Author: Steve

I hate shopping for a new wallet. Even when I find one that looks something like my old one, the changeover is a chore and the result always feels bulkier and more cumbersome than the old broken-in wallet. It would be great to find one that would last the rest of my life, and at this point that feels somewhat more possible than it used to.

However, wallets–and purses, as my wife would tell you– do wear out. Our text for this Sunday, Luke 12:32-40, begins with Jesus recognizing that fact and urging us to seek a storage place for valuables which does not wear out. Last Sunday, thinking about the foolish man building bigger barns to store his grain, I quoted St. Augustine’s suggestion that the bellies of the poor are a better and eternal storage location for our goods.

The lectionary skips verses 22-31 in the chapter, probably because the images there are more familiar as read from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6. But in general Jesus warns against anxiety about length of life, food and clothing, asking us to trust God the Father for all these things.

So as we pick it up this week we read the conclusion of Jesus’ reflection on our attitude toward wealth and possessions in verses 32-34, including the well known words, “For where your treasure is, there you heart will be also.” Then the assigned reading moves in verse 35 into a couple of parables about readiness for Christ’s return. One focuses on slaves being ready and alert when their master arrives and the other on a rather famous image of a homeowner being ready for a “thief in the night.”

If we wish to make some connection between everlasting purses and relief from anxiety over money and posessions and the two little readiness parables, we might find it in the idea of faithful service. The slaves’ alert faithfulness to their master is a good cure for the material stuff worries of the world. If we are focused on whether we are doing what Jesus wishes us to do, we will be less concerned about hanging on to the stuff we have.

 

As retirement looms fairly near in our future (3 years?), I find it harder and harder not to empathize with the “fool” in this Sunday’s Gospel lesson, Luke 12:13-21. It’s easier to condemn the pettiness of Jesus’ actual interlocutor, who asks the Teacher’s help in settling a family dispute over an inheritance. Having seen such squabbles up close and dealt with their fallout in people’s lives, I totally get Jesus’ wish not to get involved in verse 14, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?”

I can also get behind the warning against greed in verse 15. Our contemporary world seems solidly based on having turned greed from a vice into a virtue. Greed has become almost the very foundation of the way our (western, at least) society operates. Say what you want about the Christian roots of our culture, our current acceptance and even lionization of greed would have been totally anathema to earlier Christian societies.

Having said all that, I am hugely troubled that the man in the parable in verses 16 to 20 sounds pretty reasonable to me. Honestly, granted a windfall like his, I would be very tempted to jump on the early retirement train and never look back. So this parable forces me to confess my own worry and concern with having enough possessions and resources in order to have some years of ease at the end of my life.

This is the only New Testament parable in which God actually has a direct part in the story, as He brings the rich man up short in verse 20, by pointing out that his life will be shorter than he expected and all those stored riches will do him no good.

This is also one of the few parables for which Jesus offers a simple explanation (a nimshal in biblical scholar speak) in verse 21. He makes clear that the point is that being “rich” toward God takes precedence over accumulation of possessions. The point of our first 65 years or so of life is not to acquire enough in order to live comfortably for whatever years we have left. All of life is to be aimed toward God and the things of God.

Later on in the chapter, down in verse 33, Jesus gives us the antidote to greed and the formula for divine riches. It’s simple giving away of what we have. Somehow, then, I need to plan for retirement while not focusing on mere accumulation of wealth and while giving sacrificially to God. I’m still learning how to do that.

A lot of people know the Lord’s Prayer by heart. The Catholic version, the “Our Father,” leaving off “For thine is the kingdom,” etc., comes closer to the actual words found in Matthew 6 than Protestant versions. Despite a long tradition of saying it, the manuscript evidence for “For thine is the kingdom…” (Catholics do say it, just a bit later in the prayers of the mass, not right after the “Our Father”) is poor and inconsistent. It’s a beautiful closing doxology for the Lord’s Prayer, but not part of the original text of Scripture.

