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Sun, Sep 29, 2019 St John’s, Winnsboro

Pentecost 16

Opening

We conclude this week a series of readings from the gospel of Luke that have had to do with priorities and the value of money or service. I recognized in my first year of ordained ministry, having to preach on these texts that they serendipitously fall during the traditional time of pledge drives, preparing church budgets, basic fiscal management in the churches.
Next month we continue reading from the gospel of Luke, hearing Jesus teach and heal. The focus shifts toward healing and prayer, sincerity of heart.
Goodness, the Christian life is complex. At least there are a lot of moving pieces to it. What do we make of it? How is what we hear today helpful to our lives as Christians?

Stories (religious)

What does a story mean? Take e.g. Good Night Moon
In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of-
The cow jumping over the moon …
Goodnight little house
And goodnight mouse
Goodnight comb
And goodnight brush
Goodnight nobody
Goodnight mush
And goodnight to the old lady whispering “hush”
Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
Goodnight noises everywhere
Little children have loved the story for generations. You can tell because they say, “Daddy, read it again” over and over again. Children still know how to appreciate stories. Adults – at least many of them – have lost the ability to love stories.
How do you say the meaning of that story? In some sense you can’t say the meaning of the story, because the point of it is lead a child into a peaceful sleep, fully confident of the love and security of the parent.
Jesus’ stories are a little like that. And today’s reading from Luke’s gospel is all story – just story, without any commentary from Jesus. There’s no Jesus speaking. It is a story that he has told.

It’s about religious language

The stories we encounter in the gospels are called parables in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
They are a particular kind of religious language, and it’s possible pick apart some of the ways that parables work. It turns out that the way we have interpreted them for a long time tends to miss the point. Not unlike if we were to write an essay about the construction and word usage in the story “Good Night Moon.”
Religious language has as one of its basic purposes to change us. To startle us into a new awareness that is really a new life.
A group of students at Winthrop University gave me an analogy for this function of parables. They pointed out that the word “parable” sounds like the word “parabola”.
Very interestingly, when you graph a parabola you draw a line that at some point turns and heads in a new direction.

parables // parabola

Parables are about metanoia – “conversion” – which is to say “turning and going in another direction”
  • The simplest equation for a parabola is y = x2
  • x-squared is a parabola
  • link
  • illustration
I thought of an interesting illustration of the point I am making. When my youngest daughter was learning to ride a bicycle she was determined to join the federation of her friends that could travel by bicycle. She was ready to leave the world of tricycles behind. I can still picture her getting up for the first time, riding around the cul de sac we lived on. There was joy on her face.
But there was something missing. She didn’t know fully how to ride a bicycle. She didn’t how to brake and didn’t yet know the importance of that change in her understanding of how to ride a bike. She didn’t learn how she needed to change her understanding of how to ride a bike from anything anybody told her. She learned it at the end of her first ride as she crashed into a large bush in a neighbor’s yard. She needed to change and it was only when she came up against a problem – her crash – that she recognized the need for change and had the motivation to actually change.
Religious parables are intended to bring about a change in the lives of those who hear the story.
Parables are intended to give us something essential for our life as Christians. They are not giving us information. They are not teaching us a lesson. They are guiding us to a change in our life.

What do we do with the story of the rich man and Lazarus?

We can learn things that are interesting, like the fact that it is the only parable in the New Testament where the character has a name.
We can observe that the name of this character, Lazarus, is the same name as the key figure in John’s Gospel, Mary and Martha’s brother who was raised from the dead.
There is much we could learn about this religious story. But the point is for us to be confronted in some way that we leave changed, ready to head in a new direction.
That will vary somewhat from person to person. But one thing we have to get from the parable is a confrontation with the inequities between rich and poor, in our communities, in our nation and the world.
We would have to recognize that as much as we might like the poor to show us what to do, it is we who have to change.
The result of our change of life would have to reflect in some way the resurrected life of Jesus.
The concluding words of a long theological book on Jesus said it plainly for me.1
Epilogue:
postscript to the story of the crippled man
[674]
[paraphrase this]
This book begins with the story from Acts (4:10-12)2 about the village cripple who was cured when he heard Peter tell the story of Jesus. Martin Buber, too, recognizes the power of story telling, when he has a rabbi relate the following: “My grandfather was paralysed. One day he was asked to tell about something that had happened to his teacher, the great Baalshem. Then he told how the saintly Baalshem used to leap about and dance while praying. As he went on with the story my grandfather stood up; he was so caught up in the story that he had to show whal the master had done and started to caper about and dance. From that moment on he was cured. That is how stories should be told.”
If this book, the story of the living Jesus, serves to rekindle faith which tells stories with practical, critical impact based on prayerful lingering in the precincts of God’s kingdom and its praxis, I would consider myself blessed. If not, then as far as I am concerned it may join the list of second-hand books tomorrow.
We can make the same kind of judgment about our attending church, making pledges, hearing the gospel read. The point of it all is that our hearts would be set on fire. The point of it all is that we would change the direction of our lives – if only, perhaps, a portion of it. In the words of Graham Kendrick from his album No More Walls :
Turn our hearts to one another
Let your kindness show
Where our words or deeds have wounded
Let forgiveness flow
Turn our hearts (x 2)
Turn our hearts from pride and anger
To your ways of peace

Notes:

Lectionary

The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost Color:
Green Assigned Readings (Proper 21 )
Track One Lesson 1: Jeremiah 32:1-3a,6-15 Psalm: 91:1-6,14-16
Track Two Lesson 1: Amos 6:1a,4-7 Psalm: 146
Lesson 2: 1 Timothy 6:6-19
Gospel: Luke 16:19-31
  • Contentment
  • brought nothing into the world, take nothing out
  • love of money
  • Man of faith] “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith;”
  • Lazarus at the gate
  • He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”
Only parable with a name – n.b. “dives” = L. for “rich man”
confusion with John’s Lazarus?
1 story? a parable? 2 stories? or 1 story with an addition
Listen to the prophets.

Saint Michael and All Angels Mon, Sep 30, 2019

Saint Michael and All Angels Transferred from September 29 Color: White Assigned Readings Lesson 1: Genesis 28:10-17 Psalm: 103 or 103:19-22 Lesson 2: Revelation 12:7-12 Gospel: John 1:47-51
Miriam’s birthday: “Glory”
Michaelmas: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael (sometimes Uriel (God is my light– in apocrypha
Known to Quran

  1. Schillebeeckx/Buber collected works ↩︎
  2. Peter had healed a lame man and was now being accused of blasphemy by the teachers of the law. He responds that it is by Jesus’ name that the man was healed and by the power of the Resurrection. ↩︎

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