Proper 29, Year A. Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24, Ephesians 1:15-23, Matthew 25:31-46
We have come to the end of the church year. Next Sunday we enter Advent, that beautiful season of anticipation as we begin the cycle of the year again.

This last Sunday of the church year is called Christ the King Sunday. Pope Pius the XI proclaimed the feast day in 1925 as a deliberate reminder to the faithful that they owed their first allegiance to Christ Jesus, their ruler in heaven, as opposed to the more immediately intimidating supremacy claimed by Benito Mussolini, among others. Pope Pius noted, in stark contrast to the violence seemingly enveloping the world at that time that “Christ has dominion over all creatures, a dominion not seized by violence nor usurped, but his by essence and by nature.”

Corresponding to the end of the church year, the Gospel lesson this morning marks an ending also. Matthew places this apocalyptic description immediately after the series of parables we have been reading over the last several weeks, and immediately before Jesus announces his passion and crucifixion. According to the Gospel of Matthew, this is the last teaching of Jesus to his disciples, and by extension, to us. This is what he wanted them left with.

Apocalyptic visions are, by their nature, uncomfortable. At least they are unless one is a great deal more convinced of one’s own saintliness than I ever hope to be. And even if you are, convinced that is, when we start talking about separating out goats and sheep, sending the former off to eternal punishment and deeding “the kingdom” to the other – how comfortable is it to be waddling our beatific, sheeply way off to the kingdom if we know our more boisterous goat brethren are gnawing away at Satan’s shoes in eternal damnation?

Some things to keep in mind: apocalyptic visions are not meant to be a description of what is, or even of what will be. As theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said, they do not describe for us the furniture of heaven or the temperature of hell. Rather, they give us insight into that which is beyond human understanding. As one homilist said, they are attempting to give us the essence of a reality which largely remains a mystery for us. (Greg Crawford).

Bypassing for the moment sheep and goats and punishments and kingdoms (I’ll get back to that in a minute), what do we see here?

Look at Jesus first. He is Son of Man, coming in his glory. He is Christ the King with the nations gathered before him. He is the shepherd with his mixed flock of sheep and goats. And shockingly, he is the hungry, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned. He is the “least of these”. Jesus is telling us, God, creator, King, shepherd and Lord is here. As one commentary puts it, “God is here, in the messiness and ambiguity of human life. God is here, particularly in your neighbor, the one who needs you. You want to see the face of God? Look into the face of the least of these, the vulnerable, the weak, the children.

Now that we’re looking into the faces of our neighbors, lets turn our attention back Jesus’s flock. Jesus only addressed his disciples on this occasion, but now we are His flock. We do not always work and play well with others. Like the fat rams of Ezekiel’s description, we push with flank and shoulder, and butt at all the weak animals with our horns. Inside the church and outside its walls we spend time, energy and resources arguing over doctrine and detail, who is right and who is wrong; righteous behavior, and unrighteous; ultimately who is “in” and who is “out”.

Jesus had given the answers to this final exam multiple times in multiple ways: love God, and love your neighbor. Forgiveness, mercy and compassion were paramount throughout his life and ministry, even when they were inconvenient. Still, the “sheep” , the righteous ones of this story are surprised. ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ The sheep served their neighbors in the way that they did because it was the right thing to do, not because it was doctrinally correct, not to appear pious, and not to save themselves from eternal punishment. Jesus celebrates this service born of love to the vulnerable of the flock.

The “goats” are equally surprised. They weren’t bad goats necessarily. They lived in the flock easily enough. They never knowingly offended God. They answer, as perplexed as their ovine brothers before them, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ You can just hear them thinking, “We’d ‘a helped if we’d known…”

Figured out yet if you’re a goat or a sheep? Don’t worry about it. Mark Douglas in Feasting on the Word reminds us, “Christians are always both recipients of the gospel and witnesses to it. Each of us is both unbeliever and believer, both commanded to care and in need of care, both judged by the Son of Man and identified with him in our weakness, both under judgment for our failures to pursue justice and saved by grace, both a goat and a sheep.”

