Loosening our grip on all that stuff

Proper 23-B

October 14, 2012

Job 23:1-9, 16-17

Psalm 22

Mark 10:17-31

“No one is good but God alone”? God is good? Ask Job. The excerpt we are reading today finds Job in the middle of his God-induced misery, having been harassed by friends, as well as his wife, to curse God and die, or to find in his own behavior a cause for this terrible treatment. As one wise biblical teacher puts it, Job “is still laboring under the old delusion that God is reasonable.” “Oh, that I knew where I might find him … I would lay my case before him … I would learn what he would answer me.” Job is suffering. Job is the archetype of suffering, suffering without the relief or assurance of God’s love.

The rich man who kneels at the feet of Jesus is also suffering. He is worried that, although he lives a good life, as he defines it, it is not enough. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” he plaintively asks the one he calls “good teacher.” Jesus gives him some answers, but they are no more welcome to his ears than God’s silence is to Job. In fact, Jesus’ words may as well be silence, for they are not what the rich man wants to hear.

Jesus takes “good behavior” a few steps beyond the “10 commandments.” To that list Jesus adds, “Do not defraud.” This word for “defraud” in Greek means cheating a worker you’ve hired out of the wages due to him, or it means refusing to return goods or money someone has entrusted to you for safekeeping. And then Jesus throws in the kicker: “Sell what you have, and give the money to the poor.” You can see Jesus using this man’s seemingly purely spiritual and religious question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” and turning it into an indictment of all wealthy people. They have obtained their money through fraudulent means; they have cheated those whose labor created their wealth, they have not returned that which was entrusted to them. Jesus demands restitution. “Go. Get up,” he says – a phrase otherwise used by Jesus when he heals someone. “Get up and be healed of your sickness of accumulation, of using wealth as an end and not a means. “Sell that which you have. Give it too the poor. Follow me.” And this is the first and only time in the Gospels when Jesus says to someone, “Follow me,” and he does not do it. The rich man refuses to be a disciple.

The disciples are really shocked; this is too hard, they say. No one can do this, rightly recognizing that these harsh statements of Jesus do not apply only to the “lifestyles of the rich and famous” crowd. They apply all of us, for all of us can find something we would rather keep than follow Jesus. “How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!” These two stories – that of the suffering Job and the suffering rich man – hit us at the heart of our anxieties, our fears that we will not have enough – that one day God’s favor will withdraw from us like the tide going out and we will be left high and dry.

There is no doubt about it: to live in America in the 21st century is to live in a world with too much stuff – and having all that stuff contributes to that anxiety about being left high and dry. There are people in this world who can detach from all that stuff, who can rid themselves of things in order to concentrate on, to use the shorthand phrase, “eternal life.” Twenty-seven-thousand of us went to see one such saintly person this week: the Dalai Lama was in town. But even there we were hardly possession-less. All the tickets cost something – mine were very generously given to me! – and even the Dalai Lama himself joked that at home he had 21 caps with various university logos emblazoned on them, and that he might just sell them for a little fast cash.

It is possible to rid ourselves of everything and devote ourselves, as Jesus suggests, to the poor. It is possible, but not likely. We are embedded in this world, in relationships and families and commitments. What would it mean, then, to have these possessions, but know that they do not have us?

Note that the Gospel text says that Jesus loved this rich man, even if he could not see beyond his possessions to understand what it meant to love Jesus. What does it mean to live with all these possessions knowing that Jesus loves us anyway? Knowing that all our possessions are not the sum-total of our lives? Knowing that we have all these possessions not just in service to ourselves, but in service to the world, and to the people, Jesus loves? To know and to do this is impossible, as Jesus says; but then he goes on: “With God, all things are possible.”