So the version of the Lord’s Prayer we read together this Sunday from Luke 11:1-13, though it sounds abbreviated to our ears, is actually very close to what was actually written first in Matthew.

One other interesting modern English embellishment of the actual text of both Matthew’s and Luke’s versions of the prayer is the word “trespasses,” which is not found in either text. In Matthew the prayer is for forgiveness of “our debts as we forgive our debtors,” and in Luke 11:4 it is for forgiveness of “our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” Thus the modern versions which use the words and “debts” and “debtors” or “sins” and “those who sin against us,” are closer to the actual texts. The former, being exactly what Matthew wrote, is the most literal.

The little parable of the friend at midnight in verses 5 to 8 is a strong encouragement to prayer based in the goodness of God. It is basically an a fortiori argument, as seen by the “how much more” in verse 13. If even sinful human beings grant rude and unreasonable requests, how much more will our gracious heavenly Father grant reasonable prayers properly and faithfully prayed.

This is probably not a parable about persistence in prayer. Klyne Snodgrass in Stories with Intent argues persuasively that despite a long history of interpreting and translating the key word in verse 8 as “persistence” (as the NRSV does), it is actually a negative word that means “shamelessness.” The most recent NIV gets much closer to literal with “shameless audacity,” although that “audacity” addition sneaks in an attempt to put a positive spin on the word.

The “ask,” “search,” “knock” directions in verses 9 and 10 and the even briefer parables about a child asking a parent for a fish or an egg in verses 11 and 12 are also not about persistence. Their focus is on the goodness of God, which is why we may pray with confidence.

So the direction for praying, the answer to “Lord, teach us to pray” in verse 1, comes in just the first few verses, the actual prayer Jesus taught. The rest of the text is a theology of prayer based in the character of God. We may pray because God is good, and as some of my friends like to add, though I think somewhat unnecessarily, He is good all the time.

All one need do is read or listen to recent news about the president’s attacks on four female legislators to realize that ugly attitudes toward women who don’t “behave” are as prevalent as they were in Jesus’ time. While the primary complaint about the president’s words is racism, there is very likely sexism going on as well. The fact that several of his strongest opponents in Congress are female probably irks him.

One of the ironies of such situations is that some of those who feel threatened and irked by women not towing the usual social lines for women are often other women. That happens in our text for this Sunday from Luke 10:38-42, as Martha confronts Jesus over His toleration of Mary’s assumption of a “male” role in their household, to the neglect of her “female” responsibilities.

I’ve always been struck by Dorothy Sayer’s observation that she had never heard a sermon on this Mary-Martha text which did not in some way sympathize with or even defend Martha, despite our Lord’s clear, albeit gentle, rebuke and correction of her. I’ve heard the same sort of sympathy for Martha, especially from women (including my own wife), every time I’ve preached on this passage myself.

Feminist concerns may seem like an overworked, overstated cause in today’s America, especially in the eyes of conservative Christians. However one need not look far to see that women even in our country continue to labor under a load of complex social expectations which, despite lip-service to “equality,” often results in great difficulty when they seek to excel, find work, or have influence in male-dominated spheres of endeavor. I think of my oldest daughter’s own experiences searching for academic employment after completing her Ph.D.

Thus this time through the Mary and Martha story I’d like, at least in part, to ask Christian men to think about what this text implies for how we live with and treat our sisters in Christ. So the title of the message has a double meaning. It does not just refer to the two biblical sisters, but to all Christian women with whom we live and serve the Lord.

For starters right now, I intend to ask the question Sunday whether a few more men in our congregation might consider taking a turn in the nursery. Would it not give our women a more fair opportunity to do what Mary did and sit at the feet of Jesus learning from Him? More thoughts along that line to come.

I approach preaching on one of Jesus’ two most famous parables (both in Luke) with a bit of trepidation. The Good Samaritan is so familiar to us, so burned into the mind of Christendom, both west and east, that it is hard to imagine anything fresh to say about it. It’s tempting to simply recite the story, perhaps in contemporary paraphrase like Clarence Jordan’s Cottonpatch version, and let it stand for itself.

