A Question of Authority

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

The word of the Lord came to me: What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?” As I live, says the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Know that all lives are mine; the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine; it is only the person who sins that shall die.  Yet you say, “The way of the Lord is unfair.” Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way unfair? Is it not your ways that are unfair? When the righteous turn away from the their righteousness and commit iniquity, they shall die for it; for the iniquity that they have committed they shall die. Again, when the wicked turn away from the wickedness they have committed and do what is lawful and right, they shall save their life. Because they considered and turned away from all the transgressions that they had committed, they shall surely live; they shall not die. Yet the house of Israel says, “The way of the Lord is unfair.” O house of Israel, are my ways unfair? Is it not your ways that are unfair? Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, all of you according to your ways, says the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your transgressions; otherwise iniquity will be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.

Philippians 2:1-13

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any  sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Matthew 12:23-32

When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and they said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” Jesus said to him, “I will also ask you one question ; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.” Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, “If we say ‘from heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘then why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things. What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’  He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “the first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.

***

A man had two sons… usually a beginning like this means a clear either/or between how we should be and how we should not be, what to do and what to avoid. Like the older brother and the younger in the story of the Prodigal Son - although by the time that story’s over we may not know who we are in it. We don’t tend to be entirely one character or another. At least not all of the time. Sometimes we lean in one direction, sometimes in another, sometimes we find ourselves in a strange mix of the two.

So today, a man had two sons. Which one are you? Is it that simple? Remembering that this story was told over and over again long before it was written down, and that it was told over and over again after Jesus had been crucified and risen, I wonder who might be having fingers points at them in the first community of Jesus here? It’s a question which might be more easily answered by looking at the original language, as the English translations vary so widely and the Greek language holds some additional baggage we might not notice in the English. Take the word ‘repentance’ for example. It shows up here in today’s parable - sort of. The son changed his mind, right? He said he wouldn’t go, and then he changed direction and went to work in the vineyard anyhow. Except it’s not quite that. It’s another word than what usually translates as ‘repent,’ and that other word has more of a sense of regret about it. It would more properly be said that the first son had a change of heart.

Changes of heart are a completely different matter, aren’t they? Changes of heart are a lot more difficult to come by, and often more complicated to explain. They rely on emotion and empathy, and they aren’t always rational. My parents and I watched “Frozen” again this weekend, and it’s made pretty obvious there that, while ‘the mind can be persuaded,’ a change of heart requires an act of true love. Of course, for Disney it’s a true love’s kiss that is assumed - I don’t want to spoil the movie for you if you haven’t yet seen it.

Yes, the first son has a change of heart. And that weird Greek word which is different from ‘repentance’ is only used in one other place in the Gospel of Matthew. Only one other character is said to have a change of heart. Can you guess who? Who might have had something to regret? Something they wanted to take back? Something they asked forgiveness for? Even though it’s nowhere near Holy Week, we’re going to talk about him. It’s Judas. Judas had a change of heart after he betrayed Jesus. Judas took those 30 silver coins that he traded for his friend, and tried to return them to the chief priests. Judas confessed to betraying innocent blood and he asked for forgiveness. Judas was the son who did as he should have done after he made that terrible mistake.

What do you think? A man had two sons…

Which leaves us the second son to find. Somewhere in the Gospel there is another character. A character who said he was going to do good by Jesus and then dropped the ball. A guy who promised he would die before betraying Jesus, or, as the author of Matthew has him say it: “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!” The second son, in hindsight, is Peter.

Making the story go like this: A man had two sons. He said to the first, “son, follow me and trust me.” And that son said “I will not,” but later he had a change of heart and repented, going to the chief priests for forgiveness as required by the law of their shared faith. The man said to his second son, “son, follow me and trust me.” And that son said, “Absolutely! All the way! I’m right there with you!” But he fell asleep when he was on lookout and then denied, not once, not twice, but three times, that he even knew the man. Which of the two did the will of his father?

Granted, this is all in hindsight. It makes sense in the way any good story makes sense, with the parallels and the character types. But there’s more to a story than the characters. The characters are involved in something: a conflict, an adventure, a journey of self-discovery. What’s been happening in their lives, what’s the plot line and where’s it headed?

When this story is told, it’s in the context of Jesus’ last days before the crucifixion. So far Jesus has entered the Temple to the songs of “Hosanna!” He turned over the money-changers’ tables, healed the blind and the lame, and on top of it all, he told the parish leaders it was well and good - and foretold in scripture - that children will be noisy in their worship. Where did Jesus get this authority?

That’s what’s happening. Jesus tells this story that could be about Peter and Judas in the light of that question. Where does Jesus get his authority? He heals. Teaches. Feeds the hungry. Casts out demons. Calls the religious leaders to consider again what’s really behind these laws they keep. Declares the kingdom of God like he knows a thing or two about it! Where does he get the authority, the right, to even go so far as to forgive sins? 

Because, really, that’s where these questions started. When Jesus forgave the sins of the paralytic, that was when the religious leaders started accusing him. There had been times before when people were amazed at his authority. Times when he calmed the storm; when he taught like he had authority; when the centurion understood the authority he had to make something so with just a word - and Jesus healed that soldier’s servant from far away. 

