don't eat alone

I preached this morning at our church in Guilford, and it was another peach of a passage as far as the lectionary is concerned. I had to write the sermon in traffic, as I like to say, because it was a hectic week, but some of those things became part of what helped me to see the verses in a new light. Since my interim is over, this is my last scheduled sermon for a while. I hope you find something here that speaks to you.

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Last week, I started publishing an online newsletter called “mixing metaphors.” Actually, Ginger was the one who came up with the title because, she said, it’s what I do. I like to mash up ideas and images that offer the chance for imaginative conversation about what it means to be human.

As long as my mother was alive, she admonished me to be like Jesus. After dealing with today’s passage and the parables that surround it, I wish I could tell her I think I’m pretty close because in the eight verses we read Jesus gives us a festival of mixed metaphors.

First, he said, those who did not hate their families could not be disciples. Then he said those who did not carry their cross couldn’t either–and they knew nothing about his upcoming crucifixion, so what that metaphor meant to them is up in the air. Maybe it had more to do with the weight of empire, since Rome used crucifixion as punishment for crimes, than our image of great sacrifice. Then he switched to talk about counting the cost of building a tower and counting the cost of going to battle against a more formidable opponent, and then he said, “Therefore, none you can become my disciple if you do not give up all of your possessions”–and then, in the following verses that we did not read, he said we were like salt. He hit everything from siblings to seasonings as he talked about what it means to be human.

Look, Mom, I’m like Jesus . . . ?

At least, I hope so.
But I have to tell you, when I read phrases like “must hate your family” and “renounce all your possessions,” I wonder what to do with them even though Jesus said them.

I have watched, for example, as some maliciously use the two stories about counting the cost to castigate those who have had their student loan debt forgiven, and part of me wishes those words of Jesus weren’t even written down so they could not be weaponized.

Though the gospel writers rarely give us any indication of Jesus’ tone when he spoke, I have been turning these words over all week listening for something that offers more than Jesus telling everyone they were a huge disappointment to God.

Then I saw something I had not seen before. Listen again:

For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether they have enough to complete it? Otherwise, when they have laid a foundation and are not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule them, saying, ‘This person began to build and was not able to finish.’

Jesus said the reason the person had for making sure they could finish the tower was so they would not be ridiculed for a half-built tower. And the second story:

Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace.

The result of the king measuring his army against his opponent’s was to decide the battle wasn’t worth it and to send a peace delegation instead.

The characters in both stories are examples of vulnerability, not victory. The first had a big idea that got knocked down by things they didn’t see coming, and the second had delusions of grandeur that were cut down to size in a moment of reflection.

The way Jesus talked about the kind of commitment it took to be a disciple, he seemed to say that there is not a way to communicate just how much it costs.

We can give lip-service to putting our commitment to God above family and possessions, or anything else for that matter, but living that out is a different thing, as is figuring out what that looks like. The truth is our lives are littered with lots of half-built towers and battles we didn’t fight. And most all of us are attached to our stuff.

These verses read, it seems, as if hardly anyone measures up as a disciple. But these verses don’t stand alone.

Just before this mess of metaphors, Jesus told three parables about banquets. One is about someone who goes to a banquet and tries to switch place cards to worm their way up to the head table only to be moved to the back (and Jesus said don’t be like that); one is about someone who hosts a banquet and only invites people they think will invite them back only to learn that doesn’t pay off (and Jesus said don’t be like that); and one is about someone who sends out invitations to a banquet to people who were used to going to banquets, and everyone responds with silly excuses, so the host instructs their servants to go out and find anyone who is hungry enough to come and eat (and Jesus said be like that).

In the chapter that follows our verses, Jesus tells three parables of people who appear to not count costs: a shepherd who leaves his flock of ninety-nine sheep to go out in the night to find one that had gotten lost; a woman, who loses one of the ten coins she possessed, tears up her house looking for it, and then blows her whole budget throwing a party for the neighborhood to celebrate; and a father who pulls out all the stops when his son, who had disowned him, comes home after losing everything because he has nowhere else to go.

The traditional reading of these last parables is that God is the extravagant one—and that is true about God. But what if we put ourselves in the place of the shepherd or the woman or the father? What if we think of these parables in the light of Jesus’ call to give up our possessions?

Perhaps what is missing in our understanding of what Jesus was saying in these parables is that Jesus understood most of us spend their lives counting costs. We measure our steps and choose our words; we run scenarios in our minds and make forecasts and predictions. We want to make sure we are safe. We want what is coming to us. We don’t want to get taken advantage of. We want to share, but we don’t want to give up too much.