Yet perhaps it is helpful to prod a bit at our experience of Luke 10:25-37, just to try and shake loose any standard cultural appropriation of the story like the names of hospitals or “Good Samaritan” laws. In searching for art images of the parable, I appreciated the one by Bertram Poole that I post here. Unlike many paintings and images of the story, it includes the priest and Levite who have already passed by the man in distress. Those “good citizens” and whatever excuses they might have had for not helping are healthy reminders that even the best of us may fail to do as Jesus was teaching here.

The unlikeliness of the Samaritan as the helper in Jesus’ own milieu also deserves a second look and some pondering. I think we typically do some sort of mental conversion of the story that causes us to suppose Jesus is teaching us here to be kind to marginal or unsavory people. We come away from the text resolving to be more helpful to undocumented people or addicts or those of different ethnicity.

What we may miss or fail to dwell upon is that it is the marginal person who is the good man in the parable, the one who helps. Whatever it might imply about whom we might aid, Jesus’ pointed message is that establishment religiosity and “goodness” are less important in God’s eyes than simple human kindness. As Jesus tells the religious establishment elsewhere, “the tax collectors and prostitutes will enter the kingdom of heaven before you do.” Though evangelicals may typically take that latter statement as a declaration about grace, it may tie to this parable’s demonstration that sometimes those who are “sinners” in the eyes of good church people may have a better grasp of what really pleases God than we do.

So I’m looking forward to taking another run at our Lord’s simple but rich story which challenges us in so many ways to drop our excuses and to “Go and do likewise.”

I hooked a fish, a decent sized smallmouth bass, on my second cast. “All right,” I thought, “this is going to be good.” I was on a second-choice guided fishing trip at a lake on Vancouver Island. The Cowichan River I had hoped to float with a guide for trout was too low for a boat to pass. So he suggested that he take me smallmouth fishing on a lake because that had been going well. The first few minutes of that outing looked like it would prove true. Alas, it was not to be.

The rest of the day I caught two or three more decent fish and two or three tiny ones. There were none of the lunkers my guide had hoped we would find and even the smaller fish were few and far between. What had begun seemingly so successful turned out to be my second fishing disappointment in beautiful British Columbia. It was a nice day on the water, but hardly what I had expected.

Our text for Sunday, the mission of the seventy (-two) in Luke 10:1-20, was a bit like that second cast I mentioned. As the end of the text in verse 17 shows, those six dozen early evangelists were thrilled at their success, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” But in verse 20 Jesus doused their enthusiasm with a simple reminder of that in which real spiritual success consists, “that your names are written in heaven.”

This mission of the seventy (-two) appears only in Luke’s Gospel. Mark and Luke have only the sending out of the twelve, which Luke records at the beginning of the previous chapter, chapter 9. There’s an almost even split in the various ancient manuscripts on the actual number (“70” or “72”) of evangelists, although the case seems slightly better for 72. Either way, the number may represent the number of nations listed in Genesis 10 (70 in Hebrew, 72 in Greek in the Septuagint), thus signifying the initiation of the Christian mission to the whole world.

There are various source explanations for the similarity between the instructions given to these 72 in verses 4-11, and those instructions received by the 12 apostles in Luke 9 and in Matthew 10 and Mark 6. Simply speaking, it makes sense that a larger group charged with the same sort of mission as the smaller would have similar directions to follow. More broadly, it suggests that the call to Christian mission is not the narrow province of a few specialists, but belongs to all those who follow Christ. But, like all those first disciples, we must temper our expectations of success.

The warnings in verses 10 and 11 about how to respond to those who reject the mission of those who go ahead of Jesus make clear that sharing the Gospel will not be unmitigated triumph. As I approached differently in last week’s text, thinking about the 12’s own cold reception in a Samaritan town, there will be times when the only Christian thing to do is move on and away from those aimed in a different direction.

