Thompson's Blog

Costume Religion
Matthew 23:1-12

23:1 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.

Before you think too poorly of the Pharisees 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 – and the Pharisaic movement started out as a revitalization movement. Just as John Wesley was driven to confront the way in which Christianity had become an enclave for privileged members of 18th 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 plight of 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. And he connected faith in God with services for the poor. 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 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. 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 it became 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. 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 communities 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 important.

And that’s what scares me about being an Elder in an institution that began as a movement. And that should concern everyone who is attached to a church – even a church that became reborn as a new and more socially conscious church.

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 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 such 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 people weren’t perfect, we 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 gone before us.

We have all been touched by many people in very personal ways, but there are some indivituals 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 the church, and one of the best contributions that he made to Christian theology is his emphasis on our ability to grow in faith. He 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 a few other outwardly good things. Wesley believed it would help our spiritual lives develop if we would engage in these rather physical activities, and I believe there’s some truth here.

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. I know there have been some terrible people who regularly attended church, read their Bibles religiously, and took communion whenever it was offered. Outward signs of faith never provide an accurate picture of what exists in the heart, 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.

But of course, there are no guaranteed avenues to faith. As surely as many of the Pharisees lost their way as they sought to avoid the ditch the Sadducees were in, we Methodists need to remember that it’s possible for us to wear equally ridiculous costumes of faith. In fact I think we all know that some of our official doctrines stand out like bad costume jewelry, but our task is not to just get the costume looking right. Our task will always be to seek the relationship that the outward practices represent.

Our goal is to be more righteous than the Pharisees and more compassionate than the Methodists. Our hope is not to become official saints, but to join the endless list of unofficial saints who’s lives weren’t guided by the goal of looking right, but who truly yearned to get it right.

Gratefully we aren’t alone in this process – God is with us. Pulling for us, guiding us, forgiving us, and strengthening us.

Thanks be to God for providing us with the opportunity to wear authentic garments of faith.
Amen.

Equipped For the Journey
Matthew 22:34-46

22:34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” 41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: 42 “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, 44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”‘? 45 If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” 46 No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Last Spring I attended a mandatory Gathering of the Elders at 1st UMC in Jacksonville. For those of you who aren’t familiar with United Methodist lingo – an Elder is an ordained minister. You might say it’s a person that’s been admitted in to the United Methodist preacher’s union. And there’s hardly anything that gets United Methodist preachers as excited as a semi-mandatory meeting on a Friday morning. A semi-mandatory meeting is a meeting you’re supposed to attend but there aren’t any consequences if you don’t. But I showed up, and honestly, I thought my four-shot Americano would be the most stimulating thing I would encounter that morning, but we had a presenter named Doug Hester who captured my attention. Doug Hester is an ordained Lutheran pastor who works primarily in pastoral counseling. And he’s a student of the school of thought known as the Murray Bowen Family Systems Theory.

Murray Bowen was a psychiatrist who developed a method of psycho-therapy that’s rooted in looking at the way in which individuals are shaped by their family dynamics. He created a way of doing therapy with individuals, families, businesses or any other type of organization that’s based on identifying the ways in which patterns from the past continue to play out in the present, and how those patterns keep individuals or organizations stuck.

I had heard of this method of analyzing situations. There’s a book called Generation to Generation, by Edwin Friedman that’s based on the research of Murray Bowen. Many of my preaching peers purchased this book a few years ago, and a few of them actually read it. I had been hearing people talk about this way of understanding church dynamics for years, but I had never actually read anything about it or looked in to it.

Maybe it was my low level of expectation that set me up for a positive experience, but as I say, I found Rev. Hester’s presentation to be compelling. Doug Hester isn’t what you would call a dynamic speaker. He’s sort of soft spoken and academic in his presentation, but I was gripped by much of what he said.

One thing he said was that everybody gets stuck. And by everybody he was talking about individuals, couples, families, churches, and every other type of living organization. Getting stuck is just one of those things that happens to us. And when you get stuck you really can’t think your way out of the situation. It’s hard to think your way out of a situation because it’s hard to not focus on the things you already know, and the things you already know are probably the things that got you in to the situation you are in.

I don’t know if this is actually what he said, but this is what I thought I heard him saying, and what really got my attention was when he said the best way to get unstuck is to go on an adventure. And what he meant by an adventure is not just a physical journey. What I understood him to say is that you go on an adventure when you go in a direction that you haven’t gone before.

Heading out in a new direction can be disruptive to a family, or a couple, or a church, or any other system that has achieved a form of stability, and disruption is hard to deal with, but it can also lead to health.

And I think this is a great way to understand what transpired between Jesus and the religious establishment of his day. Jesus was distressed by the way the faith of Israel had become so distorted. Judaism had become this odd mix of practices that were driven by contradictory demands. The faith practices of the day were largely shaped by people who were overly focused on hyper-religious purity – people like the Pharisees, but it was also informed by people who were driven by the need to comply with the demands of Roman occupation – people like the High Priests and Sadducees, and there were also these people who had replaced their love for God with fervor for the Jewish nation – people like the zealots. Judaism had become a strange creature, and Jesus had become very frustrating to every arm of that odd body.

Representatives from all of these groups had offered challenges to Jesus, culminating in today’s passage, where the Pharisees asked him what he considered to be the greatest commandment, and he gave them a straight answer. He told them what was most essential to God, and in spite of the way that all of the various interest groups had replaced the most fundamental teaching of their faith with lesser agendas, no one could dispute the answer that Jesus provided.

Jesus reminded them of what they were to be about, and in so doing he identified what he was all about. Jesus was never confused about what was most essential, and that’s what drove him to do what he did. You might say this agenda to love God and neighbor was the basic equipment that Jesus took on his journey, and it proved to be the adventure that Israel needed.

I like a good adventure. That may be why I liked what I heard Rev. Hester say at the Gathering of the Elders last spring. I had been contemplating a bicycle trip before I went to that workshop, but his words put me over the edge – so to speak. It’s not that I was feeling particularly stuck at the time, but it’s easy for me to believe that most of us are pretty stuck most of the time. We all get comfortable in our routines, and we don’t even know what motivates us to do what we do. I don’t generally think we are badly motivated, but I think we are often unconscious of why we do what we do.