King and servant, glorious and humble, simple in lifestyle, extravagant in love, Jesus gives us today a gift. His vision is neither threat nor promise. It is an invitation to recalibrate our lives, knowing that he is in us, in ALL of us. Give extravagantly of your love, your compassion. Live as what you are, his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Amen.

Proper 25, year A, Matthew 22: 34-46

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

There are 39 books in the Hebrew bible, 27 books in the New Testament, God knows how many millions of pages of theological commentary and counter-commentary, countless hours of televangelists tirelessly preaching the “right” way; yet Jesus just crystallized the entirety of our faith, and some would argue the Jewish faith as well, in 4 sentences.

This first and greatest commandment was not something Jesus made up on the spot. It comes from Deuteronomy (6:4). It’s also the first part of the Shema – the prayer recited by a pious Jew every morning upon rising and every evening on going to bed. It would have been deeply ingrained in Jesus’s consciousness.

Some of you may have had the opportunity to visit and pray with folks that suffer from health or mental issues that have left them unable to read the words. Have you ever noticed what happens when you get to the Lord’s Prayer? Doesn’t always happen, but often these folks, who may not have communicated meaningfully in years will mumble along, or hum, or bow their heads at that point. It is so deeply ingrained… So much more so would be the shema, repeated twice a day, every day for the entirety of a Jewish man’s adult life (then it would have been only men).

The second commandment Jesus cites comes from Leviticus 19, as Mike read for us today. Plucked from the middle of an intimidating list of purity rules known as the Holiness code, Jesus chose this thought. This simple, beautiful, thoroughly un-human thought.

There we have it. Christianity in 55 words or less. Simplicity itself.

One problem….What does it mean?…Really…What does it mean?

To love one’s neighbor as oneself. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.” And we take a look at ourselves and ask, what part of “all” do we not understand. It’s a tall order as we consciously remember that the poor, and the rude and the dirty and the hungry and the addicted and the mentally ill, and the incarcerated, and the cantankerous are every bit as much our neighbor as the bathed, respectable, hard-working, charming social paragon who lives next door.

Christianity does not carry this ethic of reciprocity alone, by the way. Hillel, a first century Jewish scholar was reported to have been taunted by a pagan, to teach him the Torah while the pagan stood on one foot. Hillel patiently answered, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.” Taoism, Confucianism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the B’hai faith all tout similar precepts as central tenets. Would that all of us from all faiths would follow it…

Incidentally, Jesus’ commandment presumes love of self. We cannot truly love God without loving God’s children, God’s creation. Do not forget in this equation, that you are as much one of God’s children, God’s creation as your neighbor. Loving your neighbor does not mean hating yourself – it means loving yourself enough to give of yourself.

What does it mean to love God whole-lifedly? It sounds right enough. Of course I love God. God is good. God is love. God is life. God might strike me down if I don’t…

God is such a big thing, though. Such a complex, remote, mysterious being. How do I love something that unfathomable? How do I know if I love something that enigmatic? What’s wrong with me if I don’t feel that overpowering, all-encompassing love at all times?

I don’t have answers to these questions, by the way. I’m just thinking out loud here.

We can feel love for God; but feeling love for God is not actually what Jesus, or Deuteronomy, says. You shall love…imperative. It’s a directive, not a suggestion. I don’t know that I can force myself to feel what I do not feel. So again, what does it mean?

For a scientific, rational, learned culture, we are oddly passion driven. We wait (as a group) to experience feelings, and then we act on them. In this case, that passive reception/response pattern is just backwards. Our love for God cannot be a passive realization of transient sentiment, but an active response of God’s children to God. Loving God is not a feeling – it is a relationship.

I don’t know that I’ve ever quoted Pope Benedict before, by the way, and don’t count on it happening again, but in his first papal encyclical (a document bordering on racy in parts, by the way) he has this to say, “Acknowledgment of the living God is one path towards love, and the “yes” of our will to his will unites our intellect, will and sentiments in the all-embracing act of love… The love-story between God and man consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God’s will increasingly coincide: God’s will is no longer for me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by the commandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself.” God is more deeply present to me than I am to myself.