Ultimately, Jesus explained in verse 20, what really matters for those who do His work is not huge numbers of conversions or of people healed and delivered from evil and sin. It is the state of our own souls in relation to Him. It’s a particularly spiritual application of His saying in Matthew 16:26 that there is no profit in gaining the whole world (even for Jesus!) if you lose your own soul in the process.

One way of looking at fishing is that it is not to be measured by how many fish you catch, but how well you fished, covered the water, and enjoyed time spent in God’s sublime interface between water, land and sky. It may not be easy to keep that peaceful mindset when the fish are not biting, but it’s absolutely essential when one is doing the work of God’s kingdom.

A few years ago I sat in a gathering of local pastors, listening to a speaker advising us about legal questions and policies in regard to use of our buildings. The primary concern was being able to avoid discrimination charges in the process of declining to make facilities available for events we as Christians would find immoral.

It was all well and good, and there was some helpful information about making sure a church’s guiding policies clearly state that building use must be in keeping with the Christian values of the congregation. Denominational churches like ours are also “covered” by our denomination’s overarching policies in that regard.

However, in the process of talking about framing policy, etc., the speaker began to characterize those in cultural opposition to Christian values as our enemies, using some vivid language. In particular, he said more than once that we want to meet such opposition from society around us with “fire.” I believe he talked about “holy fire.” That language immediately raised my hackles and called to mind the first half of our text for this Sunday, Luke 9:51-62.

Found only in Luke, verse 51-56 reports how the disciples responded to the cold welcome they, and ultimately Jesus, received upon their attempts to sojourn in a Samaritan village along the way. Verse 53 says of the Samaritan townspeople, “but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem.” In other words, a Jewish rabbi and His disciples, bound for the Jews’ most holy place (different from Samaria’s holy place), was unwelcome in that town of people presumably hostile to Jews in general.

The disciples’ response in verse 54 is seemingly in the spirit of the prophet Elijah, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” As I pointed out to the speaker I mentioned earlier, verse 55 shows Jesus rebuking the disciples for that angry spirit which wished fiery divine vengeance on those who stood in opposition to Him.

Though the second half of the text seems somewhat disconnected from the asking-for-fire episode, it offers us a glimpse of a disciple attitude more in keeping with the true spirit of Jesus (verse 55’s longer version about the the disciples’ ignorance of the Spirit and Jesus’ salvific versus judgmental mission are probably not in Luke’s original). The spirit of self-sacrifice and submission, which Jesus asks from three different would-be followers along the road, show a gentler, more self-forgetful sort of discipleship in the mind of the Lord.

Those three who ask to follow Jesus are met with His demands to leave something of value behind. Beyond the immediate clear call to engage in a costly discipleship (as Bonhoeffer so eloquently described), perhaps, tying the two parts of the pericope together, we are also called to leave behind our oh-so-human need to respond with anger and vengeance toward those who oppose us.

I don’t like horror films, so I won’t be going to see “Us” or “Child’s Play” or “Pet Sematary” this summer. I’ve never seen the classic from when I was young, “The Exorcist.” I’m pretty clear in my own mind that certain of my fears don’t need any extra stimulation and that I am perfectly content to let them rest quiet.

Yet our Gospel lesson for this Sunday raises some of those fears and speaks about others. In 34 years of preaching, I’ve yet to tackle Luke 8:26-39 or either of its parallels in Matthew and Mark. I doubt its fear that caused that, but more the place this lectionary reading typically falls on the calendar, times when I’m often away on vacation or at the Covenant annual meeting (not attending this year).

So here I am thinking about the gripping story of Jesus’ exorcism of, not one, but a “legion” of demons from a man in Gentile territory. As I read it, I noted that alongside my own fear of the evil supernatural, the text brought to light a few other fears driving the characters in the story.