We do have a common example of this in human life. In marriage, the two people vow to honor each other, “with all that I am and all that I have.” The two people throw themselves into this relationship with abandon – indeed, abandoning all their personal hold on their possessions in service to, and in honor of, this new thing, this new beloved, this new relationship. Knowing that in the best of marriages this, too, is an impossibility does not make it any less likely that people will get married. Maybe it’s the love that kind of makes us crazy enough to let go of our grip on what we as individuals have in order to be part of this new thing. No, sometimes it does not work, but the fact that we are only human doesn’t make us stop trying.

It is like that with following Jesus. Crazy love: just because it is impossible does not mean we don’t want to. Loosening the grip on our possessions means we can see the world in the different way – things are no longer ours to hoard but the blessings God gives all of us to enjoy.

The last, the least, the littlest and the lost lead the way

Proper 22 B

October 7, 2012

Job 1:1, 2:1-10; Ps. 26

Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-1-12

Mark 10:2-16

No doubt about it: we are suffering through an extraordinarily contentious political season. Perhaps the Gospel of Mark is just the right gospel for us this year, because in these latter chapters in Mark’s story of Jesus’ life, Jesus is engaged in some pretty contentious debates of his own. The religious establishment tries at every turn to “get him” – to win the debate, to find that “gotcha” quote, to get him to stumble and fall, to expose him to his adoring followers as a fraud. If Jesus is a fraud, they figure, then that establishment can dismiss him as just another religious nut.

I found the presidential debate last week almost mind-numbingly dull. Trillions here, trillions there – I know the issues at hand are critical for this nation and the world, the numbers and policies do count, but aren’t we all desperate for some word that connects with the heart of the matter? If we read that debate in a Biblical context – with the values the Gospel of Mark would place on it, it would be like this story about Jesus’ opponents trying to trip him up with his opinions about the legal status of divorce. The questions being raised are about the technicalities, all the stuff up there: how do I bend this law without breaking it so I can get my way? Jesus, however, gets to the heart of the matter, to the difficult stuff. He talks not about divorce but about marriage – and makes all of us, even thousands of years later, very uncomfortable. He reminds us of the ideal God sets for human community, reminds us that marriage is a blessing of intimacy and commitment between two persons – and he reminds us that as soon as God set that ideal, humans betrayed it. God really wants our hearts. Jesus reminds us. God also knows that our bodies are not always able to follow through.

If you read these two chapters of Mark – chapters 9 & 10 – you will notice a narrative flow. Our passage today deals with marriage and divorce. A few weeks ago the disciples were arguing over who would be the greatest, and Jesus in the same way took the discussion away from the superficial argument “up here” and brought it down to the heart: he used a child, a little one, one of the “anawim,” as an example of true discipleship. Notice again and again in these chapters that Jesus names the little ones – the children, the poor, the sick, the outcast – as his true followers, the ones who get to the heart of Jesus’ message. The least will lead the way into the kingdom of heaven, and what they have to teach us, the privileged ones, is that for us to lead, we, too must get to the heart of it all – we, too, must be servants of all – that that is what following Jesus means.

It is probably nearly impossible for any of us, with a lifetime of choices and setbacks and mistakes and commitments, to receive the kingdom of God as a little child. But time and again, even when he is angry or indignant, Jesus reaches out and gives us another opportunity. The way is always open for us to enter the kingdom of God. The barriers, Jesus points out to us, over and over again, are all ours. If it is all about the technicalities, if it is all up here, if you are only out for the gotcha moment, the loophole, the fix, then you are missing out on what these little ones know and see and feel in their hearts. But then, if you take their example, you can see the way ahead.

Walter Brueggeman, the biblical scholar I often consult on difficult passages like today’s Gospel, reminds us that what holds the long, whole narrative of scripture together is that it insists “that the world is not without God, not without the holy gift of life rooted in love.”[i] God is not our fair-weather friend, the guest at our wedding but not the shoulder we cry on when the marriage relationship ends in acrimony and despair. God is not just our companion on the sunny side of the street. God’s blessings are not commercial transactions that we parcel out and consume. God’s blessings come to us in the fullness of life – in the easy times and in the hard ones, and always at the heart of it all. We receive all those blessings, and, like our hearts, we break them, and share them, and, with the openness of a child, we know there will always be enough to go around.