We say “yes” to God. And then we work our way through what that means – maybe prayer, maybe making time for God, maybe actively loving our neighbors – working for justice and peace; maybe simple mindfulness. We ask God how.

Poet and minister Thom Shuman dares to ask God how.

how do i love you
when my mind
is so easily distracted
by the yelling on television,
the anger on the roadways,
the dullness of my life?

how can i love you
when my heart
is so broken by
the hatred among believers,
the bitterness of friends,
the forgiveness which eludes me?

how should i love you
when my soul
thirsts for a companion,
hungers for empathy,
longs for a respite from its weariness?

maybe,
just maybe,
if i stop hanging on
to all my questions,
let go of all my answers,
and be caught by your grace,
i will be able to love
YOU
with all i am,
all i have,
all i hope to ever be.

Holy God, help us to love you with all our hearts, our minds, our souls; with passion, with prayer, with intelligence;
To love our neighbors; with forgiveness, with service, with humility;
And to love ourselves; with hope, with joy, with peace.”*

Amen

*Prayer adapted from liturgy written by Thom Shuman

Proper 23, Year A,
Isaiah 25: 1-9, Psalm 23, Philippians 4:1-9, Matthew 22:1-14

What stunning, joyous images we share this week!

In our first lesson, Isaiah evokes a vision of God as gentle and nurturing, “Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces,” not to mention nourishing, “On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines.”

The psalmist serenades us in our green pastures with soothing images of abundant tables in an oasis of peace and love.

From the depths of prison, Paul transports us to an emotional mountaintop with his jubilant exhortation, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” Even in his captivity, Paul knows that “God is near.”

From there we move to the good news of the Gospel lesson. “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Whoops. Ouch. This is not quite as good newsish as one might hope for.

The gospel reading starts out happy enough. The king is having a wedding banquet for his son. He sends out invitations, the first century equivalent of save the date cards. In spite of these careful preparations, the invitees shun the party when the day comes.

A patient, gracious fellow, the king sends a new contingent of slaves out to reassure them – this is the party to end all parties. Oxen and fat calves – this is no BYOB picnic. The invitees are not impressed – They conspicuously demonstrate that their own everyday activities take priority over the king’s celebration for his son. They eventually mistreat and finally kill the king’s messengers.

At this point our gracious host loses all patience completely in an interlude of enraged violence, pausing the evening’s festivities to lay waste to the unworthy invitees’ cities and kill them. Having scratched that retribution itch, the king still needs guests. He sends still more slaves into the streets to gather everyone, the good the bad and the ugly, together for the banquet.

This story is, of course, a parable. More than that, the story in Matthew is an allegory. All the elements of the story represent something specific. (The parallel story told in the gospel of Luke is not an allegory, and has a very different feel) In today’s parable, the king represents God the Father, celebrating his Son. The royal invited guests are the nation of Israel, now represented by the religious elite of the day. The first invitation represents the prophets of old; heard but not taken seriously. The second invitation represents the prophetic Christian missionaries. Spiritual destruction and devastating distance from God is the fate awaiting Israel’s elite as they ignore and mistreat God’s messengers and spurn God’s gifts.

The parable moves on to more comfortable ground. (Comfortable for us, anyway, not so very comfortable for the chief priests and elders, feeling ever more threatened by Jesus). It moves on to allegorize Jesus’s all inclusive approach. Gather them all. Celebrate with us. Come to the party. Worthiness optional.

But here we hit a sticky wicket and comfort goes by the wayside. Perfectly oblivious passers by have been herded into this sumptuous banquet from off the street. They could hardly have been expected to plan ahead for the occasion. Yet, when caught without appropriate garb (inexplicably the only one so unprepared), our wedding guest “friend” is at a loss for words and is summarily bound and tossed into the outer darkness amidst weeping and gnashing of teeth. I don’t know about you, but on first reading my sympathy is with our hapless friend.