Jesus does and says a lot of things with authority. Then he does this thing, says this word of forgiveness, and suddenly now he’s usurping God’s authority. Now he’s being accused of blasphemy, of ‘counting equality with God as something to be exploited.’

Which is exactly the opposite of what he’s doing, isn’t it? At least according to the ancient hymn that’s recorded about him in this letter to the Philippians, it’s the very thing he doesn’t do. He doesn’t count equality with God as something to be exploited. He’s really the only man alive who ever could make the most of such a claim, such a power and authority, seeing as how he actually is God among us. But he doesn’t lord it over us. Doesn’t make us bow and scrape and beg. Jesus, as Philippians puts it, “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. And being found in human likeness, he humbled himself to the point of death - even death on a cross.” 

This is why we worship him. The religious leaders - and yes, I know I am one now - we have used our authority in all sorts of wrong ways. We’ve exploited people’s good will, we’ve stolen, we’ve lied, we’ve used our position to get out of speeding tickets and jury duty. What’s worse, we’ve used our pulpits to tell people they are too fallen for God to save them. We’ve frightened people into paying for a ticket to heaven which we cannot grant. We’ve used our little authority to keep the doors open and our pensions secure.  And we’ve taught many others that this is the purpose of our institution.

But Jesus - Jesus actually has the authority to divide the sheep from the goats, the wisdom to know the difference, the right to that power. Jesus is the one and only human being with the right to condemn anyone, because he is also God - and what does he do with that authority? What does he do? He lays it down. He lives in the dirt with us. He heals. He feeds. He forgives. Again and again, he forgives. When we are very lucky to get things right, we, too, living by the Spirit, also may find ourselves healing and feeding, welcoming the stranger and forgiving debts. 

Remember, when we confess together as a community at the start of worship, “We confess that we are captive to sin, and cannot free ourselves,” the word of forgiveness that comes is not mine. It is by Christ’s authority that I declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins. It is by Christ’s authority that the word of forgiveness is spoken to you and for you, just as by Christ’s free gift his own Body and Blood are given and shed for you.  

So when we work the work of Christ - God’s work, our hands - it is by his authority that we feed the hungry, visit the homebound, love the lost and the least. And when we find ourselves facing backwards, full of regret for what we did or did not find the courage and wisdom to do, it is by Christ’a authority that we are forgiven.

I believe that, had Judas not lost all hope and died by his own hand, Christ would have received him still as one of the twelve when he returned from the dead. I’m not sure about how the eleven would have treated him, but if Jesus could forgive those who nailed his hands and feet to that cross, could forgive the criminals hanging beside him who mocked him, he could forgive even Judas, even me, even you. Peter became enshrined by the church as the first Pope even after what he had done. There is no place too far gone for the love and forgiveness of Jesus to reach you, nor anyone else, neither.

Does it matter which of the two sons you are in the story? Or does it matter more that the One who tells the story knows your heart and has come to feed, heal, and forgive you?

Of prophets and parables

Jonah 3:10—4:11

Matthew 20:1–16

The story of Jonah is one we tell to our kids over and over again, mostly because it contains this great miracle of being swallowed by a whale and living to tell about it. Like the way we tell kids about all the adorable animals on Noah’s ark and the beautiful rainbow but we leave out the mess of dead who were drowned in that 40 days of rain.

So today we get a bit of the messy part of Jonah’s story - we get the spite. Jonah would rather die than watch his nation’s enemies be forgiven and offered grace. He is infuriated by God. He knew God would relent from punishing the Ninevites, once they came to their senses and repented. It’s why Jonah fled in the first place - he wanted to see Nineveh punished for all of the pain and destruction they had rained down on Israel. He wanted those infidels to burn for their sin, and knowing that God is forgiving and merciful, he fought against telling them that they had the chance to repent.

But as much as Jonah wanted them to die, God wanted more for them to live.

So Jonah had to have some time of his own to repent, even while the people of Nineveh were sitting in sackcloth and ashes. He had to fume and fuss and kick the dust and sit and wait to die. Then this comfortable little shrubbery grew up as a shade on his hot head, and he found some comfort in it. This shrubbery he neither planted nor watered. This little plant which only a day later withered and shriveled and died as a divinely appointed worm ate its heart out. Since this disturbed Jonah’s small comfort, he threw a tantrum. Nothing was going his way. First he had to bring God’s mercy to the infidel, then the only shade he had on a hot day had been taken away. It’s as if God shook him by the shoulders: “Why are you so upset about a shrub, when an entire city was just saved! Oh, for crying out loud, at least have pity on the livestock, then, if you can’t muster any compassion for the people!”

Sometimes God has to reorient our compassion. We get a bit stuck on what works best for ourselves only, and miss the bigger picture.