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[i] From Struggling with Scripture by Walter Brueggemann, William C. Placher and Brian K. Blount (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), quoted by Kathryn Matthews Huey, Sermon Seeds, http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/october-7-2012.html

God works with the people at hand

Proper 21 B
September 30, 2012

Esther 7:1-10, 9:20-22; Psalm 124

James 5:13-20

Mark 9:38-50

Many years ago we lived next door to a Hasidic Jewish synagogue. I learned valuable things from my good friend the rabbi there. I learned that as a police chaplain he was deeply committed to diversity training as a way to embody respect for every person’s religious background. I learned that some Jews believe in reincarnation. And I learned that on the feast of Purim, you are supposed to get so drunk that you cannot tell your friends from your enemies.

Our first reading today is the joyous conclusion of the story of how Esther courageously – and cleverly – saved her people from destruction – the incident that results in the riotous festival of Purim. People dress in costume, and whenever the name of the wicked Haman is read, they boo and hiss and have a riotous, and kind of drunken, good time. Purim is supposedly the only festival that will be celebrated even after the Messiah comes.

Our lessons today are about courageous people. Esther and the unnamed man who cast out demons in Jesus’ name have been blessed by God, but they have to live with the cost of that grace, that knowledge of God and what God would have them do.

Esther, a Jewish woman who has kept her background a secret from her husband, the king, risks her life to save the lives of her people, who are about to be killed by order of an unjust vassal of the king. Esther could lose all: her life, the lives of her people. She has to reveal that she is Jewish. She must now place all her confidence in God, the God who inspired this mission, because she doesn’t know how the king will react. The king, her husband, may very well be her enemy, but her courage lies in the risk she takes to embrace this enemy, to appeal to his justice and righteousness – or else this would become just one more tale of holocaust for the Jews. But Esther’s heroism wins the day. The king is persuaded, the wicked Haman is killed and the Jews are saved.

In the Gospel, a seeming interloper challenges the exclusive rights of the disciples (as they perceive them) to do good works in Jesus’ name. This unnamed exorcist has taken a risk, and the disciples have come down hard on him. But Jesus turns the tables on them, and delivers a lecture on just how much the grace of God may cost them. It could cost them a hand, an eye, a foot. It could cost them their lives. Whatever it costs, to follow Jesus is to take a great risk, and the ones who take that risk – who cast out demons, or fight the evil one, or care for those who do – are the salty heroes of the Jesus story.

“Salted with fire” – Jesus uses a complicated metaphor which would have been full of several meanings for his hearers. To sow a field with salt means to destroy its fertility. Likewise, remember Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt for disobeying God and looking back on the destruction of Sodom. To “salt with fire” is to really, really, really kill something – to kill it so much it never has any shred of hope of returning to life. That’s the destination for those who don’t take the risks Jesus demands for following him.

But then Jesus uses the metaphor of salt a different way. “Salt is good,” he says, but if it’s not salty enough, then what good is it?? If you don’t have an edge, if you don’t take a risk, if you don’t understand the cost of grace, then what good are you? Be a little salty, Jesus says, and be at peace.

Blessings come in curious ways in these lessons today. They remind us, if we didn’t already know it, that God’s ways are not our ways, that God does not just wave a magic wand and everyone lives happily ever after. They remind us that God is in a relationship with us, that God is in this business of life with us. We get the sense from these two readings that God improvises – that God works with the people at hand: Esther was right where she was supposed to be, to save God’s people from destruction. The unnamed exorcist turned out to be doing God’s work, whether the disciples thought so or not.