At this point, I find I must consciously remember, again, that this is not a description of reality, but rather a parable; a way to make a point. According to the New Interpreter’s Bible, “In early Christianity, the new identity of conversion was often pictured as donning a new set of clothes; the language of changing clothes was utilized to express the giving up of the old way of life and putting on the new Christian identity.” Allegorically, the man was expected to don the deeds of transformation in Christ. He did not, and paid the price of isolation from the king and the celebration. The Reverend Frank Logue expressed the contemporary implications this way, “But as the last line [of the gospel lesson], ‘Many are called, but few are chosen” hangs in the air, we also see that those who have been robed in Christ are to live into that new life of grace. Having been perfected in Christ does not give us license to continue unchanged.

“That’s all very well and good, King”, you might say. “Clothed in Christ. Spectacular. But look around you, King. The church is clothed in green. This is Ordinary time. The time between the feasts. The exultant red of Pentecost and rejuvenating whites of Easter and Christmas are far away. The contemplative hues of Lent are a distant memory and the even the expectant blues and purples of Advent still seem far away. We are in Ordinary time.”

“This is the time when real life happens,”, you remind the King. “The economy is shaky at best and who knows what’ll happen to the retirement fund. My joints ache. I fall over if I stand up too fast, and I pee if I laugh too hard. My kids need my help. My parents need my help. Snow is coming, and I don’t know if I can shovel another year. I give to the food shelf and the clothes closet, and still the hungry come. I got some medical tests done, and I don’t know what they’ll find. I don’t have time to transform myself, King, I’m surviving”, you say.

And yet…The invitation to the feast is issued in the ordinary streets of our flawed and chaotic lives. From the depths of a first century Roman prison Paul gives us the key. “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

You don’t have to transform yourself. That is God’s job. Let God do it. Take on the mantle of Christ, the garment of our baptismal covenant. Come to the feast seeking both solace and strength, both pardon and renewal. Thus we are transformed and join in God’s work providing refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat. We will wipe the tears from others’ faces, and find our own tears wiped away. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Amen.

PROPER 22, A

Isaiah 5:1-7

Matthew 21:33-46

The parable of the vineyard told by Jesus is rooted in the passage we heard from Isaiah. I want to start there, because part of understanding Jesus is seeing how he changes his source material.

In Isaiah, my beloved, or God builds a vineyard. He does all the proper things to make it flourish – he chose a fertile hill, he dug it up, cleared it of stones, planted it with choice vines, built a watchtower, and built a wine vat. Then he asks the people of Jerusalme and Judah, “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?”

So why did it yield wild grapes? He had done everything properly, yet the vineyard bore bad fruit. So God decides to destroy the vineyard. Isaiah then makes clear that the vineyard represents the house of Israel. When God planted the vineyard he expected justice and instead saw bloodshed. He expected righteousness, but heard a cry.

To understand the parable Jesus tells, it’s important to look at the context in which he tells it. You know how Episcopalians and Catholics are rather notorious for not knowing the Bible. Of course we hear reading from the Bible every week, but we hear the same ones over a three year cycle, which leaves out large portions of the Bible. Likewise, we only hear the Bible in bits and pieces, and if we don’t look at the larger context, it’s all too easy to misunderstand the meaning.

This parable comes right after the ones we heard the last two Sundays. Jesus is teaching in the Temple, the day after throwing out the money changers. He has taken his message into the heart of the Jewish religious establishment. When the chief priests and elders challenged him about his authority he outwitted them. Although other people were undoubtedly gathered about him in the Temple, he is addressing himself to the chief priests and the elders. In other words, this parable of the vineyard is told especially for their benefit. And, of course, that means his audience would know the Isaiah passage too.

In this version of the vineyard story, there are tenants in the vineyard. It’s not directly about what kind of grapes the vines produce. It’s about the tenants who refuse to give the landlord his due, his share of the produce. They mistreat the slaves sent to get the produce. They kill the landlord’s son, in hope of owning for themselves the whole vineyard and all its produce.

Like the Isaiah piece, this parable is often read allegorically. Again, God is the landlord, who has generously furnished the vineyard. The tenants, are not the whole of Israel as in Isaiah, but rather the religious leadership of the people. Even the chief priests and Pharisees realized this, as the reading clearly tells us.

