Then we went over our schedule for the next thirteen weeks, a schedule which has been posted here last week.

Next Sunday we’ll spend our “coffee and bagels” time together discussing what has come to be known as sacred reading.  Sacred reading is our English translation for what centuries ago was called lectio divina: lectio (from which we get lectern, lecture, lectionery) meaning “a reading” and divina (from which we get the word “’divine” ) or in this case “sacred.”

Sacred reading is a special kind of reading, quite different from the usual way most of us read today. It’s so special, in fact, that an entire book—Michael Casey’s Sacred Reading-- has been written to help us understand the practice and show us how to do sacred reading. I’m reading parts of Sacred Reading again this week and will refer to it as we work our way to next Sunday.  Sacred Reading is a good book to purchase, and you can get good used copies at reasonable prices. I’ll bring my copy to the seminar next Sunday so that you take a look at it.

For now, however, I’d like simply to give you some of Ken Boa’s  commentary on sacred reading:

The Practice of Sacred Reading

The ancient art of sacred reading (lectio divina) centers on loving God through His word. It was introduced to the West by the Eastern desert father John Cassian early in the fifth century. The sixth-century Rule of St. Benedict that guided Benedictine and Cistercian monastic practice ever since, prescribed daily periods for sacred reading. In spite of the simplicity and power of this method of praying through sacred Scripture, it gradually fell into disuse and obscurity. Unfortunately, by the end of the Middle Ages it came to be seen as a method that should be restricted to the spiritually elite. As time passed, even monastics lost the simplicity of sacred reading as it was replaced by more complicated systems and forms of “mental prayer.” In recent decades, however, this ancient practice has been revitalized, especially by those in the Cistercian tradition. Writers like Thomas Merton (Contemplative Prayer, New Seeds of Contemplation, Spiritual Direction & Meditation), Thomas Keating (Open Mind, Open Heart), Michael Casey (Sacred Reading, Toward God, The Undivided Heart), and Thelma Hall (Too Deep for Words) have been promoting sacred reading in Catholic circles, and Protestants are now being exposed to this approach as well.  Lectio divina involves a progression through the four movements of reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation.

It’s important to notice that the practice of sacred reading is now a cross-denominational, ecumenical practice, one rediscovered way of praying now used by our friends in Baptist, Mennonite, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and other churches.   Doing sacred reading now belongs to all us Christians, wherever or whoever we are.  What we will be doing in our parish is simply learning how other Christians are now practicing the art of sacred reading.

Notice too that sacred prayer is described as having four movements:  reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation.   I’ll say more about those four movements tomorrow.   In the meantime, if you would like to do some exploration on your own, feel free to visit the following websites: Living Water: Sacred Reading and/or Book Review: Sacred Reading; good book provides depth exploration.

The first day of school is always a little scary.  Whether it’s pre-school, high school, or college—it doesn’t matter.  My first day of high school was the scariest experience I ever had in all my years of schooling.  Specifically it was lunch time that was scary on that first day of high school. In my high school the whole student body ate at the same time. So you had everybody at once in that cafeteria. The entire population of Decatur High School was in the same place at the same time. A miniature world.  With all of its variety of people. I can still remember going through the line at lunch. Putting the food on my tray and paying the lunch lady at the cash register.

And then came the moment. I remember shutting my eyes and taking a deep breath.  And turning around.  And having to make the biggest decision of my life up to that point.  Where would I sit?  In that whole world out there, where would I sit?  Or more to the point, who would have me?  Who would welcome me to their table?  In my high school, there was an unwritten seating chart.  It was unspoken, but it was very real.  You didn’t just sit anywhere in my high school lunch room.  You sat with “your kind.”  We all knew going in that certain tables were set aside for certain kinds of folks.

And it was important to know “your place.”  If you looked to the left, you’d see the tables where the popular kids sat.  The ones who had gone to the elementary schools in the upscale neighborhoods of Fernbank and Medlock.  These were the clean cut kids dressed in the newest fads who already drove their own cars. Who got elected to student council and homecoming court.  The football players, reeking of testosterone, had a table to themselves.  There was another table where the smart kids sat. The chess club members and the ones who always got the blue ribbons at the science fair.  And over by the wall in the back was a table for the guys with slicked-back hair who smoked behind the stadium.  And the girls who hung around with them.  The ones who piled their hair high up on their heads and looked as if they had put on their makeup with a brick layer’s trowel.

You were welcomed to the cafeteria at Decatur High School.  You just had to know your place once you were in there.  Find the right table and you’d be fine. Because the unwritten rule was:  “Who you ARE is defined not so much by who you ARE as by who is the person sitting next to you at lunch.” 

Whether I knew it or not, it was good practice for life out in the real world after high school and college.  Because I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.  The world welcomes you.  You just have to know where you belong once you’re here.

The world has its own unwritten seating chart.  And generally speaking, we sit at the table with folks like us.  Who look like us and worship like us and vote like us.  And the interesting thing is that we generally don’t feel a need to apologize for that.

Holly and I were in a group of pastors last week looking at the gospel reading for today about the poor and lame at the same table as the rich and the healthy.  And one of the pastors said:  “But isn’t it natural to want to be with people similar to ourselves?”  I sat there thinking:  “Yeah, I guess it is.”  “Birds of a feather” and all that, you know.  But it’s like a lot of things.  It may be natural.  It may be the way things are.  It may be the way we’ve been taught. 