First, if it’s the man himself (rather than a demon) speaking in verse 28, he appears to fear being tormented by Jesus whom he recognizes for who He is, “Son of the Most High God.” Second, it is clearly the demons who are afraid in verse 31, as they beg not to be ordered out of the man “into the abyss,” a place of judgment for evil spirits. Then the townspeople are said to be afraid  in verse 35 when they see the saved man. Finally, people from the whole region are said to be “seized with great fear” as they learn of what happened and ask Jesus to leave them.

Ironically, the fears identified in the text are for the most part of that which is good, especially of Jesus Himself. Yet relieved of his demons the man’s fear of Jesus is gone with them and he then wishes in verse 38 to stay close to Him, perhaps now fearing being separated from the Man who saved him.

Jesus’ response in verse 39 to the man freed from demons is perhaps His response to at least some of our fears, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” How many of our demons might disappear and foolish fears might evaporate if we focused on telling ourselves and others “how much God has done” for us?

One of the best known facets of the Alcoholics Anonymous program is a little three-line quotation known as the “Serenity Prayer.” Though it has often been misattributed and quoted in a number of forms, it seems very likely that it was first said in a sermon by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1930s. The best known form is this:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

In our text for this Sunday, John 14:23-31 (I’ve added two verses to the lectionary Gospel reading), Jesus offers His disciples good reasons for serenity in the face of what they are soon to experience (Jesus’ own arrest and death).

The first reason for serenity is the promise in verse 26 of “another Advocate [or Helper or Comforter–various translations of paracletos are possible].” We understand this to be the gift of the Holy Spirit which Jesus’ followers receive after His death and resurrection. The Spirit provides a continuity of Christ’s own presence with them, as well as further instruction in understanding and remembering what Jesus had taught.

Another reason for serenity is offered in verse 27, probably an expansion of the promise of the Spirit, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

Presumably both gifts, of the Spirit and of peace, can be seen as answers to the first request of Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer.” Jesus offered internal spiritual resources to cope with the unchangeable circumstances surrounding the disciples as the Crucifixion loomed near. Those same resources, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual fruit of peace, are still available to those who follow Jesus now.

What might be less clear, and why I added verses 30 and 31 to the lectionary text, is that the serenity or peace given by Jesus does not reduce to mere Stoic acceptance of all circumstances nor apathy in the face of trials or hardship. Unlike the Greek Stoics and some modern scientific determinists, Jesus did not teach that all events in the world and predetermined and unchangeable. As Neibuhr’s prayer correctly capsulizes, God gives power through His Spirit for His people to change things in this world.

In verse 30, Jesus mentions the coming of “the ruler of this world.” Other Scriptures give us to understand that this is Satan, whose evil has dominated our world and human life throughout history. Yet Jesus declares, “He has no power over me…” By implication, the forces of evil have no power over those who trust in Christ and receive His peace through the Spirit. Evil, in fact, can be challenged in the name of Jesus.

Which is all to say that we must not understand a truly Christian serenity simply as an internal state of mind or feeling. It is that, but it is not merely that. Which is why I’d like to offer an odd take on the last bit of verse 31, when Jesus says, “Rise, let us be on our way,” or “Come, let us leave now.”

That invitation to depart at this point in John’s text is a conundrum for interpreters, since Jesus appears not to leave at that point but continues talking for another three chapters! One solution which is mere conjecture, but I like it, is that they did in fact get up and begin walking to Gethsemane at that point and Jesus kept instructing them and praying along the way.

It’s a bit fanciful, but that peripatetic time of instruction could be a good image of discipleship and Christian life in general. Our serenity in Christ is an “on the way,” active sort of peace, doing its best to understand what He teaches and to go forth into the world and challenge the evil we find there. May God grant us the courage and the wisdom to get up and take our serenity out into the arena of a world very much in need of it.

We just saw the new “Avengers: Endgame” movie. In a trailer for the film (no spoilers here!), Tony Stark (Iron Man) asks Steve Rogers (Captain America), “Do you trust me?” However that plays out in the movie, it’s a key question in human relationships. Trust is fundamental to human flourishing and we simply cannot get along very well without it.

