By the time we get to Luke 12:13-21, Jesus has radically rejected our will to racism and hate, revealing the true way of life is equality and love.
Standing for dignity means also standing against indignity
Proper 13C | Luke 12:13-21
I know you are super excited to hear a sermon about a real estate question, but we’ve got a lot of stuff to catch up on. The lectionary is playing hopscotch and its throwing rocks on the best stories.
So first we must talk about neighbors, what we see, and a crazy dinner party where Jesus goes off on his hosts.
Let’s back up a few weeks and remember that his disciples weren’t acting like angels. James and John, in particular, have these ocean-sized egos and it was messing with their ability to do what Jesus was asking them to do. But he sends them out anyway.
He sends them to the ends of the earth with a mission that’s essentially go make neighbors of everyone. And a lawyer stands up (of course its a lawyer) and is like OK, Jesus, but who is my neighbor? And remember he asks this question with more than clarification in mind. He’s looking to get out of making some people his neighbors. That’s his real purpose. Who can I other?
And Jesus tells a parable we know as the Good Samaritan. So his direct response to “who is my neighbor” is really two things: 1) everyone is your neighbor and 2) there are no exceptions.
So this teaching on neighbors isn’t just saying love everybody or suck it up and love the people you want to hate. It’s something harder and far less passive. At the root of it, Jesus is trying to help us understand how we see each other. And we may choose to see God there.
This is what Jesus is teaching for several chapters.
Mary and Martha
I’m sure the last two weeks you heard fresh takes on what comes next. So I don’t want to mess with that. But I do want to place Mary and Martha and that stuff about prayer in this context.
So Jesus is teaching them about seeing this categorically other as a neighbor and not only deserving of dignity, but of emulation. Be like this person. Don’t just love the immigrant, but be like them when they are like God.
Then he goes to the home of Mary and Martha. And Martha, trying to be a good host, is blinded by outrage. She doesn’t see her sister as her neighbor! She has eyes of condemnation.
Mary, on the other hand, is gazing upon Jesus with love. So she has chosen the better part because she is seeing with the right eyes.
Prayer
The next stop is prayer. The disciples want Jesus to teach them to pray. Help us see with the right lens in front of our eyes.
And the lens Jesus gives them is a a prayer to God that we be truly equal with one another. That each and all has enough.
Then when he talks about the act of prayer, he offers us a different lens than we think. The word translated as persistence is closer to a word we never use importunity which is allied with shame. So this story it isn’t about the woman’s persistence but her shaming of the man.
So the Lord’s Prayer and this story of shaming in prayer are demands for equality from the powerless to the powerful. So add this to your lens of equality and neighbor. Neighbors are equals and not just in access.
A neighbor is not your neighbor when you exploit them or degrade them. When you make them lower or call them vermin.
Looking Them In the Eyes
Then there are a few short pieces about blessing and cursing, the interior and of focusing on God. These culminate in Luke 11:33-36:
“‘No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar, but on the lampstand so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light; but if it is not healthy, your body is full of darkness. Therefore consider whether the light in you is not darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its rays.’
Luke 11:33-36
So think of how Martha looks at Mary versus how Mary looks at Jesus. Eyes of darkness: condemnation and anger. Which we often want to defend Oh, she’s just trying to be hospitable! But not now. She’s hidden the flame of love.
So Jesus is telling us how we are to see our neighbors: with eyes of light. Full of love, generosity, hope, and understanding.
That Crazy Dinner Party
So now we come to dinner where Jesus will show the exception that proves the rule.
Jesus has been invited by some high muckety-muck to eat with the other powerful Pharisees as one of them. But Jesus “forgets” to wash his hands. And the host calls him on it.
Now this doesn’t make Jesus look good, but it’s more like Jesus being “persistent” in prayer. He shames the men in the room for being all super pious on the outside but on the inside they’re pure evil.
Now a lawyer (again!) pipes up and is like aren’t you doing to us what you are condemning us for doing? {which kinda seems like a fair question}.
But Jesus keeps going saying that they are exploiting other people and protecting a system of torture of the poor and the powerless.
“For you tithe mint and rue and herbs of all kinds, and neglect justice and the love of God.”
Luke 11:42
Their eyes are full of darkness, but worse: they have their hands on the levers of power and are using them to prevent all Jesus just taught his people to pray for.
So Jesus’s standard for love of neighbor isn’t Be nice to the Empire. The Empire has to stop being the Empire.
