Broken

This is a sermon I preached at St. Paul's in New Orleans on July 29. The text for the day was Luke 11:1-13. References to the image of a broken car and an interview with David Farah come from Chris Rose's Times-Picayune column, "If I had a hammer," originally published on July 1, 2007. If you've never read Chris Rose, I commend him to you. He has a page on the Times-Picayune site and a newly expanded version of his Post-Katrina collection titled "1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina" due out August 21.

Picture, if you will, the following scene, a scene so prevalent in this city at this time. A house stands in ruins. The roof is falling in and the shutters are off of their hinges. In front of the house is a car. This car may have run before the storm, but now it can only be described as a wreck. Dirt and grime have built up on the windshield so that you can no longer see the automobile’s interior. Into this layer someone, presumably the car’s owner, has written the following sentence: “Jesus, I did nothing wrong.

A broken car, a broken house, and, one can assume, a broken person wondering why this awful disaster has befallen them. “Jesus, I did nothing wrong.” The words on the windshield of their car are a wail of grief and a shouted accusation. They also tell us a couple of things about the person who wrote them. This is a person who knows Jesus, or at least knows of him, and feels let down by him. God is supposed to care for His people, but, in this case, all outward signs seem to show neglect rather than nurturing.

I bring up this story today because it stands as a challenge to what we heard in the Gospel lesson. After instructing his Disciples on the subject of prayer, Jesus assures them, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” Tell that to the person with the broken car, the broken life. How many, just like that person, ask God for relief, either aloud or in the silence of their hearts? How many search frantically for this God who is supposed to provide and care for them? How many knock, pound, claw at doors that have been slammed in their faces and drop, finally, into despair?

This disconnect between the Scriptures and our lives would almost be easier for us to deal with if all requests made in prayer seemed to go unanswered. If that was the case, we could say that God didn’t listen at all. We would know that we’re on our own. However, we also have examples of God’s overflowing compassion and abundance. Instances of grace that could only be work of a loving God. We here at St. Paul’s are living proof that sometimes you get what you pray for.

In the months after Katrina, most people who looked at St. Paul’s probably thought they knew how our story would end. A few members would come home and try to rebuild. A concerted effort would be made but, eventually, the parish would have to close its doors. Some disasters are simply too much for us to recover from on our own. St. Paul’s, however, has surprised everyone. By the grace of God and the power of prayer, we have been given the resources that we need to rebuild and the parish is on a roll. God has strengthened us for the struggle of recovery and provided for us along the way. Now we are able to gather here, back in our own restored building; to give thanks to God for answering our prayers. Yet, the prayers of others still go unanswered.

This inequity leaves us to struggle with the following question: How can we affirm the providence of God, His divine care for His creation, while still acknowledging that there are faithful people, both here and around the world, with needs that aren’t being met? A difficult question, to be sure, and one that I can’t claim a definitive answer to, but I think there are a couple of places that we can start our search.

We can turn to the second chapter of the Book of Acts. In this account of the early Church, we read that, “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” The followers of Jesus saw that some of them had more than they needed while others were barely scraping by. To solve the problem, they redistributed what they did have, so that all would be provided for. Of course, this strategy worked better when all of the Christians were in the same place. As the mission of the Church expanded, new means of distributing God’s blessings among the faithful were needed. We read about St. Paul taking up a collection from the churches he planted in order to support the needy in Jerusalem. As the shape of the church changed, so did their strategy for providing for those in need.

In both cases, the common property and the collection of funds, the Church was doing its best to bring about the vision of God’s Kingdom on earth. They were acting as Christ’s hands in the world, distributing his blessing and providing for his people. They were answering the prayers of the faithful. The folks here at St. Paul’s are continuing that work today. By providing resources like the Washateria and the Homecoming Center those who have little are able to experience God’s blessing. By “paying it forward” to other communities around the US that are suffering from disasters, we have been able to give in response to what we received.

The idea behind the services we provide at St. Paul’s and the collection taken up by St. Paul himself all operate out of a sense of community. We pray as a community to our one Father that we night have our daily bread, and our Father provides for us as a community. We, in turn, make sure that God’s blessing reaches all those in need.

In this broken world, however, all of those in need are not provided for. Some folks who have the means to help don’t feel like sharing. The blessings that they receive are kept for themselves. Others who want to help lack the resources to reach everyone. Due to one reason or another, the prayers of the least of our brothers and sisters seem to be unanswered.

In many ways, they are like the Disciples of Christ who were faced with the bleak reality of the Cross. Jesus, the one that they thought was to be the Messiah, had died as a common criminal. They were left adrift, wondering how their prayers for salvation could be answered. Three days later, an answer was given to them greater than they could have expected. Jesus was not dead, but risen. The Messiah that they had hoped and prayed for was victorious. A symbol of shame and death was forever transformed into sign of God’s grace, giving hope to all who are hopeless.

Jesus' conquest of the powers of this world was competed on the Cross, yet we are still waiting for that victory to be fully realized on earth. We live in the tension between the resurrection that has already happened and the coming of Christ in glory that we await. We live in the tension between the world of the Church and the world of the Kingdom. We live in the tension between acting as the hands of Christ in the world and having our needs provided for by Christ himself. Then no prayer will go unanswered.

So, until that day, we Disciples of Christ are given gifts by God to do His work in the world. We are blessed with resources to distribute. We are given power to build up God’s kingdom. We are granted strength to wait for Christ’s coming in glory. In closing, I want to return to the image of that broken car, its message, and the words of David Farah, a volunteer interviewed by Chris Rose. In response to that image David said, “You could feel the power when you saw that picture but it also made me finally feel like I had to get down [to New Orleans] and help whoever it was that wrote that.” God give us all the grace, like David, to answer what prayers we can.