The heart of the message is in this statement of Jesus: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”

Unfortunately, this parable was often used to support anti-Jewish sentiment and progroms, taking it to mean that the Jews as a whole people were going to be thrown out and be replaced by the Christians. This is a clear example of the kind of twisting of meaning that can come from proof-texting, where bits of biblical writings are cherry-picked and put together to prove a point. Jesus is clearly addressing the religious leadership, not the whole Jewish nation,

Another thing to notice about this story: it is not Jesus who says the tenants will be put to a miserable death and replaced by good tenants. Those are the words of the chief priests and Pharisees when Jesus asks them what the landlord will do when he arrives at the vineyard. It is after this that Jesus says, “The Kingdom of God will be taken away from YOU.” In other words, the oversight and the leadership positions currently held by the priests and the elders will be given to others.

When we look at the situation in Israel at the time of Jesus, it’s clear that the religious authorities were in cahoots with Rome to maintain order and their own power. Righteousness was defined in terms of purity and the purity codes made it impossible for people who were poor or outcast to be “righteous”. The wealthy were way wealthier than the poor, and most of the land was in fact held by a very few families.

There are numerous parallels to current events in our time, too numerous and discouraging to recount. In the course of the history of the Christian faith, similar failures of leadership abound. While there are exceptions, I must say that I don’t see the same failure in our Episcopal leadership at the present time.

In the coming weeks you will hear more of this discourse by Jesus and more as well from Isaiah. Especially notice next week the description of God’s feast for us.

Although Jesus aimed this parable at the religious leadership of his time, there’s a clear message in it for all of us. God, the landlord, who created the world we inhabit, has given us everything we need to create the kingdom of God.

Let’s be clear. In the kingdom of God, all people are valued equally. Everyone has enough. Although not everyone will have exactly the same amount of stuff or the same gifts, everyone will have enough to live life with dignity. Justice will reign, not only in the courts, but in the economics of the kingdom.

Probably nothing in creation can make us share the same opinions, but we are capable of civil discourse. The rules of kindness and compassion come first. Violence, as a means of solving problems, must disappear. If we cannot root out all evil, we can certainly keep it in its place if enough of us commit to the kingdom of God. When we place God first, before ourselves, before money, before our country or town or tribe, the fruits that God hopes for will follow, including righteousness, justice, and peace.

In the Kingdom of God, all of us would be working for the common good of everyone, knowing that that will create the best world in which each of us can live, and move, and have our being. What better gift could we give our children, than to create a world in which everyone can make the most of their gifts, without fear, without violence, without hate or harassment? That, I believe, is God’s dream for this world.

God won’t make it happen without us, and we can’t make it happen without God. AMEN

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Proper 18, A

Matthew 18:15-20

This week we have another difficult lesson, partly because what it suggests is difficult to do, and partly because it doesn’t quite sound like Jesus. One of the commentaries even says that it seems to reflect the developing institutional church rather than the situation during the life of Jesus. But like all difficult passages, we still have to deal with it as it is.

We certainly know that Jesus had a lot of experience with conflict among his followers, who sometimes vied with one another for his favor, who often disagreed with him, and sometimes argued among themselves. It does make some sense that he would want to lay out for them a process of resolving conflict before he left them.

The process Jesus lays out is fairly simple:

1. If another member of the community sins against you, go to them and tell them.
2. If that doesn’t work, talk to them again but take two or three witnesses with you.
3. If that doesn’t work, take the issue to the church (or the church council or the vestry)
4. If that doesn’t work, let the sinner be to you as a tax collector or a gentile.

This last part really got me the first time I read it, because it sounds very exclusionary – like casting the person out of the church and into outer darkness. Then I realized that that is what it might have meant to a religious Jew of that time, but this was Jesus speaking. How did he treat tax collectors and gentiles? Just about like everyone else. In other words, they are still given respect and offered every chance to be part of the community.

Our discussion at text study this week clearly emphasized that this process is not to be used willy nilly, but is instead a process to be used when someone is doing things that disrupts the life of the community. It might be someone who is gossiping or backbiting in hurtful ways; it might be someone who insists everything be done their way; it might be someone who enjoys stirring things up, even lying to get things going, etc. I suspect we have all experienced this sort of thing at times, whether in church or in other organizations, maybe even in our own families.

