Sermon for Sunday, June 30: 6th Sunday after Pentecost

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Luke 9

PREACHER: Pastor Carrie Smith 

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

So a priest, 2 Lutheran pastors, a political activist, a former missionary, 2 preacher’s kids, and an Archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church walk into a suburban steakhouse, and the bartender says…

I don’t actually have a punchline, but doesn’t that sound like the beginning of an excellent joke?

This was actually the scene last week, when my spouse Robert invited me to join him for a dinner with Archbishop Jean Kawak of Damascus, Syria. Bishop Kawak was scheduled to speak at a Lutheran Church in Barrington (an event which fifteen Bethany members also made time to attend—thank you!) and I was grateful to have the opportunity to chat with him at dinner beforehand.

To be fair, even the bartender had probably seen men in a clergy collar before, although perhaps not so many at one table. But it was the archbishop who made quite the impression in that little steakhouse. He wore a long black cassock and had a thick gray beard. Around his neck was a chain on which hung a large, ornate, filigreed icon of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. And on his head was a black cap, embroidered with many small white crosses, covering his ears and the sides of his face. All around us, people were trying to find a polite way to stare, especially as the waitress brought a tray of beer and set it in front of this odd group of diners.

While we waited for the food to arrive, and of course always being interested clergy apparel, I decided to just go ahead and ask the bishop about the icon and the cap.

The icon, he explained carefully, was Mary and Jesus. 

I knew that part, I assured him!

He went on to explain that wearing it signified he was an archbishop. A regular bishop would be wearing a large cross instead.

And the cap, he said, had many meanings. The twelve small crosses were to represent the twelve disciples. The larger one, in the middle, represented Jesus Christ himself. And the entire cap wraps around the side of the head, covering the ears and the sides of the face, said the bishop, to remind him that a disciple must not listen to the other voices of the world, or look to the right or to the left, but should keep one’s head pointed straight ahead, listening to and following where Christ alone leads.

The image of Bishop Kawak’s little black hat was in my mind’s eye as I read the Gospel text for this week, in which Jesus tells a would-be follower: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke chapter 9 tells us about three people who had the opportunity to follow Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem. One is eager to follow, but seems to back off when she hears the true nature of the trip. One is invited by Jesus himself, but he asks to go home and take care of other responsibilities first. And the third volunteers to enlist as a disciple, but wants to go home for some last good-byes.

And Jesus replies, in no uncertain terms: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” No one who looks to the right or to the left, who listens to the noise of the world, who looks back and longs for the good old days, or who wants to keep other options open, is fit to follow Jesus. 

If I could choose a theme song for this passage from the 9^th chapter of Luke, it would be the folk tune “Gospel Plow”, sung by the likes of Bob Dylan and Mahalia Jackson, which proclaims: “Keep your hand on the plow, hold on.”     

Jesus says to all who would follow him: “Keep your hand on the plow and hold on!” Those of you who gathered to hear Bishop Kawak speak last week got a sense of just how serious these words are for Christians in Syria today. The few Christian families who are left in Damascus struggle for work, for food, for an education for their children, and for safety. Churches have been bombed. Religious leaders havebeen kidnapped. Many families have already fled the country. But Bishop Kawak has told us that he will not leave. He will stay in Damascus—in a city where Saints Paul and Thomas are said to have lived, in a country which is called the cradle not only of Christianity but of civilization—until there are no more Christian families left, or until he himself is killed.

Bishop Kawak has decided to keep his hand on the plow, and to hold on. Hold on to his community. Hold on to the vision of a Syria where Christians and Muslims can again live in peace. Hold on to his faith in God and in Jesus Christ, who promises to be with us, even to the end of the age. God be with him, and with his community. Amen.

For most of us, following Jesus is much less costly. Our decision to be a Christian might mean choosing between denominations, choosing the best Sunday school or youth program, or choosing the early or late service. It means choosing to sit here on a wooden pew for a 10 minute sermon, over sitting at a table for brunch or getting a few extra hours of sleep on your only day off. As difficult as these decisions can feel on any given Sunday, as we approach our country’s Independence Day, we would do well to remember that having such choices available to us is a freedom that not all people enjoy.

