8th After Pentecost 2024

You're welcome to join the voluntary or not, but this is the voluntary today.

There is a place in new hooks.

They call the rising sun, when it's been run a million.

When we ten thousand years, right shiny.

I want to follow Jesus.

God sent the stars to give light to the storm.

I want to see the salt.

I want to summon cross.

I want to be with Jesus.

When we have run with patients race which among the joy of Jesus in darkness and all of the lovers, the light of the city of God.

Shine in my heart for Jesus.

Welcome to this ancient place, house of prayer for many nations, home to all who come.

Welcome to this gathering place.

Friend and stranger, saint and sinner, and all who gather here.

Come with hope or hesitation.

Come with joy or yearning, all who hunger, all who thirst for life in all its fullness.

Generous God and generous Savior, touch us through your Spirit.

We gather in God's name.

We claim Christ's promised presence.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Who is, was, and will be with you.

Let us pray.

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and may also have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.

A prayer for storms and hurricanes from the cycle of prayer for Episcopal schools.

O God, you rule over all creation, which you have set free to act according to its nature.

We know and love your world, which is also a world of randomness and chance.

You are Lord of chaos as well as of order.

And we pray to you for people caught in storms and hurricanes.

We remember particularly those whose work is dangerous.

Police and firefighters, rescue workers of all kinds.

You are known in storm and in calm.

You are Lord of thunders.

You moved across the hills of Judea.

You are also a presence in stillness, a voice from the silence.

You spoke to Job in the whirlwind and quieted the Sea of Galilee.

Wherever we are, in storm or calm, we know your presence.

Call us sometimes to storm, sometimes to calm, sometimes to wilderness, sometimes to silence.

Call us always to yourself and in love and service to our neighbor through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

My brothers and sisters, not out of dread or fear, but believing that God is faithful to forgive, let us rid ourselves of what we need to carry no longer.

O God, you are always true to us in love, and we are left wanting to say sorry for our faithlessness to you and one another, for our forgetting the poor and broken, for our failure to cherish creation.

Give us life, God, to change and enable us to change that we may live.

Holy and mighty, holy immortal, have mercy on us.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be worked with him.

Let us prepare ourselves for the word of God as it comes to us in the reading of Holy Scripture.

Our hearts and minds are open.

As you're being seated, our children are invited to children's chapel with Mr.

Alex in the back.

And it was in those days when King Assarius inhabited his royal throne in the Susa forest, and in the third year of his reign, he gave a banquet for all his officials and servants.

The army of Persia and Medea and the nobles and governors of the provinces came before him.

When he displayed the glorious riches of his kingdom and the exquisite beauty of his majesty, it was many days, 180 days.

And when these days were completed, the king gave for all the people who could be found in the fortress of great and small, a banquet lasting for seven days in the court of the garden of the palace of the king.

And there were white linen and royal blue hangings held up with cords of fine linen and purple, on silver rings and alabaster columns.

There were reclining couches of gold and silver on a pavement of porphyry, alabaster, mother of pearl, and colored stones, and there were drinks and golden vessels, vessels upon vessels of different kinds, and there was abundant royal wine at the direction of the king.

And the rule for the drinking was no restraint.

For thus it was established by the king for all the individuals of his palace to do as each one desired.

In addition, Queen of Vegeti gave a banquet for the women in the palace of the king of King Hazarus.

On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded Abraham, Abiza, Harbona, Abikha, and Abagatha, Azathar and Caracas, and the seven eunuchs who served in his presence.

They were to bring King Bajati before the king wearing a royal crown in order to show the peoples and the officials her beauty, for she was beautiful to behold.

Thanks for the word of God in Scripture, for the word of God among us, for the word of God within us.

Thanks be to God.

I will pray Play 49 responsibly.

Why should I fear in evil days when iniquity of my heels surrounds me?

Those who trust in their wealth and praise at the abundance of their riches, certainly I cannot redeem a person or give to God as a ransom.

For the redemption prize of a soul is costly.

It will come to an end forever.

Their graves are their homes over all time, their dwelling places from generation to generation.

Though they put their name on land, humanity will not recline in grandeur.

Rather, they are like the animals that perish.

