Love Rules!

Scripture:        Ezekiel 34: 1-24,  Psalm 100

                        Ephesians 1:15-23,    Matthew 25:31-46

Today is known as Christ the King Sunday, or in inclusive language, Reign of Christ Sunday.  On this Sunday, we remember the rule of Christ over the cosmos, and over our lives.  Today is also the last Sunday in the church calendar.  Next Sunday, December 3, is the first Sunday in Advent, and we begin a new liturgical year.  It’s a reminder that Kairos time – God’s time, the appointed time for God’s grace – doesn’t always coincide with chronos time – the time of our clocks and calendars.  So while God’s grace may not always arrive according to our schedule, when it does arrive, it’s always the right time.

Each year, on Reign of Christ Sunday, the gospel reading depicts Jesus as a king who doesn’t act like a king (at least not as we’d expect), a king who uses his power in ways very different from those of earthly rulers.   This year’s reading portrays Jesus as a king who is to be found among the poor and dispossessed, and who cares passionately about how we treat the poor.  Next year’s reading (John 18:33-37) depicts Christ before Pilate, explaining that his power does not come from this world.  The year after that, we will read Luke 23:33-43, which contains Jesus’ word to the penitent thief, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”  Each of these three readings show Jesus using his power to comfort the poor or to confront the powerful.  While we often see power used to crush the poor and the weak, on Christ the King Sunday, we see Jesus using his power to lift them up.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been listening in as Jesus has told a series of very challenging parables about the kingdom of heaven and how it will finally arrive in the fullness of its glory.  Two weeks ago, in the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, we are encouraged to be prepared, to grow and mature in such a way that our faith will go the distance and overcome the unexpected.  Last week, Minister Chanel was here to explain the parable of the talents, that just doing nothing is not enough, that we need to be resourceful and willing to take risks in serving Jesus.  And today’s parable tells us what we should be doing while we’re awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom, and what we should be doing with the talents entrusted to us.

We’re told that when Jesus comes in his glory, he will sit on his throne of glory, with all the angels around him.  All the nations will be there – traditionally it was thought that each nation had an angel, and so all the angels and all the nations are there – but then Jesus will separate the people, like a shepherd would separate sheep from goats.  The sheep are blessed, and told that when Jesus was hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, or in prison, they helped him.  The goats are cursed, and told that they likewise saw Jesus hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, or in prison, and they did not help him. 

We might see some connections between this reading and last week’s parable of the talents.  Remember that in the parable of the talents, the servant who received one talent – which would have been a tremendous sum of money - did not steal it and abscond to some vacation paradise to enjoy his ill-gotten gains.  He didn’t waste it on wine, women, and song.  He didn’t go to Atlantic City and gamble it away on slots or at the blackjack table.  He did none of these things.  He kept it completely safe for his master, so that nobody could steal it.  He gave back every last penny that he had received.  But beyond that, the servant….did nothing.  He didn’t waste the money, but he didn’t use it to any good purpose either.  And he was harshly condemned.  In this week’s reading, we’re not told that the goats attacked those who were in need, or that they sold those in need into slavery, or that they so much as harmed a hair on their heads.  The goats saw their sisters and brothers in need and….did nothing.   They did no harm, but they also offered no help.  Like the priest and the Levite in the parable of the good Samaritan, they saw someone in need and passed by on the other side.  And they were harshly condemned.

The  message seems clear: when we see someone in need, it’s not enough just to do no harm. According to the letter of James, it’s not even enough to offer the proverbial “thoughts and prayers” for food and warmth if we’re not willing to provide actual food and warmth ourselves. (James 2:14-17) 

Of course, while this seems simple on paper, it can become more complicated in action.  On any given day, if I were to walk down Kensington Avenue and hand a dollar bill to everyone with his or her hand out, I’d have empty pockets before I’d covered 20 blocks – assuming I hadn’t gotten jumped.  And who knows where those dollars would go. 