The most important step here, and the most difficult for most of us is the first one. To take our hurt or our discomfort, or our concern directly to the offender and to be able to say, this is what I saw, felt, heard, and it’s not OK.

I suspect that most of you were raised much as I was. Anger was unacceptable, confrontation was impolite, and ignoring hurtful or hateful behavior was encouraged. That makes it doubly hard to follow this approach. On the other hand, I’ve noticed that when I don’t confront someone who is bothering me or seems to be disrupting the community in some way, I’m much more likely to start complaining to someone else, which turns into whining and backbiting.

I believe this is the right way to go, but I myself don’t always do it. However, when I have done it, I have found it so rewarding. I can’t assume that the other person will agree with me, but if they do, or if they accept that what they did was hurtful, even if they didn’t intend it to be, then they have learned something, and they have the chance to apologize, and I have the chance to forgive them. Think of the energy that saves that would otherwise be spent stewing about it!!

I’ve had the opposite experience too – of finding out that someone or a group of people were really angry with me and never said anything. Well, how can I improve my own behavior if no one is willing to call me on it? When I have been called on it, I sometimes found that other people have been hurt by something that I would not have found hurtful. It helped me to know this and to try not make the same mistake again.

The best example from my own life: a man who was a good friend through church came and talked to me several days after a church party that had been held at his house. This was shortly after my husband and I had separated. He said, “I saw something going on that night between you and one of the other men that didn’t look good.” Genuinely surprised, I said, “Really? Could you be more specific?” No, he didn’t want to say anything more. So I thought for a bit, trying to remember anything unusual from that evening. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I can’t think of anything like what you’re suggesting. I’ve always talked to the guys and kidded around with them, but maybe what I’m hearing here is that as a single woman, I need to be more careful of how I behave – that it’s more likely to be misinterpreted.” And I thanked him profusely for talking to me. He could easily have started a nasty rumor instead and this way I learned something important.

I am aware of one situation in another church where someone was eventually asked to leave the church. This happened because the person was so convinced of their own rightness that they couldn’t seem to hear anyone else. The community is best served when we all recognize that we need the community more than we need to be right.

When Jesus tells the disciples that whatever they bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever they loose on earth will be loosed in heaven, please notice that he is not speaking to them as individuals, but as a community. So if the community decides that something is a sin, then God will uphold that. Or if the community decides it is not a sin, then God will uphold that.

This is also a difficult text because our church, struggling in community and calling on the Holy Spirit for guidance has decided that homosexuality is not a sin. Yet there are other Christian churches who have decided the opposite. Where is God in all this? Darned if I know, but I do know that over time, all Christian churches have pretty much agreed that slavery is a sin, even though Jesus didn’t teach that. And maybe someday there will be consensus on the issues of sexuality as well.

The one thing in this lesson that we can all cling to is the last line, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Jesus is with us in all our conflicts, frustrations, doubts, and sins – just as he is with us in our joy, in our worship, and in our working together. Alleluia!

THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP by Lynn Naeckel + 08/28/11 Proper 17, A Matthew 16:21-28

Last week Sam talked about the important issue of identity: who was Jesus? And who am I, especially who am I as a Christian? She ended her sermon urging you to go out into the world and change it.

Last Thursday we heard the last lecture in the First Light series. Marcus Borg tries to summarize what it means to be a Christian. He says that worrying about right belief is a distortion of Jesus’s teaching, because it leads us to argue about all manner of things instead of being disciples. Christianity is about following Jesus and that means loving God, changing ourselves to be more like Jesus, and changing the world in the direction of God’s dream for the world.

Today’s lesson may well dampen any enthusiasm you came away with last week, because it’s a clear reminder to us that the cost of discipleship can be very high. Choosing to follow the way of Jesus always means change, but it may require even more of you.

When Jesus tries to show his disciples what awaits him in Jerusalem, that the authorities will kill him, but that he will rise on the third day, they don’t even hear the last part. Peter, in rebuking Jesus, is just doing what we so often do, denying the reality of death. Jesus knows what happens to people who stand up and speak the truth to the power of empire and he’s trying to prepare his followers for what will happen. Peter and the others don’t want to hear it.