And yet, I know there are costs for you, too. Some of you are here at the protest of your spouse or partner. Some of you have left the church of your youth to find a home in a more welcoming community. Even if you haven’t suffered violence or overt harassment because of your faith, some of you have experienced quieter forms of discrimination, sometimes even at the hands of other Christians whose paths seem paved with certainty.  Anyone who has joined in God’s mission to feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, and to work for justice and peace for the whole people of God has at one time or another prayed with the psalmist: “How long, O Lord? How long shall my enemies be exalted over me?” (Psalm 13) I know, sisters and brothers, that there are days in your discipleship journey when the only way to place one foot in front of the other is to sing along with Bob or Mahalia: “Keep your hand on the plow, and hold on!”

There is an old proverb that says: "When you get to your wit's end, remember that God lives there."

To that point, preacher and professor Alyce McKenzie writes:

“And it's a good thing, too. Because it's not natural to pursue long and arduous journeys with unflagging bravery and energy. It's not humanly possible to keep on plowing, keep on proclaiming the kingdom of God without looking back.”

Did you hear that? It’s not natural to do what Jesus asks. It’s not in our nature! And that’s the point: We are weak, but he is strong! We could never make the walk to Jerusalem on our own. But it is Jesus, crucified and risen, who calls us to something greater. Jesus calls us to follow him, and the Holy Spirit empowers us to persist in times of doubt and uncertainty, to withstand persecution, to speak truth to power, to keep the faith, and to keep our hands on the plow and hold on.

Some days, it feels like too much. Some days, we feel we just can’t go on. It’s only natural for us to look back, to second-guess, and to question the wisdom of following this man called Jesus.

And that, sisters and brothers, is why we need the saints.

We need the company of the saints, past and present, who have been this way before, who have paved the path we now trod, who have run and not grown weary, who have walked and not been faint.

We look to the saints to lead the way:

Mary Magdalene, the first to share the Good News of the resurrection when others scoffed; 

Paul and Silas, who persisted through imprisonment and persecution; 

Martin and Katie Luther, standing firm on the promises of Christ our king; 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, risking everything for what he knew was right, following Jesus even to the gallows;

  

Dorothy Day, who lived her life among the poor of New York City, laying one brick at a time in the fight against poverty and hunger; 

Martin Luther King, Jr. and all the civil rights prophets, who dreamed that all whom God created has created equal would be treated as such in schools, in courts of law, and in the voting booth; 

And this week we look to Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid activist, ex-prisoner, and former president of South Africa, who even now is nearing the end of his earthly journey. Along with each of the others I mentioned, Mandela would certainly balk at being called a saint. “I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying,” he once said.

Whether saint or sinner, Nelson Mandela stands as one among many who kept his hands on the plow and held on, pushing forward against unimaginable opposition, keeping his eyes on the prize of freedom, justice, and equality for all of God’s children.

My sisters and brothers in Christ, discipleship is costly. It requires a single-mindedness and focus that we do not possess on our own. Like the would-be followers in today’s Gospel text, we may find ourselves eager to follow but easily discouraged; we may hear the call of Christ but feel the tug of other responsibilities and priorities; we may even take our place at the plow and then struggle to hold on to the faith. It’s only natural.

But even so, Christ calls you to follow him! He calls you—with Bishop Kawak of Damascus, and with Mavis, Gene, Kim, Konrad, and Sharon of Bethany Lutheran in Crystal Lake—to join him on the journey, looking neither right nor left, but keeping your eyes only on him. Through the power of the cross—and in the company of the saints—our Lord will guide us into all truth. Go, and proclaim the kingdom of God! Amen.

Sermon for Father's Day: from guest preacher Pr. Cordell Strug

Sermon for June 16, 2013 (Father’s Day)

Pentecost 4

2 Sam 11, 12; Luke 7, 8

PREACHER: Rev. Cordell Strug

When I realized that today was Father’s Day, I thought: “Well—I’m a father, and a picture is worth a thousand words, so maybe I could just stand up here and let you admire me for ten minutes or so.” But since the mother of those children I fathered was going to be here as well, I thought if I did that, I was unlikely to live to see another Father’s Day!

