Increase and Multiply Upon Us Your Mercy

Proper 12C; Luke 11:1-13; St. Paul’s Smithfield, NC 7/24/2016

Jim Melnyk: “Increase and Multiply Upon Us Your Mercy”

 

There are two particular phrases that jump out at me in today’s liturgy.  The first is from the Collect of the Day.  In it we pray, “Increase and multiply upon us your mercy.”  The second phrase comes from the Gospel according to Luke.  Jesus, asked by his disciples to teach them how to pray, includes the words, “forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.”  I don’t think the latter prayer – the request to be forgiven and to forgive – is possible for us unless God grants us the former – a deeper sense of God’s mercy.  Unless and until I begin to understand the fullness of God’s mercy, and that mercy becomes a reality in my life, I’m not sure how well I can ever accept God’s forgiveness, or even begin to carry out the ministry of forgiveness myself. 

“Increase and multiply upon us – increase and multiply within me – your mercy, Lord, because without you as our ruler and guide – as my ruler and guide – in this realm of forgiveness, we are lost.  Mercy can be defined as compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom otherwise might be treated harshly or who is in a desperate or hard situation.  And so we pray for God to increase upon and within us God’s mercy – a prayer that we may not be treated harshly when others believe we deserve harshness – and a prayer that we may treat others with compassion and forgiveness even when the most sensible part of our mind says they should be treated otherwise.  “Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.”  “Increase and multiply upon us your mercy.”

It’s important to note that today’s prayerful concern about forgiveness is not Jesus’ first foray into the topic.  There are half a dozen passages earlier in Luke that speak of the centrality of forgiveness for Jesus.  In fact in the midst of his sermon on the Plain – St. Luke’s version of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount – Jesus gets downright hard-nosed about the importance of it all: “‘Do not judge, and you will not be judged” he proclaims; “do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven…’” (Luke 6:37-38). 

Author Anne Lamott writes about her wrestling match with that particular passage: “Now try as I might, I cannot find a loophole in that.  It does not say, ‘Forgive everyone, unless they’ve said something rude about your child.’ And it doesn’t even say, ‘Just try.’  It says, if you want to be forgiven, if you want to experience that kind of love, you have to forgive everyone in your life – everyone, even the very worst boyfriend you ever had – even, for God’s sake, yourself” (Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, 1999 p 134).  This is hard stuff to hear for anyone who has been through deeply painful experiences in life.  Lamott understands that some hurts run too deep to forgive easily.  It’s not an exercise in flippancy – it is a hard challenge, and so we pray,

“Increase and multiply upon us – increase and multiply within me – your mercy, Lord, because without you as our ruler and guide – as my ruler and guide – in this realm of forgiveness, we are lost.

Now, I may be reading more into all this than I should, but it seems to me that unless and until we get the whole mercy and forgiveness stuff down in some manner or form, all the rest that Jesus tells us about prayer in today’s lesson feels just out of reach.  It’s only by God’s mercy, living and active in our lives, that we can see God’s holiness – it’s only by that mercy that we can even begin to see God as a loving parent.  It’s only by God’s mercy, living and active in our lives, that we can ever dare to begin seeking God’s kingdom breaking in not just on this earth – but in our own lives as well.  It’s only by God’s mercy, alive and active in our lives, that we can trust God to give us not just the bread we need for today, but also the bread of the coming kingdom for this world today.

“Increase and multiply upon us your mercy” is a prayer we need every day of our lives – because we – because our world – needs to understand God’s gift of mercy.

Last week we talked about Mary, Martha’s younger sister, desiring above all else to enter into the fullness of Jesus, who is the fullness of God’s Presence with a capital “P.”  In today’s lesson Jesus offers us a way into that Presence as he teaches his disciples, and then vicariously each of us, about prayer – and in the very same teachings, enlightens us about mercy as well.  The tie-in between mercy and prayer is this: Mercy moves us to see one another as fellow human beings, who despite our differences – despite any mutual animosity – despite our brokenness and even our possible desire to cause hurt to one another – mercy moves us to see that we are all created in the image and likeness of the One God.

