A CENTRAL PARK CHURCH

6 13 10

LUKE 7:36-8:3

ANTHONY E.ACHESON, M.DIV.

Over the past couple of years Nancy and I have had occasion to go to New York City a few times, to visit our daughter and son-in-law. This included a visit with them near the beginning of last month when I was taking my vacation time. Whenever I am in New York, one thing that impresses me is the enormous diversity present in that city. And the one place within the city where that diversity is most evident is in Central Park. You can see a multitude of both sights to see, not to mention many kinds of people and of activities there. You can see it in the varieties of trees and plants and landscape in the park. You can see it in activities that take place each day. You can see people playing tennis, softball, soccer, hockey, rollerblading, bicycling, jogging and, of course, walking dogs, and throwing Frisbees. Those diverse activities spring from an enormous diversity in the cast of characters you see in that park. There are infants in strollers or backpacks; young and old, blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians; straights and gays; tall and short; people who are in good shape and people who are less so. Of all the ways we might think about a place like Central Park, one thing is for sure: it is a place that welcomes and has a place for them all.

Central Park in New York, is a place that offers one possible image, one possible analogy, of what the church can look like when it is at its best:  a community where all people are welcome; and where everyone who enters its boors has the opportunity for healing and renewal, for growing and self-betterment, not to mention the simple enjoyment of good company and fellowship. That is a goal that our own denomination, the United Church of Christ, strives for proactively. In both the UCC as a whole, and in our congregation here in Greensboro, we seek faithfully to foster a form of community that is genuinely welcoming and non-exclusionary. And I believe that, at least to some meaningful degree, we have been able to achieve something of that loving and welcoming quality both in our denomination and here in our local congregation.

In today’s text from Luke 7, it is precisely that kind of accepting, welcoming community that is missing in the house of Simon the Pharisee. He has invited Jesus to dinner. There is no implication in the text that he is trying to trap Jesus into anything hurtful as we see in some other passages. Biblical scholarship tells us that many Pharisees were deeply devout people who were working diligently to bring holiness and righteousness into the smallest details of their lives and conduct, and it would appear that Simon was just such a man.  Jesus has accepted his dinner invitation. The meal begins. But while they are around Simon’s table an unnamed woman comes in to visit Jesus. Everyone present, including the woman, appears knows that this woman is what the text calls, ‘a sinner,’ she is clearly a person of low-reputation. Even in the midst of that self-awareness, however, she is drawn to Jesus. She is drawn to him as one who offers welcome and acceptance even in the face of whatever compromising choices she may have made in her life. Her actions towards Jesus show her joy at what he clearly considers to still be possible for her life.  Jesus has the ability to see her not in terms of her weaknesses, and not in terms of the bad choices she may have made in her life. He is able to continue to see her, as it were, in her original version, and as her original self, namely, as a radiant child of God, with inbuilt inherent goodness and possibility. And their encounter is an occasion for restoration in her life, the restoration of new hope and healing and self-appreciation.

But all of this good news for the woman, she of the low-reputation, was apparently not-so-good news for Simon the Pharisee. When he looks at this woman, what he sees is not a child of God but a threat to his own definition of goodness. She is someone to avoid. Simon does not appear to be a bad man. He appears to be anxious to do right, and to be right. But this is one of those instances in which we see the profound ambiguity that accrues to religious goodness. This is one of those instances in which we see a person’s diligent attempt at religious goodness as something that ends up getting in the way of the more authentic, spiritual goodness that is based more simply on goodness of heart; that is based more simply on having an open and tender spirit toward our fellow imperfect human beings. Simon is blind to the fact that he too is a sinner forgiven. He is blind to the fact that he too has weaknesses; that he too has made compromised choices in his own life, even though they may not be as visible, or as disgraceful in the eyes of society. Simon the Pharisee is blind to the fact that he too stands in need of grace, and that he too is blind; blind to how he and this woman are connected at the deepest levels, both in their fundamental human goodness and, yes, also in their sinfulness. When Simon sees that this supposedly second-rate human being enters his righteous and respectable house, he suddenly pulls back the warmth of his hospitality to Jesus, and he refuses completely to extend hospitality to the woman. And indeed it is precisely in his tendency to have an almost compulsive fixation on goodness that he ends up shutting himself off not only from the woman, but also from Jesus and ultimately from God.

There have been times in history when Simon’s story has been the church’s story, or at least has been the story of some parts of the church. But, thankfully and importantly, there have been and are many, many times when the church’s story has been very much true to Jesus’ example of welcoming compassion and love. In the several churches I personally have served over these last 33 years, I have found a great deal of that welcoming compassion right here in this church, and I very much thank God for that witness and example that so many of you set both for our community and for me.