The truth is that kind of math doesn’t add up because we can’t see what’s coming. What we can see are the invitations life is offering us right now—invitations to incarnate the love of God to those around us in tangible ways.

Our friends Jena and Marc felt compelled to pay for a student from A Better Chance (ABC) to go to college. When Julie became our foster daughter, they also gave us one of their cars because they knew we were going to need a second vehicle. They had the means to do both—and they were willing to do them.

Sometimes, the call to respond is more celebratory. Our goddaughter Ally and her partner Pete opened a restaurant in Athens, Georgia this week. As you can imagine, the opening was the result of years of dreaming and planning. Thanks to Avelo Airlines, we were able to figure out how to get there—and it mattered to her that we did.

At the same time, Ginger’s cousin in Alabama is facing a housing crisis and has nowhere to go, so we are in the process of adjusting some of our plans to buy a small place so he will have somewhere to live.

As I was working on my newsletter and trying to figure out life after my editing job, a person who I know through my blog but have never seen face to face spent two or three evenings after work helping me sort through some technical stuff I did not know how to do just because I asked.

I wish we had time to let the people here tell stories because I am sure this room holds many tales of ways people have been extravagant to us and ways in which we have counted the cost of what it means to be family or friends and then paid the bill.

Take some time to think of those stories and tell them to one another. They are stories of discipleship, if you will.

Jesus told these parables in response to questions that came from those who were critical of him: Why did you heal that man on the Sabbath? Why do you hang out with tax collectors and sinners?

Jesus’ answer was basically to say, “Why not spend my life on them? What else is going to add up to a life worth living?”

As followers of Christ—disciples—we are called to pay the cost of noticing one another, of witnessing one another, and attending to one another, of loving one another. We are called to offer our half-built towers as shelter, to share our daily meals as if they were banquets, to find one another no matter why we got lost in the first place for no other reason than that’s what Jesus did. And, like my mother said, we ought to be like Jesus. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

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Part of the reason pastors take vacation in August is because the lectionary passages are complicated when it comes to preaching. Or perhaps the Lectionary Committee thought, “Hey, let’s dump all of these in August when we know we are not going to be in the pulpit.” Either way, in the waning days of summer when we are all looking for a little relief, the passages like the one for today (Luke 14:7-14) make us think harder than we want to.

The good news for me is the two parables are about meals, and I am always happy to talk about cooking and eating, whether literally or metaphorically.

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I think one of the reasons I like Jesus is because so much of what he did and said revolved around food. He fed people. He ate and drank with all kinds of people. He even cooked breakfast after his resurrection–on the beach, no less. And he used the idea of gathering around the table as one of his primary metaphors in his parables.

All of that speaks to me. Whether I am cooking or eating, hosting the dinner or being hosted, I like to be at the table with people.

You may have noticed that our passage started with, “When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable,” which is to say we are coming in during the middle of the story. Jesus was at a dinner at the home of some people of privilege who thought of themselves as The Ones Who Made Sure Everyone Kept The Rules.

I mean, Jesus would eat dinner with anybody!

A sick man came to Jesus to be healed, but it was the Sabbath and the Rule Enforcers frowned on Jesus “working.” Jesus stared them down and healed the man. And then he told these two parables.

The two stories are connected, but they go in different directions. The first is about people who get invited to a banquet and switch their place cards so they can be closer to the the head table. The second is about someone hosting a dinner for people they know will invite them in return.

Jesus said that neither approach was the way to live. Life is about relationships, not transactions.

A couple of years after I got out of college, a friend who graduated after I did called and said he was coming to town and wanted to know if he could take me to lunch. Of course, I said yes. We had a great meal and a good conversation. Towards the end of the meal he told me that he was working for a life insurance company and wanted to talk to me about my insurance needs. My insurance needs were taken care of at that point, but I thanked him for lunch and he went on his way.

About a year later, he called again, saying he was coming through town. We went to lunch again and he tried to sell me insurance again. And it happened a third time, some months after that. At the third meeting, I said, “I am glad to see you and to hear about your life, but I don’t want to buy insurance. If you’re coming to town and you want to eat because we are friends, that’s great. If you want to see me because you think I could be a customer, I’m not interested.”

He never called back.

I look back on him how and I can find grace that I did not find back then. He was just starting out in a career and he worked on commission and he needed customers, so he called people that he knew. And what soured me was he turned a relationship into a transaction.

If he could have said, “Hey, I am just getting started and I could use some help making connections with people; can I buy you lunch and talk it through with you?” the story would have been different. Or, if I could have said, “I know you’re under pressure to sell insurance, but let’s just have lunch and leave that for another time,” rather than being as blunt as I was, we might still be in touch.