Salty, and unexpected, things like these turned out to be blessings from God. We’ve been thinking a lot about the blessings we have in this community of faith – unabashed blessings, like music and art, like this beautiful space, like family and friends, like the opportunity to serve and to give and to share; hard-won blessings, like the thoughtful and prayerful leadership core of this congregation, people who week after week, year after year, do what needs to be done to sustain our common life; peculiar blessings, like taking our unwieldy and maybe a little outdated financial accounting system and turning it into something that can help us tell the story of the many ways God has blessed us as a community and as individuals.

As we approach stewardship time, each of us will be asked to make a financial commitment to the mission of God as it is lived out in this congregation. As we do so, let us make it in the context of our blessings, paying special attention to the unexpected and peculiar ones, and the remarkable things God seems to be asking us to do. 

If God followed MY plan, I would know what will happen next

Proper 20B     Sept. 23, 2012

Proverbs 31:10-31; Psalm 1

James 3:13-4:6

Mark 9:30-37

There are a lot of myths about children: that they are helpless, self-centered, vulnerable, always happy, supremely innocent. There’s also that pop psychology talk about how we adults must get back to our "inner child."

The other side of the child myth is that they are violent, uncontrollable and incapable of moral reasoning – and must be tried and incarcerated as adults.

Myths like these are popular for good reason. There is some truth in them: children are dependent on adults for health and well-being, and many adults do carry with them the scars of a childhood damaged or robbed by cruel circumstance. Children do fly into violent rages and they often do not understand the consequences of their actions. But myths also can cloud reality, helping us see more of what we want to see that what really may be there.

I think that is part of the point Jesus is trying to make in the gospel. He tells the disciples -- again -- that he will suffer and die and -- again -- they deny it. They don't understand, Mark tells us, and they are afraid to ask Jesus what he means. But they must have been thinking about it somewhat, because they got into a conversation about who was the greatest. Jesus sits them down to teach them (and us!) a lesson: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." (Not what the quarrelling disciples want to hear.) And then he takes a child in his arms: "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name, welcomes me."

What is the importance of the child in what Jesus is trying to teach his friends?

In Jesus’ day, children were at the bottom of the bottom. They had no status or privilege, even within the family. For Jesus to use them as an example of what it means to follow Jesus, to follow the way of the cross, is to say that to be a disciple means to be as powerless and socially unimportant as a child. Rather than squabbling over who would be the greatest in the new realm of God, the disciples should model themselves on those who are powerless and insignificant. Jesus is deliberately shocking them.

What shocks us today by the example of a child? What is it about children today that might similarly shock and wake us up to what it means to follow Jesus?

Children don’t have a lot of control over what happens to them. Other people make their decisions and they are vulnerable to the wisdom or foolishness of the adults who care for them. If Jesus were using a child as an example for us, today, of discipleship, the shocking lesson for us might be that we have to give up control over the future, over what happens to us, that we would have to let go.

Wanting to control the future – to control God’s plans -- is part of the disciples' denial of Jesus' statements on suffering and death. They don't want to hear him say, "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands." Who would want to hear that? I would not, but by denying it, out of fear or lack of understanding, I, too, would be betraying Jesus, for my denial would reveal that I would rather that God follow my plan for Jesus -- that we all live happily and not too controversially ever after -- than I would follow God's plan, which leaves far too much open to chance and danger.

When God became human in the person of Jesus, he opened himself to a world of chance and change, of arbitrariness and unpredictability, to a world filled with danger, grief, sorrow, loss and, inevitably, suffering and death. Into this world God has poured hope. If we deny the suffering and death, Jesus tells his disciples, we lose the chance of experiencing the hope. Yet if we approach the world with the powerlessness of a child, we can live in that new reality, in that community of equals, where in our powerlessness we can know the true power of God.

Tough questions

Proper 19 B; Sept. 16, 2012

Proverbs 1:20-33; Psalm 19

James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38

The word for this gospel lesson is CRISIS: it is the turning point in the Gospel of Mark, the hinge point which marks the end of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and the beginning of the end. Jesus now faces his disciples toward Jerusalem, toward the challenges that lie ahead, toward the cross, toward sacrifice, toward death. He asks them the BIG question, and they have to come up with the RIGHT answer.