Like the parable Jesus tells us today: A landowner hires workers for his vineyard, adding laborers every hour, and pays them all a living day’s wage for their work. The ones who worked all day get the pay they first expected, and the ones who waited in the market most of the day until they were hired at the eleventh hour also get a day’s pay. The first workers were not cheated, but they did get upset that those latecomers got the same compensation as they received.

It doesn’t add up very well in our society, does it? Didn’t add up in Jesus’ day, either. The earliest hired got the pay they agreed to, but then expected that they deserved more when they compared themselves to those bums who just came in off the street.

But as much as we operate this way, God’s kingdom is far more generous when we are undeserving.

Because it’s not about deserving. I can’t ignore this reality after all I’ve seen just in complaints about people who flip burgers wanting to be paid a living wage.  We rank people according to so many variables - but it comes down to keeping ourselves powerful and in the right, making sure we’re getting what we deserve before we bother noticing our neighbors. 

Well, it may not seem like it, from our current position, or maybe it does: we’re not the ones who got hired first. Or second. Or third. Anyone who believes we’re in the end times ought to be able to tell us that. Anyone who has any idea of history, that we didn’t just show up here this instant without ancestors, will be able to tell us that. Anyone who has ever been taught by a teacher ought to be able to say they didn’t show up first on the scene. We’ve a whole history of generations of workers in the vineyard who got to work before we were even born. A whole legacy of laborers in the vineyard who have been passing on their knowledge and skill, sharing their witness and struggle, so that we could get to where we are.

Jesus and Jonah both reveal the patience and the mercy of our God today, in that God will relent from punishing even the worst of offenders, and God will bless even the latecomers whose work can only build on the labor of those who were present first. God will take care of us just like God took care of them. If God can forgive Nineveh after all they did to destroy and scatter God’s own chosen people, if God can choose and use and teach a prophet like Jonah to bring that word of forgiveness even when that prophet would rather die than know God’s mercy more deeply, imagine what God can give and do here. If God can be like a landowner who searches the marketplace every hour for laborers to work in the vineyard, how might God come to us, again and again, to make us part of that kingdom work?

Forgiveness. Grace. Mercy. Again and again, God pours out upon the world an abundance of these gifts, whether or not we feel worthy, because we certainly can not earn these gifts. Nothing we do can make us deserve the forgiveness, grace, and love of God, just like nothing we do can make us lose these abundant blessings. For our God is a generous God.

Of serpents and crosses

Readings

Numbers 21:4b-9    Moses lifts up a bronze serpent in the wilderness
Psalm 98:1-4    The LORD has done marvelous things. (Ps. 98:1)
1 Corinthians 1:18-24    The cross is the power of God to those who are being saved
John 3:13-17    The Son of Man will be lifted up

I’ve thought about bringing in a toy snake and winding it around the cross as a visual aid. It would certainly be an interesting thought experiment, wouldn’t it? What is this snake doing there, when the first time we see a snake in scripture is as the accuser in the Garden, the one who asks Eve if God really told them all they needed to know and could be trusted. The one snake who was then cursed to travel on its belly because it had brought people so low.

So what would such an animal have to do with the “life-saving cross, on which was hung the salvation of the world”? In the reading from Numbers, the people are being killed by snakebite because they’ve been complaining about life in the wilderness since their rescue from Egypt. It’s a long, difficult road to the Promised Land, and they are starting to think the mess they were in before has got to be better than where they’re headed. More of them start questioning God’s goodness, more telling God they know better, more looking back like Lot’s wife, though it doesn’t turn any of them into pillars of salt. It’s back to those questions from the garden again: Does God really want what’s best for us?

Today is celebrated as Holy Cross day, the festival set way back when the place of the crucifixion of Jesus was found, and they dedicated a church building there. Not an easy task, since there were so many crucifixions back then, it would be like finding the one Dunkin’ Donuts or the one Stewarts where Jesus might have gotten coffee that one time. We Christians tend to make a big deal about this one particular cross, or, I should say, the one particular man who died on this one cross among thousands. It’s almost like the rest of Jesus’ life and ministry comes second to this one moment in time when God and death met head-on and for a dark and terrifying moment God seemed to have lost the wager. 

But it was a wager made on our behalf, on our heads, for our sake. Because we don’t have the power to stand up to death once we have entered into a bargain with it. And bargain we did, way back when that first serpent first said, ‘Do you really think God will care one way or the other about you?’ We have been dying ever since, in big and small ways. The cross of Jesus is there to save us from this debt to death that we could never hope to repay - I’d pay off my student loans ten times over - plus interest! - before I’d be able to even start thinking about how to pay off this wager gone bad. 

So God enters into this contract with us, this covenant, where life is spent to save life, where blood is spilled to give new life, and as with most gods, the cost is a sacrifice of one life for another. Unlike any other gods, this God handles the whole thing without demanding any of our blood. We didn’t count on it being the author of life who would enter that sort of arrangement. Leaving us with nothing to do on our own behalf to take care of the debts we have accrued. Nothing to do but look at them, square in the face.