The Rev. Lorraine Ljunggren writes, “I believe prayer at its deepest, most meaningful level is about relationship.  It is about opening ourselves to  the Mystery – with a capital “M” – the Mystery that Is the Source of All Creation – the Mystery that Binds Us One to Another – the Mystery that Has Power to Help Us Find Wholeness – the Mystery in Which We Can Find Sustenance for Life’s Journey” (July 28, 2013).  Therefore we might say that prayer is a vehicle for relationship that can bring us into the Presence of the Mystery we call God.  Once we find ourselves in the midst of the Mystery that is God, we learn of things like compassion, forgiveness, mercy, and love – all of which are a part of the essence of God.

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Prayer is not asking.  It is a longing of the soul.  It is daily admission of one’s weakness.”  He continued, “It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart” (Synthesis, 7/24/2016).

In all this we can say, the gift of mercy most surely is tied to prayer, and it undergirds and it gives life to our prayers.  The beautiful and deeply haunting words Jesus gives us in what we have come to call The Lord’s Prayer lose all meaning if not underwritten – if not underscored – with the gift of God’s mercy in our lives.

In our first lesson it is to God’s mercy that Abraham appeals with boldness and tenacity.  And as our Eucharistic prayer reminds us today, it is because of God’s overwhelming mercy that Jesus comes among us to invite us into the fullness of God – giving himself up for us, and meeting us today in the breaking of the bread.

Ultimately, I suspect, Jesus would have liked mercy and friendship to be the reasons the sleeping man gets up to give his friend the three loaves of bread rather than the friend’s persistence.  In this case persistence has to do.  Ultimately it is mercy and love, gifted by God, which allows us to give to our own children, and to neighbors, friends, and the stranger, what they most need to survive and to thrive. 

My guess is that Jesus realizes left to our own devices compassion and mercy can be a very tall order.  It’s easy when beloved members of our faith community die, but much more difficult when we look at all the violence in our nation, and in the world, that seems to take center stage on an almost hourly basis these days. 

Which is why coming together to be a community of God’s people helps so much.  It is in the midst of community that Jesus teaches the disciples, and now teaches us, to pray.  It’s in parables Jesus shows us how important it is to have mercy.  In the examples of his own life and ministry Jesus reveals that love is the power which undergirds and gives life to our prayers.

           

“Increase and multiply upon us your mercy,” Lord – especially when our hearts are heavy with grief and we cannot understand all that is unfolding around us.  Teach us to pray, Lord, and then teach us to live our prayers – not only for your sake, but for the sake of our souls, and for the sake of the world.  Amen.

Married to Amazement

Proper 11C; Luke 10:38-42; St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC July 17, 2016

Jim Melnyk: “Married to Amazement”

If you’re at all like me, over the years you have heard many sermons on today’s gospel lesson from Luke.  Most of them probably begin with extolling the great virtue of Mary, who sits at the feet of Jesus in quiet contemplation and admiration, listening to the Master as he speaks about the coming kingdom of God.  We hear how it was a scandalous act that Mary should be sitting at Jesus’ feet, and how open Jesus was to flaunting religious rules and cultural etiquette.

And while it’s probably historically true that women did not receive formal training in Torah in the first century, it’s a Christian fallacy that rabbis could not or would not speak with women, nor that woman might learn about the scriptures informally.  We hear about Martha’s frustration and Jesus shutting down her complaint toward her sister. 

And finally, after hearing all that, we usually hear that all too clichéd addendum by the preacher: “But we need our Martha’s, too!” After all, we don’t want to talk women out of the kitchen, do we?

And once again, like last Sunday, we need to find a way to hear today’s lesson in a new way.  We need to let go of our twenty-first century ears, and even attempts to listen solely with first century early Christian ears.  We need to try to tune our ears and eyes to what first century followers of Jesus – especially first century Jewish followers of Jesus – would have heard and seen.  We need to “see” what is going on in today’s passage with eyes that would have been looking on – not decades later, but in the midst of what sounds like a busy dinner party hosted by Martha and Mary.