But I hoped at least I might find, in the day’s lessons, a fatherly story—something about Jesus in a bossy mood, telling the disciples to clean their rooms, get a haircut, or better yet—a tale of King David or King Solomon, fathers of families, fathers of their nation. Something noble, patriarchal: I saw in my imagination a tall man, strong, pure of heart, striding home across his own land, with lavish provisions in tow, greeted with joy by his dependents who had worked hard all day for his comfort; he would sit in an easy chair before the fire with his favorite dog at his side, settle accounts, adjudicate quarrels, and philosophize on the affairs of the state and the destiny of humankind. I thought I might find a story like that…

But when I looked up the lessons, what did I find?

Oh, there’s a story about King David, small comfort, and he is going to be a father—but he hasn’t exactly been devoting a lot of thought to children, not to mention nobility, his favorite dog, or the affairs of the state.

David had been coveting his neighbor’s wife—and that’s putting it mildly. David was coveting her so badly that he arranged a fatal accident for her husband and took her. We see him accused by an upright man, called to account. The story ends with the illness of their child, who will die—not the first, and not the last child to pay or to perish for a father’s behavior.

Well, that was sobering!

But who can deny that this is a word for today? Nathan’s cry “You are the man!” has probably been shouted in a lot of living rooms and kitchens: and a lot of the ears it’s fallen upon have been deaf to it.

I was watching a football game once, and you know how the players on the sidelines always wave at the camera and say: “Hi, Mom”, and I remembered my mother’s absolute inability to comprehend football. She’d say “Ooh! They all fell down!” –she couldn’t tell the difference between a football and a hockey puck, while my father was quite an athlete. And I thought to myself: “Don’t any of these clowns have fathers? Wouldn’t old dad like to get a little wave once in a while?” But then I thought, with a little shame: maybe they don’t. Maybe they don’t have fathers, or at least fathers that were there—maybe mother had to do it all.

Right now, the number of children growing up in families headed by single mothers is at an all-time high. And one of the saddest and bleakest stories of our time must be the story of lost and drifting boys: men who grow up without responsible men watching over them. They pay for it, and they’re not the only ones who pay for it.

Really, both mother and father are as much terms of honor and achievement, of places to be earned, as they are of biological fact. So we hear people say: “She was my real mother/he was my real father” – some of them might even get a card today! But we all have to step up and earn that place. This may be even more true of fathers than mothers, because of that uncrossable biological barrier. No one talks about being able to recognize a father’s heartbeat. Fathers either show up for duty or end of not counting for much.

I remember, when I was little, being a bit surprised to learn there was a Father’s Day. At least in my memory, it doesn’t seem to have been nearly as big a deal as Mother’s Day, a cultural after-thought, a consolation prize for coming in second in the sentimental sweepstakes. I though Mother’s Day was like the summer solstice: that it was part of nature and started on the sixth day of creation, while Father’s Day was a kind of made-up modern observance, like National Poetry Month of “Save the Whales Sunday”.

Maybe that says something about the fathers of my youth: as I picture them, they would have held themselves above such frippery and fuss: I can hear them sounding like Vito Corleone in “The Godfather” – “women and children can afford to care about such things. Men? No! Not men!” A lot of them were WWII vets, arms like sewer pipes. They seemed to think awards were for slackers: it’s the job that’s important, not the award! What mattered was standing up and getting it done, and not waiting around for the applause.

They all worked in heavy industry—steel mills, oil refineries, automobile plants—and, because of that, they had their own sort of absence. They were providers, of course, in those days, in that place, and they also provided mothers a kind of nuclear deterrent, a weapon of last resort: “Wait until your father hears about this!”

It’s been tempting, in our time, for our cultural complainers, the family values crusaders, to look back on that time with nostalgia for its male economic dominance, command and power. But that’s kind of a distorted picture, as nostalgia always is, and there are some hidden agendas in those yearnings. And it’s awfully hard to make dominance into a Christian virtue!

