Readings (click here for full text of the readings):
   Genesis 15:1-6; Psalm 33; Hebrews 11:1-16; Luke 12:32-40

Back in 1997, when I was living in Baltimore, I took a class at the ServantLeadershipSchool in Washington, D.C., which is a branch of a wonderful organization called the Church of the Savior. The class was called “Wisdom at Play: The Meeting of East and West in the Writings of J.D. Salinger,” and it was taught by a former English professor who now worked in conflict mediation for the General Accounting Office.  In addition to Salinger’s short stories, we read pretty much every religious text mentioned in those stories, whether they be Buddhist, Taoist, or whatever. Alongside “Franny and Zooey” we read The Sayings of Lao-Tzu and Zen and the Art of Archery.  I’ll always remember the first class, when, after we ten students of all ages and walks of life had introduced ourselves, the professor turned off the lights and invited us to remove our shoes, as he always did for prayer. After quite a few minutes of silence, his prayer began this way:  “Lord, thank you for this remarkable group of people who have gathered here.  I am most optimistic about our time together.  I feel it will be rich, and fascinating, and very, very strange.”

And indeed it was all those things – rich, fascinating, and strange.  Much like all of today’s readings, which deal with, in addition to Jesus, one of the great heroes of the faith – Abraham, born Abram, to whom the covenant was given, from whom the leaders of Israel descended. And fascinating, from the promise of infinite children to the barren couple, Abraham and Sarah, to the hodgepodge Gospel reading that blends bits and pieces of several longer stories: the owner preparing for the thief in the night, the slaves preparing for the owner’s return, treasures in heaven, and the many stories of the sheep and their shepherd.

And, finally, and perhaps most of all, the stories are just strange, especially as we read them through modern eyes. In medical terminology, pregnant women over 35 are classified as “advanced maternal age.”  But in the Genesis reading God promises Abraham as many children as the stars up in the sky, a promise that came true when Abraham and his wife were in their late 80’s. 

And from Hebrews we have the famous definition of faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  As wonderful and mystical as that definition is, it’s also downright frustrating in this rational world of ours, where we require an explanation for pretty much everything, yet when we ask for an explanation for the most important thing there is, God, we’re told we just have to trust in what we hope is true, even though we can’t see it.  To many searchers, that seems a lot like telling people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

And perhaps the strangest part of all is the references to slavery.  The readings from both Genesis and the Gospel of Luke assume that slavery exists and make no effort to abolish it.  Abraham doesn’t talk about freeing the slaves in his home; he just bemoans the fact that one of them might inherit all his stuff.  And Jesus doesn’t preach that slavery is evil; instead, He tells the slaves to be prepared for when their master returns.  “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes home,” Jesus says.  “Be good slaves,” He might have added.

The problem in all of this isn’t that the Bible says things as crazy as 88-year-olds having babies and as objectionable as telling slaves to be “good slaves”; the problem is that these things have ceased to strike us as crazy or objectionable.  We are, after all, Christians – we follow the Christ, the Savior of the world.  We are not “Biblians” – we do not worship this book, penned by humans like us.  We worship the God that this Book, the written Word, points to, just as the natural world – the created Word – and the Eucharist – the incarnate Word – point to God.  By calling ourselves Christian we don’t promise to like or even agree with everything that is in our sacred book; but we do promise to engage the book, to be in relationship with it.  To respond to it – sometimes with tears, sometimes with anger, sometimes with incomprehension. 

I’ve met a lot of people who pretend when they go to church.  Outside those doors they have strong opinions and hard-fought-for beliefs, but when they enter “the church” all that goes out the window.  What comes out of the Bible – maybe even what comes out of the pulpit, too – that’s beyond question.  If the Bible says that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is.  Even if it doesn’t jive with what they believe the other six days of the week, that’s the way it is, at least in here, in this place, amongst these people.

In the end it all comes down to belonging – we want to belong somewhere.  We want to be accepted, welcomed, part of something.  When we look the cold, hard truth square in the eye, most of us have to admit that we’re pretty odd.  We might try to call it “uniqueness” or “individualism”, but I think most of us think we’re pretty strange.  The way we look, the clothes we wear, the people we hang out with, the work we do, and, for my kindred spirits, the abominably bad movies we enjoy watching multiple times.  “There’s no one out there like me,” we might think, or, at best, there are a precious few.

