Amos8.4-7;1 Timothy 2.1-7; Luke 16.1-13

+This past Wednesday at our Wednesday night Eucharist, we celebrated one of ourvery favorite saints on her feast day.

St.Hildegard of Bingen.

Sandybrought her beautiful icon of St Hildegard.

Wejoyously rang our bell named after her.

Andwe celebrated Hildegard in all her defiant, independent brilliance!

Oh,how we love St. Hildegard!

Welove her because she was something else!

Shewas a defiant force. 

Andshe was one of the first feminists.

Infact, we love St. Hildegard so much that we even named our bell after her.

St.Hildegard was a German Benedictine nun, a mystic.

Shewas also a great musician, which is also another reason why she is the namesakefor our bell.

Butthe real reasons she was chosen as the patron saint of our bell is because shewas quite the force to be reckoned with.

Andlet me tell you, St. Hildegard would’ve loved St. Stephen’s and all it standsfor.

Shewould fit in very well here.

Ata time when women were not expected to speak out, to challenge, to standup—well, Hildegard most definitely did that.

Shewas an Abbess, she was in charge of a large monastery of women, and as such sheheld a lot of authority.

Anabbess essentially had as much authority in her monastery as a Bishop had in theirdiocese.

Sheeven was able to have a crosier—the curved shepherd’s crook—that is normallyreserved for a bishop.

Andshe definitely put Bishops and kings in their place.

Thereis a very famous story that when the emperor, Fredrick Barbarossa supportedthree of the anti-popes who were ruling in Avignon at that time, she wrote hima letter.

Mydear Emperor,

Youmust take care of how you act.

Isee you are acting like a child!!

Youlive an insane, absurd life before God.

Thereis still time, before your judgment comes.

Yourstruly,

Hildegard.

(Thatcould be written to certain leaders—I won’t mention any names—right now!)

Thatis quite the amazing thing for a woman to have done in her day.

Evenmore amazing is that the emperor heeded her letter.

Andas a result of that letter, she was invited by the Emperor to hold court in hispalace.

By“judgement” here, Hildegard is making one thing clear in her letter.

Thereare consequences to our actions.

AndGod is paying attention.

Forus, we could say it in a different way.

Ifyou know me for any period of time, you will hear me say one phrase over andover again, at least regarding our actions.

Andlet me tell you, this phrase has often felt like ashes in my mouth!

Thatphrase is  “The chickens always come hometo roost.”

Andit’s true.

Thatphrase was made famous in the last 60 years or so by Malcom X, who said, followingthe assassination of JFK in 1963, (this quote is actually from the film, MalcomX)

“I don't thinkanybody here would deny that when you send chickens out in the morning fromyour barnyard, those chickens will return that evening to your barnyard, notyour neighbor's barnyard. I think this is a prime example of the devil'schickens coming back home to roost. That the chickens that he sent out, theviolence that he's perpetrated …. I think this same violence has come back toclaim one of their own. Now, being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming hometo roost never made me sad. ln fact, it's only made me glad.”

Oneof the things so many of us have had to deal with in our lives are people whohave not treated us well, who have been horrible to us, who have betrayed usand turned against us.

It’shappened to me, and I know it’s happened to many of you.

Itis one of the hardest things to have to deal with, especially when it issomeone we cared for or loved or respected.

Inthose instances, let’s face it, sometimes it’s very true.

“Thechickens do come home to roost.” 

Orat least, we hope they do.

Essentiallywhat this means is that what goes around, comes around.

Wereap what we sow.

Thereare consequences to our actions.

AndI believe that to be very true.

Andnot just for others, who do those things to us.

Butfor us, as well.

Whenwe do something bad, when we treat others badly, when gossip about people, ortrash people behind their backs, who disrespect people in any way, we thinkthose things don’t hurt anything.

Andmaybe that’s true.

Maybeit will never hurt them.

Maybeit will never get back to them.

But,we realize, it always, always hurts us.

Andwhen we throw negative things out there, we often have to deal with theunpleasant consequences of those actions.

Iknow because I’ve been there.

I’vedone it.

AndI’ve paid the price for it.

Butthere is also a flip side to that.

Andthere is a kind of weird, cosmic justice at work.

Now,for us followers of Jesus, such concepts of “karma” might not make as muchsense.

Buttoday, we get a sense, in our scriptures readings, of a kind of, dare I say,Christian karma.

Jesus’comments in today’s Gospel are very difficult for us to wrap our minds around.

Butprobably the words that speak most clearly to us are those words, “Whoever isfaithful in a very little is faithful in much.”

Essentially,Jesus is telling us this simple fact: what you do matters.

Thereare consequences to our actions.

Thereare consequences in this world.

Andthere are consequences in our relation to God.

Howwe treat each other as followers of Jesus and how we treat others who might notbe followers of Jesus.

Howwe treat people who might not have the same color skin as we do, or who are adifferent gender than us, or how we treat someone who are a different sexualorientation or sexual identity from our own.

Whatwe do to those people who are different than us matters.

Itmatters to them.

And,let me tell you, it definitely matters to God.

Wehave few options, as followers of Jesus, when it comes to being faithful.

Wemust be faithful.

Faithfulyes in a little way that brings about great faithfulness.

So,logic would tell us, any increase of faithfulness will bring about even greaterfaithfulness.

Faithfulnessin this sense means being righteous.

Andrighteousness means being right before God.

Jesusis saying to us that the consequences are the same if we choose the right pathor the wrong path.

Alittle bit of right will reap much right.

But  a little bit of wrong, reaps muchwrong.

Jesusis not walking that wrong path, and if we are his followers, then we are notfollowing him when we step onto that wrong path.  

Wrongfulnessis not our purpose as followers of Jesus.  

Wecannot follow Jesus and willfully—mindfully—practice wrongfulness.

Ifwe do, let me tell you, the chickens come home to roost.

Wemust strive—again and again—in being faithful.

Faithfulto God.

Faithfulto one another.

Faithfulto those who need us.

Faithfulto those who need someone.

Beingfaithful takes work.

Whenwe see wrong—and we’re seeing a whole lot wrong right now in our world!—our jobin cultivating faithfulness means counteracting wrongfulness.

Ifthere are actions and reactions to things, our reaction to wrongfulness shouldbe faithfulness and righteousness.

Nowthat seems hard.

And,you know what, it is.

Butit is NOT impossible.  

Whatwe do, does matter.

Itmatters to us.

Itmatters to others.

Andit matters to God.

Wemust strive to be good.

Hildegardwould say the same thing to us.

Shewould wave her finger at us and say, “Do good! God—who loves you!— iswatching!”

Thosegood actions are actions each of us as followers of Jesus are also called tocultivate and live into.

AsChristians, we are called to not only to ignore or avoid wrongfulness.

Weare called to confront it and to counter it.

Hildegarddid it when she wrote to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.

Andwe too should do it.

Weare called to offer faithfulness in the face of wrongfulness.

So,let us do just that in all aspects of our lives.  

Letus offer kindness and generosity and hope and truth and forgiveness and  joyand love and goodness, again and again and again whenever we are confrontedwith all those forces of wrongfulness.

Letus offer light in the face of darkness.  

Letus strive, again and again, to do good, even in small ways.

Forin doing so, we will be faithful in much.

“Forsurely I will not forget any of their deeds,” God says in our reading from Amostoday.

Whatwe do matters.

Goddoes not forget the good we do in this world.

Weshould rejoice in that fact.

Goddoes not forget the good we do. 

Whatwe do makes a difference in our lives and in the lives of those around us.

Solet us, as faithful followers of Jesus, strive, always to truly “leada…peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”

Amen.