This is the way of the foolish.

Those pleased by their own words.

Like sheep, they are set for shoal.

Death shall be their shepherd.

The upright shall ruin over them until the morning, and their form shall waste away.

Shoal shall be their abode.

That God will ransom my soul.

Wail for the misery that are coming to you all.

Your riches are rotting, and your clothes are moffing.

Your gold and silver have decayed, and their decay shall be a witness against you, and it shall eat your flesh like fire.

You have all laid up treasure for the last days.

Listen, the wages of the workers who reaped your field, which you have all defrauded them out of, cry out, and the cries of the farm workers have reached the ears of the common commander of heaven's legions.

You all have lived on the earth yourself in indulgence and in luxury.

You all have gorged your hearts in a day of slaughter.

You have all condemned, murdered, and the righteous one.

Does not God resist you for the word of God in Scripture, the Word of God among us, and for the world of God within us.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

As Jesus went out the road, a person ran to meet him and knelt before him and asked him, A good teacher, what must I do in order to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus said to the person, Why do you call me good?

No one is good but God alone.

The commandments you know.

You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not defraud, but honor your father and your mother.

And the person said to him, Teacher, all these things I've kept from my youth.

And Jesus, looking at the person loving them, said, One thing you lack, go sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me.

Now that person was shocked at this word, and went away grieving, for the person had many possessions.

Then looking around, Jesus said to his disciples, How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the majesty of God.

Now the disciples were astounded at these words.

So Jesus spoke to them again, Children, how hard it is to enter the majesty of God.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the majesty of God.

And they were amazed all the more and said among themselves, Who then can be saved?

Jesus looked at them and said, For the woman born it is impossible, but not for God.

All things are possible for God.

Peter began to speak to Jesus.

Look, we've left everything and followed you.

Jesus said, Truly I tell all of you, there is no one who has left house or sisters or brothers or mother or father, or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age.

Houses, sisters and brothers, or friends and kin, mothers and children and fields with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.

But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

The gospel of the Lord.

Which is actually probably a good idea.

Because if we did, then there'd be nothing to provide for ourselves, right?

So, look, the story today is about wealth in this one person's case.

It's important to hear that.

I'm going to talk about it, about money, but I'm going to talk about uh figuratively what might also be going on here.

One thing I want to make sure you hear, if you've gone to church for more than a couple of years, it's possible that you heard a sermon once upon a time that said, in uh the Jerusalem of Jesus' time, there was this little gate called the Needle Gate.

And a camel could enter that gate on its knees, like in prayer.

That's totally not the case.

So I just want to make sure nobody's heard that before.

Okay, good that I don't need to talk about it anymore.

Um, it's this is an interesting story, and maybe you know that there are people throughout the times who have taken this literally.

Saint Anthony was one of the first.

He heard this gospel reading, literally sold everything he had, gave it to people who had not, moved into the middle of the desert so we could have solace and be poor in God's presence.

I don't know if you know how it turned out.

Um, people thought Anthony had a lot of wealth of wisdom and spirit, so they kept visiting him.

So he tried to get away from everybody, and then they followed him.

St.

Francis did the same thing.

Inspired by Saint Anthony, he, well, he gave away all of his father's stuff, and he got in trouble with Dad for doing it, and he founded what's called the mendicant order, right?

People who ask and they only eat what they're given.

And if they're given nothing, they don't eat.

Um I hope it's important to hear, though, uh, I don't know that this is a universal imperative from Jesus.

Instead, I think there's something really interesting going on here about what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

And I know he's talking to one person.

Did you hear that?

To one person.

And sometimes we forget he's not making it hard for this person.

I mean, it is hard to hear, but it's the scriptures say that Jesus looked at him lovingly and told him, This is what you need.

And there's this back and forth that happens.

The person who comes says, God, I have checked Jesus, I've checked all the right boxes.

Which makes me think, and you may be immune to this, but I will tell you, we live in a quid pro quo world.

By and large.

You get what you pay for, right?

Actually, that's really helpful in times of stress in school and work, right?

I'm gonna work hard, I'm gonna finish this, and then it's gonna be good, right?

That's actually very motivating.

It's very natural.

It's natural as an athlete.