The news around us seems to indicate that the whole world has been thrown into a crisis, and at every point, like the disciples confronted by Jesus, we are forced to make a choice, and every choice seems to hold life or death consequences. The Presidential election maybe the most debated one of the moment. Who do we say Romney, or Obama, is? Which side are we on? Which path should we take?

When Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” they trot out the usual answers, drawn from their experience with religious figures: Elijah, who was an ancient Jewish prophet, John the Baptist, who cried out in the wilderness. That would be the predictable thing, to understand Jesus because he was like someone we already knew about. But then Jesus surprises them – and us – by asking them – and us, the readers of this encounter, “Who do YOU say that I am?”

Peter delivers the surprise line now: You are the Christ. You are the Messiah. You are the leader with royal stature and political power to lead us in a revolution against all that oppresses us. You are the one who will deliver us from the power of the Roman Empire and the corruption of the Jewish authorities. You are the Man.

We can hear a tune playing in the back of Peter’s head: “happy days are here again.” Visions of sugar plums, their side winning, the oppression of the cruel Romans routed out, no more crippling taxes, leaders with true spiritual and moral integrity restored to the Temple in Jerusalem. These plans sound good. Isn’t this where you’ve been heading all along, Jesus?

Maybe Peter should have paid attention to the kind of advice given in the Epistle of James – “Watch your words!!” – for Peter’s words in answer to Jesus’ question caused the teacher to erupt in an angry rebuke: “Get behind me Satan.” What you have in mind are merely human expectations; you need to set your mind on what God has planned, and for the short term, it won’t be pretty. God has sent me here to confront all those evil things that you mention: the powers and principalities that work against what God has in mind for humanity. But they will fight back, and I will suffer and die. And to follow me means sharing in that fight, in that suffering, even in that death. This way is difficult, but this is the way to life, to justice, to abundance, to mercy, to love, to community, to life.

No, this is not the response you will hear from political candidates, and believe me, it is no easier for preachers to deal with texts like this that it would be for politicians. It’s so much easier to preach on the abundance Jesus promises, or the healing he delivers, or many times he fed and taught and touched people in need. Here we are faced with what seems like an impossible choice, to follow Jesus down a difficult road.

Let’s step back a bit. Unlike Peter, we can move away from the brink. We have all of the Gospels before us; how else does Jesus talk to us? In the parables, for instance, all those wonderful little stories which frequently begin, “The kingdom of heaven is like …” Jesus tells us stories about how God is searching for US – how God is seeking the lost and the least, and is less interested in the triumphalistic and the powerful, or the secure and the slick and those who are SURE they always have the right answers. One theologian put it this way: “The Christian Church does not offer men and women a route map to God. Instead it tells them by what means they might be found by [God].”

So often, when we seek God, the temptation is to look for a reflection of our own needs, to find the key to our own selves. But our lessons today remind us that when we get in this business of a relationship with God, God takes the lead – God looks for us – God asks tough questions of us – God directs us to places we never thought we’d go. “Who do YOU say that I am?” Jesus asks us. This is not the final exam, but it is an invitation to follow him and to find out more.

EVERYONE falls within the reach of God's saving grace

Proper 18 B   September 9, 2012

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23

Psalm 125

James 2:1-10, 14-1

Mark 7:24-37

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt created Social Security, he knew it would not work if it was only for a certain group of poor old people, who could be isolated, stigmatized, shunned. The program could be chopped off by later administrations if it was something for “those people.” Social Security would work, he advocated, if it was for everyone: the very needy would be embedded into something that was good for everyone who got old. It was old-age insurance for everybody, rich and poor.

All of our lessons today talk about the rich and the poor, and, like FDR’s plan for Social Security, what we actually read is not what we thought we might be reading, at first glance.

