A question I get asked a lot is if I had planned to move to Michigan. With you all I’d like to settle the question once and for all. No. No, I never intended to move to Michigan. In fact, prior to coming here to interview and subsequently moving here, I had been in the state of Michigan four times. Once when my brother started law school, once for his graduation. One trip to the UP last summer. And once, on a road trip across the Ohio turnpike in 2007, my roommate and I took a 20-minute detour for lunch at a Subway, so I could check Michigan off the “list of states I’d visited.” I liked Michigan; don’t get me wrong. The UP especially was lovely, and Ann Arbor is a great city. But until Bishop Satterlee called to ask me to consider interviewing with a little congregation in a city I’d never heard of, Michigan, lovely as it was, was just not really on my radar.
I shouldn’t I suppose, have been surprised to end up in a place I hadn’t expected. The story of my faith has always sort of felt like this, with my merrily making plans as to how my life would unfold, and God merrily coming along behind and messing those plans all up. The result of this messing always turning out to be more than I imagined, more than I maybe would have dreamed for myself. I have jokingly referred to this as God’s cosmic sense of humor, but I think it’s something more than that; more like God’s vast ability and desire to dream more for me than I think I deserve or am capable of.
God’s cosmic messing in our lives are always life-giving. But there are other times, when our stories are knocked aside in ways and by forces that do not seem life-giving. Ways in which the bad does not seem to be giving way to something better. Times in which we wonder where God is in the midst of such tragic calamity. The Israelites in Isaiah find themselves in the middle of just such a shift.
In our Isaiah reading for this morning, the Israelites are reeling from a cosmic messing up of their story that doesn’t feel life-giving or very much like God. I talked a little bit last week about how the book of Isaiah tells of the experience of exile. Last week we heard one of those in-breaking stories, promising hope in the midst of judgment. This morning our reading is from the middle of the book of Isaiah, smack in the middle of persecution under Babylon. The story had been going along fine for Israel, or so it felt. They were a wealthy and prosperous nation. Trade was booming, commerce was flourishing; God truly blessed them. On the surface, the story was great, but hovering just below another story was taking root. Corruption, greed, persecution, inequality, those were the true forces at work. Sin and brokenness had slipped into the system. And sin, as it has a way of doing, does not confine itself to those whom welcomed it in. The headlines of wealth and prosperity were just that, headlines. Below them the foundation of justice was weak. And so, when the Babylonians came calling, the system crumbled, taking with it the guilty and the innocent alike.
That’s the thing about sin. It is not bound to those who created it. When sin comes to collect, it has no sense of equity, no restriction to those from whom it is owed. Sin takes its piece from the middle, demanding more and bigger interest on its debt. And the Isarelites, those who benefitted from the inequality and those who suffered, all found their stories washed away in the wake of the exile in Babylon. Guilty or not, all were held by the bronze doors and iron bars of captivity.
And then, unexpectedly, the story changed. Out of the midst of a future that seemed to hold nothing but exile and destruction, a savior broke through. “Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped…I will go before you and level the mountains, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron, I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the LORD, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.”
God is always messing up our stories in order to bring us to life. No matter how clearly the path we think we have drawn, or how stuck in sin we seem to be, God is always moving and driving and bringing life in darkness, hope when all seems hopeless.
And here’s the really crazy part of this story. Those promises, that hope, can come from the most unexpected of sources. God promised the people of Israel “treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places.” And that salvation would come to Israel from such an unlikely source as Cyrus was certainly such a treasure. Because here’s the thing about Cyrus. He wasn’t an Israelite. He wasn’t seeking to bring justice or promote harmony. Cyrus was the king of Persia. He was the pagan leader of a heathen nation. And yet, it was through him the God would deliver God’s people from exile. God said to Cyrus, “for the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me. [Because] I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god.”
It seems wildly unlikely that salvation would come through Cyrus. But if we look back, the whole of our salvation history is the story of a God who always breaks through in the most wildly unlikely ways. The son of a Hebrew slave, left in a basket and raised as a foster child in the court of Pharaoh, raised his rod and the Red Sea broke in two so the Israelites could march to freedom. The heathen king of Persia conquered the Babylonians in his own quest for power, and freed the Israelites from their exile. And of course, that most unexpected of indwellings, that began when the birthing wail of an infant in a stable cut through a cold winter night, reached it’s height on a Friday afternoon when the dying gasp of a political prisoner caused the curtain of the temple to be torn in two, and finally came to completion when an earthquake revealed an empty tomb, breaking open the barrier of sin and death that kept us apart from God. A breaking we remember when we gather at the font or around the table and experience for ourselves a God who breaks through each and every day in the most common elements of bread and wine and water.
God breaks into our lives in unexpected places, God breaks into our lives in unexpected ways, God breaks into our lives in unexpected people. Sometimes those unexpected people are even us…
That is the possibly the most unexpected twist in this text. This text is addressed not to the oppressed Israelites, but to the King of Persia. God chose Cyrus, of all people, to bring hope to the Israelites. Cyrus, who never even knew it, never even knew God, was God’s instrument in bringing salvation. And if God chose Cyrus, then God can and does choose us. Not only does God break into the captive places in our lives, but God also uses us to break into the captive places in others' lives. God told Cyrus, “I call you by your name. I surname you, though you do not know me.” And God calls us by our names too. Surnames us, in ways we do not even know. We are the ones God uses to break into this world. God uses us, though we do not know what we are doing, or where we are going, though we may not even know it is God who is acting, but uses us to be God’s hands and feet creating light and life in this world.
Our unexpected God breaks in. This is the history of our salvation; this is the promise of our future. God, who loved us so much that slavery under Pharaoh, that exile in a foreign land, that even death itself could not keep God apart from us, is still working in our lives and communities to break down everything that holds us captive. This unexpected God is even working through us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Monday, October 13, 2014
Failure to Party: A Sermon on Isaiah 25:1-9 and Matthew 22:1-14
Isaiah is my favorite prophet. If I haven’t told you this yet, you should be aware that throughout the course of our ministry together, you will probably hear a lot of sermons on Isaiah, because I love the book of Isaiah.
So a little background before we begin. The book of Isaiah is actually three books written at three different periods in Israel’s history that were sort of cobbled together to become one book. The beginning is from the prophet Isaiah himself before the fall of Israel to the Babylonians, the later sections were probably composed by people in the Isaiahic school during and after the exile. This was totally acceptable practice; the ancient near east had very different ideas about plagiarism and authorship than we do. After a religious leader died it was considered totally appropriate for that person’s followers to continue to write and prophesy in their name. Sort of like how a ghostwriter would function now, except way more commonplace and expected. This is especially important in Isaiah because from this practice we get this beautiful prose narrative of the history of Israel, from the corruption of the heights of power, through the downfall and exile, and into the freedom of the restored Jerusalem. It is a book that, more than any other, tells how God stays with God’s people throughout all darkness and leads them into freedom.
Isaiah can mostly be read chronologically, with the beginning the warnings before the fall, the middle the period of exile, and the end the restoration of Jerusalem. But because centuries of editors have played with the text, throughout each of the sections are these snapshots of the promised reign of glory, moments of hope amidst the chaos. Our first reading for this morning is one of those moments.
This beautiful pronouncement of hope, of how the Lord is a refuge to the poor, a shelter in the storm, a doer of wondrous things. Of how the Lord will set a feast of rich foods and well-aged wines, and how death will be swallowed up forever. All of this comes in the middle of a pronouncement of judgment upon the earth. If you read chapter 24 you’ll notice that this reading stands out as in sharp contrast with the doom and gloom that surround it. Things will be dark, the book of Isaiah says. Things will be dark and hard and scary. Israel will fall. Violence will reign. But don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid when you look around and God seems very far away. Don’t be afraid when the world seems out of control and all you see is darkness. Don’t be afraid, because God has done wondrous things. Don’t be afraid because God is preparing a feast. The day we have waited for will come, and on the mountain of the Lord we will rejoice in this promise. So, the book of Israel proclaims, “let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
The beautiful feast imagery in Isaiah, “of rich foods [and] well-aged wines, of rich foods filled with marrow, [and] well-aged wines strained clear,” a feast at which God “will wipe away the tears from all faces [and] swallow up death forever” seems to both compliment and challenge to our gospel this morning, this very strange parable Jesus told the chief priests and elders. So to see what these two readings might be having to tell us, let’s first take a look at some of the absurdities in this parable story.
Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a banquet for his son.” Now that seems to line up alright. The kingdom of heaven as a banquet feast, “a feast of rich foods,” of foods fit for a king. But here’s where the parable gets strange. The king sets the feast, but no one will come. Here’s the thing, when the king invites you to a banquet, you clear your schedule. You don’t not go the king’s banquet, you just don’t. But these guests, they don’t go. So the king again sends messengers to tell the guests, look, everything’s ready, the food’s set, come to the party. But still the guests won’t come. So the king burns down his own city. Ransacks it, destroys it, leaves it in a heap of smoldering ash. I’ve read enough fantasy novels to know that storybook kings sometimes do weird things, but burn their own city to the ground? Seems like some pretty poor decision-making.
So then, now that the city is destroyed, the king sort of nonchalantly sends the messengers back out to find anyone who survived the rampage to invite them to the party. Two things strike me about verses eight and nine here. First the callousness of the king in verse eight, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.” Such an offhand remark to explain the destruction of a city. And second, the surprising openness of verse nine, “Go, therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” In sudden sharp contrast, now the feast is open to all. Suddenly we see a banquet that sounds like the elaborate feast described in Isaiah. The oxen are slaughtered, the dinner is prepared, and everyone, good and bad, is invited. The doors are flung wide, the party is at hand, come and taste the feast prepared. Which is some pretty great news. The kingdom of heaven is open to everyone. All are welcome at the banquet feast of the Lord.
