Almost twenty years ago, there was book published by Leonard Swidler, Jesus was a Feminist. Jesus was neither a feminist in our contemporary meaning, nor was he a patriarch. I would place Jesus in another category, knowing very well that he broke a lot of categories. He troubled his cultural gender boundaries; for he created unsettling gender space. His companionship of empowerment or kindom created new dislocated space outside the gender categories of household. He could hardly be an advocate for traditional family values or married life or the patriarchal household. God’s companionship of empowerment was not known social space; it never was before in history. Jesus understood very well that God’s kindom was no social location, it was no-place, it was outside space yet to be created and realized. Many of his radical sayings challenged gendered household space and roles.

Think for a moment his identification with eunuchs in Matthew 19:12, proto-transgendered folks who were outside male space. Jesus’ opponents used the gender slur of “calling him a eunuch,” much like word “faggot” or “queer” was used against us in earlier times.

But like the word “queer,” Jesus took the slur of eunuch and identified with it. He had a brilliant strategy of taking a slur used against him, appropriate it, and disturb his opponents by being comfortable with it. Jesus announced that there are eunuchs for the kindom of God. To take on the label of eunuchs, Jesus further unsettles the masculine codes of his opponents. By denying the very nature of masculinity and marriage, his use of the image evokes castration anxiety. He recalls the wonderful image in Isaiah 56:4-5:

For thus says the Lord, “To the eunuchs who keep My sabbaths, And choose what pleases Me, And hold fast My covenant. To them I will give in My house and within My walls a memorial, And a name better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which will not be cut off…
Jesus deliberately disturbs the gender codes at a primal cultural and religious level for his opponents. To be a man in his culture was to be an honorable man, who was in charge of his household and owned land, dominated his wife, servants, and children. But he created a counter-cultural space, calling male disciples to become itinerant, share the goods, and to leave their families for the mission—to be outside the patriarchal household. There was only one household, with one parent God, and we were God’s beloved children.
Jesus queered his responses and ministry against religious critics. He queered, that is interfered with, troubled the categories that were rigid and exclusive for God’s kindom. He disturbed his religious critics with a larger, more inclusive vision of God’s companionship of empowerment. Radical inclusive was new to tribal thinking or even Roman imperial notion. Both have entrenched hierarchies.

Jesus never defines any notion of queer, but his actions and message are shockingly queer. He shocks with a radical inclusive vision of God with us, and this disturbs the cultural and religious system that Jesus lives with. It imprisons people, creates hierarchy, separates insiders from outsiders, holy from unholy, sinless from sinner.

If I could have been present to Jesus during his time and engaged in conversation, I would describe to him the meaning of queer as “to disturb the world and its categories and rules with God.” And I suspect he might respond, “I am very queer.” Queer works will as interpretative window into Jesus’ ministry and message of God’s reign.

I do think Jesus delighted in creating such gender dislocation of alternative space, outside space that mess with cultural gender definitions. He was continually at odds with his dominant Jewish patriarchal culture and the Roman hyper-masculinist culture of domination and male virility. We see hypermasculine codes and misogyny because Hillary Clinton is a woman candidate. We have not progressed sufficiently on gender equality.

Jesus troubled almost everything in his culture with God. A Norwegian gay biblical scholar Halvor Moxnes, uses the word “queer.” Jesus queered the cultural codes, the gender codes, for queer challenges fixed definitions and codes of gender and cultural normality. Queer does not indicate another category, but points to an “alternative” space and dislocation, a not yet space coming into existence. It is the space of God’s reign breaking in, and that is new.
Moxnes describes the women who followed Jesus as “irregular women.”
They were most likely not bound in marriage, or they had some freedom within the relationship to leave their husbands. They were not childbearing, or had reached the stage of life when they were free because of their age. Thus, their sphere of possibilities had opened up. (Moxnes)

Women accompany Jesus; they support him financially. There is an insider group of women (Lk. 8:2-3), who provide monies and resources for Jesus and his male disciples out of their means (Lk. 8:13) Women disciples journey outside the confines of their homes, accompany him to the cross, and are the first witnesses to his resurrection. Women spatially break the cultural categories of women as respectable daughters, wives, and mothers. Women space is in the household, and Jesus women travel outside the household space into public space unaccompanied and unveiled.
These women are more than “irregular,” perhaps transgressive women who were able to follow Jesus just as his male disciples were. They are liminal, if not disrespectful women, crossing the gender-threshold into male space. Jesus notes that barren women are “blessed” (23:29), and barren women are shamed in the Jewish gender codes. He associates and empowers a Samaritan woman, with five previous husbands and living with a sixth. He does not condemn her. How many churches would condemn and ostracize her, exclude from church? He associates with prostitutes. How many clergy associate with prostitutes? Perhaps, only those clergy, who hire them for sexual service. Jesus disturbs religious categories then as he continues to queer our society with a vision of God who disturbs the world.