I know another person whose parents told her that the proper response to a gift is to return the container full. I gave her some peppers I had canned and she returned the jar full of something. When I said she didn’t need to do that, she said her mother had told her that she had to do that to be polite. But now it leaves me wondering how that expectation leads her to feel about people, like me, who return her containers empty and just say, “Thank you.”

Hear me clearly: life is not as simple as this is the right way and this is the wrong way when it comes to how we relate to each other in most cases. The give and take of our daily lives requires of us to move back and forth between being givers and receivers, hosts and guests. Like is a series of exchanges, in a way–but here is where we have choices about what we make those interactions mean to us and to others.

At the heart of both stories is this: don’t keep score when it comes to giving and receiving.

If you go to a banquet and you are at the table against the back wall, take it as a chance to dance where no one can see you and have the time of your life. If you’re the one hosting dinner, invite the people who need to eat, not those who will make you look good. Either way, enjoy the meal for the sake of the meal. Make a memory, not an accomplishment.

Life is about relationships, not transactions. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

PS—my newsletter, mixing metaphors, starts Tuesday. You can subscribe here.

I am down to my next to last sermon at the church where I have been bridge pastor since the beginning of last December. They are moving into a promising new chapter as a new settled pastor joins them in early September and I am moving into Whatever Is Coming Next, a chapter that has yet to be fully defined.

My idea for my sermon came to me as Ginger and I sat in a pub on our last full day in Ireland; Guinness, it seems, is not only good for strength, but also for sermon ideas—in moderation, of course. The text is Isaiah 58:9-12. I’ll let my sermon tell the rest of the story.

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When Ginger and I first moved to Boston in 1990, we couldn’t get over how old things were. The first house we owned in Charlestown was built around 1840. Having moved from Texas, where anything over fifty felt ancient, we felt like we were living in the middle of history. Then we had a chance to go to Paris. As we stood in Notre Dame cathedral, we could overhear a tour guide describing the two huge stained glass windows. One, he said, was a new window–a replacement after a fire–that had been put in place in the mid-1500s.

Our little row house in Boston suddenly felt new as well.

During our time in Ireland over the last couple of weeks, we saw lots of old things. We walked around the remnants of old castles, marveled at the miles and miles of stone walls that stood without mortar, and stayed in hotels housed in stone buildings dating back centuries. All of those were things I expected. But on our last full day in Ireland I was surprised by what we found.

Our task that day was to drive from Galway to Dublin so we could fly back to Boston the next day. I looked at the map to find somewhere in between to stop for lunch and saw the name Athlone about halfway along the highway. When I searched to learn more about the city, I found out it was home to Sean’s Bar, which is certified by both the Guinness Book of World Records and the Irish National Museum as the oldest bar in Ireland–dating back to 900. That date means less time passed between Jesus being on earth and the opening of the bar than between the opening of the bar and today.

We knew we had to stop–and we did.

The building was unassuming. The pub was quiet and cozy and opened up on a patio that had been built more recently. On one wall was a shadow box that held a piece of an earlier building, which was basically a bunch of sticks held together by some sort of mud mixture. The room we were in wasn’t from 900, but the bar was part of a continuous lineage.

What I have since learned is Athlone is the English way of saying the Gaelic name, Atha Luain, which means “the ford of Luain.” Before bridges were built, this spot was where people could ford the River Shannon. Luain was the one who both provided a way across the river and a place for refreshment and rest, starting in 900. A town grew up around the inn, and then a castle was built in the twelfth century. Through all the changes, the pub has continued to take care of people.

As one of my friends noted when she saw our pictures, “Bars have been a necessity for a long time.” The idea that everyone wants to go to a place where everybody knows your name is much older than we think.

Soon after we got back, I read an article that said for the first time in American history people who go to church are in the minority. In 1990, seventy percent of Americans participated in worship; that has now fallen below fifty percent. Those of us who go to church live with the assumption that churches have been a necessity for a long time, too. Perhaps, what we miss is that it can’t stay the same if it is going to endure.

I wonder how many times over the years the patrons of Luain’s Inn or Sean’s Bar have lamented a change in location or decor or beverage options. My guess is at least every few years over the thirteen centuries, someone has said, “Well, it’s not what it used to be,” and yet, it’s still here.

We have lots of reminders around us that much of life works that way. We think of ourselves as being the same person our whole life, and yet our skin cells regenerate every two weeks, our stomach cells every couple of days, and our bones every ten years, to name a few. As we age, we don’t keep much original material and yet we are still ourselves. Our identity does not require us to stay the same; in fact, we have to change to stay alive.

