Get Down from Your Tree - Luke 19

Get Down from Your Tree

Tony E Dillon Hansen

Sermon based upon Luke 19: 1-10, Psalm 119

Opening Prayer 

Happy Reformation Sunday! 

I thought for a moment that I might reflect why I am protestant but I think today’s lesson gives us something metaphorically visualizing  and challenging at the same time.

I remember in my youth wondering about tree houses because I wondered what it would be like to have one.  You would see them in the movies and a few neighbors had them.

What do these treehouses offer is a place to be above all and away from the busy of life. What these offer is a place for a young child may become master of their own domain because for those people that had one of these, they controlled who could come into the treehouse with rules as what was done and why - a world away from the world we know and live each day.

Isn’t that what we enjoy in our lives with our houses and our phones even?  When I close the door to my house, I can shut out the world and I have dominion over all that is done in that house, what we eat, when we eat, what we watch, read or do is all under the guise of house rules.

What privilege that is. Who do we shut out when we close the door and what are forgetting when we do this? What people do we shut out of our media streams because they think different?

We have our own little treehouses in our phones where we separate good news from bad news, people we follow or not and so on. 

It is nice to control an area of life, considering all the parts of life where we don’t. Yet that I think is one of the points of this lesson.

That when Jesus sees Zachaeus in the tree, there is plenty of reason why they are in the tree. Was it to get a better look because people, like me who are short, tend to need help in crowds to see people? Was it to get away from the people and the crowd - to distance oneself away from all that is and has been done?

What privilege that is,  To be able to climb a tree, open/close an app, to distance oneself from everyone, yet forgetting that we too are broken,  That is why Jesus seeks out the person in the tree. 

Jesus in no uncertain terms wants him to get down from the tree, get down from the perfect life and privilege that has been learned.

You may have made a good life for yourself in the world that you have created (as the lesson says about this tax collector), but Jesus wants more from you than separation from the world.  God wants you to be with the people and to be the grace, love and forgiveness to those around you. 

From the our privilege, our tree, you may see different perspectives. Great learning opportunities, but you may miss something important in those heights. God wants you grow and to learn with the people.

Get down from your tree to experience God on God’s terms - with people in all of the hustle and bustle - with all of the snickering people do.  Yes get down from the tree because the Lord needs a bed to sleep, and wants to come over to your house. God wants to be with you!

Get down from your tree because you can’t do good things when you lock yourself away and pretend it doesn’t exist.  

Get down from the tree of privilege and control because there is something more tangible in being the hospitality that God wants us to be.

Get down from the tree and be with the people in all their brokenness because you and I are too.  

I think this Zachaeus gets it and why he offers the amends to Jesus. There is something to be said about acknowledging our faults and failures.  

That isn’t to say we should dwell on them, but to acknowledge that we may not be best we should, intentionally or otherwise?

More importantly, be willing to make amends.

This is one of the reasons why these are parts of the 12 steps.  This isn’t to say all people need to do this, but we do fall short. Who among you have clean and perfect slates?

We do give people wrong ideas, and we may have gained at the expense of others.  Acknowledge that we fail -  name and confess, where we fail and then make amends. Then we can grow in that confession

Otherwise, to live without that confession is to hole up in the treehouse - separating ourselves from truth and the life God wants for us. To live in privilege and not sharing what we have been given, not what God wants… 

We may not be good all the time, but we can work to be better each day. 

In your honest confession with God, begin to truly grow. Grow when doing business, when walking along the streets, having dinner, or just coming to church. 

People can shut out the world and crawl into lonely treehouses - leaving the crowds underneath them, but God wants us to be more than that.  

God wants us to come down from the heights of our tree, our privilege, our headspace to be with and learn from all God’s children. 

That is God exacting grace, forgiveness and love because we should too. That is God teaching us to forgive others because we acknowledge that we fail too. Even more-so, that means we too need that forgiveness in our own hearts.

Beloved, God offers this for you to grow - a path for you and me. 

Lets get down from your tree and walk with Jesus. Lets welcome Jesus into our hearts and our homes.

Why? because God loves you and me. 

God wants you to come down from the tree to walk with you. God wants you to see what is so very possible with the love and grace we can extend.

That Beloved is…

Thanks Be to God

All Who Humble Themselves - Luke 18

All who Humble themselves

Tony E  Dillon Hansen

Reflection based upon Luke 18: 9-14, Jeremiah 14:7-10,19-22, Psalm 84

Opening Prayer

“All who Humble themselves will be exalted.”

