Homily
by The Rev. Marcia McRae for Parish
Retreat at Trinity Center & at Lay-Led1
Morning Prayer at
St.
Francis Episcopal Church, Goldsboro, NC; 19th
Sunday after Pentecost, 25 Sept. 2016
Proper
21 Year C RCL: Jeremiah
32:1-3a, 6-15; Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16; 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31
God
is
gracious.
Remember
this.
Jeremiah
remembers. His cousin is
Hanamel, whose name means “God
is Gracious”;2 so Jeremiah has strength to act in faith. He has courage to do
something audacious:
buy property while the
city is besieged, about to fall, & he is under house arrest
because the
king is
angry
that Jeremiah speaks the truth about the coming disaster.
God
is gracious, & people are blessed.
Jeremiah
knows this. His secretary is Baruch, whose name means "blessed."3 Jeremiah
knows that, despite the enemy at the gate, he can buy property &
trust that God is gracious & by
God's graciousness he & the people will be blessed.
God
is gracious, & we
are blessed.
We
are
partakers of God’s heavenly treasure. God calls us to share God's
treasure. We have a foretaste of it at this Holy Table.
This
reminds me of the story of a man who dies, & at the pearly gates
St. Peter says he will show him what heaven & hell are like.4
They
look way
down
& see people sitting around a sumptuous feast. They aren’t
eating.
They
are weeping & starving.
Their arms are strapped to large utensils, so that they cannot bend
their elbows to feed themselves.
The
man is really upset & asks to see heaven.
They
look way up & see people sitting around a sumptuous feast. Their
arms are strapped to large utensils, so they cannot bend their elbows
to feed themselves.
These
people are laughing & savoring the delicious food as they reach
out their utensils & feed each other.
Our
perception of situations drives our actions & makes all the
difference between making life heaven or
hell.
Our
perspective of our material resources & of our abilities guides
how we use or misuse
our gifts from God.
The
rich man Jesus talks about & the message Jeremiah gives challenge
the prevailing perspectives of how things are & how they should
be. They challenge the numbness5
the status quo counts on – numbness
to the pain around them,
which allows the rich man not even to see Lazarus’ suffering6,
& allows the king to throw Jeremiah into prison because he speaks
truth the king does not
want
to hear.
The
rich & powerful do not want
their way of life to change.
People
in the Bible are like us. Tending to work, to one’s own needs, they
/ we
can overlook the far reach of God's love.
People
don't usually turn their backs on God & intentionally leave this
holy relationship. People drift away with a false perspective &,
like the rich man, can’t see real pain on the doorstep.
We
must guard against seeing what we want to see & failing to see
reality.
Author
Isabel Fonseca addresses false perspective in her book Bury
Me Standing, which tells of her experience with Gypsies in several countries.
After
visiting a slum, she talks about its filth with her guide, who is a
scholar on Gypsies. The guide says the
slum wasn't dirty,
This
kind of denial is what Jeremiah deals with & what we hear in
Jesus' parable of the rich man & poor Lazarus. As
one bible commentator says:
This self-indulgent rich man gorges on expensive food 7 days a week
in a land where most people might
have meat once in a week.8
In his day people eat with their hands...the wealthy wipe their hands
“on hunks of bread (that are) thrown away (& this is) what
Lazarus (eats).”9
Notice:
The rich man does not
have Lazarus thrown off the premises or object to his eating the
bread...10
The
rich man’s sin is doing nothing.11
He “(wallows) in luxury (&) accepts Lazarus' suffering
“as...natural & inevitable...”12
You
may recall from your Bible studies: wealth
& health have been seen as God’s blessing good people, &
poverty & sickness mean punishment for sin.
We
hear this distortion of reality expressed in our world today.
Our
Gospel says some people learn too late. The wealthy leaders in
Jeremiah’s day learn too late.13 Our
lesson from Jeremiah is during the siege of Jerusalem. The city is
about to fall. So why does Jeremiah buy real estate? Property “is
totally worthless…”14
Jeremiah
buys it to obey
God.
He
& his cousin seal the deal with witnesses. This lesson gives us
the Bible’s most detailed description of a business deal.15
It
is fascinating to know:
Documents have been found in jars “in caves near the dead Sea”16
& in Egypt,17
& a clay seal with the name Baruch
son of Neriah
was discovered in Jerusalem in a house destroyed in a siege, as
the Jewish Study Bible notes.18
Today's
lesson says Jeremiah gives the deed to Baruch
son of Neriah.
Remember:
Baruch
means “blessed”.
Signing
the deed, Jeremiah expresses hope.
He knows God promises: “Houses & fields & vineyards shall
again be bought in this land.” Jeremiah trusts God’s redemption &
the promised future restoration...19
Jeremiah
trusts God's saving help.
God’s
saving help is abundantly clear in Jesus’ story about Lazarus, the
only parable in which anyone has a name: The
name Lazarus means “God is my help.”20
Remember:
God
is our
help.
God's
great love gives us new life & new work to share God’s
liberating love in this hurting world. We do this work with
God's help.
Remember:
Because God is gracious, we can
afford to be
generous, to see
our wealth, our resources, ourselves
as gifts to be shared, to use for good, to have courage
to do something audacious like Jeremiah does.
What
audacious action is God calling us to do as the
Body of Christ at St. Francis?
Bibliography
Barclay, William. The
Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Luke Revised Ed.
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. 1975.
Brueggemann, Walter. The
Book That Breathes New Life: Spiritual Authority and Biblical
Theology.
Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press. 2005.
Brueggemann, Walter. The
Prophetic Imagination.
2nd
Edition.
Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2001.
Davidson, Robert. The
Daily Study Bible Series: Jeremiah Vol. 2 and Lamentations.
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. 1985.
Fonseca, Isabel. Bury
Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1995.
The Four Translation New
Testament.
Minneapolis: World Wide Publications. New York: The Iversen Assocs.
1966.
Handy Dictionary of the
Bible.
Gen. Ed: Merrill C. Tenney. Grand Rapids: Zondrvann Publishing House.
1965.
Harper’s Bible
Commentary.
Gen. Ed: James L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers.
1988.
Harper's Bible
Dictionary.
General ED: Paul J. Achtemeier. San Francisco: Harper & Row,
Publishers. 1985.
Holy Bible with the
Apocrypha.
New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press.
1989.
Jewish Study Bible:
Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation.
New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Matthews, Victor H. Social
World of the Hebrew Prophets.
Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. 2001.
The New Oxford Annotated
Bible with Apocrypha Expanded Edition.
New York: Oxford University Press. 1973.
1
Thank you to our 2 licensed lay leaders who read this sermon at our
morning worship services so that we all shared the same focus despite our being apart.
4
Note: I heard this
story years ago and do not recall its source. Internet search says
the
allegory is told in several cultures, including Buddhist, Christian,
Hindu, Jewish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_long_spoons
5
Brueggemann, Walter. The
Prophetic Imagination.
2nd
Edition. P. 92. Note: Concept of
numbness also influenced by
Brueggemann lectures & other
work listed in bibliography below.
9
Ibid. Pp. 213-214.
10
Ibid. P. 214.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
14
Ibid.
20
Ibid. Barclay.
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