Thompson's Blog

The Genuine Article

Matthew 23:1-12

1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; 3 therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. 6 They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, 7 and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. 8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9 And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father–the one in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

There’s really nothing mysterious about this passage of scripture. While we don’t have an insider’s view of what the scribes and Pharisees were doing that upset Jesus, it’s not hard to understand the nature of the problem. You don’t have to know what the long fringe and the large phylacteries were all about in order to know that these people were full of themselves. It’s interesting to know about the fringes and phylacteries. It’s always good to understand the ways that previous generations of religious people turned sound teachings into foolish traditions, and this deal with the phylacteries and fringes was classic.

A phylactery is a small pouch that contains a small parchment with a few key verses from the Torah written upon it. Devout Jews then and now to some extent wear these pouches on their foreheads and on their wrists because there is this instruction in several places within the Torah to keep these key teachings as a mark on their hand and as a frontlet before their eyes. It’s not clear within the Old Testament verses whether or not this was to be taken literally or figuratively, but the Pharisees took it very literally and they wore extra-large versions. Their vision was sometimes impaired by the size of their phylacteries, which seems like perfect irony. Instead of practicing their faith in such a manner that their sense of understanding and vision expanded, they were actually blinded by their religiosity.

We would say that the Pharisees were familiar with the letter of the law but not the spirit. They were tragically misguided in the implementation of their faith. They were confused as to who the tradition was to glorify – which is a problem that seems to get recreated by each generation and religious tradition.

But before I smear the Pharisees too badly I want you to think about this: the Pharisaic movement developed within Judaism in much the same way the Methodist movement grew out of the Anglican Church. Some of the same sad dynamics existed within both of those religious environments that gave rise to these reform movements. Just as John Wesley was driven to confront the way in which Christianity had become an enclave for privileged members of 18^th Century English society, the early leaders of the Pharisaic movement sought to turn Judaism in to a more vibrant exercise of faith for all the people of Israel instead of a dead set of practices that were carried out by the aristocratic priests.

The Pharisaic movement only came to life within Judaism about 150 years before Jesus was born, and it was very much a reformation movement. Around that time the faith of Israel was pretty much directed by elite members of Jewish society who were known as the Sadducees, and for the average person in Israel, proper observance of Judaism was reduced to showing up at the Temple for the major feasts of the year and making the proper sacrifices. Judaism was directed by the priests who were handed those privileged positions by the aristocratic leaders of the Sadducees. They only recognized the Torah, or the first five books of the Hebrew bible as being authoritative, and they didn’t recognize the value of any commentary on those books. Under those circumstances, the faith of Israel had become very static and removed from the hands of common people.

In a similar fashion, being a member of the Anglican Church in the early 1700s was largely an exercise in being a proper member of English society. There was very little effort to connect faith in God with life on earth. The role of the priest was to baptize and to bury those who were considered to be worthy of such attention. The church of England exhibited little interest in the physical or spiritual lives the impoverished members of society, and it offered little resistance to the social evils of the day – which were rampant.

It was in to a situation where faith in God had become largely divorced from any kind of outreach to the world that John Wesley came along and put the two back together. Consequently, he was largely shut out of the cathedrals of his day, but he created a huge movement among people who were hungry to hear the good news that Jesus Christ came for all people. Wesley was able to connect faith in God with a genuine form of piety. He was able to weave together worship and service in a way that was both inspirational and practical. John Wesley moved the church out in to the neighborhoods of the people who weren’t welcome in the cathedrals. He didn’t intend to start a new denomination within Christianity, but what he did was too large to be contained within the Anglican Church.

In a very similar way, the Pharisees had moved Judaism away from the Temple and in to the hands of the people. Some have described the Pharisaic movement was an exercise in democracy. It represented a movement away from a priestly led institution in to a movement among lay-people to study and to connect their faith with their daily lives. The Pharisees emphasized the importance of practices that anyone could do. Originally, the Pharisees were average members of society who sought to educate themselves on the Mosaic tradition, and they honored sacred writings other than the Torah. What the Pharisees taught was very appealing to the common people of Israel because it made the faith more accessible to anyone – at least at first. It clearly began as a reform movement, but by the time Jesus came along it had become a bit of a nightmare.

What started out as an exercise in encouraging people to learn and to study turned in to an institution that over-emphasized the importance of purity and imposed endless demands upon people. Instead of just going to the Temple two or three times a year to give the priest their due, the Pharisees called people out for all sorts of technical violations. It was the Pharisees who condemned Jesus for not washing his hands properly, and doing things like gathering food and healing on the Sabbath. That reform movement was in need of reformation by the time Jesus came along, but it grew out of something that once had vitality.

There aren’t perfect parallels between the Pharisees of Jesus’ day and the United Methodists of our day. For one thing, I think it’s a lot easier to be a Methodist than it was to be a Pharisee, but I think it’s worth noting that both of these groups began as reform movements within institutions that needed reformation. I’m happier to call myself a Methodist than to wear the label of a Pharisee – I’m proud to say we’ve got them beat when it comes to being less religiously pretentious, but I don’t think it’s ever easy to see self-deception.

The way the gospels are written it’s easy for us to see the ways in which the Pharisees wore their religion a bit too proudly. Matthew clearly wanted us to see the ways in which the Pharisees over-emphasized the wrong things and were ignorant of essential things, but for the most part they were people who were wanting to wear their religion well. There may well have been some who were consciously hypocritical – those who were out to maintain their position as leaders of the religious community regardless of what they knew to be true, but I’m guessing there were many Pharisees who were genuinely distressed by Jesus – of the way he violated what they believed to be essential aspects of their faith.

And frankly speaking, this is something that scares me about being an Elder in an institution that began as a movement. And I think it should all of us.

I know Halloween is over. I know I shouldn’t be trying to scare you this morning, but this is a scary passage of scripture! Jesus was warning us religious people not to be like the religious people of his day – people who wore the costume of faith in God without having the inner understanding of the undertaking. Jesus wanted us to be the genuine articles of faith.

Today is the day we celebrate All Saints Day in the church. It’s traditionally the day we acknowledge our loved ones who have passed away, and that’s an important thing that we do. We don’t know all the ways in which other people enrich our lives, but we do know we are touched by the lives of other people. Communities of faith in particular are guided by those who have gone before us, and while we know those who came before us weren’t perfect, we can learn a lot from the ways that others have lived. I think the reason we have such a day in the church is to acknowledge our debt to those who have provided light for our paths.

We have all been touched by many people in very personal ways, but there are some individuals who have been very influential over many of us. I’m mindful today of the way our spiritual ancestor, John Wesley, helped steer the Anglican Church away from being such a deadly club-like institution in to a vibrant community that helped people develop actual faith in God. John Wesley is truly one of the saints of our tradition, and one of the best contributions that he made to Christian theology is his emphasis on our ability to grow in faith.

Wesley rejected the notion of Christianity as being a static rank you obtained when you made the right confession. Wesley believed faith in Christ was the pursuit of a lifetime. He believed we could grow in our knowledge and understanding of God and that there was always more to be learned and experienced.

Wesley was an advocate of practicing what he called the means of grace, which included things like attending worship, reading scripture, partaking of Holy Communion, fasting, praying, attending to the needs of others, engaging in spiritually edifying conversation, and doing good work in general. Wesley believed it would help our spiritual lives develop if we would engage in the right physical activities, and I believe this as well.

You might argue that doing these outward things are really no different from what the Pharisees were doing when they wore garments and accessories that were supposed to remind them of what they were all about, and there’s probably some truth to that, but I think it would take an incredibly hard-hearted person to tend to the sick, visit the imprisoned, and feed the hungry on a regular basis without becoming a more gracious person.

Of course, there are no guaranteed avenues to faith. Our religious costumes can look a lot like genuine articles, but the joy of following Christ is not in looking right but in being right. It’s not the outward appearance that will bring us peace but the inward desire to love God and to serve one another.

It’s a high bar that’s been set before us. You might say our goal is to be more righteous than the Pharisees and more compassionate than the Wesleyans. Our hope is not to become official saints, but to join that endless list of unofficial saints who weren’t guided by the desire to look right, but who truly yearned to get it right.

Thanks be to God for providing us with the opportunity to wear those genuine articles of faith.

Amen.

Rendered To Life

Matthew 22:15-22

15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20 Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” 21 They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

Jesus touched a lot of nerves as he went about his ministry in Israel, and the tension was high when he arrived in Jerusalem for Passover. I’m probably the only one counting the number of encounters we’ve examined over the past few Sundays, and I’m very aware of the fact that this is the fourth week in which our Gospel lesson is set in the Temple during that huge annual festival. Once again, Jesus is addressing his Jewish adversaries, but today we aren’t dealing with a parable or an allegory as we have for the last 3 weeks. Today we’re looking at some straight dialogue, and this conversation has some interesting dynamics.

It was a remarkable thing for the Herodians and the Pharisees to collaborate on anything, but Jesus brought them together. Under normal circumstances the Pharisees and the Herodians couldn’t stand each other. The Herodians were the Jews who actually supported the Roman occupancy of Israel. They were rewarded by Romans with positions of authority within Israel, and the Romans used the Herodians to collect the taxes and to help maintain the kind of order within Jewish society that the Romans desired.

Under normal circumstances, the Herodians were considered to be horrible collaborators by the Pharisees along with other groups within Israel who longed for independence from Rome. The Herodians and the Pharisees were as far apart on the political spectrum as they could be, but both of these groups were challenged and threatened by Jesus, so they got together to ask Jesus about the thing that always gets people stirred up – taxes.

The Herodians were beneficiaries of Jewish taxes. You might say the Romans provided them with lucrative government contracts. They managed the tax collection program, and they were appointed to the highest offices. The High Priest was actually appointed by the governor as were all of the other priestly positions associated with Temple functions in Jerusalem, and these people were generally considered to be Herodians.

