August 21, 2016 Luke 6:39-49

He also told them a parable:
“Can a blind person guide a blind person?
Will not both fall into a pit?

A disciple is not above the teacher,
but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher.

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye,
but do not notice the log in your own eye?
Or how can you say to your neighbor,
‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’
when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye?
You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye,
and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.

“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit;
for each tree is known by its own fruit.
Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.
The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil;
for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.

“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?
I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words,
and acts on them.

That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it,
because it had been well built.
But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation.
When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house.”

SERMON (PASTOR)
You cannot take a speck out of a friend’s eye without loving them, and if you love them, you love them speck and all, because that’s what love is, accepting people for who they are, and all and loving them, not just anyway, but because of it, because it too, whatever that thing is, that speck, is they are who they are, its what makes all of them.

I am headed to L.A. over Labor Day to see my closest friend Lisa, but it will be the first time I will have gone and not seen my former best friend Anne. We were best friends from eighteen to thirty-one, and had been though a lot, camp counselors together, college and grad school, the death of a parent, a wedding and a divorce, and a good handful of heartbreaks and more first dates than one could count. By twenty we had crossed over each US border together, and traveled to see one another in who knows many states. Today, we haven’t spoken for a year, and had unresolved falling out the year before.

I told Lisa, who knows us both, how there was a grieving in going to L.A. without seeing Anne too, another piece of saying goodbye to that friendship. Lisa said, “You guys will be friends again someday,” and I agreed that there space for that, but I said, “There would have to be some sort of apology and understanding before that happened. That I didn’t want to continue to be hurt by her choice of prioritizing places over people.” I didn’t like the way it sounded even when I said it. It was true, but it told more about my own hurt, moreover and perhaps because of that hurt, my comment somehow expected Anne to change in order for us to reconcile. It wasn’t me loving someone for who they are, speck and all.

Lisa said Anne has been in Europe all summer, but should be coming home around that weekend. That currently, Anne would be visiting Lisa’s mom and dying grandmother, and I instantly knew that as abrasive as Anne can be on all sorts of things, she is good with other people’s dying, both the sorrow and the medical complications that accompany failing health. I said to Lisa that Anne would be good being there for her mom in a way that most people wouldn’t. Saying it felt like trying backtrack from the earlier judgement and Lisa heard both, my leveling and the reassuring.

For the next few days, I wrestled with not wanting to be hurt again, but also knowing that Anne didn’t need to change for us to be friends. I would have to love her for who she is, all of her, speck and all, and what that might require is seeing my own log. A log that values relationships over all other things and a log that I know can be hyper-emotional If Anne is a friend, I have to love her speck and all, but maybe I also have to love myself log and all.

The scripture says, “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye,
and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” Well, you can’t take a log out of your own eye its too big. And so maybe its learning to love the logs we have. I was once told that our strengths are our weaknesses, and our weaknesses are our strengths. So what if, a log isn’t a good or a bad thing. Its just the way we see the world, its our lens and our view. When I think of my own log, I know I couldn’t live this calling if I didn’t value relationships paramountly and if I wasn’t connected to my emotions. Funny thing is Anne has a Phd. in sociology, it is her job to look scientifically at people without emotion. She needs this lens to do what she is called to do. This view may be the log that keeps us from being friends again, maybe it's what's required to love myself, but it also may be the log we need to help us see ourselves rightly.

A log is made up of uncountable specs; our view is never the clearest, never the absolute truth. In fact, maybe we need other’s truths to see rightly. It takes friend, or at least a good close up mirror to help us even see a speck to remove, and we can’t see anyone else while we have speck in our own eye. But the speck is part of the log, and the log makes us who we are, and if we are friends, if we are Christians, we will love each other, and ourselves log and all.

August 14, 2016 Luke 6:17-26

He came down with them and stood on a level place, 

with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. 

They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; 

and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 

And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, 

for power came out from him and healed all of them. 

Then he looked up at his disciples and said: 

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 

“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. 

“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; 

for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. 

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 

“Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. 

“Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. 

“Woe to you when all speak well of you, 

for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. 