Like if you want to go run a marathon and you haven't put in the work, good luck, right?

So at some point you do get some of what you pay for.

But I would suggest that this passage to me seems a lot about how and when we bring quid pro quo arrangements in with God, who over and over in Scripture doesn't play that game.

You don't earn grace because grace isn't a wage, grace is a gift.

Now, this person is going to Jesus and saying, look, I've checked all the right boxes, so when do I get the reward?

I mean, I pray like that sometimes.

I'm not proud that I do.

Uh sometimes I pray the opposite.

I haven't had a speedy ticket, but let's just pretend you had a speeding ticket.

Sometimes I find myself thinking, why did I get that?

What did I do wrong?

As if, well, by the way, the thing I did wrong was speeding.

Um, but sometimes we think, I got this, so God must be punishing me because I did the wrong thing.

Or why did my power come on on Tuesday and my neighbors didn't get theirs till Friday?

It must be more righteous.

We operate in that world secularly a lot of the time.

We do.

I'm not saying it's an invalid way to be human beings.

I'm just saying it's not authentic spirituality.

Grace doesn't work like that.

Here comes this man saying, look, I've done all this, so how do I get it?

And notice what he's done.

He's kept what we call the either the decalogue, that's the Greek word for the ten words.

In Scripture, they're never called the Ten Commandments.

I don't want to harp on this too much, but since I mentioned it, I'm going to.

I am, uh, because it shows up later.

These ten words, keep in mind, Moses gave these to people who were used to being slaves.

They were used to being told what to do.

They were used to being treated as chattels and property.

So these are rules about the minimums for social behavior.

Like, I can't really get along with you when killing is an option.

It's not safe to be in community when defrauding you is okay.

But I hope you'll notice the easiest way to keep the Ten Commitments is to live by yourself in the desert.

Because if you don't ever see your neighbor, you'll never want to defraud them.

If you never see your neighbor's wife, which in the original, your neighbor's wife is his possession.

So just make sure you hear this case.

Do not covet your neighbor's donkey.

And then the next one is do not cover your neighbor's wife, because he owns her just like he owns the donkey.

The easiest way not to break that commitment is not look at anybody.

So the Ten Commitments are not the key to eternal life.

They're minimums for getting along.

Maybe I've got storm on my mind, so forgive me for the next thing I'm going to say.

But I hope you know that no Jewish person is interested in having the Ten Commitments posted on a courtroom.

No Jewish person is interested in that.

Why Christian people are interested in it is beyond me, because what I heard Jesus say is, love your neighbor as yourself.

So why we don't want to post that on courtroom walls, I don't know.

Because the truth is, I can keep the Ten Commandments and never love you.

They're the beginning, they're not the end.

And I actually think that's what Jesus is trying to convey to this person.

You've kept the rules, and are these rules keeping you?

In fact, Jesus says to this person, there is something keeping you back from the majesty of God.

In this case, maybe it is he has a lot of literal stuff.

Now, I don't like to go too figurative, but I do want to say I own a lot of wealth in ideas and experience and technical training that sometimes works to my advantage and very often holds me back from entering into the majesty of God.

Particularly when my wealth and experience and privilege of training, of visiting the world, leads me into quid pro quo relationships with God.

If you've ever done the food distribution here, which is a lovely thing, I trust that you have seen people drive cars more expensive than yours.

And it is very easy to say, they don't need that.

We don't know if they live in that car.

We don't know if that was the last bequest from their dying grandmother.

I mean, we don't know anything, but we see it and we think, or sorry, y'all probably don't.

I see it and I think, what a jerk! You're taking food from people who really need it.

That could be true, I don't know, but I would tell you, that thought process, especially when it turns to bitterness, keeps me back from the majesty of God.

Now Peter is quick to say, but look, Jesus, like we left everything.

We left it all.

So, like, what do we get?

You see that?

What do we get?

That's what he wants to know.

And Jesus says, Oh, like very obliquely, right?

He says, you know, look, you'll get all this stuff a hundredfold.

Uh properties and kin.

And then do you notice his last two words?

You'll get them with persecutions.

I hope you find that a little bit disappointing.

I find it disappointing.

