Frail and stooped with the ravages of illness, out of the hospital… her only yearning: to go to church. Out of the hospital  into the sanctuary… Wearing joy upon her wrinkled face, she is full of light. Her hand shaking, she places her offering on the plate. O God, a widow’s mite! This day in this time  lovingly, cheerfully offered to her Lord… O God, a widow’s mite! a sign of hope among us!
                                                         - Ann Weems

READING
Looking up, Jesus saw rich people throwing their gifts into the collection box for the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow throw in two small copper coins worth a penny. He said, “I assure you that this poor widow has put in more than them all. All of them are giving out of their spare change. But she from her hopeless poverty has given everything she had to live on.”
                                                        - Luke 21.1-4 (CEB)

REFLECTION
NOTE: Pastoral needs have called me away from my reflection, whisking away in one fell swoop the time I need to prepare an adequate preparation for worship. I would say, “I’m sorry,” but I simply can’t apologize for providing pastoral care when and where it is needed. That, after all, is why we are here. 

This much I can say about Sunday's topic: There has to be a reason the widow in this story offered her all to God – a whopping two mites! – and only by peering into her heart and finding there this reason would Jesus be moved to affirm her action above all others in the temple that day. While her motives are not transparent to us, we can imagine the interior of a heart so willing to share. Ann Weems certainly has her idea, and it is expressed in the poem cited above. As you meditate on this passage and poem, seek to discern the widow’s reason for giving… and join us on Sunday as we consecrate our stewardship pledges to God.

Grace must find its expression in life, otherwise it's not grace.          
                                                           -Karl Barth

Reading:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. After he agreed with the workers to pay them a denarion, he sent them into his vineyard.

“Then he went out around nine in the morning and saw others standing around the marketplace doing nothing. He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I’ll pay you whatever is right.’ And they went.

“Again around noon and then at three in the afternoon, he did the same thing. Around five in the afternoon he went and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you just standing around here doing nothing all day long?’

“‘Because nobody has hired us,’ they replied.

“He responded, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the workers and give them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and moving on finally to the first.’ When those who were hired at five in the afternoon came, each one received a denarion. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more. But each of them also received a denarion. When they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, ‘These who were hired last worked one hour, and they received the same pay as we did even though we had to work the whole day in the hot sun.’

“But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I did you no wrong. Didn’t I agree to pay you a denarion? Take what belongs to you and go. I want to give to this one who was hired last the same as I give to you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with what belongs to me? Or are you resentful because I’m generous?’ So those who are last will be first. And those who are first will be last.”
                                                      -Matthew 20:1-16 (CEB)

Refection:
It is difficult not to focus on the vineyard workers and apply our economic system to the situation in this parable. Every one of the workers in this parable ends up earning the exact same pay regardless of how long they worked. Those who worked the full day were paid a denarion and they were happy to make this money. That is, until those who were hired later in the day and even those who only worked a very short time ended up being paid the exact same wage. Most of us would have grumbled in this situation because from our view point it just isn't fair!

But what happens when we change our focus? What happens if we look at this parable from the viewpoint of the landowner? The landowner gave those hired early in the day what he had promised. The landowner valued all of the workers the same, regardless of when they were called to work. They were all worthy of the denarion in the landowner's eyes. 

Let's change the word "denarion" now into the word "grace". 

At the end of the day, do we still want to argue about fairness? Or will we accept God's generous gift? It's difficult to change our focus from the way our society works but Jesus asks us time and again to see it all differently. He asks us to open our eyes and see from the viewpoint of the Kingdom of God. Might it be time to change our focus?

But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”
                                                            - Paul of Tarsus



READING
The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It’s written, I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I’ll expose so-called experts as crackpots. So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn’t God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb--preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation. While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”    

     - 1 Corinthians 1.18-25


REFLECTION
Let’s get one thing straight from the get-go. In this passage Paul is neither vilifying Jews & Greeks, nor writing off spiritual signs and reason altogether. Paul was himself a proud Jew, steeped in its traditions and rituals; and he had one first rate Hellenistic education. So if you read this passage as anti-Semitic or as anti-intellectual toward faith, think again.

Paul is, however, critical of certain notions of signs and reason that he thought led to a spiritual dead end. For example, if you seek divine fireworks, a spectacular occurrence so compelling it takes away the need for faith… forget it, Paul says. Faith is the lived experience of following Jesus, and will more likely lead to unspectacular service to others than to divine fireworks.