***

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCguq3hTC2M

The young woman stands, leaning to one side, hip jutted out, her thin back to her friend’s phone camera, which pans until we see the young woman also has her phone out, and is watching her video screen. There is part of it that just feels voyeristic rather than fully appreciative, like the point is to capture him, to take the man’s music for herself, to expose to the world the juxtaposition of weathered skin and simple clothes, with the elegance of his song. With the separation of the screen, she has chosen to keep her distance, rather than be in the music with him. Then like a lion in a ring, sizing up its opponent, she walks around him; not something one would do at a concert, but he is not afforded the still silence to which Bach should ensew, his social status as a homeless man trumps his artistry. In the camera lens we watch her detract from his performance as she too is in the limelight of contrast. Her fresh dark curls to his sun-bleached, untrimmed hair and beard, her model thinness to his tanned skin wrapped closely around bones. There is a moment she dances, swaying like kid, the fringe on her purse swings side to side as she smiles and stops again to enjoy, this time without her camera, at least for moment and she is in it without, lost herself in the music like an symphony goer who leans their head back on the edge of the chair closing their eyes and just listens. She moves to his front and side and places her hand on her chin, as if she is realizing there is more than meets the eye. But with that realization comes her need to make it about her, and she begins to video again, as if you can capture a song in snippets, as if you can capture live sound on a phone’s camera. She tells her friend, mid-song, “Do you know how hard this piece is to play,” and when the friend doesn’t hear, she repeats it louder, “Do you know how hard this piece is to play?” There is a way she wants him to be seen, and uses power of her voice to the end, but by speaking she makes her voice drone out his song, distracting the viewer, when perhaps just giving her full attention would have done the same, if not more. 

But there is a way in which his hat on the piano allows it, welcomes it, but keeps the system intact, the one with having power over the one without. Soon in the corner of the camera we see her slide open her black leather wallet and pull out a couple bills, pushing back some more. She unfolds them, inspecting how much to give, all while keeping the decision hidden from him, though not the camera. She says, “This is really cool,” and it feels like justifying herself, as she walks forward to his hat. 

“Its good to see you,” she interrupts as he plays, and over his refined Bach, he responds, with the same casual speech, “it was good to see you too,” and she walks away, a piece of him in her purse, a piece of her purse on his piano. It wasn’t the end he might have been used to whoever it was he learned to play, when the conductor circles and pinches his hands and there is that pause before the clapping starts. We don’t know when it ends, because the camera shuts off, as we assume the friends leave together. 

The video would go viral, without his permission, without his knowing, without his name. The next day the camera holder would go back, find him, video him, while they told him the news. They would ask him about his music background - playing his whole life, and in the marine corp, and all over the world, going to school for music theory, playing everything from the piccolo to the tuba. And still videoing they would ask how long he’d been homeless, and tell him that they hoped someone would find him a job, not in construction for which he said he had skills, but in music, because they saw his gift. But missed the reality of the system, that this mans hands had been worth more in labor than pleasure. But they knew the reality, like woman speaking over his song, that it just might take someone from the outside plucking him out of his poverty, for it to be overcome. Other videos, as he became more famous, show a transformation of his beard being shaved, his hair trimmed, and playing at an NFL game, and I question if this is simply more of the same. An outsider’s camera catching him, and a bigger hat catching the outsider’s purses. It’s the system on a larger scale. 

And my question is, when is he seen as the musician, rather than the homeless musician? When is he seen as Donald Gould? 

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 

“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. 

“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy,

for surely your reward is great in heaven; 

for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. 

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 

“Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. 

“Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. 

“Woe to you when all speak well of you, 

for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

Watching this video is painful, because I identify with the woman, though I see her missteps, how am I any different, preaching his story, using their video, sharing my voice? Woe, to me, for I already received my consolation, but I cannot see.

July 31, 2016 Luke 12:13–21

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus,

 “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 

But Jesus said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 

And Jesus said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” 

Then Jesus told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

***

I struggle with this passage, and ones like it. 

I struggle that I spent a few weeks at my parent’s second home, on Cape Cod. I struggle with the image that it portrays of Kennedy’s and sailing, and, “summer,” as a verb, and the location itself arrogantly abbreviated to, the Cape, as if it were the only Cape in the world.

