Pentecost 15 - C

Dinner at the Table
Introduction

I remember that there was one basic rule in our house that trumped all others. We ate supper together. It was possibly the only thing we did together, especially as my brother and I aged. My dad worked a lot, both before and after supper. We often only saw him at supper… but we probably saw him at almost every supper.

Inevitably we would be asked all those questions that now that I am a parent, I appreciate more… how was school, what is new, how is your project coming? I almost always answered, fine, or that nothing was new. As do my own kids…

But I understand now what my father was about. He wanted to make a connection. He wanted to have this one time when we heard each other, when we solved problems as a family, when big decisions were made.

Family meals were about character building. They were about values. They were about connection.

As an adult I love dinner parties for exactly this reason, or even having a conversation over a cup of tea. It is food and fellowship that bring us together. Jesus knew this. He loved a good dinner party and almost all of his instruction happens around meal times… whether with his disciples, or with his enemies, or with strangers… Jesus sat down and ate and talked and shared.

And just like in my home, it was during those meals that a lot of character building and instruction got handed down.

Dinner with Kings

What if you have dinner with a king? What I just read are actually instructions about decorum of speech, handling conflict, and maintaining one’s honor and reputation.

What it boils down to is this: Do not question the king’s wisdom (verses 2–3); do not be drawn into corrupt schemes at court (verses 4–5); do not be hasty exposing others’ misdeeds lest you misstep and bring shame upon yourself (verses 8–10).

In sum, hold your tongue, keep your nose clean, and don’t meddle -- all good advice for those climbing the ladder of success at court.

What we are going to see is that there is a lot of similarity to Jesus’ advice when he has dinner with the Pharisees… and there is good reason. In essence it advises courtiers to keep a low profile for it is better to be lifted up than put down. And that is good advice for anyone…

But more importantly we are talking about motive… it is about asking the question as to who you are serving and why. Are you doing it just to get ahead, or are you trying to do the right thing.

If you are going to be dealing with kings, with government, with your career; then acting out of the best motives and being humble and moral are very good ideas as to how you can get ahead.

But this is just to set the stage and remind you all that there are a couple of thousand years of wisdom, at least, boiled down in these dinner time conversations. And even the ones I had with my dad were similar… how to make friends or avoid bullies on the school yard often boiled down to just these same sorts of advice… keep out of trouble, say the right thing, don’t make enemies of people…

But is this about faith? Or just about Common Sense?

The Best Advice Ever

My grandfather was the family’s dispenser of wisdom. He was a Baptist who was also a school principle who had also fought in World War Two. He started with nothing and ended content with his lot in life.

And sometimes he said wise things, to be sure. He often told corny jokes though, and you could confuse the two…

The way he really taught was by example. He would let you have your say, ask you questions to consider your options, and then live his life the way he thought was right. He almost never said you had to do it his way… but he made it clear that his way was right. And you wanted that, you wanted the certainty, the knowledge, and the peace which it seemed to bring him.

So what did he do? He worked on things, he helped anyone who asked, he did not lie or cheat or swear… I don’t know, he had a life before I was around and when I was away, so he might not have been perfect all the time… but when he was around you he modelled the good and godly life.

Which is what all of this has been focussing on this morning, the wisdom that gets handed down from generation to generation, often at the dinner table, but maybe out in the barn, or the classroom, or on long drives….

So what is the best advice you ever received? What is the best you have ever given?

This wisdom, as most good advice does, echoes the wisdom of the Bible, is about who we are meant to be, and how we are meant to be. It acknowledges that God is good and created us to be good, and it is about living out that goodness in the real world where we find ourselves.

I Have a Dream

You may have heard on the news that this week was the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington by Martin Luther King Jr. King was an activist and Baptist preacher who wanted to ensure that there were equal rights for black people. He was also one of the best preachers ever, and it showed.

The thing is, he believed that equality, that love, that black and white people eating together at the table, was all part of Jesus idea of the heavenly banquet… that this is what God intended for us.

So on August 28th 1963 Martine Luther King Jr. gave a speech in Washington, that would become known as the “I have a dream” speech. Here is some of what he said:

“I have a dream that one day right there in Alabama little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers….

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character…

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood."

Seems to me that this is not very different than Jesus’ dream; seems to me that this is what God has been trying to get across to us forever. So what is your dream for the world? What part of God’s way would you like to see made a little more real?

Conclusion

“One does not live by bread alone,” as Jesus argues in the temptation scene. It is not like Jesus is only concerned about what happens at meals. His teaching is about the way we treat others, especially those among us who unable to “pay us back.” We say in our modern world that all people are created equal… but are we so different than the folks back in Jesus day?

We do have our ways of making sure that there is an us and a them… we create distinctions between people,… and most of the time these distinctions keep us from true fellowship with one another. Jesus’ story is a reminder to us about the company we keep. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood, “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”

Pentecost 12 - C

Thief in the Night!