And as a preacher, it would be so nice if Jesus stopped talking here. But he didn’t. The story takes one last weird turn for us. Because then we discover that the king came into the party and discovered one of his guests was not wearing the proper clothing. Which, considering all of the guests were just picked up out of the rubble of a destroyed city and brought with no prior information to the wedding, seems not all that unlikely. It actually seems pretty amazing that only one guy was not properly outfitted for a wedding, that the banquet wasn’t entirely made up of people in sooty, smoke-stained street clothes. Then the king has the man bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness, “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” a phrase that Matthew’s Gospel is uniquely focused on. For, says the end of the parable, “many are called, but few are chosen.”
This parable has a hard edge and takes a dark turn. Read like we often read parables, with God playing the role of the king, it’s hard to quite know what to do with it. I think part of what’s going on here is strife within Matthew’s own community. The struggle between Jesus and the religious leaders over authority is the same struggle between the religious leaders and the followers of Jesus that the people of Matthew’s community saw lived out day after day as they tried to make sense of the world after Jesus death and resurrection, after the Temple had fallen. Stories such as this one reminded them that Jesus too had struggled with close-minded religious leaders, and that Jesus had harsh words for such people.
And there is wisdom and guidance in that. But we read this parable from a different place than Matthew’s community. We read it not as an oppressed minority reeling from the destruction of the temple. We read it as Jesus disciples hear it, as a radical promise that God invites everyone to the banquet, good and bad, because God is a God of radical welcome and expansive love. So, because we read it from a different place, I want to wonder with you for a bit about what this parable might mean for us from the point of view of different characters. How might it change how we understand the banquet feast?
What if the king is not God, but the religious leaders? What if the feast is set, the banquet is thrown, but because of the king’s exclusivity, he still ends up dining alone. Yes he threw open the doors to everyone, but still there were hidden restrictions, laws and codes in place for who was welcome. Eventually, such barriers will end in the same place, a banquet set for an empty room. How does this parable then challenge us to question our own hospitality? What barriers might we still have up in truly believing that the feast is set for all?
Or what if the failure of the man dressed incorrectly was not his inability to wear the proper clothing, but his hesitation to enter fully into the joy of the feast. After all, if everyone else was dressed in wedding robes, clearly the possibility was out there that he too could have become properly attired. What if his problem was a failure to party? And so, by standing arms crossed at the edge of the party, afraid to truly let his guard down and have a good time, lest he look the fool, he missed out on the celebration entirely? How might this parable challenge us to consider our own joy? Is our faith fun? Something we engage because it brings a smile to our faces and a dance to our steps? Or to we approach a life of faith more as a life of obligation? We’re here to check the box off of “good person,” to fill the slot of our resume, but in doing so we forget that in the end this is a banquet, and we are called to dance. How might we be being challenged to bring more joy, more laughter, more downright silliness into this world?
This parable asks hard questions of us. It ends in a place with no clear answers and frightening challenges. But here’s the good news, sisters and brothers, even in the midst of our questions, in the midst of our shortcomings, and failures to welcome, still the feast is set. So come to this table with your questions. Come feeling unwelcoming or unwelcome. Come overfull or underdressed. Come filled with joy or cautious in fear. Come to a foretaste of the rich foods, of the well-aged wines strained clear. Come with your questions unanswered, knowing that such questions and wondering can only bring us closer to the heart of God, who promises in the midst of all our fears and doubts, to rest God’s holy hand upon this mountain. Amen.
So a little background before we begin. The book of Isaiah is actually three books written at three different periods in Israel’s history that were sort of cobbled together to become one book. The beginning is from the prophet Isaiah himself before the fall of Israel to the Babylonians, the later sections were probably composed by people in the Isaiahic school during and after the exile. This was totally acceptable practice; the ancient near east had very different ideas about plagiarism and authorship than we do. After a religious leader died it was considered totally appropriate for that person’s followers to continue to write and prophesy in their name. Sort of like how a ghostwriter would function now, except way more commonplace and expected. This is especially important in Isaiah because from this practice we get this beautiful prose narrative of the history of Israel, from the corruption of the heights of power, through the downfall and exile, and into the freedom of the restored Jerusalem. It is a book that, more than any other, tells how God stays with God’s people throughout all darkness and leads them into freedom.
Isaiah can mostly be read chronologically, with the beginning the warnings before the fall, the middle the period of exile, and the end the restoration of Jerusalem. But because centuries of editors have played with the text, throughout each of the sections are these snapshots of the promised reign of glory, moments of hope amidst the chaos. Our first reading for this morning is one of those moments.
This beautiful pronouncement of hope, of how the Lord is a refuge to the poor, a shelter in the storm, a doer of wondrous things. Of how the Lord will set a feast of rich foods and well-aged wines, and how death will be swallowed up forever. All of this comes in the middle of a pronouncement of judgment upon the earth. If you read chapter 24 you’ll notice that this reading stands out as in sharp contrast with the doom and gloom that surround it. Things will be dark, the book of Isaiah says. Things will be dark and hard and scary. Israel will fall. Violence will reign. But don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid when you look around and God seems very far away. Don’t be afraid when the world seems out of control and all you see is darkness. Don’t be afraid, because God has done wondrous things. Don’t be afraid because God is preparing a feast. The day we have waited for will come, and on the mountain of the Lord we will rejoice in this promise. So, the book of Israel proclaims, “let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
The beautiful feast imagery in Isaiah, “of rich foods [and] well-aged wines, of rich foods filled with marrow, [and] well-aged wines strained clear,” a feast at which God “will wipe away the tears from all faces [and] swallow up death forever” seems to both compliment and challenge to our gospel this morning, this very strange parable Jesus told the chief priests and elders. So to see what these two readings might be having to tell us, let’s first take a look at some of the absurdities in this parable story.
Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a banquet for his son.” Now that seems to line up alright. The kingdom of heaven as a banquet feast, “a feast of rich foods,” of foods fit for a king. But here’s where the parable gets strange. The king sets the feast, but no one will come. Here’s the thing, when the king invites you to a banquet, you clear your schedule. You don’t not go the king’s banquet, you just don’t. But these guests, they don’t go. So the king again sends messengers to tell the guests, look, everything’s ready, the food’s set, come to the party. But still the guests won’t come. So the king burns down his own city. Ransacks it, destroys it, leaves it in a heap of smoldering ash. I’ve read enough fantasy novels to know that storybook kings sometimes do weird things, but burn their own city to the ground? Seems like some pretty poor decision-making.
So then, now that the city is destroyed, the king sort of nonchalantly sends the messengers back out to find anyone who survived the rampage to invite them to the party. Two things strike me about verses eight and nine here. First the callousness of the king in verse eight, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.” Such an offhand remark to explain the destruction of a city. And second, the surprising openness of verse nine, “Go, therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” In sudden sharp contrast, now the feast is open to all. Suddenly we see a banquet that sounds like the elaborate feast described in Isaiah. The oxen are slaughtered, the dinner is prepared, and everyone, good and bad, is invited. The doors are flung wide, the party is at hand, come and taste the feast prepared. Which is some pretty great news. The kingdom of heaven is open to everyone. All are welcome at the banquet feast of the Lord.
And as a preacher, it would be so nice if Jesus stopped talking here. But he didn’t. The story takes one last weird turn for us. Because then we discover that the king came into the party and discovered one of his guests was not wearing the proper clothing. Which, considering all of the guests were just picked up out of the rubble of a destroyed city and brought with no prior information to the wedding, seems not all that unlikely. It actually seems pretty amazing that only one guy was not properly outfitted for a wedding, that the banquet wasn’t entirely made up of people in sooty, smoke-stained street clothes. Then the king has the man bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness, “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” a phrase that Matthew’s Gospel is uniquely focused on. For, says the end of the parable, “many are called, but few are chosen.”
This parable has a hard edge and takes a dark turn. Read like we often read parables, with God playing the role of the king, it’s hard to quite know what to do with it. I think part of what’s going on here is strife within Matthew’s own community. The struggle between Jesus and the religious leaders over authority is the same struggle between the religious leaders and the followers of Jesus that the people of Matthew’s community saw lived out day after day as they tried to make sense of the world after Jesus death and resurrection, after the Temple had fallen. Stories such as this one reminded them that Jesus too had struggled with close-minded religious leaders, and that Jesus had harsh words for such people.
And there is wisdom and guidance in that. But we read this parable from a different place than Matthew’s community. We read it not as an oppressed minority reeling from the destruction of the temple. We read it as Jesus disciples hear it, as a radical promise that God invites everyone to the banquet, good and bad, because God is a God of radical welcome and expansive love. So, because we read it from a different place, I want to wonder with you for a bit about what this parable might mean for us from the point of view of different characters. How might it change how we understand the banquet feast?
What if the king is not God, but the religious leaders? What if the feast is set, the banquet is thrown, but because of the king’s exclusivity, he still ends up dining alone. Yes he threw open the doors to everyone, but still there were hidden restrictions, laws and codes in place for who was welcome. Eventually, such barriers will end in the same place, a banquet set for an empty room. How does this parable then challenge us to question our own hospitality? What barriers might we still have up in truly believing that the feast is set for all?
Or what if the failure of the man dressed incorrectly was not his inability to wear the proper clothing, but his hesitation to enter fully into the joy of the feast. After all, if everyone else was dressed in wedding robes, clearly the possibility was out there that he too could have become properly attired. What if his problem was a failure to party? And so, by standing arms crossed at the edge of the party, afraid to truly let his guard down and have a good time, lest he look the fool, he missed out on the celebration entirely? How might this parable challenge us to consider our own joy? Is our faith fun? Something we engage because it brings a smile to our faces and a dance to our steps? Or to we approach a life of faith more as a life of obligation? We’re here to check the box off of “good person,” to fill the slot of our resume, but in doing so we forget that in the end this is a banquet, and we are called to dance. How might we be being challenged to bring more joy, more laughter, more downright silliness into this world?