I struggle because it’s not who we are, if you were to visit, (and I promise my parents have an open door policy if you are ever near Boston) you would find a small house, where simply making lunch sandwiches on the kitchen counter requires the skill of a Twister game - we are so on top of one another in a space so small. What you wouldn’t see, is my parents years of frugality, my memory of parts coming off our old car as friends and I were picked up from an 8th grade dance, you wouldn’t see my mom frequenting thrift stores and my sister and I wearing second hand clothes, and getting excited for direct handle downs from two girls at church. You wouldn’t see my mother’s depression-era-like saving of everything from cool-whip containers for tupperware, and general penny pinching that spent nothing on herself. She literally, I believe spends more on what my grandfather, calls, “Mumsys backyard restaurant, which feeds the birds, squirrels and even unintentionally, rats,” in their backyard. Equally altruistic, my father will spend half the day cooking for guests. And though they care for others, including my 92 year old grandfather, I struggle, because I get to see my parents relax from their busy lives in San Antonio; my dad reads the baseball scores each morning and my mom putzs in the garden, and I gain ten pounds on seafood, and sitting on the beach, and driving guests to various sites. 

I struggle because although we grew up very frugal, there are ways that the classic images of Cape Cod do ring true. The fact that we are, “summer people,” whether we want to admit it or not, and that on occasion we have succumbed to terms like, “the Cape.” Even more so, I cringe, with privileged guilt, when my parents say, “We didn’t know where the girls (my sister and I) would end up, so we tried to pick a place that they also would like after we are gone. I struggle because no matter how frugal, we, simply as Americans, have an unbelievable inheritance as one of the wealthiest countries in the world. There are days we don’t think about running water, and indoor plumbing, or having enough food to eat, and I can’t help but feel like I have a wealth of barns even though I spent my vacation time hosting and officiating more than I did relaxing. 

I struggle because I think Jesus tells us to do both, to enjoy, to eat, drink, and be merry, as well as to give all our possessions to the poor. I struggle because it seems the host will always have more than the guest, but we need both, and Jesus asks us to be both. I struggle because in this passage Jesus seems to preach a happy medium and I don’t know what that looks like in my parents life, or my own, or yours, or as a church. In this passage one brother asks for his brother to split their father’s inheritance, and it is hard to tell whom Jesus is critiquing, the brother who got nothing and wants, or the brother who got everything and will not share, the guest or the host, or both. That what Jesus is implying is that to be poor and only think about money is no different than to be rich and do the same. Jesus says, that neither brother should worry about possessions about inheritance. That when it comes to wealth what is rich, is to be rich toward God and loving toward neighbor. The rich farmer is not wrong for wanting to store his crops in a land of drought and uncertainty, he is wrong because he doesn’t think of anyone else nor does his wealth honor God. But how much are we supposed to store, and how much are we supposed to give, and how can our death count to honoring God?

As a church with its own inheritance, of memorials gifts and endowments, how much are we supposed to save for future generations, and how much are we supposed to use on ministry and mission today? Moreover, how much are we just simply not supposed to worry about endowments and inheritance and instead focus on being rich with God right now? We as a church can measure our finances down to the penny but have we measured the power of our prayers, our ministry of presence, or the purpose of us here in this moment in our sanctuary? We know how humanly rich we are but do we spend equal time seeking to be rich toward God?

In our own lives, how often, how many times a day, do we think about money, about having or having not? I think of the bills and debts I have to pay, of big expenses, and I think of my guilt of already having too much, the privilege of simply being born here in America and adopted into the family I was. How often, in those times, do we pray, instead to be rich with God? I don’t. I just make myself stop thinking. But, maybe those are the times, I can send up a prayer, or text someone who might need a bright spot in their day. What if the times we thought about wealth were the times we re-focused on being rich toward God? What would this look like for you? What would this look like for us as a church community? Does it look like guest or the host? I think God wants both. I think God wants us to enjoy, to eat, drink, and be merry with friends, and also to give away what we have. I think God wants us not to focus on what we have, and to focus instead on God. But those lines of what is what, are hard, and I struggle.