I would love it if being a good person and doing all of my prayers and tithing gave me extra privileges in the kingdom of God.

And just to be fair, Jesus says, don't work like that.

Doesn't work like that.

So you may find this difficult to hear.

I hope you'll find it liberating.

Being a good Christian gets you no more privileges than being a bad one with God.

And if you're doing it for what you're going to get, let me liberate you.

You're going to get God's love no matter what you do.

You're going to get it no matter what you do.

And you may be thinking, well, geez, you know, if you were preaching that in a secular world, then I wouldn't be a member anymore.

And of course, discipleship is not about what we get.

It's about who we get to be.

It's about who we get to be.

It's not what we get from God.

I think we start to realize as disciples who God already loves and how we get to love by God.

Again, this I think is so against the way we run our world, and I'm not criticizing the way we run our world exactly, but it's so against the way we run our secular lives that it's very confusing.

And we often sort of bring it into church and we say, like Peter, look, I mean, if rich people, I mean, clearly they're rich because they're doing good stuff, right?

We all know better than that, don't we?

But this is what they say.

Look, God must be blessing them or they wouldn't be rich.

And just a reminder, it doesn't work like that.

My neighbor, five doors down, was not a backsliding Christian.

My neighbor who had a tree fall on their home didn't happen to me.

It wasn't because they were wrong and I was right.

It's because we live in a world where stuff happens, isn't it?

I mean, stuff happens in the world.

The question is not what did we do to get it, it's what do we do now that we've got it?

What do we do now that we've got it?

Now, I know I've told this story before about the Zen guy, but I happen to love it, right?

There's a person who goes to a Zen master and says, I want to learn Zen from you.

And the Zen master puts two cups out for tea, takes a teapot, and starts to pour the tea.

The cup's filling up.

The cup is full.

He keeps pouring, the cup overflows.

The person says, Stop, you're wasting all that tea.

And the Zen master says, You came to me to learn Zen, and you're so full of your own ideas, there's no room in your cup.

I wonder if that isn't part of what Jesus is actually saying.

You're asking me how to live a more majestic life, and you're so full of your own ideas, you have no room for anything I might tell you.

So, what could you do?

This could be about money, but to be honest, I think this could be about many of the privileges that we enjoy that we're not often aware of.

Privileges like education.

That's a privilege that I have.

Privileges like time for leisure.

Privileges like, you know, a body that works and can pick things up.

So it's not that I need to like disable those.

The question is, do I give them away or not?

Do I share them with other folks?

Or do I just want more and more of that stuff to keep to myself because I think I deserve it?

Keep in mind, the best news of the gospel is you don't get what you deserve.

That's the best news from God.

You don't get what you deserve.

You get more than you deserve.

You get grace.

And if you don't deserve it, you get it anyway.

Now, what do the other readings have to do with this?

Well, you know, the Esther reading, and sorry, Lila lost the reader bingo of the day because she got seven names that who knows even how to pronounce them, and all of these weird words, right?

So that happens sometimes.

And I hope you've heard this story.

This is the Esther story.

It starts out where this guy throws a raging party.

And you notice he even says, the rule for drinking is no restraint.

I mean, it's almost hyperbolic, right?

It's sort of nuts.

And look, the queen throws a party, it's really sweet.

Everything's going really well.

They're having a raging party until the king gets this great idea because he's drunk with his male friends, who are all drunk.

And he says, I'm gonna bring out the prettiest thing I own, which is Queen Vashti.

And I'm gonna have her come out in her crown.

Now, I don't know if you know this.

Most Jewish scholars will say the intent of the king is to bring her out wearing only her crown, so that he can show off what a treasure he has in a woman he owns.

This is when wealth gets in the way, you see.

If you know how the story goes, Vashi says, nuh.

Right?

No good has ever happened from a woman coming out unclothed in front of a bunch of junk men.

I hope you know that.

And she says, at the risk of her own life, uh-uh.

I mean, if I'm not gonna die either way, I'd rather die with my dignity.

That's how the story goes.

Right?

So if you read the story, it's kind of hard to say who the better heroine is.

Is it Esther or is it Vashti?

Because Vashti says, I'm not doing it.