But then, Jesus comes along.  And says: “Just because it’s natural doesn’t make it right.”  The world says: “You are what you eat.”  Jesus says: “You are WHERE you eat.”  He said that at a dinner table.  I’ve counted nineteen stories in St. Luke’s gospel where Jesus has a knife and fork in his hand and a napkin in his lap, and he’s teaching while he’s eating.

Luke seems to love catching Jesus talking with his mouth full.  And this text is one of those occasions.  Jesus has been invited to supper one evening.  And he notices how all the guests come in and look around and move up toward the front to get the best seats.  So he takes his butter knife and hits it a few times on the side of his tea glass and says:  “Can I have your attention for a minute?  Let me give you some advice.  If you think you’re smart enough to sit at the table where all the smart kids sit, you run the risk of them asking:  ‘What did you make in Algebra last quarter?’  And you have to get up with your tray and slink off to sit with the kids who smoke behind the stadium.”  But if you play your cards right, you can be the Big Man on Campus. 

Let me tell you how to do it.  After you’ve paid the lady your lunch money and you turn around, go sit with the folks everybody considers ‘losers.’  And you never know.  With a little bit of luck somebody from the table where all the popular kids sit will yell across the cafeteria, in front of everybody in the school:  “Come on over here and sit with US.”  And you’ll get to say in front of everybody:  “Aw, shucks.  Me?  Little old me?   Well, I guess if you say so.’ ”

Now, Jesus isn’t serious about that little strategy, of course.  And the people that night knew that.  They ”got it.”  They knew what he was doing.  He was poking fun at their behavior.  But more than that, they knew he was reminding them how ridiculous and stupid it is to structure society in such a way that we divide ourselves into different tables according to who we think we are or what we think we’re entitled to as opposed to somebody else.

Why does it matter where we sit?  That’s what Jesus wants to know.  Any old place is the right place, according to Jesus.  Just sit down.  And let other people just sit down.  Right now in this country, we’re divided over where a Muslim community center should be located in New York City.  I don’t know where you stand on that question.  And I don’t much care.  I do care, though where Jesus stands.  And based on the gospel reading today, I wonder what would Jesus say about this issue?  Where is it appropriate for Muslims to sit these days?  Where is “their place”?  Is it two blocks from “Ground Zero”?  Four blocks away?  A mile away?  And it’s not just in New York City where that question is being asked.

There’s a big controversy brewing in northern Kentucky these day where many of the citizens have risen up to oppose the building of a Muslim worship center near Cincinnati—hundreds of miles from Ground Zero.  I don’t know the political answer to any of that.  All I know is, Jesus says:  “When you give a dinner, invite everybody to your table.” 

To be honest, I wish he hadn’t said that.  Because I like to hang out with my own crowd.  It feels natural.  It’s much more comfortable to choose my own friends rather than have Jesus do it for me.  Because you know how he is.

That’s the thing about baptism.  The moment we are baptized we no longer have the luxury of choosing our friends.  Jesus does it for us.  He just puts us all in a bag and shakes us up and dumps us out.  Jesus doesn’t care about order in society nearly as much as we do. Whether it’s undocumented immigrants in Arizona or Vineyard Community Church in Lexington with its blacks and whites and Latinos, wanting to buy an old elementary school close to an old established neighborhood and turn it into a church, the issue is the same.

 Where are we going to sit and with whom?  We make it so complicated.  But in Jesus’ mind, it’s not complicated at all.  St. Paul understood that.  He knew Jesus as well as anybody when he wrote to the Galatians:  “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female.  For all of you are one and the same in Christ Jesus.”

We might divide into religious camps because it’s “natural.”  But in Jesus’ mind, there is no such thing as Lutherans or Baptists or Roman Catholics.  There is just “the baptized.”  In Jesus’ eyes, there are no “rich people” or “poor people.”  In his mind, we’re all poor in our own way in need of gifts only he can give.  Jesus never said a word about gays or lesbians.  It was a non-issue apparently for him.  Which means it’s safe to say, I think, that he sees no difference between a gay man or a straight man, between a lesbian or a heterosexual woman any more than he sees a difference between a Jew or a Greek. 

Look at Jesus’ eating habits.  The record is clear in all four gospels.  He ate with conservative Pharisees on Monday and folks completely unlike them on Tuesday.  Which, to me indicates that Jesus is equally comfortable with Tea Party folks as he is with Left wing Democrats.  To him, they’re all sinners.  And they all need his death and resurrection.  Which he is more than happy to give them. 

All of this is to say, we may struggle with where to sit, but we know where Jesus stands.  So, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors…But when you give a banquet invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  And you will be blessed . . . .”

The preacher was right last week at that conference.  That kind of behavior doesn’t come naturally Monday through Saturday.  Which is why we practice on Sunday at Jesus’own table.  Where every week, even though he knows how blind we are, how we lame we are, how poor our efforts are at being his followers, he invites us to sit down with him.

When all is said and done, we Christian might as well rearrange the seating chart while we’re here on earth. Because we’re going to be sitting together for all eternity in heaven.

And that means, Glenn Beck and President Obama will be eating off each other’s plates one fine day.  “Here, try some of this, Glenn.”  Won’t that be a sight?

And what about the sight of a child who never drank a cup of clean water in her life drinking beside the little boy who never drank anything but filtered water from a tap.  That will be a day.

