it about the power of faith?

Or is it about the dangers of idolatry?

Or is it about our duty to the poor?