The Pharisees hated Roman taxes and the people who benefitted from those taxes. The Pharisees were out to create religious purity within Israel, and they were highly offended by the control that Rome had over their state. They considered Roman coins to be dirty money because the coins were inscribed in a way that portrayed Caesar as a god, so they considered Herodians to be dirty collaborators. For the Pharisees, paying taxes to Rome was like bowing down to a false god. And the Pharisees represented popular opinion within Israel. Not everyone who hated Roman taxes were associated with the Pharisees, but there were many different groups that felt the same way about those taxes.

So it was a rare day when the Herodians and the Pharisees got together on a plan, but neither of these groups had any affection for Jesus. The Herodians considered him to be an insurrectionist, and the Pharisees considered him to be an infidel. Both groups feared his popularity, so they shared this interest in getting him to say something unfortunate. This was an interesting political alliance that approached Jesus to ask him about taxes. They didn’t know what he was going to say, but they thought his answer would either result in his arrest or in the loss of his popular support. They thought they had him between that proverbial rock and a hard place.

I’m reminded of my friend who was once the pastor of a struggling congregation. It was a church that was largely financed by one couple, and that couple became unhappy with the nature of my friend’s preaching. My friend wasn’t hostile to the affluence of his primary contributor, but they didn’t see eye to eye on some things, and this couple got in touch with the District Superintendent about getting my friend moved to a different church. Unfortunately for the District Superintendent, when the word got out that my friend was going to be moved the bulk of the congregation let it be known that they would probably stop coming to that church if they moved the pastor. So the District Superintendent had to decide if he wanted to have a financially stable church with one family, or a poor church with a significant congregation.

I hate to own up to taking pleasure in the discomfort of others, but I was a little amused by the dilemma of that District Superintendent. The situation sort of resolved itself when the affluent couple moved to another UM church, where they were properly appreciated I’m sure, and they stuck the struggling congregation on with another church.

Religion, politics, and money – that’s a powerful brew. You mix those elements and you produce some interesting situations. It’s a combination that moves people to do unusual things, and it reveals raw agendas. When Jesus stepped in to the Temple people were compelled to decide what they valued the most, and much of what emerged wasn’t very pretty.

Newer versions of the Bible don’t use the word, render, to describe what Jesus said to his questioners. The New Revised Standard Version has Jesus saying that we should, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s, but older English translations say we should, render under to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. I think this speaks to the fact that most of us are pretty far removed from any kind of rendering process, but previous generations were more familiar with the term.

I’ve never done any rendering, nor have I ever toured a rendering plant, but I’ve driven by one, and I can testify that it’s an aromatic process. A rendering plant is a place where they basically cook animal carcasses down until they are reduced to their elemental materials. It’s not a pleasant process to ponder, but it’s very useful in a utilitarian sense. I’m not saying the way we treat animals is right, but it happens and most of us probably use some products that are somehow connected to that process.

And our Jewish ancestors were very familiar with that process. In some ways the ancient Temple had as much in common with a slaughterhouse as it does with a church sanctuary, and holy rituals were very much connected to what we might think of as butchering and rendering. So I think it’s helpful for us to think about the rendering process. It was the process they used to separate the most precious form of fat from the less valuable animal byproducts.

In some ways you can think of rendering as the process of reducing a creature down to it’s essential elements, and in a figurative sense, that’s a process that we sometimes find ourselves going through. Hard times put us in touch with what we are made of, and that’s not an entirely bad thing to experience. A life crisis isn’t anything any of us would choose for ourselves or for others that we know and love, but it’s not a bad thing to recognize what we value most and love the dearest.

You might say Jesus created a crisis for the Jewish community, and what emerged from that crisis wasn’t all good. It turns out that there were some people who valued and loved the wrong things. Jesus revealed the truth about God, and it turns out that there were some people who preferred their false illusions of God. In fact there were people of every different political and religious persuasion who loved their false understandings more than anything else, and Jesus functioned as a spiritual rendering plant. People who came in contact with Jesus were reduced to their essential elements and unfortunately many of them were shown to have more love for their own personal interests than for God.

We live in a far different, but an equally difficult world. In some ways it’s not as easy for us to identify the ways in which the demands of Caesar are placed upon us. There aren’t people in this world who blatantly establish themselves as gods and ask others to bow down to them. That just doesn’t work so well anymore, but there are ways in which institutions and individuals continue to lord themselves over other people. False understandings of God continue to exist, and many of us often give unwitting support to the false gods of our day.

It’s not easy to recognize the ways in which we give our best to Caesar and our leftovers to God, but I think this admonition from Jesus to, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s, is a powerfully pertinent thing for us to ponder.

If we were to be reduced to our most essential elements what would be revealed. To whom do we give our best, and who is it that we reluctantly give what we must.

I think Jesus was acknowledging that there are these Caesars in the world that must be fed. It’s all but impossible to not pay tribute to some ugly entities in this world, and I’m grateful that Jesus didn’t say to ignore Caesar. Jesus said to give Caesar what Caesar deserves. Caesar doesn’t deserve much, but you’ve got to give Caesar what Caesar is due.

And this sounds sort of easy, but it’s not. Caesar wants our complete allegiance and Caesar rewards that kind of attention. In many ways, if you want to do well in this world you’ve got to give your best to Caesar, but if you want to find true life you give your best to God. I’m speaking very metaphorically here. In fact I’m being intentionally vague about what it means to serve Caesar or to serve God because I don’t want Caesar to come after me.

But we all have critical decisions to make in regard to who it is that we love the most. It’s impossible for us not to engage with systems and institutions that have no regard for God, and because of this it’s critical for us to understand who it is we seek to serve. It would be nice if the only relationship we had to pay attention to is our relationship with God, but this isn’t possible, and Jesus seemed to be acknowledging this with his clever answer.

The one to whom we give our best is the one to whom we truly serve. And who it is we love the most determines whether or not we will be rendered to death or rendered to life when any form of heat gets turned our way. Jesus didn’t give us a magic formula for how we organize our lives, but he did provide a clear message about how we will find true life, and the message is that we need to be clear about who it is we live to serve. We live in a messy world and it’s not easy to find that narrow path that leads to true life, but Jesus spoke true words and the Holy Spirit is on hand to help us understand what he was talking about.

It’s tricky business to navigate through the godless traps that are easy for us to fall in to, and the enemies of God have many advocates who try to lure us in to giving to Caesar what belongs to God, but we aren’t on our own in this messy world. The Lord, our God is with us, and by the grace of God we will choose to live in a way that will keep us close to the source of true life and out of the grip of Caesar.

Thanks be to God – Amen.

Properly Responsive

Matthew 22:1-14

1 Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying::2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ 5 But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. 8 Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ 10 Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. 11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, 12 and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Last week I talked a little bit about the difference between an allegory and a parable. I pointed out that an allegory is generally sort of a straight story who’s fictional characters represent identifiable people or entities, and that a parable is a story that goes off in a strange direction in order to make you question your view of reality. This week’s story reveals how fuzzy the line can be between those two types of stories. What we have this week is a story with some strong allegorical features that concludes with a twist that’s fitting of a parable. So when you start reading this parable you think you know what it’s all about. You think you know who represents who in this story and how it’s going to play out, but the story ends with a bizarre twist. If you don’t find yourself saying: What?!! – you aren’t paying attention.

I mean the situation is that Jesus is in the temple and he knows the chief priests and the Pharisees and all of the other people who didn’t like his message and leadership style were plotting against him. He knows that he’s dealing with some biblically literate people, so he knew it wouldn’t be hard for his detractors to understand what he was saying. They knew that he was connecting them with that long line of false prophets and leaders who lead the people of Israel astray. This story of the wedding feast is a pretty transparent tale that identifies the current leaders of Israel as being like those guests who were invited to the king’s wedding banquet and then refused to show up.

This story portrays the kingdom of God as being the kind of place where you aren’t likely to find the people who were originally invited to be a part of God’s holy community. This story reveals the ongoing tradition of abuse within the leadership of Israel and it identifies God’s rejection of those false leaders in a rather graphic way. You think you know how this story is going to end with the king inviting to the banquet those who were formerly uninvited. That is in fact what happens, and the king seems pleased that these new guests actually show up. It seems to be such a nice story for people like us who were never a part of the community that originally rejected Jesus, but out of no-where the king sees someone who isn’t dressed properly, and he has his guards grab that man, bind him, and throw him in to an entirely unpleasant place.

You probably came here this morning expecting to have a little relief from the variety of stressful stories that inundate our various news-feed-lines, and here we have a story that seems to portray God as being a little more erratic and inhospitable that we generally think of God as being. I’m a big fan of that promotional campaign that was introduced in the United Methodist Church a few years ago that described our denomination as being defined by Open Hearts, Open Doors and Open Minds. I like to think of our church as being the kind of place that welcomes everyone, but this passage of scripture makes me think the slogan needs a footnote directing prospects to the fine print that says: Enter at your own risk. Circumstances may call for you to be bound and cast in to the outer darkness where you will find weeping and gnashing of teeth.

There’s sort of a terrifying conclusion to this story, but I don’t think the news is as bad as it may seem on first glance. Once again, I think it’s important to recognize the context of this story. Jesus was talking to people who were very literally out to kill him, and he didn’t want them to continue going down that road without some clear warning of the danger involved in what they intended to do. And in fact, Jesus didn’t want any of us to be unaware of the costs of following him. I believe Jesus used some hyperbole to illustrate this point. I don’t believe this is a literal portrayal of how God treats houseguests, but the truth is that following Jesus is not a free ride down a lovely lane through a peaceful valley.

I liked that United Methodist promotional campaign, but it really isn’t an accurate portrayal of what the Christian faith is all about. If we are going to be true to the message Jesus presented our slogan should be something like this: United Methodism: It’s Not For Everyone.