This parable asks hard questions of us. It ends in a place with no clear answers and frightening challenges. But here’s the good news, sisters and brothers, even in the midst of our questions, in the midst of our shortcomings, and failures to welcome, still the feast is set. So come to this table with your questions. Come feeling unwelcoming or unwelcome. Come overfull or underdressed. Come filled with joy or cautious in fear. Come to a foretaste of the rich foods, of the well-aged wines strained clear. Come with your questions unanswered, knowing that such questions and wondering can only bring us closer to the heart of God, who promises in the midst of all our fears and doubts, to rest God’s holy hand upon this mountain. Amen.
Monday, October 6, 2014
Amazing in our Eyes: A Sermon on Matthew 21:33-46
Here we are in the second of three parables of Jesus response to the chief priests and the elders questions about authority. Last week, we heard about how the chief priests and elders would be second into the kingdom of God and this week it seems like maybe they aren’t getting in at all. I confess I don’t love preaching parables. Preaching always seems like a bit of a bold endeavor, and parables even more so. Here’s a lesson that Jesus himself chose to teach using a story, and now I’m going to try to explain it out to you in ten to twelve minutes. Seems a bit ambitious if you ask me.
And this parable seems like an especially funny one for explaining. Not funny, ha-ha, but funny as in confusing. So there’s a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a fence around it, dug a wine press, built a watchtower, and generally did all the things one would do to have a successful crop. Then the landowner leased the vineyard to some tenants to care for it while he was away. This was standard practice in first century Palestine. Wealthy landowners would often find others to work their land for them in exchange for a portion of the crops. What’s odd about these tenants is that they seem to get too attached to the property. Like the way my friend’s two-year-old firmly believes that any toy she is playing with is her toy, the tenants seem to think that the land they are working should belong to them. So when the landlord sends his slaves to gather up his portion of the produce, the tenants seize the slaves, beating and killing them. Again the landlord sends slaves; again the tenants kill them. Finally, the landlord sends his son, thinking, “surely they will respect my son.” Now let’s pause here for a second and think this decision through. On one hand, Jesus is telling this story to a patriarchal society. One’s entire social status is based around one’s alliance to the patriarch. So to assume that the son would have the weight of the landlord is a totally legal and reasonable belief. But the tenants have thus far not shown any great concern for the legal or rational ramifications of their actions. So why he would think that his son, a much more valuable commodity than any of the servants he’d thus far sent, would have the effect he is looking for seems sort of unbelievable.
And of course, the tenants don’t respect the son. They kill him as well, thinking that with the son out of the way they can have the inheritance.
So what, Jesus asked the chief priests and the elders, will the landowner do to those tenants? They say 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.” This seems like a harsh, but possible rational response to the problem at hand. One might even wonder why the landlord took so long to send in a stronger force to deal with his unruly tenants. It would seem after the first set of slaves were killed like it was past time to get rid of that group and go with tenants who were a little less possessive.
And of course, because we’ve read enough of these parables, we can see the trick Jesus has pulled on the chief priests and the elders here. The landlord, obviously, is God. You can hear the echoes of the creation story in the creation of the vineyard, how in the beginning, God filled the universe with everything necessary for life, just as the landlord filled the vineyard with everything needed for the harvest. And then God/the landlord turned the vineyard/earth over to tenants, who would care for God’s creation and bring it to fullness. But what did the nasty tenants do? They killed the prophets, over and over again. What is the Old Testament but the story of God’s people turning away from the messengers God has sent them. So finally, the landlord sent the son. And the tenants killed the son, so great was their desire for power. But then what happened? [Pause]
Jesus followed up their call for vengeance by quoting the book of Isaiah, asking, “Have you never read in the scriptures?” Here’s where we have an advantage over the chief priests and the elders to whom Jesus addressed the original question. Because the chief priests and the elders don’t yet know what’s to come. But we do. We know just how true this story is to our story. We know that the landlord did indeed send the son, God’s only Son, our Lord. And that in just a short time from when Jesus had this conversation in the temple, the parable would play out just as he had described it.
But what happened after Jesus was put to death? He rose again. And in doing so, he defeated death. And the words from Isaiah would ring true in a way that no one could have guessed, no one could have imagined. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.”
This parable paints for us a story of the indescribable vastness of God’s love. God’s relationship to God’s creation is not a tenant/landlord relationship. A landlord, someone more interested in the production of product than the prospects of the tenants, would certainly have turned those rotten, violent folk out at the first sign of disloyalty. But God the good landlord puts relationship with the tenants above production of the harvest. God so desperately wants to be in relationship with God’s people that no matter how many times they turn away, God sends another messenger. Even to the point of sending God’s own son.
And when God’s own son is put to death, even that becomes life-giving, becomes an opportunity for redemption, for relationship, for God to claim us as daughters and sons, heirs of the promise of the kingdom of God. God’s greatest gift of life, came through death on a cross. Hope came out of despair. Light out of the deepest darkness. The incredible, paradoxical foolishness of the cross is the apex of God’s love song to creation. A song so powerful that it draws everyone into its power. So powerful that power is transformed into mercy. This truly is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.
The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls. The cornerstone that is Christ will crush you with its mercy. I don’t mean that in some sort of trite, all trials come from God, sense. I mean that so powerful is the grace and the mercy of God that you will find yourself broken in God’s presence. You will find your guilt broken, your shame broken, your greed broken, your need for self-control. All the things that hold us captive, all the things that keep us separate, all are broken to pieces, all are swept away by the power and the mercy and the grace of God. And in that breaking, in that letting go, you will find yourself put together again, stronger, deeper, new, refreshed, restored, in the nearness of Christ.
God can make us new. God does make us new. With the strong and steady hands of the master vintner, God breaks away all that keeps us captive and we find ourselves renewed, recreated, in the light of this new relationship. The stone that the builders rejected breaks away our brokenness so that we stand with Christ at the cornerstone of God’s harvest.
The harvest is ready, prepared for those who bear the fruit of redemption. A broken feast, for broken people, a holy feast, for God’s own people. So, come to this table. Come and taste the fruit of the vineyard. Bring your brokenness to be broken away by God. Come because this is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes. Amen.
And this parable seems like an especially funny one for explaining. Not funny, ha-ha, but funny as in confusing. So there’s a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a fence around it, dug a wine press, built a watchtower, and generally did all the things one would do to have a successful crop. Then the landowner leased the vineyard to some tenants to care for it while he was away. This was standard practice in first century Palestine. Wealthy landowners would often find others to work their land for them in exchange for a portion of the crops. What’s odd about these tenants is that they seem to get too attached to the property. Like the way my friend’s two-year-old firmly believes that any toy she is playing with is her toy, the tenants seem to think that the land they are working should belong to them. So when the landlord sends his slaves to gather up his portion of the produce, the tenants seize the slaves, beating and killing them. Again the landlord sends slaves; again the tenants kill them. Finally, the landlord sends his son, thinking, “surely they will respect my son.” Now let’s pause here for a second and think this decision through. On one hand, Jesus is telling this story to a patriarchal society. One’s entire social status is based around one’s alliance to the patriarch. So to assume that the son would have the weight of the landlord is a totally legal and reasonable belief. But the tenants have thus far not shown any great concern for the legal or rational ramifications of their actions. So why he would think that his son, a much more valuable commodity than any of the servants he’d thus far sent, would have the effect he is looking for seems sort of unbelievable.
And of course, the tenants don’t respect the son. They kill him as well, thinking that with the son out of the way they can have the inheritance.
So what, Jesus asked the chief priests and the elders, will the landowner do to those tenants? They say 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.” This seems like a harsh, but possible rational response to the problem at hand. One might even wonder why the landlord took so long to send in a stronger force to deal with his unruly tenants. It would seem after the first set of slaves were killed like it was past time to get rid of that group and go with tenants who were a little less possessive.
And of course, because we’ve read enough of these parables, we can see the trick Jesus has pulled on the chief priests and the elders here. The landlord, obviously, is God. You can hear the echoes of the creation story in the creation of the vineyard, how in the beginning, God filled the universe with everything necessary for life, just as the landlord filled the vineyard with everything needed for the harvest. And then God/the landlord turned the vineyard/earth over to tenants, who would care for God’s creation and bring it to fullness. But what did the nasty tenants do? They killed the prophets, over and over again. What is the Old Testament but the story of God’s people turning away from the messengers God has sent them. So finally, the landlord sent the son. And the tenants killed the son, so great was their desire for power. But then what happened? [Pause]
Jesus followed up their call for vengeance by quoting the book of Isaiah, asking, “Have you never read in the scriptures?” Here’s where we have an advantage over the chief priests and the elders to whom Jesus addressed the original question. Because the chief priests and the elders don’t yet know what’s to come. But we do. We know just how true this story is to our story. We know that the landlord did indeed send the son, God’s only Son, our Lord. And that in just a short time from when Jesus had this conversation in the temple, the parable would play out just as he had described it.
But what happened after Jesus was put to death? He rose again. And in doing so, he defeated death. And the words from Isaiah would ring true in a way that no one could have guessed, no one could have imagined. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.”
This parable paints for us a story of the indescribable vastness of God’s love. God’s relationship to God’s creation is not a tenant/landlord relationship. A landlord, someone more interested in the production of product than the prospects of the tenants, would certainly have turned those rotten, violent folk out at the first sign of disloyalty. But God the good landlord puts relationship with the tenants above production of the harvest. God so desperately wants to be in relationship with God’s people that no matter how many times they turn away, God sends another messenger. Even to the point of sending God’s own son.
And when God’s own son is put to death, even that becomes life-giving, becomes an opportunity for redemption, for relationship, for God to claim us as daughters and sons, heirs of the promise of the kingdom of God. God’s greatest gift of life, came through death on a cross. Hope came out of despair. Light out of the deepest darkness. The incredible, paradoxical foolishness of the cross is the apex of God’s love song to creation. A song so powerful that it draws everyone into its power. So powerful that power is transformed into mercy. This truly is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.