The truth is that my two weeks on a bicycle didn’t provide me with any great revelations about what motivates me or what I’m doing with my life, but it was nice to step out of my routine for a little while. And I think it did leave me wanting to be a bit more intentional about how I operate.

And there’s one thing I know I learned from that trip – having the right equipment makes all the difference. I didn’t do an over-abundance of training for my trip. I have a little body maintenance routine that I’ve been doing for years, so I wasn’t totally out of shape for my trip, but I didn’t spend a lot of time on my bike before I left. In fact the longest ride I went on before I embarked on my trip was 37 miles. So I knew two things on the day of my departure. I knew my body could hold up for at least half the distance I planned to go on the first day of my trip, and I knew I had good equipment.

I had a good bicycle. I knew I could trust my bicycle to hold up under the weight of my stuff. I knew I had good bags that the rain wouldn’t penetrate, and I knew I had good racks to hold those bags. I had a great little holder for my iphone that provided me with relatively good information about where I was going, and I had an extra battery to keep my phone going. I had new high-pressure tires that were very durable but with little tread, so I knew there was a minimal amount of friction between me and the road, and I was happy about that because I knew I needed all the help I could get. And I spent a good amount of time contemplating and shopping for the clothes I would wear. I had to strike the perfect balance between comfort, durability, protection, visibility, and fashion.

I probably spent more time getting my equipment together than I did actually training for the ride, but I think that was time well-spent. I believe it was that good equipment that enabled me to keep going.

Now I also know that equipment isn’t everything. Better equipment is not going to improve my ability to play golf, but it could if I didn’t have decent equipment. I know it’s easier to hit a metal driver than a wooden driver. Having the right equipment is essential for most undertakings, and maybe it’s a stretch, but what I’m thinking is that the right concept of God is a powerful piece of equipment.

Knowing what’s most essential is a powerful tool. Remembering what Jesus said was the greatest commandment is what equips us to live intentional lives. Regular examination of the words of Jesus can help keep you from falling in to an unconscious pattern of living, and appealing to the Holy Spirit to illuminate his words can help you get out of those patterns when you do.

It’s not easy to stay focused on the most fundamental teaching of our faith. Just like the Israelites of Jesus’ day, we are vulnerable to the non-essential pressures of our day, and it’s easy for us to substitute those lesser causes and agendas that unconsciously guide our lives for the most important commandment that Jesus identified.

I’m not sure what question Jesus would ask us that would cause us to recognize our own faulty logic, but Jesus was able to do that to the Pharisees. He wasn’t able to cure them of their misguided agenda, but this question about the lineage of the messiah somehow gave them pause. Today’s scripture ends by saying they dared not ask him any more questions – they dared not ask because they were afraid of what they might find out.

Our spiritual wholeness depends on our ability to welcome the truth. Such wholeness is an elusive quest, and it can be a confusing journey. It’s so much easier to stay on familiar paths that take us to comfortable places than it is to go in a new direction, but we should never settle for comfort when there is the possibility for renewal. Jesus was provocative to the religious people of his day, and if he’s not somehow provoking to us we probably aren’t paying attention.

The journey of discipleship is far more interesting than we often allow it to be. I don’t believe we should ever stay home when we have the opportunity for an adventure, and that’s what we are offered by Jesus. Jesus invites us to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. The destination is true life, and we already have the only equipment we need. We have been given the greatest commandment – let’s not keep it hanging in the garage or buried in the closet any longer!

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rendered To Life
Matthew 22:15-22

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. This is fourth week in which our Gospel lesson is set in the Temple during that huge annual festival and Jesus is addressing his Jewish adversaries. For those of you who can’t get enough of the same thing over and over, we’ll have the final of these encounters next week, but today we aren’t dealing with a parable or an allegory as we have for the last 3 weeks (but who’s counting). Today we’re looking at some straight dialogue, and this conversation had 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 Jews who 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.

Herodians were considered to be horrible collaborators by the Pharisees and the other sects 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 interest 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 the Pharisees hated those Roman 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 Romans worshiped Ceasar, and they considered Herodians to be dirty collaborators. For the Pharisees, paying taxes to Rome was like bowing down to a false god. And they represented popular opinion within Israel. Not everyone who hated Roman taxes were associated with the Pharisees, but there were many different sects 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 they 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. 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. I think the affluent couple ended up going to another UM church, where they were properly appreciated I’m sure, and they stuck that 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 Ceasar what is Ceasar’s and to God what is God’s, but older English translations say we should, render under to Ceasar what is Ceasar’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 older Americans 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 how 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, so to speak, 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 there were these people who preferred their own illusions of God. There were people who loved their own sense of power more than anything else. When they were reduced to their essential elements they chose to serve themselves.

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 Ceasar 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. And many of us often give unwitting support to these rivals to God in our world.

It’s not easy to recognize the ways in which we give our best to Ceasar and our leftovers to God, but I think this admonition from Jesus to render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar’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 Ceasars 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 Ceasar. Jesus said to give Ceasar what Ceasar deserves. Ceasar doesn’t deserve much, but you’ve got to give Ceasar what Ceasar is due.

And this sounds sort of easy, but it’s not. Ceasar wants our complete allegiance and Ceasar 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 Ceasar, 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 Ceasar or to serve God because I don’t want Ceasar to get upset with me. And I don’t feel that bad about it because Jesus was a little vague in the way he responded to this situation. You need to exercise some shrew caution when you’re dealing with powerful and hateful individuals and institutions.

To whom we choose to give our best makes all the difference. It’s the difference between being rendered to death or rendered to life. I hope we will all find that narrow way of giving our best to God and what we must to the rest. Thanks be to God – Amen.

Our Properly Unpredictable God
Matthew 22:1-14

22:1 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 a place where you are not likely to find the people who were originally invited to be a part of God’s holy community. It 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.

Did anyone expect this to be the way this story would end? Does this not make you wonder what kind of organization you’ve stepped in to?

You may have come here this morning in search of some kind of refuge from the terrible stories that inundate our digital news-feed-lines – you come in here in search of some respite from the world and you hear a terrifying tale that seems to portray God as being far less hospitable than you would expect from the One we call the Author of Salvation and the Giver of Grace.