That’s the connection I’ve made this time reading through the story from Numbers, and by Jesus’ reference to it according to John’s Gospel. Those serpents, brought on by the people’s willful and arrogant bad behavior, became the very tool of their healing when they only looked at one bronze serpent held up before them. They could not pretend they hadn’t gotten what was coming to them. They couldn’t pretend they had been either grateful or faithful. They could not look away from their own anguish and from the things which threatened to kill them.

Neither can we look away from Christ lifted up on the cross, from the things we do to him each and every time we ignore, misappropriate, and abuse his name and his people. Every time humanity has splintered community and gone the way of every one for themselves our species has broken creation’s covenant with our creator. But now that we have seen the cross, those sins, no matter how deep, are not anymore a source of despair for us. We know that these things that are so terrible in the light of holiness are ultimately without the power to define us - thanks be to the one who was everything humanity was created to be, and who allowed death to taste him last of all, to give him up first of all.

We center our faith on this cross, on this free gift of God which repairs the breach between us. Not only is the brokenness we see carried up on this cross, but the brokenness we have grown accustomed to is there, also. Our ancient saints, the first followers of the Way, the first to be called ‘Christians,’ knew that something peculiar was happening when it was Jesus of Nazareth up there suffocating to death with nails in his hands and feet. We have tried for generations to make sense of it, to organize some philosophy, wisdom, theories, around a man, who is also God, dying just like any other Jew of bold integrity in those days would have been killed by the powers and principalities… but the cross does not make sense. We have talked about it so long that we may have gotten used to it, certainly, but here is a man, who is also God, who has the authority to bring down fire and plague upon our heads, and instead he is loving the world - the actual, flesh and blood world that we lived in then and that we live in today - up to his very last breath, and then some.

We cannot properly fear and love God without this gift. We cannot properly know God without this mystery. Yet this gift and this mystery are offered freely to us, without any merit on our part, without our even wanting to love God or know God better.

Madison said to me last Spring: “Tell me a story about Jesus. I miss him.” This cross is the central story about Jesus, and from it we tell all of our other stories about Jesus. Feeding the 5,000. Walking on water. Healing the lepers. Welcoming the children. It all comes from the very same Jesus whose life, death, and resurrection bring God and humanity - God and the whole of the cosmos! - back together again in right relationship. The lover and the beloved. And none shall separate us from that love.

God's Work, our life in community

Ezekiel 33:7-9 

Romans 13:8-14 

Matthew 18:15-20

Yesterday I was blessed to represent our congregation at the installation of our new Bishop of the Upstate NY synod. We gathered a whole lot of singers and prayers and musicians, including representatives from our sister synods in Zambia and Zimbabwe, Bishops from the other regional synods of New England and Pennsylvania and Metro New York, ecumenical partners from the Episcopal diocese… it was a sight to behold, and a choir to hear.

It was a long drive there and a long ride back, but to gather with all of those people for such a celebration was well worth the trip. I wish you could have been there! Trumpets and tympanies and french horns and a string trio and more than enough food and drink for all. It was a beautiful liturgy and a joyous occasion. 

The Presiding Bishop - who represents the denomination as a whole nationwide body - had some good words for us in the sermon which were too good not to share. She quoted the Lutheran theologian Deitrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote many letters and delivered many lectures, who lived and died in Germany during the second World War, and is still a man we study and honor and marvel at today. 

She called on Bonhoeffer’s words yesterday to illustrate the sort of work we are all called into by the Spirit. I don’t have the reference directly before me, but the quote went something along the lines of, “nothing kills a community more certainly than service to the ideal of the community, rather than the reality of it.” We can hope and dream that our community is the kingdom of God lived here and now, and we can have a vision of what that looks like, but unless we see who is right before us, who is sitting next to us, who is in reality in this time and place part of the community, we will never have a thriving community.

Sounds like common sense, but how many times do we pine for the good old days or wish for revitalized new programming for a bright future, and in that process miss what and who we do have in the present moment? How often have we looked forward to vacation only to be so disengaged from work we lose track of what we are doing? 

Loving the reality of the lived community among us is not an easy task. But it is the reality of the Incarnation, of God with us. In Christ Jesus, we are saved from the power of sin, death, and the devil, but that does not mean we have an easy escape from life. Bills still need to be paid, votes cast, people cared for, and conflicts resolved.

Which brings us to this morning’s gospel reading. Life in Christian community isn’t always easy, and Jesus knew there would be miscommunications, fighting, insecurities, and that thing we talk about in seminary as the most common struggle: triangulation. It happens when one person hurts another, accidentally or on purpose, and rather than talking directly, a third person is brought in, almost for gossip. Usually because we can’t gather up the courage and trust the possibility of forgiveness shared. So, almost out of habit, we fester in our hurts by talking to everyone else about our pain, but not the person who inflicted us with that pain. 

But that breaks down community, and when we are hurt, we tend to hurt each other. We have these words of Jesus and still we’re not very good always at telling someone directly, and I don’t know if it’s because we’re trying so hard to be nice that we’ve grown afraid of conflict in the church, or because we’ve seen the ways conflict in the church has done such damage in the past that we don’t want to touch it. But we still have those final words of Jesus in today’s Gospel: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them.”

