Knock, Knock (Luke 11: 1-13) 7/28/13

           In the eleventh chapter of Luke, we find Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. It is a prayer that he taught to his disciples and might be better understood as the Disciples Prayer. It is a model prayer meant to guide us into both worship and intercession. It is a prayer we learn early and say often. It acknowledges God as our father and our sovereign. It calls for God’s rule both here and now and in the consummation of the kingdom. It petitions for sustenance, for forgiveness and for the strength not to fall away in times of trial. The use of the pronoun “us” seems to imply that the prayer is not just for each of us, but even more for us as a community of faith.

          Then Jesus tells a parable. It is found only in Luke’s gospel. It is complicated, but its lesson is simple. To better understand the parable, we need to know something about Palestinian homes of Jesus’ time. But first, let’s put the scene in a contemporary setting.

Last week, three of our grown children and our grandchild came home for the weekend and my wife’s friend from college also flew in for a few days. We had to borrow a blow-up mattress from our neighbor in order to provide everyone with a bed to sleep in.  Our neighbor was glad to accommodate us, but imagine if, instead of asking in advance, we knocked on his door at midnight on Friday night. Our neighbor most likely would not have been so accommodating. Imagine that I just kept on knocking until I woke him up and then wouldn’t leave until he found his portable mattress all properly stored away and put it in my hands. I’m thinking that our friendship might have been stretched to the limit.

          Jesus talks in Luke 11 about friendship and hospitality. A friend comes visiting late at night. The host is caught unprepared. In first century Palestine, it was not unusual to travel at night to avoid the scorching heat of the day and time of day didn’t matter when it came to hospitality. It was the custom of the day to always be prepared for visitors. It was the sacred duty of the host to be ready to extend hospitality and to do so with abundance.

          Confronted with the inability to perform his sacred duty, the host goes to his neighbor. Even though it is midnight, he would rather prevail upon his friend nearby than to forego his duty as a host. The neighbor says “the door is now shut and my children are with me in bed.” It helps to understand this in context. In first century Palestine, doors to dwellings stayed open all day. Privacy was non-existent. But at day’s end, the door closed. Quite often, the hens and the goats were taken inside the house as well. The home usually consisted of one room with a dirt floor. About a third of the floor was raised and upon this a charcoal fire was built. The entire family slept close together on mats near the fire, because nights are cold in that part of the world. So, when the neighbor said that his children were in bed with him, he was being literal. To get up was to roust the family and the small livestock which had all settled in for the night. 

          Of course, the host knew this situation and knocked anyway. He not only knocked; he continued to knock until the door was opened. The ESV says he was impudent. Perhaps a more accurate characterization of this term would be to understand our host as shamelessly bold or persistent. He had a duty to perform and he could not do it without the help of his friend and neighbor. So he persisted until the neighbor came to his aid. Jesus goes on to say that the neighbor performs not because of the friendship, but because of the persistence of the host who knocks at his door.

          At first reading, it would seem that our task as Christians might be to persist in prayer until we are heard, for this passage, after all, is still about prayer. But Luke’s meaning may be more subtle than that. Yes, we are exhorted to be boldly persistent in our prayer life with God, but we should understand that here Jesus is saying that we can take anything before God in prayer; that God is more gracious and more caring than any neighbor—even a neighbor who eventually comes to our aid. This parable has parallel tracks. Parable means “to lie alongside of” and this is a good example.  We see a good result in this story of neighbor helping neighbor. One person reacts to another’s need. Jesus uses this to illustrate how much more our Heavenly Father will care and meet our needs than this earthly response!  

          Jesus then turns to the famous phrase, “Ask…seek …and knock.” In the Greek language, all three words are verbs in the imperative. In other words, they are spoken as commands. These requests then point out what an earthly father might do. If even sinful men can act with love, how much more will the Lord do for his people? Jesus promises that everyone who asks receives, that the one who seeks finds, that to the one who knocks it will be opened. But for what shall we ask? For whom and what shall we seek? When we knock, on whose door are we knocking?

          Part of the lesson here is our need to pray. It can be compared to the need of the host to do his duty to his traveling friend. He had a great need and he boldly persisted with his neighbor until he could meet that need. In a similar fashion, we must recognize our need to pray. When the need is real to us, we will be boldly persistent about our prayer life. This need for persistence in praying is not God’s need, it is ours. Neither is the persistence to be seen as constantly praying for one thing, but rather for God’s presence, for God’s guidance, for God’s Spirit to be present in our lives. If we pray boldly and with passion for God’s will to be done, we can pray with confidence of the result.