Luckily this is a story that utilizes fiction and hyperbole to illustrate a point – this isn’t 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. The Judeo-Christian faith journey is simply not for everyone.

If you are looking for a safe organization you need to join an alumni association or something predictably hospitable like that. It’s sort dangerous to get involved in a church. Alumni associations only want your money, so they will always be nice to you and tell you how wonderful you are. The church wants your money also, but that’s not all that it wants. There are other expectations as well, and if the church is true to it’s roots it’s going to make life a little more complicated for you. The church is an easy organization to join, but following Jesus is hard! It’s actually sort of scary.

I was visiting with a man the other day who had been the Chairperson of the Finance Committee in another UM church here in Little Rock. He had been in that role for a number of years, and he said he still remembers what it felt like to wake up on New’s Year’s morning when he first rotated out of that position. He said his first thought of that year was how thankful he was to be finished with his commitment to that work. I recognize that this isn’t a very good story to tell as we are currently finding people to fill various positions within the church, but it doesn’t matter whether you are willing to do that kind of work or not – if you pay attention to the call of Christ in your life you are going to experience some uncomfortable demands.

Following Christ has it’s benefits. After all, Jesus is comparing it to being invited to a wedding banquet, but don’t expect it to be an easy party to attend. You may think you know what’s right and wrong and who needs to do what in order for everything to work out right, but if you pay attention to what Jesus said and did and you earnestly want to take his words seriously he is going to disrupt your comfortable way of viewing yourself and others. The church isn’t like an alumni association – it doesn’t just tell you how wonderful you are – it makes you engage in some self-examination and life-evaluation.

Frankly, it would be so much easier to be Christian if we didn’t read the Bible. It would be so nice to turn Jesus in to the kind of lord and savior that good reasonable people like us expect him to be. It would be nice to create some clear formulas for successful living, but Jesus makes it hard to do that. Just when you think you know who the bad guys are, and who is at fault for the problems we face in the world, in the church, and in our communities – you experience Jesus in a way that makes you wonder about yourself. This business of seizing a man who isn’t wearing the right clothes to the party is frankly pretty unsettling to me.

Now I’m not here to scare you to death. I honestly don’t believe that God is as brutal and bloodthirsty as this story might indicate. This is a story, and I don’t believe Jesus intended for us to live in fear of what God’s going to do to us if we don’t act right. I just don’t believe that this story is designed to portray the actual way God rewards and punishes people. But what I do believe is that if you want to find your way in to the most abundant life – into the rich community that God has most graciously invited us to be a part of – there are some expectations.

We don’t have to show up for this party. In fact it may be very reasonable to ignore this invitation to God’s banquet. We can continue to live really normal lives and be perfectly content with ourselves. I don’t expect God will ever leave us alone, but we don’t have to respond to God’s initiatives. I think God probably sends out more invitations and solicitations than your average politician. And we can ignore God’s invitations as easily as we ignore those endless political fliers that are coming in the mail these days. I don’t know if God can match the size of some of the post-cards that are coming in the mail these days, but I’m sure you can actually trust the information that comes to us from God.

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 put on.

I don’t know if you’ve ever found yourself in a situation where you are wearing totally inappropriate clothing at an event, but I have, and I hate that feeling. I think the worse time I ever did that was 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. After dropping her off I went home and started working outside. I was doing some painting on our house and it was hot and I had taken my shirt off. When I realized I was about to be late picking Liza up 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 a bit late, and 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 nearby and they sold me a shirt before 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. And I think Jesus told this parable so we would pay attention to our spiritual clothing. This parable stresses the need for us to be faithful to claim of Christ. I don’t think of this as a warning about what will happen to us in the afterlife if we ignore the demands of our professions of faith. I think Jesus wants us to feel the discomfort right now if we aren’t wearing our faith well. Jesus told this story to expose the impropriety of the religious pretenders 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.

There are so many ways to become ill-fit for the kingdom of heaven. It’s so easy to get this business of discipleship wrong. It’s always easy to take a little bit too much pride in not being like someone who seems obviously ill-clad, but that’s an even uglier way to dress. It’s hard to know exactly what God expects of us, but we need to pay attention. I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you than to warn you to watch out for the way you are wearing your faith, but God has some clear expectations for the way we look.

You probably came here this morning thinking it doesn’t matter what you wear, but I’m telling you it does. Shirts and shoes aren’t required, but don’t expect to feast at the banquet of the Lord without putting on some compassion, forgiveness, generosity, and love for your enemies as well as your friends.

There’s a strict dress code in the Kingdom of God – you’re better off ignoring the invitation than to try to get in without putting on some hand-me downs from Christ. But if you are willing to wear some of that Christ-like-self-giving love you will find that there is a place for you at the banquet of the Lord! And thanks be to God for this!
Amen!

Farm Management
Matthew 21:33-44

21:33 “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.

You could have stayed home this morning to watch CNN and heard a better story than what we have in this morning’s scripture lesson. What we have here is not a pretty picture. It’s sort of a reverse fairy tale. This is a story with a happy beginning and a sad ending. But I’m glad you chose to come to church. What Jesus had to say is not easy to hear, but trust me – it’s not all bad. Maybe hearing this story has already made your workplace feel much more hospitable than you previously considered it to be. It could be worse – you could be working with people like this!

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 story with a familiar circumstance that goes off in a strange direction in order to disrupt your usual way of seeing and interpreting the world. A parable causes you to think. An allegory is a literary device where the characters in the story are designed to represent identifiable characters, and it’s usually not very hard to figure out who represents who.

And it seems very clear in this story who the various characters represent. The landowner is God, and the vineyard that the landowner established is Israel. The members of the Jewish establishment are the tenants, and those who came throughout time to collect what was due are the various prophets. Of course the landowner’s son that was killed by the tenants represents Jesus, and the new tenants of the vineyard would be the church.

It was pretty clear to the chief priests and the Pharisees who was who in this story, and 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. There isn’t much of a surprise in this text, and if this was the end of the story it really would be a downer, but this story ends with the vineyard being leased to a new group of tenants. That new group of tenants is us, and our challenge is to be better tenants than those who went before us. I think it’s important to note that we weren’t given the vineyard – it has been leased to us. We have an arrangement with the landowner – not a deed to the property.