Toward the end of today’s story, Jesus concludes the interaction by telling the woman that she is free to go in peace. One of the most renowned preachers of our generation, the Rev. Dr. Fred Craddock, has commented on this passage and in doing so asks the question, ‘Where does one go when told to go in peace as Jesus instructs this woman to do at the end of our story. Fred Craddock goes on to say, “It is all to the good that she is offered the gift of peacefulness within her own soul, which she no doubt needs; but what she also needs,” Craddock says, “is a community to go into; a community of forgiven and forgiving sinners. The story,” he says, “screams out the need for a church, for a real church, one that proclaims loudly, you are welcome here.” She had such a welcome from Jesus. She might find something of that welcome  out on the streets of a large city. She might find something of that welcome in Central Park in New York.

But, says Fred Craddock, for the work of redemption and healing to go forward long-term and in a sustained and sustaining way, there must be communities of redemption and healing for people such as her, and people such as we are, to come into, and to be held in and sustained spiritually by.

The late children’s writer, Madeleine L’Engle, once told a story about the apostle, Judas, he who betrayed Jesus. The legend is that after his death Judas found himself at the bottom of a deep and slimy pit. For thousands of years he wept his repentance, and when the tears were finally spent, he looked up and saw way, way up a tiny glimmer of light. After he had contemplated it for, O, a thousand years or so, he began to try to climb up towards the light. The walls of the pit were dark and slimy, and he kept slipping back down. Finally, after great effort, he neared the top and then he slipped and fell all the way back down again. It took him many years to recover, all the time weeping bitter tears of grief and repentance, and then he started to climb up again. After many more falls, and efforts and failures, he reached the top and dragged himself into a building, and then into an upper room in which he found, of all things, twelve people seated around the table. “We’ve been waiting for you, Judas,” Jesus said kindly. “We couldn’t begin till you made it back.”

There are a lot of people out there……and in here……who are looking for a community of welcome and acceptance, a community of forgiven and forgiving sinners. They might find some traces of such a community hinted at in the bowels of a large city, or on the lawns of a great urban park. Places like that are all to the well and good. But at the end of the day, what places like that can give, is not much more than sketched out hints and traces. At the end of the day, what the men and women and children of the world need …..including you and me…. are ongoing, trustworthy communities, that can hold us, and that we can be held by, and that we can do our share of the holding in, as ongoing containers for expressing and sustaining the divine love of welcome and acceptance and forgiveness and compassion.

I thank God for the degree to which that is already a reality right here within this room, and within our own ways and forms of being church, and I ask and pray that the power of God’s amazing and sustaining grace might grow within and amongst us in the days and months, and years ahead. In the name of the living Christ we ask it. Amen.

THE GOOD AND BAD SAMARITANS

LUKE 9:51-56

6 6 10

REV ANTHONY E ACHESON

In today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel, we hear that, “When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face like a flint to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples, James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them? But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.”

We are all familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan that appears in Luke 10.It’s interesting and significant that today’s story from Luke 9 -appearing just one chapter earlier in Luke - also involves Samaritans.  Today’s example of Samaritans, however, is not at all an example of good Samaritans. We might even be tempted to call them a group of bad Samaritans.

Today’s story occurs at the time when Jesus is beginning his final journey into Jerusalem. In verse 52 we hear that Jesus’ disciples entered a village of some Samaritans to make advance preparations for the travel of Jesus and his group. But the Samaritans there would not receive him.

The backdrop here, as for the more famous ‘Good Samaritan’ story in Luke Chapter 10, is the fact that Samaritans and Jews were highly antagonistic, each believing the others’ religion to be wrong; each disliking the other as an ethnic group. Because Jesus was a Jew; because he was travelling to observe the Jewish Passover in Jerusalem; and because Samaritans were at odds with Jews and Jews with Samaritans, these Samaritans were unwilling to extend hospitality to this Jewish man or his group.’

The disciples reacted to this refusal with their desire to call fire down from heaven on these inhospitable Samaritans. Jesus, of course, immediately and unambiguously rejected their approach. His willingness to rebuke people close to him and in his own group; was a hard thing to do. Our human tendency is to smooth over potential disagreements and conflicts in our closest in circles. But as most of us have learned, it is impossible to successfully do that in the long run.

It is easy to hear about the disciples hostile and conflictual response and think to ourselves, ‘We aren’t like those people.’ In the first place, we know we can’t call actual fire down from heaven on those we don’t like. But we may and do think unloving thoughts about those who are ‘other’ to us, or are different from us. We may and do become people who want to raise the ante in conflict and disagreement against those who oppose us.  We may very definitely be or become people who want to use violent and destructive means to try to solve problems. That’s basically what those disciples were doing. There was a problem between Jews and Samaritans. That was a real problem. But their method of trying to solve it was to use violence and to call down harshness against those they opposed, and who opposed them.

You and I, like them, may indeed entertain patterns of thought that lead us to think we can solve significant problems in our world by raining down fires from above. Consider, for example, the planes and jets and automated drones that this very day and week and month are raining fire down on Muslim towns and villages half way around the world. In the process of doing that they are killing substantial numbers of women and children, as happens again and again and again. Suchh accidents are not at all rare, but are tragically frequent.

