when love comes to town: Taste and see the goodness of the Lord...

NOTE: Here are my worship notes for Sunday, September 12, 2010. They are grounded in both the Common Lectionary readings for the day as well as our own exploration of what it means to see God's was as a life-long feast (or fast.) I am keenly aware that our Jewish friends begin Rosh Hashanah tomorrow and our Muslim friends end Ramadan on Saturday and these truths have been woven into my own reflection. If you are in town at 10:30 am on Sunday, please join us...

I have a vision for First Church – some might call it a fantasy or even a pipe-dream – but I believe it is a vision. A vision where our number one, primary and preferred way of teaching the faith involves a feast: can you imagine what that could mean?

• Adult classes gathered around a table – a sacred and sumptuous potluck each Monday evening – where the meal both shapes and empowers us to experience something of God’s mercy and joy?

• Sunday School for our children that engages all their senses and nourishes them in body as well as spirit?

• Seasonal, all-church celebrations that help us reclaim the ancient rhythm of feasting and fasting so that from the inside out we came to know what the Psalmist was talking about when she sang: taste and see the goodness of the Lord.

Those are interesting words, don’t you think: taste and see?

Experience and discover – feel and comprehend – sense and understand the mercy of the Lord. I think of our Jewish spiritual cousins who this week marked Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year – with a feast that includes honey, challah bread and apples. On the first night of the celebration, the challah is dipped into the honey with a blessing followed by apple slices as this prayer for a sweet new year is offered.

Blessed are you, Lord, our God, king of the universe who creates the fruit of the tree. (Amen) May it be Your will, Lord our God and God of our ancestors that you renew for us a good and sweet year.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner of Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco tells of how some small children in his tradition learn both the sweetness of the Lord and the importance of literacy by using their tongues to lick honey from tablets containing the Hebrew alphabet. I know that this would freak-out some of our germ-conscious folk, but still what a bold and embodied way to taste and see the goodness of the Lord, yes?

And our Muslim cousins – also connected to us through Abraham – know something about using food to taste and see the goodness of Allah, too: they just completed the holy fast of Ramadan. During the daylight, all food and drink is avoided in order to nourish patience, humility and spiritual

intimacy with the Lord. At sunset, the family gathers to break the fast starting with eating a date – a sweet fruit – just as the Prophet Mohamed did in his day. And at the end of Ramadan, of course, there is a feast for friends and family where a portion of the feast is dedicated and shared with the poorest of the poor.

All of which brings me around to this morning’s gospel text in which tells us that by this point in his ministry…

… a lot of men and women of doubtful reputation were hanging around Jesus, listening intently. The Pharisees and religion scholars were not pleased, not at all pleased. They growled, "He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends." Their grumbling triggered this story from Jesus."Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn't you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, and when you got home call in your friends and neighbors, saying, 'Celebrate with me! I've found my lost sheep!' Count on it—there's more joy in heaven over one sinner's rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue.

Or imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won't she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it? And when she finds it you can be sure she'll call her friends and neighbors: 'Celebrate with me! I found my lost coin!' Count on it—that's the kind of party God's angels throw every time one lost soul turns to God.

Now I hope you noticed that once again Jesus is eating meals with those who have been both forgotten and excluded. And it is his table fellowship with those considered to be unclean and unsavory that upsets the religious scholars and leaders of his day more than anything else, right?

• So what do they do? What do the scribes and Pharisees – those who know the tradition best – do about this? What does the text tell us is their reaction to the feasts of Jesus and the sinners?

• They grumble. Murmur. Articulate their displeasure in low and mean-spirited words – and what is the Bible telling us in this description? What other people grumbled and murmured and complained in the history of God’s people?

• The children of God with Moses out in the desert, right? Time and again when they grew frightened or confused or simply un-comfortable, they murmured against Moses and his vision of freedom in a land filled with milk and honey. And their murmuring – the grumbling articulation of both their frustrations and ignorance – always led to trouble.

And that is part of what Luke’s gospel is asking us to hold in the back of our memories this morning: the murmuring, mean-spirited complaints of God’s people that always lead to trouble. Sometimes it looks like idolatry – as in today’s Old Testament story – other times it looks like cold and calculating political obstructionism as we see in Washington, DC today. So keep attentive for a bit because it is truly liberating how Jesus addresses and challenges the murmuring, ok?

He tells the grumblers a story – but not just any story – he shares with them two parables. And parables, says Eugene Peterson, are narrative time bombs. I respect the way one pastor put is once while explaining the power and potential of a parable:

Parables and myths (or foundation stories) function in diametrically opposite ways. Myths construct a world in which we can live. They tell us where we come from and who we are. Tribes, nations, religions, and families all have their own foundation stories. Parables, on the other hand, challenge accepted worldviews, expose their inadequacies, and require us to search for more adequate interpretations of who we are and how we ought to live. (David Howell, http://www.goodpreacher.com/)

Peterson takes it one step beyond saying, “We want to explain parables, usually reading them either as analogies to be decoded or puzzles to be solved. Either way, we try to tame them, even domesticate them, when all along parables favor detonation over explanation.”

So what is Jesus trying to detonate – or subvert – or even turn upside down with his parables? Let me suggest at least the following: first the very notion of sin, second the nature of God’s heart and third the importance of table fellowship or feasting in the healing of God’s people.

• Do you recall from this summer’s conversation with St. Paul and the insights he shares with us in the book of Romans how within the Jewish community of first century Palestine sin was under-stood to be actions that broke covenant with God and God’s people?