I didn’t grow up around a vineyard economy. I grew up around rice and soybean fields and farms. In fact my grandfather carved out such a farm. And he created a very nice farm. It wasn’t as picturesque as the vineyard portrayed in this morning’s passage, but there are some similarities.

My grandfather didn’t start out with much, but his hunger for a better life matched up with some opportunity, and it turned in to some good fortune. Tom (that’s what we all called my grandfather) figured out how to navigate the economy of the twenties and the thirties. During that time he became a successful Chevrolet/Oldsmobile dealer, and in the forties he bought some swampy forest land west of Wynne, AR and he turned that land in to a rice and soybean farm. But he didn’t just want to make money, he wanted a place to hunt ducks, so he left a perimeter of trees on the lowest part of the land so he would have a place to hunt ducks, and my cousins and I continue to enjoy the benefits of what he established. We don’t have the duck population that he had, but I feel very fortunate to have access to some flooded woods to go stand in on cold winter mornings.

My grandfather loved his farm. When I was a child he would pick me up and drive me out to his farm. It seemed pretty boring to me at the time. He didn’t talk much. We would drive around fields that all looked the same to me, but there would be some fishing or shooting at something sprinkled in with watching the crops grow, so I went along with him often.

Our roles reversed when we both got older and he could no longer drive. He loved for me to drive him out to his farm. I’ll never forget one of the last times I ever drove him out there. It was about this time of the year. We drove around the fields and saw what was harvested and what wasn’t, but then he wanted me to drive him in to the woods. As I say, he didn’t talk much. He didn’t tell me why he wanted to go in to the woods, but I did as I was told.

The road in to the woods was more of a trail than a road, and we were in a car – not a truck with four wheel drive. I kept stopping thinking we had gone far enough, but he kept motioning for me to go on. I kept driving until we were literally surrounded by these thick vines. I stopped the car and when I did he said one word, muscadines. And sure enough we were in the middle of a muscadine vine. My grandfather was a man who knew what he wanted and he would push until he got it.

My grandfather loved his farm. And he had a good tenant on his farm. The same man farmed the land for probably forty years. I don’t know how fair their arrangement was. My grandfather wasn’t an overly generous man, but I guess he was fair enough because a number of people worked for him for decades.

I didn’t grow up with the same passion for business that my grandfather had. He grew up hungry and in search of opportunity. I grew up comfortable but in search of meaning. He carved out enterprises and I spend my time trying to understand this enterprise we call life. You might say I had the luxury to embark on that enterprise.

And it seems to me that there’s an interesting relationship between the physical economy and the spiritual economy. We tend to think the word economy only refers to financial matters, and that is about the only way we use the word, but the word, economy, is derived from two Greek words that combine to mean something like: household management.

And it’s interesting that Jesus would use these economic examples to help us understand how to be more spiritually awake. What we have in today’s passage is the story of how a particular household was mismanaged in order for us to understand how things are managed in the household of God. Of course understanding how our current physical economy functions is as esoteric as the mysteries of heaven, but on a very basic level I think we can see what Jesus was saying.

What I get from today’s story is that God loves this world, and God wants us to live in this world in a harmonious fashion. God didn’t expect the tenants of God’s vineyard to give up the entire yield of the vineyard – God wanted them to release a fair share of the produce. The problem was that they wanted to keep everything for themselves. The problem was that they wanted more than their share – they sought to put themselves in the place of God.

I guess this is always the problem that comes with a degree of success in this world. It’s always hard not to think that the most important thing is to maintain and expand your influence over others. It’s easy to think that the power that comes to us when we are in charge of a physical enterprise is more important than the power we receive when we become active participants in God’s spiritual enterprise.

I don’t know how to live in this world without participating in the physical economy. We are all involved in one kind of enterprise or another. We all play a role in those various enterprises. Some of us are in positions of authority in those enterprises – some of us do as we are told. Many of us experience a little of both.

I don’t think Jesus expects us to live without engaging in the economy of this world, but he’s also very clear about the need for us not to take the roles we play in the vineyards of life too seriously. None of us have as much authority as we think we have, and if we put too much stock in the physical economy we will fail miserably in the spiritual economy. If we spend all of our time and energy managing our physical households our spiritual households will suffer.

I had the good fortune of growing up around a man who had a lot of authority in this world. I am the beneficiary of a man who knew how to make things happen. I also had the good fortune of seeing how inconsequential money really is when your health fails and death looms near. When I told Tom I was going to seminary his response was typically brief and memorable. He said, Well, money isn’t everything.

Of course the lure of power and money doesn’t go away for people who go in to ministry. Today’s passage clearly points out the way in which religious professionals can become particularly twisted by the power of the position. A career in ministry doesn’t provide immunity from godless pursuits – it just provides you with a thin mask to hide behind. The truth is that it’s a struggle for us all to not become consumed by worldly pursuits and to seek the rewards of earth at the expense of those that come from heaven.

Learning to become good tenants of God’s vineyard is a challenge for us all. Each day is filled with opportunity and fraught with danger. As followers of Christ we are challenged to be those rare economists who understand the dynamics of this world and the next. May God help us all to understand how we might best manage our resources, invest our lives, and provide the most bountiful yield. May, by the grace of God, we become worthy tenants of all that has been given to us. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Revealing Questions
Matthew 21:23-32

21:23 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 people 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. 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.

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 (which is very endearing to me – I like a professor who owns up to engaging in a mindless activity). So 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 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 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 ask Jesus questions without being frightened by his response, but it usually didn’t go well for the adults who asked him questions. Of course, the people who questioned him were usually out to do him in, so 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 well-endowed young man who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life and 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 your world turned upside down, but I’m with Dr. Campbell on this – I don’t think it would be a real career-boosting move for Dr. Phil to interview Jesus.

One of my early life lessons came when I was old enough to throw a rock relatively hard and accurate, but not old enough to know when to use such a skill. What I learned one day is that it’s not a good idea to attack a wasp nest with a rock. I had brute force on my side, but they had numbers and speed. I don’t think I’ve ever trusted brute force as much after that day. And you should never underestimate the ability of your adversary to retaliate. That was a very educational experience for me. An educational experience – that’s what you call an idiotic act a couple of decades later

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 put people on the spot and made 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.