Jesus responds sharply to Peter’s rebuke. “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Peter is playing devil’s advocate without intending to by tempting Jesus NOT to go to Jerusalem, NOT to put himself in danger, not to defy the authorities so openly. And let’s face it. Jesus could have lived out his days preaching in Galilee, and he might have done a lot of good, but it’s not hard to figure out that his movement would not have lasted.

What gave the movement real momentum were the events of Easter through Pentecost. The empty tomb did not really convince anyone of anything. It was the appearances of Jesus to his followers post-Easter and the work of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that sent them out into the world proclaiming the Gospel.

The heart of today’s Gospel comes in what Jesus says to his disciples after he has rebuked Peter. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

What does it mean to deny ourselves? I think it’s learning to deny our own selfish needs and self-interest in order to put other people’s needs first. If a man asks for your cloak, give him also your shirt. If your enemy reviles you, love your enemy in return. Do not seek vengeance. Turn the other cheek. And so on –you can fill in many more.

Then follows another paradox that turns the world around, as Jesus so often does: anyone who wants to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for his sake will find it. So – by trying to avoid the consequences of being a Christian, that is by trying to save my life, by trying to avoid death or change, or by trying to keep it comfortable, just as it is, I will in fact lose it. I think that means that I will fail to live up to my potential, fail to enter into partnership with God to move this world towards love, peace, justice and non-violence.

And what might it mean to “lose your life for Jesus’ sake?”

It might mean to die literally as Jesus and so many others have done – to be a martyr for the cause of God’s dream for the world, to be hung on a cross, eaten by lions, tortured on the rack or the wheel, burned at the stake, investigated by the FBI, crucified in the press,or thrown in jail, etc. Not many of us are called to this extreme of sacrifice.

At the personal level it may mean to die to your old life, to let loose of old ways and take up new ones. These would affect all areas of life, including politics, life style, personality, and religious practice. All of us are called to this path of personal transformation.

This may not sound so hard compared to physical death, but it is still very hard work. For one thing, any time you try to change your ways, you have to put up with backsliding and disappointment in yourself. This is not pleasant!

It means giving up old pleasures, often before the new ones are evident. You have to give up eating to loose weight for quite some time before you experience the pleasure of having a lighter body, wearing better clothes, or feeling good when you look in the mirror. It’s not easy to stick with the program!

When we change our lives, we often experience the displeasure of friends or family, who don’t want us to change. What must Peter’s wife have felt when he gave up fishing and went off to follow Jesus?

Reading the Gospels seriously has changed my political point of view, which has pretty much made me a traitor to my family, and at least in their view, to my class. We still see each other, but cannot talk about it, and I know that my move to the left, the liberal, and the progressive is both a puzzle and an affront to them. It’s an uncomfortable wedge in our relationships. And giving up old friendships, even while forging new ones, is a painful process. This is often the price we pay for growing up.

The earliest name for Christians was “followers of the way.” They understood that they were to follow the way of Jesus, meaning to follow his example, to follow his teachings, but also to follow him in the journey to Jerusalem and through death to resurrection. As Borg puts it, this journey to Jerusalem is a metaphor for the inner journey of transformation that is at the heart of the Christian life. That is, that we work to die to our old ways of selfish self-interest and rise into new life of service to others.

But we are also called to change the world, just as Jesus attempted to do. That means speaking truth to power, and in this country in this time, it means speaking against the power of empire, against greed, against fear, and against violence and injustice.

And finally, Borg suggested that we don’t get discouraged by the size of the problems. Instead, think of the whole world as a patch-work quilt. All we have to do is make our own patch better. We can give our time and energy to improving our piece of the planet in any number of ways. If we are blessed with more than we need we can give money or goods to help others work toward economic justice and peace. And we can all vote for candidates who most closely reflect our desire for a better neighborhood, where everyone has enough, and everyone understands and respects their connections to one another.