I sense in this nostalgia a resentment of the opportunities gained by women, a resentment I don’t see as part of the men of that time that I looked up to. There are reasons we got from here to there, and one of those reasons is that real families embraced opportunities for both daughters and sons. Real families are richer and more flexible than the ideologues would have us think.

Even in an industrial community like the one I grew up in, with its rigidly separated roles, the good families were partnerships because they wanted to make a go of it together. We weren’t that well off, and when my mother got a night job at a bank in downtown Chicago, life became even more of a partnership. When I was serving as a pastor in rural Minnesota, which had a completely different work cycle and role models, I still can’t think of a single farm family that wasn’t also a partnership.

It’s no accident that the 4^th commandment calls us to honor our father and mother as a pair, that new creature of one flesh that we proclaim in the marriage service. And when Luther explains the Lord’s Prayer in the Small Catechism, he says that to pray “Our Father” (to use, as Jesus did, “Father” as an address to God) is to believe “that we may approach God boldly and confidently in prayer, even as beloved children approach their dear father.” In other words, Luther (who drove his own father crazy, by the way!) sees the title “Father” not in terms of power and rule, let alone gender superiority, but in terms of loving accessibility. This is the name that should cast out fear and offer the welcome home.

Now let’s take these thoughts of fathers, families and values and look at this little episode from the life of Jesus.

Jesus didn’t have children of this own, and the only story we have of his growing up is one of him NOT obeying his parents, but leaving to do what he wanted and teaching in the temple! It might have been fun to see how Jesus would have reacted to his own son going missing for a couple of days to study in the temple—or to rebuild an engine in somebody’s garage. It would have been instructive to see how Jesus handled his daughter’s first date. But what we learn from him about family life we have to learn from his life as such.

And, really, it isn’t that much of a stretch to see this dinner at Simon the Pharisee’s house as a family scene, in a larger sense of family. It’s about who belongs and who doesn’t, how we treat on another, and how we go on together.

In fact, it has an eerie echo of the messy family scene from David’s life. There are two men facing off, one of whom speaks as a moral guardian, one of whom seems to be compromised, neglectful and careless of his authority and position. There is a woman involved, and what’s going on seems to demand the naming of a sin.

Superficially, it we have learned the lesson of Nathan and David, it might seem that Simon the Pharisee, the man who names the sinner here, the man with the hard word, is the name with a true and godly word. I bet if you left out the names and disguised the details a little, then showed this story to a random group of religion leaders, most of them would say Simon is the real Christian.

But the hard word of Simon is not the word of the Gospel, and don’t you ever forget that!

Simon thinks: “If this man were really a prophet, he’d know who and what this sinful woman is.” And it’s not irrelevant that Simon adds “This woman who is touching him.” He doesn’t exactly accuse Jesus of being like David with Bathsheba, but was thinking along that line!

But the point of the story is this: Jesus does know who and what she is—better than Simon does, and at a deeper level than Simon does. Jesus never let himself be blinded by his own goodness. Yes, he knows what she is; he also knows there’ more to her; he can see her and he knows what she needs. She can come to him without fear and he welcomes her home. The sin named in this scene is Simon’s sin; his treatment of Jesus, his scorn of the woman, his distance from which he looks down on them both. The way that’s shown in the scene is the way of God with the sinner.

We might say David’s story showed a failure of responsibility; Simon’s story is a failure of forgiveness, a failure of love. And, provocatively, they’re both blinded: David by lust, Simon by moral judgment—but neither one can see what he is doing.

It’s to David’s credit that he can respond “I have sinned against the Lord!” because these failures are more than personal. They’re failures in what and how God would have us be together.

Since I was looking at these scenes through the lens of Father’s Day, I thought there was one more light, or one more challenge, thrown here on the family.