Because the Christian faith is not designed to be an easy undertaking. Our denomination, like many other denominations and institutions, has experienced a lot of decline over the last few decades, and we continue to struggle to get our trend lines moving up instead of down. We want the church to be an attractive organization, but in all honesty Jesus isn’t the easiest messiah to follow. When he told his followers to pick up their cross and follow him he wasn’t talking about picking up a piece of jewelry that could be hung on a small gold chain. The church is an easy organization to join, but the honest truth is that following Jesus is hard.

And of course if you actually get involved in a church you know it’s hard. Unfortunately the hard things that we encounter in church are often organizational matters. I’m happy to say that we aren’t currently experiencing financial hardship within our church. This is not to say that you can rest easy. We have what you might call some fragile stability, but this is so much better than financial distress.

I know a man who was the Chairperson of the Finance Committee of a church that had become overextended in a number of ways and they had a perpetual shortage of money. He served in that role for a number of years, and he told me that he often remembers how relieved he was on the first day of January of the year he rotated out of that position. He said that was the first thing he thought about when he woke up on the first day of that new year and he could still remember how sweet that feeling was. He was clearly exercising some faithful discipleship in serving in that role, but I think it’s sort of sad that the people who engage in the most challenging church-work are often doing what they can to keep the doors open. I can tell you, I’m incredibly grateful to those of you who do the hard work of keeping the doors open, but I’m pretty sure the hard work Jesus was calling for us to do is beyond the doors of the church.

Jesus wants us to know that we are going to experience some uncomfortable demands if we are faithful to his call.

Of course following Christ isn’t just about costly effort. After all, Jesus compared the invitation to abide in the Kingdom of God to an invitation to a wedding banquet, and in Jesus’ day about the best thing that came along in a village was a wedding banquet. That’s when you got access to the best food and drink. A wedding banquet was a great break from what was generally a pretty tough and austere routine. So the invitation to follow him was an invitation to a grand opportunity, and the invitation comes to us as a great gift, but there’s an expectation of response.

This isn’t easy for us to hear, but I think we all know that it’s true. To be unresponsive to God’s expectation is to somehow miss the party. Actually, Jesus says this is a reason to be thrown out of the party. This isn’t an easy thing for us to hear Jesus saying, but it’s important to keep in mind that there aren’t any of us who are qualified to judge what’s expected of others. It’s the king who observed the guests and who didn’t like what that one person was wearing. It’s God alone who judges our fitness for the banquet. And it’s God who enables us understand what’s expected of us. It’s not unreasonable for us to encourage faithful living within our community, and I think we can help each other discern what that is, but it’s not up to us to decide who is properly or improperly suited up for God’s kingdom.

I don’t think the intent of this passage is to generate fear of God, but I do believe it is designed to illustrate the importance of connecting our lives with our professed desire to show up for God. If we accept the invitation to this divine banquet that we call the kingdom of heaven – we need to pay attention to what we have on – so to speak.

You may think that a person who owns a fluorescent green suit and puts a pumpkin on his head has little regard for the importance of appearance, but I’m actually pretty sensitive to being properly dressed. There’s an experience from a few years ago that’s seared in to my memory of when I realized that what I was wearing was totally inappropriate for where I was going. It happened when my daughter, Liza, was about 2 years old, and I had taken her to a Mother’s Day Out program at a YWCA in Durham, NC. Sharla was in class for the day, and I had taken Liza to Mothers Day Out so I could spend the morning painting our house. I had gotten to work and it was hot and I was young, so I had taken my shirt off. I suddenly realized I was about to be late picking Liza up, so I jumped in the car and started driving to get her. I was about half-way there when I realized I didn’t have a shirt on, and there wasn’t one in the car. It wasn’t a short drive, and I was already going to be a bit late – which was heavily frowned upon,  but I was mortified by the thought of walking in to that day-care situation without a shirt on.

I was near a restaurant where I knew the manager, and of course it isn’t proper to go in to a restaurant without a shirt on either, but that seemed like my best option. I ran in with $10 in my hand begging for a t-shirt and luckily my manager-friend was on duty and she sold me a shirt instead of throwing me out. I was so relieved to get a shirt on before I stepped in to the Mother’s Day Out community. I was late, but I avoided the humiliation of being so improperly covered.

It’s a terrible feeling to be inappropriately dressed. To feel some public scorn is to experience some inner wailing and gnashing of teeth. Jesus knows how much we hate to be singled out and to have our personal failure exhibited to the public, and I think he used that fear we have to raise our awareness of how important it is to respond appropriately to this invitation we’ve been given to live in relationship with God. It’s a gracious offer, and we don’t need to ignore it. Jesus told this allegorical parable so we will pay attention to our spiritual clothing.

Jesus wants us to feel some discomfort if we aren’t wearing our faith well. Jesus told this story to expose the impropriety of the religious offenders, pretenders, and neglecters of his day and of ours. The living Christ doesn’t want those of us who recently got invited to the party to think that we are fine just because we aren’t the former people.

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced the humiliation of being improperly dressed, but I can testify that its not a good feeling, and I know I don’t want to repeat the experience. I hate to think how often I’ve failed to show up wearing the spiritually proper clothing, but it’s very clear to me that Jesus wants us to pay attention to such matters.

I don’t know if shirts and shoes are required at the banquet of the Lord, but I’m sure we need to be wearing some genuine love and forgiveness in our hearts if we want to enjoy the feast.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

God’s Employment Policy

Matthew 21:33-44

33 “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. 34 When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. 35 But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. 37 Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ 39 So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40 Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 41 They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” 42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? 43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. 44 The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” 45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. 46 They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

Matthew labels this story Jesus tells as a parable, but it seems to function more like an allegory. Unlike a parable, which usually involves a familiar circumstance that goes off in a strange direction, an allegory is a story where the characters represent identifiable people. A parable is designed to disrupt your usual way of seeing and interpreting the world, while an allegory unmasks a truth in a manner that isn’t very hard to follow. A parable causes you to think while an allegory reminds you of something you probably already know.

The Gospel of Matthew seems to have been directed toward people who were familiar with the faith and history of Israel. The community that Matthew was addressing was wrestling with the issue of how Jesus fit in with the Jewish faith tradition, and this story serves as both an endorsement of what God had done through the people of Israel, and an indictment of the way in which Israel had been managed.

It’s not very hard to identify who the various characters in this story represent. The landowner is God, and the vineyard that the landowner established is Israel. The tenants of the vineyard are the various leaders of Israel who had put their own interests above God’s intentions, and those who came throughout time to collect the rent were the various prophets that were persecuted for their efforts to speak the truth. Of course the landowner’s son that was killed by the tenants represents Jesus, the killers were the various scribes, chief priests, and Pharisees who rejected Jesus, and the new tenants of the vineyard would be us, the church.

It wouldn’t have been hard for the religious executives of the day to see who was who in this story, and I’m sure they didn’t like it, but they didn’t choose to change their role in the story. Upon hearing this story they became even more determined to have Jesus arrested and killed. The story ends with the old tenants being put out and put to death in a miserable manner, which is suitable for the story, but not something for us to use maliciously. Jesus didn’t tell this story in order for us to become overly self-assured of our own Christian righteousness. In fact it’s important for us to take note of the detail about us being the new tenants – not the owners of the vineyard. We don’t have a deed to the property – we have been granted a lease, and God is no doubt paying attention to the way in which we manage the farm.

I like this story. I’m not saying I like all the details of this story. It’s a tough story to hear, and it’s actually sort of gruesome, but I don’t mind a gruesome tale when it makes a good point. I don’t like to watch gratuitous violence on television or in movies, but you can’t really watch television without seeing somebody getting killed, and I don’t mind watching a malicious character getting killed in a fitting manner.

Of course we’ve seen and heard too many stories of real-life death on television this week. I can’t help but wonder if we haven’t become desensitized to actual death by our over-exposure to dramatized death. It’s enough to make you want to turn it all off, but it’s also been gratifying to hear the stories of heroism that were exhibited by so many people in response to the terror that erupted in Las Vegas last Sunday night.

And on a side note, I’m the owner of guns and I have appreciation for guns, but I’ve come to feel that access to military-style assault weapons needs to be more controlled. I’m sorry to distract from what Jesus was talking about, but I can’t help but share my feelings about this. I totally understand the need for self-defense, and I support the right to have self-defensive weapons. I even understand the attraction to shooting powerful weapons, and I’m ok with providing access to those weapons in controlled settings, but nobody aught to be able to build up the kind of death-dealing arsenal that the shooter in Las Vegas had legally acquired. There may be something about this that I don’t understand, and I’m open to a debate about it, but I feel like we’ve got a gun problem that needs to be addressed in a significant way.

I don’t mean to distract you from what Jesus was wanting us to think about, but I think this is on all of our minds, and I just can’t keep from saying something about it.

Of course it’s a life and death issue that Jesus wants us to think about. Jesus told this story to illustrate what it looks like to live in a manner that embraces death and not life, and he doesn’t want us to make that mistake. He, more than anyone else, recognized that it’s possible for people who profess to love God to live in ways that offend God, and he doesn’t want us to do that. God has had some bad tenants of his vineyard, and we need to not do as they have done. If we want to remain as tenants of God’s good vineyard we need to know what God expects and to do the work that gives God pleasure.

This is a story that taps in to that vein of outrage that we probably all can find within ourselves when we hear of excessively bad behavior or perhaps even experience it. I know it’s easy for me to get infuriated by people who take advantage of situations to serve themselves.

When I was the associate pastor at Lakewood UMC we had the misfortune of hiring a new secretary who turned out to be a thief. She wasn’t there long enough to figure out how to steal large amounts of money, but she started taking money from a petty cash fund that I kept in my desk drawer. We had started a recycling program at the church, and every once in while this retired man and I would load up a trailer full of newspaper and take it to a local recycling plant. We’d get $15 or $20 dollars/trip and I would just put it and the receipts in a cash box in my drawer until I had a good collection and then I would add up the receipts and the cash and give it to the financial secretary. We had been doing that for a year or so and the money and the receipts always added up, until we hired a new secretary, and on more than one occasion the money didn’t match the receipts. The money wasn’t all gone, but a significant portion would be missing.