Luke the evangelist participates in the masculinist culture codes of Greco-Roman ideology, but he inherits from the Jesus tradition the “discipleship of equals.” There has been a storm of dispute by scholars on the reading of women in Luke’s gospel. Some scholars have claimed that Luke has a positive view of women while others maintain that he has a negative of women as leaders in the Jesus movement. For example, Luke omits the story of the outspoken Gentile woman who wins an argument with Jesus (Mk. 7:24-30). There are no call stories to discipleship for women recorded in the gospels; and they remain at the narrative fringes of the gospels. Yet Luke has to accommodate the fact that irregular women were present in the Jesus’ history. There are more women visible in Luke’s gospel, but they are generally silent. It is only we realize that these were queer women, who broke gender categories for the sake of Jesus’ message of God’s kindom. We give voice and recognize their queerness.

The story of Martha and Mary (10:38-42) has germinated a very productive and conflicting discussion on whether it supports women’s leadership role or submission to male leadership in the Jesus movement and later missionary activities of the church.

First, it is a story about hospitality. Martha is the dominant figure who welcomes Jesus into her household. There seems to be no male head of the household. Perhaps a younger brother, Lazarus, in the later story of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in John’s gospel.

Mary is more marginalized person initially in the story. Martha appears to be extravagantly preparing a feast for Jesus while Mary has chosen to sit at the feet of Jesus listening to his teaching. She has broken female stereotypes ad assumed a male disciple position, sitting at the feet of Jesus.

But this is a story about more than hospitality. These two women are irregular women. Mary is silent and passively listening to Jesus’ instruction while Martha is fussing and distracted in her service (diakonia). The Greek used for service is diakonia, and it does not specify domestic service but “designates a commissioned spokesperson or agent, a ‘go-between’ who ministers on the behalf of God.” (Carter) Diakoinia is a loaded word for Jesus’ followers. It is the root word for deacons and deaconesses. Diakonia is the communal service at table that was an essential part of Jesus’ tablefellowship of an open table where people of all kinds joined, talked about their pain as outsiders, shared a meal with God’s presence and acceptance. Diakonia was the service of the greatest as the least, where those disciples would take on the position of the least, women and slaves in washing the feet of the guests. Deacons and deaconesses became later installed positions in Christian service.

Martha is not distracted with kitchen duties as traditionally preached but she is focused with her duties that included care for followers, teaching, and preaching. She is fussing over what she needs to do while her partner in ministry Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus. Her problem is with what she perceives as Mary’s slackness. Martha is an overzealous disciple committed to the goal of hospitality.

I understand Martha’s role of fussing very much on Sunday morning.
Jesus’ loving reprimand is a reminder to take some time out, not be anxious, and just chill out like Mary. The work will get done. And I need to often to remind myself of Jesus’ words to chill out.

A queer reading might build on the liturgical nature of the text. Mary intrudes on male space, receiving a theological education that authorizes her leadership. She is one of those irregular women following Jesus, preparing herself as a disciple. But Martha also is a person in charge of the household, trying to ensure that hospitality is extended to all. Martha, I am sure, in the post Easter Jesus movement probably became a house church leader and presider or presbyter.

I need to point out that many of the Pauline house churches were led by women. They took serious the baptismal formula: “There is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, nor freed and slave in Christ.” (Gal. 3:28) The irregular women in Jesus movement took this serious, and Paul panicked in his letters to Corinth as women became prophets and leaders not only in the church households but extended that leadership into public male space. Paul panicked while Jesus enjoyed disturbing or queering cultural space of the household and the public.
Irregular women are paradigms of discipleship in Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary the mother of Jesus, Martha and Mary, the women at the tomb, and perhaps the unnamed partner of Cleopas in the encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus, or Lydia in Acts of the Apostles. Irregular women were equal to irregular men in God’s kindom.

They became deaconesses, presbyters, and even bishops in the first and into the second century CE. And I am glad that the United Methodist Church in its western region elected its first lesbian bishop this week, Karen Oliveto.
And I rejoice that women are celebrated with men as irregular men and women dedicated to Jesus’ very queer vision that there is an equality of discipleship in his movement for God’s reign. May all churches attain the gender equality that Jesus envisioned.

In Jesus’ stories in Luke’s Gospel, the Parable of the Prodigal Son is his longest and perhaps, equally famous as the Good Samaritan Parable. There are three main characters in the parable–the youngest son, the eldest son, and the father. I ask you to take a moment and figure out with which one or ones you identify. Prodigal means lavish, extravagantly wastefully, profligate, giving something on an overly lavish scale. I suggest that each character in the story, and I would include the narrator, are all prodigal.
Let’s start with the youngest son, who asks for his inheritance from his father. A father usually does not bestow his inheritance until his dying. Then the oldest son gets two-thirds, and the remainder one third is divided up among the other brothers.
One writer, Kenneth Bailey, writes

For over fifteen years I have been asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and form Turkey to the Sudan about the implications of a son’s request for his inheritance while the father is still living. The answer has always been emphatically the same… the conversation turns as follows:
Has anyone ever made such a request in your village?
Never!
Could anyone ever make such a request?
Impossible.
If anyone ever did, what would happen?
His father would beat him, of course.
Why?
The request means—he wants his father to die. (Bailey/Nouwen)

The son is requesting in the parable not only for his inheritance but the right to do whatever he wishes. What the youngest son is saying: “Father, I can’t wait for you die…give me my due, right now!” His request is insulting in its request and not offering his father the cultural reverence due to him.