Children are like guests in our lives, as Jesus was in Simon’s house: poor Simon probably thought he had a tidy little domestic arrangement completely under his control (like the Martha Stewart of the moral world): then all of a sudden this woman is at Jesus’ feet, like a little too weird-looking date your son or daughter might bring home. It’s a question children raise in lots of ways, as long as they are with us: “How flexible can our family be?” Can we see our children for who they are, not for who we want them to be; how far can the family be open to others and to the world the kids bring home with them?

So it seems very appropriate to me that today’s Gospel ends with a picture of Jesus walking around with an extended family of people who just sort of got attached to him: the 12 picked up here and there, Mary who had seven demons, the wife of Herod’s steward (How did SHE get there??)—and I think it’s very deliberately meant to show the rough-edged, ragged, uncontrollable hodge-podge of everybody, the sloppy bigness of the family of God, as big as God’s mercy, a mess from the human point of view, but all wrapped up in the real goodness of God’s kingdom.

Amen.

Sermon for June 9, 2013: Professional Compassion?

June 9, 2013

Luke 7:11-17 The Widow of Nain

PREACHER: Pastor Carrie Smith

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Sisters and brothers, here we are, another Sunday into the season the church calls “ordinary time”, and this morning we hear an account from the life of Jesus which is anything but ordinary. In this scene from the 7^th chapter of Luke, Jesus encounters an ordinary funeral procession and does something extraordinary—he steps forward, places his hand on the funeral cart, and with a word raises a dead man to life. This miraculous event is all the more powerful because we are told the dead man was the only son of a widow. Her situation, which was tenuous before, was about to become even worse following the loss of her son, her only source of income and security.  This wasn’t just bad news—it was extraordinarily bad. The crowd following the procession outside the town gate had gathered to witness not just a son’s burial, but also the end of a mother’s life as she knew it. 

So while this isn’t the only account of Jesus raising someone from the dead—in fact, in the very next chapter of Luke Jesus raises a 12 year old girl with nearly the same words: “Little girl, get up!”—this healing story grabs our attention because Jesus doesn’t just raise a man to life; he restores life to the mother, too. He rescues this woman, a stranger, from a future of poverty and desperation. Verse 15 says “The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.” Jesus gives the widow of Nain her son, but he also gives her hope and a life worth living.

It’s probably safe to say that any story of a dead man sitting up and talking is extraordinary! But this one stands out among the other miracles of Jesus because there’s no mention of faith having any part of the healing process. Unlike last week’s story, when we learned of the tremendous faith of the Roman centurion, this week we don’t know anything about the faith of the widow of Nain. She says nothing, she asks for nothing—and yet Jesus restores her life anyway.

Why does he do this? Because, we read in verse 13, when the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” 

Jesus had compassion for the widow of Nain. Jesus changed his itinerary, took a detour, interrupted a funeral procession, raised a dead man and restored a woman’s life—not because of her faith, or because her friends asked on her behalf, or to make a point to the crowds who were gathered—but because he had compassion for her. 

Now, “compassion” is not such an unusual word, so when you hear it, it probably conjures up some images in your mind. Think for a moment: What does it mean for you to “have compassion” for someone? And how do you communicate that compassion? What does compassion look like? Perhaps, when someone shares a medical diagnosis with you, you might say, “I’m so sorry—let me know what I can do.” Maybe, if you are an employer or a teacher or have some other authority, you may “have compassion” for someone’s situation by treating them a little more kindly than usual. If you’re a Lutheran, you may show compassion through a casserole or a cake (time-tested remedies, for sure!) Often, however, in our ultra-connected world where bad news is shared across social media 24 hours a day, “having compassion” for another human being means little more than a quick thought of “Man, that’s terrible”; the sharing of a status update; and the perfunctory “You will be in my prayers”.

But when we read in Luke chapter 7 that “Jesus had compassion for her and said to her ‘Do not weep’”, there’s nothing perfunctory about it. The Greek word for “had compassion” in this text is one I couldn’t begin to pronounce: "splagchnizomai”. Now this is just the verb form of the noun "splagchnon," meaning your bowels, heart, lungs, liver or kidneys, which in that day were thought to be the center of human emotions. Throughout the Gospels, this is the word used when we read that Jesus was a man of compassion. Jesus was one who felt the pain and sorrow and grief of the world in his “splagchnon”, or, in other words, his very innards. He was affected deep within wherever he encountered poverty, or hunger, or pain, or grief. In the case of the widow of Nain, he felt her grief, her hopelessness, her desperation and lack of options so deeply that he was moved to raise her son from the dead and restore her to life.

