Henrietta United
Rev. David Inglis Luke
7:36-50
Father’s
Day
“Two Paths”
Imagine that someone you knew suddenly
died. This person had some good points,
but they also had some a lot of rough edges.
You start to wonder what happened to their soul. Are they in eternal bliss? Or are they having
to pay for their selfishness and dishonesty?
You start to wonder what would happen to your soul if your life
suddenly ended. This is not a pleasant
thought. Maybe you should start thinking
about what would please God instead of just thinking about what would please
yourself.
Maybe instead of filling your whole weekend with
having fun and doing errands, you should put in an appearance at church more
often. Maybe some of the trash you like
to read should be replaced with something more inspirational. You try to watch your language a little more,
cut down on the habitual lying, maybe even volunteer to drive for FISH and help
a neighbor in need.
You’ve started along the path to God that we
might call the high and holy path. Each
step is designed to lift you up a little bit farther from your base,
self-centered nature and to point you toward godliness.
This was the path Simon the Pharisee was
on. It’s not a bad path, and most
Pharisees were not bad people--in spite of all the sermons that have been
preached against them (including some of mine).
The Pharisees were people who devoted most of their energy to carefully following
religious law, so they could avoid the things that were displeasing to God and
do the things that would make God smile on them. Who of us would be
here today if we weren’t at least partly on this path?
But there are some potential wrong turns along
this path that anyone who follows it will eventually encounter. And we can see that Simon the Pharisee has
found a couple of them.
Simon had
invited Jesus, this extraordinary teacher and healer that everyone was talking about, to
dinner. As was the custom, anybody could
come into the inner courtyard of his house and listen to this big celebrity
that Simon had invited to his house. But Simon was so caught up in putting on a
good show and perhaps catching Jesus in a trap that he failed to offer Jesus
even the common courtesies of hospitality of the day--a kiss of welcome, water
for his dusty feet, and a little fragrant oil on his head. It seems that the better we try to be, the
better we think we are. We feel we deserve respect from everyone rather than
showing respect for everyone.
The other main wrong turn on this path is this:
the more proficient we get at taming our impulses and controlling our behavior
and our words, the more judgmental we tend to get towards people who haven’t
yet advanced to our level of righteousness.
Simon demonstrates this with the one word he used to describe the woman
whose life was undergoing a profound change as she washed Jesus’ feet. His word for her was “sinner.” That was all he saw her as:
“Sinner.”
So Simon is not bad. He has standards and godly morals. But we don’t experience anything of God in
him.
So then there’s the woman, presumably a
prostitute, slathering Jesus’ feet with her oil, dripping tears all over
him, and shamelessly letting down her long hair and drying his feet with
it. She hasn’t set one foot on the high
and holy path, has she? Not even a
toenail. And yet Jesus sees her as far
closer to God than Simon the Pharisee.
This woman of the street is showing us another
path to God. This path is not high and
holy. You could say it’s “down and
dirty.” And this path can be traveled in as little as one step. How did this woman of the street find
it? What might we surmise about her?
She had fallen into prostitution or been forced
into it, we don’t know how. But we do
know that she would have been exploited and abused by men at the same time as
she was despised and condemned by them.
She would have
tried very hard not to think about her life and what had become
of her. But in those unguarded moments
when the deep pain and shame welled up, she would have felt nothing but
helplessness and despair.
Then she heard Jesus, we don’t know exactly when
or how. Maybe she had seen him heal
lepers nobody else would go near. Maybe
she had heard Jesus tell the story of the prodigal son, who was welcomed back
into the embrace of his father after squandering his inheritance in loose
living. Maybe she been among the
despised tax collectors and sinners that Jesus ate and conversed with as a
compassionate friend. Somehow the
message had gotten through to her soul that no matter how other people saw her,
and no matter how she saw herself, God saw her with love. Even though she had stopped believing in
herself, God still believed in her. And
some glimmer of a soul that was buried so deep under layers of pain and shame
stirred to life, and said “Oh! Yes! Yes!
It’s me, my God. I hear you. I believe you. Thank you.
Thank you! I’m coming back to you
with all that I have. Thank you!”
And there she was, overflowing with gratitude,
hope and love at Jesus’ feet. She was
closer to God at that moment than Simon the Pharisee could even imagine being.
Now the good news is,
we don’t have to get that lost to find this shorter path to God. The bad news is, we
do have to get that humble. That’s why
most of us would rather spend our lives struggling up the high and holy path
and seeing how far we’ve come and looking at the other people still below
us. Somehow that seems easier than
admitting how much we need God, or completely yielding our lives and will to
God, or releasing all of our pride and proclaiming, “How great Thou art”--and
fully living in that humble gratitude.