This parable comes to us after hearing about the widow and unjust judge. This parable involves two folks - people much like you and me here at church. 

Two people go to church to pray. What they pray are two different ways of praying.  One is somewhat grateful with a smirk of thanks for a good life.  You know this person well.  It may be us this time and again. 

This person is someone who has done all the things that have been asked of them and they give money regularly. Great and good for you!

The other, comes to church knowing there is sin in the heart. There is brokenness, and you can almost hear this person praying out of pure desperation, “God be merciful.”

Which of these is you today and which of these will be next week?  Which of these were you last week?

When we have argued with God, When we have found ourselves with bit of fortune and privilege, When we have figured out the system, when we have patted ourselves on the back for doing, did we forget something or someone along the way? 

It is easy sometimes to just think we got where we did because of the hard work and effort we put in, but who along the way helped?  Who of our neighbors did we help to come along with us? 

When we think we have done all that we could, be reminded there is still more for us to do.  Be mindful that there is need around us and there is someone somewhere near us that needs our care and love. 

Maybe the question for us is: are we in this world only for ourselves? 

OR 

Have we been God’s agent on this earth for all God’s children today, yesterday and will we extend that love and grace tomorrow or even when we walk out the door of worship? Have we extended a sandwich to those who are hungry? Have we consoled someone who is in turmoil? Have we been the friend to someone who was left out? 

This second person.  We can hear the tension, the pain and the internal turbulence.

This is heart-felt prayers that we pray because the moment deserves our full self and so we plea with God.  These are moments of agony, trial and temptation. This is recognizing we are not the perfection of Jesus but that shouldn’t stop us from trying to be better.  How do we?  

Look at all the opportunities around you.

When you pray, think of the author of Jeremiah 14 and be humbled before the awesomeness that is God, that is love and grace fulfilled in our day when we need it the most, even in our folly and ridiculousness. 

Yes we fail and we are broken. We know we fail.. We know we sin and if you don’t believe that, I want to know what stuff you been consuming to think you have it all figured out. Let me sign up for your book club.  

For the rest of us, we do fail and we really don’t need reminders because calamity is only a matter of time and space away from us - even for you - who think they have figured it out. In that calamity, that moment of wrestling, that long night wondering, in that brokenness, we may feel alone at times, but God is near and ready for you. 

So let God hear your cry, your angry rant, your gripe about a lesson that you didn’t want, your hopelessness and then let that turn into hope, into something far beyond our ourselves and our plans.  

This is the good stuff God wants to hear from you and your heart. God doesn’t need the boasts and such, but God wants the true you. So when you pray, do not leave out the good parts. Bring your heart to bear, bring your worries, bring your concerns, and bring you!

God is there  and God is healing today. So reach out, reach into your own heart and find that God is already there working to turn you into something better than you were when we started and that God is giving you assurance that you will have grace and love.

God shows up and will not leave you the same as before. So pray your in-most thoughts and let yourself be known not just to God, but to yourself and let yourself be real in the moment. 

Let God do some amazing for you. God is with you and brings the realm of love and grace into your life. God is with you now and so be rejuvenated in that grace and love.  

Thanks Be to God.

Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-kindness

as translated from the Pali by The Amaravati Sangha

This is what should be done

By one who is skilled in goodness,

And who knows the path of peace:

Let them be able and upright,

Straightforward and gentle in speech,

Humble and not conceited,

Contented and easily satisfied,

Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.

Peaceful and calm and wise and skillful,

Not proud or demanding in nature.

Let them not do the slightest thing

That the wise would later reprove.

Wishing: In gladness and in safety,

May all beings be at ease.

Whatever living beings there may be;

Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,

The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,

The seen and the unseen,

Those living near and far away,

Those born and to-be-born —

May all beings be at ease!

Let none deceive another,

Or despise any being in any state.

Let none through anger or ill-will

Wish harm upon another.

Even as a mother protects with her life

Her child, her only child,

So with a boundless heart

Should one cherish all living beings;

Radiating kindness over the entire world:

Spreading upwards to the skies,

And downwards to the depths;

Outwards and unbounded,

Freed from hatred and ill-will.

Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down

Free from drowsiness,

One should sustain this recollection.

This is said to be the sublime abiding.

By not holding to fixed views,

The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,

Being freed from all sense desires,

Is not born again into this world.