One of the things I have enjoyed since I got back has been reading the email thread about the ways in which you as a congregation are preparing for a new year and for a new pastor. Those two things, along with what appears to be the first fall in a while not totally encumbered by the pandemic, have created space to dream and plan. It has also made room for trying to get back to the way things were. Those two impulses can pull against each other.

The words from Isaiah we read this morning were spoken to people who were working to rebuild what had been lost and trying to figure out how to keep going. Isaiah’s call was to do more than try to reinstate old patterns. Instead, he said, be healers. Repairers of the breach.

Be the ones who help others cross the river and provide refreshment and rest for them when they do.

We do not exist because of our institutions or for our institutions–that’s true about churches and governments and workplaces. We are made for one another. We are built to be healers, helpers, caregivers–and receivers: people who tend to one another.

One of the stops we made on our Peace Retreat was in a town called Rostrevor, which is in northern Ireland. As we were getting off the bus, Ginger and I saw a man walking two miniature Schnauzers, so we were quick to cross the street and talk to him. After we had met the dogs, we began to talk to him. His name was Paul. He asked what we were doing in Ireland and we said we were with a group hoping to learn more about how to be peacemakers by hearing the stories of those who are working for peace in Ireland.

“I was in prison in Manchester during the Troubles,” Paul said. He went on to tell us he had been sentenced to twenty-four years but got out after eleven years because of good behavior. “I was changed by my time in prison. I am a different person. I was a Republican (one of those fighting for a unified Ireland), but I’m not now. What matters most is that we learn how to be friends with one another.”

Across the street from Paul was a school that advertised itself as “integrated”–meaning Protestant and Catholic students attended together–and next to it was a church that had been converted into a restaurant and bar. As Ginger and I sat at one of the outside tables, we watched the church fill up with various groups of people sharing their lunches and lives together, and I wondered what the former congregation had missed that the restaurant seemed to be getting right when it came to making people feel like they belonged in that space.

Sean’s Bar has not survived because Luain had a plan for lasting a millennium. What he did was feed people and help them cross the river and those who followed him found their own version of hospitality to offer. Though they boast about being the oldest bar, that is far from the point. The point is that they tend to people day after day, and have done so month after month such that the years have stacked up into centuries.

Likewise, as you look to the days ahead and the hope of new life here in Westbrook, remember a couple of things. One, the point is not to last forever, but to meet the needs at hand. As Gareth Higgins, who led our retreat, says, look for ways to make the world less broken and more beautiful. Second, as you make room for and take care of one another, and of those who will come to join you, remember it ultimately doesn’t matter what order the hymns come in, or what prayer is said when, or whether you like every piece of music that is played.

What matters is you are here together and you want to widen the circle of belonging. You have a long history, but as you lean into that, remember the congregation that exists today is most likely quite different than the one that started here, and different from many of the versions of church that have inhabited this space since. Perhaps that is why Isaiah said we are called to be “repairers of the breach”–we are called to look for the little things (and some big things, too) that will make it easier for people to get across whatever boundary or difficulty that keeps them from feeling like they belong so they can find rest and refreshment.

God doesn’t expect us to last forever. God does call us to love one another with every moment we have. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

My sermon for the church in Westbrook this week comes from the lectionary text, Luke 12:13-21, where Jesus tells a parable about a person who keeps building bigger barns so they can amass greater wealth. (Consider the previous sentence as a clear example of a way to get people to decide not to read further—but please keep reading.)

The story was a response to a request from someone for Jesus to arbitrate a dispute over an inheritance. He declined, and then told a story to say, “Your financial abundance is not the point of existence.” It strikes me as a good perspective for institutions as well as individuals.

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As best I can remember, it was a little over twenty years ago that Ginger and I were talking with my mother and she said, “‘Would you like an inheritance or would you and Ginger like to go to Africa?”

We were unflinching in our response. “Africa,” I said, “definitely Africa.”

As I have told you, I spent most of the first sixteen years of my life in Africa. We left the continent to move to Houston, Texas in 1972–on my sixteenth birthday. I had never had the chance to go back. I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity, even if it meant I didn’t get an inheritance.

it was a good choice, even though there are those who would point out that if I had invested the money spent on the trip it would have multiplied itself many times over in the last twenty-odd years. That’s true–and I would not have seen the herds of zebra and wildebeest, or listened to the hippo choir sing at night in the river below our camp, or listened to the young school children we met who were so proud to show us what they had learned, or had a chance to show Ginger the house where I lived in Nairobi, or gotten to take a hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti.

I am infinitely richer for those memories.