The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls. The cornerstone that is Christ will crush you with its mercy. I don’t mean that in some sort of trite, all trials come from God, sense. I mean that so powerful is the grace and the mercy of God that you will find yourself broken in God’s presence. You will find your guilt broken, your shame broken, your greed broken, your need for self-control. All the things that hold us captive, all the things that keep us separate, all are broken to pieces, all are swept away by the power and the mercy and the grace of God. And in that breaking, in that letting go, you will find yourself put together again, stronger, deeper, new, refreshed, restored, in the nearness of Christ.
God can make us new. God does make us new. With the strong and steady hands of the master vintner, God breaks away all that keeps us captive and we find ourselves renewed, recreated, in the light of this new relationship. The stone that the builders rejected breaks away our brokenness so that we stand with Christ at the cornerstone of God’s harvest.
The harvest is ready, prepared for those who bear the fruit of redemption. A broken feast, for broken people, a holy feast, for God’s own people. So, come to this table. Come and taste the fruit of the vineyard. Bring your brokenness to be broken away by God. Come because this is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes. Amen.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
90s Pop Music, the Present Perfect Tense, and God's Consistent Yes: A Sermon on Matthew 21:23-32
My friend Kristin is visiting this weekend. And Kristin, among other things, reintroduced me to the band Sister Hazel. I share this with you because this week I was reading commentaries on our Gospel reading and one of them actually quoted “Change Your Mind” by Sister Hazel. This had two effects on me. 1) It seemed like a funny coincidence since Kristin would be here for this sermon, and 2) it caused me to have “Change Your Mind” by Sister Hazel stuck in my head for the better part of this week, along with another similarly themed classic, “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson.
But back to “Change Your Mind.” If you’re not familiar with this turn of the century cult classic, the chorus goes: If you want to be somebody else, if you’re tired of fighting battles with yourself. If you want to be somebody else, change your mind. As someone who came of age in the 90s with a bit of an, independent, shall we say, streak—my grandmother would tell you stubborn, but I’ve always felt “independent” sounded better—this song was kind of a mantra for me. It spoke to my desire to do things on my own, to forge my own path, to make a difference. Yeah, I would think, hitting rewind on my tape player, that’s right, if you want things to be different, the person you’ve got to change is you. It was right up there with Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” on my favorite self-empowerment mixed tape.
So it was, I confess, a little jarring to read Change Your Mind quoted in a commentary on our parable for this morning. Because the song always felt like what the parable seemed to be stressing. That our actions matter more than our words, that we are the only ones who can change our situations. Just do it, both the song and the parable seem to be saying. Just live the way you’re supposed to. Change your mind.
But that, as you may already be aware, is way easier said than done. Just change your mind, lead singer Ken Block crooned. If you don’t like something, just change it. This was a good soundtrack to my adolescence, but now that I’m aware that I in fact do not know everything, it’s a bit less successful. See, what I’ve come to realize about myself, and what you may feel about yourself, is that I relate a lot more to the first brother than I do to the second. I am more apt to change my mind and do the wrong thing than to change my mind into becoming a person of great virtue and work-ethic.
So I struggled with this parable, as a preacher, as a theologian, and also as a follower of Christ. It’s nice, I guess, that actions speak louder than words, but I’m still not totally confident I want to be judged by my actions. There are too many times when I’ve done the wrong thing, too many times I’ve walked away, too many times I’ve said one thing and done another. This parable seems to focus on the sort of decision theology, the sort of “make yourself right with God” ideas that make me so uncomfortable, because they seem so unreachable. Just do it is a great mantra for sports or pop psychology or adolescent angst. But when my soul is on the line, trusting in my own ability to just do it seems like a frightening and, quite frankly, foolish gamble. So, where is the good news in this parable?
Parables, as I’ve mentioned, are a tricky teaching tool, and the first pass over is rarely the full story. So yes, actions speak louder than words is a true and important lesson for us, but there’s more to this one. So as I wrestled with what else might be going on in this one, I tried something a little different. I backed in; starting from the end, from the explanation of the analogy that Jesus made and I noticed a surprising thing. The difference between the prostitutes and tax collectors and the chief priests and the elders was this, the prostitutes and tax collectors were willing to let go of their past in order to enter into the future that Christ was offering while the chief priests and the elders were not. The so-called “sinners” walked away from the life they’d had before, whereas the “righteous” hung onto that past as proof of their righteousness. Each was set free from the sins and brokenness that had defined them, but only the tax collectors and prostitutes, only the brother that said no, had hands free to accept the gift. The truth is that both brothers, the chief priests and elders, the prostitutes and tax collectors, all of us, have all said No to God at one point or another. And what set the first brother and the prostitutes and tax collectors apart was that the answer was able to change from no to yes.
And here’s where this whole thing just gets really good. So the situation that prompted Jesus to tell this parable is a conversation between him and the chief priests and the elders about authority. Who gave him the authority to preach, who gave John the authority to baptize. And baptism is, I think, the key to understanding this whole thing. Because what happens at baptism is that God turn our no into God’s yes. At baptism our hearts, our minds, are changed as we become children of God. And this isn’t like a one-time thing. It’s not like suddenly the second brother had this conversion experience where his no was gone and he never said no again. But continually God is pouring grace into us, turning our nos into yeses, again and again. That I think is the power of this story, that we are always being reformed, being remade into the image of God. That over and over again our sin is taken away and we start again.
I think a few of you are English teachers; baptism is like the present perfect tense of sacraments. It is an event that happened once, but whose effects are continually felt into the present. It’s like dropping a stone in a pool and watching the ripples go out, and then another stone, and then another, again and again, stones dropping into eternity, forever changing the surface of the water and the courses of our lives. It means that we are forever changed, that our minds are forever transformed, and that no matter how many nos we might say, no matter what sins we might make, what brokenness might remain within us, God is continually working and moving in our lives, changing those nos to yeses. We don’t know how long it took the first brother to go back to the vineyard; maybe it was years. Took Jonah two tries to get to Nineveh, and quite a while after that to recognize the power of God’s grace, but it didn’t stop God’s grace from working.
We start every service at the font with a time of confession and forgiveness. We start at the font because baptism and confession and forgiveness are intricately linked. Baptism is the one time event, the first stone in the pond, and this time of confession and forgiveness is the ripples running out, every stone following, the opportunity to remember every Sunday, again and again, that this promise God made to us in baptism is true, is real, and is lasting. That it wasn’t something that happened once, long ago, that maybe you don’t even remember. But it is an event that is continuing to have ripple effects in your life today. Confession and forgiveness is a tricky little rite. We put it at the beginning of the service to remind us of how baptism marked a new life for us. But sometimes this location can have a different effect, can make it feel like some sort of mark of entry, like we have to get right before God before we can come into worship. The truth of it is the confession part is for us. The confession is to help us hear better the words that follow. But the important part is the forgiveness, the important part is God saying not, you need to be forgiven, but don’t forget that you are forgiven. Don’t forget that you are loved. Don’t forget that you are a child of God, precious in God’s sight. So from this Sunday on out, I invite you to focus on the forgiveness section, on the promise that you are forgiven, that you are made new, that every moment is a chance to start again, to try again, to believe yourself to be the kind of person God has made you to be, the kind of person God already knows you to be. Thanks be to God, who made us all new, and who is continually working until we can recognize it too. Amen.
But back to “Change Your Mind.” If you’re not familiar with this turn of the century cult classic, the chorus goes: If you want to be somebody else, if you’re tired of fighting battles with yourself. If you want to be somebody else, change your mind. As someone who came of age in the 90s with a bit of an, independent, shall we say, streak—my grandmother would tell you stubborn, but I’ve always felt “independent” sounded better—this song was kind of a mantra for me. It spoke to my desire to do things on my own, to forge my own path, to make a difference. Yeah, I would think, hitting rewind on my tape player, that’s right, if you want things to be different, the person you’ve got to change is you. It was right up there with Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” on my favorite self-empowerment mixed tape.
So it was, I confess, a little jarring to read Change Your Mind quoted in a commentary on our parable for this morning. Because the song always felt like what the parable seemed to be stressing. That our actions matter more than our words, that we are the only ones who can change our situations. Just do it, both the song and the parable seem to be saying. Just live the way you’re supposed to. Change your mind.
But that, as you may already be aware, is way easier said than done. Just change your mind, lead singer Ken Block crooned. If you don’t like something, just change it. This was a good soundtrack to my adolescence, but now that I’m aware that I in fact do not know everything, it’s a bit less successful. See, what I’ve come to realize about myself, and what you may feel about yourself, is that I relate a lot more to the first brother than I do to the second. I am more apt to change my mind and do the wrong thing than to change my mind into becoming a person of great virtue and work-ethic.
So I struggled with this parable, as a preacher, as a theologian, and also as a follower of Christ. It’s nice, I guess, that actions speak louder than words, but I’m still not totally confident I want to be judged by my actions. There are too many times when I’ve done the wrong thing, too many times I’ve walked away, too many times I’ve said one thing and done another. This parable seems to focus on the sort of decision theology, the sort of “make yourself right with God” ideas that make me so uncomfortable, because they seem so unreachable. Just do it is a great mantra for sports or pop psychology or adolescent angst. But when my soul is on the line, trusting in my own ability to just do it seems like a frightening and, quite frankly, foolish gamble. So, where is the good news in this parable?
Parables, as I’ve mentioned, are a tricky teaching tool, and the first pass over is rarely the full story. So yes, actions speak louder than words is a true and important lesson for us, but there’s more to this one. So as I wrestled with what else might be going on in this one, I tried something a little different. I backed in; starting from the end, from the explanation of the analogy that Jesus made and I noticed a surprising thing. The difference between the prostitutes and tax collectors and the chief priests and the elders was this, the prostitutes and tax collectors were willing to let go of their past in order to enter into the future that Christ was offering while the chief priests and the elders were not. The so-called “sinners” walked away from the life they’d had before, whereas the “righteous” hung onto that past as proof of their righteousness. Each was set free from the sins and brokenness that had defined them, but only the tax collectors and prostitutes, only the brother that said no, had hands free to accept the gift. The truth is that both brothers, the chief priests and elders, the prostitutes and tax collectors, all of us, have all said No to God at one point or another. And what set the first brother and the prostitutes and tax collectors apart was that the answer was able to change from no to yes.