Last week I heard someone quote that 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 engage in conversation.

Being careful has it’s benefits. Careful people don’t provoke powerful adversaries, but it’s possible to be too cautious. 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.

When I read this morning’s passage I find myself being grateful that I’m not like one of those chief priests or elders who are blinded by their allegiance to their religious institution. I can tell you, I don’t have that kind of allegiance to my religious institution. It would not hurt my feelings if someone cleansed our denominational temple, but I’m not unindicted by this passage. What I see in this passage is the value 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 is the need to get rid of this man who would do these things that were so disrespectful of 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 he would want us to see.

Jesus wants us all to see the truth about ourselves. He wants us to understand what it is we are professing without doing. He wants us to know who we are serving, and who we are 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 sure 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.

When you leave here today don’t go out and be careful. Go out and be faithful. Be dangerously faithful to the one who doesn’t just want us to be comfortable. Be faithful to the one who wants us to find true life.

Thanks be to God that Jesus knew how to disrupt deathly behavior and to bring us to life.

Thanks be to God! Amen.

The Godliness of Unfairness
Matthew 20:1-16

20:1 “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 can’t read this parable without thinking of the way United Methodist ministers are compensated here in Arkansas because it’s equally odd. We preachers aren’t paid the same amount for unequal amounts of time spent in the vineyard. The amount of time we spend at work may vary a bit, but it’s roughly the same. The amount of work we do has little bearing on how much we get paid – what we are paid depends on the vineyard we are working in.

And there is wide variation in the amounts we are paid. I don’t know the full extent of that variation because you can’t get a copy of the salary sheet anymore. The salary sheet is the document that shows the breakdown of all the clergy salary packages in the state. Of course we aren’t supposed to care about such things, but I think it’s information that should be available. When I last tried to get a copy of that document I was told that I could find that information in the Annual Conference Journal, but that really isn’t true. Each church reports these lump sum amounts paid for clergy support without identifying who gets what.

My retired preacher friend refers to the salary sheet as the sin-sheet – which is exactly what it is. Any preacher who looks at that sheet becomes fully engaged in one of those official types of sin. The sin-sheet immediately elicits things like pride, greed, envy, jealousy, anger, or outright malice. And then those sins become compounded by the phone calls that generally follow a view of the sin-sheet. As soon as you see it you are compelled to call another preacher to engage in what Wesley might refer to as non-edifying conversation. I fully understand why our conference administrators keep the salary sheet under tight control. That’s what you call a sin-reduction plan.

I can generate some righteous indignation about the unfairness of our compensation system. And I tell myself that it’s not that I feel under-compensated. I like to think I get worked up about the over-compensation of some of my peers, but when I start ranting about the unfairness of our system I can’t help but notice how much I sound like one of those workers in this morning’s parable – one of those guys who got hired first thing in the morning.

While I really don’t trust the motives of those who keep the salary sheet under tight control I’m honestly sort of grateful they won’t let me have one. I wish we, as a Conference, would engage in some honest analysis of the impact our arbitrary compensation system has on the health and vitality of our denomination, but I’m sure my lack of access to that information reduces the rate of my sinning. And what I also know is that compensating pastors for the work of ministry is always going to be an odd and arbitrary undertaking. How much should you pay a person not to have a regular job? It’s no wonder that the figures are all over the place.

But this isn’t just a problem for United Methodist preachers. It’s hard for anyone to untangle their sense of worth from their compensation package. How we are paid gives some people an inflated sense of importance and it robs others of value. It creates painful divisions among us, and it disturbs our souls. Apparently it’s an old problem because I think these are the issues this parable raises and addresses.

I believe Jesus told this parable to reveal the way in which money messes with our hearts and minds. I don’t think any of us can read this parable without being a bit disturbed by the unfairness of the way these workers were paid. I think most of us could argue that this employer engaged in an unfair business practice, but what it primarily exposes is how much importance we place on our desire to get what we deserve – when we think we deserve more than others.

Because this desire to get what we deserve can evaporate pretty quickly when you fully examine what it is that we actually deserve. When you take in all the factors that impact who we are and how we have what we have I think most of us would be happy to get what Jesus said we all deserve – which is daily bread. In a business sense, it was unfair to pay those who worked a short time the same amount that those who had worked all day, but Jesus wanted those of us who have an inflated sense of what we deserve to let go of our obsession with what we sense to be fair and to recognize that none of us actually deserve to have more than others.

I’m not sure how you put this kind of economic system in to practice. We’ve seen some pretty bad examples of what happens when countries claim to have equality within the marketplace. So-called communist countries might argue that they have established more equality between workers, but as George Orwell said in his allegorical dystopian novel, Animal Farm, which critiqued the Soviet Union under Stalin — all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.

We human beings have a hard time creating fair economic systems. And what constitutes fairness looks vastly different depending on where you are standing. Fairness means one thing to people who have more than they need and a far different thing to people who don’t have enough, and how you define fairness will determine how important you think fairness really is. The workers who were hired last and paid first weren’t so concerned about fairness – they got what they needed and were grateful to have it. And I think that’s the attitude Jesus was trying to promote in all of us with this parable.

Fairness is a fine thing. I don’t think any of us need to be quiet about the various forms of unfairness that surround us, but none of us need to harbor the illusion that we have what we have because life is fair. If you think the world we currently inhabit and the good fortune that some of us have is a product of divine fairness you need to meditate for a moment on the history of the native Americans or the plight of African Americans. Our country has not been shaped by fairness, and it’s not currently guided by fairness. I’m not saying our country is any worse than any other nation that has ever existed, but it’s not fair.

I just finished listening to a book called The Journey of Crazy Horse, by Joseph Marshall. Crazy Horse was the Lacota warrior who is best known for leading the Battle at the Little Bighorn where Gen. Custer had his last stand, but Crazy Horse was known within his tribe as someone who was totally focused on the well-being of his tribe. The clash between the native Americans and the European Americans is a tragic story. I’m not sure how it could have played out in a better way, but I wish we had been more sensitive to the way they lived on the land.

