RULERS, DOERS, AND GOSPEL LEADERS -- A PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY FOR THE KINGDOM MISSION

Luke 14: 1, 7-14

Today’s Gospel lesson tells us something

            about leadership and humility.

Jesus’ advice on where to sit at a banquet

            is one of the most misunderstood sayings in the New Testament

            and that misinterpretation has caused no end of trouble,

                        especially in the Church.

It sounds like Jesus is advising us to use false modesty

            as a backdoor way to gain prestige.

Don’t put yourself forward if you don’t want to risk being put down.

How much better to deliberately sit below your station

            so you will be invited up higher;

            and thereby win public acclaim not only for your prestige

                        but  also for your modesty.

The first thing to know is that this is a Jewish joke

            – but we take it seriously.

Maybe a British joke will make the point better.

I am not a fan of Prince Charles

            but sometimes he gets it right.

He was once given an award of some sort.

He said how grateful and honored he was by this award

            as well as all the other awards he had received.

But he regretted that he had never gotten an award for humility.

Actually, he said, he had once been given a medal for humility,

            but when he put on, they took it away from him.

Our Gospel lesson is usually read as a sneaky way

            to get a medal for humility.

They wouldn’t do this in the business world

            where serious money is at stake.

They wouldn’t do it in sports where kids on the bench

            jump up and down saying “put me in coach.”

But in places like the Church where status is more subtle

            and is achieved in far more duplicitous ways,

            we have to slip our pride in the back door.

People are readier to have root canals than they are

            to put themselves forward to lead in ministry and mission.

No one wants to admit to considering himself “worthy” to lead.

We are all too humble to do the job Christ has given us.

Back when Agnes Sanford was the great teacher of healing ministries

            in the Episcopal Church, after one of her workshops,

            a man told her he felt called to a ministry of healing,          

                        but he knew he was not worthy.

Agnes replied, “Then get worthy.”

But what about our Gospel lesson?

Is Jesus actually advising us to adopt a posture of false humility,

            slinking into our unworthiness, wringing our hands like Uriah Heep?

Is Our Lord prescribing manipulative self-abasement

            as a devious way to climb the social ladder?

I don’t think so.

Yes, he says “whoever humbles himself will be exalted;

            and whoever exalts himself will be humbled.”

But it doesn’t really matter

            whether we humble ourselves or exalt ourselves.

In Luke’s Gospel the lowly are always getting exalted;

            and the exalted are always being brought low.

But then the formerly exalted become the lowly,

            who are due to get exalted again.

Meanwhile the formerly lowly have gotten exalted

            so they are the ones heading for a fall.

The picture of life we get from Luke’s Gospel is a see-saw.

In the words of the Frank Sinatra classic,

            “That’s life. That’s what all the people say.

            You’re riding high in April, shot down in May.

            But I know I’m gonna change that tune

            When I’m back on top in June.

            I said, ‘That’s life.’”

It’s true isn’t it? That is what happens.

But Jesus does not agree with Frank Sinatra on one point.

All that riding high and getting shot down are not life.

They are not what life’s actually about.

Life is about how we treat each other on the way up

            and how we treat each other on the way down.

The gospel happens as truth and justice, as healing and mercy,

            as relationships sparking between such unlikely friends

                        as Jews and Samaritans

            – of such things, the Kingdom of God is constituted.

Those who climb any ladder, whether it is the ladder

            of government, military,  business, or church

                        achieve a perilous perch.

The higher we get, the farther we have to fall.

But refusing to step up a rung to do the job

            is an act of either spiritual cowardice or moral sloth.

We have to be ready to rise and ready to fall for sake of the gospel.

Status is not the thing to focus on.

Rank is irrelevant. Authority is irrelevant. Prestige is irrelevant.

What matters is the mission – a mission that happens

            not just in the church but also in the home, in the community,

                        in the workplace.

Our lesson from Hebrews describes the mission        

            as hospitality to strangers, mercy to prisoners and the suffering.