Another point is that the younger leaves his father’s household. It is a blatant rejection of his father. It is an insult, offensive, rejection of the social tradition. His leaving for a distant land is commonly understood of youth today wanting to see the world. But in the ancient world, this is heard as a drastic rejection of social conventions of his people and his father’s household. For Jewish listeners it indicates a rejection of his people for the impure Gentile world.

Of course, the younger son squanders his inheritance with prodigal living. How many friends did he make as long as he had some inheritance to spend? When he no longer had any monies left, he stopped existing for his newly found friends. We all know some of these fair weather friends. Such friends left him when he was in need, hungry, and certainly lonely. They were no longer there for him. It was so bad when no one gave him any food or shelter, he gave himself to a citizen of that country who sent him to feed the swine. He was so hungry that he would gladly have eaten the pods feed to them.

The younger son reached rock bottom—lonely, doing the most menial job in society and with swine—an animal considered unclean by his own people. He was lost, totally isolated, and abandoned. He has reached rock bottom. At that moment, he probably felt regrets at what he did to his father and though how secure his life was earlier in his father’s household. And his father called him, “my beloved son,” while he hugged him. Think of those moments in your life when he felt that there is nothing lower and emotionally distraught than this. I can’t sink down any further. We all been there. He thought, “How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough, and I perish with hunger!”
The younger son rehearses what he will say to his father: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”

I am going to suggest that Jesus who told this parable and criticized for associating with sinners and unclean outcasts, lived the pain of being stigmatized as a fellow outcast. When I imagine Jesus speaking this parable to me, I also hear his in voice: “I have been there as well! I know what it is like to be there. It is a lonely place.”\

But I hear in his voice, a tinge of surprise and hope in the journey of the younger son. Jesus continues the story of everyone’s experience as well as his own.
When the young son was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion. He ran to his son, hugged him with his arms around him and kissed.

Jesus’ description of the father is his own experience of Abba God. He remembered the words of the prophet Isaiah:

Can a mother forget her baby, at the breast, feel no pity for the child she has borne? Even if those were to forget, I shall not forget you. Look, I have engraved you on the palms on my hands. (Isaiah 49:15)

Abba God for Jesus was a maternal father, he had compassion. To have compassion means to have a womb-like love. The Hebrew word for compassion is derived from the word for “womb.” Spiritual writer Henri Nouwen writes, “What I see here is God as mother, receiving back in her own womb the one whom she made in her own image.” Remember Jesus’ own words in the sermon on the plain in Luke’s Gospel: “Be compassionate as your Abba God is compassionate!”

Now the elder son hears a commotion and discovers that his father has welcomed his own brother back into the household. He was angry and refused to go into the house. His father comes out and tenderly tries to soothe the anger of his son. The eldest son angrily says, “Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I have never transgressed your commandment at any time, and yet you never gave me a young goat; that I make merry with my friends.” Hear the resentment in the voice and tone of the eldest son. I have often found such resentment in religiously righteous people.

His father replies, “My son, you are always with me, and all I have is yours. But it was only right we should celebrate and rejoice because your brother here was dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found.”
The key to this parable of Jesus is his own words and the message that Jesus lived out, despite the harsh criticism and his death for the compassion that he extended to sinners and outsiders: “Be compassionate as Abba God is compassionate!”

Jesus is speaking two groups of people represented by both sons:

Those represented by the younger son, who rudely felt entitled to his father’s inheritance and rejected his father, and who left his country to buy friends and have a good time, spending everything.
And those represented by the eldest brother, who resented the father’s welcoming back his lost son, who is angry for doing the necessary things that will secure his father’s inheritance, who hates his brothers, and now is angry with his father for compassionate welcome back of his younger brother.

Henri Nouwen writes,

To associate and eat with people of ill repute, therefore, does not contradict his teaching about God., but does, in fact, live out this teaching in everyday life. If God forgives the sinners, then certainly those who have faith in God should do the same. If God welcomes sinners home, then certainly those who trust in God should do likewise. If is compassionate, then certainly those who love God should be compassionately as well. The God whom Jesus announces and in whose name he acts is the God of compassion, the God who offers Godself as an example and model for all human behavior. (Nouwen)

Jesus knows something of the eldest brother. Diarmuid O’Murchu in the poem for Centering prayer echoes the eldest son’s complaint.
The rules are all broken, strange words are being spoken,
That young guy called Jesus has life upside down,
We must all be inclusive –it scares me illusive,
It robs the uniqueness I too long have known.

Many of Jesus’ religious opponents criticized him: “Look he is a drunkard, he associations with sinners and tax collectors.” Jesus pokes fun of this position of his critics. His critics place himself in the position of the youngest son in the parable. Jesus is prodigal as well the youngest son. Both are sinners: But Jesus turns the world upside for the eldest brother as well and critics:
“Can you deal with God imagined as the father in this Parable? In fact, God is more prodigal in God’s love for us. God’s hospitality is so extravagant and so indulgent of us.”

One of my favorite theologians, a Jesuit Karl Rahner” “God is the prodigal that squanders himself (Godself).” Let’s apply this to Jesus’ parable. The father exceeds his younger son as a prodigal, he is true prodigal by his extravagantly lavish display of compassionate love and hospitality. The real prodigal in the story is God.