The native Americans had their issues, but they had some good values. They valued courage and honor and the skills of both men and women. They valued having enough meat to get them through the Montana winters, but they didn’t waste meat or any other resource. And they had no idea what this obsession with gold was all about. Unfortunately I think we immigrant Americans have done a better job of teaching the native Americans the value of gold than we have learned from them how to live well on the land, but how to live with others will always be a problem.

It’s hard not to live with an eye of judgement toward one another. We have this inclination to measure ourselves against each other and to get bent out of shape by pride, jealousy or shame. We rationalize where we are by pointing out the fairness or the unfairness of it all, and I think Jesus calls all of this measuring we do in to question.

Jesus turns the world as we know it upside down. By saying the first will be last and the last will be first he messes up all of the ways we generally sort ourselves out. He wants those of us who have much to question the value of our things and our positions, and he wants those who don’t have enough to know that they deserve more. Jesus told this unsettling parable so that we would question the way we see the world and to take note of how much we rely on this concept of fairness or unfairness to make ourselves feel better about what we have or angry about what we don’t.

Jesus didn’t seem to care very much about fairness. Jesus cared about faithfulness. Jesus wanted to produce faithfulness to the God who loves us all equally, and who wants us to do the same. Loving us all equally isn’t an act of fairness – it’s an act of generosity, and that’s what we need to value more than anything else. We don’t just need to treat each other fairly – we need to treat each other generously.

The kingdom of God is such an odd place. All of the standards we use to measure ourselves and one another simply go out the window. What goes on in the kingdom of God isn’t fair – it’s glorious! And we are invited to abide there. It’s an odd journey we are challenged to take, and if you don’t feel qualified you can take comfort in knowing that in God’s kingdom the first are last, and the last are first.

It’s not fair – it’s gracious.
And thanks be to God for that. Amen.

The Fixer?
Psalm 103:1-13

1 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits—
3 who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
5 who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
6 The LORD works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed.
7 He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel.
8 The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9 He will not always accuse, nor will he keep his anger forever.
10 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion for his children, so the LORD has compassion for those who fear him.

There was a tweet I never did figure out how to formulate while I was on my two week bicycle trip last spring, but I remember spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to articulate it. What I wanted to be able to communicate in a few words was the sweet sensation of diminishing pain. I remember searching for the perfect words to express the wonderful feeling that washes over you when your suffering subsides. Because when you are about half way up a steep hill on an overloaded bicycle, and you are in your lowest gear, and you are only going fast enough to keep from falling over, and you seriously wonder if you have enough left in your burning legs to get you to the top – that first sense of relief is such wonderful sensation. And as the hill levels out and the pain subsides you begin to have this sense that the world is a beautiful place again.

I am convinced that one of the sweetest feelings in life is that experience of diminishing pain. Another thing that plagued me on my trip was cold hands. I didn’t think I would get cold hands in Mississippi in May, but I did. There were a couple of days when I was longing for some scorching heat because my hands were wet and cold. I hate it when my hands get cold and it’s so easy for me to get cold hands. And it would be so nice when the sun would finally come out or it would at least quit raining and the temperature would rise and my hands would begin to feel normal again. I just love the way it feels when pain goes away.

I never did get that tweet written. I guess the sweet feel of relief only lasted so long before I would become distracted by the sight of another hill. And once my hands got warm I probably began to get hot. The sensation of retreating pain is an illusive moment.

And as far as I can tell life is sort of made up this dance between the jabs of pain and the balm of relief. There are all kinds of variations of this theme. Certainly some people live in incredibly harsh situations or are dealing with situations where it’s hard for me to imagine that there is ever any kind of relief, but I’m guessing that in every circumstance there is an occasional sense of release.

And there are other people who don’t appear to have any pain at all. It seems like there are some people out there who have all the things most of us think we need to make us happy, but I’m pretty sure there’s not anyone with enough fame, fortune, health, beauty or charm to eliminate all the pain of life.

Suffering happens. Pain is part of the landscape for all of us. But I’m thinking we all know the feeling of relief as well. It may just be a blip on the suffering screen, but that sense of being delivered from something horrible is a wonderful thing. In fact, I believe what we have in today’s Psalm is the heartfelt expression from someone who had somehow been delivered from a terrible circumstance. What we have here isn’t wishful thinking – it’s genuine thanks to God for deliverance. This person had been on the brink of the Pit, but was back on solid ground and grateful to be there. And this person was giving God all the credit for getting them back to a good place.

This person didn’t get distracted by the sight of a new trouble before he could get this Psalm written. This person was out to remind people of how good life can be and of the God who is behind it all. This Psalm is full of good news – even for people who are still on the edge of the Pit.

After reading this Psalm a couple of times I found myself thinking that many of the characteristics that are attributed to God are in common with the character of Olivia Pope on the tv series, Scandal. I’m a recent convert to that television show, but I’m not just a fan of that show – I’m addicted to that show. I lost a good amount of sleep last week because there were nights when it came time to go to bed but I just had to watch one more episode – which sometimes turned in to two more episodes.

Those of you who have actual lives instead of Netflix don’t know how this works, but when you find a television series that you like you can watch years of a given show within a few weeks. And it can mess you up. I actually skipped the first season of Scandal, but Sharla filled me in on the essential details, and I got hooked on Season 2. Olivia Pope is a woman who heads a company, that finds ways to get people out of trouble. Olivia Pope is what you call a fixer. And as you can imagine, there’s a lot of business for a fixer in Washington, DC.

After watching that show, I highly suspect that that Roger Goodell, the NFL Commissioner has employed a similar agency after all of the ugly publicity the NFL has experienced this week. I feel sure it was a fixer who suggested that they hire Robert Mueller, the former director of the FBI to investigate what happened in the domestic abuse situation involving the Baltimore Ravens running-back, Ray Rice. I feel sure the commissioner knows exactly who knew what happened and when they knew it, and if he doesn’t he could walk down the hall and find out what happened, but that wouldn’t take long enough. It’ll take months for Robert Mueller to generate a report, and no doubt someone else will have done something far more regrettable by then. And maybe by then Commissioner Goodell will have generated a plan that will enable him to keep his $44 million job.

I’m happy to say I’ve never done anything bad enough to need the services of a fixer, but from what I can tell, people who get themselves in horrible messes often get redeemed in dramatic ways. A good fixer doesn’t just get you out of trouble – a good fixer can turn your troubles in to gold. Of course you have to pay the fixer their share of the gold, but on television, and perhaps occasionally in the pseudo-real worlds of business, politics, and the church – people who get in to big trouble often end up in bigger offices.