The day he calls “the resurrection of the righteous.”  And that day is coming when Jesus returns.  We might as well start practicing now.

On September 12:  Sacred Reading
On September 19:  Fixed-hour Praying, Daily Prayer Books
On September 26:  Centering Prayer: Silence and the Contemplative Tradition
On October 3:  Using the Church’s Lectionary and Calendar
On October 10:  Praying the Psalter,  the Quiet Singing of Psalms
On October 17:  Fasting and Prayer as Jesus Recommends Them Together 
On October 24:  Praying with Heart, Soul, Mind, Strength, and Body
On October 31:  Praying without Ceasing: The Orthodox Jesus Prayer 
On November 7:  Praying with Icons (A Gift from the Orthodox)
On November 14:  Prayerful Journaling and Keeping a Chapbook 
On November 21:  Prayerful Money Management, Making Prayerful Decisions
On November 28:  Praying in a Community and Global Intercesssions

If you are interested in broadening and deepening your present prayer life, come and join us on these Sunday mornings.  The seminars will be held between our 8:15 and 11:00 a.m. services, from 9:45 to 10:45.   Bring your Bible and a desire to deepen and broaden your life with God in prayer.

St. John Lutheran Church

Tomorrow will be a big day at my parish, St. John Lutheran Church in Griffin, Georgia.  The bishop will be coming to help us celebrate not only the dedication of a new educational wing and fellowship hall, but also help us rejoice on our Pastor’s twentieth anniversary of her ordination.  What a day it will be!

I’ll be telling you more about it, especially as we come together in the Prayer for the Day, in the Great Thanksgiving (the Eucharist–the Church’s ancient name for Holy Communion), and in the many intercessions, praises, and personal prayers of parishioners.

In the meantime, realizing that the Gospel for tomorrow, The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost is Luke 14.1, 7-14, you may want to visit Journey with Jesus to read “A Spirituality of Food: The All-Sufficient Metaphor for Power,” Daniel B. Clendenin’s essay on Luke 14.1,7-14.

Those of you wishing to examine Luke 14.1, 7-14 more intensely may go to Brian P. Stoffregen’s Exegetical Notes located within Crossmarks.

Pastor Katie's Welcome

Pastor Katherine Pasch (Pastor “Katie” to all of us at St. John Lutheran Church) has asked me to lead a thirteen-week series of Sunday morning seminars on prayer that’s to begin on September 5, The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost.  We’re calling it “Spiritual Formation 101,” and it will include discussions on Silence, Fixed-hour Prayer, Prayer and Fasting, Centering Prayer, and so on.  You might well imagine how eager I am for September to come bounding in!

I’ll be using this blog to help set up and encourage participation in the weekly Sunday seminars.  As a consequence, you find that what I’ve posted over the years here will in some measure be reposted once in a while.  That said, let me reassure you that I will do my best to update everything; postings will reflect more recent reading and prayer, and my own thinking, expanding and maturing over the years will no doubt reflect some changes in my understanding of prayer as my experience has become at once more broad and focused.  I hope you’ll find yourselves, whether in the seminar at St. John or elsewhere in the world of prayer, a frequent reader within “Spiritual Formation 101.”

Students on the campus of Gordon College

Then too I managed to find myself a job.  Having retired from university teaching as a full professor in 2006, I ambled a month ago into the local college Department of Humanities and am now an adjunct professor (a part-timer on the bottom rung of the academic teaching ladder), showing up in three classes to teach freshman composition and Early American Literature at Gordon College, just a mile from our new home.

Then too a new companion, Mitzy, has entered my life.  Weighing forty-five pounds, she’s carmel-colored, wears a white scarf about her neck, runs with a white-tipped tail, and loves to chase a raw-hide bone during her morning, midday, and evening walks.  She also smells a bit skunkish lately, having chased Disney’s “Flower” a bit too closely across the nearby soccer field, winding up befumed.  Her visit to the vet yesterday went well: no fleas, no heartworms, just excellent health. More about her in forthcoming posts.

The above comes your way simply to say that I’m not entirely lazying around here in B’ville.  Sometimes it’s been necessary for me to climb out of bed at three in the morning to make sure that I can teach the poetry of Anne Bradstreet well.  I quite sure, however, that as my routine becomes more regular and as all the framed photographs are hung, that my blog time will once again open itself up, and I’ll be able to post more often, regularly.

 I write all of this in response to several phone calls that I enjoyed because, among the details of chatting, several have asked when I will get back to this blog.  Apparently they like to read now and again some of what gets posted. So to those who have asked, “When again?”, I say, “Now.”  And thanks for reminding me that what goes on here is important too.

I want to talk about faith this morning.   What it is.  And particularly what it isn’t.  And I want to use a verse from the letter of Hebrews.  Listen to this:  “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

You might get the idea from that verse that faith is a feeling. That it’s a matter of the heart.  “Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for.”  That idea of what faith is, drives people into my office occasionally.  “I’ve lost my faith,” they say, by which they mean they’ve lost that feeling they once had.  We have the idea—and I blame preachers for this—   we have the idea that faith is something you feel.  A confidence you have inside.  No doubts.  Complete certainty.  You either have it or you don’t.  And if you don’t, there must be something wrong with you. 

