In the dark waiting, we have hope our faith embers will rekindle anew.

Vicar Kelly Sandin
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 27 C
Texts: Luke 17:5-10; Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4, 2 Timothy 1:1-14

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

How long, O Lord? “Destruction and violence are before me,” and justice can’t be found. When are you going to do something God? Answer!

Habakkuk was deeply troubled with what he saw, as we are today. The times have changed, but the violence remains. We’re still hoping God will fix all that is messed up and broken. We’re still begging God to stop the negativity that comes from all directions. We’re exhausted from the media reporting tragedy after tragedy, where innocent people are murdered and corruption is on every corner. And, sadly, we’re not too surprised. We know tomorrow will bring yet another story of human bloodshed and injustice. We want to trust in all this, but how can we? We want to give another the benefit of the doubt, yet we’re so aware of people taking advantage of others that it’s too hard to do. How do we walk without fear when darkness is all we see? Is there anything good in this world?

And so, like Habakkuk, we watch and wait for God to answer.

In this despair we’re rather like the apostles who cried out, “Increase our faith!” We want to believe all will turn out right, but will it? We want to trust God and love our neighbors despite what we see, but how? Even with Jesus right by their side, the apostles still felt utterly inadequate to live the life of discipleship they were being called to. They just couldn’t fathom how to live out what was being commanded.

“How are we going to do all this?” they cried! “We obviously need more faith. If you just give us more faith, Lord, perhaps we can live up to what it is you’re asking us to do.”

The great part about this gospel is the apostles weren’t afraid to ask for help. They weren’t too proud to be vulnerable and show who they really were before God and one another. They felt something was deeply missing within them to actually live out this life God was calling them to and more faith seemed like the solution.

Now, it would be wonderful if Jesus gave an easy response to their demand. They wanted immediate relief. They wanted rest from their anxiousness. Instead, Jesus talked about having the faith the size of a mustard seed – which is ever so small. You might miss it if it was right in front of you. But the smallness of it didn’t matter. What mattered was that this thing called faith was in them. What mattered was they already had it. Their little bit of trust in God was there. Their little bit of commitment to God was already planted inside them. Within that little seed of faith was power beyond themselves.

Having more faith isn’t what they needed. They had enough.

Of course we, too, feel the inadequacies of our own faith. We don’t think we have what it takes. We talk about needing more faith. We cry out to God with pleas of “Give me faith, Lord! Help me to hang in there, Lord!” This anxiety isn’t foreign to us. We live in a world full of pain and suffering and we want relief, for ourselves and for the world. We want God to fix it.

When we want increased faith, what we’re really hoping for is God to take care of it all. We’re praying God will make all things better. That we’ll have rest. That we’ll have peace. That the world will be a better place. That all things will be made right.

Isn’t wanting more faith the idea that what it is we worry about will no longer be a worry? That our children will always be safe? That a loved one will come through their illness? That our pain will go away? That there will be no more suffering?

The hardest part in this life of faith is the waiting. We desperately pray while we wait, while we’re anxious, and while we’re in fear. We wait on God because so much is out of our control. What else can we do?

Nonetheless, even in our most depressed moments we still somehow manage to cry out the smallest whimper. “How long, God? How long?” Somehow within us we have enough to at least do that.

It’s not about needing more trust or more belief or more commitment. We already have it. It’s there. But in the dark times, when a whimper is all we’ve got, we simply can’t sing a note of praise. In those times, riding on the praise notes of one another is often our only way to cope. Until, finally, the embers of our faith rekindles again.

Timothy, in our text today, needed that kind support. The author recalled his tears and reminded him of his faith, the faith that was first in his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. And now lived in him.

Like Timothy, it’s not that we’ve lost our faith. It’s that sometimes the darkness gets so overwhelming we simply can’t see. And in that darkness we need others who, on that day anyway, can see a bit more clearly. Who can hold our hand and help us through with their strength and prayers. Knowing that tomorrow they may stumble, too, and will need someone else to help bring them through.