Persistence and Wrestling - Luke 18, Genesis 32

Persistence and wrestling

Tony E Dillon Hansen

Sermon based upon Luke 18:1-8, Genesis 32:22-31, Psalm 121

Opening prayer.

The parable from the Gospel of Luke can be seen through a few lenses.We can see Jesus telling us to pray always and not lose heart. That feels like a hallmark card greeting, but when Jesus says this, there is more.

We can look at the widow. This woman, who has little power or money in those days, requests justice from this judge. It is prayer in many ways.

We can look at the judge. This unjust judge tires of her nagging, gives in and grants the request.

Then there is God.

Thing is that this unjust judge is not God nor like God. Yet we often think of God much like this judge: someone aloof, disinterested or simply ignoring our pleas. Ever feel like that?I think this parable gives us pause and recognition because we do this in our lives.We wonder where our prayer goes, if anyone is listening, or if anything will change.

We pray, demand, and wonder - Why isn’t anything changing when I pray to God this day? There are whole comedy routines on this complaint.

I submit to you, Beloved, that God has big shoulders and is hearing your pleas, your rants, your disgusts, and your loves.

Nevertheless, the woman persists in her pleas because that is her faith.This persistence is not due to doubt but due to faith and trust. This is (as one describes) a lifestyle of faith revealed in prayer and persistence of the prayer. 

Question for us then is, How do our prayers reflect our faith and trust or are they mere words we speak or read just to sound cute or otherwise?

When we read from Psalms or scripture, are we just reading text or are we acknowledging the presence of something - someone - bigger than us - with us - who is teaching us.

Our tenacious prayer amid challenge and adversity are the necessary components not because God tires of our plea but because we have faith that God will come through for us. When we don’t know the answers or what will happen to us tomorrow or maybe when we haven’t been the best person we can be… Yet, we can turn to God. There is possible and there are answers for us.We can lean into our faith and know that God hears us and works with us to provide for us because God is trustworthy.

These are prayers during difficult times, agonizing times, troubling times, and questioning times. Yet we have power and agency in our prayers through our faith to persist and know that God is listening. God is working with us even when we don’t recognize the help.God hears us and responds - not out of injustice - but because our faith is strong. Thus, justice and grace will be served in our hour, our night, our times of need.

That leads me into the Genesis32 text.

As part of a wrestling family, this text is among one of my favorite episodes in all Hebrew scripture. In many ways, this text demonstrates the persistence of prayer through Jacob’s wrestling, but I believe it also reveals what can and does happen when we meet God.

The thing is that Jacob has not been the nicest of people. Jacob has deceived his own father, Isaac, as well the house of Laban. Jacob tries to make peace with Esau for taking the brother’s birthright. Jacob has been cunning and deceptive to get things from people.There is a cost for this. What is that cost?

Jacob senses something is going to happen. Not sure who, where or what, but the anticipation is real. With trepidation, anxiety, and maybe even some fear. He sends his family and possessions with them.

Then Jacob wrestles with this all night. He persists to ask for a name and has this one in a good hold. Why does Jacob need to know the name? Think, isn’t that what we do when we go to doctors but get no answers? 

Yet this is no ordinary wrestler, and the result is injured hip, new name, revelation that that he wrestled with God, and blessing.

Even though Jacob has not been perfect, God meets Jacob, engages, and does not leave Jacob the same. 

That is what happens when we persist, even in our folly. When we persist in our faithful prayer, we can meet God in the middle of the turmoil of life, in the mud-pit of adversity, or the creepiest of places.

Then something happens. We recognize, we learn, we find. We may get a few bumps and bruises, but we grow into something more than what we were.

What happens here is a transformation – a change (not the rhetoric we get fed from shaky politicians). We may feel we win against God at times (Jacob appears to win this wrestling match), but there is more.

God is not at our beck and call, but with persistent and faithful prayer, we can meet God to experience real change. We become more than our sins or our history. We find blessings and grace in our lives.

Not bad for a night but what will Jacob (now Israel) do with this blessing, this new hope, this revelation? Continue to be a jerk and deceptive to folks? No, and read the rest of Genesis to learn how Jacob changes. 

Thus Beloved, the question for us, the challenge for us is to meet God, talk with God, and sometimes, wrestle with God. Find yourself on the other side with grace and change of heart. 

Beloved, God answers your prayer, meets you in that moment, and you have revelation.