But here, in this place, we find hope.  We jump on this motley bandwagon, where the doors are open every Sunday, and the price of admission is paying a little attention and suspending a little disbelief. But when we do that, we underestimate the miracle that the church is all about.  We lowball grace, if you will.

Because what we’re meant to be, this congregation, this family of God, has nothing to do with conformity. We’re not here to listen passively to talk of slavery and the babies of octogenarians; we don’t have to pay that price to be part of this family.  The ticket to this dance is much more personal and dangerous than that; our ticket to this dance is confessing that we are strange, that we are strangers, to each other, to this world, even to ourselves. 

For tucked into the listing of the Hebrews Hall of Faith is one of the most marvelous passages in the Bible that I’ve ever come across.  Speaking of Abraham and Moses and the other great Old Testament pillars of faith, Hebrews says, “They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.” 

They confessed that they had no home – that they were not welcome, at ease, safe, anywhere.  Robert Frost once defined home as “the place where, when you have to go there,  they have to take you in.”  They didn’t have such a thing; that’s what they spent their lives looking for. Hebrews goes on to say that “if they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return.  But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.”  The same is so for us – there’s the door, and the harsh and often inhuman world outside, and if you want that, you got it. 

And the same goes for a church that asks us to be something we’re not.  The church that asks us to be normal, to conform.  If that’s what you want, it’s there for you – the place where the illusion of home takes a little less work to believe in, but is still an illusion.  A place you’re welcome to go, as long as you agree with some things you really don’t believe, and become someone you’re really not, just for a few hours a week. 

But the faithful desire a heavenly country – the same heavenly country that each week in the Eucharistic prayer we ask God to bring us to with all the saints – that is wholly different than that.  And there, according to Hebrews, God has prepared a city for us, and there God is not ashamed to be called our God.

30 years ago a book was published called I’m OK, You’re OK, and since that time it’s sold over 15 million copies.  It’s become a mantra of the self-help movement.  And it’s seeped into the church as an unholy expectation disguised as grace.  The history of our faith overflows with people who weren’t OK – senior citizens who laughed when God said they’d finally have kids; would-be prophets who cowered in fear when God told them what He expected of them, and then begged God to send anybody else, just not them; and a savior for whom we’re named as a people, who died a criminal’s death, after being mocked and tortured and rejected by the people he came to save. None of that, or them, is OK.

Our faith doesn’t say “I’m OK, you’re OK.”  Our faith, the faith of the strangers and foreigners on the earth, says “I’m not OK, you’re not OK, but that’s OK.”  We don’t have to pretend to be normal and fine – for the one in a million who really is, more power to ya, but for the rest of us, strange is the way we are, and strange is the way we’re accepted in this sacred place.  I’ll always remember the banner that hung from the back of the church Pam and I belonged to in New York City.  It said that in the Episcopal church there are no outcasts.  But maybe that banner was wrong.  Lovely as that sentiment might be, it’s probably truer, and even more wonderful, to say that in the Episcopal church we are all outcasts.  We’re a family of outcasts.

We can sit here and try to make sense of all this rich and fascinating and strange stuff.  We can imagine miracles of truly elderly mothers and how slavery was just something that was accepted back then.  But when it makes sense, it doesn’t take any faith. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, especially the things that we’re most afraid to hope for – that God is strong enough to handle our tears and our anger and our indignation; that the church is big enough to accept the hang-ups even our closest friends don’t know about; that the person next to us isn’t any closer to being normal than we are, and if we cut them some slack, maybe they’ll do the same for us. 

And as the world gets turned on its ear, and the thing we’re most afraid to hope for is precisely the gift that is so freely offered, grace abounds and truth shines forth.  Sure, Jesus didn’t say that slavery was wrong, but if we read on we see that the reward for the slaves isn’t merely freedom, it’s that “[the master] will fasten his belt and have [the slaves] sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.”  The oppressors serve, the 86-year-old man cradles the baby he’s longed for his whole life, and homeless wanderers have a place all their own, which not only has to take them in, but wants to more than anything in the world.

Flannery O’Connor was a faithful, irreverent, southern Catholic writer who died too young, and she coined what is probably my favorite summary of what this faith of ours is all about. “You shall know the truth,” she said, “and the truth shall make you strange.”

Amen.

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