          The end of the passage finds Jesus asking a “how much more” question again.  Luke uses this device to compare and contrast what God can do as opposed to the limits we have as humans. Jesus guides us in our directions to ask, seek and knock. If sinful people can give good gifts to their children, and we all know they certainly can, then how much more will our heavenly Father do?

More important is the nature of the gift promised here by our heavenly Father. Jesus promises us the Father’s gift of the Holy Spirit to those of us who ask him. It is the answer to our prayer, but it is God’s answer. What is promised is not prosperity or wealth or even health, but instead the gift of the Holy Spirit. The real answer to all our asking, the true destination to all our seeking, the final entry to the door of our knocking is the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is in this way that God answers every prayer. He comes to us with the gift of himself. William Barclay puts it this way: “We are not wringing gifts from an unwilling God, but going to one who knows our needs better than we know them ourselves and whose heart toward us is the heart of generous love. If we do not receive what we pray for, it is not because God grudgingly refuses to give it but because he has some better thing for us.”

          There is no such thing as unanswered prayer. But in our prayer, as Jesus taught us, we need to discern who is in charge. We need to ask for the right things, such as God’s will in our lives. We need to seek the right directions, and then and only then can we end up at the right door, so that when we knock, it will be opened to find God on the other side. If we seek God, we will find him and we will find him waiting with a full measure of the Holy Spirit as a house-warming gift. And unlike the host with an empty larder, we will never find him unprepared. 

Choosing the Good Portion (Luke 10: 38-42) 7/21/13

          Do you have an adopted family? A family who you choose to “adopt” just because everything feels so relaxed and easy? If you do, it probably started out with visits to a friend’s house, but somewhere along the way, you just began to enjoy your friend’s mom or dad as much or more than your friend. My mother was like that. I remember coming home from college and military service, only to find out that several of my friends had come by. They knew I wouldn’t be there. They just came by to have some ice cream and shoot the breeze with my mom at the kitchen table.

           The Bible doesn’t say so, but if you read between the lines, the family of Lazarus seems to have had that kind of effect on Jesus. The family lived in Bethany, just outside Jerusalem. Of course, Jesus had his own family and he had his disciples. Peter, James and John are referred to as the “inner circle” of Jesus, but Lazarus may have been his “go to” guy. Lazarus was arguably the subject of Jesus’ greatest miracle, when he was raised from death after four days in his tomb.  Even though Jesus knew what he was to find when he arrived, he wept when told of his good friend’s death. While there are a number of reasons for Jesus to have done so, at least one of them is the strong connection he had with Lazarus.  And Jesus’ connection with Lazarus went beyond his friend. Jesus enjoyed his visits with Lazarus’ sisters Martha and Mary as well. It seems that every time Jesus came to Jerusalem, he stopped by to see his friends in Bethany.

          Luke introduces us to Mary and Martha in the tenth chapter of his gospel. Sandwiched in between the parable of the good Samaritan and the teaching of the Lord’s Prayer is a short story about one of those visits to Jesus’ “adopted” family. It’s a very short story with a very big punch line. The Good Samaritan story is a powerful parable and the Lord’s Prayer is a powerful Prayer. But the story of Mary’s heart for relationship has a powerful signature as well.

          You know the story. It has been told and retold many times. Martha runs around making ready, doing all the chores of the house. She is tending to the details of hospitality and meal preparation and serving. You know what that’s like: a million details and not enough time or hands when they are needed. Into this fray comes sister Mary, who has left it all to Martha. Suffice it to say that Martha is less than happy. She’s so vexed she even complains to Jesus.

          Jesus tells Martha that only one thing is necessary. Don’t you know that just about threw Martha into a tailspin? But Jesus meant what he said. In the great scheme of life, only one thing was necessary. But what did Jesus mean? What was the “thing?”

In the 1991 movie City Slickers, Jack Palance plays the part of Curly, an aging cowboy who guides Billy Crystal and his friends on a dude ranch cattle drive. Crystal is on a quest to “find” himself, to find the smile he used to have in his life. Driving the cattle, Curly holds up his index finger and tells Crystal that life is “just one thing.” “Just one thing?” asks Crystal. “What is it?” Palance smiles wryly: “That’s for you to find out.”