We trust each other in all sorts of ways. We trust the driver approaching on a cross street to stop at the stop sign. We trust a babysitter to be responsible for our children. We trust the barista not to spit in our coffee before he creates that foam heart on top.

Yet we also know that trust is often violated and is sometimes foolish. I, for one, have a vivid memory of the time a driver on a cross street did not stop at the stop sign, but plowed full tilt into side of my car. Thirty years later, I still take a second look at what is happening on cross streets to my right, not completely trusting other drivers anymore.

In our text for this Sunday, John 10:22-30, Jesus chides the Jewish religious establishment for their continued distrust, as they ask Him in verse 24, “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” In verse 25, Jesus replies, “I have told you, and you do not believe.” In other words, they don’t trust Him.

Jesus goes on in the rest of verse 25 to offer a firm basis for trusting Him: the evidence of the “works” He does, which are both supernatural in their power and good in their compassion toward those who are fed, healed and even raised from the dead. In something like the trilemma often credited to C. S. Lewis, the Jewish authorities are being to asked to consider whether someone who does such thing can be considered trustworthy in what He says about Himself. Trust in Jesus can have foundation and is not foolish.

Trust turns foolish when it has no basis. When, without any reason or even contrary to experience, one simply trusts ordinary human authority, be it government, family, or even religious, that trust can become a kind of naive idolatry. Trust is especially idolatrous when it is expressed with a kind of fervor and commitment that really only belongs to God. That happens when an abused person constantly accepts apologies from and places unbreakable trust in an abuser, when citizens retain undying loyalty to a political authority that has proved itself deceptive, and when religious believers unquestioningly accept biblical interpretations or doctrines which fly in the face of basic morality or simple compassion or even the plain sense of the Scripture text.

In Jesus’ time, the religious authorities’ unwillingness to trust Him was their failure to recognize divine authority when it actually appeared to them. Instead, they substituted the idols of their own regulations and perceptions of how the Messiah might appear and act. This is what places them, in verse 26, outside of those who belong to Jesus, His sheep. Those who hear and trust Jesus and follow Him are those who recognize (by the character and works of Jesus) to be true what He says in verse 30, “The Father and I are one.” That is, He is deserving of trust because He has true divine authority.

Verses 28 and 29 show us the benefits of well-placed trust in Jesus, eternal life and security, “No one will snatch them out of my hand.” Trusting in Jesus is blessed beyond even the most well-founded trust in other human beings. May our trust, our faith, only increase.

Outside of a courtroom, the word “witness” does not enjoy a stellar reputation in these times. Nearly a century of the word being co-opted by the sect known as “Jehovah’s Witnesses” has, in the popular mind, firmly associated a religious “witness” with knocking on doors and aggressive evangelism, often accompanied by various heavy-handed tracts threatening doom for the unrepentant.

In one of my favorite books, The River Why by David James Duncan, the protagonist’s crude, home-spun mother refers to all visitors who come to the door with some religious purpose as “witlesses.” To her they are all ignorant, Bible-toting fools who very likely have not read very well the book they carry around.

It seems unlikely to me that any wholesale change in the cultural understanding of what a religious witness is will occur any time soon. Nonetheless, Christians can move beyond that cultural bottleneck to appreciate what a “witness” was in the early days of the church and how that word came to identify some of the most committed believers in our history.

In the last verse of our text for this Sunday, Acts 5:27-32 (readings from Acts take the place of readings from the Old Testament in the Easter season), Peter says “we are witnesses of these things,” “these things” being the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In a time when Christians bearing witness can suggest testimony to many different aspects of faith, including Christian morality, end times warnings, and even simply, “what Jesus means to me,” it is good to recall that the first Christian witnesses were much like courtroom witnesses, those who beheld and recall a specific event and can testify to its occurrence. A step on the way to redeeming the act of witnessing today might be to freshly embrace our responsibility for just that one testimony, Christ has died and Christ is risen.