And this is very Good News, don’t you think? We have a God who, through Jesus our brother, feels our pain and our grief more deeply than we can imagine. We have a God who, through Jesus our healer, restores us to life. We have a God who, through Jesus our redeemer, assures us that though we walk through the valley of shadow of death, we shall fear no evil, for the Lord is with us. Amen?

Jesus felt compassion on the widow of Nain and restored her life. But first, he stepped forward. Because he felt her pain and grief deep within, he took a moment out of his packed preaching itinerary and came forward to speak to a grieving woman. He stepped right into the middle of that funeral procession and reached out to touch the cart on which her dead son lay. And then he said, “Do not weep.”

Now this is the part where many of us say “And that’s why he’s Jesus, and I’m not!” Most of us find ourselves tongue-tied just thinking about what to say to someone who is grieving. We’re afraid to say the wrong thing, afraid of offending, afraid of making things worse. Often, we’re just afraid to come forward and place ourselves in the middle of those sacred moments that exist where life and death meet.

Many of you know that for several years I worked as a certified “doula”, or labor and birth assistant. It was a job that paid not even as well as being a pastor, and the hours were much worse. There were middle of the night calls and false alarms. There were hours of sitting with women in pain, knowing you couldn’t take it away. Being a doula meant touching someone who just weeks before had been a stranger—rubbing feet, massaging shoulders, holding hands, pushing pressure points. It meant seeing women at their best and at their worst, walking with families through difficult decisions, and being a witness to joyous and sometimes heartbreaking moments. 

When I went to seminary and was required to write about my call to ministry, I talked often about how the experience of being a doula was such good preparation for being a pastor. Being a doula had placed me right smack in the middle of that sacred, in-between space between life and death, over and over again. It opened my heart and taught me how to feel the pain, and grief, and struggle of others. In other words, it gave me a small taste of the kind of compassion Jesus has for our suffering—a compassion which he not only felt deep within, but took upon his own body when he suffered with us and for us on the cross. 

Now that I have a few years of ministry under my belt, I still think being a doula was good preparation for being a pastor. But these experiences have also brought to light what seems to me a significant challenge for Christian communities today, which is the professionalization of compassion. 

No one even knew what a “doula” was 100 years ago. It is a profession today only because birth was moved out of the home and into the hospital, thereby removing women from their systems of support. A doula is only doing what aunts and sisters and grandmothers once did.

In the same way, we now have hospice nurses to care for us when we are dying, and we send out pastors and chaplains to visit the sick and the grieving.

When I say that compassion has been professionalized, what I mean is that we now assume one needs special training to sit with the sick and suffering. We prefer to send the certified and accredited and properly prepared to be with those who are about to be born or who are about to die. Somehow, we’ve gotten the idea that these sacred moments are out of bounds for “regular” Christians. 

But the truth is, compassion is the call of every Christian. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, he did extraordinary things—feeding, healing, and raising the dead. And every time, he called ordinary people to continue his extraordinary ministry. Today, he sends us out to the sick, and the suffering, and the grieving. He invites us to join him at the edge of the city, with the marginalized and those with no future, and to feel their suffering deep within our own bodies. We are the ordinary crowds gathered there at the gates of Nain. We have witnessed the great compassion of Jesus Christ, and we will never be the same.

Today, I see ordinary Christians continuing Jesus’ extraordinary ministry of compassion every time one of you dares to enter into that sacred space where life and death meet.

Every day, right here in our community, prayer shawls are delivered to those who are grieving. Communion is delivered to the homebound. Cancer patients receive rides to chemo and radiation.  Casseroles are baked and delivered to those who have had surgery. Meals are served to PADS guests. Donations are sent to end the suffering of malaria in faraway places. Hands are held, tears are shared…and people are restored to life, in the name of Jesus. 