But here’s the interesting thing.  And this is so important.  The word in this verse that we translate “assurance” doesn’t mean “to be sure.”  It is not describing a feeling at all.  It has more the sense of a verb, really.  It means to behave as if you are sure, even when you may not be sure.  Does that make sense? There are some times in your life when you are called upon to act “as if” something is true even when you have your doubts.  When your daddy or your mama stood in the water beside the edge of the pool with their arms up and said to you:  “Jump. I’ll catch you,” it probably didn’t feel safe.   You didn’t KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’d catch you.  But you behaved “as if” they could be trusted to catch you, and you jumped.

Sometimes I have someone say to me in a new members class or in a counseling session:  “I can’t in good conscience say the Apostle’s Creed because I’m not sure I believe it.”  And my advice to them is:  “Say it anyway.  Say the Apostles’ Creed as if you believe it trusting that there will come a day when God will bring you around and you will actually believe it.”

The Bible is not a book of psychology.  There’s precious little in the Bible about feelings.  Faith is not about what you feel.  It’s wonderful when you feel all “spiritually” warm inside.  But your faith should never be measured by how you feel.  In the Bible faith is not a feeling.  Faith is behaving “as if” the thing you hope is true, is in fact, true.

What I admire about some people is that there is an “as if-ness” about them.  All hell may be breaking loose around them, but they behave “as if” God has them in the palm of his hand.  And that makes all the difference in the world.  It’s what distinguishes them from other people.  That’s the faith the writer of Hebrews is talking about.  He’s not talking about a feeling of assurance.  He’s talking about a way of behaving.  “Now faith is the ‘as if-ness’ of things hoped for.”  Living “as if” God’s promises will come true.

Having given a definition of faith, the writer of Hebrews then uses the story of Abraham and Sarah to illustrate what faith looks like.  In the book of Genesis Abraham is almost a hundred years old when we meet him the first time.  He’s got Coke-bottle thick glasses and walks with a cane.  His wife, Sarah is in her nineties.  They’ve been married for decades and have never had a child. 

God visits Abraham one evening.  “Come outside with me for a moment,” God says to him.  He takes Abraham out under the night sky and tells him to look up.  “See those stars up there?” God says.  “Can you count them?  That’s how many grandchildren and great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren you and Sarah are going to have.”

And Abraham says:  “Lord, with all due respect, have you checked my sperm count lately?  Have you taken a good look at Sarah?  There’s not a snowball’s chance [on a hot dessert day] that she and I are going to have a child.”

And God says:  “I didn’t tell you to look down below your belt, Abraham.  I told you to look up at the sky.  Count the stars, Abraham.”  Start behaving ‘as if’ what I promise is going to come true.” 

And if you read the story in Genesis, Abraham starts behaving that way.  He may be on a cane, but after that evening when God stops by there’s a certain spring in his step as he travels toward the land that God has said will be his.  He behaves “as if” God can be trusted to make him the father of an entire nation.  A little later on, Sarah gets her own chance to behave “as if” or not.  Three visitors stop by one day with the news that Sarah will conceive soon.  Not surprisingly, she laughs at the idea.  Which gives one of the three visitors the bright idea that a good name for their future son would be Isaac, which means “laughter.”

So that forever thereafter, whenever they call their son to supper—“Isaac!”—they’ll remember how they were tempted once upon a time to second-guess God.  To behave “as if” God couldn’t be trusted.  Well, to make a long story short, nine months later Abraham and Sarah are getting up for Isaac’s two o’clock feeding.  “Now faith is the assurance—the ‘as if-ness’—of things hoped for.”

That was Abraham’s faith.  Not what he felt.  But what he did in spite of what he might have felt.  He behaved as if he were going to be the father of a nation, even if, by the way, he never got to see all those grandchildren and great grandchildren God said he’d have.

And that is the story of faith throughout the Bible.  Not feelings.  But behavior in spite of feelings.  Behaving as if God can be trusted even when all the evidence points to the contrary.  Refusing to act out of fear even when we feel afraid. 

It’s the kind of faith Moses told the people of Israel to have at the Red Sea.  Here they were with their backs against the wall.  They turn to face the most powerful army on the face of the Planet—the Egyptians.  The Hebrew people have no weapons. They have no boats to cross the Red Sea.  They’ve never learned how to swim.  They’re “done for.”  They start bawling and wringing their hands.  And what does Moses say to them?  I’m quoting here.

“Don’t be afraid.  Stand your ground and watch what God will do to save you today . . . . The Lord will fight for you, and all you have to do is keep still.”  Keep still “as if” God can be trusted.  And you know the story. 

The Bible is filled with those kind of stories about a God who makes a way out of no way.  And who asks only one of thing of us—“Trust me.”  Behave as if what I say is true.

It’s one story after another.  Culminating in the life of a man named Jesus—whom we call God’s son—whose last words on the cross were what?  According to Luke it was:  “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.”  Abandoned by his closest friends and surely feeling that his mission was an absolute failure, he behaved on the cross “as if” God could be trusted to bring something good out of this “mell of a hess.”  He was behaving “as if” Easter had already happened.  That’s the kind of faith the Bible talks about.

And it is into this faith that we baptize.  We Christians refuse to live our lives in fear.  Regardless of what the voices from the right and left tell us on their talk shows about where our nation and this world is headed, we will have none of it!  Because we are baptized.  And that means we behave “as if” God holds the world in the palm of his hand and will stop at nothing until his will is done. 

Shel Silverstein says in one of his poems:

Listen to the mustn’t, child.
Listen to the don’ts.
Listen to the never could bes.
Listen to the won’ts.
Listen to the never has beens.
Then listen to me.
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be.