Our Gospel today has this very curious interchange between Jesus and the Gentile, Syrophoenician woman. He seems to make fun of her, telling her her ailing daughter is not worth any more than a dog. Yet the woman persists, gets back at Jesus, and when she returns home, the child is healed.

So we think that this bossy woman caused Jesus to change his mind – and yes, she was outspoken. But where else did we ever hear of Jesus NOT healing one of the many, many people from all walks of life who came to him for healing? Never. So what was it about THIS woman?

The point Jesus is trying to make in this interchange – and yes, Jesus knew what he was saying to her – is that even a woman like this woman – a Gentle, a foreigner, and a well-to-do foreign woman at that – receives the blessings of God’s grace. Like Social Security, Jesus’ healing powers are for the rich and the poor, the native-born and foreign-born, our next-door neighbors and the ones on the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

As always in the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus is is part of the story. Tyre, far up the Mediterranean coast, is a Roman port city, well-to-do, Gentile, Hellenized. “Hellenized” means Greek-speaking, but it also means more. It means people who are part of the upper-class culture of the day, the cosmopolitan, Empire-traveling Greek-speakers. The Syrophoenicians who lived in Tyre moved in the circles of power and privilege and influence. This posh place is where we find Jesus today.

Yet we usually think of Jesus being among the poor – and the poor people of Jesus’ day were given a raw deal by people with power and privilege. Not only was this bossy woman a Gentile, she was part of the elite class that benefited from keep poor farmers and fisherfolk and townspeople at the bottom of the economic ladder.

How astounding then, when Jesus comes to this region, trying to lay low and keep his presence a secret – he seems to be coming here for a kind of vacation, away from all the press of the crowds who want healing and hope --  that a woman of this Syrophoenician, Greek-speaking, urban elite comes barging in. Jesus’ secret was apparently not safe; even this Gentile woman knew this random, roving teacher had the power to heal her demon-possessed daughter. Somehow even she has heard the Good News, she, who Jesus notes, someone supposedly excluded from it. This woman comes from the outside, from the world of power and privilege and empire. She does not live by the covenant with God, but she knows Jesus can help her.

And if we read between the lines of their repartee, we see that Jesus not only helps her by healing her daughter, but that Jesus uses this interchange – this conversation with the outsider, rich woman – to prove to those around him that God’s reign knows no limits. After this, Jesus leaves Tyre, goes north to Sidon, and then takes a journey of 40 miles to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. He travels through Jewish Galilee to the Gentile, Roman, Greek-speaking region of Decapolis, another city of “foreigners.” Again, Jesus’ messianic secret is not so well kept. Here a deaf man, with a speech impediment, comes to be healed -- even someone who is deaf has heard the Good News. When God rules the world, EVERYONE falls within God’s saving embrace. The kind of distinctions that humans love so much – rich, poor; native, foreign; “our kind” of religion vs. “their kind” of religion – are not what God cares about.

In the letter of James, we read how the early church lived out this Good New. James continues Jesus’ radical equality: rich and poor are included. The rich should not be privileged, but they are our neighbors. The poor should be treated with dignity – with honor to their “excellent name” – and yes, some of what the rich hoard must be shared with the poor. The mark of a faithful person, James says, are seen in what that person does. “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and … yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” Sounds like Social Security to me. Maybe all those years sitting in church listening to scripture did something to FDR. Maybe this line, from Proverbs, began to sink in: “The rich and poor have this in common: the Lord is the maker of them all.” Even a rich fellow like him – deaf, in a certain way, and shielded from the poor – understood that the Good News really had no limits, and no, Social Security wouldn’t work if it was only for the poor.

But Social Security, as good as it is, is, after all, only a human-designed program. In the world that Jesus proclaims, in the reign of God, everyone, always, has all that they need, and everyone’s excellent name is honored.