That’s not such a good thing, but in the truly-real world – the world that God created, loves, and continues to touch – I think it’s also our troubles that can lead us in to a richer way of living. It’s often within the context of suffering that we develop a greater sense of awareness of the loving-kindness of God and compassion for other people. We are more likely to desperately scan the horizon for the illusive nature of God when we’ve put a foot in the muck of the Pit. We search for the forgiveness of God when we come to see how shallow and selfish we are capable of being, and that often leads us in to becoming more forgiving toward others.

And the good news is not that there are people out there who can help restore our public images when we do ridiculous and scandalous things – the good news is that we are more likely to find true life after we have destroyed those illusions that we harbor about how wonderful we all are and how perfect our lives are supposed to be.

I went to a series of lectures last Wednesday at 1st UMC here in Little Rock. The lecturer was a man named Peter Rollins, who is a young philosopher/theologian from Belfast, Ireland. I never had heard of him before seeing a flier about the event, but it sounded interesting, and it was interesting. He spoke three times last Wednesday, and what he had to say really spoke to me.

I can’t easily summarize what he had to say, but one of the things I think I heard him say is that it’s an illusion to believe that we will ever arrive at a perfect reunion with God in this life. This may not sound like a profound thought or even good news, but it feels like the truth to me. In both overt and subtle ways I think we church people often generate the false expectation that you will find yourself in perfect union with God in this world if you will practice all of the right things, and have the right beliefs. I may be totally wrong about what he was saying, but I think he sees faith as the exercise of carrying on with faith and trust in God without the expectation that all the pieces of life are going to fall perfectly in place for us.

This is not to say that this image of God as the One who saves us, and protects us, and guides us, and perfectly loves us is not an accurate image of God, but we should let that image of God be our guide for how we should treat one another and not be an excuse for doing nothing for ourselves.

I think Peter Rollins wants people of faith to be realistic about what we expect God to do, and to take seriously what we think God expects from us.

This Psalm is a beautiful portrayal of God. It provides us with a clear portrayal of what God is like. God is sensitive to who we are. God exudes deliverance, healing, redemption, justice, mercy, forgiveness, and compassion, but we don’t generally experience these things apart from the actions of others or ourselves.

We are all in need of some fixing, and as long as we live on this earth there will be something that needs to get fixed within ourselves, within our communities, and within our world. God is on our side, and somehow God is there for us, but don’t count on God to repair your marriage, your workplace, your children, or your parents. God is a helpful presence for us all, but I suspect the most dramatic thing God is going to do is help us understand what it is we need to do.

God doesn’t fix things the way Olivia Pope does, and I sort of hate that. It would sometimes be nice if we could get God to make some clear adjustments for us, but it wouldn’t be so good when we are the ones who need to be adjusted. Whether we deserve it or not, God has largely entrusted this world to us. Our merciful God is with us, but we need to pay attention to what we’re doing. God is in the fixing business, but I think God is counting on us to do that good and holy work of redeeming, healing, forgiving, and caring for one another.

This may not be the good news you were hoping to hear today, but I’m thinking it’s the truth, and it’s not all bad.

God’s steadfast love does endure forever. And thanks be to God for that. Amen.

Holy Diplomacy
Matthew 18:15-20

18:15 “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 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. This may be disappointing to some of you, but you personal offenders out there can relax. This really isn’t advice on how to extract repentance.

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 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 get drunk and dance naked on Main St. – it would be 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 I’m sure there’s a principle here for us to observe.

On one level, this passage comes across as 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. Is it just to be a group of well-behaved citizens who deal with each other in properly measured ways? I’m thinking this passage does have something to say about how we are to relate to one another, but I suspect the message has more to do with maintaining relationships than with controlling behavior. It’s not 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 practice this ancient endeavor.

It’s interesting to note that the lesson from the Hebrew Scripture or Old Testament that is recommended for us to read this week is perhaps the most famous case of holy diplomacy — the story of the Passover. The original telling of this story is found in the 12th 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 remember.

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 months of diplomacy. Moses and Aaron had provided the Egyptian Pharoah with some seemingly 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 intent of this meal has never been to highlight the privilege of the people of Israel. 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.

This is the essence of holy diplomacy. It’s the story of the way God intends for us to relate to one another. We are to remember what God has done for us and to treat others with equal graciousness.

The story of the Passover is good background for what we have in today’s scripture. The community that Jesus established was to be a community that was not about excluding unredeemed people, but to be a community of people who make a great effort to redeem lost people.

I believe God established the people of Israel to be a source of redemption for the world, but I’m not saying God is always behind the actions of the nation of Israel. 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 to say about what’s happening in the Middle East right now – it’s hard to see what God is doing there now, but it’s clearly a place in need of some holy diplomacy.

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. Even when we can’t find satisfying resolutions to strained relations with others we are to treat them as gentiles or tax collectors – as Jesus treated people who were gentiles or tax collectors – which was as people who were worthy of attention.

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.

Thanks be to God for this ancient and timely gift of holy diplomacy!
Amen.

Who Do YOU Say That He Is?
Matthew 16:13-20

16:13 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.

Jesus found the perfect person to build his church upon. Peter was perfect because he was one of us. We don’t know how the other disciples reacted to this big announcement that Peter was the rock upon which Jesus would build his church, but I’m thinking there might have been a group double-take. This is not to say that Peter was any less qualified for the job than the others, but it’s not like he had distinguished himself as the most thoughtful member of the group.

In fact he might best be described as the most impulsive of all the disciples. A couple of weeks ago I diagnosed him as being someone who tended to live a step ahead of the moment as opposed to a person who was fully present in the moment. But willingness to leap before looking seems to have been a characteristic Jesus valued for this job of building the church.

Peter wasn’t perfect, but he had the most essential quality – he loved Jesus. Peter recognized the uniqueness of Jesus and he wanted to serve Jesus.