In a world that constantly uses words like:  “Can’t” and “won’t” and “never will” and “never could be,” we are baptized.  And we live “as if” anything God says can be, can be because we’ve heard stories of what God did at the Red Sea and in a tomb outside of Jerusalem.  And we’ve looked up and counted the stars.  And we’ve seen an old couple rocking their baby boy and behaving “as if” this were only the beginning.

This morning Daniel B. Clendenin sent out his Monday morning announcement in Journey with Jesus about what to think about in preparation for next Sunday’s lectionary readings:  Here’s what he says:

There’s a remarkable admission in the reading for this week, that many believers who have died “did NOT receive the promises of God” (Hebrews 11:13, 39).  And so I call my essay “Believing Isn’t Seeing.”  This is a great antidote to all the many forms of the prosperity gospel that we hear.

Huston Smith of UC Berkeley, now in his nineties, has a new autobiography that I review this week: “Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine” (2010).

For movies I review the Argentinian title  The Secret in Their Eyes, which won the Academy Award for best foreign film in 2009.  And for poetry we post a piece by the Spanish mystic and priest Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), ” I Do Not Die.”

Icon of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. 15th cent. Novgorod

Today many churches–Lutheran, Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox, among others–celebrate The Transfiguration of our Lord.   In my Lutheran daily prayer book, Frederick J. Schumacher, the editor, provides this reading of the famous 15th-century Novgorod Icon of the Transfiguration, a reading that helps us understand what the Transfiguration means to us this day:

In the book of Exodus (33:20-22) the Lord says to Moses, “You cannot see my face; for man shall notsee me and live.  Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand upon the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by”;  Irenaeus (130-200) commenting on this [passage] explained:

Two things are thus indicated: that it is impossible for man to see God, but secondly that through the wisdom of God, man shall see him in the lst times standing upon the rock; that is, in His coming as a man.  For this reason the Lord conversed with Moses face ot face on the top of the mountain (of Transfiguration) in the company of Elijah, as the gospels relate, thus fulfilling the ancient promises (Against Heresies, Book IV, Chapter 20).

When St. Catherine’s Monastery was built at the foot of Mt. Sinai in the sixth century, one of the first images of the transfiguration was created, and this icon in the Orthodox tradition has remained basically the same ever since.

The icon portrays the gospel accounts of the fulfillment of what Moses and Elijah on Mt. Horeb (Mt. Sinai) did not see (Matthrew 17:1-8; Mark 9.2-8; Luke 9.28-36).  Here Christ stands on the top of the mountain (accordng to tradition, Mt. Tabor) in the middle of a perfect circle (mandorla,), symbolic of the transcendent God.  In the center of the third inner circle sometimes there is a star, but here the rays of light represent the "luminous cloud" once seen on Horeb, sumbolic of the Holy Spirit and the source of divine light (Exodus 24.15-18; 34.5, etc.).  The light of God’;s glory transfigures Christ, the Word made flesh, as the light of God shines through him.  In the words of Gregory Palamas (1269-1359),

The Father by his voice bore witness to His beloved Son; the Holy Spirit, shining with Him in the bright cloud, indicated that the Son possesses with the Father the light, which is One like all that belong to Their richness (Homily 34)

In this light stands Moses to the right witha book or the tablets of stone in one hand representing the law, and Elijah to the left representing the prophets.  They both point to Christ, acknowledging that they have in Him seen the face of God, and that through His coming death and resurrection will begin the New Covenant foreshadowed in and prepared for by the law and the prophets.  In Mark’s account of the event, when the Father said, "This is my beloved Son; listen to him," the disciples, depicted at the lower part of the mountain, no longer saw Moses and Elijah (9.7-8).

Looking at the three disciples, we see three rays of divine light, symbolic of the Trinity, cming from the circle and overwhelming them.  To the right Peter appeaers to have just spoken to Jesus saying, “Lord, it is well that we are here; if you wish, I will make three bothshere, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah” (Matthre 17.4).  When one of the three rays of light falls upon himand, supporting himself with his left hand, he raises his right hand to protect himself.  It is Peter who would later preserves his recollection of the event itself,  “We were with him on the holy mountain” (2 Peter 1.16-18).  John in the center falls, turning his back to the light.  It would be he would pass the vision on in the words, “God is light in himis no darkness at all” (I John 1.5).  And James flees from the light in either a backward or forward fall.

Christ at the top of the rocks that form the mountain appears to be in composite continuity witht the rocks of the mountain, recalling Paul’s words: “the Rock was Christ” (I Coir. 10.4).  Christ is the mediator betrween God and all who look at this icon.  Christ is the mountain, the absolute meeting place between God and His people.

The ancient iconographers began their writing (painting) of icons with The Icon of the Transfiguration.  It became a direct initiation into the divine light, revealed on Mt. Tabor, that they would need to express through all subsequent icons.  Whether in an icon of a feast day or of a saint, the divine light of God was to be shining through the image so all who would look on the icon would behold the light and the beauty of the Triune God.  To the fullest extent, The Icon of the Transfiguration is bathed in a sunoight of high noon where there are o shadows, as in the Kingdom of God itself.  The Icon of the Transfiguration is thus a foretaste of the future where God’s Kingdom is fulfilled and “there will be no need for sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the lamb” (Revelation 231.22-25; 22.5).