I became very suspicious of her. And then I became outraged. We had a fish fry for the youth program one weekend and I worked really hard on that event. I counted the money on that Monday morning and I guess I was tired and not sufficiently vigilant and I left the cash in my drawer when I went to lunch. When I came back there was $100 less than what I had counted that morning.

At that point I went on a mission to catch her in the act. I actually hid in my closet one day during lunch in hope of catching her looking through my drawer, but that didn’t work out – people kept coming in the office all morning. I didn’t want to spend every lunch in my closet so I bought a light activated alarm from Radio Shack. I put it in my cash box, and I left it on my desk one day during lunch. I had shared my suspicion with Doris the Financial Secretary, and her office was near mine, and I told her if she heard an alarm going off in my office she should take note of who was in there.

When I came in from lunch that afternoon Doris came in my office and she was sort of hyper-ventilating. She told me she had heard that alarm and then she had seen the secretary leaving my office. I thanked her for letting me know, and I proceeded to tell the senior minister that our secretary was a thief. He was newly appointed to the church, and we had only been working together for about a month. And after telling him what I had done he wasn’t sure if I was a nut or she was a thief.

He chose to trust me and he confronted her with the information I had given him. She acted offended by his accusation, but she called him at midnight that night and said she couldn’t work with people who didn’t trust her. By the next morning she had removed all of her stuff from her desk and we never saw her again.

I’ve got a short fuse when it comes to people stealing from the church. I think most decent people can get pretty activated by people who take advantage of godly institutions, and rightly so. Stealing money from a church is clearly a bad thing to do, but what isn’t so clear are the ways in which we aren’t so vigilant about the subtle ways we take advantage of God.

And when I say this I’m thinking more of what the Catholic church would label as sins of omission as opposed to sins of commission. As the Apostle Paul says in Romans: For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. There may be some obvious things that we do that are clearly offensive to God and hurtful to our neighbors, but I think it’s more likely that we harbor attitudes and habits that we don’t even know are ungodly and insensitive. There are ways in which we fail to do something good because we simply aren’t paying attention.

It’s too bad that you can’t buy a little alarm like the one I got from Radio Shack, but instead of going off whenever it’s exposed to light it would go off when we hide from the light.

Jesus didn’t just tell this story in order to reveal the excessive pride of the Jewish authorities. Jesus wanted to drill through the layers denial that we are capable of building up between us and the truth. He doesn’t want us to focus on the misguided tendencies of those who have come before us or even of the evil scoundrels of our day. Jesus wants us to live with keen awareness of ourselves. Jesus told this story in order for us to maintain a high level of alertness for how we might be less self-serving and more God-fearing.

This story portrays God as being capable of dealing with us in a harsh manner, but that isn’t the focus of this story. The intent of this story is to highlight the choices we make in how we live our lives, and there are clear consequences of the choices we make. There are ways of living that put us in touch with the very present kingdom of God, and there are ways of living that put us in touch with death. It’s not always so easy to see the ways in which we are choosing death over life, and that’s why Jesus told this story. He wants us to be alert, and to be good stewards of God’s beautiful vineyard.

We’ve been given a good deal, and by the grace of God we’ll maintain our end of the bargain.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Powerful Questions

Matthew 21:23-32

23 When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” 24 Jesus said to them, “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. 25 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, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 26 But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.” 27 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. 28 “What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ 29 He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. 30 The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. 31 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. 32 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.

Dr. Charles Campbell is a professor of homiletics at Duke Divinity School – which means he tries to teach people how to preach. And that’s got to be one of the hardest jobs there is. I don’t know how you train a person to speak for 12 to 20 minutes in a way that’s creative, inspirational, relevant, insightful, wise, witty, and true to the Biblical text. I wish someone could have trained me to be all of those things. Actually I wish I had given them the chance to train me to be those things. I hardly took any classes in preaching when I was in seminary. I’m not sure what I thought I would be doing when I became a preacher, but it turns out that preachers do a lot of preaching.

But I came across something Charles Campbell wrote as I was working on my sermon earlier this week, and it made me think he’s the kind of professor I would have enjoyed having. He mentioned that while he was channel-surfing one day – I don’t know if that’s something he recommends to his students to do in order to get sermon ideas or not, but while he was channel-surfing he came across someone who was interviewing the celebrity psychologist, Dr. Phil. And he heard Dr. Phil say something that got his attention.

Dr. Phil usually does the interviewing, but as I say, on this occasion Dr. Phil was being interviewed, and when Dr. Phil was asked who he would like to interview if he could interview anyone from any period of time he immediately responded by saying he would like to interview Jesus Christ. He said he would like to have a conversation with Jesus about the meaning of life.

Charles Campbell said that when he heard Dr. Phil’s answer he immediately thought to himself how badly it would go if Dr. Phil tried to interview Jesus. It’s not that Dr. Phil isn’t a skilled interviewer, he would probably do as well as anyone, but it just never went well for people who tried to extract information from Jesus. Jesus would probably not have given Dr. Phil the interview of his dreams. It’s far more likely that such a conversation would turn in to a nightmare.

Children could probably have asked Jesus questions without being frightened by his response, but the adults who questioned him usually found themselves in some kind of a bind. Of course, the people who shot questions at him were usually out to do him in. They were often trying to get him to say something that would either get him stoned to death by a crowd or arrested by the police, but that’s not what generally happened. Such interrogators usually found themselves running for theological cover.

But even those who weren’t out to get him were often troubled by his response to their inquiries. I’m thinking of the well-meaning and affluent young man who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus told him he should go sell everything and follow him – which is not what he was hoping to hear. Maybe Dr. Phil could do what no-one else ever did, which was to leave a conversation with Jesus without having their world turned upside down, but I’m with Dr. Campbell on this – I don’t think that would be a real career-boosting move for Dr. Phil to interview Jesus.

Of course it’s not always a bad thing to have a painful experience that provides you with greater understanding. I remember the day I learned about the power of fire. I think I was probably 5 or 6 years old when I climbed up on the kitchen counter to get the box of matches that I had seen my parents use every now and then. Those matches were so interesting to me. I struck one of them and held it to the curtains on the kitchen door. I didn’t think anything had happened until after I had put the box back up and turned around to see a large flame growing. Luckily my keeper was in the house and came quickly when I screamed. She got the flame put out, but not without some tragedy. We had a parakeet in a cage nearby, and apparently the bird was going nuts. She opened the cage and the bird flew in to the wall and died.

It was a terrible and memorable event for me. That may be my earliest memory. That was a very educational experience for me. An educational experience – that’s what you call an idiotic act a couple of years later when it’s safe to bring it up.

I don’t know if the chief priests and elders were ever able to recognize this encounter with Jesus as being an educational experience, but they certainly underestimated their adversary, and what they exposed was not what they wanted people to see.

I’m guessing these chief priests and elders were accustomed to being in the role of Dr. Phil – they were the ones who liked to put people on the spot and make them answer uncomfortable questions. They were hoping to expose Jesus as being someone who was totally out of bounds, and I can understand where they were coming from. This conversation happened the day after Jesus had gone in to the temple and totally disrupted the religious marketplace. When they asked Jesus who gave him the authority to do those things, the things they were talking about included turning over the tables of the money changers, freeing the unblemished animals that were for sale, and driving the sales staff out with a whip. Those things Jesus did had not gone over well with the temple authorities, and they wanted to know who gave him the authority to do such things.

They thought their question would get him to say something blasphemous or incriminating, but it blew up on them. His question to them about the authority of John the Baptist put them in an exceedingly awkward position, and their hesitation to answer him revealed them to be the ones who were operating with false authority. He exposed them to be like the son who said he would go in to the field but didn’t. He declared them to be less righteous than those who were generally considered to be the least righteous people in the community, and it was believable.

You’re probably familiar with that wise old saying: It’s better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. I don’t always let this wisdom guide my mouth, but I know there’s some truth to it, and it’s not that hard for me to keep my ignorance to myself. I have learned to be careful. I think I would have known not to challenge Jesus. I’m not like Dr. Phil – I’m careful about who I choose to challenge.

I’ve got a friend who finds it really hard not share his opinion about whatever is going on in the world or at work. He used to be real clear about what he thought about everything on Facebook, but the reactions he got sort of soured him on the practice. I sort of admired him for his honesty and openness, but it got to him. He and I were talking about this not long ago, and I told him how inclined I am to keep a low Facebook profile. It’s easy for me to be careful in that way.

Being careful has it’s benefits, but it’s got it’s downside. Careful people don’t generally provoke powerful adversaries, but it’s the people who aren’t so careful that make things happen. We don’t have any stories in the gospels about the careful people who kept their distance from Jesus. Careful people didn’t get close enough to him to be questioned or challenged, and in so doing they avoided having the most profound educational experience you could possibly have. It might have been painful life lessons, but Jesus needed misguided people to engage with him in order for us to see some truth exposed.

When I read this morning’s passage I find myself being grateful that there were these people who were so blinded by their self-serving allegiance to their religious institution that they thought they could expose the spiritual weakness of Jesus. I’m so happy that they did this for us. What I see in this passage is the value of any kind of encounter with Jesus, and how important it is to become engaged with who he was and to hear what he had to say.

It’s not good to avoid those educational experiences that happen when you engage with the unknown. It’s important to step in to situations that are out of our control and disruptive to our comfortable patterns of behavior. It’s in those situation that we can learn the most about ourselves and become more fully alive. Jesus didn’t challenge people because he enjoyed giving people a hard time (he may have, but that’s not why he did it). Jesus challenged people because he wanted them to discover true life. Jesus didn’t call for repentance because he was a religious brute who wanted to exercise his godly authority. Jesus wanted people to leave their old lives behind in order to live better lives.