Sisters and brothers, today I want you to hear that Christian compassion doesn’t require special training. You don’t need to be a professional to restore life and hope to someone walking in the valley of the shadow of death! You have everything you need to continue the feeding, healing, and raising the dead—for in Christ you have been restored to new life. In the Christ, you are healed. In Christ, you are called. In Christ, you are sent out. In Christ, you are equipped. And in Christ, your ordinary becomes extraordinary! 

Amen. 

Sermon for June 5, 2013: Worth It

Sermon for June 2, 2013

Second Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 7:1-10

Preacher: Pastor Carrie Smith

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Ask any of our neighbors, and they’re likely to tell you they’re just waiting for us to put up a yard sign that says “Smith Family Bed and Breakfast”. Our kids don’t bat an eye when I tell them “Better clean up the basement today” but instead come right back with “Who’s staying with us this time, and what country are they from?” Just in the last year we’ve hosted a group of Palestinian teenagers, three girls from a Ugandan children’s choir, a priest from Bethlehem, a professional singer, a random British stranger on a bicycle tour across the U.S. (I preached about that experience last year!), an old seminary friend and her entire family, and of course a constant stream of Chicago friends seeking a respite from the city. 

We love hosting guests in our home, and consider it our Christian responsibility to show hospitality. Most of the time, we clean up a bit first. Last week we even bought a new mattress before Chicago friends came to stay. We noticed they hadn’t been out to visit for awhile, and then we remembered how much they hated our blow-up air bed. We put two and two together…and headed to the mattress store.

We’ve received many guests at our home, but there was one scheduled visitor who made me question if we were even worthy of his presence.

His name was Calvin Morris, and he was to be the speaker at the FaithBridge Interfaith MLK breakfast. As an eager new member of the MLK breakfast committee, I of course raised my hand and said, “Sure! I have room to host him at my house!” 

It wasn’t until I Googled the invited speaker that I started to question my eagerness to volunteer. I learned that the Rev. Dr. Calvin Morris was the national coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Operation Breadbasket from 1967 to 1971. After leaving there, he was the executive director of Atlanta's Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change, working directly with Coretta Scott King. As I read more of his impressive resume, I realized Dr. Morris was truly a history-maker—someone we might read about in a textbook on the Civil Rights movement. 

Suddenly, I wondered if it had been wise to offer to put this man in my basement. What would he think of that patch of carpet the dog chewed up? Did he even like dogs—or teenagers? Will our house meet his standards? Then, another panicked thought: This man is a community activist and an urban dweller—maybe he’ll be offended by my suburban existence! Maybe my house is too big!

In other words: I suddenly saw my home and my life with new eyes, and I judged myself completely unworthy. I wanted to forget the whole thing, and book the Rev. Dr. Morris a room at the Country Inn & Suites.  

Have you felt unworthy lately?

Feeling unworthy was apparently a new emotion for the Roman centurion in today’s Gospel reading. Here was a man who was accustomed to getting what he needed, when he needed it. He had a fair amount of power and privilege: servants working for him, soldiers under his authority, and an esteemed reputation within the community, cultivated after building a synagogue for his Jewish neighbors.

So when his beloved servant was ill, the centurion’s instinct was to use that power, privilege and accumulated respect to bring Jesus, a healer, to his home. He of course called upon the Jewish elders who had benefitted from his good deeds to visit Jesus, a Jewish man. 

Sure enough, when the elders reached Jesus they had only good things to say about the centurion. “He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.” Having received this good recommendation, Jesus set out to see the centurion and, apparently, to heal the slave, when something surprising happened.

It’s not clear from the text what exactly occurred, but it seems that sometime after sending the messengers out, the centurion had second thoughts. Maybe, like me, he looked around his house and saw the chewed-up carpet. Maybe, as some scholars suggest, he was making a political move, expressing false humility to gain an even better reputation.

