10 Pentecost, 2025-C: In the name of Love

Lectionary: Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18; Hebrews 11:29-12:2; Luke 12:49-56

En el nombre de Dios, nuestra luz, nuestro amor, y nuestra vida… 

In the name of God, our light, our love, and our life. Amen. 

So… that’s a tough set of readings we have today. Good news, eh? Actually, it is… if we have eyes to see and ears to hear it.

I want to begin by pointing out my favorite phrase in our Collect today, because it is a VERY important part of what we believe. “Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work” …the fruits of HIS redeeming work.

Somehow, we moved from receiving the fruits of his redemption to working to achieve our own or someone else’s redemption, even though we believe and profess that redemption is a gift from God and not something we can achieve for ourselves.

Christians are not called to worry about our own or anyone else’s salvation. Our faith assures us that Jesus has already accomplished that once for all, for all time. Our life here on earth isn’t about getting to heaven after we die, but about bringing heaven to earth while we live.

Currently, we are living in a time of alarming hypocrisy by people who call themselves followers of Christ. There are prophets among us speaking out right now, and they’re being treated now as prophets always have been - with avoidance and contempt.

But we must listen to these prophets who are telling us honestly where and how we got off the path of love and onto a path of destruction. It’s easy to see - we know the signs and we hear the cries - all over the news and social media.

A couple of people complained to me this week that they hate when we read the prophets because they’re so dark and full of threats and punishment. To which I replied, I love the prophets - they are such a source of hope and some of the most truthful storytellers in our Scripture.

Prophets are only called by God to speak when things are going way wrong, when the path God’s people are on will lead to destruction or death. Through the prophets, God reminds the people how to get back on the path that leads to life.

Prophets don’t hold back when speaking the truth. We also have to remember that the prophets in our Scripture were from a culture of storytellers, whose readers weren’t listening literally as most modern Christians do.

The story being told in Isaiah is a love song about God’s care of and devotion to the people, represented as the vineyard. God provides the people with everything they need to thrive out of pure love for them. “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?” God asks.

But, as Isaiah explains, “…the vineyard… is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!”

This is about as honest as our Scripture gets. God gave us everything we needed to bring about justice, but we created war. We were given all we needed to be in right relationship, but we created suffering.

Whenever and wherever we see bloodshed in our world today or hear cries for help, cries of hunger, or cries of suffering, we know we, God’s people, have not used the gifts God has given us faithfully. The prophets are the ones who remind us to open our eyes and see the reality of the world we have created.

The prophets don’t hold this truth up just to leave us wallowing in misery and hopelessness. They always show us the hope, which is God’s faithfulness to us, despite our faithlessness to God and one another.

When we see and hear the reality in our world, we return to God with something like the prayer in our Psalm: “Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven; behold and tend this vine; preserve what your right hand has planted… Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.”

And God does - every single time. If you read the prophets to the end of their stories, they always end with God responding in tender love for us, protecting and restoring us even when we are caught in a mess of our own making.

This has happened over and over throughout our history as God’s people, which is what the letter to the Hebrews is reminding us. Too many to recount, the author says.

The genius of this letter, however, is how the author connects these stories to faith. It is through faith that, for example, David conquered Goliath. In this storytelling culture, David represents the tiny community of the people of God in Israel who fended off Goliath, who represents the huge, military-supported machine of the Philistines, who were driven by territorial ambition to attack Israel.

If we were to tell this story today, we might say that David represents Ukraine and Goliath represents Russia. Same story, different time.

Our collective narrative is replete with these stories, and that gives us hope. As we see this playing out in our world today, we have a great cloud of witnesses who will testify to us about the faithfulness of God who makes us all Davids, able by God’s grace, to defeat whatever Goliaths we face.

Will people suffer in the meantime? Yes, but by faith we lay aside every weight, every fear, every thought of abandonment, and we run our race with perseverance looking to Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”

Which brings us to our gospel story and one of Jesus’ most challenging teachings. He begins with: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”

Many of our fire-and-brimstone siblings in Christianity would have us believe that Jesus came to purify the world by burning and destroying the enemies of God. Then, of course, they decide who those enemies are. In our world today, this list would include LGBTQIA2S+, anyone who is “woke,” immigrants, refugees, the poor… you know the list.

