Children of the Light and Children of this Age

The Scripture this week at Haywood Street’s service was Luke 16:1-13. It is the parable of the shrewd manager. As Brian Combs said in his introduction to the sermon exchanges, most ministers either don’t preach from these verses or they ignore them altogether. They are full of irony and difficult to understand, but why?

On Tuesday evening I had a conversation with Brian Hooks and some of the Tuesday afternoon Clothes Closet workers. I made the comment that trying to explain to other people what Haywood Street was all about was impossible. You have to be at Haywood Street. It is like Copernicus trying to explain to his Inquisitors about the sun being the center of the universe, not the earth. They had to look through the telescope to see that the earth was not the center of all things and, in fact, the earth revolved around the sun.

I come every week to “catch” what the congregation at Haywood has and to work there on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning is to be exposed to the “sneezes.” However, learning to live the Gospel is a process, a process of learning Jesus in the most intimate sense. We must not think we can get it any better than the disciples who lived and breathed the same air as Jesus until we come into contact with the risen Lord. He told us where to find Him, with children, with the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the hungry. Of course, you have to cherish the little children, cloth the poor, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, and feed the hungry to meet the living Lord. That is the first place to be if you want to learn the Gospel. You must have ears to hear and eyes to see, too.

The parable of the shrewd manager adds another dimension to learning Jesus. There was a manager who was called in by his master. The master had heard that the manager had been wasting his possessions and told the manager to bring his accounts to him. The manager was worried. He couldn’t do manual labor because he was too weak and he was ashamed to beg. Instead he went to all the master’s debtors and reduced their debt so that they would be grateful to him and would help him when he lost his job. The master heard about it and he was impressed. He commended the manager for his shrewdness.

Parables are supposed to have one truth they are teaching. So what is it in this one? What on earth was Jesus trying to get across? Jesus explains that the children of this age are shrewder in dealing with one another than the children of light. So he tells his disciples to use wealth to help other people so they might be welcomed into heaven by the people they helped. Jesus further explains that if you are not to be trusted with someone else’s wealth, how can you be trusted with wealth of your own and if you are dishonest with very little, you will be dishonest with much. You cannot serve God and wealth, simple but hard to understand – and even harder to do. Money is only useful if it is helping others.

We did not discuss the last paragraph in this Scripture. Luke 16:14-15, but Jesus brings the point home in the strongest of language. Listen.

‘The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.  He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.”’

The question all of us rich and poor must ask ourselves is are we children of the light or are we children of this age like the Pharisees? Do we walk in fear or do we walk in faith?

God's Lavish Love

A few years ago my husband and I went to the Folk Art Center for the Fall Festival. There was a shepherd at the Festival shearing sheep. He demonstrated separating out a sheep to shear. The sheep were in a tiny fenced area. When the shearer entered the area all the sheep ran to a corner as far as they could get from him and faced in the opposite direction. He grabbed the nearest sheep and left the area. None of the sheep did anything to help their baaing brother as the shearer pulled him away nor did they even look his way.

You see sheep have been over-domesticated. They are totally dependent on the shepherd for their care and survival. You can never leave sheep unattended. Should one accidentally lie down in a field such that his shoulder is against a rock, he won’t get up – ever. He’ll starve to death first. A shepherd has to pick him up for him to move. To shear a sheep the shepherd places the sheep’s shoulder against his shin, almost in a sitting position, and the sheep is totally immobilized just by the positioning. That way the shepherd has a free hand to shear with.

Brian preached about the Pharisees seeing Jesus eating with tax collectors, prostitutes, and other undesirables. When they objected, Jesus reminded them that the shepherd would leave the ninety-nine of the flock to find and bring back the one lost sheep. Indeed, the Shepherd would celebrate the return of the one more than the presence of the ninety-nine. Then Brian asked, what was the crisis in the Scriptures?

There were lots of answers. One was the loss of a sheep was a crisis. Indeed, when a sheep is lost and found, the shepherd often breaks the legs of the sheep and carries it on His shoulders while it heals. That way the sheep learns not to stray and it forms a relationship with the Shepherd.

But the real crisis was the frustration, disillusionment, and anger of the Pharisees over Jesus spending so much of His energy and time on those that according to the Pharisee’s measure were unworthy. The Pharisees were like the sheep at the Folk Art Center. They were used to hiding behind their religious dogma, in a group, in a corner. They were not interested in their lost brothers and sisters. They had become so used to feeling safe by following rules on their own that they couldn’t save themselves by following the Shepherd’s lead, even when He was there to pick them up and set them aright.

Brian described God as a Shepherd with lavish love for His sheep. He was willing to give His life for them. He doesn’t wait for a prodigal son to beg forgiveness. He rushes to that son with His ring and a robe to embrace him. He does not wait for the sheep to come home. He goes out and finds him, brings him home, and celebrates his return. He is a Hound of Heaven. We can leave the Shepherd, but the Shepherd will not leave us.

In the parable of the Prodigal Son and the story of the lost sheep Jesus ends with a celebration. The world will know us by our love and by our party. At the end of the service yesterday we had two tiny liturgical dancers who reminded us what love and party looked like. If you missed the dance, be sure to join us next week. God’s grace is spontaneous at Haywood Street Congregation and it pops out in the most magnificent ways.

A Cautionary Tale

Grace. That’s what Haywood Street Congregation is about. So what do we do with difficult Scripture that talks about sheep and goats and disasters that the Potter is devising for His rebellious people. That’s the question that I have been coming back to over and over recently. This week Brian brought it to us through the Scripture according to Jeremiah, the Prophet, in Jeremiah 18: 1-11.

The part about the Potter shaping a spoiled piece of clay was easy enough to picture. God takes me, a sinner, and reshapes me into a more useful vessel. However, if I, like the house of Israel, don’t turn from the evil I do, then, He will devise an evil plan against me. Whoa! My forgiving God, full of Grace, would do that? To me? That’s what Jeremiah said. Looking back at the history of the Israelites that is what God did. Israel didn’t turn from its wicked ways.  And God let Assyria overtake them and later Babylon did the same and banished the wealthy and powerful to another land. There was a remnant that survived and remained in the Promised Land, but they were mostly the poor and the unskilled.

So what does that mean for me? I returned to the whole idea of Judgment and Grace. God warned the house of Israel what would befall them, but He left redemption open if they would come to Him. God is the only One who is good and therefore He is the only One who can judge. What is Grace? Is it forgiveness? No, Grace is more. Is it an absence of Judgment? No, Grace is more than that. We are free to do or not do whatever we wish, not because God will excuse our lack of concern or outright selfishness, but because He wants us to choose His Way and His love. So Grace is acting in the Way that leads others to God and brings us closer to Him.

What does that mean in daily living? At Haywood Street it means we offer food for everyone once a week so that we can have fellowship with one another and can meet a basic need. It means we have clothes available to adorn the body to keep it warm or dry and comfortable. Clothing is offered with only availability as a limit and with all the choice that we can afford. It means we have haircuts and vaccinations and acupuncture to bring additional boosts to our wellbeing. Most of all it means we listen and care and welcome one another without judgment because we are all imperfect pots that the Potter is still working on.  We gather at His Table for Communion in the Sanctuary and we praise Him with music and prayers. All of this takes tremendous trust in God and faith in His Presence among us, but the more we practice Grace the more likely we are to turn around and discover God is next to us passing the bowls of food, hanging up the shirts and jeans, serving the bread and wine, and sitting nearby loving every minute.