In the Orthodox tradition the significance of the oight of Mt. Tabor is expressed at Matins [Morning Prayer]:  “Today on Tabor in the manifestation of your Light, O Word, you are the unaltered Light from the Light of the unbegotten Father, and we have seen the Father as LIght and the Spirit as Light, guiding with light the whole creation.”

(For All the Saints: A Prayer Book for and by the Church, IV, 1074-1078)

 “Take care!” Jesus says.  “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.” All kinds of greed. I’ve never really thought about that before—that there is more than one kind of greed.  I always thought greed was greed.  But Jesus says:  “No, greed comes in all shapes and sizes.”  He tells a story about one kind of greed.  The kind that tempts you when your ship suddenly comes in. 

 Once upon a time, there was a farmer whose land suddenly woke up one year and began to produce crops like there was no tomorrow.  The farmer had never seen so much stuff coming up out of the ground.  All summer long, he takes the corn and beans, tomatoes and cucumbers and Lord knows what else to market, and he makes a fortune.

 Now, he’s got a decision to make.  He was accustomed to knowing what he would do with a hundred thousand dollars.  But now, he has a million dollars.  “What do I do with all this money?”  Now, that’s not just a question you have to answer when you suddenly become a millionaire like this farmer.

 It’s the question a college senior or a graduate student asks when they’ve been living on ramen noodles in a cramped college apartment for years, and suddenly one day they’re offered a job making a high five-figure income.  “How am I going to spend all this cash I’m going to be making?” Or when you get a promotion, and there’s a big pay raise to go along with it.  “How am I going to shape my lifestyle now that I’ve got a bigger paycheck?”  Or when you get a certified letter in the mail from an attorney telling you that your uncle who passed away a few months back left you ten thousand dollars in his will. 

 “What should I do with this sudden windfall?  Save it?  Spend it?  Give it away?”  Or when you pay off your mortgage and the kids you’ve been supporting get a good job, and you find your savings account is two thousand dollars fatter each month than it’s ever been before.

 “How is our life going to change, now that we have more discretionary income each month than we’ve ever had as a couple?”  That’s the situation this farmer faced.  Your ship has come in.

And now you’ve got a decision to make.  “What should I do, For I have no place to store my crops?”  So, that’s one kind of situation where we’re tempted to be greedy.  And to one degree or another we’ve all perhaps had something like that happen to us.

Not a lot money, but suddenly more than we had yesterday.  Now what?  But there’s another kind of greed.  The kind of greed most of us are familiar with. 

It’s much more subtle.  It’s the kind of greed that just sort of comes with the territory of living in a rich nation like ours where we’re constantly tempted to want more.  Enough is never enough.  There’s always something else out there to acquire.  It’s the kind of greed that’s so dangerous because we’re actually given permission to be greedy.  We’re helping the economy    when you buy stuff, we’re told.   Then you’ve got advertisements telling us we need what they’re selling to bring out our potential beauty or enhance our performance at the gym or the bedroom.  We need their stuff. 

Add to that our basic fear that God can’t be trusted to make us secure, so we’d better surround ourselves with things.  We’re always looking for more stuff.  And, like the farmer, we have to find a place to put all our stuff.  The farmer built bigger barns. We rent storage sheds. One of the fastest growing industries in the United States is storage companies.  Did you know that?

That ought to tell us something about the problem of greed in this country.  I looked it up in the yellow pages this week. I hope you appreciate all this research I do for you each week.  I looked it up this week.  There’s A Number 1 Mini-Storage, AAA Storage, ABC Storage, Ace Mini-Storage, Add-a Space Mini-Storage, American Mini-Storage, Amy’s Storage . . . . And, mind you, each of those outfits has several locations in town.  And that’s just the A’s.  There are two more pages of storage companies in the phone book. 

 And when we run out of storage space, what do we do?  We have yard sales, of course.  It’s the American way.  And we aren’t the least bit guilty about it.  When was the last time you had somebody apologize to you for having a yard sale?  “I’m sorry I’ve got all this stuff.  As an act of penance, I’ll sell you this couch for a quarter.”  Nobody apologizes for having a yard sale. 

  “Take care!” Jesus says, “Be on your guard for all kinds of greed.”  Jesus understands that there are all kinds of greed but in the story of the farmer he makes it clear that all greed—whether you’re a multi-millionaire or a little kid . . . . A teenager, or somebody living a modest middle class life—all greed is based on the same thing.  The notion that what is mine is mine.  It’s my money.  I worked for it.  So, I get to decide how I’ll use it.  Because what’s mine is mine.  That is what all greed has in common—the belief that what is mine is mine to do with however I please.

And Jesus challenges that notion.  He will not let it go without a fight. Because he happens to think that greed is a spiritual issue.  What we do with our stuff, he says, is an indicator—maybe the greatest indicator—of our relationship with God. 

In this story he tells, Jesus lets us inside this farmer’s head, so we get to listen to his conversation with himself as he tries to decide what to do with all this money he has.  Listen to him.  He says to himself, “Here’s what I’ve decided to do. I will pull down MY barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all MY grain and MY goods.”  Are you hearing all those personal, possessive pronouns?  “I’ve decided.”  These are My barns.  This is My grain. My goods.

And do you hear all the grand plans he has?  “I will pull down my barns.”   “I will build larger ones.”  “I will store all my grain and my goods.”  You see what he’s assuming?  That not only is this stuff his.  The future is his as well.  “I get to decide what my future looks like.” 