Three Miles an Hour

Proper 17 B     Sept. 2, 2012

Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Ps. 45:1-2, 7-10

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Labor Day is the American holiday, as the unions like to say, brought to us by workers. Working conditions at the beginning of the 20th century were abysmal, especially in the rapidly industrializing cities, Laws and customs changed when people, working across class and social boundaries, decided it was in everyone’s best interest to improve things for the people who worked the hardest: No child labor. 40-hour work week. Occupational health and safety standards. And an occasional paid day off: hence, Labor Day. The last day of summer. The last day of the State Fair. Brats and burgers on the grill. Fresh corn and tomatoes. One farewell swim at the beach.

Yet even if the workers threw off their chains over the past 100 years or so, the industrial revolution is not what it used to be. We’ve certainly seen in this community how it has come to a screeching halt, and no amount of fair work rules can make up for a workplace that is no longer there. Technology is rapidly creating a new kind of workplace and a new kind of labor, but we know that it has not quite jelled in our social consciousness. We’re going somewhere in a hurry, but we may not be quite sure where, and if we stopped a minute to think about it, we might acknowledge some worry that not everyone is coming along.

Listen to this, the Manifesto of the Slow Food Movement, written in 1989, in Paris (of course):

Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine, and then took it as its life model.[i]

Slow Food, which began as a protest to the introduction of a McDonald’s near the Spanish Steps in Rome, now claims over 100,000 followers, in 53 countries. They are dedicated to food grown and served locally – food that starts out fresh and ends up as a delicious meal on your table. By hearkening back to the beginning of the industrial era, I think they are saying that workers don’t live by their union dues alone – that there has to be something about the quality of life – about the very bread we eat and the wine we drink – that is worthy of who we are as humans created in the image of God.

I think Jesus would be part of the Slow Food movement. In our reading today, Jesus accuses the Pharisees of being too rule-bound, of worrying too much about who shouldn’t eat with them. In service to these well-intentioned rules, they have neglected some of the deeper traditions of God, traditions like hospitality to strangers, and feeding the hungry, and providing for those who are in need. They certainly have forgotten the sensual beauty of the Song of Solomon, where every meal is a delight, especially when shared with someone you love. The words of the Psalmist fall on their deaf ears, unaware of the songs and treasures and fragrances that are part of the language humans use to praise God.

The Slow Food movement has encouraged other movements, including a Slow Church movement. Like the rest of society, church life can get too busy – we can focus our attention on the wrong things, and lose sight of the delight we have in each other, in being called together in Christ’s name. We can think too much of our selves, and our needs, rather than on those out there who need us, and how much we have to share. Theologians have for some time encouraged us to slow down and pay attention to what is going on around us; they remind us that the pace of the modern world, and all its rules and restrictions, distance us from life itself. “Love has its speed,” Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama tells us:

It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice it or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore the speed the love of God walks.[ii]

Each local chapter of the Slow Food movement is called a convivium. It’s a Latin word, describing the place where people come together for a feast, where they live and dine together, where they eat, drink and are merry.

A convivium is what Jesus had in mind when he ate and drank with his disciples, for wherever the love of God is, you will find a party. Remember the story from the Gospel of Luke, about the dinner in Emmaus. Two disciples invited their companion, who had walked along the road with them, to join them for a meal. As the meal progressed, and the conversation became lively and animated, it was then they realized they were having a party, a great, rollicking, delightful party, and only then, in the middle of all that conviviality, did they realize it. Only then did they realize that their companion had brought the party with him, only then did they realize it was Jesus, revealed to them in the breaking of the bread.

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[i] Quoted by John Pattison in “Why We Need a Slow Church Movement” http://neuemagazine.com/digital-archives/issue-08-augustseptember-2011?page=34

[ii] Kosuke Koyama, The Three-Mile-an-Hour God (Orbis Books, 1980), quoted by Simon Marsh in <http://simonmarsh.org/2011/07/22/three-mile-an-hour-god-2/>