Introduction
How much faith do you have? Enough to move mountains?

I do not. I have to be honest with you, I have never been one of those people who feels that if I pray about it everything will be ok. I knew a guy in seminary who would set out on a road trip to an important meeting and not fill the car with gas, claiming that God would provide… Most of us thought he was crazy….

But he, honest to God, believed that God would provide… the one thing he did not lack was faith.

And it always made me wonder, what does it mean to have faith? What is it that we are supposed to have faith in?

There are many possibilities, we can believe we are going to heaven if we are good enough, we can believe that God is making things work out the way they are supposed to, we can have faith that Jesus came and did something which saved us in some way…

But on a day to day basis… what do we have faith in? And what do we mean by that… is it the same thing to say, “I believe in” as when we say that “I trust that” and is that what it is to say, “I have faith in”

Just some light fluffy questions for you to think about …

I can tell you that it is hard. It is hard for most people to believe everything will be all right when the evidence shows differently. When you are all alone it is hard to believe in love. When you are really sick it is hard to believe you will get better. You get the idea, just having faith that something will work out is not a very easy thing to do.

Is it Just Trust?
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and not seen.

I have heard that definition for most of my life… faith is simply believing, despite the evidence. So, from this perspective, is faith simply trust? Is that all there is to it?

That passage from Hebrews is right, there were a ton of people who trusted God and did what was asked of them without ever seeing the promises fulfilled. Abraham was going to be the father of a billion people, or at least that is what God promised; but when Abraham died his kids hated each other and it was not looking good.

Moses never saw the promised land, even Jesus didn’t find out whether Easter meant anyone to anyone…. In other words, they just trusted that doing the right thing would bring the right result.

We all take risks. I suppose, we take a new job, or we move, or we get married or we have kids, or we buy a house… hoping that things will work out the way we want. But we have some idea before we do it, don’t we… we go and see the house, we interview for the job… we try to raise the kids properly… it is not really going in blind… we are not asked to trust that everything will work out even though we cannot possibly imagine how that could be possible.

The Biblical characters were… Abraham finally had a son when he was somewhere North of 80 and the very next thing God tells him to do is take him up the mountain and sacrifice the boy. So… he has waited his whole life for the promise of kids… and when it happens… God says, you are going to lose him… but trust me…

What would you do? Do you have faith like that? Can anyone? And again, is that what it means… to trust despite not knowing?

The Stick
What if the definition of faith, the definition of trust was to sell everything you have and join a convent, become a monk, join the church and wait for the end of the world? It might make things a whole lot easier, no?

At least we would know what was expected of us, what being faithful meant…

But I think this passage goes deeper. Where the passage about Abraham told us that faith is being able to trust God, this passage tells us that faith is also the belief that things are different, that things will get better, that there are other possibilities.

What if I said it this way: You don’t need the fancy car or the big house. You don’t need the big promotion or the flashy jewelry. You need to live life in a way that you are ready for whatever happens. You need to be ready for the miracle of really living… of the unexpected… of the new… and if you are too tied in to the old, you will never be able to recognize when the new things are happening.

One of the main things that Jesus came and tried to teach us is to embrace possibility. He would call it the kingdom of God, and he was always saying that God has made the world much bigger than we believe… that there are always more possibilities than we can imagine… that anything is possible.

I remember growing up and believing that I had to be one of four things, a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or a minister. I honestly did not think there were many other jobs… but I could also be a soldier while doing any of those things so make it five…

One day when I was in my 20’s and almost done seminary I drove by a billboard saying that I should become a Marine Biologist and work with whales… And I thought, how cool would that be! But I never even thought of that before? People can really become marine biologists?

I know it sounds silly, but that was really what I thought. All of a sudden I realized the world was a whole lot bigger than I had been imagining… and the only thing limiting me was myself; I had made myself believe that only certain things were possible.

I have done a whole lot of things since then, just for the record, and right then I also decided to start working on writing. It took a decade or so but I started writing for the papers, and on stories, and magazines….

I had never believed I could do that… but all of a sudden I started to ask, why not?

So be ready for action, keep your lamps lit, let go of the things that are holding you back, look out for the opportunity that is coming in the middle of the night, be ready for what God throws your way…. That is what I believe Jesus was saying.

Conclusion

So I do not think that faith is simply trust, and I do not think it is simply believing in certain things.

I believe faith is a way of life. It is a way of seeing the world that says that there is more out there than I can possibly imagine, and being okay with that.

That also means that we are called to have a sense of trust, a sense of belief, a sense of openness and a sense of wonder as we approach life.

No matter what comes our way, we have to be ready to embrace it and see it through, we have to be willing to ask, what are we supposed to learn in this and where is it supposed to lead us…

By embracing the world for what it is and seeing God at work in everything, maybe we can even move mountains.