Or—maybe this Roman leader recognized that this Jesus, who was about to arrive at his house, possessed a different kind of authority; was working under a different system of values; would perhaps be unimpressed by a centurion’s status, privilege, or military might. This Jesus, after all, was said to be a miracle-worker, a healer, a prophet, and even more: the Son of God.

So the centurion sent out some friends with a different message: “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.” 

These words stopped Jesus in his tracks—literally. He stopped in the road and turned, telling the crowd that was always following him, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” Jesus never made it to the centurion’s home, but when the centurion’s friends returned, they found the slave had been healed.

This centurion, because of his humility and surprising recognition of Jesus’ authority, has been lifted up as an example of great faith. But I must say that I struggle with this text, because what I don’t want you to hear today is one more reason to say to yourself “I’m not worthy.” I think we do enough of that already:

I’m not worthy of God’s love.

I’m not worthy of having a healthy relationship—this is the best I deserve.

I’m not worth being treated right at school or having friends.

I don’t have anything to contribute to the discussion.

Why would God listen to my prayers, after all the mistakes I’ve made?

I cringe when I think of teenagers, or a spouse in an abusive relationship, or someone who has never known God’s forgiving and redeeming love, hearing this story and thinking: “See? I’m right in thinking of myself as unworthy. Jesus even blessed this way of thinking.” 

But I don’t believe this is a story about Jesus blessing the kind of self-hate we are so good at cultivating. This is not a case study on how to beat yourself down so you are worthy of God’s attention. Humility is a virtue, but self-loathing is not. 

Instead, I believe the story of the faithful centurion is about authority. It’s about recognizing who has authority in our lives, and therefore who judges your worthiness.

When the centurion first called for Jesus, it was not “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear”, but more like “What a solution I have in Jesus, all my problems to solve.” He sought an answer to his problem—a sick slave—using the authority he had at hand: power, privilege, money, position, reputation. According to this system, he judged himself worthy of having his request honored, his needs met, and his slave healed.  

The centurion was therefore not a person of faith at the moment he called upon Jesus—but it didn’t matter, because the religious leaders also seemed to agree with his judgment. “He’s a good guy!” they said. “You should totally do this for him, Jesus.”  

And you know what? The faith of the centurion didn’t seem to matter to Jesus, either. In the telling of this story, we often forget that Jesus was already on his way to visit the centurion when he received that message: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.” Jesus was already on the road to the centurion, well before the centurion was on the road to faith. 

But the faith of the centurion is amazing, and surprising, and worthy of note, because it was he, an outsider, who was able to proclaim the truth. When even the religious leaders believed the lie that “If I am a good person and work hard, God will hear my prayers”, the centurion was the one who proclaimed: “Lord, nothing that I have and nothing that I have done has made me worthy of your visit. No matter what I bring to the table, Lord—you alone say who is worthy and not worthy. Your judgment matters, and no one else’s.” 

Sisters and brothers, I hope you are hearing today that the story of the faithful centurion is about just how worthy you are in the eyes of God. Here we encounter a Jesus who places no value on power or privilege, who doesn’t care how many soldiers we command or how big our house is, who never sees the chewed up carpet or the size of our credit card debt or the number on the scale. This is about a God who, through Jesus Christ, sees instead our faith alone and deems us worthy. And in fact, in this story we meet the Jesus who starts the journey toward you before you have any faith at all—because you are worth it.

In the book “Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion”, Father Gregory Boyle tells of ministering to a 15 year old gang member in a county detention facility. Father Greg asked about his family. 

“That’s my mom over there.” the boy said. “There’s no one like her. I’ve been locked up for more than a year and half. She comes to see me every Sunday. You know how many buses she takes every Sunday—to see my sorry self?”

He paused for moment, and then gasping through tears, he said, “Seven buses. She takes…seven…buses. Imagine.” 

What better way is there to explain the expansive love of God? How better to describe how God sees us, through the eyes of Jesus: You, Child of God, are worth a seven bus journey for a 15 minute visit. You are worthy of love, worthy of respect, worthy of hope and a future—not because of anything you have, or anything you have done—but because of Jesus and the cross. And Jesus says: you are worth even that. 

Amen.