Christian community is where we come to lay open our wounds and our failings and to give and receive grace for mutual healing. It is where we confess our sins and receive forgiveness. It is where those confessions and that forgiveness are real and personal, not just some empty ritual that we act out because we ought to. It leaves us vulnerable in front of each other, which is a difficult posture to maintain without some small level of anxiety, especially if we are a guest in someone else’s church. Where we spend so much of our time trying to be our best, hiding what we think are our flaws, making excuses for our failings, church is where we stop pretending we ever were perfect or ever could be, where we let down our guard and let it be known that we are sinners saved by grace. We do this, of course, because we have a God who has known what human life is like from the inside and who has forgiven us, time and again.

So when we get these ‘how to treat the sinner in your midst’ texts, as often as we like to see ourselves as the one who has been right and has to go confront the one who was wrong, let’s look at it from the point of view of the one who has done the wrong. From what seems like the lower position of the two - although Jesus calls the offender ‘your brother’ to make clear there is no distinction between us. 

What grace there is in being told directly of our wrong, to be given the chance to ask forgiveness! This is not the accusing tone of someone ripping us apart for being late with paperwork or having said something offensive in polite company, it’s an open, forgiving, honest statement of pain received. It does give us some power to make things right again, doesn’t it? And to have welcome extended to us again and again, first by one, then by two, then by the whole community, seeking reconciliation.

The tough part is when reconciliation doesn’t seem to work. Or the outcome we want is not the outcome we get. But remember that promise again. Jesus is the great reconciler, the one who has not only shown us how to live, but freed us to do so through the blood of his cross. He says that if the brother who has sinned against you refuses to listen even to the church, that one ought to be treated like a Gentile and a tax collector - and have you heard how he treats those folks? Just as full a welcome as to anybody. Doesn’t mean we’ll behave as Jesus wants us to all of the time, if even some of the time! 

But it does remind us that, no matter what a mess we make of things, Jesus is among us to bless our work of reconciliation, our coming together again and again to offer confession and receive forgiveness, to be the source of our life of faith together. And to do this as we are, not as any book or study or statistics say we ought to be.

Living together in real transformative community can be a struggle, and Jesus knew it. He also knows what it’s like to love a people who are all over the map and tougher to handle than a herd of cats. But he didn’t come to ‘handle’ us, he came to heal us. To welcome the sinner. To embrace the outcast. To bring together a bunch of misfits who might not even be aware of how much he has done for us, so that we might be instruments of his healing one to another.

We’ve got our service project focus today. Tip of the iceberg stuff for how deeply poverty and hunger affect our communities. Awareness raising stuff. Advocacy stuff. Holy community building stuff. Remembering that there are a lot of struggling people in the world, including us, and that living into the kingdom of God takes work. But it is God’s work, the Spirit in and through this mission. Jesus has promised to be with us when we do his work. When he does his work through us. And so he is. And so he will be, on into the ages of ages.

Amen.

Welcome to Christian Community

This Sunday we welcomed a new member, Cate, and so that shapes the basic context for the sermon.

Readings: 

Jeremiah 15:15-21

Romans 12:9-21

Matthew 16:21-28

Well, this is a great lot of Scriptures for the day we welcome Cate officially as a member of this parish. Especially the Romans text, that how-to list for living in Christian community. Sounds pretty easy at first: hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good. Love one another. Rejoice, have patience, pray, share, and show hospitality.

So far, so good. Right? These are the bright spots, the basics, the easy marks of a community of faith. But then we get: bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. And weep with the ones who weep. (In other words, don’t avoid the people who suffer, join them in it!) Live in harmony and with those deemed lowly, don’t try to get back at anyone who has done you wrong - in fact, if you kill ‘em with kindness you’re doing it right.

Welcome to Christian community. Where everyone is a doormat and we really like to suffer.

Okay, no. Not really. Not the point. Not the invitation we’re given. Not the shape of our lives together once we’ve been welcomed, even though to many it may sound like that.

Paul isn’t inviting people to be pushovers, he’s offering them strength for the inevitable. Remember, Paul himself has endured prison, beatings, the whip, all for the sake of the message he proclaimed about the death and resurrection of Jesus. When he had opportunity to escape prison after an earthquake set loose his shackles and opened the doors, he stayed where he was to bring good news to his jail keeper. He has seen the power of the Gospel change lives and is willing time and again to put his own life on the line for the sake of those who have not yet heard they are welcome at God’s table.

It’s from this context that Paul writes to the Romans. Christians are being killed around him, left and right. He himself used to gather them up and bring them in to the authorities. Then Jesus shone in his heart so brightly he was struck blind on the road and had to depend on the kindness of the very strangers he came to threaten. He has lived and known the power of the Gospel.

The disciples, on the other hand, are still in the middle of that story and haven’t the foggiest idea what to make of it. Peter has just spoken truth about who Jesus is: The Christ, the Son of the Living God. He has said things he does not understand, because he cannot comprehend that anyone would be able to kill someone like that, let alone that Jesus would have foreknowledge of it and let it happen anyway.