In addition, we will want to note that the Greek word for the witnesses which Peter claims he and the other apostles to be is martures, “martyrs.” The word which simply denoted testimony came to be associated with those Christians who testified to their own peril, in the face of opposition like is described in our text. Those who gave their lives for the faith were called “martyrs” because they were first and foremost what that word literally means, “witnesses.”

There is more to say about how Christian witness might look today, whether Peter’s brave insistence that “We ought to obey God rather than humans” implies a certain quality to true witness which will always make it abrasive or at least annoying. In that regard, let me offer just a thought from Chrysostom that what appears to be arrogant defiance of authority in Peter’s words is actually compassion for those who need to hear a message of good news, that Christ is risen and there is in Him, as verse 31 concludes, forgiveness of sins. That’s a message of love, not defiance.

Even without having visited Israel, one can discern from both Scripture and photos that a rocky landscape is the backdrop to much of what happens in the Bible. The rocks are everywhere, ever-present. Jacob lays his head on a rock, Moses splits one for water, God’s people stack them up for altars and monuments, and they constantly figure in biblical metaphor and sayings. Even God Himself is likened to a Rock (Psalm 18:2).

Yet for all their scriptural ubiquity, we don’t really expect much from rocks. They are there to be walked upon or around, to be carved and/or stacked up to create structures, or, sadly, to be thrown at others with intent to harm.

In Luke’s Palm Sunday text, chapter 19 verses 28-40, Jesus in verse 40 picturesquely assigns the rocks along the road to Jerusalem an unexpected role. If the praises of the children and others were suddenly silenced, the stones around Jesus would take up the shouting. In other words, His entrance to Jerusalem to accomplish our salvation is such a pregnant moment that it is impossible for it to happen without His praises being spoken.

One wishes that the rocks actually would speak. When our family once climbed the rocky Areopagus (Mars Hill) in Athens, it would have been fantastic to hear the rock beneath our feet tell us their memories of Paul’s conversation with the philosophers there, not to mention all the other debates that took place on that spot. Visitors to the Holy Land would be overwhelmed if the stones of the Wailing Wall or of any number of other sites might speak their recollections of God’s people and the Lord Himself in those places, among those rocks.

One is reminded by Jesus’ words to the Pharisees that the inanimate creation does, in a sense, have a voice, as in Psalm 19, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” As Christian philosophers have discussed, the fact that something, even a rock, exists is itself a witness to the reality and power of God.

Yet as those same Christian philosophers have also said, there is much to say that the rocks cannot. God has revealed Himself in the living Word who is Jesus Christ in ways that demand true speech in order to truly declare. Rocks may be able to praise God, but He assigns a better form of praise to we who can actually know and love Him.

So let’s accept the role Jesus gave to His disciples on the road to Jerusalem and to all His disciples down through time. Let us not force the stones to take our place, but gladly shout the praises of the One who comes, who came to save us.

My wife doesn’t need me to buy her flowers, and she will often say so when I come home with a bunch of daffodils or roses from the mark down rack at Fred Meyer clutched in my hand. What I spend on those blooms is definitely an unnecessary extravagance and both Beth and our marriage could probably get along just fine without them. Yet I get joy in the giving and Beth is pleased to receive them.  What seems “unnecessary” from a purely practical perspective might be necessary in another way, as an expression of love and honor.

Mary’s outpouring of expensive perfumed ointment on Jesus in this Sunday’s text, John 12:1-8, could certainly be construed as an unnecessary extravagance. That’s exactly how Judas Iscariot described it in verse 5, money wasted that could have been spent on the poor. That this very practical and seemingly compassionate notion comes from the mouth of Judas should give us a clue that is is somehow mistaken. And of course John goes on to tell us in verse 6 that Judas real motivation was to get hold of the price of the perfume, not consideration for the poor.