So before we dismiss these disciples as holding ancient superstitions about miraculous interventions; or before we dismiss them as people who might have been having a particularly curmudgeonly day; you and I may want to ask ourselves if we too, like those early disciples, allow ourselves to be drawn into collective ways of thinking that also glorify the raining of fire down from heaven on those whom we today may oppose. And you and I may want to ask ourselves the question, ‘Is that really the most effective way to solve real problems.’

I said a moment ago that there were real problems between Jews and Samaritans. Today there are also real problems between the Western world and the Muslim world. There are real problems today between America and certain violent groups in the world. Is raining fire down from Heaven the best way to solve those problems? This gospel reading at the very least asks us and encourages us to ask that question. For those of us who look to Jesus as our primary model, teacher and guide, and for those of us who look to Jesus as our most foundational window into God, this passage calls us clearly to take note of the fact that Jesus has no interest whatsoever in raining any fire from Heaven down on anyone.

In just a moment we come to our monthly table of communion, in which the fundamental metaphor of that table is the metaphor of being broken. It is important to note the main metaphor of this table is not an encouragement to go out and inflict brokenness on any other. The main metaphor of this table is one of having the courage - the spiritual courage, and also the psychological courage - to allow brokenness within ourselves when life brings brokenness to us or requires brokenness of us.

Every time we take communion the bread is broken before our eyes. That symbolizes the brokenness that Jesus allowed in his own being, rather than inflicting brokenness on His enemies. Every time we come to this table and receive the juice, that always involves brokenness. Every grape that resulted in the contents in that cup had to be mashed down and broken. It used to be done by human feet. The symbology of this table has to do with the fact that Jesus had a choice between either using the strategy and methodology of inflicting brokenness on his enemies, or of using a higher and ultimately more effective power of allowing brokenness to come into His own being in such a way that would release the power of God from within his own being to find a better, higher, more effective way to solve human problems.

He allowed Himself to be broken, rather than inflicting brokenness on someone else or on some group of others. He did so in order to do right and in order to bring the kind of healing that comes from God, and that’s what we see also in Jesus in His relation to these Samaritans. When it came to their hostility to him, the disciples’ attitude was, ‘Let’s crush them.’ Jesus’ approach, however, was very different.  Jesus’ alternate approach was to go find another solution that was non-violent and non-destructive.

As we come to this table today, I invite us to reflect on the importance of placing our major focus in our spiritual lives on dealing with our own imperfectness rather than thinking of how we can deal with the imperfectness of others. Remember that this chapter in Luke 9 comes before the one in Luke 10, which is the Good Samaritan story. In the Good Samaritan story, it’s the Samaritan who is good, and the Jews who are bad. In this story in Luke 9, it’s the Samaritans who are bad, and the Jew, Jesus, who is depicted as being good. If you look at Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 together in Luke as a unit - which I think is very helpful to do - you see that what Jesus is doing is making the same point in both stories except in chapter 9 it’s the Samaritans who get ensnared in unlove against their enemy, the Jews, and in Chapter 10 it’s the Jews who get ensnared in unlove against their enemy the Samaritans. Jesus makes it clear that regardless of which group you belong to, there is for any person in any group an equal danger to use your primary group membership as a way to engage in and even use as an outlet for human sinfulness.

One of the primary ways that sin works in human life is through groups. I want to repeat that because I think that’s one of the most important things we can hear: one of the primary ways that sin works in human life is through groups. The most serious incidents of destructive and damaging sin that we human beings engage in most of the time, are the sins we engage in by allowing the collective entities we belong to engage in the attitudes and actions that we might not do as individuals; but that we will offer consent to our larger collective affiliations to engage in.

Some of these most serious incidences of destructive and damaging sin are specifically the sins committed by racial and ethnic groups, which are what these Samaritan-Jew stories in Luke 9 and Luke 10 are about.  The most serious instances of destructive and damaging sins that we humans engage in are the kinds of sins that are committed by nation states, by military organizations, by religious organizations, by corporations. Think of the sin that the BP corporation has committed against the human race. That’s a major, major sin that has been committed against the world in our time. Think of the sin that the Roman Catholic church has inflicted on the human race by allowing pedophilia to go on year after year; that is a major, major sin. I could give you many more examples, but I believe it’s important we understand that we often allow our larger groups - our religions, our nations, our military, our racial groups, gender groups - to do the kinds destructive dealings on our behalf that we as individuals would never commit personally.  A very important part of the spiritual life is to be aware of, and to be willing to acknowledge, which of the collective sins we say ‘yes’ to, by supporting those large collective patterns.

So as we approach this table, I invite us to include in our reflections how it is that we may support the larger doings of hurt and harm in the racial, the ethnic, the national, the military, the religious, the gender, the corporate systems that we’re involved in, that we might reflect on ways we give support to those ways of dealing hurt and harm, and to the ways in which we can call and challenge those larger collective entities to be instruments of grace and love and creativity and building something better for the future we all look forward to.

I ask and offer all these things in the name of the living Christ who calls us to live out those highest and best possibilities both as individuals and in larger groupings. In His name we pray it. Amen.