And here’s where this whole thing just gets really good. So the situation that prompted Jesus to tell this parable is a conversation between him and the chief priests and the elders about authority. Who gave him the authority to preach, who gave John the authority to baptize. And baptism is, I think, the key to understanding this whole thing. Because what happens at baptism is that God turn our no into God’s yes. At baptism our hearts, our minds, are changed as we become children of God. And this isn’t like a one-time thing. It’s not like suddenly the second brother had this conversion experience where his no was gone and he never said no again. But continually God is pouring grace into us, turning our nos into yeses, again and again. That I think is the power of this story, that we are always being reformed, being remade into the image of God. That over and over again our sin is taken away and we start again.
I think a few of you are English teachers; baptism is like the present perfect tense of sacraments. It is an event that happened once, but whose effects are continually felt into the present. It’s like dropping a stone in a pool and watching the ripples go out, and then another stone, and then another, again and again, stones dropping into eternity, forever changing the surface of the water and the courses of our lives. It means that we are forever changed, that our minds are forever transformed, and that no matter how many nos we might say, no matter what sins we might make, what brokenness might remain within us, God is continually working and moving in our lives, changing those nos to yeses. We don’t know how long it took the first brother to go back to the vineyard; maybe it was years. Took Jonah two tries to get to Nineveh, and quite a while after that to recognize the power of God’s grace, but it didn’t stop God’s grace from working.
We start every service at the font with a time of confession and forgiveness. We start at the font because baptism and confession and forgiveness are intricately linked. Baptism is the one time event, the first stone in the pond, and this time of confession and forgiveness is the ripples running out, every stone following, the opportunity to remember every Sunday, again and again, that this promise God made to us in baptism is true, is real, and is lasting. That it wasn’t something that happened once, long ago, that maybe you don’t even remember. But it is an event that is continuing to have ripple effects in your life today. Confession and forgiveness is a tricky little rite. We put it at the beginning of the service to remind us of how baptism marked a new life for us. But sometimes this location can have a different effect, can make it feel like some sort of mark of entry, like we have to get right before God before we can come into worship. The truth of it is the confession part is for us. The confession is to help us hear better the words that follow. But the important part is the forgiveness, the important part is God saying not, you need to be forgiven, but don’t forget that you are forgiven. Don’t forget that you are loved. Don’t forget that you are a child of God, precious in God’s sight. So from this Sunday on out, I invite you to focus on the forgiveness section, on the promise that you are forgiven, that you are made new, that every moment is a chance to start again, to try again, to believe yourself to be the kind of person God has made you to be, the kind of person God already knows you to be. Thanks be to God, who made us all new, and who is continually working until we can recognize it too. Amen.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Cranky, Whiney Prophets of God: A Sermon on the Book of Jonah
This morning you’ll notice we mixed up the order of the readings a little bit. That’s because I really want to pay attention to is the Jonah reading. The lectionary only gives us the end of it but to really get the whole scope of it, I’m going to go ahead and sort of paraphrase the whole story for you.
Our story begins: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” So Jonah went…to Joppa to find a ship going to Tarshish. Now, to put this in perspective, this is would be like God saying, I want you to go to Chicago, and responding, OK, sounds good, only about four hours to the Mackinaw bridge from here, and from there it’s just a short hop across the UP into Canada and on to Nova Scotia. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, in what is modern-day Syria, east of Israel. Tarshish, however, was a seaport on the western coast of Spain, so basically as far west as one could go without falling off the edge of the known world. Now in fairness to Jonah, the Assyrians were not known for their niceness. They had a well-earned reputation for violence and conquest, and they were really the worst enemies of the Israelites. So Jonah had good reason to fear going there. But the edge of the known world seems maybe a little bit extreme.
When Jonah got to Joppa, he bought a ticket, boarded a boat, and promptly fell asleep. Running away from the presence of God is pretty exhausting work. But the ship was not too far out into the Mediterranean when a massive storm blew in, threatening to destroy the boat. The captain woke up Jonah and pleaded with him to call on God to spare them, but still the storm raged. So finally, Jonah is like, you know what, you’re going to have to just throw me into the sea, I guess. And the sailors are like, we don’t want to do that, if you’re a prophet, your God’s going to be pretty mad at us for drowning you. But Jonah’s like, nope, the only way God will spare you, is if you throw me into the sea. So, what could they do, they threw him into the sea.
But before he drown, a giant fish came and swallowed him whole. Now Jonah’s certainly having a pretty bad day here, but you know who’s having a worse day is the fish. I mean, Jonah chose to run away from God, and Jonah told the sailors to throw him overboard. But the poor fish, he’s just swimming by, minding his own business, doing whatever fish do, and suddenly he’s called upon to swallow this, rather disagreeable, human, and keep him in his stomach. Can’t digest the guy, can’t even chew him up a little bit, just this huge lump of grumpy human sitting in his belly whining about how God, who, mind you, just saved him from drowning, is picking on him. Talk about some serious indigestion!
So finally, after three days of this, God spoke to the fish, and the fish, and this is directly from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, “spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.” Spewed isn’t even really the best translation of the Hebrew here, really the fish vomited Jonah onto the shore. Seriously, if anyone tells you the Bible is boring, have them read Jonah. Especially if that person happens to be a preteen boy.
So now Jonah’s out of the water and back on the land. And for a second time, the word of the Lord came to Jonah, saying “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” And this time, Jonah goes to Nineveh, an “exceedingly large city,” literally in the Hebrew, “a great city to God.” It’s such a huge place that it took three days to walk across it, the same amount of time, remember, that Jonah was in the belly of the fish. But Jonah didn’t make it the full trip across Nineveh, he got about a day’s walk in. He was supposed to be proclaiming a message of judgment, shouting “Forty days more, and Nineveh will be over thrown.” But I wonder how enthusiastically he shouted this message. Was he really shouting? Or was he walking along, sort of unobtrusively, “nothing to see here, nothing to see, forty days, God’s going to overthrow the city, but just, you know, go about your business, don’t let me bother you…”
But even just a day’s walk into the city, the response of the Ninevites was sudden and intense. As soon as they heard the message, they instantly believed God, proclaimed a fast, and begged God for mercy. This brings us to our reading for this morning. Jonah chapter three, verse ten through chapter 4, verse eleven.
“When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. —I love this here, I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and somehow Jonah makes that sound like a bad thing. —And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” — Really Jonah, better for you to die then to live, because you succeeded in your mission and an entire city of people was not completely destroyed? — And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. — Basically, Jonah goes out of the city to pout for a while, and while he’s out there pouting—The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” A Word for God’s people. Thanks be to God.
So here’s what I love about the Jonah story. First off, was there ever such an annoying, thick-headed, little twerp as Jonah? I mean, seriously, ran away to Joppa, whined for three days in the belly of a fish, really apathetically proclaimed God’s message, and then got angry when God saved an entire city full of people. And then got even more angry when the bush he was sitting under died and he had to sit in the sun for the afternoon. Except he didn’t have to sit in the sun. He could have gone into the city, gone home to Israel, really done anything other than sit pouting under a tree, hoping that God might still reign down fire, even though God is, annoyingly apparently, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
But here’s the thing, as annoying and wrong-headed as Jonah was, as many times as Jonah got it wrong, went in the wrong direction, got worked up about something silly, God was determined that Jonah would finish, and not just finish but succeed beyond his wildest dreams, at the task which God had called him to.
And that is great news for us for a lot of reasons. I think, or I hope at least, that Jonah looked back on this event and thought, wow, was I ever a bad prophet. And that’s certainly a feeling I can relate to. Jonah’s a pretty extreme example, but even when I’m actually trying to spread this message of God’s forgiveness, it’s hard to be a prophet and even my best attempts fall flat. But if Jonah, whiney, apathetic Jonah, managed to save an entire city, maybe God can, and in fact is, using my weak attempts at spreading the Gospel.
But I think the best news in this story is maybe also the most challenging. And it’s this, that only God gets to decide who is and who is not forgiven. And God is, whether we like it or not, “a gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Jonah was all prepared to send the Ninevites off to damnation, he saw nothing worth saving in these people who he saw as sinners. But God wanted to rescue the Ninevites, and nothing Jonah could do or say was going to change God’s mind. The Ninevites, more than one hundred and twenty people and also many animals, mattered to God.
It’s great news for the days when we feel like the Ninevites. When it maybe feels like we’re too far gone, too broken, too outside the realm of God to be forgiven. Or if someone has told us, you don’t matter, you’re too far gone to be saved. The Jonah story tells us that it doesn’t matter what the people of God may have decided about you, God loves you. That God is always, always, always, a merciful God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. That God is always concerned about God’s people, no matter how far they have strayed.
This is good news, but there is also a challenge for us here. Because Jonah’s judgmentalness, while I’ve sort of made fun of it here, is a real temptation. So here’s the challenge. Sometimes God forgives people that we don’t necessarily think deserve God’s forgiveness. If God is truly, “a gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,” sometimes God is going to forgive people that we don’t want God to. This story tells us that God’s forgiveness is open to everyone, regardless of who they are or whether we like them or how they got invited to the party. Even the Ninevites, even Jonah, even us. Amen.