The religious executives could understand why the tax collectors and prostitutes needed to let go of their old lives, but they couldn’t see their own form of unrighteousness. The only thing they could see was the need to get rid of the man who didn’t respect their authority. I don’t know if any of them were able to see what Jesus actually revealed. We don’t know if any of them learned the right thing from this educational experience, but I think I know what Jesus always wants us to see.

Jesus wants us to see the truth about God and about ourselves. He wants us to know how well we are loved by God and how we can be the bearers of that love. But he also wants us to know of the ways in which we fail to connect our professed love for God with love for our neighbors. He wants us to see who it is we are serving, and who we may be hurting. What illusions are we promoting and what truths are we denying?

Honestly, I think Dr. Phil had a good answer when he was asked who he would like to interview. I’m guessing that’s not an interview he would be able to control, but that’s an interview we all need to have. We need to be in touch with the one who sees us for who we are and who loves us enough to ask us those perfectly unsettling questions.

We aren’t just called to live careful lives – we are called to be faithful. We’re going to make mistakes, but I think we all know that we learn the most from the things we do wrong. We aren’t to be reckless, but the most spiritually deadening thing may be to remain in our most comfortable places.

It’s not an easy thing to be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ, but the life lessons that he offers will last a lifetime and beyond.

Thanks be to God! Amen.

The Bread of Life

Matthew 20:1-16

1 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2 After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; 4 and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. 5 When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. 6 And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ 7 They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ 8 When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ 9 When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ 13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

I don’t guess we’ll ever figure out how to create the perfect order for our society. Hopefully the political pendulum will continue to swing back and forth in a civil manner. This parable doesn’t resolve the issue of how our economy should operate, but Jesus sure wanted us to wrestle with the issue. I think he wanted us to do some rethinking about the way things operate and to consider how we might better operate. He told this parable to disrupt the economic expectations of his day, and I suspect he wants us to do the same.

Now there are theologians who argue that this parable has nothing to do with money, and everything to do with the conflict between the Israelites and the Christians. Between those who were the original children of God (represented by those who were hired early in the day) and those who were newly invited to feast at the table of God (represented by those who were hired at the end of the day).

Of course whether this parable represents a theological or an economic conflict, the real issue is how we deal with the conflict between grace and justice. And there’s some serious tension between these two pillars of our faith. As people of faith we embrace the importance of fairness and justice, but we also recognize the value of unearned love and acceptance. The bread of heaven comes in a variety of forms, and we need to value all of the ways in which it arrives.

On a theological level, I think we Christians are pretty happy with the idea of newcomers being equally welcomed to the table of the Lord, so I don’t think it’s as helpful for us to think of this parable as being an allegory of the gentile/Jew debate. We gentiles who were invited late in the day aren’t very threatened by that kind of reading of the parable, and if it’s not threatening to our worldview that’s probably not how Jesus wants us to read it. Jesus told parables in order to challenge short-sightedness, and if the story doesn’t cause us some discomfort we probably aren’t reading it right.

If, however, you are currently feeling the full weight of life’s difficulty, I welcome you to identify with those who only worked an hour and were provided full pay for the day. Jesus always had good news for those who were the most troubled. Unlike the scribes and Pharisees of his day who heaped additional burdens on those who were the most troubled, Jesus had the most compassion for those who were having the hardest time.

This work/compensation issue is a sensitive one. It evokes passion in some powerful ways. This is one of those issues that just doesn’t come up in polite conversation. People don’t generally talk about how much they get paid for the work they do. Sometimes people don’t want others to know how little they make. Sometimes people don’t want others to know how much they make. This is a sensitive issue, and there probably aren’t too many people who feel like they are getting exactly what they deserve. I’m guessing this has always been a delicate issue, and Jesus stepped right into the middle of it.

How money is distributed has been the source of a lot of bad behavior over the planet for as long as people can remember. You might say the conflict between Cain and Able was over the distribution of wealth. God valued Abel’s sacrifice more than Cain’s, and the implication of the story is that Cain killed Abel out of envy or jealousy. It’s an abbreviated story and not easy to fully interpret, but clearly there was some conflict over who had what. Jesus knew how reactive we humans are about our financial situations, but that didn’t deter him from bringing it up. Jesus wasn’t interested in promoting propriety – he wanted us to understand the things that get in the way of our communion with God.

Once again, we are presented with some funny math from Jesus. Last week we were told to forgive our offenders an unfathomable number of times. This week we are presented with the story of a really wacky compensation system. We have here the story of a landowner who paid the same wage to people who spent wildly different amounts of time in the field, but the scoundrel in the story is not the landowner. The way Jesus told the story, the scandalous behavior came from the men who worked all day and complained that it wasn’t fair, but their complaints were dismissed by the landowner as having no merit.

It’s not hard for any of us to see how those who had been working all day were coming from, but once again, Jesus was wanting us to see that the Kingdom of God functions with a different set of values.  This story is designed to blurr our understanding of who is most deserving in the eyes of God. I think it serves to challenge our insistence on fairness when we think we are the most deserving, and it highlights God’s desire for all of us to get what we need.

I think this parable sort of parallels the debate we’re currently having over the issue of healthcare in our nation. I’m not claiming I know how to fix our national healthcare system, but I regret the way in which this debate has turned in to a battle between political parties, and in that sense the issues get buried under the amount of debris each party can dump on the other. Of course apart from the political conflict this issue has fostered, I think it highlights the same conflict that we see illustrated in this parable. The issue is, who is going to pay for something that some people need more than others? Should our system operate in a manner that’s fair or gracious?

Of course the miracle would be to find a system that’s both fair and gracious, but that’s an illusive concept right now. Adequate healthcare for all people seems to mean that healthy people pay for more than they need in order for those who can’t afford to cover the costs of their conditions. I think we all generally get that notion, but there are a lot of different ways to carve this problem up, and it’s hard not to get invested in the plan that’s the most fair to where you’re standing.

We don’t live in a world that’s fair. We all know that good fortune is a fickle friend and hard times are distributed in an equally unpredictable manner. We all contribute to our good or bad fortune in some significant ways, but we don’t get to pick our parents, our bodies, our brain-function, our place of origin or many other things that significantly define the course of our lives. We don’t all get a fair shake in life, and that’s unfortunate, but the unfairness that we encounter in life will only prevent us from abiding in the Kingdom of God if we are more focused on fairness than grace.

I believe Jesus told this parable to illustrate the fundamental element of grace that enables any of us to live in relationship with God. None of us have earned God’s favor. The Kingdom of God doesn’t function like a pickup game on the playground. You don’t get picked to be on God’s team because of your extraordinary ability to hurl a fast ball at evil. And I don’t think he wanted us to operate under the illusion that any of us do work that is so much more valuable than the work that others have been called to do.

This is a hard thing for us to get our minds around. We live in a world that sort of worships the work of some people and disregards the work of others. As a person who works in a position that’s relatively well compensated I can testify that we don’t live in a world that’s fair. I can get a little self-righteous about my modest compensation when I compare myself with the Joel Osteens of the world or even some of my United Methodist peers who have larger numbers by their names on the salary sheet, but I’m humbled by my knowledge of the the sacrifice of others I know who are doing God’s work in very private and even uncompensated ways.

Jesus didn’t want us to get confused about who is the most important in the Kingdom of God. This parable points to the fact that there isn’t a place for privilege in the Kingdom of God. None of us are invited into relationship with God because of our gifts, graces, or heroic efforts. Our place in the community of God is rooted in the gracious initiatives of God. The church needs us all to do what we can, but it doesn’t hinge upon any of us.

There is no shortage of jobs available for those of us who choose to follow Jesus, and the rewards are wildly abundant, but we don’t need to mistake our positions in society with our standing in God’s Kingdom. It’s easy to get these things confused, but today’s parable helps me to see pretty clearly how Jesus sorts us out, and it’s nothing like the way the marketplace generally operates.

I’m not entirely comforted by this passage. In some ways I identify more with the worker who went out first thing in the morning. It’s not that I feel like I’ve been at work longer than others, but those of us who’ve been given a fair shake at life are sort of like those men who were hired early. Those who were hired early in the day didn’t spend most of the day wondering where their daily bread was going to come from. A sense of security can create a sense of expectation, and maybe even a sense of entitlement – which is an attitude that quenches an appetite for the unexpected grace of God.

This is a challenging passage of scripture for those of us who have been dealt a fair hand, but I also know it’s the best news any of us will ever get. Because what Jesus wanted us all to know is that the bread of life will never run out. Fairness is going to fail us all at some point. The time will come for all of us when aren’t going to get what we expect or even what we may deserve, and that’s when God’s going to provide what we need. It may not be much in the eyes of the world, but God knows what to deliver when there’s nothing else to count on.

The Kingdom of God is ordered in a far different manner than the society in which we live, and this is a good thing. May we have the eyes to see and the hearts to understand how God chooses to distribute the true bread that comes from heaven. And may we feast on that bread now and forevermore!

Thanks be to God.

Amen

The Mathematics of God

Matthew 18:21-35

 21 Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. 23 “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25 and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. 31 When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

If you’ve ever spent a night in a cabin with 8 to 10 middle-school boys you begin to wonder how literally you can take this advice from Jesus about forgiving someone 77 times. I can remember being the chaperone at such a retreat and felt certain my capacity to forgive was approaching that magic number. Can you start pounding on someone if they offend you 78 times? I don’t expect that’s what Jesus had in mind, but if I ever find myself in a confined space with an abundance of unrulely boys I’m going to let them know that I’m not responsible for my behavior if they manage to offend my sensibilities 78 times.

There’s actually some debate among the Greek scholars as to whether Jesus said we should forgive someone 77 times or 70 times 7 times, but the point is pretty clear, and the point is he didn’t intend for us to keep count. I think we all know the importance of not keeping such counts. If you’re counting you’re going to have trouble

I used to watch that sitcom, “Home Improvement” pretty regularly, and I think I’ll always remember what Tim Allen said to one of his friends when he found out his friend was about to get married. Tim Allen didn’t give him any advice, he just said, Let me hear how well you can say “I’m sorry”.