In other words, Jesus invites his hearers whether they identify with the younger brother as a sinner and outsider or the eldest son with righteous resentment at God’s mercy and forgiveness to become like the compassionate father of his parable. We are invited to model the compassionate love of the father in the parable.

As young man, I realized that no matter what I did or thought I did that was sinful, God was always there to love me. I was convinced numerous times that at the core of this universe is love, so prodigal in its unconditional love and outreach. God is the true prodigal who squanders so much love on each and every one of you. We are invited to imitate the prodigal love of God as community.

“No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”

Mary,  More Radical and Challenging Than We Iimagine

Vanilla theologies portray Mary as a passive and obedient “yes” person to God. Such theologies glorify her passive and subordinate role to a male God. Mary’s subordination as a woman has been abusively misapplied by a number of churches to keep women subordinate to men and docile to male church leaders. But there have been other consequences beside religious male domination. Mary has been socially and theologically constructed as a model of women, mother and virgin, an ideal woman that no woman can ever achieve. For centuries, Christian values around Mary claimed that women should not know “carnal pleasure.” She became the chaste icon of sexual morality within a heterosexual economy of grace that damages women as well gender-variant and non-heterosexual. Mary experienced no carnal pleasure in conceiving Jesus and had no labor pains during the birth of Jesus. Christian constructions of Mary supported heterosexuality while denigrating sexuality altogether by holding her as a “perpetual Virgin” and denigrating alternative sexualities and sexuality outside of marriage. Thus, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, and a few Protestant churches use Mary for an entrenched sexual moralism. The Spanish and Portuguese conquerors forced indigenous peoples to adopt the sexual mores of Catholic Europe under the banner of Mary, the Virgin Mother. Mary became the sacred representation of how women are to live and subordinate themselves to men, church, and society. She became an icon of a heterosexual economy of subordination of women and indigenous peoples to a vision of imperial Christianity.

In recent decades, there has been a tug of war over the image of Mary– between fundamentalist Christians holding to the above values and opponents who want to recover Mary’s original voice as a real flesh and blood peasant woman in history. I naturally am inclined to the latter position. I think Mary has an affinity to women, gender variant, the poor, the migrants and refugees, folks who are different religiously and anyone falling into a category of “other”, including nonhuman animals on Earth. She is the voice of resistance at this season. Her voice this season may echo ours as we read and listen anew to her story and the words of her song of resistance and envisioning a new world.

Mary comes from a poor family, and she is a teenager when the angel Gabriel announces the offer from God to bear a child. And she accepts the offer without hesitation. God complexifies her life beyond anything she can imagine. And Mary responds with a song of praise, and it is this Canticle (Luke 1:45-55) that I want to focus my Christmas reflections to celebrate Mary as queer model for ourselves this Christmas.

My soul magnifies your greatness, O God, And my spirit rejoices in you, my Savior.

God is bigger than we can imagine, and our God is not bound by male structures, heterosexist power, structures of economic greed, and the fossil fuel lords. God has the ability to surprise Mary and us by coloring outside the lines of heterosexuality and stepping outside of religious boundaries. Mary welcomes a vocation to stigma and otherness, and she takes seriously that God will work through her otherness to transform herself and her world through her child.
Mary’s soul has humbly accepted the invitation of unprecedented grace to carry God’s child, and her acceptance magnifies the greatness of God. Her bodily response over time actually makes God more than God was before. There is something new happening in the life of God: God will embody God’s self in her womb and take on human flesh. And the incarnate one will be born in a cave with nonhuman animals and placed into a manger, a feeding trough. And her spirit rejoices because ultimately it is this transformation within God that will save her and others whose voices have been silenced. .

For you have looked with favor upon your lowly servant, and from this day forward, all generations will call me blessed.

She is from a poor peasant family, a nobody in Palestine and in the powerful Roman Empire. She becomes controversial in her own family and is at risk of rejection and perhaps even stoning to death because she accepted God’s offer and became pregnant while betrothed. I am sure in the midst of her explanations to parents, family, and to Joseph her betrothed that consequences of her acceptance to bear the child of God were not seen as a blessing. Mary carries the stigma of otherness, a pregnant unwed mother from a poor family, and we understand the stigma of otherness among Christian Pharisees.

She made a decision for God, and that choice places her at risk. Elizabeth reminds Mary of Gabriel’s earlier message, “God is with you. Blessed are you among women.” The young teenager comes to see that God is working through her stigma and otherness to transform herself. She accepts her vocation to bear God’s holy word with a glad heart and the challenges from her parents and Jewish society..

Mary queers the patriarchal economy that understands women’s bodies as not belonging to themselves. She is free to answer as an equal to God’s invitation to bear Jesus; she has ownership of her body and remains an active agent in making a decision for herself and a decision to accept God’s offer. But she models for us authentic queer discipleship, for she accepts her otherness not as a burden but as a grace.