But this is just what happens when God and the world we have made collide. When sin and the sacred meet face to face, it gets pretty ugly. God knows it will. God also knows that what comes after is worth the price. That remaining aloof and uninvolved won’t fix us. That walking with us as God did in the garden will result in blood and death for both of us. We were promised death if we ate that fruit of that one tree. We were promised death, and we got what we chased after. We wanted power, were tempted by the idea that we would be better gods of ourselves, and in trying to make ourselves more important we wound up killing ourselves.

So what was God to do? When we left the garden, we made our own way, we wrestled with God and with gods of our own making and with each other, and made such a mess of things we don’t even remember a world without this mess, can’t even imagine the sort of Kingdom God promised, not without the social structures we have built to keep the ‘right’ people in and the ‘wrong’ people out.

Jesus had to remake the world. From its very foundations. Which would not be easy. It would require a sacrifice unlike any other. In ancient times, sacrifices were made in blood, because blood was life. It still is, in many ways, but before we had scientific studies and transfusions and microscopes, blood was a sort of magic thing, because life and death were so mysterious and holy. Even with scientific research and medicine, life and death are still mysterious and holy. But in that mystery and holiness, a virus crept in, a plague, a scourge called sin, which infects all of us. Be it pride or lust or racism or embezzlement or what have you, sin is a big problem. And it needs an answer, it can’t just be wiped away and forgotten by anything we do.

Blood sacrifices used to serve as the way the effects of sin were repaired. They also served as thanksgivings. This sacred thing, this life blood, was spilled from rams and goats and cows and sheep and birds, on our behalf. Some gods even asked for the blood of children to make the crops grow or bring the rain. It was not the sort of image we use when we talk about sacrifice. It was smelly and smokey and there was fire and you couldn’t get the ritual wrong, and you had to do it on a regular basis, over and over again, to make yourself acceptable before God.

Jesus took up his cross willingly, lived his life knowing it was going to end at the hands of the very people he loved so much. He also knew it was going to be the end of the sacrifices, that his death would once and for all make the world acceptable before God again. Not that we could and would never sin, but that sin would no longer be the last word. Sin would not define or direct us. Peter was so distraught by Jesus’ talk of his impending death that he missed entirely the hope which followed: and on the third day rise.

Jesus broke the power of death to control our lives. That’s what Paul experienced in his living, through all of those trials. That’s what we have experienced and known in our lives together, through all of the actual deaths of loved ones and all of the other sorts of deaths when our lives have changed and set us off balance while we get used to new things before God springs something else new on us. That’s what we welcome you into sharing with us here, Cate. In this particular time and this particular community, we are learning together how the cross of Jesus has set us free to live for others. How to follow a savior who never gave us any promises of success as the world sees it, but promised to be with us to the end of everything. How to lose our lives in the life of the Spirit moving in and through and among us toward ministries which may make us unpopular but will bring us more fully alive. How to trust that we are always, no matter what the day may bring, welcomed, loved, forgiven. Thanks be to God.

How does faith say who?

Isaiah 51:1-6

Romans 12:1-8

Matthew 16:13-20

Alright, Peter, you’ve figured it out. Now keep it a secret.

Wait, what?

Jesus has gotten himself quite a reputation. It’s no wonder, really, considering all that he has been doing and teaching. But everyone has experienced him from a different point of view, and with different expectations, so in trying to explain who he is, either to convert people to his cause or to get properly angry at him, there are only so many metaphors available. Folks seem pretty familiar with the fire and brimstone preaching and the water baptisms of John, so there are those who see Jesus in that light, or as someone who will continue John’s ministry. Then there’s Elijah, a historical figure who was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot and was said to be coming again to prepare the way for the long-awaited Messiah. Jeremiah and the prophets were very vocal about the oppressive powers which threatened the right Jewish way of life, the equitable and compassionate and just world God has in mind for all people. And then there are those who walked with him, ate with him, fed the hungry with him. Who might they say he is?

I love telling people I’m a pastor. Especially on days when my tattoos are visible. There were some kids on a stoop down the street awhile ago who I got to sit and chat with one day, and when they found out I am a pastor, they had all sorts of questions: “Do you smoke? Do you drink? Do you cuss? Are you gay?” Because, for many, and for a very long time, Pastors were held to such a high standard we were hardly allowed to be ourselves. The barriers that were up and the pressure that was on made the clergy, and thus the God those clergy claimed to represent, very nearly unreachable. Thank goodness we have learned that people are way more diverse than the labels of our professions and confessions, and that God is often pretty creative. But when y’all met me some seven months ago, and when I met you, we had paperwork to go on, and some expectations and curiosities and concerns. I wasn’t a pastor you’d had before, y’all weren’t a congregation I’d had before. But together we are figuring out what we mean to and for and with each other. Like, the Bible is the paperwork we’ve got on God, written over centuries in lots of different styles and a couple of languages, but God also wrote the paperwork on us, so to speak. It’s an incomplete metaphor, but when we talk about God all of our metaphors are too small.

