Reformation Sunday. Five days before Reformation Day proper, but Concordia Publishing House put it on the bulletin insert, so why not? Besides, you probably wouldn’t have shown up for a Thursday night service anyway, being busy with that great holiday known as Halloween.
Reformation Day, October 31, the Eve of All Hallows (that is, All Saints) is the day when in 1517 an Augustinian friar and professor of theology at Wittenberg University named Dr. Martin Luther posted 95 theses in Latin concerning the practice of indulgence selling on the church door. Luther wanted to discuss what he saw were abuses in the church and a misunderstanding of the Gospel.
“Jesus told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” The “they” are Jesus’ disciples to whom He has just spoken about the dark days of the end. And now He speaks about prayer. Persistent prayer. Nagging prayer. Prayer that for all intents and purposes looks like a pesky widow coming to a crooked judge who simply wears him down with her persistent petitioning.
We’ve been doing a lot of faith talk the past few weeks. Faith that forgives. Faith that moves mulberry trees. Faith that serves without boasting or bookkeeping. Today we hear about the faith of Ruth, a young widow from Moab, who becomes an Israelite and goes with her mother-in-law Naomi with the words, “where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried.” These are beautiful, faithful words of a daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law expressing her faith in the God of Israel, a story that ends with Ruth becoming the great-grandmother of David and the ancient ancestor of Jesus.
Scandals, stumbling stones, tripping points inevitably come. They can’t not come. But woe to those through whom they come. Jesus is not talking about “temptations to sin,” as the translation you heard has it, but stumbling points to faith. Things that make your faith trip on your walk of faith. It’s like you’re walking along and all of a sudden your toe jams into something and you fall flat on your face. That’s what a “scandalon” is. Something you trip over as you are walking along. And walking through the rocky, uneven path of this life in which sin, death, disease, and doubt are strewn all over the place, there are no shortages of stumbling stones.
Today’s reading from the Gospel according to St. Luke deals with the topic of Money. Property and Possessions. The stuff that keeps many of us awake at night and busy during the day. “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.” It’s doubtful that Jesus said all these things back to back. Some of them appear elsewhere in a different context. It’s more likely that Luke, under the watchful editorial eye of the Holy Spirit chose to gather up a bunch of “money sayings” all into one place so that we could hear them all at once. What Jesus has to say can be neatly summarized in a sentence that doesn’t appear here in Luke: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
This morning’s Gospel text is Luke chapter 15, and that means you get to hear my triennial rant over the lectionary and the beady little minds who produce them. The reading should have been the entire chapter not two-thirds of it. “Jesus told them this parable.” This parable. Singular. A three-parter consisting of a) a lost sheep, b) a lost coin, and c) a lost son. The first two set up the third, which is the clincher and the point of the whole thing. But someone apparently thought that we don’t have the time or attention span for a whole chapter of Holy Scripture and so we get only the first two parts - lost sheep and lost coin. Lost sons will have to wait for another time, I guess. It’s like telling two thirds of a joke and making you wait a couple of years for the punch line.
In reading Luke’s version of the Gospel, you always have to be aware on which side of chapter 9 verse 51 you are. Are you before or after? It is a line of demarcation, a turning point. Jesus had just appeared before three of His disciples in transfigured glory on the mountain, and then it says: “When the days drew near for Him to be taken up, He set His face to go to Jerusalem.” He never took His eyes off Jerusalem after that. The cross was His goal, and He was compelled to get there.
A Sabbath dinner with Jesus in the house of a Pharisee. You just know this is going to be good. A teachable moment, ripe with possibilities. The Pharisees are watching Jesus carefully. Waiting for Him to make a slip. Do or say something so they can pin a charge on Him.
Enter a man with dropsy. Just the sort of person you want dropping in on your nice little dinner party with Jesus. You’re just getting started with the appetizers and drinks and in walks this man with a distended gut and stands in front of Jesus.
“Lord, will those who are saved be few?” You wonder sometimes. I sure have. How many will be saved? When you look at the condition of the world around you, when you look at the state of the church today, when you consider the diminishing impact that Christianity seems to have in the world, you begin to wonder. Will only a few be saved in the end? How many are going to make it past those pearly gates? Will you?
Luke 12:49-53 / 13 Pentecost / 18 August 2013 / Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights, CA
“Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” Just what you wanted to hear, I imagine. You expect peace from the Prince of Peace, and instead you get division. You expect Jesus to focus on the family and bring the family together, because, after all, the family that prays together is supposed to stay together, and you get Jesus saying He’s going to set father against son, mother against daughter, in-law against in-law, and divide houses of five, three to two. And will you be in the majority or the minority? And which will be on Jesus’ side?
This is the same Jesus who at His birth the angels sang of “Peace on earth”. The One who said “Peace I leave with you , my peace I give to you.” The One who said, “Peace be with you” to His frightened disciples. Here the Prince of Peace speaks of a fire, a baptism, and division.