God and Mary break the patriarchal and exclusive economy of grace, for Jesus is conceived without male agency and outside of marriage by the Holy Spirit overshadowing her. These two points are backgrounded by many churches in the idealization of the Virgin Mary and Christmas. Both Judaism and early Christianity perceived the Holy Spirit as the feminine principle in God. Some early Christians genderized the Holy Spirit male rather than female because of the implications of same-sex conceptualization of Jesus. Yet if God’s Christ was conceived in a non-heterosexual manner and born out of wedlock, what does this say about narrow regimes of Christian marriage and sexual morality? What does it say to the many who are excluded from heterocentric economies of grace?

For you, the Almighty have done great things for me, and holy is your Name. Your mercy reaches from age to age for those who fear you. You have shown strength with your arm; you have scattered the proud in their conceit; you have deposed the mighty from their thrones and raised the lowly to high places.

After accepting God’s invitation to bear the messiah, Mary prophetically sings how God will upset the social world, bringing down the mighty and elevating the lowly. God’s action will literally queer the world by turning it upside down, for Mary will bear a child who will challenge the world, disrupting the social world and conventional notions of God. God will disrupt through her pregnancy the notion of compulsory heterosexuality as the only means to salvation. God scatters religious bigots who pride themselves upon their excluive privilege or even their Christian privilege but exclude the infinite diversity of sexualities, gender variances, or other religious traditions found in their midst. God disrupts fundamentalist Christians who promote that there is no salvation outside of Christianity as they fire-bomb mosques and harass women in their Islamic garb. .
You have filled the hungry with good things, while you have sent the rich away empty. You have come to the aid of Israel your servant, mindful of your mercy—the promise you made to our ancestors—to Sarah and Abraham and their descendants forever.

Mary’s song is a radical proclamation of good news for women, indigenous peoples, undocumented, those outside of heteronormativity, and for the Earth and the community of life, for she now praises God for turning the world upside down. She praises God who has promised compassionate solidarity with those who suffer from personal, political, racial, and environmental injustice.
Mary’s vocation is a thoroughly queer vocation; she stands with the underside, the marginal, and the outsiders—those yet unimagined as outside
A twelve or thirteen year girl lifts our eyesight to the profound realization that God breaks boundaries of male power and agency. God breaks the boundaries religious people build. Mary conceives Jesus outside of marriage and religious values. She realizes the grace of otherness and how God uses her otherness to transform her and the world.

But moments of grace generate other moments. Author Nick Page writes, “The story of Jesus’ birth is not one of exclusion, but inclusion…Joseph’s relatives made a place for Jesus in their heart of their household. They did not shun Mary, even though her status would have been suspect and even shameful (carrying an illegitimate child) they brought her inside. They made room for Jesus in the heart of a peasant’s home.”

Mary is not the passive but a pregnant virgin, chosen to bear God’s child, not as constructed by many Christians as the bearer of Christian sexual morality. The real teenage Mary bursts into song–singing about the end of human oppression and religious tyranny in the name of God. She anticipates the powerful will be brought down, the hungry fed, and the rich sent away empty. God will turn the heterosexist world upside down by the baby growing inside her womb.

Mary anticipates that God’s promise of Jesus’ birth will continue to turn the world upside down and that those who are excluded will have their rightful places in God’s reign. As Jesus preached and challenged religious bigotry and oppression, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’ But Jesus said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and obey it!’” (Luke 11: 27-28)

Blessed are we who take the model of Mary’s courage and otherness to thank God for our diversities as transformational grace, for she truly became a breath of heaven when in all her humanity boldly said “yes” to God’s grace of Jesus the Christ. . But blessed are we who hear God’s Word and live it with the boldness and courage of Mary. May heaven continue to breathe through us that queer grace that Mary carried to birth and transform countless lives.

This Christmas I finally share this youtube video with you: “Breath of Heaven.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icilgwdHiZg

This morning’s gospel we hear two stories connected together. The first is Jesus’ criticism of religious scribes, perhaps Pharisees or some functionaries of the Temple. They wear long robes, demand they be greeted with respect, and have the best seats of honor in the synagogue or at a banquet. Jesus say, “They devour widow’s houses, and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.” Hear Jesus’ criticism, “They will receive the greater condemnation.” In the first story, Jesus addresses religious hypocrisy.

Over the years, I have heard so many sermons on how Jesus praises the poor widow who gave her two copper coins worth a penny to the treasury over the many rich people who gave large sums. Her gift is insignificant but to God her contribution is valued because God has seen her heart and what she has contributed. She has given all her life savings.

But I want to come back to the story of the widow’s contribution. There is another way to view this story.

The Didache, meaning Teaching (of the Twelve Apostles) a Christian text from the 2nd century CE, gives some criteria for determining the legitimacy of a genuine religious person:

Now about the apostles and prophets: Act in line with gospel precept. Welcome every apostles on arriving, as if he were the Lord. But he must not stay beyond one day, In case of necessity, however, the next day too. If he stays three days, he is a false prophet. On departing, an apostle must not accept anything save sufficient food to carry him till his next lodging. If he asks for money, he is a false prophet.

The term apostle is loosely used in the 2nd century for one “sent on a mission.” Paul was not one of the twelve apostles, and yet he called himself an apostle. Prophets and apostles were held esteem, and they were welcomed by various communities, and they were accorded leadership roles in Christian worship. They were also worthy of financial support in the form of assistance.
But the Didache was very aware that Jesus instructed his disciples to go out two by two and they should take nothing for their journey, except a mere staff– no bread, no bag, no money in their belt.