When Peter claimed Jesus was the Messiah, that was a very loaded, a very provocative word. There is so much expectation packed into that word, not to mention political threat to the Roman authority trying to maintain control over the Jews of Jesus’  day, that it was no small thing to attach that label to Jesus. “Messiah” technically meant “anointed,” prophet, priest, or king. It wasn’t an eternal sort of thing, but an earthly authority granted by God. It was a title the ruling Roman authority had claimed at the edge of a sword and backed up with many soldiers and public executions. If you wanted to live in safety, you served the Roman ruler as your messiah, and any who breathed a word of someone else with that authority was crucified as an insurrectionist.

But when Jesus carried that title, it meant something altogether else entirely. It wasn’t a military power to rule by force. We hear this usually in Advent, that the king we wait for is coming as an infant, vulnerable and dependent. We hear this on Christ the King Sunday, that the throne of our Savior is the cross. Not the typical image one puts to the title of ‘messiah.’ 

Maybe that’s why Jesus compelled Peter to stay quiet about it. People would be both killed and confused if word got around about his being Messiah.

But that doesn’t change who he was, just means our language is a bit too small. What was it Shakespeare said? “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”? What about “a Christ by any other label would still save”? Because the person exists before the label we put on them. Or rather, before they are given the label. Labels and positions and expectations exist long before we exist and long after we’re gone. Is the bread and the wine really the body and blood of Jesus, or is it bread and wine, or is it both? Do we have to know what we mean by those words for the things to be what they are?

Just a little confusing. Or rather, mysterious. Inviting, hopefully. In the way that evading a clearly known label means investigation and curiosity are necessary. I’ve just read C.S.Lewis’ “The Horse and His Boy,” and when Shasta the boy asks the voice of Aslan who he is, Lewis describes the answer this way: “Myself,” said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again “Myself,” loud and clear and gay: and then the third time: “Myself,” whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all around you as if the leaves rustled with it.” (p.157-159) Like the voice from the burning bush said simply “I AM.” Because when we rely only on our labels to carry us, the labels become the thing we think we’re in relationship with and we forget the one who carries our labels is far more than we can put any two or three words to.

Take parents, for example. For so long we call them “Mom and Dad.” But then at some point they become people. With their own names, and histories, and dreams, and childhoods, and struggles. They can make mistakes. They can need help from time to time. 

Or teachers. Or actors. Or members of groups we don’t know or understand. Police are people.  Black men are people. Children are people. Politicians are people. Israelis and Palestinians are people. Actual individuals with dreams and hopes and fears and their own histories and ways of understanding the world around them.

And for all of the people, there is the one person of Jesus, who is the one bringing us all together under a rule of love and security and freedom. Who is building a kingdom among us which cannot be beaten even by the gates of hell, no matter how those gates of death and despondency run their battering ram into our very guts. On the rock of Christ Jesus, out of the Rock that is Christ, we are built and carved into relationship with the creator of the cosmos. We don’t really have language big enough to explain who this creator is, just the stories we’ve been given over the generations, just the language we’ve borrowed from halfway around the world, and we do the best we can with the words we have, with the songs we have been given, with the meal we have been commanded to keep together.

So Peter was given the words “you are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Some other words we have been given include: Faithful. Merciful. Mighty. Eternal. God who sees. God of the mountains. God of hosts. Righteous judge. Emmanuel, God with us. Each of these names comes from someone’s experience and expectation of a God worthy of our worship and devotion. When we get confused and wonder at who this God is, we look to the cross, we come to the table, we wash in the font. We do not have to know all of the names to be welcomed by the One who, by naming each of us, has claimed us for his own. We do not have to have God ‘figured out’ for God to set us free and walk with us. We do not have to carry on ourselves the ‘right’ or ‘appropriate’ or ‘preferred’ labels, or any labels at all, in fact, to approach the throne of grace and ask for mercy and forgiveness and justice and healing. 

Is Jesus the Messiah? Yes. Is the the Faithful one? Yes. Immanuel? Yes. God of grace and mercy and justice and truth? Yes. Crucified and risen? Yes. All of this and so much more. Given and shed for you, the Body of Christ. And the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 

Demanding crumbs

Isaiah 56:1-8
Romans 11:1-32
Matthew 15:10-28

Do you ever feel as though, when you pray, God just ignores you? As though your prayers just aren’t good enough, or your problems aren’t important enough, for God to spend time listening, much less doing anything about it?

I don’t know where this idea comes from, but it’s a terrible feeling. It’s also blasphemy.

We often talk ourselves out of our pain and need by playing a comparison game. “At least I still have...” “At least I’m not...” Or we look at those who suffer more visibly and find ourselves saying “there but for the grace of God go I.” Which is also pretty unhelpful a thing to say, because God hasn’t given those who suffer any less grace than those who seem to have it all together. 

We’ve got to stop this game. We have to quit measuring ourselves against each other as though there is a great competition for who can suffer better or who can avoid suffering best. If your dog dies in the middle of a week where celebrities die and thousands of children are killed, God still cares about your loss. God still knows the hurt of our neighbors and children here who struggle with poverty and hunger and addiction, just as much as God knows the hurt of those children being killed by war around the world. 