That’s where all greed comes from, Jesus says.  Assuming that what’s mine is mine.  “MY money. MY grain. MY goods.  And even MY future.”  “And I will say to myself (after accumulating all this stuff). ‘Self, you have enough stuff to last a lifetime.  Relax, eat, drink, and be merry.” 

And God says him, “You fool!”  By the way, God doesn’t use that word, “fool” lightly.  Just about the only occasions in the Bible in which a person is called a fool is when that person begins to behave as if there is no God.

It’s what Peter Rhea Jones calls, “practical atheism.”  It’s when you say you believe in God, but you manage your life, and you make your decisions, and you deal with your possessions,  and you plan for the future as if there is no God.  As if God hasn’t promised to give us everything we need. 

That’s practical atheism.  I practice it all the time. I stand here all gussied up on Sunday morning. The Reverend Doctor Fancy Pants.  “I believe in Gawwwd.” And then I turn right around on Monday and behave as if God is not God, I am.

And God says:  “You fool.”  You and I can make a lot of mistakes in our lives.  Commit a lot sins.  And God won’t call us a fool.  But the moment we begin to behave as if there is no God then God says:  “You fool.”  And that’s what he says to this farmer.  He says, “You fool.  These aren’t your barns.  They’re my barns.  And this is my grain and my goods. And by the way, this future that’s ‘YOURS’  Have you checked your cholesterol lately?  Tonight, you are ‘history.’ ”

Jesus concludes this story by saying, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”  David Buttrick is a biblical scholar and teacher of preaching. Buttrick reminds us that in the Bible the phrase “rich toward God” has a very special meaning.  According to the Bible there is only one way to be “rich toward God.”  And that is not to build bigger barns but to give away what is already in our barns to those who have no barns.  That is what makes us rich toward God.

And that is our constant challenge.  To say we believe in God and then, with God’s help, to behave as if we really do.  By letting the first thought in our mind be, “This is not mine to keep.  This is God’s to give away.”  The farmer was rich.  He just wasn’t rich toward God.  He wasn’t about to redistribute his wealth.  And Jesus said:  “You fool.” 

Now, you gotta admit, calling somebody a fool for not redistributing their wealth doesn’t make political sense.  Not these days.  But then, Jesus never ran for political office.  And if he had, he’d have lost by a landslide.

Which makes it all the more amazing that knowing us like he does, he tells this story on his way to Jerusalem to die for fools like us.  And that is the good news.  Isn’t it?

Next Sunday’s Gospel is Luke 12:32–40, and Daniel B. Clendenin’s “‘Don’t Worry About Your Life’:  Jesus Speaks to Our Fears and Anxieties” is worth reading carefully.

If for next Sunday you have parish preaching or teaching responsibilities, you may want to prepare for your delivery of a sermon or Scripture lesson by consulting CrossMarks Christian Resources, especially Exegetical notes on texts from the Revised Common Lectionary by Brian Stoffregen.    Remember:  Next Sunday’s Gospel is Luke 12:32–40, (Proper 14, Year C).   Going to Crossmarks is well worth the visit.

                                                                                                                                                         A sermon for the Nineth Sunday after Pentecost, July 25, 2010, by Pastor Ron  Luckey, Faith Lutheran Church, Lexington, KY.  This sermon is based on the appointed Gospel reading for yesterday,  St. Luke 11:1-13: 

 One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”   He said to them, “When you pray, say:

‘Father, hallowed be your name, 
your kingdom come. 
Give us each day our daily bread.  
Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.  
And lead us not into temptation.

Then he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.’   

“Then the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man’s boldness^, he will get up and give him as much as he needs.   

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.  

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?  Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?  If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”  (New International Version)

My first experience with praying didn’t go all that well.  I was six or seven years old.  One Sunday morning, in one of the very few times my family went to church when I was a kid, my parents took me to Columbia Drive Baptist church, a mile or so from our house on Kirk Road.  The preacher, Brother Charles Aderholt, was preaching that day on the subject of prayer.  He quoted the same words that we read this morning from St. Luke’s gospel.

Jesus is teaching his disciples about prayer. “So, I say to you: ‘Ask, and it will be given to you.’”  I was a six-year old little pagan who seldom went to church.  So I had no idea that verse was in the Bible.  It was the first I’d ever heard of it.  Just ask, and God will pony up.  My experience up to that point was, when I asked my mama or my daddy for something, it was all up for grabs.  I might get a “yes, but often as not, I’d get a “no.”  Or a “You got to be kidding.”  Brother Aderholt was talking about something entirely different.  An automatic “yes!”

I was certain I had hit the mother lode that Sunday.  Just ask, Jesus said, and “bingo,” it’s all yours.  When you’re six years old, it doesn’t get much better than that.  I sat there in my little suit and bow tie and shiny shoes thinking to myself:  “No wonder my parents haven’t been taking me to church.  They don’t want a house full of everything under the sun I’d be asking for.”

Anyway, I remember it as clear as a bell what I did that afternoon.  Right after we had the meal that northerners call lunch and southerners call dinner, I went out back to where our 1949 Plymouth was parked in the driveway and slipped into the front seat and rolled up the windows to be alone with God. And sitting on the bench seat of that old car, I bowed my head and furrowed my brow and devoutly asked God for a horse.  Not just any horse.  I swung for the fence.  I prayed for a golden palomino horse with a white mane like Roy Roger’s horse, Trigger who was so smart he could untie a rope with his teeth and count by pawing the earth when Roy gave him a math problem.