The needs just in Philly alone are overwhelming.  Recently I drove by Kensington Avenue near Lehigh.  On Kensington Avenue just north of Lehigh, there’s an overpass, and under that overpass, on the sidewalks on both sides of the street, at first I thought I saw a huge piles of garbage….plastic bags and trash and such.  But then, I saw movement amid the piles of trash…..and on second look, oh dear God, I saw there are people there, sitting with blanket and bags, apparently camped out.  Likely at least two dozen people living under one bridge.  And no, I didn’t stop and hand each of them a dollar….though I do hope I can find some way of helping…they’ll be in my thoughts and prayers, and I pray in due course I’ll find a way to put prayers into action in some practical way that makes at least a bit of a difference. 

Time for true confessions from Pastor Dave:   It’s a rare day that I don’t do something to help someone – give money or food or such.   And it’s also a rare day that I don’t turn down requests for help.  Beyond encounters on the street, on any given day there are holiday fundraisers at my day job, telephone calls asking for donations, text messages from a friend trying to help yet another family get off the street – she says I’m one of the few pastors still willing to take her calls -  begging letters in the mail from any number of charities – most of which go into the trash unopened -  “go fund me” links online requesting help with anything from burial expenses to medical bills to legal expenses, on and on….  So on any given day, I can find myself among the sheep or among the goats, several times a day, maybe several times within the same hour, as sometimes I help and sometimes I don’t, as I try to offer help as best I can with limited resources.  I want to help, but I’m not an ATM machine.  To me, it’s frustrating, heartbreaking, to have to say no to someone I really want to help….and to people and situations where I feel a personal connection, more often than saying no, I say “not yet” – I can’t help just now, because I’m tapped out, but I do care, and I will be there for you when I’m able.

No one of us can help every single person in need on the planet, or in Philly, or even in Bridesburg  – I can’t, and neither can any of you.  We can help more people working together than separately – and that’s why our support of the Bridesburg Council of Churches matters so much -  but even there we are limited.  All we can do is to do what we can, and not let ourselves be paralyzed by the magnitude of the need, to pray for God’s guidance in our giving and helping, and to trust in God’s grace to suffice where our efforts fall short.

We also need to look at our society, at our government, our laws, our customs, in light of this passage.  So much of our society, including millions of people who claim faith in Christ, live by the gospel of “I’ve got mine, and to hell with you.”   Our society’s problems, our world’s problems, would not be nearly so overwhelming were it not for the absolute, unmitigated, breathtaking greed and selfishness and callousness that has taken root among so many, and has been turned into public policy.   Our country’s social safety net has been shredded over the past 40 years.  When objections are made, the response is that the churches should be doing this work.  But the churches can only work with the resources their members make available, and in any case more and more churches are closing.  Meanwhile, we’re now told, the wealthiest 3 people in the country have as much wealth as the poorest 50% combined.  It used to be the wealthiest 8 people, then the wealthiest 6, the wealthiest 5, and now wealth has become so concentrated that three super-rich people have as much wealth as 160+ million people combined.  The truth is that there is enough to satisfy everyone’s need, but not enough to satisfy everyone’s greed.   And so in addition to direct aid, we need to witness in the name of our Lord Jesus to the need to care for the poor and abandoned.  To be silent is to turn our backs on our sisters and brothers in need.

Our church has been on a journey toward greater faithfulness.  There was a time when many in Bridesburg didn’t even know our congregation existed, or thought we’d closed years ago.  But over the years, as we’ve fed and clothed people and tried to link them with social services, as we’ve given backpacks to school children and provided supplies to Bridesburg Elementary School, as we’ve hosted fundraisers for treatment of diabetes and prevention of suicide, as we’ve provided a welcoming space for people in great need, I believe we’ve become more visible and more connected to our neighborhood - though there’s still work to be done.  But I still think we need to challenge ourselves from time to time with questions such as “Why are we here?  What difference are we making?  If we were to close tomorrow, beyond our own members, what impact would that have on the neighborhood?  If we closed, would anyone notice?”  I’m glad to say that today, I think we are making a difference.