What would happen today if we evaluated televangelists as authentic Christians from this text? I can think of the Georgia Minister of a megachurch who maintained that he needed a 65 million dollar check, or Joel Olstein who has an 11 million dollar home. Or the hundreds of millions of dollars each year Pat Robertson makes from the millions who watch his Christian Broadcast Network and contribute to him from their fixed incomes. “You should see the thousands of social-security checks that are sent over to CBN, (Christian Broadcast Network)” one former employee told Newsweek. The Christian Broadcast Network receives notation of nearly $300 million dollars, and those donations do not go to feed the poor and homeless.

Or how Catholic German Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst spend $42 million renovating his episcopal residence and spending $20,000 alone a bathtub? 1.1 million dollars went for landscaping and fountains. The bishop of bling was removed by Pope Francis I.

Or two ministers at the former MCC church, Glory Tabernacle Christian Center where the Pastor has BMW and the Associate Pastor a Mercedes? The ostentatiousness of religious leaders is certainly problematic to me but also to Jesus. Do religious leaders need more money, plush residences, or high-priced cars than the people are called to serve? How many the above examples and others would fail the criteria of the Didache instructions on dealing with itinerant prophets and apostles?

Christian communities have valued spiritual leaders through the millennia, and there have been leaders and churches that have grown wealthy from the business of religion, selling salvation.

Conscious of these Christian leaders, I look at the story of the widow’s contribution, and I see another conclusion from Jesus that has often been overlooked by years of sermons on this passage. We have made Christianity a salvation religion, forgetting the valuable message of Jesus has abut God’s companionship of empowerment (reign of God)?

Jesus points how the Temple administration preys upon the piety of the vulnerable and the poor, extracting monies that the poor cannot afford to pay. Jesus commends the devotional piety of the poor of giving their all to God. This is commendable for the genuine gift of the poor, but what Jesus condemns is the pressure of the Temple or church administration “devouring” the meager savings of the poor. They pressure the poor to contribute not what they can afford but on what they need to survive upon.

Let me read how this scripture is sadly alive:

A viewer wrote Pat Robertson that she and her husband have been tithing for many years, as they “both love the Lord and give willingly and our tithe is over 10 percent.”

But she noted that, “we never have an extra penny after our monthly bills are paid.”

“Our old car just broke down and we had to borrow money to fix it,” she said. “We both need dental work, but we can’t afford it. I constantly have to use our credit card to pay for medical needs … What could we be doing wrong?”

Robertson showed zero concern for the fact that she could barely pay her medical bills, because the obvious solution is for her to “ask God to show you some ways of making money.”

“There are many ways of making money, even at 80 years old. You know, you can get on the telephone and people are hiring … there are all kinds of things you can do. For example, you may have a bunch of junk lying around in your garage that you can sell on eBay, and get some money that way,” he said.

He then chided her for complaining about her bills. http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/pat_robertson_tells_80_year_old_tithing

Here is an example of what Jesus describes a religious person “who devours the houses of widows.”

The above examples illustrate how the religion of Jesus confronted the greed of religious leaders, taking advantage of the poor then, and still now the church leaders of our time pressure people with the notion of salvation. The salvation business of churches has long been used to oppress people, to mute silence of the very poor over the wealthy, and the wealthy and the religious leaders conspire to get wealthy. Maybe Robertson should send some of his personal wealth to help the 80 year old woman or television empire of 300 million dollars could spare some to help viewers. But no, he tells her to get a job at 80 years old so she can pay tithes to him in the name of Jesus. What would Jesus do? Overturn the Christian Broadcast Network as the new Temple. .

Now do not get me wrong, I do think clergy and church leaders should be paid a fair and equitable wage. It is the exploitation and the outrageous salaries and extravagant living that Jesus would object.

In our own society, capitalism has been made into a religion that the very wealthy export. It has impacted Christianity in the negative.

Let me give you a couple of examples: Prosperity Christianity preaches a gospel about tithing and giving more, and that God will reward true faith with financial blessings. This preached by many evangelists. What happens when something bad happens? You lack true faith. Poor people live on the streets because they have lacked true faith. This is double-victimization of the poor. True faith is rewarded with great financial blessings. Televangelists model extravagant wealth selling this idea of prosperity intertwined with salvation.

Other versions are: The more generous you give, the more God will reward you in heaven. I consider this another version of the medieval practice of selling indulgences. It plays on the fears of pious.

This practice of pressuring vulnerable people for monies is the practice that Jesus is critical in today’s scripture. I read today’s gospel as an instruction to his disciples. Jesus warns his disciples with the widow’s giving beyond anything she afford. On another occasion, he bluntly says, “You cannot serve God and mammon,” the Aramaic word for money. He is right. Greed and the gospel cannot co-exist.

I read recently about a group of 40 Catholic bishops on November 16, 1965 while the Vatican II was being held. They gathered in an ancient Christian underground basilica, the catacombs of St. Flavia Domitilla to celebrate a mass. The church marked the location where two Roman soldiers were executed for converting to Christianity, and it connects to 10 miles of catacombs under Rome. One of the concerns of Pope John the XXIII was to make service of the poor a key part of revitalization of the Catholic Church. I loved John XXIII.