Jesus goes on to say that Mary has chosen the “good portion.” Portion is an interesting word. The Psalmist tells us that “the Lord is my chosen portion” (Ps.16: 5); that “God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Ps.73:26); that “the Lord is my portion” (Ps. 119: 57), and that the Lord is our refuge, our “portion in the land of the living” (Ps. 142:5).   Portion is roughly synonymous with inheritance or share. Notice that at least four times in the Psalms, it is God or the Lord who is our “portion” or inheritance. Sure enough, the inheritance, or portion, that Mary is interested in is close fellowship with God. So Mary walks out of the kitchen, sits down at the Lord’s feet and listens to his teaching. What Jesus is saying is that Mary has chosen her inheritance wisely and at the end of the day, that’s all she really needs.

So Mary would have an answer to Curly the cattle drive foreman. Mary would tell Curly that her “one thing” is fellowship with her Lord, that the “good portion” is being in relationship with Jesus.

We live in a Martha world. We are so busy, getting and spending, going and coming, preparing. But just because the world seems to be set up for the Marthas doesn’t mean that they have the corner on wisdom. Far from it. While we all need to be like Martha, we need to know when enough is enough. We can all take a lesson from Mary’s heart.  Want to find your smile again? Grab Martha’s hand and come on in the den. Sit down with Mary. Take a timeout and a load off. Have a seat at the Master’s feet and listen to his teaching. That’s the one thing that is necessary. That’s the good portion.

Who Is My Neighbor? (Luke 19: 25-37) 7/14/13

                                          Who Is My Neighbor?

        Luke 10: 25-37

A long haul trucker is making a run across the desert. He’s over his load limit and he decides to take a detour around the weigh station. He just can’t afford the fine. It’s a little after dark when his fuel pump dies, and with it, his short wave radio. Of course, he had meant to charge his cell-phone, but forgot.  He can’t stay with the truck and it’s a long walk back to the interstate. If he stays on this road, he should come to a truck stop about thirty miles down the road. So, he sets out to walk.

Not long after dark, his flashlight batteries give out. The trucker…let’s call him Hank, is getting a little spooked. He has only gone about five miles when he stops for a quick break. For almost an hour, not a single vehicle has come by. As he starts to get back on the road, he hears a hissing sound close to him. He sees it just as it strikes his the calf og his leg. The fangs go right through his jeans. He doesn’t know the exact type, but it is definitely a rattlesnake.

Hank makes a tourniquet with his belt, but it isn’t long before the poison begins to do its job. Hank is having a very hard time breathing. He can’t go on. He lies down on the side of the road to wait for help.

An hour goes by. Hank has passed in and out of consciousness. The red line of poison can be traced up his leg. A car comes by. It is a minister on the way back from prayer meeting. He slows down, but he still has one more appointment with a shut-in on his way home. The minister looks at Hank and surveys the situation. The guy on the side of the road could be carrying a disease. He could be faking it, waiting to lure a victim. It’s too dangerous and the minister has an appointment. The minister drives on.

Another hour passes. An elder from a popular church up the road comes by. He stops and looks at Hank, now barely breathing. The man stays in his car at a distance. He is wary. It could be a trap. What’s a man doing out here on a dark road in the desert in the middle of the night unless he’s up to no good? The elder too drives on.

Past midnight, a long haired dude with a pony tail is riding down this back road on his motorcycle. He has noticed the abandoned truck about five miles back. He sees Hank and pulls over. As he checks Hank’s pulse, he notices the belt improvised as a tourniquet. He sees the swelling in Hank’s leg. He is glad that he didn’t take his side car off the motorcycle. He gets Hank in the side car and takes him to the nearest emergency room some forty miles out of his way, where the ER doctor immediately begins anti-venom therapy. Hank is in for a rough several days. Meanwhile, our hero, the hippie, has made arrangements for Hank’s truck to be towed. He has agreed to be responsible for the hospital bill if Hank can’t pay. He has even hired a mechanic to put a new fuel pump on Hank’s tractor and left extra money for whatever else the mechanic might find.  He promises to check back when he comes back through that way again.

In Luke’s gospel, a lawyer, an educated man, asks Jesus how to be sure of eternal life. Jesus answers the question with a question. What does the Law say? You carry it around on your wrist. Read it. Devout Jews of the time carried little leather boxes called phylacteries. Inside these boxes were favorite scriptures. So Jesus, referring to the man’s scripture box, literally says: “How do you read it?” The lawyer answers, quoting part of the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:5. We also know it as the Great Commandment from when Jesus quoted it: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Yes, says Jesus. “Do this and live.” That is how you can be sure of eternal life.

          I’m thinking about that minister and that elder who kept on driving. Don’t they know that’s not the way to inherit eternal life? Surely they of all people, Christian people, would know what to do. Surely they know more than this hippie on a motorcycle.