Again, If you seek a sure knowledge and understanding of God in order to package & contain God, and tie up all the loose ends… forget it, Paul says. He would agree with Thomas Aquinas that reason can lead all the way to a knowledge about God, to the conviction that God exists, but there it reaches its limits, and fails to comprehend God as vulnerable and loving; so loving, in fact, that God is willing to go to any length to put the world right again, as John’s Jesus says in chapter 3. At a certain level, this characterization of God seems quite absurd, but in the proper context it leads to comfort, courage, and joy.

So let’s not give up on signs, they may very well play a role in the spiritual life; and for Pete’s sake let’s not give up on reason in favor of an unthinking faith that is gullible to so many shallow, lowest common denominator answers to life’s questions. Rather, let’s gather on Sunday and reflect on how we may with integrity incorporate both into our spiritual life. 

Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees, takes off his shoes…
     - Elizabeth Barrett Browning


READING:
Moses was taking care of the flock for his father-in-law Jethro, Midian’s priest. He led his flock out to the edge of the desert, and he came to God’s mountain called Horeb. The Lord’s messenger appeared to him in a flame of fire in the middle of a bush. Moses saw that the bush was in flames, but it didn’t burn up. Then Moses said to himself, Let me check out this amazing sight and find out why the bush isn’t burning up. When the Lord saw that he was coming to look, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” Moses said, “I’m here.” Then the Lord said, “Don’t come any closer! Take off your sandals, because you are standing on holy ground.”
                                                    - Exodus 3.1-5    


REFLECTION: 
I’m sure you have heard the old saw about kids in the Deep South going barefoot in the summer; or as any son of the South worth his salt would say, “barefooted.” Well, I am a card carrying southern boy born and bred (though I don’t pull the card out very often), and I’m here to put an end to this misconception. I would say the notion is a myth, but I have too much respect for mythology to defame it in this way as simply something that is false.

There is some truth to the falsehood claim; but while close, it misses the mark by a country mile… and then some. Indigenous religions get it; take, for example the introduction a clan elder once gave to his storytelling. “I’m going to tell you a story,” he began. “It’s a lie, but not everything about it is false.” Sometimes, even philosophers get it, like the philosopher who referred to myth as “a lie designed to tell the truth.”

Myth and symbol - the language of wonder and awe in the ancients’ stories, the language of poetry - ain’t simple, as these statements indicate; but is sho’ ain’t false. It sho’ aint a statement of fact gone awry.

Take the story of the burning bush. If it were merely factual, one could ostensibly verify its actuality, measure the temperature of the flames, and eventually explain how a bush could burn without being tormented in the flames (as the rich man in another story would say). Such an experience might be many things – a hallucination, an exception to the laws of nature, even an exceptional act of power – but it wouldn’t be God. It wouldn’t be capable of inspiring Moses with the very real sense of God’s presence. It wouldn’t inspire awe, fear, and just about every emotion in between.

It wouldn’t be God, because the closest we mortals come to recognizing God’s presence is through symbols, metaphors, myths; language that starts out in the world as we know it; but which opens out to that which lies beyond; beyond the reach of factuality, limitation, or cause-and-effect. It’s no wonder one Christian thinker would refer to symbolic language as the house of God.

Moses was right to take off his shoes, because the ground he stood on was holy. He was right to take off his shoes, not as a gesture of respect, but as acknowledgement that he was in a mysterious place between earth and heaven – call it epiphany, call it a thin place, call it vision, call it living on the border of the sacred – Moses was in the presence of God.

Moses was in the presence of God, and needed to learn to walk barefoot. Walking barefoot symbolizes need, to be sure, that something important is lacking; but Moses, walking barefoot, was ready to accept help when it was offered (like the disciples accepting foot washing from Jesus). Walking barefoot symbolizes that Moses was vulnerable, as anyone knows who has stepped barefoot on a sharp rock, but it can lead to the recognition that one needs the God revealed in mystery and flame to be healed. And walking barefoot symbolizes an intimate connectedness that Moses surely felt. Walk barefoot in the park and you will feel a closer connection to the earth and to all of nature. Walk barefoot in the spirit, and you will feel an intimate connectedness to God.

Moses was right to take off his shoes, because walking barefoot offers so many analogies (again with the symbols!) to a life spiritually engaged. On Sunday we will explore what it might mean for us to learn to walk barefoot. I hope to see you then and, by the way, it’s okay to come “barefooted.”