Don’t imagine for a minute that God only cares about the catastrophes that make the nightly news and not about your life. Don’t imagine for a minute that God rewards your righteous work with only good health and must be punishing those doctors who contracted Ebola, either.

We try so hard to make sense out of pain. It’s only natural to try and organize the chaos inside and around us. But we can not expect that life and death and suffering and joy always make sense. 

For the suicide of a comedian to make more news than the police killing a black man holding a toy gun in the toy aisle of a store, that’s the way we think, the way we operate. 

For either of those things to happen in the first place, neither of them makes sense. Except for the terrible realities of depression and racism, of fear and despair. Because even though we know they are wrong, when we know they ultimately have no power, they still get to us in so many ways.

Okay, so this is a lot of tragedy. Some we can get away from and some is not so easy to escape, depending on who you are and where you’re from. The one common thread through it all is that when tragedy strikes, we can pray. Or someone can pray for us. When pain threatens to overtake us and those we love, we turn to Jesus and cry out “Lord, have mercy!”  When our friends and loved ones, or even complete strangers, are suffering, we cry out this long ancient prayer on their behalf, demanding God hear us, and even when it doesn’t feel like it, God does hear us.

The Canaanite woman who showed us how to do this had the tenacity to remind Jesus of who he is, regardless of her own position. She had the courage, and maybe the desperation, to demand God pay attention to the suffering of her daughter. She did not tell Jesus to leave behind his mission to his own people, but to remember that his mercy and power was bigger than just one community. He had, after all, fed over five thousand people and collected up twelve baskets of leftovers. Any of those leftovers go to the outsiders who hadn’t made it to that particular dinner? We don’t know where they went, but twelve baskets left over, how could he deny a few crumbs to this woman?

A few crumbs, after all, was all she asked for. It was all she needed. It was enough for her daughter to be made well, because it was a few crumbs of Jesus. The son of God. God with us to the end of the age. Only a few crumbs were all that she needed, and she knew there was more than enough to go around, because she had heard of this Jesus, of the things he said and did, of the kind of man he was.

It didn’t matter that she was a foreigner. That wasn’t what she was arguing. It wasn’t a question of whether she deserved healing for her daughter, if she was good enough or worthy enough. Jesus called her a dog, and she didn’t disagree with him. She wasn’t about to make her own position a stumbling block for the healing her daughter needed. “Yes, fine, a dog,” she said. “But even the dogs get scraps sometimes.” 

And that’s all she was asking. She wasn’t answered the first time she called out to Jesus, but she didn’t let that stop her from crying out. She didn’t let that stop her because she knew this Jesus was greater than the differences between them. 

She knew this Jesus was powerful and merciful and honest and holy. She knew this kind of healing was in character for his mission and ministry, and she demanded it.

Do you look at the news or hear from your neighbors and coworkers and think there are better things God ought to be doing than listening to your little personal problems? Because the God we have is a relational God. Not a God who sets the world in motion and then just sits back to watch us make a mess of things. Not a God who is going to make sure we’re registered Republicans or Democrats or even tax-paying citizens before deciding to hear or ignore our prayers. The God we have is one who knows what a splinter and a stubbed toe feel like. One who knows what it’s like to see his mother suffer because of his life choices. One who knows what it’s like because he’s decided to live the life we live.

We have a God who loves us enough to become us, no matter what it will cost him. Just to walk with us again. So why would we think he doesn’t want to hear from us when we were created to be in relationship with him? As with any relationship, it takes work and struggle and frustration, just as much as joy and laughter, but that’s the sign of being in relationship. And it’s a relationship that depends most of all on who our God is. 

We bring ourselves to it as fully as we are able, and God comes to us as fully as we can bear. And God is the one who starts it all, in our baptism, but even beyond that - somebody had to bring us to baptism, especially those of us baptized as infants. 

God reaches out to us in every time and place regardless of who and where we are. 

The Canaanite woman, the soldier who trusted Jesus could heal his servant from a distance with just a word, the kings who traveled such a long distance following a star... our God has a reach far beyond our imagination, far beyond our borders and our expectations. 

And it includes us just as much as anybody. And it includes everybody just as much as it includes us.

Whatever your life, your position, your status according to yourself or according to other people, God has ordained that all people are welcome. The prophet Isaiah reminds us that God’s house is a house of prayer for all people. And Isaiah was talking to a people who had been beaten down, abducted in war, who were trying so hard to make a new home for themselves. Isaiah reminded them they were welcome before God no matter what the war had done to them, and that their neighbors, however different, were also welcome. Not because of their own worthiness, but because God is the sort of God who works that way.

Se we bring the world before God in prayer. We pray for ourselves. We pray for the big and the small and the mundane and the miraculous, trusting that God hears and answers in some way, just because of who God is. 

And we pray and wrestle with God until we are left limping from the struggle of it, changed by our ongoing encounter with a living, mighty, mysterious, merciful Lord, who has mercy on us even when we haven’t the strength to demand it for ourselves.