Parish Photo Albums

Proper 17, Year C
Jeremiah 2: 4 – 13; Psalm 81: 1, 10 – 16; Hebrews 13: 1 – 8, 15-16; Luke 14: 1, 7 – 14
The Rev. Linda Campbell

Have any of you moved recently? Isn’t it a trial?! When my family moved out of the family home in Sonoma County, it was amazing what we found! Try undoing your home. You’ll find out that NOTHING disappears! The earring that you thought you’d lost long ago, is still there, behind the bed, just where it fell after you got home from that wild Christmas party five years ago.

Going through a home is like looking through a photo album. Albums of memories and connections and meanings, sometimes rather loosely organized. Parishes are like that, too. As we got ready for the construction of the wheelchair lift to go in, things got moved around, and amazing things were found! Stories of the windows. Stories of the kneeler cushions. Just as the parish was about to make a major new investment in becoming even more hospitable, reminders of past major investments were re-discovered, and their stories came to light once more. Just like these beautiful stained glass windows, and these needlepoint kneeler cushions, all of our belongings have stories that surround them.

The stories fit together – sometimes quite loosely, and sometimes we’re only able to recognize the thread that binds them all together after a long time has passed. But the thread is there – and almost always the thread that binds families and parishes together, as well as individual lives, has to do with love and loyalty, faithfulness and forgiveness.

Today’s epistle is like looking through a congregational photo album. The letter to the Hebrews gives what appear to be random snapshots – of hospitality, prison, marriage, adultery, finance, but they are bound together under the banner of love. “Let mutual love continue,” the writer begins, echoing Jesus’ commandment to “Love one another.”

But how did that congregation turn a broad injunction to love others into actual behavior that led to a measurably, demonstrably different kind of life? What difference did it make to “let mutual love continue”? What difference does it make for us? Where do we begin?

The letter writer began with hospitality, particularly with strangers. At St. Alban's, the injunction to practice hospitality as been taken very literally, as the wheelchair lift has been constructed, the handicapped restrooms have been put in. Just this morning, Jill, with her broken ankle, and Merlyn, with his fourteen pound tank of oxygen, were able to be at the parish breakfast because of this commitment to practical hospitality. When you find yourself wondering about the cost of these projects, know that this isn't just something "nice" that St. Alban's has done, but it has been a carrying out of an injunction from scripture to practice hospitality - especially to those who are impaired, lame or crippled, and frail. The gospel is always costly in one way or another!

This morning’s gospel gives us a clear and discomforting picture of hospitality to strangers, especially to the desperately poor and those on the margins of society. Jesus didn’t talk about handouts. He talked about the more costly path of relationship, of conversation, of kindness that is vulnerable to the realities of being human together.

That’s not easy because poverty isn’t pretty. I worked for many years in a church where lunches were served every day to homeless women and children, and weekly lunches to people who were HIV positive. It was much more comfortable to dish out the food then to get out from behind the counter and sit down to eat with the woman who smelled and the child with the bad manners and the runny nose. But whenever I did, I can testify that something mysteriously new always broke out into my world, and that I wouldn’t want to be without those encounters.

Here’s another snapshot – “Remember those who are in prison as though you were in prison with them, those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.” We have certainly heard a great deal about torture in the headlines recently. As your priest, I tell you that Christians may never, under any circumstance, be involved in torturing another human being or any creature. In our own parish, Ruthie Marsh has undertaken a ministry of inviting us to write letters for prisoners whom Amnesty International has identified as being tortured because of conscience. Signing a letter at Ruthie’s table during the monthly parish breakfasts is one way that you can “remember those who are in prison as though you were in prison with them.” You might want to take it one step further, and after signing the letter, remember this person in your daily prayers.

Another photo – this one of marriage. This morning, at the 8:00 service, Merlyn and Barbara Counsel celebrated their 58^th wedding anniversary. And for those of you who know them, their love and faithfulness to each other continue unabated. They are a living witness to the joy of permanence. The truth is that while there is argument over who can and can not be married, the institution continues to be highly valued. While our commercial culture treats relationships as disposable commodities, marriage is a covenant of mutual love and blessing between persons that points to the everlasting covenant God has made with creation. And fornication? It is such an antique word, isn’t it? In the era of Sex and the City – which I have watched and enjoyed – it is virtually meaningless. But regardless of cultural entertainment standards, the church continues to hold out for the risky, come-what-may vows of permanence. The church also recognizes that as humans, such permanence is not always desirable or feasible. We can be confident however the God never abandons the covenant to be with us forever.

And final double sided snapshots – “keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have.” I love how the scriptures zing right to the heart in such a few words – like all worthwhile pictures do.

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have. Contentment with what you have and who you are is counter cultural. We hear so many messages that are just the opposite, that attempt to generate need on our part for something more, something different, and something else, to make us happy. And the ever growing array of choices to answer the needs that have been created keeps us very preoccupied! Jeans, internet providers, coffees, cereals, and on and on .... so many daily choices inundate our lives, that some authors say the choices themselves actually create depression! The solution offered to that of course, are choices of an array of medications and there's always another shopping trip!

The good news is that Jesus stepped in to save us from this death trap of preoccupation with self. To help us become content with exactly who we are, at rest, in God. To set us free from having to buy the next best self-help book that promises freedom and happiness.

But what a way Jesus opened to us! Sit in the place with the least honor. Don’t spend your life trying to be invited to the best parties and the “in” gatherings. Open your life and your heart to those who don’t matter; to those who don’t count; to those who are overlooked. Jesus pointed us towards Life by pushing us to the edge of our very human, fundamental fears about not mattering, about being nobody, ultimately really about death.

That is why Christianity is dangerous. Because the cross stands in the center of every avenue by which we try to approach God. This is the pulsating generative truth at the heart of the gospel – you must lose your life in order to save it. Or as the modern theologian, Marcus Borg puts it; “your heart must be hatched open.”

The snapshots contained in the letter to the Hebrew’ show us what a hatched open heart looks like. It is an awakened heart filled with gratitude and contentment and the mystery of joining hands with the prisoners and the poor. It is a lively heart that imitates Christ who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant.

This is our family album, bound together by love and faithfulness. It is a series of snapshots of each one of us, out in the world, practicing our religion, letting the Holy Spirit work through the sacraments and the scriptures and our daily encounters with others to break our hearts open so that we do, in truth, let mutual love continue.

Resources:

The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg

The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz

Peace, Walter Brueggemann

Christian Century, 8/24/04, Living by the Word, Bruce Wollenberg