And so we can try to immerse ourselves in the scene – hear the bustle in the kitchen as Martha tries to oversee the cooking and the table-setting, perhaps wiping her forearm across a sweaty brow and drying her hands on an apron.  We can smell the meat cooking over an open fire and the bread baking.  We can picture young children running about and getting in the way much as they do today when we’re trying to pull a party together.  We can imagine the frustration growing in Martha as she oversees it all on her own.

And then we notice Martha’s younger sister Mary sitting near Jesus, her imagination captured by his storytelling and passion.  We may find ourselves getting caught up in trying to hear what Jesus is saying – what it is that has Mary so enraptured – and just when we think we’re almost able to hear the conversation and BAM!  In bursts Martha – hands on her hips and a scowl on her face – “Jesus, don’t you care at all about me?  I’m stuck doing all the work.  Tell my sister to get her lazy bones back in the kitchen to help me get this meal on the table!”  "Martha, Martha,” Jesus replies, “you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."  Please note that Jesus does not add, “But we need our Martha’s, too!”

As I try to imagine what’s going on with Martha, I see her as someone caught up in a pattern of living – someone who feels like she’s been rowing against the tide most of her life – and it is so tiresome.  I can imagine her thinking words similar to those of poet Anne Sexton:

           

“I am rowing, I am rowing

            Though the oarlocks stick and are rusty

            And the sea blinks and rolls

            Like a worried eyeball,

            But I am rowing, I am rowing.”

Martha knows there is more to life than what she is experiencing in the present, but she lives her life rowing against the tide – always worried and distracted by many things and unable to stop.  She finds those who can – those who can see past the distractions – people like her sister Mary – as one more frustrating distraction in her own life.

Mary, I think, senses something greater in her presence that day – she senses Presence with a capital “P.” – and she longs to be a part of that Presence – she longs to understand the Presence that is Jesus in all its fullness.  Unlike Martha, Mary may be thinking something along the lines of what the poet Mary Oliver says about her own life:

           

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

            I was a bride married to amazement.

            I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

            I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

           

As followers of Jesus we need to do more than just visit the world.  As Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s father used to tell him – and ++Michael loves to repeat often, “Michael, you were put here on this earth to do more than just use up oxygen.”  We’re here on this earth to take the world in our arms – we’re here on this earth to be a bride or a bridegroom to amazement – we are here on this earth to live fully in the presence of Christ and share that experience with everyone who finds themselves too distracted – too anxious – too overwhelmed by the craziness of this world – feelings that are all too real for most of us these days.

The trouble is, I suspect, that all too often we feel like we’re rowing against the tide with rusty oarlocks and heavy seas surrounding us.  How are we supposed to find Presence with a capital “P” in the midst of our all-too-busy lives and the constant hammering away of the 24 hour, seven days a week, news cycle and the seemingly endless political campaigns that more closely resemble the World Wrestling Entertainment Network than a class in Citizenship 101?  How do we find Presence with a capital “P” in a world suddenly running amok with violence?

Our call as baptized Christians to follow Christ and to be Christ in the world through active, hands-on, ministry was made clear in last week’s Parable of the Good Samaritan.  But when life in general, or even our work of ministry – as vital as it is – becomes a distraction from knowing and following Jesus, we need to step back and take a breath – we need to put down the oars for a bit and contemplate the vastness of the sea around us and the fullness of God’s presence in the midst of it all.  The hard work of ministry is balanced by our willingness to be still in the midst of the Presence – balanced by our willingness to just be.

Rather than all of us needing to be "Marthas," I'm willing to bet we all have a bit too much Martha in most of us already. We go about with tiny computers on our belts or in our pockets or purses. We're constantly bombarded with emails, and texts, and news, and ads, all telling us what we need to do and when we need to do it – telling us what we need to think or believe to be on the right side – telling us what we need to buy to be successful and live up to the world’s expectations.

The Good News is that God in Christ gives us permission to – no – rather God longs for us to be more like Mary. We can do that, even if it's only a few minutes here and there at first. And once we get even the slightest hand on carving out some time to simply rest in the Presence, we can learn to be better at it.  As Julian of Norwich once wrote, “The best prayer is to rest in the goodness of God.”