Our story begins: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” So Jonah went…to Joppa to find a ship going to Tarshish. Now, to put this in perspective, this is would be like God saying, I want you to go to Chicago, and responding, OK, sounds good, only about four hours to the Mackinaw bridge from here, and from there it’s just a short hop across the UP into Canada and on to Nova Scotia. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, in what is modern-day Syria, east of Israel. Tarshish, however, was a seaport on the western coast of Spain, so basically as far west as one could go without falling off the edge of the known world. Now in fairness to Jonah, the Assyrians were not known for their niceness. They had a well-earned reputation for violence and conquest, and they were really the worst enemies of the Israelites. So Jonah had good reason to fear going there. But the edge of the known world seems maybe a little bit extreme.
When Jonah got to Joppa, he bought a ticket, boarded a boat, and promptly fell asleep. Running away from the presence of God is pretty exhausting work. But the ship was not too far out into the Mediterranean when a massive storm blew in, threatening to destroy the boat. The captain woke up Jonah and pleaded with him to call on God to spare them, but still the storm raged. So finally, Jonah is like, you know what, you’re going to have to just throw me into the sea, I guess. And the sailors are like, we don’t want to do that, if you’re a prophet, your God’s going to be pretty mad at us for drowning you. But Jonah’s like, nope, the only way God will spare you, is if you throw me into the sea. So, what could they do, they threw him into the sea.
But before he drown, a giant fish came and swallowed him whole. Now Jonah’s certainly having a pretty bad day here, but you know who’s having a worse day is the fish. I mean, Jonah chose to run away from God, and Jonah told the sailors to throw him overboard. But the poor fish, he’s just swimming by, minding his own business, doing whatever fish do, and suddenly he’s called upon to swallow this, rather disagreeable, human, and keep him in his stomach. Can’t digest the guy, can’t even chew him up a little bit, just this huge lump of grumpy human sitting in his belly whining about how God, who, mind you, just saved him from drowning, is picking on him. Talk about some serious indigestion!
So finally, after three days of this, God spoke to the fish, and the fish, and this is directly from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, “spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.” Spewed isn’t even really the best translation of the Hebrew here, really the fish vomited Jonah onto the shore. Seriously, if anyone tells you the Bible is boring, have them read Jonah. Especially if that person happens to be a preteen boy.
So now Jonah’s out of the water and back on the land. And for a second time, the word of the Lord came to Jonah, saying “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” And this time, Jonah goes to Nineveh, an “exceedingly large city,” literally in the Hebrew, “a great city to God.” It’s such a huge place that it took three days to walk across it, the same amount of time, remember, that Jonah was in the belly of the fish. But Jonah didn’t make it the full trip across Nineveh, he got about a day’s walk in. He was supposed to be proclaiming a message of judgment, shouting “Forty days more, and Nineveh will be over thrown.” But I wonder how enthusiastically he shouted this message. Was he really shouting? Or was he walking along, sort of unobtrusively, “nothing to see here, nothing to see, forty days, God’s going to overthrow the city, but just, you know, go about your business, don’t let me bother you…”
But even just a day’s walk into the city, the response of the Ninevites was sudden and intense. As soon as they heard the message, they instantly believed God, proclaimed a fast, and begged God for mercy. This brings us to our reading for this morning. Jonah chapter three, verse ten through chapter 4, verse eleven.
“When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. —I love this here, I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and somehow Jonah makes that sound like a bad thing. —And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” — Really Jonah, better for you to die then to live, because you succeeded in your mission and an entire city of people was not completely destroyed? — And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. — Basically, Jonah goes out of the city to pout for a while, and while he’s out there pouting—The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” A Word for God’s people. Thanks be to God.
So here’s what I love about the Jonah story. First off, was there ever such an annoying, thick-headed, little twerp as Jonah? I mean, seriously, ran away to Joppa, whined for three days in the belly of a fish, really apathetically proclaimed God’s message, and then got angry when God saved an entire city full of people. And then got even more angry when the bush he was sitting under died and he had to sit in the sun for the afternoon. Except he didn’t have to sit in the sun. He could have gone into the city, gone home to Israel, really done anything other than sit pouting under a tree, hoping that God might still reign down fire, even though God is, annoyingly apparently, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
But here’s the thing, as annoying and wrong-headed as Jonah was, as many times as Jonah got it wrong, went in the wrong direction, got worked up about something silly, God was determined that Jonah would finish, and not just finish but succeed beyond his wildest dreams, at the task which God had called him to.
And that is great news for us for a lot of reasons. I think, or I hope at least, that Jonah looked back on this event and thought, wow, was I ever a bad prophet. And that’s certainly a feeling I can relate to. Jonah’s a pretty extreme example, but even when I’m actually trying to spread this message of God’s forgiveness, it’s hard to be a prophet and even my best attempts fall flat. But if Jonah, whiney, apathetic Jonah, managed to save an entire city, maybe God can, and in fact is, using my weak attempts at spreading the Gospel.
But I think the best news in this story is maybe also the most challenging. And it’s this, that only God gets to decide who is and who is not forgiven. And God is, whether we like it or not, “a gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Jonah was all prepared to send the Ninevites off to damnation, he saw nothing worth saving in these people who he saw as sinners. But God wanted to rescue the Ninevites, and nothing Jonah could do or say was going to change God’s mind. The Ninevites, more than one hundred and twenty people and also many animals, mattered to God.
It’s great news for the days when we feel like the Ninevites. When it maybe feels like we’re too far gone, too broken, too outside the realm of God to be forgiven. Or if someone has told us, you don’t matter, you’re too far gone to be saved. The Jonah story tells us that it doesn’t matter what the people of God may have decided about you, God loves you. That God is always, always, always, a merciful God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. That God is always concerned about God’s people, no matter how far they have strayed.
This is good news, but there is also a challenge for us here. Because Jonah’s judgmentalness, while I’ve sort of made fun of it here, is a real temptation. So here’s the challenge. Sometimes God forgives people that we don’t necessarily think deserve God’s forgiveness. If God is truly, “a gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,” sometimes God is going to forgive people that we don’t want God to. This story tells us that God’s forgiveness is open to everyone, regardless of who they are or whether we like them or how they got invited to the party. Even the Ninevites, even Jonah, even us. Amen.
Monday, September 15, 2014
"Father, Forgive Them": A Sermon on Matthew 18:21-35
Poor Peter seems to be at it again this morning. After totally nailing who Jesus is, he seems to spend the rest of Matthew’s Gospel not quite getting the point being made. So last week, if you remember, Jesus laid out for his disciples what they were to do if conflict arose in their communities. How they were to approach each other, talk it out, and try to move forward. This morning we hear that Peter took the opportunity to sort of push the question a little bit. OK, Peter says, so this whole talk it out thing is great, but really, let’s talk details. If someone sins against me, how many times do I have to forgive them? Like seven times? Which, if you think about it, is kind of a lot of times. Takes seven times to make a habit. Also, interesting fact, seven is a number that shows up a lot in the scriptures. God created the world in seven days; the Israelites marched around Jericho seven times, for seven days, holding seven trumpets; it took Solomon seven years to build the temple. Seven is a number that represented completeness in the Israeli tradition. So there’s some theological backing to Peter picking seven as a “complete” amount of forgiveness. It’s a good, solid, biblical number of times. But Jesus ups the ante. Not seven, but seventy-seven, or seventy times seven. Either way, the point is multiple sevens, which is like more than completeness.
The point Jesus makes with Peter here is that there is a fundamental difference between the account-based system Peter is proposing and the radical nature of God’s forgiveness. The problem really comes down to a problem of scale. As humans, we are finite creatures in a finite system. We exist in a world bound by space and time, numbers and math. There’s nothing good or bad about this, it simply is. In fact, there’s really something sacred about it, because in the incarnation, Jesus came and bound himself by the same finiteness. When Jesus was on earth, he was under the same laws of gravity and physics that affect all of us. So when Peter tried to assess a number to forgiveness, it comes out of this reality of his finitude. There really is only so much to go around. But here’s the problem Peter’s facing, God is not bound by the same finitude that we are. So God’s reality exists on level that is not mathematical or logical. To help make sense of this, Jesus uses a parable.
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. One slave owed him ten thousand talents.
I tried to translate ten thousand talents into modern currency to give you a sense of the comparison, and here’s what I learned. A talent was worth like fifteen years worth of wages for an average laborer. But more than that, a talent was the largest increment of money that existed. And the concept of infinity as a number didn’t exist yet, so ten thousand, a myriad in the Greek, is the largest number that there was. So ten thousand talents is the largest possible amount of money that there could be. The slave could not owe the master more money, because there wasn’t an amount higher than this. You know when two kids are bickering about something and the first one is like, yeah, well I’m right times infinity, and then the other one is like, yeah, well I’m right times infinity plus infinity. That’s basically what Jesus has done to Peter’s argument with this parable. It’s a reduction to absurdity.
And even though the slave owed the king basically all of the money that existed, when the slave begged for mercy, the king granted it. Which is pretty amazing. The king just threw away all that he was owed. And we might have judged the king for his poor money management, were it not for what happened next. That very same slave, having just been set free from this astronomical debt, comes across someone who owes him money. One hundred denarii is the debt, about a hundred days wages. So no small sum either, but not all of the money that had ever existed. And we would expect for the forgiven man to show mercy, right. That would be just, that would be fair. It would be a way for the man to pay back for the mercy he’d received.
But he didn’t. Instead he demanded what he was owed, throwing his fellow slave in prison until he could recoup his losses. And everyone was, of course, disgusted with the first slave, and went and told the master. And the master called the first slave in, chastised him for his failure to show mercy, and threw him in prison. And so too, ends the parable, will your heavenly father do to you, if you do not show mercy. Pretty cut and dry.
At least, it seems pretty cut and dry. But here’s a couple things about parables. First, because we are analytical beings, we tend to try to make parables allegorical, to assign each character a roll. God is the king, or the farmer, or the sower, we the servant, the plant, the weed, angels are harvesters, etc. And that works, to a point. But one theologian I love remarks that using parables to explain concepts is like using riddles to give directions to the airport. Parables get us thinking in the right direction but trying to make these sorts of direct connections always sell them short. God instead exists for us in the intersections of the parables, in the ways the characters come together and in how those interactions change us.