Peter didn’t fully understand what he was saying when he first identified Jesus as the Messiah. In fact, he would later announce that he had no idea who Jesus was, but Jesus saw that coming. Peter wasn’t perfect, but he became perfect for the job. More than anyone else, he came to experience and to recognize the perfectly forgiving love of Christ, and through it all he developed perfect trust in the resurrected presence of Jesus. Following Jesus Christ isn’t anything any of us are fully qualified to do, but Jesus can do a lot with imperfect people who love him and who want to put their love in to practice.

Peter was the first person to announce his trust in Jesus as the Messiah, and in so doing he became the founding member of the church, but the church stays alive because this question remains alive – who do we say Jesus is? And living people continue to answer this question in the same way Peter did. The church is a mysterious body, and you might even say it’s an ailing body, but it’s a living body. It’s alive wherever there are a few imperfect people who are trying to live with trust in the perfect love of Jesus.

And Peter is our perfect leader. Peter wasn’t paralyzed by his desire to be perfect – Peter didn’t let his fear of doing the wrong thing stop him from doing anything. Peter was going to do something – right or wrong that would reveal his trust in the living presence of our loving messiah. And that is the kind of person Jesus can work with.

Jesus knew not to choose a more thoughtful person as the rock upon which to build the church – if he had done that it would have died during the planning stage. And what I think Jesus understood and accepted was the fact that the church is a living organization. Like us as individuals who continue to grow and evolve – the church is a living body. Jesus chose a rock-like person to be the first leader of the church, and that was a God-inspired decision, but the church is not a stone-like structure – it’s a living creature.

There are many stone structures that bear the name of Jesus, and in some ways the living body of Christ is weighed down by these stone structures. I know we have to spend a lot of our time and energy taking care of these bricks and mortar, but we’ll be ok as long as we know not to serve the stones. A good structure is a fine thing to have, but if it doesn’t contain the spirit of Christ it’s nothing but a pile of stones. A church building without people who love Jesus and who practice their faith is more like a corpse than a living body. A body is a fine thing to have, but when it quits breathing it’s not much use.

I’m in no position to judge between the quick and the dead, but I believe it’s possible for a church to become a dead body of Christ, and that’s the last thing this world needs. Of course there’s always this possibility of resurrection, but our calling is to be a living and breathing body of Christ.

Peter was granted the power to bind and to loose, and we who follow in Peter’s steps are to share in that authority. And while there are people like me who wear official churchy titles – I believe this authority to bind and to loose is a responsibility that all aspiring Christians are to bear. Peter represents all people who make this confession that Jesus is the Messiah – the son of the Living God, and it is up to all of us to bear this responsibility.

The language that Jesus used to describe the authority of Peter to bind and to loose is very connected to some traditional Jewish terminology. It refers to the way in which the leaders of Israel were to guide that community. One of the responsibilities of the Jewish rabbis was to determine which ordinances were binding and which ones could be released. The rabbis were charged with determining proper doctrine and authority and it was often described as a process of binding and loosening.

As much as some people want to portray the Christian faith as an unchanging set of doctrines – the truth is that it’s in our roots to change and to adapt.

The arrival of Jesus himself was an exercise in adaptation. God wanted the people of Israel to go in a new direction – a more open-hearted and loving direction – and that’s what Jesus brought. The self-serving leaders of Israel wanted their petty rules to remain primary, but Jesus replaced their endless ordinances with one ruling principle – the need for love to prevail above all else. This is the message of Christ and Peter got it. Jesus empowered Peter to build the church on this one essential principle, and this power has been passed on to us.

And speaking of passing, a very significant person passed away last week. His name was BKS Iyengar and the fact that there are multiple yoga studios in places like Little Rock, AR can be traced back to his life and work. Iyengar was born into an impoverished family in India 1913, and he was a sick and malnourished child. During his childhood he suffered from typhoid, malaria, influenza, and tuberculosis. They didn’t expect him to make it to adulthood, but at the age of 16 he began practicing yoga, which was about the only form of healthcare that was available to him, and over the next 6 years he regained his health.

He became a very accomplished practitioner of the discipline, and he made a living as a young man going around India demonstrating some of the astonishing yoga postures that he had learned. In 1952 he met a European violinist named Menuhin who was impressed by him and he brought him to Europe where the popularity of Iyengar’s teaching began to grow. He wrote a book in 1965 called Light on Yoga that became the foundational book of yoga instruction for many Europeans and Americans, and it has never been out of print since then.

Iyengar was committed to helping people integrate their minds, with their bodies, and their emotions. He wanted to help people develop a deeper level of consciousness, and he believed that there were these exercises of breathing and stretching that could help people become more physically and spiritually healthy. He once said: How can you know God if you don’t know your big toe?

Another interesting thing about Iyengar was the way in which he understood yoga to be an evolving practice. While conducting a class one day a student pointed out to Iyengar that something he was teaching was contradictory to what he wrote in his book, and he responded by saying he was a living teacher and that was a dead book.

I think BKS Iyengar brought a great deal of light in to the world. He wasn’t dogmatic about a particular belief system, and he brought a nice tool for spiritual growth that fits with any healthy belief system. I’m not what you would call an avid yoga practitioner, but I am a regular yoga dabbler, and I fully embrace the notion that a healthy spiritual practice continues to grow and to evolve.

I don’t believe that the Bible is a dead book, and one of the things that makes it a living book is this message that Jesus passed on about the authority we have to bind and to loose. What is the bedrock of our faith? And what is the fluff? These are essential questions for us. They are essential for us as individuals – they are essential for us as a congregation – they are essential for us as a denomination.

Our denomination is struggling to find it’s way. And we need to be involved in that struggle to help it find it’s way, but we also need to tend to our own church, and to our own selves.

I’ve often heard yoga instructors remind people to breathe as they embark on various yoga postures. You can’t hold any position for long if you hold your breath.

In the same way, none of us are of any use to our congregation or our denomination if we forget to breathe the living breath of Christ. Who do you say that he is, and what is Christ calling you to do? That’s a question we must always continue to ask of ourselves. I think this is what it means to be a practicing Christian, and this is the practice that will keep us alive on every level.

Following in the footsteps of Peter and all the others who have kept this living body of Christ alive is a high calling. It’s a life-long challenge. It’s a life-giving practice.

Thanks be to God for the divine opportunity we have to be a part of this living organization that leads to true life. Amen.