I’ve never shared that line with any of the young people who have asked me to officiate at their wedding, but I’m guessing it’s a familiar phrase within most marriages. There’s that famous line from the movie, “Love Story”, where the woman says to the man she loves, Love means never having to say your sorry. And that’s a great line in a movie where the significant other dies young, but I’m more inclined to think Time Allen is right. Love means you’re always needing to say your sorry. I’m not sure what couples talk about if nobody is ever sorry about anything.

Of course the appeal for forgiveness is the easy side of this equation. Now it’s not always easy to acknowledge fault and seek forgiveness, but I find it to be so much easier to plead for forgiveness than to grant it. I want understanding in response to my failures. I want retribution when others commit offenses against me.

I really like the way this issue of forgiveness is examined in these verses. I think Peter was thinking he was being very generous in his estimation of how many times we should make the effort to forgive. He probably thought he was being wildly generous when he asked if we should forgive someone seven times, but when asked to establish a policy, Jesus stretched the number until it was off the chart.

There is so much truth in the parable Jesus told to illustrate the importance and the difficulty of forgiveness. I think the first scenario in this parable is one that we can all appreciate. The notion of a king forgiving the debt of a servant is like the plot of a Disney movie, but what those of us who live in a world of dollars and cents don’t immediately recognize is the extent of the debt that this king forgave. The amount of money that this servant owed was an unfathomable amount of money. Ten thousand talents was like bazillion dollars. It’s inconceivable that a servant could have built up such debt, but that isn’t the issue. The point is that the servant had no chance of repaying what he owed, but instead of punishing the servant in a crushing way, the king had compassion and gave him another chance.

There’s some hyperbole going on here. The extent of the forgiveness of debt is far beyond anything imaginable, but that’s the mindset Jesus wanted us to have in regard to forgiveness. We aren’t to be calculating when it comes to forgiving. This isn’t an easy thing to incorporate in to our economy. It would be hard for any business to stay afloat if they were to be so generous, but Jesus didn’t want us to have hard and fast rules about the amount of forgiveness we should exercise. He wanted us to be more forgiving than what seems reasonable.

This story of the master granting this unfathomable degree of forgiveness is a nice story, and I like to think it illustrates the way God will treat us all. It reaffirms the concept of our world being in the hands of a benevolent God who understands our capacity to get in over our head, and who chooses to give us a lift when we are unable to help ourselves. It’s a reassuring concept, but the story doesn’t end there. There’s this next episode that sort of shatters my sense of wellbing.

The servant who had been forgiven that unfathomable amount of money refuses to forgive his fellow servant who owes him a couple of bucks. This was some ugly behavior, and when the master hears about this he comes down on the unforgiving servant in a relatively satisfying manner. This feels like some nice justice, and it makes sense that this greedy servant would get what’s coming to him, but there’s something a little unsettling about this.

I think there are times when we all like the idea of there being some sound accounting taking place. We want those people we know who have done ourselves and others wrong to get what’s coming to them. But I’m not sure how to mesh the end of this story with the beginning of the story. Clearly there is this point that gets delivered quite clearly at the end of the story that there are some terrible consequences in store for us if we fail to be as forgiving toward others as God is forgiving of us, but the math doesn’t really add up.

At the beginning of this passage Jesus tells his disciples to be endlessly forgiving, but it ends by portraying this servant getting pounded because he immediately failed to be as forgiving as he should have been. And the final line is that this will be the case for us all if we don’t forgive our brothers and our sisters from our heart.

This is a powerful little parable. On one hand it reinforces the notion that there is no limit to the amount we can be forgiven, it calls for us to exercise unlimited forgiveness, and then it points to God’s willingness to exercise swift, eternal, and painful punishment. This is some funny math. There’s unlimited forgiveness in the kingdom of God, but it’s possible to have an attitude that is virtually unforgivable.

I’m pretty sure Jesus was sort of messing with us in this parable. It seems to me that there are two messages in this parable and each message sort of cancels out the other. It portrays God as being unfathomably forgiving and in doing so to reinforce our need to be have that same attitude toward others, but it also portrays God as being pretty quick to condemn someone who doesn’t live up to the proper standard of forgiveness.

On one hand, I think Jesus wanted to keep us a little off balance. Not unbalanced in a bad way, but I don’t think he ever wanted us to become so sure of ourselves that we become quick to judge other people and to decide who is in for what at the end of time. Clearly the threat of eternal pain can serve to motivate proper behavior, but I don’t think anyone is ever really motivated to love other people in order to avoid endless eternal torture.

I think Jesus wanted us to see the value of operating with boundless forgiveness. I think Jesus wanted us to recognize that this is what will enable our community to flourish. Without forgiveness, we are almost guaranteed to do ourselves in. If we don’t function with an abundance of forgiveness, our trespasses will do nothing but escalate and our community will deteriorate. Learning to forgive from the heart is truly the fuel for lasting and loving relationships.

But there is this other message about the need to not take forgiveness for granted. Forgiveness isn’t just a get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s not a form of divine enabling to do whatever we please. Jesus wanted us to exercise forgiveness in a boundless manner, but he also wanted us to have some fear of those privileges being revoked.

In our passage this morning, Peter was asking how much forgiveness they should be expected to exercise within their own religious community. And the answer was that it requires a heroic level effort to maintain relationships within a caring body of people. We know what Jesus said about the need to be insanely forgiving, but we also know that this hasn’t played out so well within the Christian community. The number of wars, factions, denominations, sects, and different United Methodist Churches is an indication of the difficulty of exercising forgiveness as liberally as Jesus called for it to be practiced. So it’s not hard to see how difficult it is to forgive people who live far away and ascribe to different ways of living and serving God.

It’s pretty hard for me to imagine how world tension is going to deescalate in the years to come, but I think it would be helpful if those of us who ascribe to Christianity would hear what Jesus had to say about the value of forgiveness – which is about the hardest thing we are challenged by Jesus to do. Politically speaking, I think it’s probably easier to call for people to engage in life-threatening operations than it is to try to understand our differences and to exercise forgiveness.

Our parable points to this truth that I think we’ve all experienced on a personal level, which is that forgiveness is a wonderful thing as long as you’re on the receiving end of it, but it is an unfathomably hard thing to exercise when you are on the giving end. We want others to understand why we found it necessary to do what we did, but somebody needs to pay when harm has come our way. It’s a natural instinct, but it’s not what Jesus taught us to do.

Jesus wants us to see the way in which God measures things, and it’s not normal math. What’s most valuable to God is not what we generally think will give us the most satisfaction – but it is the thing that will bring us the greatest sense of peace. What Jesus had to say about the value of forgiveness may well be some of the most challenging words that we hear from him, but the reason he instructed us in this way was because he wanted us to find our way into the good grace of God, and out of the pain of living in service to ourselves.

It’s a hard teaching, it’s a powerful teaching, and it’s the source of true peace.

May God provide us the grace we need to practice the forgiveness that we have already received.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Holy Diplomacy

Matthew 18:15-20

15 “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. 16 But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 18 Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19 Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

The first thing I want to say about this passage of scripture is what it’s not. It’s not advice on how to get your fellow church member or even your pastor to repent and do what you expect them to do. This is not to say that I or anyone else in the church is incapable of behaving badly, but the intention of this teaching was not to provide a practical strategy on how to get other people to act right. I’ll try to say what I think this passage is about in a moment, but I first want to let you know what I don’t think it’s about. And it’s important for us to think about this because it sort of sounds like a way of getting what you want from other people. This is not to say that it’s fine to behave badly, but I don’t think Jesus was wanting us to understand how we can get our personal offenders to do what we want them to.

In fact the oldest manuscripts don’t include the words: against you in verse 15. The oldest texts just say: If another member of the church sins, go and point out … The original teaching doesn’t seem to have been about addressing personal violations. At some point along the way some scribe decided it would be helpful to turn this in to advice on how to address interpersonal conflicts, but originally this teaching seems to have addressed those situations where someone was behaving in a way that violated everyone’s sensibilities.

In all honesty, it’s not easy to see how that more general sense of misbehavior translates in to our day and age. It takes a lot to distinguish yourself from the average pack of sinners. And if you are compelled to take a step beyond the normal range of bad behavior – it’s probably not going to be a fellow church member who pulls you aside and points out to you that it’s not so good to make a name for yourself as a world-class sinner. If you do some extraordinary sinning its likely that it’s going to appear on youtube – along with lots of comments from people you’ve never met. We live in a far different society than Jesus did, and it affects the way we relate to each other, but there is an important principle here for us to observe.

On one level, this passage does come across as some straight forward advice on how to maintain proper behavior within the church, but on another level it raises the question of what kind of community the church is to be. Certainly we are to be a relatively well-behaved group of people who treat one another well, but Jesus didn’t just want us to understand how to control the behavior of one another, Jesus wanted us to understand how to maintain our relationships with each other. This isn’t an instruction on how to get people to quit behaving badly – it’s advice on how to promote reconciliation and to maintain a Christian community.

What we have here is some instruction on how to exercise holy diplomacy – which is a very satisfying phrase to say. Holy diplomacy – it just sounds like a good thing to do. Whether I am able to define what it is or not I feel good about sharing that phrase with you. Holy diplomacy is something I want to learn to practice, and I’m thinking you can spend a lifetime learning to exercise this ancient wisdom.

It’s worth noting that the lesson from the Old Testament that’s recommended for us to read this week is perhaps the most famous case of holy diplomacy ever revealed to the world — the story of the Passover. The original telling of that story is found in the 12^th chapter of the Book of Exodus. That’s where you find the instructions God gave Moses and Aaron to give to the people of Israel for the final meal they were to have in Egypt before God led them out of slavery.