I believe this text by itself may justify some of the extravagant things Christians do in worship, whether it’s merely constructing a building or some expensive beautification of a worship space like stained glass, carved wood, flowers or banners. If the motivation is to honor and praise Jesus, the extravagance is justified, even if some more practical humanitarian end might have been accomplished with the same money.

However, we should not forget practical compassion in our extravagance. We can be thoughtful in our spending. My wife actually enjoys her flowers more if they are marked half price and some money was saved for other purposes. We can have beautiful extravagant worship and remember the poor.

Jesus did not mean to ignore or forget the poor in verse 8, “You always have the poor with you…,” which is an idea drawn from Deuteronomy 15:11, where it is immediately followed by a command to generous to poor and need among us.

There’s a place for extravagance in many of our relationships. It’s a way to express love and respect. Isn’t extravagance appropriate in our relationship with the One who both created and saved us by the sacrifice of His own life?

This image of a bowling score sheet is the way it used to be. A few years ago I discovered it’s all automated now, that modern bowing alleys actually keep score for you and post it above the lane for everyone to see. I’m not sure I would have liked that back in my high school and college years when I bowled a little more often.

I was a pretty mediocre bowler. My sister bowled in a league and became quite serious about it, but I only dabbled despite being fully equipped. She gave me a bowling ball one day for my birthday and I ended up buying my own bowling shoes because of how difficult it was to fit my size 13 narrow feet with rental shoes. Yet I was always in the group that was happy to break 100 and only once in a great while managed to get to 150 or so.

So I’m not sure how much progress it is to have those scores up there for everyone in the bowling alley to look at. I’m not thrilled at having my gutter ball or failure to pick up an easy spare on display. I imagine others might feel the same.

Yet human nature is such that we interact with each other in many areas of life as if a scoreboard is hanging up there ranking each of us. One obvious place that happens for pastors is comparing church size. But we do it with grades, income, success in romance, general levels of happiness and all sorts of other scoring scales both measurable and immeasurable. As we read in our very familiar text this week from Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32, siblings are notorious for this sort of score keeping in competition with each other.

Believers in God may particularly feel the presence of some sort of divine scoreboard keeping track of moral and spiritual performance. As I look at this well-known story of two brothers and consider the conversation of the father with the elder brother at the end of the parable, I believe it is Jesus’ declaration that God the Father is not keeping score, or at least not in any way that we might typically assume.

So let us remember that God’s love toward us is not based on a good score in the contest of life, especially in comparison with our brothers and sisters in the faith. Instead, let us learn to accept His freely offered love and grace, and to do our best to offer it those around us, forgoing every temptation to keep score.

We call it “blaming the victims.” I did it myself when I first heard about the 737 Max crash in Ethiopia just prior to some air travel myself last week. I remarked to my wife that American planes are probably better maintained than Ethiopian planes. A couple days later my son-in-law corrected that opinion, explaining to me that Ethiopian Airlines is actually well-run, with a pretty good safety record overall.

Jesus addressed the natural human tendency to blame victims, imagining that they somehow must deserve their fate, in our text for this week, Luke 13:1-9. Jesus denied in verse 3 that the Galileans murdered by Pilate in the act of making sacrifices to God were somehow worse sinners than other Galileans (verse 2). However that denial is quickly followed by the perhaps unexpected warning, “but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”

Another current event of Jesus’ time, a tower falling on eighteen people, is given similar treatment in verses 4 and 5. Jesus denies blame for the victims while at the same time using the disaster as a warning to unrepentant sinners.

Then in the last part of the text, verses 6 to 9, Jesus tells a little parable about an unfruitful fig tree, with the same warning as the point, repent or suffer the consequences.

The parable in verse 8 is tempered with a little glimpse of the mercy and patience of God in the gardner’s request for patience with the fig tree.

Yet, as Klyne Snodgrass says in his book on the parables, mercy is not the primary theme here. In contrast to measuring the blame of others, He calls us to look to ourselves and our own need to repent from sin rather than to identify others more sinful than ourselves. And that is a big part of what Lent is all about.