          Back to luke. Although the lawyer has the answer, he doesn’t like it. He wants to narrow the playing field of responsibility. The lawyer is playing lawyer. He asks “And who is my neighbor?” And Jesus tells him a story, a story of a man needing help, lying on the side of the road.

          A week later, the unnamed hippie comes back through the area. He stops at the hospital to check on Hank, who is now recovering from his ordeal. Hank has another visitor. The minister has stopped by to invite Hank to a church fundraiser. He is telling Hank what he must do to inherit eternal life. He ignores the man covered with the dust of the road. As the minister talks, Hank realizes he has seen this man. He says to him, “I know you. You pulled up across the road from me when I was lying there helpless, but you didn’t even get out of the car.” Overhearing the conversation, the hippie gets back on his bike and rides away, kicking up quite a cloud of dust as he leaves.

          “And who is my neighbor?” asked the lawyer. “I must know my limits,” the lawyer might have said. “I need to know where this stops.” And Jesus told him a story, a story a lot like the story about our friend Hank the trucker. Then Jesus asked another question of the lawyer. Which of these three proved to be a neighbor? In our trucker story, was it the man with the religious training? Was it the upright citizen and church leader? Or was it the long haired stranger who dressed weird and rode a motorcycle?

          The lawyer, a strong religious man, could not bring himself to answer that the good neighbor was a Samaritan, a man whom the lawyer would not be caught dead speaking to. So instead, he answered that it was the man who showed mercy.  He was right, of course. It is the one who shows us mercy who is our neighbor.   

          Sometimes the best prayer meetings take place on the side of the road. Sometimes the most powerful witnessing for our Lord happens without a word being spoken. Sometimes mercy comes with a ponytail and a beard. Who is my neighbor? He is the man who helps me. She is the girl who offers me a cup of water. It is the church member who invites me to supper, the young man at the supermarket who stops to carry my groceries even though he doesn’t have a job there.

          We cannot confuse religion with righteousness. We must not sacrifice mercy for convenience or even safety.  We should never define Christian neighborliness by geography or ethnicity or social status. When we do, we try to limit a limitless Savior. We witness to those who would join us, but our witness is that the church may be a place of boundaries, a club instead of a sanctuary. We send a message to the Good Samaritan on his motorcycle that he is on the outside, that he cannot belong. We send a message that there are limits to our mercy. And so he goes on his way. He has seen the church through the minister who ignored both him and the man on the roadside. This is not his neighborhood.

          If we want to be God’s people, we have to be neighbors. If we want God’s church to be open, then we have to carry it with us wherever we are and to whomever we meet under all kinds of circumstances. Everywhere we go, everything we do, becomes a witness. Someone is looking. Someone is measuring God’s love and God’s message by our love and our message.

Who is my neighbor? The one who shows mercy. “And Jesus said to him, ‘You go, and do likewise.’ ”

7/14/13

Making Satan Fall (Luke 10: 1-11, 17-20) 7/7/13

                                                 

It is generally thought that the second most important post in our government is that of Secretary of State. The Secretary of State is the delegate of not only the President, but the United States as well. If the Secretary makes a promise to a head of state, it carries the power of the Presidency behind it. It is a position of both enormous power and of enormous responsibility.

When Jesus sent out the seventy two in the tenth chapter of Luke, they were acting as his emissaries, just like the Secretary of State does for the President. He sent them out with the power of the Son of God. When they spoke, they spoke with the authority of God behind them. These people were entrusted with both enormous power and enormous responsibility. They took the Word of God on the road and they were charged as the advance team to carry the message of the kingdom of God to every town and village to which Jesus would later go.

The Secretary of State is always a senior person, usually involved with affairs of state for many years prior to his or her appointment.  Young folks need not apply. This is a job requiring years of training, decades of experience, thousands of major decisions behind the nominee.

But in Luke’s gospel, Jesus gives his charges about a paragraph’s worth of instruction and sends them on their way. No Secret Service. No helicopter. No Air Force plane. No business cards! Jesus sent the seventy two with no money, no knapsack, no sandals. They left with the clothes on their backs in twos. They were to stay in the first house that welcomed them and not move around. They were to heal the sick in the name of God. There was no training other than what they had received at the feet of Jesus. There was no logistics, no press. They went on faith, delegates of Jesus.