Some 40 progressive bishops and cardinals from Europe and Latin America world gathered secretly and signed a commitment, named the “Pact of the Catacombs.” They committed themselves to “try to live according to the ordinary manner of our people in all that concerns housing, food, means of transport, and related matters.” They vowed to renounce fancy vestment, personal possessions and titles. They were commitment to make the church of the poor for the poor. The manifesto read:

We will seek collaborators in ministry so that we can be animators according to the Spirit rather than dominators according to the world; we will try to make ourselves as humanly present and welcoming as possible; and we will show ourselves to be open to all, no matter what their beliefs. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pact-of-the-catacombs_563930c3e4b0307f2cab1c23

One of the signers was one of my college heroes, Dom Helder Camara, the Brazilian Archbishop of the slums of Recife. I was introduced to his writings in 1968 in a philosophy class taught by a French atheist and existentialist philosopher. Archbishop Camara deeply felt the gospel call of Jesus to live in service to care for the poor and the homeless. Archbishop Camara once said, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” It is okay to feed the poor, but you step on dangerous ground when you ask “why are they poor?” The wealthy are committed to keep the minimum wage to sub standard as they make even greater wealth. It depends on keeping people poor.

The bishops who signed the Pact of Catacombs kept this underground for years. They feared that openness would result in being labeled as communists by wealthy Catholics and bishops. It was dangerous to mention this document in the Catholic Church or in public until Francis was elected pope. One signatories of the document was a former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, who assassinated by the military and wealthy for his commitment to the poor.

Francis has lived the dream of the Pact of the Catacombs, a “poor church, for the poor.” Before he was elected pope, he as cardinal and Archbishop of Buenos Aires did not have a car and driver as most Catholic bishops, he used public transportation. He lived in an apartment and did his own cooking. Next to rare among Catholic bishops.

Francis has shunned the extravagant papal garments or the red Prada shoes of Benedict XVI. He decided not to live in the elegant papal apartment in the Vatican but lives in a room in the Vatican guesthouse. He has open the Vatican for 40 homeless men from Rome to eat, bathe, and be sheltered. This is a first in Vatican history.

Jesus’ instruction to care for the poor is one of the central practices of the Christian church. Beware of the greedy religious leaders who “devour the homes of widows.”

I gave a 45 minute sermon today, the longest ever for me off the top of my head. Here is the sermon Intended to give.

Today, we celebrate the 43rd anniversary as a church. Eleven and half years ago I came to the Valley church. The actual numbers of members were then 30 something. The facility was not kept up, and I observed layers of dust and pizza stains on the banners in the sanctuary. One clergy, interested in the position of pastor, attended a Sunday service quietly while the search for pastor, he later told me the bathrooms on the street side were “terrifying.” He declined to apply. I later learned that the MCC denominational office in West Hollywood had written off the church and gave this church a year or two of surviving.

Here we are eleven and half years later. Like most Protestant denominational churches our size, we are principally an older congregation. And our numbers decrease through attritions: people moving because of jobs or the expensive cost of living in California; folks becoming more house-bound as they age or through illness. The MCC denomination from which we originated has shrunk from 40,000, when I joined in 1995, to well below than the 8000 globally, with fifty percent or more of churches smaller than our own. MCC has lost its cutting edge and prophetic voice when Troy Perry retired. This is not Troy’s fault. It is the lack of qualified leaders and leaders with a passionate vision for service. Their concern is maintaining their own positions. We have lost talented pastors, flourishing congregations, and theological thinkers. More importantly, there is no vision of the movement for a viable future. Maintaining your position or institution is not vision that sustains anything but decline.

One social change author writes,

Ultimately, the relation and legitimization of established authority and power structures weaken the bonds of religious community and threaten to dissolve the fascination of the original movement. (Wolfgang Vondey)

I have to confess that I was fascinated and attracted to MCC as a movement through its Pastor in St. Louis, Brad Wishon, and then Moderator Troy Perry. In 1995, we shared a protest on the steps of St. Louis City Hall together. Then there was creativity spirituality, passionate energy fighting for our human rights, laced with a vision of radical inclusive love and prophetic courage to stand up against cultural hatreds and discrimination. Many were fighters and prophets for LGBT justice. But the fascination disappeared after Troy retired. We shifted from prophetic to preservation mode.

The mission was lost for maintenance of the institution. And that is always a dangerous turn. The denomination has been unable to adapt to the realities of changes that the millennium brought: greater acceptance of LGBQI folks, the marriage and family movement, the migration of more 30,000 members to other churches because they no longer wanted to be part of a ghettoized church and because other churches have welcomed them back. But more important the prophetic and cutting edge fascination was no longer there.

What lesson can we learn from this picture? The lesson is that mission, not preservation, defines a movement and a church. When mission is no longer the central driving force of church, it becomes a museum whose mission is preservation of artifacts, dead bones, and past memories. I am reminded by today’s reading “Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” Mt. 9:17

Jesus makes it clear that disciples need to live out the tensions between the claims and memories of tradition and the contemporary warrants of the gospel mission. Our inclination as human beings is toward the safety of tradition or what we are familiar with. The mission, Jesus understood very well, involves inconvenience, energy, passionate commitment, and the desire to follow Christ. The easier path for us, and I include myself, is to fall back on what we know.
Let’s move to today: Many are churches are unable to adapt to change, they become increasingly evolve into museums, preserving the past. I can’t tell you the number of stories how congregations in decline have to choose whether they can afford the expenses of the church facility or a pastor.