This little mustard seed size of faith is there to be in service to God and neighbor. It’s a gift to see us through this thing called life. God wants us to do what we can with what we’ve been given. It may be a small seed of faith, but the size doesn’t matter. The apostles had enough and so do we. The impact from this little bit of faith on someone else is something we may never know. But, if you think about the encouragement you’ve been given from others, it’s often the tiniest gesture of caring that makes all the difference. It rekindles the embers of our faith so we can see again.

Serving the other in whatever that may look like has a promise of becoming more because God is at work in it. It’s not about us. It’s not about getting praise or for being noticed for what we’re doing. It’s about acting on the command to serve others so God can do what’s needed in this world. God wants us to be in relationship with one another because God knows what’s best for us.

In loving God and neighbor, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are intertwined as brothers and sisters in Christ. We’re not alone. With this connection we notice suffering in the world and try to do something about it. We feel each other’s pain and pray. We rally around one another with support and strength. We ride on each other’s praise notes until we can sing praises, too. And through it we are given hope that in the darkness of life our embers of faith will rekindle anew. And for that we must say, “Amen.”

There is no longer a chasm between us and God, or between us and our neighbor, for God has filled in all that divide through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ our Lord.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 26 C
   Texts: Luke 16:19-31; 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Amos 6:1a, 4-7; Psalm 146

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

There are two great, fixed chasms in this story, not one.

There is the chasm between Abraham and Hades, which Abraham declares is fixed and great, and can’t be crossed in either direction. The rich man – so intertwined with his wealth, he has no name; Jesus just calls him “rich guy” – he feels the pain of this divide separating him not just from Abraham’s bosom, but from God.

But there was another chasm in his life, also fixed and great, that also divided “rich guy” from Lazarus, a poor, sick man who begged outside his door. Like the other one, this chasm, separating him from a neighbor in need, was never crossed. Lazarus may have sat outside his door for years, but could have been miles away for all “rich guy” could see him.

Amos rails against this second chasm. He decries the wealthy relaxing on their nice couches, enjoying wine and music and parties, and not even noticing or grieving the ruin of their own country. Their nation is collapsing under infidelity to God that builds a tremendous divide between rich and poor, an ethical failure that deems religious activities sufficient for faithfulness instead of caring for God’s world as God does. Meanwhile the wealthy enjoy their Cabernet.

Amos wonders how anyone could be content in their lives while others suffer. His audience, like “rich guy,” are living on the other side of the Grand Canyon from God and from their neighbor, and trying to make themselves content with that situation by seeking wealth and comfort.

That’s the problem God’s Word places directly in our path today.

It makes us uncomfortable to talk about being wealthy or rich, but it’s such a critical problem with our human nature that the Scriptures come back to it again and again. Our problem is we see the 1% in our country, the wealthiest of the wealthy, and know we aren’t among them. What we avoid is that we’re actually the 1% ourselves when it comes to the rest of the world. Comparing ourselves only to the ultrawealthy lets us hide from God’s claim that our relationship to wealth is destroying us. Our love for money is at the root of all kinds of evil in the world and our lives, from war to poverty to injustice we permit to continue.

Today we hear that wealth tempts us to be content with our lives while others suffer terribly. That wealth, our wealth, blinds us to these chasms that exist. That wealth doesn’t lead us to God; it helps us set up our couches and parties on the edge of the canyon in hopes we can pretend the divides between us and God, and us and neighbor, don’t exist.

We hear that wealth, our pursuit of it, our defensiveness that we aren’t wealthy, our need to protect what we have, all of this means we are not living a real life, a truly contented life. We were designed to live in love with God and with our neighbor. As long as chasms divide us from those relationships, no amount of enjoying ourselves on the edge is going to truly fill our empty hearts and our discontented spirits.

It’s good that Abraham is wrong about one thing, then.