I didn’t beat around the bush either.  No, polite preliminaries.  I got to the point right away.  I said I wanted a horse that looked like Trigger.  And if he could do math, so much the better.  I even told God I would be patient.  I’d be willing to wait until the end of the week.  I got out of that old Plymouth convinced that somehow—I didn’t know how—but somehow a golden palomino horse would show up in a few days tied to the big oak tree in my front yard. 

After all, Brother Aderholt had quoted Jesus.  “Ask and it will be given you.”  Sounded like a promise to me.  I figured if you can’t trust Jesus, who CAN you trust?  Well, it’s a short and sad story.  I didn’t get the horse.  And I never believed anything Brother Aderholt ever said again.

It was a few years before I realized that when Jesus said:  “Ask and it will be given you,” he meant that God gets to decide what “it” is.  In other words, God never promises to give us what we want.  God promises only to give us what we need.  He gets to decide.  Which is just another way of saying that God is God and we are not. 

But it was a long time before I figured that one out.  And I needed some help doing it.  Miriam McGinnis was my teacher in that.  In my first parish, Miriam McGinnis became very sick.  And along with everybody else in Stanley, North Carolina, I asked God to heal her.  Miriam was a young mother.  Active in my little church.  Always doing something kind for others    in the community.  Miriam McGinnis was a saint if there ever was one.  When she got sick, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me that God would agree with our requests for Him to heal one of his most faithful servants.  But in the end, God didn’t do that.  In the last days of her life, I talked with Miriam about it, and she gave me the greatest lesson I’ve ever had about prayer.

She was in the hospital in Charlotte.  Weak as water.  Not a hair on her head.  It was late on a Sunday evening when I got there.  We were all alone in her hospital room, she and I.  And I told her:  “Miriam we’ve all been praying that God would cure you, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to do it.  And I got to tell you, it breaks my heart.”  She listened sympathetically and then, in that quiet way of hers, she said:  “No, God has done something better.  I’m not going to get well.  I’m going to get God.”

“I’m not going to get well.  I’m going to get God.”  Miriam was talking scripture.  That’s exactly what Jesus meant when he said at the very end of the gospel reading today:  “If . . . you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” 

The Holy Spirit is God’s presence.  Miriam understood that.  That’s what God promises when we ask him for something.  Not that we’ll get what we pray for.  But that we will always receive what we need—God’s presence.  Which, when you think about it, what more DO we need?

“I’m not going to get well. I’m going to get God.”  And that’s what that little church celebrated a few weeks later when we rolled Miriam’s casket out of the church singing: “I’ll Fly Away.”  She hadn’t gotten well.  She’d gotten something far better.  She had gotten the God who gave her the ultimate healing by raising her from the dead. 

We make prayer so hard, don’t we?  We make it so complicated.  When all it is, is talking back to someone who loves us and who has talked to us first. Not just through the Bible.  Or through hymns and sermons.  God talks to us in our dreams and in something a friend says to us—like what Miriam said to me.

That was God talking.  God through a paragraph in a book—doesn’t have to be a “religious” book.  Or a thought that comes into our minds.  Or a feeling that floods our hearts.  God talks through the people we set out to help.  God will talk this week to these young people from Wisconsin who stayed at our church last night.  And he’ll do it through the words and actions of somebody in need.  

God is always talking to us.  And it’s only polite to talk back to someone who talks to us.  Sometimes when we talk, we ask for stuff.  Whether it’s a six-year old asking for a horse or a twenty-six year old asking for the healing of one of his church members.   But asking is just a small part of prayer.  Sometimes when we talk to God it’s to thank Him for something.  And there’s so much to thank him for.

Every time I come back from Haiti, I realize how little I have to complain about and how much I have to thank God for.  Sometimes praying doesn’t sound like talking at all.  Sometimes praying is sitting silently and simply delighting that God is God.

Sometimes sighing is a prayer.  It may not sound like a prayer to us.  But, St. Paul is right.  God translates our sighs into words.  “I’m tired.  I need rest.” “I’m disgusted.  I need perspective.”  “I’ve had it.  I need strength.” 

Sometimes laughing is a prayer.  Singing is a prayer.  Dancing is a prayer.  Painting is a prayer.  Wayne Schedler’s leather making is a prayer.  Joe Swanson’s day lilies are a prayer.  Trude Ranta’s blueberry pies are a prayer.  Anything we say or do that’s offered up to God is a prayer whether we consciously offer it up to God or not.

However we pray God has promised to listen.  To listen because he is in love with us.  And can’t stop talking to us.  And wants us to talk back.  It is as simple as that. 

So, let us pray.

Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we are to pray and to give more than we either desire or deserve.  Pour out on us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask except through the mercy of Jesus Christ, who has taught us by example how to pray.

Next Sunday, August 1, 2010, will be the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost.  To prepare for hearing and responding to the appointed lectionary readings, visit Journey with Jesus.

If for next Sunday you have parish preaching or teaching responsibilities, you may want to prepare for your delivery of a sermon or Scripture lesson by consulting CrossMarks Christian Resources, especially Exegetical notes on texts from the Revised Common Lectionary by Brian Stoffregen.    Remember:  Next Sunday’s Gospel is Luke 12.13-21 (Proper 13, Year C).   Going to Crossmarks is well worth the visit.