Let’s take a look again at Jesus’ words:  “Whatsoever you did to the least of these my sisters and brothers, you did to me.”  That is to say, we did it directly to Jesus.  How can Jesus say this – what can these words mean - unless Jesus is in each of us, and in each of those we help, or don’t help.  We tend to think of God as being far off, up there somewhere.  But Jesus reminds us that God is here, right here, right now, not only around us, but within us, within each of us.  And so we are all connected by God’s presence.  We’re also connected in that we’re all living on the same planet, breathing the same air, drinking the same water.   We’re all connected.  To turn our back on others is to deny that connection, but to deny our connectedness is to deny reality.  Our actions affect others, as their actions affect us.

“Jesus shall reign where’re the sun doth it successive journeys run….”  Amid the cruelty and indifference and selfishness we experience every day, it takes a major act of faith to believe that God’s love will win out in the end, and yet that’s what we believe.  That’s why we’re here….because we believe that ultimately, love will win out over hate and indifference, that generosity will win out over greed, that caring will win out over callousness.  Every time we help others, or don’t help them; every time we embrace others, or turn our backs on them, we’re voting for the kind of world we want to live in.  Every dollar we spend, every action we take, is a vote for the kind of world we want to live in.  Myself, I want to live in that world where Jesus reigns and love rules – and so, however imperfectly and inconsistently, I try to live accordingly, with faith that God can use the little bit I can do to great effect, and that in any case God’s grace will be sufficient.    

“Jesus shall reign….”  We look to the day that Jesus will reign in glory, but that day begins with our actions now…the kingdom of God is not just life in the hereafter, but what we do right now, as we allow Jesus to reign in our lives.  And eternal separation from God begins with refusing to allow Jesus to reign.  If we have faith that love will win out in the end, let’s live so that love wins in our lives day by day.  Let us live so that some day we may hear those words from Jesus, “Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world….for I was in need, and you were there for me.” Amen.

Going the Distance

Scriptures:       Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25,  Psalm 78:1-7

                        I Thessalonians 4:13-18,  Matthew 25:1-13

In today’s Gospel reading, we have a parable from Jesus about a wedding.  For some reason, it seems strangely appropriate…for Emanuel Church, this has been a year of weddings.  For my first nine years as pastor here, we had exactly one wedding, in August, 2008, for the daughter of the family across the street.  And then 2017 came around, and yesterday afternoon marked my third wedding this year.   Could there be still more on the way?  Stay tuned.

Anyway, Jesus tells us about a wedding, and, then as now, no wedding is complete without bridesmaids.  This wedding had ten bridesmaids.  Also, then as now, weddings would have been a good opportunity for eligible young ladies to catch the eye of an eligible young man, in hopes of having weddings of their own.  And so these young ladies would have wanted to look their best. Scholars tell us that at that time, a marriage came in two stages, the first being an agreement, not between the couple, but between their families – remember that this was a time of arranged marriages.  At some point after the ink had dried on the agreement between the families, the groom, accompanied by bridesmaids, would go to fetch the bride for the wedding.  And the bridesmaids would have been carrying oil-filled lamps – remember there were no street lights in those days.

Just one problem: the groom was delayed.  Not just an hour late, either.  It’s like he got caught in the mother of all traffic jams on the Schuylkill, or maybe like the situation during a snowstorm in January 2016, when two feet of snow literally stopped traffic and stranded motorists for more than a day on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  He was really, really late, so late that all the bridesmaids fell asleep.  But then, at midnight, the cry was heard, “Hear comes the bridegroom.”   We learn that five of the bridesmaids had the foresight to bring extra oil “just in case”, and five had not…..and so the lamps of the bridesmaids who had brought extra oil were shining bright, while the lamps of the bridesmaids who hadn’t were starting to flicker and sputter.   The five bridesmaids who were short of oil asked the others, “Could I borrow some of yours?”  And at this point, the parable turns into a scene from the movie “Mean Girls” – “No, you can’t have any of our oil! Go get your own!”   So the bridegroom came, with five bridesmaids carrying lamps to light the way, while the other five made a quick run to the local 7-11.  By the time they got to the banquet, the doors were locked.  When the five bridesmaids started banging on the door, the bridegroom said told them to go away – he wouldn’t even admit to knowing them.  And so the five bridesmaids missed a chance at landing husbands...and in the patriarchal culture of the day, that truly was an unhappy ending to the story.