But they have failed to hear the story being told by Jesus. What does fire mean every time we hear it in our Scripture? We’ve done this enough times that most of you know… fire means the presence of God.

Jesus is prophesying the redemption he is bringing as the Incarnate Word of God, the Second Person of the Trinity who took on human form. Jesus IS the fire, the presence of God on earth.

Then Jesus says, “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Baptism is the ritual, the outward sign of the inauguration of a spiritual transformation, and Jesus is going all out (a better translation than stress) and give everything, even his life, for it to be completed!

Then the really hard part of this teaching - Jesus says, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” This spiritual transformation, Jesus warns us, will divide households.

Some will follow Jesus’ way, letting go of their own power and privilege in order to raise up those who don’t have either, while others will demand they lift themselves up by their own bootstraps. Some will share from the abundance they have, while others will be indignant that the have-nots don’t deserve any rewards they haven’t worked for. Some will recognize all others as siblings in the family of God, while others will hate, denigrate, and oppress those whose skin color, religious practice, gender identity, or language is different from their own.

Many of us already experience this happening among our friends and families. Jesus’ way, the way of Love, will divide families and communities.

The world has always had Goliaths who vociferously defend their destructive path. And Christian Nationalists among us today are even calling their way Jesus’ way. To them, Jesus says, “You hypocrites!”

The way of Jesus is a way of love, generosity, selflessness, kindness, forgiveness, and the sharing of resources with all who need. It does not need or seek earthly political power. Anyway, God’s family includes all nations, peoples, and languages as Isaiah says.

Following Jesus’ way invites us to give all we have as we trust God to redeem. We must also open our eyes, ears, hearts, and hands to the reality around us.

Wherever heaven isn’t happening on earth, there is where we need to be, bearing the light and love of Christ, serving our neighbor, lifting them out of pain, poverty, hunger, oppression, judgment, cruelty, and loneliness, and into peace and harmony in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. We do this as a faith community, and as members of our local, regional, and global communities – all of us working together in the name of Love. Amen.

9 Pentecost, 2025-C: Called to be awake

Lectionary: Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Psalm 50:1-8, 23-24; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40

Our readings today are very sacramentally focused and lead us to ask, why did the ancient Jewish people gather to worship? Why do we?

The answer is simple, and the same for both of us: to foster a sense of unity within the covenant community. In a covenanted community, both God and the people make promises. God promises to be present with us and to act to redeem all things until, ultimately, the will of God is happening on earth as it is in heaven. We promise to cling to God’s promises and to one another while God works that reality into being.

We also promise to be present for God just as God is present for us. It is by being present to God that we can discern God’s will for us and for the world - in each moment - as the big picture of God’s plan of redemption unfolds in earthly history. This takes faithful vigilance because since God is responsive to the world, God’s path forward will change and adapt, and we can only know the path of God by being continually present with God.

One of the most important and functional ways we remain present with God is through services of worship which use prayer and ritual. In the ancient world, services at the local synagogue offered sacrifices for atonement or peace, or festivals celebrating the stories of their redemption by God. They were gathering places for community events and education, and central not only to the religious and community life of the ancient people, but also where legal issues were judicated and the political life of the Jewish people was shaped.

The temple in Jerusalem remains an iconic earthly symbol of the unity of Jewish people everywhere. Each time the temple was destroyed it was devastating to the people but did not deter their moving forward in faith. The same might be said about our churches. We love them, tend to them, worship in them, but if destroyed, as happened to some of the churches in my former diocese of WNC, the people and their service to God continue on.

Worship, however, isn’t enough by itself to fulfill our part of the covenant with God. In the story from Isaiah, God is kinda yelling at the people, saying, ‘Don’t come and worship me while you continue to do evil.’ Evil here refers to dividing the people into two classes: the rich and powerful, and the poor and weak, with the rich class heaping heavy burdens and suffering on the poor, oppressing them.

God knows we are masters of defending the systems we create even when they oppress some among us, because we are benefitting. So, God invites the conversation, ‘let’s argue this out,’ and here is where God’s eternal promise is lifted up again: even though your sins are like scarlet, they shall become like snow… In other words, God will forgive us.