This is not something that we do easily or naturally. And it’s not something we should do in order
to rack up righteousness points. It’s something that our soul does in response
to God. We might find this path when we hear God’s call to repentance and to
come home to God’s forgiving love for us.
We might find it when we feel God’s nudge to take the next step of
service or growth. We might find it when we are awe-struck with the miracle of
life--our child’s life, our life--so precious and full of possibility.
The high and holy path to God is a good
one. It helps keep us out of trouble and
leads to a life of virtue. But the humble and grateful path doesn’t lead us to
God as our distant goal; it begins with God as the one who calls us and leads
us forward. We don’t just journey towards God; we journey with God.
Simon and so many of the Pharisees got lost because they forgot to humbly
listen and gratefully respond.
Now this is Father’s Day, and for the life of me
I couldn’t find any references to fathers in today’s lectionary reading. But a recent movie about a father and son
helped me realize that there are two paths to fatherhood just like there are
two paths to God. The “high and holy”
path to being a good, respectable father is made up of steps like being a good
provider for your family, working hard and achieving success, staying out of
trouble and being a model citizen, being strong and knowing what to do. That’s
the kind of father we would like to be.
The movie The Pursuit of Happyness is
based on the true story of Chris Garner, an African American man from
Chris’ small business was failing, his wife was
working two shifts, and unpaid bills were still piling up. Chris latched onto a highly unlikely shot at
becoming a stockbroker for Dean Witter by enrolling in a full-time training
program. Only one of the 20 class
members would be hired. Chris’
stressed-out wife saw no sense in this plan.
She left for NY City, leaving 5-year-old Christopher with his
father. Chris and Christopher moved
into a cheap hotel; but he couldn’t make enough sales to pay the rent. They got evicted. Sometimes they had to spend their nights in a
grimy subway restroom, where Chris had Christopher imagine they were in a cave
hiding from dinosaurs. When there was
room, they’d go to a homeless shelter for men, where Chris tried to make his
son feel as safe as possible. One night,
as Chris was saying good-night to his son in the shelter, surrounded by
derelict men on cots, Christopher reached up, stroked his father’s face, and
said, “You’re a good papa.”
Chris had slipped off the high and holy path to
our model of what a successful father should be. He had to take the down and
dirty path. All he had to offer his son
was unswerving love and commitment not to abandon him, no matter what. And somehow, the quality of their
relationship was better than lots of men whose successful lives we look up
to.
And even though it’s a true story, it still has
a happy ending. Today Chris Garner is a
multi-millionaire. But he insists that
his story is not a rags-to-riches story.
He says it’ a story about a father’s commitment to his
son.
This is our choir’s last Sunday until September,
and I couldn’t find any reference to choral music in today’s scripture
reading. But I realized there are two
paths to singing. One is to carefully
memorize all the notes and rhythms and make sure you don’t make any mistakes. The other is to throw your heart into the
song, and let yourself become the humble instrument of the music and its
message. That’s why our choir inspires
us, more than many church choirs with paid professionals.
I didn’t find any references to graduates or
students either. But there are two
paths to learning. One is to know what’s
expected of you, complete all the assignments, study hard for the tests, and
get the best grade you can. The other is
to embark on a
learning adventure that broadens your horizons, deepens your understanding, and
opens your awareness.
And there’s no reference to Sunday School teaching in today’s Bible story. But there are two paths to that too. One is to make sure you drill into the
children all the biblical knowledge and moral values the church
believe are important so that nobody can fault you for missing anything
crucial. The other is to walk with the
kids on their budding journeys of faith, opening to them the biblical truths
that make life meaningful, and pondering with them questions that don’t have easy
answers but that take you all deeper into the wondrous mystery that is
God. That’s the kind of teachers we have
here, which is why the kids love going to Sunday School
and our teachers love teaching them.
Because our Sunday School is growing, we’re
going to need some more teachers next fall, as well as teachers who can
volunteer for a week or two this summer.
Few people feel equipped to teach from the high and holy path of knowing
it all--and if they did, I’d be concerned.
But we’re counting on some of you feeling a tug to help your faith grow
as you learn and grow along with some of our eager, curious children.
When it comes right down to it, there are two
paths to living our lives, aren’t there?
We start on the first path out of our fear of being wrong, and so we
strive to avoid mistakes, and we work to appease God or the critics out there
or the critic in here. We start on the
second path from a place of trust--in God, in the power of love, in our
capacity to grow. And though this path
is humble, it is this path that lifts toward the heights of who God created us
to be.
Which path are you traveling on your journey of
life?