Perhaps an easy way to start is to take home today’s bulletin insert and make a commitment to spend 5-10 minutes a day this week sitting with Mary and Martha, or another passage that speaks to you from today’s readings – or perhaps even a verse or two from one of your favorite psalms. God will stop with you even in the midst of all the craziness of your lives.  

Take the time to quiet yourself and place yourself in the setting and pay attention to all that is happening – not just around you, but in the passage as well – and then purposely let it go – put it down – or shut it out.  Let your breathing relax, and then feel your heartbeat relaxing with you.  Know that you are in the presence of the Holy One. Then simply ask God, “How do you want to help me be more like Mary this week?”

Proper 10C; Deut. 30:9-14; Luke 10:25-37 St. Paul’s, Smithfield 7/10/2016

Jim Melnyk: “The Parable of the Merciful Enemy”

As twenty-first century Christians, we have lost – or perhaps never fully understood – the scandal of today’s parable from Luke’s gospel – the parable we know so well as “The Parable of the Good Samaritan.”  We misread the parable on so many settings – mostly because we are twenty-first century Christians rather than first century Jews.  But to hear the powerful meaning this story – this parable – was meant to evoke from those hearing it for the first time, we need to listen with first century ears – or rather with twenty-first century ears tuned to another time and place – and when this is done, we may find ourselves calling this wonderful parable by a new title.

To begin with, the lawyer in the story is less than sincere in his approach to Jesus.  He knows the answer before he asks the question, and rather than looking for a way of life that leads toward righteousness, his choice of verb tense implies a desire for an item that he can do once and get it over with – something he can check off his to do list.  “Tell me something I can do to be done with my obligations before God.”  His question, “And who is my neighbor?” is meant to limit his obligation further – to identify those with whom he does not need to interact in a righteous manner.  Jesus will give him an answer that stuns the lawyer so completely he all but loses his voice.

We know the lawyer understands the centrality of what we have come to call the Great Commandment: The command to love God with every fiber of our being, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  As someone conversant with Torah, he would also understand the fuller context of both parts of that commandment.  In Deuteronomy the command to love God with all our heart, soul, and strength cannot be separated from the understanding that nothing in our lives can stand above and beyond God, and that these words should be fixed on our hands and on our foreheads – we might say as Episcopalians, “grafted inwardly on our hearts” – and taught diligently to our children.  In Leviticus, the command to love our neighbor – that is those with whom we have immediate connections and friendships – cannot be separated from the command to love the alien in the land as if he or she were a citizen among us – for Israel knows full-well what it means to sojourn as an alien – as a stranger – in a foreign land. 

In a twenty-first century world that demands a religious-like allegiance to people, causes, and things – and in a world that embraces fear of the stranger – the alien – the sojourner – sometimes – sometimes, with good reason – we need to tune our ears differently to hear the scandalous messages of Scripture.  And all too often I’m afraid we’re unwilling or too anxious to take that risk.

Then there’s the parable itself: and in it the priest and the Levite both fail to stop for the dying man.  We often are told their failure to stop has something to do with a fear of becoming ritually impure if they were to touch what they think may be a dead body.  This is false on several levels.  First of all, they were both going down from Jerusalem, so their temple duties would have been finished and any need for ritual purification would not have hindered them in any way.  And neither Jesus nor Luke makes any excuse for the two based on a fear of “uncleanness” or “purity.”  “Nor would any excuse be acceptable,” writes Amy Jill Levine, who is both a New Testament Scholar and a faithful Jew.  The responsibility of the priest and the Levite is “to save a life; [and in this] they failed.”  Levine continues, “Saving a life is so important that Jewish Law mandates that it override every other concern, including keeping the Sabbath” (Short Stories by Jesus, 2014, p 94) – one of the very things Jesus teaches.

People hearing the parable would have expected the third person coming along the road to be an Israelite who will set right the surprising inaction by the priest and Levite.  But Jesus, as is his regular practice, throws his listeners a curve ball.  The person who stops is a Samaritan – an enemy of Israel – and it is the Samaritan who acts with the divine attribute of mercy – it’s the Samaritan who acts the way God is expected to act (ibid 105).