When we accept God’s forgiveness and amend our ways, we will live in peace and enjoy God’s abundance. When we don’t, we will be destroyed by the consequences of our own choices.

The Psalm repeats this message using a court metaphor where God is witnessing against the people of Israel who do not keep their part of the covenant. They forget God and in doing so, lose sight of their only path to redemption. But those who remain present with God will continually witness God’s redeeming love in action.

The letter to the Hebrews was written to early Jewish Christians who knew the stories of the faith of their Jewish ancestors. They could see the big picture of God’s plan of love and connect themselves to those promises fulfilled now in Jesus Christ. It is a beautiful exposition, clarifying that faith is living in expectation of the fulfilment of God’s promises, even though we may not see it happen during our time on earth.

The gospel of Luke was written about 60-70 years after the resurrection to a group of mostly Gentile Christians who were new to these stories and promises. This group of converts was being persecuted and the promised second coming seemed not to be coming at all.

Fear and doubt were creeping in and without a strong historical tether to the stories of their forbears in faith, they were becoming frightened. We can imagine then, how very comforting Jesus’ words were: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

The reign of God, or as our Scripture calls it, the kingdom of God, is both a ‘where’ - in heaven and earth, and a ‘when’ - all that was, and is, and is to come. It is a living, developing, eternal reality. The Greek word, βασιλεία, translates as God’s reign and control over the whole cosmos. It’s also the time when God’s will is being done on earth as it is in heaven.

As we look around at our world today, we see rampant destruction and escalating wars, starvation, appalling poverty and oppression, financial duplicity, and obsessive selfishness. It doesn’t look much like God’s βασιλεία yet, does it?

I’ve mentioned before that we live in a time called the “already, but not yet.” Jesus has already redeemed all creation for all time. It has already happened but is not yet complete.

We have been chosen to be partners with God to work toward the completion of this process, and we have work to do. Each of us has been created and gifted for our part in that work. In order to fulfill our purpose, we must choose to open our eyes to our gifts, then nurture and develop them so that God can use them to bring about the βασιλεία of God.

And Jesus offers us four (4) bits of advice on doing that… 

1. Sell what you own. Jesus advises us to be unattached to any earthly thing that gives us security or identity. We can have them, but we can’t give them priority over God or neighbor. The test is: would we willingly detach from it if God asked us to?

2. Give to the poor. Money = power. Jesus calls us to use our power as he used his: humbling himself and giving his life for the sake of our redemption. Now we are to do the same for the sake of those who have no power: the refugee and immigrant, the poor who work and those who can’t or don’t, the mentally ill, people in the midst of war, our veterans who gave so much serving us, the hungry and oppressed here and around the world – the list is a long one . Give until no one has priority over or is esteemed better than anyone else. Be forewarned, though, the world doesn’t respect those who give up power. It panders to those who accumulate it.

3. Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” This, Jesus tells us, is how we will know where we really are in our effort to love God, other, and self. What kind of wealth do we spend our time, attention, and gifts storing up? This is an especially difficult balance for a church which must have money in order to be a community who serves – but where is the focus? Is it on the church’s survival? Or is it on building and strengthening a community that prays, listens, and serves the needs of the world?

4. Jesus’ last bit of advice is a familiar Biblical theme: Be awake. Be ready. To illustrate this, Jesus tells the parable of the master (God) who shows up unexpectedly and - even more surprisingly - serves the one who serves, translated as slave (us). Be ready, Jesus says, because God will come to you - the one who serves - sit you down to eat, and serve you. I can’t think of a better description of our Holy Communion – if we’re awake to it – and we are called to be awake to it.

God chooses each one of us and calls us into this worshipping community to nourish us, strengthen us, and send us into the world to be co-creators of the βασιλεία of God, until everything is on earth as it is in heaven.

I close with a prayer from the Iona community. Let us pray. 

[O God] For your love for us, compassionate and patient, which has carried us through our pain, wept beside us in our sin, and waited with us in our confusion. We give you thanks.

For your love for us, strong and challenging, which has called us to risk for you, asked for the best in us, and shown us how to serve. We give you thanks.

O God we come to celebrate that your Holy Spirit is present deep within us, and at the heart of all life. Forgive us when we forget your gift of love made known to us in our brother, Jesus, and draw us into your presence. Amen.