The mission is sharing God’s love with a broken world

            in tangible ways.

What matters is the mission and the mission needs leaders.

But this kind of mission calls for a different kind of leader.

Jesus said, “The one who would be first among you

                                    must be the one who serves.”

Throughout Luke’s Gospel, Jesus teaches

            a different kind of leadership —servant leadership.

It isn’t about being a boss, a ruler saying “Do this. Don’t do that.”

Rulers are the ones who take the head of the table

            in an attempt to gain rank.

But it isn’t about being a doer either.

It isn’t about the lone ranger servant who acts alone.

Doers are the sneaky ones who try to gain rank

            by sitting at the foot of the table.

Of course it is easier to do something ourselves

            than to get someone else to do it.

And there are advantages to doing it ourselves.

When we do ministry on our own,

            people come to depend on us

            and there is a kind of power in that.

What’s more, if I do it myself, it gets done my way.

But if I recruit someone else to do it,

            they are apt to do it their way

                        – which may be right or wrong –

                                    but it isn’t my way.

Pride wants its own way.

But the gospel leader, the Christian leader, the servant leader

            is not a ruler or a solo doer.

The servant leader get his hands dirty serving the mission

                        then invites, encourages, and inspires

                        others to take the mission on.

Do you see the sacrifice, the humility it takes to be a servant leader?

It takes empowering someone else so that they don’t depend on us

            – which is a loss to our status right there -- 

            and it takes trusting them to do the job their way.

Can you imagine what it was like for Jesus at the Ascension

            to hand over the gospel mission to a bunch of goof balls

                        like the apostles?

After the apostles planted churches all over the civilized world

            they had to pass the job on to the first generation of bishops

             – none of whom had even met the historical Jesus.

Jesus rose above pride when he handed the mission over

            to the Apostles.

The apostles rose above pride when they handed the mission

            over to the bishops.

The bishops rose above pride when they ordained the priests

            and entrusted congregations to their leadership.

And so it goes.

We rise above pride when dare to not just do the job,

            but to invite, encourage, and inspire

                        someone else to share it with us

            – even take it over from us.

That’s how we build up the kingdom of God from the ashes of our pride.

GOD'S COUNTERINTUITIVE ECONOMICS OF FAITH

Isaiah 58: 9-14

Today’s Old Testament lesson is about Jerusalem

         after the Babylonian Exile.

After 40 years of captivity,

the Jews had returned to find the walls of the city torn down,

         which made them afraid the same way we might be

                  if we lived in a bad neighborhood and the door was missing.

The Temple was destroyed.

So they had a major problem with their worship space. It was rubble.

If they didn’t worship in the Temple,

         they did not think they could flourish or succeed

         agriculturally, economically, or militarily.

 So they set out to rebuild the City

         but it wasn’t going well.

The capital fund drive flopped.

People were squabbling with each other,

         blaming and blame shifting, left and right.

They felt poor -- and the  poorest among them,

         the am ha-aretz, the people of the land,

         were a burden on the better off folks.

It wasn’t that the better off folks were stingy or greedy.

They were just afraid.

They were financially, militarily, and spiritually insecure.

They didn’t have enough army, enough police, enough wall,

         enough Temple, enough anything.

Scarcity and fear were the hallmarks of the day.

So they hunkered down. They pinched their pennies.

They adopted a fortress mentality -- suspicious of outsiders

and even of each other.

Then along came a prophet with this surprising message from God.

“If you want to restore your City, you gotta do it different.

You are going about it all wrong.

Here’s how it’s done:

If you remove the yoke from among you . . .

if you offer your food to the hungry,

         and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,

then your light will rise in the darkness

         and your gloom be like noonday.”

They were looking at the construction costs

         and seeing there just wasn’t enough money

                  in the building fund.

So God said, “Not a problem. Here’s what you do.

          Take some of that money in your building fund

                  and put it in outreach.

You don’t have enough construction workers on the wall project?

Send a few of them over to tutor the children of the am ha-aretz,

         the poor folk.”

“Just do it,” God said, “and watch what happens.

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt,

         you shall raise up the foundation of many generations,

you shall be called the repairer of the breach,

         the restorer of streets to live in.”

God is saying something completely counter-intuitive.

He is saying when you feel like you don’t have enough,

         take some of what you’ve got and give it away.

Poverty is the occasion for generosity.

It doesn’t make any sense at all does it?

That’s because God doesn’t play by our rules.

God also said through Isaiah,

         “My thoughts are not your thoughts,

          nor your ways my ways.

As the heavens are higher than the earth,

         so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts

         and my ways higher than your ways.”

God says that at the deep down core of things,

         when you get to realest possible level of real,

         the take it to the bank truth of life,

         everything we think we know is wrong.

It’s wrong because everything we think we know

         is based on fear and scarcity.

Our basic assumption is that life is a zero sum game.

There isn’t enough of it to go around.

But God says “not so.”

“I came that you might have life and that you might have it abundantly,”

         Jesus told us.

 Life isn’t something to be seized by fang and claw.

It’s a gift to be received in faith,

         and the test of faith is generosity,

the courage, when we don’t have enough,

                  to give away some of what we have.

Crazy, of course. In some spiritual traditions,

         they call it “crazy wisdom.”

There are churches that live like that.

Last year as I was at the budget meeting of a congregation.

They adopted a deficit budget without blinking an eye.

Then they began expressing their concerns.

They had heard some other congregations were struggling

         and they wanted to help.

They got an unexpected gift and they sent it to a local ministry.

We sent them their assessment rebate.

They gave it to St. Jude’s Ranch For Children.

You just can’t help some people.

It is a leap into the dark, an exercise in faith.

It is a leap into God’s ways, a trusting in God’s gift.

It’s like exhaling in the faith that the air will still be there

         so we can inhale again.

Crazy like that.

But you know that crazy congregation somehow

manages to pay the light bill,

         and they just bought some additional land.

How do they do it?

They don’t. It’s a God thing.

It’s exciting to see congregations walk by faith

         because that’s the only way we can walk

into the Kingdom Mission;

and the Kingdom Mission is the only thing that makes life count.

So in itself the faithfulness of a church is a good thing.

It gives God a chance to demonstrate God’s faithfulness.

But the best thing about it is a faithful congregation

teaches its people how to live faithfully.

It doesn’t just talk about  faith and trust.

It shows us what they look like.

Such congregations teach the art of breathing.

You have to breathe out all the way so you can breathe back in.

One basic thing I’ve noticed about living churches and living people:

They breathe – in and out.

The heart of being a Christian is living by faith instead of fear,

         by God’s ways instead of human ways.

When we are baptized or confirmed or received,

         we make a life commitment.

We take our stand on this earth as believers.

To believe means to invest our trust.

We don’t just say, “I believe that God exists.”

That’s just an opinion.

An opinion and $1.85 will get you a tall coffee at Starbucks.

We say “I believe in God the Father. I believe in Jesus.

         I believe in the Holy Spirit.”

I jump out of this burning building of mortal life

         because I believe they are holding the net.

I know a young man in another of our churches,

         who carefully calculates the church’s value to him

-- it’s the difference between his kids’ tuition at our camp

     and the tuition at a comparable private camp –

then he gives that amount to the church at the end of the year

         after he makes sure all his other obligations are paid first.

And God says,

         “My thoughts are not your thoughts,

nor your ways my ways.
         My measures of worth are not your measures of worth,

nor your calculations my calculations.”

 Brothers and sisters,

         you are in a time of discernment.

You are discerning who you are called to be,

         what part you are called to play in the Kingdom Mission,

         and who will best provide the leadership for that calling.

I cannot answer any of those questions.

But God can and God will.

“The Lord will guide you continually

         and satisfy your needs in parched places

 and you shall be like a watered garden,

         like a water spring

         whose waters never fail.”