What was Jesus trying to say?  In the previous chapter of Matthew’s gospel, the disciples asked Jesus how long it would be until the coming of the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed.  Jesus responded with a long speech with lots of graphic and disturbing imagery (Matthew 24), but with the qualifier that even he didn’t know the day or the hour.   So Jesus was telling his disciples that even he couldn’t tell them how long they would have to live in the world as it is, with all its problems, but that they needed to be prepared for the long haul.  And indeed, most  Bible scholars believe Matthew’s gospel was written somewhere around 40 to 50 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  The disciples who lived at the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection and their converts had believed Jesus would return within their lifetimes.  Forty to fifty years on, many of these disciples had died – all but one of the remaining eleven apostles had been executed, in fact – while those left who had known Jesus or the original apostles had grown old and gray.   And so they were asking:  Had Jesus forgotten about them? Had there been an unannounced change of plans?  And so Matthew included this parable of Jesus as reassurance and encouragement to persevere.

 How about us?  Will our faith go the distance?  Or will our flame go out at the first gust of high wind, at the first sign of trouble.  It’s notable that elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus tried to prepare his disciples for what it would mean to follow him….and by our standards, Jesus was the world’s worst salesman.  A modern day salesman – or a modern day televangelist (often not a dime’s worth of difference) - will tell prospective converts to sign on the dotted line, to turn their lives over to Jesus, and God will shower blessings on them and their lives will become so easy as they “name and claim” prosperity in God’s name.  And then if hard times come, these followers become disillusioned and walk away.  But Jesus took a very different approach.  He told prospective followers up front to count the cost.  He told prospective followers that if they weren’t willing to leave their families and homes behind to follow him, they weren’t worthy of him.  He told a wealthy potential convert that he had to sell everything and give it away before he could follow Jesus – nowadays, we’d let him keep his money and put him on the finance committee, in hopes maybe he’d leave some money to the church in his will.  Jesus told his disciples that following him would mean taking up a cross, would mean losing their lives.  Jesus was very clear up front about the costs of following him – and so those who followed Jesus, having had fair warning, prepared themselves mentally and spiritually.  And their faith was able to go the distance.  

These days, in our country, living in the way of Jesus may not get you persecuted. In many other countries it’s very different – in many countries around the world, being openly Christian can get you killed -  but in this country, living in the way of Jesus will mostly get you ignored, not killed.  People won’t want to hear you, but they probably won’t kill you.  But if you act on your faith in a public way, you may face opposition, even in our country – as when Christians feeding homeless people have been arrested for violating ordinances against feeding homeless people.  Christians, clergy and lay, have been among those arrested at Standing Rock and other pipeline sites, defending land and water against fossil fuel corporations.  And even if we’re not out there making public statements, living in the way of Jesus, loving God and neighbor, caring for the poor, can involve major sacrifices of time and resources, because we’re living for Jesus, not just for ourselves.  So even here in our country, following in the way of Jesus can come at a cost.

Jesus’ parable assumed that there was only so much oil to go around, so that the bridesmaids wouldn’t share.  But the oil that keeps our faith going – faith, hope, love, encouragement, mutual support – is unlimited.  In fact, the more we share, the more we have.  And so, unlike the bridesmaids in Jesus’ parable, we can help keep one another’s faith alive, can help keep one another’s lamps trimmed and burning, when difficult times come.   We can help.  It’s also true that we can’t rely entirely on others, that others can’t live our lives for us, that while we can lean on others along the way, there are some parts of the journey only we can walk.  if our relationship with others is all give and no take, or worse yet, all take and no give, we may need to ask God to lead us into healthier ways of relating to others.  Even the most generous people don’t appreciate being mistaken for ATMs, and depending entirely on others to rescue us over and over again keeps us functioning on the level of children, when God may be calling us to grow up.