The people of Israel were instructed to select a lamb of a certain age, to gather in family groups at twilight on a particular night, and to prepare that lamb for dinner. After they slaughtered the lamb they were to smear some of it’s blood on the doorpost of their house, and then they were to cook that lamb in a very specific manner. God provided instructions for how to cook that lamb, what they were to eat along with that lamb, and what they were to wear to this dinner. It was to be a meal to be remembered.

Of course they would remember this meal because of what happened after dinner – which is when God sent the angel of death over Egypt to strike down the first-born males of all the people and the animals in the households that didn’t have the blood of the lamb smeared on the doorpost of their houses. It’s a gruesome story, but it wasn’t an arbitrary act on the part of God.

The events of that evening followed many months of diplomacy. Moses and Aaron had provided the Egyptian Pharoah with some very persuasive reasons to let the people of Israel go, but he wouldn’t do it, so God arranged this final dinner in Egypt. And to this day the people of Israel – wherever they may be living – are to prepare a very similar meal on that particular evening of the year and to recall what God did for them.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a meal that is able to pull all communities of the world together. It functions as a very particularly Jewish celebration, and that’s understandable, but the Passover celebration isn’t something that people outside of the Judeo-Christian community find to be very satisfying. I can understand why the non-Jewish world takes offense at this, but I don’t believe the intent of this meal was to establish Israel as a privileged community. I believe God’s intention was for this meal to remind the people of Israel of their salvation. This meal was to remind them that their deliverance was not earned or deserved, but graciously provided. And they were never to forget that. God didn’t act on behalf of the people of Israel because they already knew how to act – God provided them with a way out of slavery in order for them to experience redemption and to become redeeming people.

I believe God established the people of Israel to be a source of redemption for the world, but I’m not saying this is exactly the way it has worked out. As surely as we followers of Jesus Christ are not always as Christlike as we can possibly be, the people of Israel haven’t always lived up to their calling to be the light of the world.

The nation of Israel has a well documented history of not doing what God expected, but God has a longer history of providing redemption in ugly situations, and certainly the current state of the world isn’t unredeemable. I really don’t know what needs to happen in the Middle East right now, but it’s clearly a place in need of some holy diplomacy.

The story of the Passover is good background for what we have in today’s scripture. The community that Jesus established is to be a community that understands how to deal with unredeemed people. We are to be a community of people who make a great effort to redeem lost people. And even when people seem to be totally out of bounds we aren’t to totally reject them – we are to treat them as Gentiles or tax collectors. And I think we all remember how Jesus treated such people – with grace and hospitality.

The world is a hard place to fix. The difficulty of that undertaking becomes clear when you think about what it takes to retrieve a lost friend, but the starting point of every act of redemption is to remember who it is that calls us all to life.

What Jesus was instructing us to do in this passage is not to ramp up the pressure on people who are somehow living out of bounds, but to be relentless in our efforts to achieve reconciliation. The easy thing is to give up on people, and Jesus wants us all to stay in touch.

I’m not sure how you translate these particular instructions on how we should resolve conflict in to actual church policy. Perhaps one thing Jesus was saying is that whenever two or three have gathered in his name you have achieved the most optimal church size. It seems like things get complicated whenever you get more than four or five people involved in an undertaking.

But the more people you have the more important it becomes to engage in holy diplomacy. And the primary principle of holy diplomacy is to remember that none of us stand in the position of God, but when we gather in the name of Jesus – when we seek to be the body of Christ – Jesus is with us and Jesus is there to help us find our way.

Jesus instructs us to be honest with each other, to be clear with each other, to be relentless in our efforts to be redeeming to each other, and always to be kind to one another. The essence of holy diplomacy is to remember the grace that has been extended to us and to extend that to others. This is the essence of what the Israelites were to remember, and it’s the heart of what Jesus has instructed us to do.

To live as a disciple of Jesus Christ is to live a life of holy diplomacy. It’s not easy, but it sounds like such a good thing to do – and it is a good thing to do. It’s what holds us together. It’s what sends us out.

It’s what God has revealed, and it’s what we are called to practice. It will enable our church to thrive, and it will enable our world to survive.

We’ve been provided the wisdom we need to do more than survive and may God help us to use it!

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Do What?!!

Matthew 16:21-28

21 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” 24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? 27 “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

One thing I do that I feel pretty good about is giving blood. It’s not on the level of a heroic thing, but I’m pretty committed to it. I go in about as often as I can and give a pint. I’ve got what one of the Red Cross nurses once described as big juicy veins. It’s easy for them to tap into me and I hardly feel it. It doesn’t take much time, but you’re a captive audience for a while, and some of the phlebotomists like to talk while they’re doing their work. I prefer the quiet ones, but I don’t ignore the talkative ones – you don’t want to annoy the person who’s putting a needle in your arm.

I dropped by the Red Cross Blood Center in Jonesboro late one afternoon not too long ago to donate, and after going through all the preliminaries you have to go through I was laying there on the table with the needle in my arm and my blood flowing in to the bag. That’s the quickest part of the process, and it’s sort of like down time for the technicians. This nurse wasn’t particularly talkative, but to pass the time she asked me if I was getting off work for the day. I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer her. Sometimes I know when I’m working or not, but I’m often in sort of a gray area in regard to being at work. I think I said my work day was about over, and then she asked me what I did.

That’s a question that makes me a little nervous to answer in a situation like that because you can’t get away if need be. As we all know, there are some people with powerful religious convictions about one thing or another, and I like to be able to extract myself from conversations that clearly aren’t going to go well. I was stuck, but I told her I was the pastor of the Newport First United Methodist Church and she responded by telling me that I didn’t look like a minister. It sort of surprised me that she shared her opinion so freely, but I assured her it was true. She wasn’t being critical, and I didn’t take any offense, but I thought it was sort of interesting comment.

I’m not exactly sure what she saw that didn’t look very ministerial. It’s not unusual to see a preacher wearing blue jeans these days, but there was something about the way I looked that didn’t fit her preacher profile. And in all honesty – I’m not sure what a preacher is supposed to look like. Or act like for that matter. Sometimes I think I know, but often I’m sure I don’t know. And in my opinion, anybody that thinks following Jesus is an obvious undertaking isn’t really paying attention. I’m not sure how she could tell by looking at me that I’m not perfectly clear about everything, and that I don’t offer easy answers to what I consider to be a complex undertaking, but she could see something about me that wasn’t normal for a preacher.

Unlike me, I think you could probably tell by looking at Peter that he was a preacher. Peter was a rock solid outspoken advocate. Jesus recognized that about Peter, and Jesus knew that Peter had love for God in his heart. Jesus had just announced that Peter was the keeper of the keys of God’s kingdom on earth. Peter was ready and willing to serve in that position, and he immediately blew it.

The first thing Peter did after Jesus endorsed him as the one the church was to follow was to pull Jesus aside and to tell Jesus that he was wrong about what he intended to do. Peter had a powerful presence. He was the kind of person people would look to and follow, and he also had the capacity to go barreling off in the wrong direction. Jesus told him he was a stumbling block and a spokesman for satan. The rock that was to be the foundation of the church immediately became a stumbling block.

And this is a story that makes me feel better about not being immediately recognizable as a preacher. I’m not saying that it’s best not to be an obvious advocate of Jesus Christ, but I am saying that following Jesus isn’t a sprint – it’s a marathon. You don’t get points for winning the first half of a game – it’s the score at the end that counts. This business of following Jesus isn’t as easy or as obvious as we want it to be. It’s the undertaking of a lifetime.

Jesus didn’t soft-peddle the difficulty of living as his disciple. Jesus was painfully clear about the cost of following him. Although I really don’t think Peter was put off by the sacrifice that discipleship would entail. Peter wasn’t a timid man. I don’t think it was the potential for pain that put him off, I just don’t think Peter trusted the strategy. I believe it was unfathomable to Peter that Jesus was going to save the world by walking in to the hands of his enemies. Peter would easily have gone in to battle for Jesus, but he couldn’t bear the thought of Jesus being killed by his enemies.

And I think we all understand this. The power of brute force is so much easier for us to understand than the power of love. We understand a show of force – we aren’t so quick to understand the power of love.

Now I know we’ve been talking and preaching about Jesus for more than 2000 years now. As much as we talk about Jesus and as popular as the Christian faith has become you would think that the power of love would be all we ever look to, but I think it remains as foreign to us as it was to Peter. We’re still looking to those more tangible forms of power to change our world and to establish God’s kingdom on earth. I’m not surprised that I don’t know what a preacher is supposed to look like – following Jesus often requires us to let go of the very things we think we need and of going in directions that make no sense. If I actually looked like a preacher who fully represented what it means to follow Jesus I would probably look a lot more like John the Baptist than a guy who could blend in anywhere on a casual dress Friday. Following Jesus isn’t a normal thing for average citizens. To follow Jesus is to go down an entirely different path than the one we would normally choose.

Jesus came to offer us the greatest opportunity – this opportunity to abide in the company of God – now and forever! And all we have to do to get it is to be willing to let of everything we’ve ever been inclined to think we need. Or as Jesus put it, If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

This following Jesus business is tough. It’s a delicate balance. We are to love life, and we are to be willing to let it go. It might be easier if we were to live without any regard for family or community ties, but I don’t believe expected us to disregard our family and community responsibilities. I believe Jesus expected us to be fully engaged in this world – to love this world and all the people that we are fortunate enough to have in our lives – and to love God even more.

It’s not easy to live in this world and have our minds set on divine things, but this is our calling. As surely as Jesus needed to go to Jerusalem, there are times in our lives when we discern between the demands of human things and the path of divine things, but I don’t think this is an instruction for us to engage in a blind form of self-sacrifice. I think Jesus was very clear on why he went to Jerusalem. He didn’t go to Jerusalem because he was tired of dealing with the hassles of this world and he was ready to get it over with. He didn’t go because he had been outwitted by his opponents. He didn’t go because he didn’t want anyone else to get hurt. It seems to me that he went to Jerusalem because the opportunity had arisen for him to fully reveal the extent of God’s love for us, and that is what he came to do. He came to reveal the power of the love of God in the most powerful way possible. This is what he did and we’ve been trying to get our minds around this ever since.