This church in the last eleven years had its ups and downs, with the ebbing and the increasing of membership. Early on I grieved every person who left the church, and finally I realized that no one church ever meets the needs of all folks for all times. I found myself prayer for those folks and grateful for their time spent in community and prayerful for their journey.

But we are here today, while you may celebrate the 43rd anniversary, I thank God that the church has existed these past years, despite the prognosis that it had one or two years left. What has let us to this point?

First, we had the ability to adapt. We had a make-over of this church. I heard for awhile from a current board member that this was an ugly little church, but when he and others tapped their creative and decorating genes, this church became a lovely church with a spectacular garden, with a new pipe organ, solar panels, a new altar with a redwood burl, and comfortable seats. One of our deceased members Bob Cross complained that his butt hurt from the uncomfortable seats we had. Many times when I sit down I am aware of his comments about the chairs. For him, one of the greatest positive changes were the seats you now sit in. So thank Bob Cross for his complaining, it brought the change you are sitting on.

While making-over the church to be more welcoming is part of our mission of hospitality, our primary mission as church is to imitate the radical inclusive love that Jesus practiced in sharing the good news of the gospels in word and in the witness of our lives and the actions of the church.

Rev. John Dorhauer, the newly elected General Minister of the United Church of Christ, calls for the church to be “risk-taking, creative, and cultivate ingenuity.” These were the virtues exemplified earlier by Troy Perry that MCC has sadly lost. They are virtues for adaptability to change and thus survivabilty.
Adaptability to change has been a central virtue of the Jesus movement. A bunch of Galilean and Judean outcasts, fisherman, tax collectors, and housewives from the countryside, single women like Mary Magdalene after the resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit, transformed the Jesus movement ragtag bunch of rural misfits and outcasts into an urban movement. Within three years of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Jesus movement spread through the cities of the Roman Empire; all of Paul’s letters are addressed to communities in cities. They were house churches that brought men and women, upper class and slaves together in the weekly worship around the Lord’s Supper. Women found equality with men in this Jesus movement. Slaves dreamed of the freedom that they experiences in these churches. Remember Paul’s baptism formula in his Letter to Galatia: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Gal. 3:28 Slaves could dream of freedom, and there was only one identity generated from baptism, being in Christ.

These country social misfits of the Jesus movement were charged to spread the good news, and the good news of Jesus Christ challenged the power structures of the Roman Empire and it cult of Emperor worship. Risk-taking, creativity, and ingenuity were descriptive of the post-Easter church.

Risking-taking is about radical inclusion and openness, and I will add openness to change. Barbara Fiand asks Christians a significant question, “Why is it that many of us do not even connect anymore in the day-to-day living out of our religion with Christ’s ancient vision of inclusiveness?” We have become a radical inclusive church. What is preventing us from filling these chairs on Sunday?
We have actively worked to move beyond just being an LGBT church to welcome heterosexual folks at worship? How often have we bragged about or church to others? Or invited folks to join us for events and worship? The strongest drive for inclusion comes from the outside. And this was the ingenuity that Jesus had. He invited strangers, outcasts, the poor, women, men, and children to dinner with himself. It is our mission as congregants not only to live the good news of Jesus but imitate him. We will become more inclusive as individuals see that as part of the mission of the church and as community we market ourselves as an open and inclusive church. Let’s not keep that a secret any longer. Tell a friend. Tell someone each week and invite them to join us.

Creativity is built upon risk-taking. How willing are we to explore various spiritual practices, change our worship style and experiment? There are few churches as creative as us. Look at our fund-raisers over the years. We may need to become creative in the style of worship to attract folks to our service. I am now talking to Roxy Mountains about a gospel drag fundraiser for January or February.

Ingenuity is built upon the previous two virtues: It differs from creativity because it involves cleverness. How clever are we for the Lord? For the church? Cleverness has traditionally been called “discernment,” the ability to listen to God as God calls us to mission and service. Can we initiate and implement new things to realize our mission of radical inclusive love?

Let me give you example: We were ingenuous enough to make the Earth a member of our congregation and embark upon a journey of greening our church with solar panels, efficiency saving and conserving measures for water. How do we reach folks who care for the Earth and life and invite them to the church? You might say, “That’s the pastor’s job.” You would be partially right and partially wrong. It is our job together.

These characteristics must transform us enough to engage the gospel mission. There are those who are consumers and those committed to mission, and many in between. The consumers come on Sunday and take away the message and grace home with them. We all hope that it provides for a seeding of their lives in God’s grace.

But we be transformed to become missional. Besides the above, we have vacancies on the board. We are down in our numbers of people for our feeding program. We need volunteers for caring for our garden. And we need people to take an active interest in bringing folks to church. We can’t be just consumers or what I understood as Sunday Christians as I called them as a child. We must be the living word of the Gospel, and our mission is to share the good news of God being with us and inviting us to create a mission to transform the world. God bless you!