This is an oblique reminder of how sometimes wealth gets in our way.

I mean wealth of you belong to me.

The gift of grace is we belong to God.

In a sense, there is belonging with each other, but we don't belong to each other.

Now, I know we often think we're immune to this kind of thinking, but friends, I would just like you to invest spiritually in whether that's the case.

There's this word in the New Testament called the apocalypse.

Apocalypse of St.

John.

Maybe you've heard this before, it's the book of Revelation, which a lot of people do weird stuff with.

Does anybody know what apocalypse means in Greek?

It means unveiling.

There's this great book called The Liturgy of the Ordinary that says, hey, we have apocalyptic moments all the time.

Like when we get cut off in traffic.

It lifts the veil on who we are.

When our kids don't do what we expected them to do, it's an apocalyptic moment.

You will be amazed at what comes out of you that you didn't know was in there.

These are moments that unveil, well, frankly, whether we're playing a quid pro quo or whether we're choosing to do the work of belonging to one another and belonging with God.

These are moments like, what do you do when you're, I'm not trying to emulate this, right?

When you throw a 180-day raging party and you decide to showcase your wife, that's an apocalyptic moment.

It showed what was in you.

Now, these aren't moments to necessarily think like, oh, I'm not worthy, I'm miserable.

These are moments to say, I want that out of me.

I want that out of me.

If you don't identify with this young man's question to Jesus, I don't know how to help you.

Because I got the same question to God sometimes, especially when there's a hurricane that affects us unequally.

I'm just hoping we don't have another one.

You are too.

The question is not who deserves it.

The question is, what do we do when it happens to us?

What do we do to our neighbor?

You know, helping people doesn't always come with thanks.

I don't know if you've ever experienced this before.

If you're helping people so that they'll thank you, good luck.

Try having kids.

Right?

I mean, and try being married for more than two years, right?

If your marriage is predicated on gratitude, it isn't gonna last, right?

That's not why we do it.

We give up fairness when we choose to enter into love and marriage.

If you're keeping score in marriage, it's not gonna work.

I don't care how long your spreadsheet is, it isn't gonna work.

We make a decision when we marry somebody that we're committed.

We don't know what we're doing when we have kids, but we made that decision too, right?

If we known, maybe we would have changed our mind.

Right?

But we didn't always know what we were getting.

So we made this decision.

I'm committed to you no matter how hard it is.

And maybe, just frankly, that's the gospel again.

I love it when people say thank you, because I did a nice thing.

I do, I love that.

And that isn't why we do it.

It isn't why we do it.

And that isn't why God loves you either.

So saying thanks to God for love is probably great.

But God doesn't need it to love you.

Which is all the more why we do it.

It's all the more why we do it, not because God needs it, but because we need to.

This is why we help our neighbor, but it's not just that they need it, that we need to help our neighbor.

Because in so doing, we help the embody of Jesus Christ.

Now, this is a tough thing.

And by the way, if you want to hear the contrary, you can turn your TV on when you get home, and there are a lot of religious speakers who will tell you that the more you give to your church, the more God will return to you with interest.

You can hear that.

I just don't believe it.

I don't believe it anymore.

Because I don't think God plays the investment game.

I think God just chooses to give grace to us.

And the readings today are a reminder to me that sometimes I think I'm doing it.

And maybe it's worth paying a little more attention to whether I'm doing it or not, especially in those uh apocalyptic moments.

I invite you to join me in an affirmation of faith in your bulletin.

We believe in God above us, maker and sustainer of all life, of sun and moon, of water and earth, of male and female.

We believe in God beside us, Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, born of woman, servant of the poor, tortured and nailed to a tree, a man of sorrows, he died forsaken.

He descended into the earth to the place of death.

On the third day he rose from the tomb.

He ascended into heaven to be everywhere present, and his kingdom will come on earth.

We believe in God within us, the Holy Spirit of Pentecostal fire, life-giving breath of the church, spirit of healing and forgiveness, source of resurrection and of eternal life.

Amen.

O Trinity of Love, God and community, holy and one, look now on us who look to you.

Where there is falseness within our relationships, where there is coldness, where there is joy and hope, and make us one.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

The peace of the Lord be always with you.