Think of a time when you had to do something completely out of your comfort zone. Maybe you left home…for college or military service. Maybe you took a job that caused you to move. Remember when you reported for work at your first real job. Those times can be very traumatic. Most of us don’t feel comfortable being thrust into new surroundings. All those trappings of home are absent and you have to be accountable. I remember a long time ago stepping out of a train at Grand Central Station in New York City with two suitcases and a job to go to the next morning. I was scared out of my wits. But even in that time for me… and there would be many more, right down to becoming the pastor of this church…even in those many times you have had to do something brand new, you had some sort of safety net. You could call home. You could ask your new boss or a co-worker. The only thing the seventy two had was that they were paired. There is no indication that there was a senior or a junior in the pairs. They just went out by twos. They had each other…and that was it.

My first grownup job was in the Navy. I had plenty of instruction for that. The Navy expects a lot from you, but it also trains you. My next job, and each one after that until I went on my own, came with some kind of training or apprenticeship. If that was the case with the seventy two, it certainly came in a hurry, for these first missionaries went in front of Jesus. They were called upon to pave the way in a sense. There was only the preparation born of that strong belief that they went out for the Master…and that whatever he asked of them would turn out okay because it was Jesus who asked.

It is typical of Luke to ignore the details of what went on with the pairs of missionaries. He is much more concerned with reporting what Jesus said...how Jesus reacted. Luke gives us only a summary of the activities of the seventy two. They return with joy, saying “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!”

The passage in Luke 10, verses 17-20 is one of those times that it simply is not enough to read silently. This passage must be read aloud and with emphasis. When John says that Jesus wept, I get it. But when Luke tells us that Jesus said: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven,” it’s not enough to read it. I think this is one of those times that the humanity of Jesus shined through like a beacon on a hill. “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven…nothing shall hurt you…rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”  Sometimes in the magnificence of Jesus’ life and deeds, we forget that he was also a small town kid who grew up to be a man just like you and me, only with perfect obedience to his heavenly father. And on this occasion, he took a risk. He sent out normal people to do an abnormal job. He sent them out on faith and they went on faith. When it was all said and done, the Son of Man looks up and out and says: I saw Satan falling! The good guys really are gonna win!

In the church, there is a lot of talk about sending. Our weekly bulletin has a sending section. We send people out into the world. In the Old Testament, there was a lot of sending. God sent Abraham to a mountain with his son Isaac to test their faith. God sent an angel to wrestle with Jacob. God sent Moses to deal with Pharaoh and liberate the people of Israel from bondage. God sent Isaiah and Jeremiah and so many more prophets to deliver his message. In the New Testament, God sends John the Baptist to baptize Jesus. And God sent himself. Yes, he sent himself. He sent God the Son from the Trinity that is God in three persons, and he sent him as a baby. He sent him as a human. He sent him to bleed his own blood for you and me and all human kind.

And yet, in the most bizarre turn of faith, God left the fate of this great experiment in the hands of amateurs. When Jesus returned to heaven, he left his disciples in charge. If they failed to carry the message for just one generation, then it was over. Christianity would fail. This is why Jesus was practically jumping out of his skin when the seventy two returned. They had acted in faith and that’s all it took. They said yes. Jesus did the rest.

Nothing has changed. The kingdom of God is still near to us. It is closer today than it has ever been and tomorrow it will be closer yet. When will it come? I don’t know and no one else does either. The Bible tells us to be ready…that the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. It’s funny to hear that phrase this week. Last week someone broke into our home. That’s right. Someone violated the sanctity of our home. If the person had just broken into our house, it would already be forgotten. But the peace of our home was breached by a stranger and it has left us off balance. Now I understand anew what it means to hear that the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. It will be a surprise. We will either be ready by living in a state of readiness…or we will be caught unprepared.

As much as I would like to see the coming of the Lord, I still take comfort in the fact that Christianity continues to spread…that people are daily being won to the Lord. The seventy two have multiplied considerably in the years since Jesus sent them out barefoot to pave the way. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t chosen to end the age. People are not only still being sent…they are still going. They are still accepting the call. And more than any other time in history, people are coming to God.

So listen. When you are asked, say yes. When the call goes out, say as the great prophet Isaiah said: “Here am I, Lord. Send me” [Isa. 6: 8]. The harvest is still plentiful and the workers are still few.  We are the modern day version of the seventy two. We are Jesus’ disciples, except we don’t just pave the way for him to come behind us. We stand on the shoulders of all those who have followed him and we build on that foundation for all those who will follow us. 

You will never be alone. Chances are that if you have not already been paired, God will provide you with the partner you need at the time. You will never feel prepared, but go anyway. Your assignment is always the same. Respond. Don’t say no when he calls you.

When you work for him, nothing shall hurt you. Your names shall be written in heaven. And maybe if you look up, you can even see Satan falling like lightning from heaven.