“Lift up your eyes to the hills” and let God change you. The question then Beloved, is what do you do with that change in your life?

Thanks Be to God.

Showing Gratitude - Luke 17

Showing Gratitude

Tony E Dillon Hansen

Sermon based upon Luke 17:11-19, Psalm 66

Opening prayer

In our lives, we get many opportunities handed to us where we are told to be thankful. Like it is a task or something. Yet when something special happens, when life gives us seeming miracles or just grace of a new morning, we forget to lift up and thank those who helped to give us these. We forget to thank the one who gives life.

The question then is: How do we say thank you?  There is an awe when God does something (when we recognize it). There is something amazing when we pray and learn that God fulfills our wish and desire. What do we do then? Then do we pause and take moment to not just thank God? Perhaps in those moments of recognition, we might do something more. We might take an opportunity to worship. 

Then people might come up to you and ask you why you are so happy and praising; you can tell them your witness and your worship.  Then maybe, they can share in that with you.

Also this lesson reminds us to look at the invisible borders we put in our lives. 

Jesus is traveling along in parts of the country with borders between regions. This raises a question for us to consider. Who in our lives do we think Jesus ought to be praying with, healing or just doing work?  What do we expect of and identify with Jesus? What borders do we put on Jesus? What does that say about the arbitrary limits we put on Jesus: of people, places and things Jesus does. 

The lepers are impure, dirty, and forgotten- needing something or someone. Jesus reaches out to them - they who are in need. What about us who have walked through a pandemic full of anxiety and fear against being around our loved ones. Think about that  and you might have an idea of what faces these lepers who cannot hide their disease or condition.  For then, they get outcast and pushed to the fringes We don’t have to think we are so pure when we, who see people on the corner asking for handout, we quickly roll up the window.

What does it mean to live as someone as who is close to death or reminds us as people of mortality?

This is not Jesus vs establishment by telling the healed to go to the priests. Jesus is working to transform the broken system - to show a measure of God’s realm on Earth - to help people find God in many ways and the many people around us. Jesus wants the healed to tell the wonder and work of God to those who need to hear it.

Remember to tell the story for those who never heard it. That is what God wants us to do, and thus, Jesus sends the lepers to the priests. To remind them and all those lepers too are children of God needing grace and to be a part of the life of God. That, my friends, is worth being thankful and full of gratitude. We who suffer through pandemic, death and anxiety are children of God and need that grace more than ever. 

How can we then find gratitude in our worship? The response to God ought to be like the Samaritan -  those in the story who worship - the gratitude to God is important. 

We might not have a lot of models in our world. Yet we, as people of God, have ways and paths to show gratitude that shows strength in our faithfulness and strength in our belief that is more than our broken systems.  We have faith in God who heals and cares for us.  That can give us strength when we need it the most

Our world may want us to just take and take. Our world may even reward us for taking everything and leaving others behind. After all, we deserve it right? Those who have nothing, they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and figure out a way like everyone else who has to stand in line for food and pay. 

This harkens back to our lesson a couple weeks ago that reminded us that our ways of navigating broken systems are not gifts but maybe privileges of which we unintentionally forget, privileges that trample upon those less fortunate or who may be perceived as death, dying , poor, old or useless (much like the lepers in our story).  How selfish does that navigation skill seem without acknowledging those around us that help us? How un-Godlike is that? 

Instead, we should have gratitude for all who are around us, our neighbors (even the ones we disagree), for those who have more than us, extend a thankful heart - help them remember to share, and for those who have less than us, extend welcome and thanks. Extend a sandwich to who is hungry, clothes to ones who need coats, love to those who need compassion.

Think of all the grace you have in life. Or even your own life itself? The fact that you breathe today is a gift - one that we should treasure because it is a gift from above.  Yes our parents were there and we ought thank them for this gift of life, but God brought you into being, to breathe and to witness the spirit that is around us and inside us.  

In our relationships and such, remember to thank your partner, your friend for being there and thank God for bringing you together - for being your friend. Don’t let people around that you love go without knowing that they are loved, and they will in turn show you love as well. As will God.

So yes find a moment and thank your parents, but also thank God.  Know that God will be with you through thick and thin.

Thus, give thanks! Make a joyful noise to God! Remember how awesome God’s deeds and power are! Come and see what God has done and is doing in your life and let the world know how grateful you are!

Thanks Be to God