Our calling isn’t to live miserable lives, but to find the richest form of happiness. Jesus’ instruction was for us to be more concerned with our souls than our bodies. Our souls are currently attached to our bodies, and while I don’t think Jesus wanted us to despise any part of this arrangement, I think he wanted us to see that there’s not much life in a body without a nourished soul.

It’s interesting to think about the way in which the recent flooding will affect the lives of the people who have lost so much. I’m guessing there are many people who will come to define their lives by the way they lived before the flood and the way they lived after the flood. Clearly this has been a devastating experience for literally millions of people, but I dare say the loss of so much stuff will result in a whole lot of spiritual gain. I’m guessing this will be an experience that will put a lot of people in touch with what’s truly important. I’m not saying that this flood is a good thing, but I am certain that some good things will come from it. There are some people who are going to find true life because their false lives got washed away.

This isn’t the kind of wisdom that we generally value. We don’t generally make our plans around finding opportunities to give ourselves away, but Jesus wanted us to understand the divine wisdom of sacrifice. One of the recent news accounts I saw on television accounts was of a man who was about to launch his new looking ski boat off a flooded road to go search for people who needed were stranded in their homes. I don’t know how it went for him, but it was touching to see someone who was willing to get their nice new boat all dinged up in order to help somebody. I wouldn’t be surprised if that didn’t turn out to be the best day he ever spent in that boat.

Of course Jesus doesn’t just want us to look like we know how to serve him. Jesus wants us to actually know what we need to do to find true life and to have the courage to follow him there. It can be frightening to seek the kind of abundant life that Jesus offers, but it’s good to remember that Jesus didn’t just go to Jerusalem to die – he went there because he knew what it means to truly live.

It doesn’t matter what we look like, but it makes a tremendous difference what we act like when opportunities arise for us to reject the petty demands of godless agendas and to give ourselves to those situations that offer abundant life. We don’t always have the wisdom to step in to those spiritually rich situations, but sometimes fifty inches of rain falls in two days, and we find ourselves waist deep in spiritual opportunity. You never know how the path to true life will present itself, but if we will learn to be suspicious of the wisdom of the world and to seek the wisdom of God we will find our way to the highest ground there is.

Thanks be to God.

Amen

Known By God

Matthew 16:13-20

13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14 And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

It’s an interesting thing to me that Jesus placed so much responsibility on Peter. Peter clearly had leadership qualities. He dared go where others were hesitant to trod, but you can’t really say he had an excellent performance record. He was almost always the first person to jump out with a response to whatever Jesus said or did, but he frequently responded in a clearly appropriate way, and these failures even escalated after this moment in which Jesus declared Peter to be the rock on which he would build the church. The fact that such a flawed character serves as the foundation of the church probably explains a lot about why the church is the less than perfect institution we know it to be. But the church hasn’t expired, and this indicates to me that once again, Jesus knew what he was doing when he appointed Peter as our founding father.

What we have in our scripture reading for today is the dialogue that took place between Jesus and his disciples as Jesus came to see that Peter was the one to whom he would bequeath responsibility. Jesus knew that his days were numbered, and he didn’t want to leave his fledgling community leaderless. What this conversation reveals is what Jesus was primarily looking for in the person that he would entrust his organization. It’s not easy to discern exactly what Jesus was looking for, but clearly there’s something more essential than perfection when it comes to following Jesus.

This is a telling conversation. Jesus wanted to know what people were saying about him, and who they thought he was. Linking him with one of their national heroes was a complimentary thing on some level. By saying that some people saw him as John the Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah the disciples were indicating to Jesus that people thought very highly of him. But Jesus didn’t just want to be revered by people. Jesus wasn’t wanting people to hope for a return to their perceived glory days of the past. Jesus wanted to be seen for who he was, and this is how Peter saw him. By saying he knew him to be the messiah, the Son of the Most High God, Peter was saying that he recognized that they were in new territory. Peter wasn’t looking to return to anything. He could see that through Jesus they had embarked on a new relationship with God.

There is a sense in which Jesus came to discover something when Peter said what he did. Jesus came to understand that God had spoken to Peter in a profound manner, and this was a moment of celebration for Jesus. It’s as if Jesus came to see that God was going to keep this thing going, and I’m sure this was good news to Jesus. I don’t think Jesus was asking a rhetorical question when he asked his disciples who they thought he was. I don’t think Jesus knew what they would say. They might very well have felt like everyone else – that he was just a new and somewhat improved version of someone they had seen before. I don’t think he expected Peter to pronounce him as the One whom God had sent to bring salvation to world in a new and unheard-of manner.

Peter had never had a profound grip on the message of Jesus. In fact Peter would continue to display a very flawed understanding and commitment, but what Jesus seemed to understand is that God was at work in Peter in a way that would exceed Peter’s capacity to do the right thing. Peter wasn’t perfect, but God was going to use him anyway, and Jesus could see this.

I think this is one of the best things I’ve come to discover about the Christian faith. My initial understanding was that our relationship with God depended upon our ability to be lovable and to perform well. This was probably more of a subconscious belief than an actual conviction, but in my early days I thought of Jesus as being more of an intimidating authoritarian figure than someone I actually wanted to know. I’m not exactly sure where I obtained this impression of Jesus, but it was before I actually did much examination of the way Jesus interacted with people. It was also before I met Lewis Chesser.

I’ve spoken of Lewis before. He was the United Methodist campus minister in Fayetteville when I was at the University of Arkansas. And Lewis did a wonderful job of portraying Jesus as someone that was not to be feared but to be embraced. He spoke of Jesus as someone who was much more interested in knowing us than in controlling us. Lewis made me think Jesus loved me for who I was. You might say Lewis helped me get over my fear of not pleasing God, and one way he did that was by not pretending to be a very perfect person.

Lewis was a good person, but he could be pretty salty, and he had attracted a motley crew. The people who hung around the Wesley Foundation weren’t very churchy people, but it was a place where people were able to speak freely about Jesus, and I found the atmosphere to be very stimulating and in a significant way – life changing.

It was my experience at the Wesley Foundation and my relationship with Lewis and other people that I met there that made me want to go to seminary and to learn more about Jesus. Lewis is someone I’ve remained in touch with and I continue to be touched by him and his mistakes. He told me a story a couple of years ago that reveals the lovely way in which God often uses our less than perfect selves to do some godly work.

Lewis left the Wesley Foundation while I was in seminary and served a few different churches in western Arkansas. He was the pastor in Charleston for several years right before he retired and moved to Ft. Smith. There was a couple from Charleston that would drop by and see Lewis and his wife, Mazie, whenever they were in Ft. Smith and Lewis had a hard time remembering the man’s name. His name was Don, but Lewis inevitably called him Bob. Lewis said he always had a little distress when they came by because he knew he always got his name wrong. He got to where he would never say his name until he heard someone else speak his name.

So one day this couple came by and they had gotten some bad news about the man’s health. He had been diagnosed with some kind of cancer and they were really distressed. They visited for a while and as they prepared to leave Lewis offered to say a prayer. He said they actually got on their knees and he began to pray. Unfortunately, no one had mentioned the man’s name, but Lewis felt like he needed to be specific in his prayer, so he took a chance. Among other things, Lewis asked God to provide strength and healing for Bob. As soon as he finished the prayer Mazie said, Lewis, it’s not Bob, it’s Don! Of course this came as no surprise to Lewis, but before he could say anything, Don said, That’s ok, God knows me as Bob.

There are a number of stories about the ways in which Lewis provided opportunities for God’s grace to sweep in and redeem difficult circumstances, but has come to be my favorite one. God doesn’t love us and use us because we know what to do. God uses us in spite of our ability to perform, and I’m telling you, as a preacher count on this. If I didn’t trust that the Holy Spirit is on hand to help you hear something better than what I know to say I wouldn’t have the wherewithal to show up and preach. I count on God’s ability to take whatever we try to do and to turn it in to something greater.

Peter is a great model for us. Peter didn’t understand Jesus perfectly, but he had experienced who he was on a significant level, and he was transformed by Jesus. Peter loved Jesus, and he trusted that God was at work in Jesus in a new way. He didn’t know where they were going, and he failed to be as faithful as he wanted to be, but God’s perfect forgiveness would be revealed through Peter’s most profound failure. Jesus found his perfect leader in the life of this man who didn’t always do what he should have done, but who knew to look to God to make things right. I’m sure Peter learned to be more careful about what he binded and what he loosed because of his various forms of failure and forgiveness.

Peter is the perfect rock for us to continue to build upon. We all have a lot in common with Peter when it comes to being less than perfect, but we are all as capable as Peter of being powerful witnesses to the redeeming love of God and to serve as evidence of God’s ability to use our feeble efforts to produce amazing results.

God knows when we are trying to make ourselves available, and sometimes we actually do muster up the courage to do the right thing, and when that happens it’s a beautiful thing. Peter wasn’t the only person who has ever been inspired to say or do the right thing at the right moment. Sometimes, like Peter, we get it right and we bring glory to God and give Jesus something to celebrate.

We are all known by God in ways that we don’t even know ourselves, and I believe that when we seek to love and serve God we are doing God’s work regardless of what it may look like to others. This is another one of the mysteries of our faith. Sometimes what appears to be failure on earth is a victory for heaven. And just as surely we don’t always judge the events of this world with the eyes of heaven.

But God sees us all very clearly, and this isn’t something to be feared. God knows us well, and loves us perfectly. This isn’t to say that God loves everything we do, but God works in mysterious ways, and there’s always an avenue for redemption. To be faithful isn’t to be perfect, but to want to grow in our relationship with God, and to trust that it can happen.

Thanks be to God for including us all in this holy work of revealing God’s relentless love.

Amen