August 11, 2019 - Ninth Sunday After Pentecost - Connections with Today's Gospel, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, and the Free-Range Church

August 11 was our outdoor service. Paul played drums for the first time, Claire the ocarina, me guitar and Matt on keyboards. Shirley was the Assisting Minister. Changing the space definitely changed the feeling of the service and many things were adjusted, like how people went up to receive communion. There was rain the night before so there was some concerns initially about the dampness of the grass but the sun came up during the service and things dried up nicely.
Creator's new council was installed. There was cake for a celebration after the service. A couple of St. Stephen's congregation members were there to talk about the Via de Christo retreat taking place in October this year at Turner, Oregon.

Practicing worship differently on a particular Sunday fits in with the Gospel lesson for the day, Luke 12:32-40, where Jesus says Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit.  We may focus on what becomes second nature to us on a Sunday and may not  always appreciate the unique and varied ways we can "dress" for action.  Making ourselves ready for the unexpected, as Jesus admonishes us, is not like insuring we have plans or the money to cover any future contingency.  Setting our hearts to "making a purse that does not wear out" takes us to a different perspective on life.

Of course this is not the stand out verse of the Gospel. What concerns most of us is the direct command "Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." together with the warning to be prepared for the master's coming. Looking at this verse as a direct command it is not easy to see this as something we can easily and continually do on earth as we live our lives.

"Giving until it hurts" may be a good practice but we cannot be prepared for the master's coming by constantly selling possessions and constantly giving alms. As noble as this aim might be this could mire and tempt us to think about our possessions and others constantly rather than making a purse that does not wear out and the unfailing treasure Jesus wants us to invest ourselves in. We need only think of the story of Mary anointing Jesus with expensive ointment. Obviously this was an unfailing treasure for her. Jesus did not have her sell the ointment and give the money as alms. There is something more going on in this apparently direct command.

I have lived this Gospel text for the day all week starting with a story Pastor Ray told last Sunday in our Adult Forum. Eric was leading us in a discussion about the book The Sacredness of Questioning Everything by David Dark. Dark brings up the concept of God as an angry, vengeful tyrant, an abomination who punishes the slightest doubt or faithlessness with a swift and terrible consequence, a false God which he names Uncle Ben, or “Nobodaddy.”  Dark confesses to slipping into this conception of God every so often as we all can do.

When Eric asked for personal stories Pastor Ray told his story of being terrified as a child by a 1972 evangelical Christian film titled A Thief in the Night, a rapture story that came before The Late, Great Planet Earth that pulled end-time prophecies in the Bible with then-current events in an attempt to predict future scenarios resulting in the rapture of believers before the tribulation and Second Coming of Christ to establish his thousand-year Kingdom on Earth. Pastor Ray felt terrified that he was not among the blessed and was going to hell because he was falling short.

Last week Pastor Ray preached about people who examine themselves like this falling prey to a crippling judgment that "I am not enough." This Gospel could be read as Jesus commanding something impossible to achieve in life and warning that if we are not prepared to do this we may not be among the blessed.

When I read this Gospel on Monday in preparation for a text study I was going to attend with local pastors the thief reference immediately jumped out. At the text study the pastors all pointed out how important it is to put trust in the first verse "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."

We need not worry about being blessed. Heaven is populated  by nothing but forgiven sinners and hell is populated  by nothing but forgiven sinners. The difference us that those in heaven simply accept God's endless forgiveness and those in hell do not.

And this brings me to an email Pastor Erika from Story Dwelling, an emerging spiritual movement in Bend rooted in relationship, sent to that group. She titled the email  This Sunday: Free-Range Church. The boxed texts here are from that email.

She talks about a conversation shared last week in the group where it was brought up that one of the greatest sins we have been forced to operate under is that we are all separate. She went on to hope that we live our lives to reveal that this is simply not true. We are interconnected and interdependent, living in communion.

She sent this email out because they were not physically meeting this weekend and, perhaps not unsurprisingly, this email was the closest I have felt so far to being part of that group.

It amazes me that we easily pass up the Father's good pleasure to give us the kingdom that Jesus talks about to focus and worry about not being prepared. Why does Jesus include this following warning of not being prepared? 

"Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. "But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."

For me this works as a follow up on last week's Parable of the Rich Fool. The farmer's death is the lynch-pin this story revolves around. Often the greed of the farmer or his self-absorption is stressed but consider if he lived another decade most would applaud his thoughts as prudent rather than self-absorbed.

These are also the words of Jesus on his way to Jerusalem to face his death. We can consider the story of the cross is a story about God's behavior in life when facing death. On the cross, with nails in his hands and feet, he does all that he judges needs doing, and he does it all by doing precisely nothing. He just dies. He does not get mad, he does not get even, he just gets out.

No wonder Jesus starts us with "do not be afraid". He is talking about accepting death, his and ours, as a way of being alert and prepared. Our desire is to do anything but that. Yet God doesn't work with the ways we learn to live. This is why Jesus is commanding us to sell our possessions. Finally God's judgement is not about anything we have acquired.

God does not work with the ways we chose as we are dying. We may choose our way to die but that is not the preparation Jesus wants us to do to be alert. In the end God can only grant resurrection and eternal life only through death.