But First, Jonah
So by the time we get to the real estate question in the middle of chapter 12, we’re going through these seminars on transforming the way we see our world.
There’s even this reference to Jonah in the middle of it. You probably remember Jonah because it’s the story about a big fish swallowing a dude. But really it’s the story of a prophet called to proclaim doom to Nineveh if they don’t change.
Most of the book is Jonah running away from responsibility. Which is really why the book is so relatable. But finally, Jonah relents and goes to Nineveh with his eyes full of darkness toward them. They are foul people and he doesn’t want to be neighborly to them.
But he takes off that hate lens and does what God asks him to do. And he tells them that God is going to destroy the city if they don’t turn their lives around.
And Jonah is ready to turn around, go back to God and say I told you so. But he doesn’t get the chance. They repent. So they accept God’s invitation to change and do.
Now Jonah doesn’t know how to deal with that. He liked hating them. He liked believing they deserved his hatred. It was far easier to forget about them when you dehumanize them and throw away the key. That made him feel righteous. But instead, God gave Jonah the chance to partner with God in revealing righteousness. And it meant he had to change too.
Real Estate
So given all this, the question about real estate is kind of like a student who wants to get ready at the end of the term for the final exam and she’s like so…is this person my neighbor? And it’s also like Martha asking Jesus to make Mary help in the kitchen.
And Jesus, who just warned them of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, where they are supposed to be looking (Jesus), and who will provide them the words when they need them (God) says don’t let any of this steal your attention.
Because every brick, plant, instrument, vestment, or stock in your portfolio loves to steal your eyes. It draws you to those deep-rooted urges to preserve yourself, your church, your tribe, your country. Fear of losing our stuff is not simply the cause of anxiety, but the darkening of our souls and the snuffing of the fire God lights in our hearts.
Chapter after chapter Jesus is teaching us how to love and how not to love. But half of that message we don’t want to hear. It’s hard. It sounds too political.
Speaking Up
But it is for that reason our National Cathedral spoke out this week. In “persistent” words, the Bishop of Washington, the Dean of the National Cathedral, and the Canon Theologian of the Cathedral wrote:
“We have come to accept a level of insult and abuse in political discourse that violates each person’s sacred identity as a child of God…When does silence become complicity? What will it take for us all to say, with one voice, that we have had enough? The question is less about the president’s sense of decency, but of ours.”
Because this racist rhetoric has clearly crossed the line. A line history has shown time and again, leads to violence. The violence of the sort we saw yesterday in El Paso and last night in Dayton, Ohio.
We are no longer speaking of a difference of opinion or normal negative partisanship. This isn’t some abstract zero-sum game in which one team wins and another must lose. Our president called human beings vermin. And this level of racism and public indecency is never acceptable.
In November, when we celebrate All Saints’ we will reaffirm our baptismal covenant, just like we did at the Baptism of Jesus, Easter, and Pentecost.
We will promise again to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being”.
This is the lens Jesus keeps revealing.
We don’t seek only liberty, but also equality. Not only love for ourselves but also our neighbors. And we give generously rather than hoard or withhold. AND we shame the powerful when they oppress the powerless. We don’t overlook unjust systems but strive to make them, not just a little less unjust, but truly just.
We’re called to accept the fire Jesus is lighting in us for love and generosity; to accept that we can be changed. AND that we can accept when others change, too.
Jesus is leading us through this obstacle course of hate with just God and each other. That’s it.
And to make it all the way through, we need to wrestle with the way we look at each other. The buckets and cages we put each other in. To see the ways we avoid seeing our neighbors as neighbors. How easily we justify or overlook indignity. Even how we selectively tolerate abuse to get along.
And it is God’s conviction that we love AND transform unjust systems of penalty and cruelty into relationships founded on love. On hope. And on the willingness to risk that maybe we’ve had it wrong from the beginning.
That’s how we “persist” in prayer–praying for the equality we are building.
To stand in the breach when violent words beget violent action, racist words beget racist action, dehumanizing words beget dehumanizing action and say enough. We can’t stand for the dignity of every person and then refuse to end indignity.
But we have God and a world full of neighbors. And we pray his prayer for sufficiency and equality. So, according to Jesus, that’s enough.
For the Washington National Cathedral’s statement: “Have We No Decency,” visit the Cathedral’s page.
And this interview with Bp. Budde and Canon Douglas explains why they chose this moment.