Terms and Conditions

This is a sermon that I preached at St. Paul's, New Orleans on July 1. The text for the day was Luke 9:51-62.

Sometimes we don’t know what we’re signing up for. For example, I’m sure that all of us have received an invitation in the mail that reads something like this: “Twelve CDs for the price of one! Nothing more to buy ever! But hurry: this is a limited time offer! Don’t delay: order today!” Dazzled by the combination of both music and savings, we select our CDs, send in the order form, and start jamming out to our new tunes. We throw away all of the information that the company mails us since we were assured that there was nothing more to buy ever. A few weeks later, however, we discover that the offer we signed up for wasn’t as straight-forward as it seemed. It turns out that if we don’t mail in a card each month we get charged big money for CDs that we don’t want. “That’s not fair,” we cry. “You didn’t tell us the whole story! If we knew all of the details we wouldn’t have signed up for this deal in the first place.”

This is the type of complaint that Jesus tried to nip in the bud in today’s reading from Luke. He knew that a lot of the people living in the area he traveled through had heard about his ministry. He also knew that what they heard came in a format similar to that CD club advertisement. The word on the street might have sounded something like this: “Here comes Jesus of Nazareth! The man is filled with the power of the Spirit. He’s teaching the crowds, curing the sick, and raising the dead! Sign up today and become part of the Kingdom of God, but hurry, this offer expires soon!” Jesus knew that, given this description, folks would be chomping at the bit to follow him, ready to have their sickness healed and reserve a place for themselves in the Kingdom of God. Later on these CD club disciples would have cried foul when discovered that they would have to take up their cross daily and loose their lives in order to save them.

So, while Jesus was on the road to Jerusalem, he made sure that all of his would-be disciples knew exactly what they were signing up for. He was upfront about the demands of being one of his followers. There’s no guarantee of a place to live, there’s no time off, even for funerals, and you don’t get a chance to say goodbye before you ship off. Nothing trumps the urgency of proclaiming the Kingdom of God.

I imagine after hearing all of these details, some potential disciples decided that following Jesus wasn’t really what they were looking for. At first they might have thought that they were getting involved in a self-help program, where all of their problems would be solved by God. Perhaps they were seeking a fast track to worldly success once this new Kingdom was established. Whatever their reason, it seems safe to assume that, once all of the details were laid out, not everyone was ready for the demands that come with discipleship, even those who really wanted to help spread the word about the Kingdom.

While this reaction to an unpredictable and possibly dangerous lifestyle was to be expected, what is amazing is the number of people that did want to become Jesus’ followers. Even the crucifixion couldn’t stop people from taking part in his Kingdom-building work. A mere fifty-three days of after Jesus was nailed to the cross people were flocking to the life of discipleship by the thousands. It didn’t matter to these early Christians that they were being persecuted for their beliefs and thrown in jail on account of the name of Jesus. But what could possibly give someone the strength to put the gospel message in front of everything else, to sacrifice everything for their beliefs?

The source of their strength was in the crucifixion of their Lord. These disciples knew that Jesus’ death redeemed them, won their lives back from death and granted them citizenship into God’s Kingdom. In response to this loving self-sacrifice, they gave their whole lives to the building up of his Kingdom and were given gifts to help them in their work. Filled with the power of the Spirit, they sought to do all that they could to bring about the reign of God on earth. They overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles and faced death without fear. This isn’t to say that the members of the early church were super heroes. In fact, they weren’t responsible for their strength at all. Their witness was one of ordinary people made great by the power of God’s Spirit working through them.

Unfortunately, much of the radical nature of Jesus’ message has been lost over time. Many churches these days have taken the Kingdom-building movement of Christ and turned it into something else, something less than it was meant to be. Our focus has been shifted from transforming our lives to fixing our problems. Our mission has changed from standing with the marginalized to maintaining the status quo. Our prayer has changed from “Thy will be done,” to “Oh that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory…”

In short, the Church has come dangerously close to offering the CD club discipleship that Jesus tried to get us to leave behind on the road to Jerusalem. “Come visit us this Sunday at St. Swithun’s! We’re doing Church for the new millennium! Our sermons are short and the lessons are painless. Try us out today! No obligation required!” We are trying to ignore the parts of the Scriptures that trouble us instead of wresting with the message that they give. We are compromising the gospel in hopes that a watered down Christianity might entice more members. We are giving up on transforming the world to focus on maintaining our individual parishes, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

We can revitalize the Christian movement by doing what Jesus did: Letting people know exactly what to expect from a life of discipleship. Would-be disciples need to know that living the way that Christ taught us to live will not win us any popularity points with folks who like things the way that they are. Christians follow a God who “has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” Nobody at the club likes to hear that God “…has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty,” but that is the message that we are to deliver. The world that we live in doesn’t understand how someone can be strong by making themselves vulnerable or lead by being servant of all. No, folks don’t understand at first, but there is nothing that they need to hear more.

I want to be clear: Christ does change our lives, he does help us get through our most trying times, and he does help us build Christian communities. He does this all on his own, asking nothing from us. What is up to us is how to respond to this abundance of grace. We can keep it to ourselves, offering it to the people that worship with us on Sunday mornings, or we can offer it to the whole hurting and broken world that we live in. I have had my own spiritual life refreshed by seeing all of the kingdom building, community restoring work being done here at St. Paul’s When we do that, when we use the power given to us by the Holy Spirit to reach out into the world around us, Christ is truly present.

So here are the facts, laid out plain: discipleship isn’t a bargain and you can’t cancel your membership at any time. Discipleship holds power and pain, rejection and rejoicing, agonizing crucifixion and glorious resurrection. True discipleship takes all of your life. Knowing all the details, one question remains: Who still wants to sign up