• Covenant, of course, has to do with the promises made between God and God’s people – vows about how we will live and love one another together in community – including things like: because we love the Lord and God’s people we promise not to steal from one another – or lie – or commit adultery, right?

As best as I can understand it, Jesus was trying to overthrow a na

rrow or even superficial notion of breaking covenant: he was clear that some actions and attitudes are truly sinful - they wound the Lord as well as the community of faith – but more often than not we confuse our fears and prejudices for the will of God.

Take that misguided and dangerous bible-thumper in Florida who burned copies of the Qur’an on September 11th. When asked what he knew about Islam – of loving his neighbors as himself in God’s grace – he could only reply: “I don’t know anything about it – I just know what it says in the Bible.” He is well-intentioned – probably loves his family and country – but somehow he has confused his fears with God’s will.

It brought to mind what the late Dietrich Bonheoffer said during the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany during the 1930s: “You cannot dare to sing our Gregorian chants if you do not stand with the Jews in their hour of need.” I am certain that he was right then – and is right today – that we who claim Christ as Lord cannot pretend to sing or live our faith if we do not also stand in solidarity and support with our Muslim cousins.

For that’s the first detonation of these parables: our sense of sin is often too self-serving and narrow to be of the Lord. Remember what Jesus told the religious leaders – who were also well-intentioned men who loved

their families and country – at the start of his ministry? “Go and learn what this means: the Lord our God desires mercy not sacrifice.”

It’s from the prophet Hosea and Peterson rendition gives it power: I’m after compassion not religion – here to invite outsiders – not coddle insiders – so go figure that out!” First, our notion of sin is usually too self-centered so God calls us to be about compassion rather than the status quo – looking for and joining the outcasts rather than the insiders - ok?

Second, whenever we create the Lord in our image rather than live into God’s true image for us within, we shrink God’s heart. We restrict God’s love until the Lord’s blessings only extend to those who look and act like you and me. No wonder Jesus gave both the outsiders and the insiders – for the story tells us that Jesus shared this parable with both the sinners and the religious leaders – the story in which God was liken to a shepherd searching for a lost sheep or a woman searching for a lost coin.

+ See where this is going? A shepherd – that was bad enough – because a shepherd, while essential in an agricultural economy, was also considered ritually unclean and most often dirty, shiftless and untrustworthy. Can’t you just see the look of loving mischief on Rabbi Jesus’ face when it dawns on the crowd that the Lord is being portrayed as a ritually unclean shepherd who celebrates with a feast in heaven when one of the lost is found?

+ But then to make matters even worse, Rabbi Jesus goes on to say that maybe the Lord is also like a woman sweeping and cleaning and searching for a lost coin? What are you nuts: a woman? Who most likely was searching for part of her lost dowry?

It was bad enough that this coin was lost in the first place – it could have brought shame to the family - but then she goes and tells everyone she has found it – and she is joyful not ashamed. And, that, of course is the second explosion: God is really much more about joy and feasting than judgment and shame. And if that is God’s nature – and we are created in God’s image – how come there isn’t more joy and feasting in church?

• There is an old saying that rings true for me: a parent is only as happy as his/her least happy child. I know that one in my soul…

• And it seems that such wisdom is part of what Jesus evokes in these parables: God rejoices when the broken covenant is healed, feasts and celebrates when a wound is made whole and puts on a party in heaven when a sinner is welcomed home.

No wonder Jesus spends so much time eating and feasting with people rather than scolding or even instructing them: most of us learn best by doing and experiencing. We can’t intellectually embrace the sweetness of the Lord

– we have to taste before we can see – the words have to become flesh before we understand.

And for so many of us who are lost, we don’t know what to do, right? One preacher put it like this: “at least according to this parable, there's not much you can do when you are lost. Jesus doesn't set out a formula about repenting first, or set down four spiritual rules, or even compose a "sinner's prayer" for us to recite. I suppose Jesus figures that often you don't even know you're lost in the first place.”

But you do know when you've been found. Sometimes, in fact, it's only when you're found that you realize you were lost at all. Which means, oddly, that while there's nothing to do when you're lost, there's all kinds of things to do once you've been found: like tell, share, shout, give thanks – in a word, rejoice. That’s why the primary character of the Christian life, from this point of view, isn't morality, or repentance, or discipline, or obedience, or any of the other hundred things we might suspect. These things are all good, just not primary. Rather what seems to be primary here is joy, the joy that comes from knowing that though you once were lost, you now are found.
(David Lose, http://www.workingpreacher.org/)

I think it is right to say that the religious leaders of Jesus’ day – and maybe our own, too – forgot “how incredibly, unbelievably joyful it is to be sought, found and loved by a devoted, desperate parent. They remember the importance of obedience, discip

line and morality… but forget the joy of being found.” (Lose)

Deep in the heart of our biblical tradition there is the wisdom that true joy is born of the Lord feasting in heaven. What’s more, for us to grow into the Lord’s joy here on earth as it is already being realized in heaven, we must come to the feast as well and live like God’s feast for the world:

• The feast of reconciliation – the feast of broken bread – the feast of discipleship where we practice loving one another as God truly loves us.

• And let’s face it: we have to practice. The way of Jesus has been around for 2,000 years – the way of Abraham for 2.000 more before that – and we still haven’t come very far from the grumbling and murmuring of the crowd.

So, we’re going to practice a mini-feast today – a baby taste and see exercise – borrowed from our cousins in Islam and Judaism: as we sing this prayer/song of joy for you, we’re going to distribute some dates and dried apples for you to taste – and maybe even see the goodness and joy of the Lord.