He says those who want to cross the chasm in either direction, can’t. But God’s Word witnesses that the Triune God absolutely can and does cross over, and it is so massive a movement of grace that the chasms are filled in forever.

One of the greatest mysteries of our faith is why God bothers to try and heal our world after all the evil we have done to it and to each other. Surely God has earned the right to relax on a heavenly couch, enjoy wine and music, and not be grieved over the ruin of this earth.

Yet God could not rest, would not be content while this world suffered. The Incarnation reveals to us God’s sleepness nights over our brokenness and sin. Unable to let us go, God chooses to become one of us, and the Trinity sends the Son to take on our flesh and cross the great, fixed chasm between humanity and God. God has crossed, and reached out into our lives to restore us into the relationship of love God always wanted.

The other chasm doesn’t exist in Christ, either. In Christ Jesus, the Triune God does exactly what we sang with the psalmist today, and what we prayed in our collect: God looks with compassion on this troubled world, and comes to give justice to those who are oppressed, food to those who hunger, freedom to those who are captive.

Jesus’ ministry is the embodiment of the Scriptures’ hopes for God’s healing life in this world. Even when he didn’t want to distract people from his preaching by doing miracles, Jesus couldn’t walk past the Lazaruses sitting in his path, hiding in the corners, unseen or unloved. In Christ, the chasm between us and our neighbor is utterly removed.

That is, of course, if we wish to be found in Christ. If we want the chasms gone.

“Rich guy” worried about that, now that he saw the truth. Who would warn his brothers about these chasms?

It’s a fascinating question. What does he want to warn them? Does he want them to care for the Lazaruses outside their own doors? What warning will help them?

Whatever he wants, Abraham says “never mind.” They’ve got Moses to warn them, they’ve got the prophets. Prophets like Amos today. They can see truth there.

When “rich guy” says that’s not enough, have someone come back from the dead, and then they’ll believe, Abraham says something that breaks this all open: “If they don’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they’re not going to be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

This might be the second time Abraham’s wrong in this story. Because someone will rise from the dead, and the Risen One will change everything. Even if we’re not convinced by Scripture, by Moses and the prophets, we need to pay attention to this One who died and rose.

Christ’s resurrection isn’t about warning, like Moses and the prophets. It’s about ending the chasms permanently.

Christ Jesus, in dying and rising from the dead as the Incarnate Son of the Holy and Triune God, shatters the fabric of all things. Christ’s resurrection fills in the chasms between us and God and us and neighbor with all the rubble of death and evil that was broken by divine love that overcame all the powers of this world.

A new land now lies before us, a gift of the Risen One, an unbroken, filled landscape, where we are able to walk with God as we were created to do, and where we are brought out of ourselves into the reality of God’s love. Where we see all our neighbors as Christ does, wrapped in the same love of God, and see how we are connected deeply to them.

This is the “life that really is life” Timothy speaks of, because in Christ this is not just the world yet to come. It is abundant, contented life we can know now. Pain and suffering still exist here, but shaped and fed by this love of God, we become Christ, chasm crossers, agents of God’s healing and grace to every Lazarus we encounter, even as others are the same to us. There is great gain in this, Timothy says. Not gain of wealth, but the gain of godliness combined with contentment, a life of love, faith, gentleness, righteousness.

Compared to such a life, the tiny, self-centered life of taking care of our own needs, our own ego, our own accumulation of wealth, looks worthless and cheap. This new reality can fill us with contentment and peace right now, in this place, and change this world.

The Risen Christ isn’t trying to convince us of anything, only invite us to follow.

Christ would have us rejoice that there is no divide between us and God or us and neighbor. Christ would draw us deeper and deeper into God’s love until we are utterly transformed, until we see as Christ sees, act as Christ acts.

The greatest news we could ever know is that these chasms we thought were enormous and permanent no longer exist in the resurrection love of God. That seems like an excellent reason to get off our couches and enter into the life that really is life, until all Lazaruses, even we ourselves, are healed and whole and living in the love and life of the Triune God.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen