Category luke

The parable of the persistent widow is all about relationships

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Luke 18 1-8 Psalm 66 1-11 2 Timothy 2 8-15

The readings this week are about relationship and community. They are about family, they are about
loving someone enough to look after them, to make sure they are safe. To know they love you
enough so that when you give them bad news they will know you mean well and the other way
round.


I always remember It was on the 59th minute or so of a 1 hour interview someone told me that I
had done the whole thing with the tail of my suit jacket firmly tucked into my trousers. I had dashed
out the rest room and nobody thought to tell me.


Family tell you things like that, family calms you down when your flustered. Family stop you crossing
the road when the cars coming, tell you when your breath smells, encourage you when your
flagging. Let you know if you have been rude, and love you lots and lots through all those things. On
your good days and your bad days, the dialogue keeps us on the straight and narrow. You accept all
those things from family because they love you lots and lots.
They stop you eating too much chocolate.


How our families do that is by the constant dialogue of family life
We can understand exactly how Paul did that because of his letters. In todays reading the
community, he is talking to Timothy in Ephesus, which was in modern day turkey, about an hour’s
drive from Izmir where lots of people go on holiday.

The aim here is to help Timothy understand
how to create a good culture and deal with problems, and some problematic people in a very new
church, and a lot of Timothy must be seen in that light. That specific person, being told how to
manage that specific church, with specific people, in it causing it very specific problems. He
includes prayer in his letters as a thing to do and as a way, he was guided.
, so when Paul directs people, it we can read his letters?


When it’s family or friends they speak to us
How do we do that with God though, how do we talk to god and how does God direct us?
We could write letter or poem like the person that wrote the psalm has done.
A psalm is sort of a letter or a poem to God really. Looking at them they are people bringing their
joy, and Desires and complaints to god, the psalms also show us how god directs the writer, and
then by us reading them directs us.


The majority in fact of our psalms are mainly people complaining, moaning, asking for justice. So our
psalms show us God values and listens to our distress and takes it seriously. They are called psalms
of lament.


Jesus story today shows us another way we can do all that a psalm does with God, and that’s called
prayer. Prayer is dialogue with god, prayer is working directly with the greatest force in all creation.

Jesus also showing us how to pray shows also a very important thing about prayer, Persistence
often pays off.
Persistence can sound. hard, but like when I want a new set of golf clubs, or Mrs T wants a new
kitchen, you may want a new game, or a new phone, or whatever it is we want. When our family
wants us to behave better. Sometimes being persistent is the best way.

That’s what our reading says, be persistent. That sounds like taking great chunks of our day and
setting them aside, but Our heritage as Christian’s show there are lots of examples of different ways
to pray.
The way we can be persistent doesn’t have to mean kneeling and closing our eyes. These are good
ways of making God your center of attention. But Prayer can Take many forms , A dialogue as we
drive , or shower , or over dinner, or before we sleep or whenever is just as good. As long as you are
paying attention to God, then God is paying attention to you. In fact God is always paying attention
to you even when you are not.


That’s the thing about prayer it can take many forms, and be like many things. It can be at the
shopping Centre,it can be a letter , or a psalm, it can be as we walk, it can be eyes open or closed, it
can be happy or sad. Restricting prayer to that 5 minutes or so when we “do prayer” is like saying to
your family, I am only going to talk to you for one hour today when we do our chat.


They would wonder what’s gone wrong, and be very sad. Also you probably wont get those trainers
or golf clubs or kitchen. Prayer is a dialogue, spoken or unspoken,, written or unwritten, happy or
sad, angry or calm. But it should be just part of life. I quite often ask God into my business meetings
before I start and it does really help?


In the bible we do prayers of confession (we did that right at the beginning of the service today) of
adoration, people make promises to god, people ask for healing, prayers of thanks, and later we will
do the Lord’s Prayer which is us asking god for seven different things.


Prayer is that constant awareness of God, that can fluctuate and gods awareness of us which never
does. St Benedict says we can give whatever we do to God because Gods in it already, the washing
up , the cooking. We can say this is for you and offer it to him. Like the old song the little drummer
boy, we can make whatever we do a gift to him. Even playing the drums as best we can. God wants
us to involve him in everything we do.


That’s what Jesus means today, persistence, meaning the constant dialogue that goes on between
people we love. All the magnificent, moving, good bad, boring mundane stuff of our daily lives
shared with God.


and that as Jesus says today is when prayer really works, for us for God and we really become part of
Gods friends and family. That of course is what God really wants.
Amen

The parable of the shrewd manager and our late queen

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Luke 16 1-13 The Parable of the Shrewd Manager

Question 

Who in this last week of thinking about our queen has really thought about or been jealous of her money?

How many  of all the eulogies we have heard have been centred on that fact?

They have been about her service, her faith, humour, but money

When her funeral happens in the morning how much will be about that.

Not any I have heard, a few republicans have mentioned it in regards to her role, but not her.

She got the subject of money correct among many things.

On the subject of money, we do need money…..

On the other end of the scale Ive been poor and having enough is nicer, it solves many issues. I recall one time needing to do some overtime to pay a utility bill, and I had an MOT, and that failed, and then I couldn’t use the car to do the overtime to pay the bill, and of course now I had two bills to pay.  Ive seen the shanty towns in Colombo, and in Johannesburg and my problems shrink further still compared to that.

 Having enough relieves that sort of stress, and in our story its that sort of stress all the people that owed the money were no doubt u under owing so much money.

Because all the people spoken about today who were owed money were rich?

All those that owed it were tenant farmers, and my uncle bob was one of those and he didn’t have much money I can tell you. Life was hard, hand to mouth, making their own food on an allotment to fill the gaps.

There are various interpretations of this parable, and I am comforted that Paula Gooder in places found it as confusing as me?  But here’s where I landed, the word used for squander is actually closer to spreading around, so a sort of wasteful sharing if you like.

I think its about recognising that which we sow on earth is reverberated in heaven, part of that which is reverberated is what we do with what we own, are owed, that make cake a difference. that is to say the manager is rewarded for spreading about the money and alleviating the stress that the tenant farmers were under by the landlord.    

Why? Because as he said you cannot serve two masters, your eyes are either on gathering in as much money as you can, or transversely while owed a lot, you can gather in as much as is fair, or as much as people can give when the bill is owed and the MOT’s due.  

The idea in this story is in not being a slave to money means you tend to be a little more generous and therefore spread a little more happiness around. The reverse leads to the reverse, you gather in every penny, are not generous, and you spread sadness.

I think also that a message comes across, that the landowner was less worried about the squandering of money, of that spreading around but that it had to have a purpose, to make his tenants lives happier, and less stressful.


So essentially this parable is saying, our lives can tell a different story than the money we have, or the wealth we accumulate if that isn’t the sole lord and master of our lives.  

This is why I think the queen albeit immeasurably wealthy, her life told a different story.  Her legacy isn’t all about that, it’s a fact but to most not the most important one. In fact I am not sure I or many  would swap my average  life of comfort, for her wealthy life of service to all.

As in this story its not not having money that’s the problem its allowing it to take over our lives, our society, our government etc. When we measure the treasures, we store up in heaven none of them will have pound signs attached, of that I am sure.  When we measure all those things that detract from them, how we treated others as a result of measuring the world as profit and loss will be part of it.

That idea extends into so many things, into our health system, social security, refugees, how we help those that are homeless and all those in need. Its why I always wince when we measure those things solely by money and not by real need.  Because as Jesus is showing us here, that is the real sin, not squandering the money, but where its squandered and how and why. 

We have a god of outrageous love and grace, and by any terms when love is given like that it could be measured to be squandered, but its not really. Because we get it back when we are in the phase of existence our dear queen is, where shis is inheriting all the rewards of her grace and kindness as we speak I am sure.

Money and how we treat people as a result of how we spend , share or withhold it , has ramifications far beyond our earthly debt. Jesus did just clear the debt because the landowner was owed it, but he also didn’t squash the people that owed it.  The landowner was owed money but not obsessed by it.

So much of our society is obsessed by things, and has lost the idea that sharing those things stores up treasures in heaven used well.

  How empty does celebrity or fame, or bling become when we see what we can really be given in return.  I used to get ever more guilty as I progressed in my career thinking its about giving everything away and living like a hermit.  But its not about that so when 

in Luke 6 Jesus says 

 anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.

Todays passage shows it doesn’t matter if you have another 2 coats indoors, if you give to whoever needs,


So our goal isn’t to necessarily become poor, but to not be defined or to define ourselves by what we have, rather by what money enables us to do for others,  how we can use that wealth to store up treasures in heaven.  

Our legacy is really when we are gone and people speak about us and we face his judgment, that the measure isn’t what we had, but whether it obsessed us, owned us , defined us.    Listening to the stories of the queen this week, I think she got that right, and made our world, our country our commonwealth a better place and that’s whats going to define her.

On a smaller scale perhaps  that what the goal of our lives should be

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Jesus and come dine with me

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Luke 14

In amongst the TV that my daughter sometimes watches, there’s one that truly boggles my brain. People go round people’s houses for dinner, and then the people who have been fed and watered clearly to the best of the host or hostesses’ ability are then rude about it! I watched one part of this, and I was like, bad manners are now a TV program?

But that isn’t a million miles from what Jesus was up to today!

Imagine being invited for dinner and then really lecturing them on how they decide to seat people. Especially when they have seated you at the seat of the most honour.

As much as that program riles me, it’s fair to Jesus is quite rude to his host today, and my sermon today is to maybe look at why.

In Jesus’s time, the Pharisees held dinners for visiting itinerant preachers that moved from town to town. This was just such an occasion that Jesus was invited to. The seating for said dinners was very much ordered by your standing in the community; the higher honour, the better seat, however quite often, people used to try and move up the social ladder or be seen too by moving themselves up in the order of seating.

In an Honour based society, the more honour you could have been seen to accrue, the better for you.

Loss of honour meant shame, and the word shame entomology can be directly routed back to being forced into a lower place around the table.

This jostling for position is probably what Jesus was watching going on when he spoke up


So we have to ask ourselves what’s got Jesus upset enough to be so forthright and blimmin rude really.

 how we work that out really goes to the heart of how we use the bible as a guide for our lives. What’s a rule, what’s a paradigm, what’s an ethic, what is moral? It’s work we should do because Confusing those leads to all sorts of trouble. Treating a paradigm or a metaphor as a rule leads to literalism, and that’s a path to madness.

In simple terms,

Jesus isn’t after you changing where you sit.

Physical seating only matters, in this case, if certain seats are seen as having more honour. So if the seats at the front of the church are seen as more honourable then the seats at the back are the place to be. But if it doesn’t matter to you, then it doesn’t matter.

I say this as someone standing at the top of the church has moved from a special seat. I’ll be honest with you, it bothers me greatly until I came to the realization that people do have to hear what we say up here and be able to follow the service and that’s best done in a place where people can see us.

Today’s story has many layers, and seating really disguises

what Jesus is actually on about today.

The story is  about who we invite to the table, and who  indeed invited by Jesus and  whom we should invite to whatever we consider as places of honour, the best seats, the greatest places, those who we show off as worthy or merit and honour

The occasion in the story is a feast, and soon we are all to be invited up here to Jesus’s feast, and as a church in this story, we have been shown here as to whom should be invited.   

Because The most crucial thing Jesus is asking  us here today is this question, the question we should go away from today with


Who  does Jesus want us to ask “Friend, move up to a better place.'”


It’s kind of the story of Luke, really, Luke is the gospel where Gentiles are invited to the feast. Gentiles were considered by Jesus’s audience to be unclean, beyond redemption, sinful and breaking rules that God cannot forgive. 

They were withheld from religious rites that religious law stated god does not want at his table, and those who’s sin debars them due to their breaking of certain theological or religious norms that meant they cannot be accommodated.

When Peter questioned the inclusion of gentiles god said to him do not declare anything unclean that I have called clean.

This brings us to the central point

Who is beyond Jesus’s grace is the central question being asked here.

Todays story shows us that , nobody is beyond grace, nobody is beyond his love. Everyone is invited to the table indeed to the places of honour, because of Grace, which is why  god has declared us clean.

Grace is why Jesus came, Grace is the central idea of every word in the bible. It’s the drop that encapsulates the meaning of the ocean . The roots of the word Grace mean  Rejoice I am Glad.

Grace is for those that are declared beyond the pale! 

So to drill right down to it the story today is actually becomes about us.

Those whom that are considered unclean by us, lower than us untouchable, aberrant, who are so far from what we consider acceptable that we don’t want them in that door.

What I would really love from today is if you go out of here and think about who and why you might choose to stop from some religious rite, baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, marriage whatever.

Think about  that and then realise. whoever you think of as beyond grace, Jesus is today saying these are  whom you should invite to the places of honour, and whom Jesus calls friend as well as you.

I’ll try and illuminate that story by a couple of stories


I read a story recently, and a lady of the night was asked to come to church and her response was “why would I go there it would only make me feel worse!. That’s the reverse of Grace.

A bishop and a curate once were going to see a man who’s wife had left him  after he had cheated on her. The Bishop asked the curate, could you ever imagine doing something so awful?
The curate said no of course not.
The Bishop said, you better stay behind then.

Nobody is beyond grace, nobody is more or less broken than one another and all are called friend, and invited to his table.

That is what Jesus is saying today,  nobody is beyond his grace.

That’s it.
Amen