Perhaps the best explanation for everyone’s actions in the story was suggested in a sermon by The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  He preached, “I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me.  It’s possible these men were afraid…. And so the first question that the priest and the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’… But the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’”  Levine reminds us that shortly after that sermon, King went to Memphis to stand alongside the striking sanitation workers, and was assassinated” (ibid 94).

Amy Jill Levine’s biting insights give us an almost perfect translation for today, updating the identity of the figures in a way that speaks to our experience.  “I am an Israeli Jew on my way… to Jericho,” she begins, “…I am attacked…and left half dead in a ditch.  Two people who should have stopped to help pass me by: the first, a Jewish military medic…; the second, a member of [The Episcopal Palestine Israel Network].  But the person who takes compassion on me and shows me mercy is a Palestinian Muslim whose sympathies lie with Hamas, a political party whose charter…anticipates Israel’s destruction….” (ibid105-106)

In other words, we have met the enemy – and he has showed us mercy!  Those whom we believe should know better have left us hanging – and the one we fear and despise is the one who acts with the mercy of God.  The parable concludes with this incredibly shocking and scandalous twist – and we should hear it in a way that should catch us up just as short as it caught up and scandalized the original audience. 

And so perhaps a better title for this story – for this parable – for this teaching – is “The Parable of the Merciful Enemy,” and I am willing to bet it is a difficult rendering, at one level or another, for all of us to hear.  In the end, Jesus seems to say, “loving God and loving neighbor cannot exist in the abstract: they need to be enacted” (ibid105) – they need to be embodied.

This has been a terrible week for our nation, and many of us have found ourselves weeping over the violence and the loss of so many lives. Who is our neighbor in all of the confusion of today?  Our neighbor is the person shot under questionable circumstances during police stops in places like Falcon Heights, MN and Baton Rouge, Louisiana – stops which normally don’t require deadly force.  Our neighbor is also the fearful police officer pulling the trigger.  Who is our neighbor today?  Our neighbor is the innocent policeman helping to keep the peace in places like Dallas, Texas or Ballwin, Missouri, who is gunned down in an arbitrary act of vengeance.  Our neighbor is also the angry, misguided person senselessly pulling the trigger.  Our world is broken.  In some ways it is broken beyond our wildest imaginings.  The poet Warsan Shire writes:

“later that night

I held an atlas in my lap

ran my fingers across the whole world

and whispered

where does it hurt?

it answered

everywhere

everywhere

everywhere.”

Who is our neighbor?  Everyone – everyone is our neighbor, and we, with all of our many varying and conflicting emotions are their neighbors as well.  And we need to find a place of healing in the midst of all this brokenness.  It begins with listening to one another; it begins with telling the truth; it begins with respecting one another as people created in the image and likeness of God.  And we find through this parable that Jesus wasn’t kidding when he tells us we need to love not just our neighbor, but our enemy as well.  And I, because I know my own self, I know that is scary!

It’s in this unexpected place that we find the Good News of the Gospel.  It may be likely that on more than one occasion in our lives there have been people whom we might not name as an “enemy,” but at least as an outsider, who have given us unexpected help or support.  We might find that someone whom we might never have expected to “be there for us” in a time of need, is actually alongside us.  Or perhaps even we have been the one least expected to help or support someone, and yet our hearts are moved to act.

In the midst of all the stories of great atrocities which grab the headlines these days, we miss the stories of Muslims guarding Churches in Syria during services, or Christians doing the same for their Islamic sisters and brothers.  We miss the stories of inner city neighbors hugging weeping police officers, and caring police officers watching over hurting citizens. This is grace in action.  This is Good News.  This is how we begin to heal a broken world.

Jesus teaches us over and over again that our common humanity is part and parcel of the Good News of God.  In parable after parable, or in act of mercy after act of mercy, Jesus invites us to enact – to embody – love of God and love of neighbor in our daily lives.  We might ask ourselves, using twenty-first century ears and hearts, in the days to come, “Like the wounded person alongside the road, how and where do we need God to stop and meet us?  And like the Samaritan, how is God calling each of us to stop and embody this kind of love with and for one another?”