Second, parables can be read as either prescriptive or descriptive. We tend to read them prescriptively, if you do this, then this will happen. But in the Greek, “if” and “when” are the same word. So sometimes parables are more descriptive. They don’t describe the consequences of our actions; they describe the world we already live in.
So what if this parable Jesus shares this morning, might be more descriptive than prescriptive. What if that last like is better read this is “when you don’t forgive” rather than “if you don’t forgive”? What if Jesus is telling Peter, when you do not forgive, you hold yourself captive?
All of us carry scars of places where we have been hurt by other children of God. Some scars are visible, some are invisible, but all of us carry them. And God wants desperately to heal those scars, to bring us to a place of wholeness. But those scars came at a cost, a cost we had to pay. And when we are focused in recouping our cost, when our hands and our hearts are full of what we are owed, we don’t have space to hold the gift of mercy and grace which God is extending to us. But when we are able to let go, when we are able to open our hands and our hearts, we find that we have been invited into a different system altogether, a system that is based not on accounting, but on abundance. That less than what the other person deserves is somehow more than we can imagine.
That’s the power of forgiveness. Not that it changes the other person, but that it changes us. Forgiveness is not about love, or even about liking. It’s not about restoring relationship necessarily, and it’s certainly not about forgetting. But it is about deciding that the past will not hold you captive anymore, that whoever has sinned against you will not be permitted to live rent free in your soul, and you will live into the promised reign of God. Forgiveness is about giving up the pain so that God can heal your hurts, mend your scars.
This is hard, God knows it’s hard. Forgiveness takes time, like love it cannot be forced. But we can practice forgiveness. We can practice and like any muscle it will grow stronger. And seventy times seven times God is with us in the practice, coaxing us into an existence that is more than we thought we deserved, more than we think we could be.
As I was prepping for this sermon I came across the story of the first African-American to integrate the New Orleans public school system. Ruby Bridges was six years old when her parents enrolled her in the all-white William Franz Elementary School. The public response was swift and immediate. Looking back, Bridges remarked that the first day she drove to her new school she, “thought it was Marti Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of thing goes on in New Orleans at Marti Gras.” She couldn’t imagine all that commotion was about her. The first day the chaos was so great she spent the entire day sitting alone in the school office, surrounded by U.S. Marshals. By the second day, every other student had been pulled from the school, and every teacher but one had resigned. Ruby Bridges was the only student at William Franz Elementary.
But while the students were gone, the crowds outside only got worse. Ruby continued to be escorted to and from school by U.S. Marshals. Crowds shouted obscenities and set up disturbing displays, people threatened her home and her family. Through all of this, little Ruby Bridges marched to school.
To support Ruby through this time, famous child psychiatrist Robert Coles offered to meet with Ruby once a week in her home. On one meeting, Coles remarked he’d noticed Ruby reciting something under her breath every day as she walked to and from the school. Ruby responded that she was reciting a line from the Bible her parents had taught her to say, a line that they hoped would shield their young daughter from the hatred and the violence that she faced every day. Every day, twice a day, as she walked through angry crowds to integrate her school so other kids would not have to suffer as she had, Ruby Bridges recited, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.”
That is the power of forgiveness. It is a power that says your sin, your anger, will not have control over me. Not because I am weak, but because I am strong. It is a power that allows us to stand up in the very face of evil and live forward into the coming kingdom of God. Amen.
The point Jesus makes with Peter here is that there is a fundamental difference between the account-based system Peter is proposing and the radical nature of God’s forgiveness. The problem really comes down to a problem of scale. As humans, we are finite creatures in a finite system. We exist in a world bound by space and time, numbers and math. There’s nothing good or bad about this, it simply is. In fact, there’s really something sacred about it, because in the incarnation, Jesus came and bound himself by the same finiteness. When Jesus was on earth, he was under the same laws of gravity and physics that affect all of us. So when Peter tried to assess a number to forgiveness, it comes out of this reality of his finitude. There really is only so much to go around. But here’s the problem Peter’s facing, God is not bound by the same finitude that we are. So God’s reality exists on level that is not mathematical or logical. To help make sense of this, Jesus uses a parable.
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. One slave owed him ten thousand talents.
I tried to translate ten thousand talents into modern currency to give you a sense of the comparison, and here’s what I learned. A talent was worth like fifteen years worth of wages for an average laborer. But more than that, a talent was the largest increment of money that existed. And the concept of infinity as a number didn’t exist yet, so ten thousand, a myriad in the Greek, is the largest number that there was. So ten thousand talents is the largest possible amount of money that there could be. The slave could not owe the master more money, because there wasn’t an amount higher than this. You know when two kids are bickering about something and the first one is like, yeah, well I’m right times infinity, and then the other one is like, yeah, well I’m right times infinity plus infinity. That’s basically what Jesus has done to Peter’s argument with this parable. It’s a reduction to absurdity.
And even though the slave owed the king basically all of the money that existed, when the slave begged for mercy, the king granted it. Which is pretty amazing. The king just threw away all that he was owed. And we might have judged the king for his poor money management, were it not for what happened next. That very same slave, having just been set free from this astronomical debt, comes across someone who owes him money. One hundred denarii is the debt, about a hundred days wages. So no small sum either, but not all of the money that had ever existed. And we would expect for the forgiven man to show mercy, right. That would be just, that would be fair. It would be a way for the man to pay back for the mercy he’d received.
But he didn’t. Instead he demanded what he was owed, throwing his fellow slave in prison until he could recoup his losses. And everyone was, of course, disgusted with the first slave, and went and told the master. And the master called the first slave in, chastised him for his failure to show mercy, and threw him in prison. And so too, ends the parable, will your heavenly father do to you, if you do not show mercy. Pretty cut and dry.
At least, it seems pretty cut and dry. But here’s a couple things about parables. First, because we are analytical beings, we tend to try to make parables allegorical, to assign each character a roll. God is the king, or the farmer, or the sower, we the servant, the plant, the weed, angels are harvesters, etc. And that works, to a point. But one theologian I love remarks that using parables to explain concepts is like using riddles to give directions to the airport. Parables get us thinking in the right direction but trying to make these sorts of direct connections always sell them short. God instead exists for us in the intersections of the parables, in the ways the characters come together and in how those interactions change us.
Second, parables can be read as either prescriptive or descriptive. We tend to read them prescriptively, if you do this, then this will happen. But in the Greek, “if” and “when” are the same word. So sometimes parables are more descriptive. They don’t describe the consequences of our actions; they describe the world we already live in.
So what if this parable Jesus shares this morning, might be more descriptive than prescriptive. What if that last like is better read this is “when you don’t forgive” rather than “if you don’t forgive”? What if Jesus is telling Peter, when you do not forgive, you hold yourself captive?
All of us carry scars of places where we have been hurt by other children of God. Some scars are visible, some are invisible, but all of us carry them. And God wants desperately to heal those scars, to bring us to a place of wholeness. But those scars came at a cost, a cost we had to pay. And when we are focused in recouping our cost, when our hands and our hearts are full of what we are owed, we don’t have space to hold the gift of mercy and grace which God is extending to us. But when we are able to let go, when we are able to open our hands and our hearts, we find that we have been invited into a different system altogether, a system that is based not on accounting, but on abundance. That less than what the other person deserves is somehow more than we can imagine.
That’s the power of forgiveness. Not that it changes the other person, but that it changes us. Forgiveness is not about love, or even about liking. It’s not about restoring relationship necessarily, and it’s certainly not about forgetting. But it is about deciding that the past will not hold you captive anymore, that whoever has sinned against you will not be permitted to live rent free in your soul, and you will live into the promised reign of God. Forgiveness is about giving up the pain so that God can heal your hurts, mend your scars.
This is hard, God knows it’s hard. Forgiveness takes time, like love it cannot be forced. But we can practice forgiveness. We can practice and like any muscle it will grow stronger. And seventy times seven times God is with us in the practice, coaxing us into an existence that is more than we thought we deserved, more than we think we could be.
As I was prepping for this sermon I came across the story of the first African-American to integrate the New Orleans public school system. Ruby Bridges was six years old when her parents enrolled her in the all-white William Franz Elementary School. The public response was swift and immediate. Looking back, Bridges remarked that the first day she drove to her new school she, “thought it was Marti Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of thing goes on in New Orleans at Marti Gras.” She couldn’t imagine all that commotion was about her. The first day the chaos was so great she spent the entire day sitting alone in the school office, surrounded by U.S. Marshals. By the second day, every other student had been pulled from the school, and every teacher but one had resigned. Ruby Bridges was the only student at William Franz Elementary.
But while the students were gone, the crowds outside only got worse. Ruby continued to be escorted to and from school by U.S. Marshals. Crowds shouted obscenities and set up disturbing displays, people threatened her home and her family. Through all of this, little Ruby Bridges marched to school.
To support Ruby through this time, famous child psychiatrist Robert Coles offered to meet with Ruby once a week in her home. On one meeting, Coles remarked he’d noticed Ruby reciting something under her breath every day as she walked to and from the school. Ruby responded that she was reciting a line from the Bible her parents had taught her to say, a line that they hoped would shield their young daughter from the hatred and the violence that she faced every day. Every day, twice a day, as she walked through angry crowds to integrate her school so other kids would not have to suffer as she had, Ruby Bridges recited, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.”
That is the power of forgiveness. It is a power that says your sin, your anger, will not have control over me. Not because I am weak, but because I am strong. It is a power that allows us to stand up in the very face of evil and live forward into the coming kingdom of God. Amen.