Maybe that is an odd way to start a sermon about what we do with our possessions, but that is the first thing that popped into my mind when I read Jesus’ admonition about storing up our treasures, I think because my father caught me by surprise. I didn’t expect him to value a memory with me over a savings account. My parents were savers and planners and they also knew they was not going to live forever, so they shared the wealth to deepen the bonds of family.

Though life doesn’t always play out as simple either-or decisions, we have many moments in our lives where we must choose between generosity and self-preservation, and those moments string themselves together into a way of living. Sometimes we become most possessive of the stuff we didn’t earn or collect but has been handed down; we act as if we deserve it.

That seemed to be the attitude of the man who came to Jesus and said, “Tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” We don’t get any indication of the issues at stake. Perhaps the parents were dead and the other sibling was the executor. Who knows. Whatever was going on, Jesus had no desire to weigh in.

“Who set me as the arbitrator?” he asked, making it clear he had no intention of doing any such thing. He did, however, see it as an opportunity to speak to the larger issue, so he turned to those gathered and said something that jumped out at me: “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

That’s not one of the sayings of Jesus we quote with regularity.

I have a feeling, at this juncture in the sermon, that it probably feels like you know where this is going–that I am going to talk about how we have too much stuff and we need to learn to live on less and give away more—Marie Kondo style; that the point is not to see how much we can amass, but how much we can share.

Yes, to all of those things. But since that is the obvious sermon and you already saw it coming, I feel the tug to focus in a different direction and start with the sacred cow of many congregations: our endowments and our perceived need for bigger barns.

The word endow means “to provide an income for.” The basic idea is not a bad one. People leave an inheritance to provide some stability for congregations that meant a lot to them during their lives. Often, they leave quite specific instructions about how the money should be used, and often those instructions are trapped by history and, even though driven by passion, are short-sighted.

At the church in Guilford, there is a fund “to provide hats for the minister’s wife.” I don’t know who gave the money or when, but the designation is no longer useful or helpful–although I did make a case for using the money to buy me a new Red Sox cap every spring. Though the line item feels kind of silly, the problem is the designation makes it hard to spend the money because of all of the rules around endowments, which leads to a larger question: what are we saving for?

What I have seen more than once is churches saved the money, but then don’t spend it for fear they will use it up and then have none. Meanwhile, the day to day life of the church suffers because they don’t have the money they need to answer God’s call to ministry in their towns and neighborhoods.

Ginger served a church in Massachusetts that both had an endowment and struggled to raise the money to support the annual budget. One of the folks in the church came up with the idea of drawing “legacy pledges” from the endowment as a way to allow the church to thrive. “Those folks gave the money for the church to use, not to sit on,” he said. It was a life-giving suggestion to the congregation.

Maybe all of this is on my mind because you as a congregation are beginning a new chapter in a time when we are getting warnings about our economic situation. It also hits a recurring theme for me that the reason for a church’s existence runs deeper than self preservation. The reason we gather and minister as a congregation is not so the “church” will last forever, but so faith will endure through loving our neighbors as ourselves. We are called to meet the needs around us, to offer help and healing and hope. We are called to generosity and compassion, not frugality.

Theologian Carol Howard Merrit says,

Our future does not depend on our bank balance; it depends on whether we are making a difference in the world. Stewardship doesn’t mean we stockpile cash until we all die; it means that we look for ways to use our resources to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, welcome the stranger, and tell the good news. Faithful ministry is not watching over the bank balance to make sure it doesn’t dip below a certain point. It’s about being faithful in our work and witness.

The reason the man in the parable built bigger barns was so he could feel like he had enough to relax and live his best life. That formula for life doesn’t work. There is never enough to allay our fear if our fear is about never having enough. Whatever security we think we have in our endowments is not a reliable sense of security. Congregations don’t thrive because they are sitting on tons of money. They thrive because they are sharing what they have and they are sharing themselves. They share what is in their barns.

We have congregations all over New England who have wealthy endowments but only a few people in the pews. Many are closing and the big question is what to do with the money they saved as security and never shared.

This congregation is far from closing its doors. In fact, you have a new pastor coming and you are sharing new ideas and dreams. You have good days ahead of you, even as I know you have big questions to face about how you will minister to people in Westbrook and the surrounding towns. Remember no one ever chose to be a part of a congregation based on how they handled their investment portfolio. Remember Jesus didn’t say, “I am with you as long as you have a healthy endowment.” He said, “I am with you till the end of the age.”

We are not called to last forever. We are not called to build bigger barns. We are called to love one another, to care for one another, to share with one another for as long as we can. The legacy of love that we create with our compassion and faithfulness is what will endure. Amen.

Peace,
Milton