How do we keep our lamps burning.  A part of it is self-care.  God who created us knows we were never intended to be perpetual motion machines.  Indeed, we’re not just encouraged, but commanded, to rest one day out of seven – that’s the commandment about keeping the Sabbath.  And Jesus often pulled away from his disciples to climb a hill and pray to God…..as likely as not, he was praying for strength to deal with those disciples, who constantly misunderstood him.  And so self-care is a part of keeping our flame from going out.

There are times in our spiritual walk when the path can become very dark.  St. John of the Cross wrote about what he called the dark night of the soul, when we just don’t feel God’s presence in our lives, when it feels like our prayers are going up, bouncing off the ceiling, and landing back on the floor, when it feels like God is telling us “talk to the hand”.  We try and try to get that old feeling of assurance back – more prayers, different devotional practices – but still, the way is dark.  John of the Cross assures us that these feelings don’t mean God is abandoning us – far from it - but rather than God is inviting us into a deeper relationship that doesn’t depend on emotional highs or spiritual wows.  It means that God is weaning us off spiritual milk and inviting us to taste spiritual meat.  And yeah, if I’m a baby and don’t have a lot of teeth, a breast or a bottle of milk is appropriate.  But a 20-year old who still fed from a bottle would be grotesque. At some point, we need to cut our spiritual teeth, put the bottle and the binky aside, and try out some solid food. 

Will our faith go the distance? The Rev John McNamee, also known as Father Mac, now retired, was pastor for many years at St Malachy’s Roman Catholic church at 11^th & Master Streets, in North Philly near Temple University.  He wrote a book which has encouraged me in my ministry, called Diary of a City Priest,  basically a year in the life of a North Philly priest.  And here are the chapter titles:  Spiritual Progress: Very Poor at It All, Belonging Nowhere, The Long Haul, Going Away and Coming Back – that chapter was about a trip to Ireland, where the poor man had a chance to get in touch with his roots.  More chapter titles:  Aesthetics of Asymmetry – translation, basically, “here’s what it looks like to do ministry in my off-kilter neighborhood where everything’s broken and nothing works”  More chapter titles:  The Margins of the Church, Tired of Losing, Simply to be Here, or to Be Here Simply, There Is No Payoff, The Primary of the Spiritual, Emotional Exhaustion, and finally, This Dark Night.. A Grace.   Reading these chapter titles and knowing the amazing quality of ministry Father Mac did gives me assurance that if his faith could go the distance, despite the sense of discouragement and defeat that constantly ate at him,  there’s hope for me yet as a pastor here.

Will our faith go the distance? Will our church go the distance?  There was a time in the 40’s and 50’s when a church could just open its doors and people would fill every pew - Build it and they will come.  Those days are long gone.  We can’t count on the church that was always there in the past to be there in the future….and it’s frustrating to watch non-church folks as I read conversations on the  Bridesburg facebook pages just blithely assume that if they need the church someday, it’ll be there.  Bad assumption.  Blink, and that church on the corner may turn into apartments or an antiques shop.  Today churches exist because their people are committed to do what’s necessary to keep them going, however painful, whatever the cost…..and even so, churches like ours are often like the proverbial duck that on the surface just seems to glide along, but underneath is paddling with all its might….and sometimes, even all that paddling isn’t enough to keep a church afloat.  It’s not just about this or that individual church, but a culture that has pushed the church to the sidelines….and that culture is very much present in the ‘Burg as well.  According to congregational statistics I’ve read, Protestant and Catholic, out of over 8000 people in the ‘Burg, at best maybe 1000 attend church regularly, roughly 700 at Cantius, maybe 250 between Grace Baptist and Real Life, and maybe 50 between us and Bridesburg Methodist.  So we need to be intentional, packing plenty of extra oil for our lamps, if we hope to keep the lights on here at Emanuel.

“Keep your lamp trimmed and burning”.  May we journey together on the path of faith, and help to keep one another’s flame from going out.  May we journey together, and together may our faith go the distance.  Amen.