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Joan Rivers, Romans, and the Uncontainable Love of God: A Sermon on Matthew 18:15-20
Karl Barth is quoted as saying that preachers should approach their sermons with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. I’m pretty sure this sermon is not what Barth had in mind when he said that. The news story that’s captured my attention this week is the unexpected passing of Joan Rivers. Not news I ever thought I’d share in a sermon. Mainly because, truth be told, I never found Joan Rivers all that funny. I guess I’d known of her before, but most of my exposure came from watching Fashion Police with my roommate in LA. She liked it, and I liked watching bad TV with my roommate more than other, more productive, things I could have been doing. But I found Rivers’ humor too caustic, and I really could care less about celebrity fashion.
Because I’d mainly associated Joan Rivers with red carpet fashion criticism, I was at first amazed this week when everyone from NPR to 20/20 covered her life. Then as I listened to some of these stories, I was amazed again, this time to discover that Joan Rivers was a comedic icon. Turns out, and maybe you all knew this but I most certainly did not, that Joan Rivers was a trailblazer. In an industry that had been completely male dominated, Joan Rivers really paved the way for female comedians. And she was not just a pioneer for women in comedy but for comedy itself. Her crass, caustic style created stand-up comedy as we know it today, as a means of social commentary and a forum for social change.
In one of the NPR interviews, Rivers shared how when she started in comedy there were all these subjects that couldn’t be talked about. But instead of shying away from these taboo subjects, Rivers came out and made jokes about them. And, I’ll give you, many of the jokes were insensitive and probably inappropriate. But what she discovered in doing this was that by talking, by joking, about issues, it really deflated the power that they had. Suddenly these subjects that had been “off-limits” were able to be discussed openly and worked through in healthier and more productive ways. Through Joan Rivers and people like her, comedy became a form of power, a tool for embracing social issues and taking some of the mystery out of them so they could be dealt with and healed.
But what, you might be wondering, does any of this have to do with our readings for today? Well, I’ll tell you. At its very core, what comedians like Joan Rivers discovered was that our words have power. What we chose to say, but sometimes even more so what goes unsaid. When we don’t talk about something, when we ignore it, push it to the side, hope it goes away, that very act of not bringing something to the light can give it even more power than if we had done the initially harder work of dealing with it upfront.
Unfortunately, that’s not how our Gospel reading for this morning often tends to be read. Instead of offering a framework for conversation, “Matthew 18” becomes a slam text to justify bullying. Have you ever heard this? When Matthew 18 gets used like a verb, a way to justify ganging up on someone we disagree with? I think you’re a sinner, so I tell you that. And if you don’t agree, I bring some buddies, and we tell you you’re a sinner. And if you still don’t agree, we get the church to tell you you’re wrong. And if you still don’t agree, we shun you. Right, that’s what treating someone like a tax collector or a Gentile means? I wish I was exaggerating; I’m not. So often the Bible gets used as this tool to tell people that they are wrong or bad, and that God doesn’t love them, and we don’t have to either.
But here’s the huge, glaring problem with that way of reading of this scripture. The Canaanite woman from the story last week, she was a Gentile. And Matthew, the guy for whom this Gospel is named, he was a tax collector. See the trend here, Jesus didn’t shun tax collectors and Gentiles, he ate with them. He healed their sick. He invited them to travel along with him, to learn from him, to be in relationship with him. He loved them.
Sounds like our Epistle reading from Romans, where Paul talks about how the Roman community is to relate to each other. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another,” Paul wrote. All the commandments, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, all of them can be summed up in this one command, love your neighbor as yourself. Paul goes on to say, “Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, [let us] put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” Which is great, right. Love each other, don’t hide things in the dark, but bring things to the light. Right, it’s an excellent method for living in community and for being in relationship, just love each other.
Of course, this is like way harder than Paul tries to make it sound. It’s one thing to say we need to love each other, but it’s a totally different thing to actually do it. Especially when the other person seems so darn unlovable.
So I think this Gospel reading is really less about setting up a set of rules regarding how to keep conflict out of our communities, and more about creating a space so open, so full of light, that the darkness that hides within us has no place to flourish. I think maybe, believe it or not, Jesus is encouraging his disciples to be a little bit more like Joan Rivers, a little bit less afraid to say hard things, even if they might be misunderstood, because there is power in speaking truth, because our communities, our relationships are stronger, if we are willing and able to be open and honest with one another.
Here’s the thing. God loves us like crazy. Like more than we can even imagine. And so great is God’s love for us, that this love cannot be contained in a relationship between God and us, it spills out into communities. So much does God love us that God wants us, needs us even, to experience love through each other. And the power in this mutual accountability is that the sin that resides within us, the sin, the pain, the brokenness, that can fester in the darkness of isolation, has nowhere to hide when we come together in communities. When we love one another, when we lift each other up, when we support each other, when we give words to our pain and we hold the words of each other’s pain, that brokenness is driven away in the grace and the love and the forgiveness of God.
That, I think, is the lesson Jesus had for his disciples in this text. That we are stronger together, we are lighter together, that we are more powerful together. That in the love and the grace and the forgiveness of authentic community, the powers of darkness have nowhere to go. It’s hard. We make mistakes, we break relationships, we hurt each other. We’re human. God knows that. But God also knows that only by bringing these hurts to the light of forgiveness can we receive healing, not just for each other, but more importantly, for ourselves. So thanks be to God for people who are willing to speak truth to power, even though it hurts. And thanks be to God for loving us so much that God gave us each other. Amen.
Because I’d mainly associated Joan Rivers with red carpet fashion criticism, I was at first amazed this week when everyone from NPR to 20/20 covered her life. Then as I listened to some of these stories, I was amazed again, this time to discover that Joan Rivers was a comedic icon. Turns out, and maybe you all knew this but I most certainly did not, that Joan Rivers was a trailblazer. In an industry that had been completely male dominated, Joan Rivers really paved the way for female comedians. And she was not just a pioneer for women in comedy but for comedy itself. Her crass, caustic style created stand-up comedy as we know it today, as a means of social commentary and a forum for social change.
In one of the NPR interviews, Rivers shared how when she started in comedy there were all these subjects that couldn’t be talked about. But instead of shying away from these taboo subjects, Rivers came out and made jokes about them. And, I’ll give you, many of the jokes were insensitive and probably inappropriate. But what she discovered in doing this was that by talking, by joking, about issues, it really deflated the power that they had. Suddenly these subjects that had been “off-limits” were able to be discussed openly and worked through in healthier and more productive ways. Through Joan Rivers and people like her, comedy became a form of power, a tool for embracing social issues and taking some of the mystery out of them so they could be dealt with and healed.
But what, you might be wondering, does any of this have to do with our readings for today? Well, I’ll tell you. At its very core, what comedians like Joan Rivers discovered was that our words have power. What we chose to say, but sometimes even more so what goes unsaid. When we don’t talk about something, when we ignore it, push it to the side, hope it goes away, that very act of not bringing something to the light can give it even more power than if we had done the initially harder work of dealing with it upfront.
Unfortunately, that’s not how our Gospel reading for this morning often tends to be read. Instead of offering a framework for conversation, “Matthew 18” becomes a slam text to justify bullying. Have you ever heard this? When Matthew 18 gets used like a verb, a way to justify ganging up on someone we disagree with? I think you’re a sinner, so I tell you that. And if you don’t agree, I bring some buddies, and we tell you you’re a sinner. And if you still don’t agree, we get the church to tell you you’re wrong. And if you still don’t agree, we shun you. Right, that’s what treating someone like a tax collector or a Gentile means? I wish I was exaggerating; I’m not. So often the Bible gets used as this tool to tell people that they are wrong or bad, and that God doesn’t love them, and we don’t have to either.
But here’s the huge, glaring problem with that way of reading of this scripture. The Canaanite woman from the story last week, she was a Gentile. And Matthew, the guy for whom this Gospel is named, he was a tax collector. See the trend here, Jesus didn’t shun tax collectors and Gentiles, he ate with them. He healed their sick. He invited them to travel along with him, to learn from him, to be in relationship with him. He loved them.
Sounds like our Epistle reading from Romans, where Paul talks about how the Roman community is to relate to each other. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another,” Paul wrote. All the commandments, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, all of them can be summed up in this one command, love your neighbor as yourself. Paul goes on to say, “Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, [let us] put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” Which is great, right. Love each other, don’t hide things in the dark, but bring things to the light. Right, it’s an excellent method for living in community and for being in relationship, just love each other.
Of course, this is like way harder than Paul tries to make it sound. It’s one thing to say we need to love each other, but it’s a totally different thing to actually do it. Especially when the other person seems so darn unlovable.
So I think this Gospel reading is really less about setting up a set of rules regarding how to keep conflict out of our communities, and more about creating a space so open, so full of light, that the darkness that hides within us has no place to flourish. I think maybe, believe it or not, Jesus is encouraging his disciples to be a little bit more like Joan Rivers, a little bit less afraid to say hard things, even if they might be misunderstood, because there is power in speaking truth, because our communities, our relationships are stronger, if we are willing and able to be open and honest with one another.
Here’s the thing. God loves us like crazy. Like more than we can even imagine. And so great is God’s love for us, that this love cannot be contained in a relationship between God and us, it spills out into communities. So much does God love us that God wants us, needs us even, to experience love through each other. And the power in this mutual accountability is that the sin that resides within us, the sin, the pain, the brokenness, that can fester in the darkness of isolation, has nowhere to hide when we come together in communities. When we love one another, when we lift each other up, when we support each other, when we give words to our pain and we hold the words of each other’s pain, that brokenness is driven away in the grace and the love and the forgiveness of God.
That, I think, is the lesson Jesus had for his disciples in this text. That we are stronger together, we are lighter together, that we are more powerful together. That in the love and the grace and the forgiveness of authentic community, the powers of darkness have nowhere to go. It’s hard. We make mistakes, we break relationships, we hurt each other. We’re human. God knows that. But God also knows that only by bringing these hurts to the light of forgiveness can we receive healing, not just for each other, but more importantly, for ourselves. So thanks be to God for people who are willing to speak truth to power, even though it hurts. And thanks be to God for loving us so much that God gave us each other. Amen.
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