God won’t create this kind of world for us, and we can’t do it without God. But working together we can make our patch shine. To quote Sam, “Go forth into the world and change it!”

Who Do You Say That I Am?; August 21, 2011; Proper 16, Year A; Isaiah 51:1-6, Psalm 138, Romans 12:1-8, Matthew 16:13-20; Samantha Crossley

May what I say, and what you hear be in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Listen to me. Isaiah’s entreaty betrays an urgency to capture the attention of a people lost and broken.

Listen to me. Isaiah’s people have lost their moorings. They have lived more than a generation in exile as Isaiah demands their attention. They knew the destruction of their nation, Judah, and the burning of their capital as they were overrun by the Babylonians. They witnessed the capture, torture and death of their king, Zedekiah. They suffered the long, ignominious march from their homeland into exile, each step dogged by shame and pain. To survive, they became an invisible people, living at the edge of ruin.

Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness.

Listen to me, you that seek the Lord.

Isaiah drags his people from their quiet nameless misery, urging them again to action by re-asserting who they are.

He gives them a rock to cling to, the very rock “from which you are hewn”

He re-grounds their identity on the one thing that will endure when the heavens vanish and the earth wears out; their relation with God. God’s salvation and God’s deliverance.

Identity is a tricky thing. Merriam-Webster calls it, “the distinguishing character or personality of an individual (or group).” In real life, it boils down to, “Who am I?” “Who are we?” Without some sort of answer to those questions, we don’t know how we relate to anything else. Like Isaiah’s people, we become lost in our own invisibility and insignificance.

We base our own identities on a fluctuating profusion of factors ranging from nationality to personality; from occupation to vocation; from accidents of birth to choices of associations. We base virtually all our interactions with and reactions to others on our own identities, and our perceptions of theirs.

By virtue of my birth I am the Crossley’s daughter, Calvin’s sister, US citizen, white anglo-saxon female. By virtue of my choices and opportunities, I am mother, wife, physician. By virtue of my baptism and ordination I am a member of the Body of Christ and a servant of Christ. By virtue of having been created, I am a child of God. None of that matters a whit if I don’t act on it.

Jesus and his followers have travelled a long road. They are approaching the end of the line. Jesus knows this, although the disciples haven’t quite picked up on it yet. The disciples regularly prove themselves an utterly human, utterly fallible lot. They have nonetheless given up much to follow this holy man they call Rabbi. They are good Jewish men. Family men. Working men. They are far from home, have forsaken family and livelihood, have been associated with what the authorities of the day call blasphemy. They have given up much of what they would have based their own self image upon in order to follow the man called Jesus of Nazareth, whom they have experienced as holy.

As we follow their journey, we travel with them to the vicinity of Caesarea Philippi. In Old Testament times this area was called Baal Hermon and dedicated to the worship of Baal. When the Greeks moved in, it was re-dedicated to worship of the pagan god Pan, earning the name Panius. Eventually, Philip the Tetrarch took over and named the city after his benefactor, Caesar Augustus and himself, but the primary religious practice remained the worship of the greek fertility gods. Near Caesarea Philippi lay the actual “Gates of Hades”. A spring which exited from a cave nearby was believed to be the gate through which the fertility gods travelled to their winter homes in Hades, and through which they were enticed by all manner of x-rated activities to return to earth in the spring. Not a good place for a nice Jewish boy to be.

Here in this politically and religiously hostile environment, Jesus chose to explore his identity with the disciples. Do not think for a moment that Jesus did not know what labels had been attached to him when he asked “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Do not think that he did not know what the disciples thought of him. According to Mathean accounts, the disciples themselves had already identified him as the Messiah. His question was not, “Who do you think I am?”, but “Who do you SAY that I am?” What is your testimony of me? Having sacrificed so much simply to follow Him, the disciples’ identities had become inexorably entwined in the identity of Jesus. He challenged them with his question. “Who do you say that I am?” “How will the world see me through you?”

There in the heart of the red-light district of Pagan-ville, far from home, family, and protection, Simon, son of Jonah bursts out with the deeply dangerous truth, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

As Jesus points out, Simon Peter is not repeating what he has heard from other people. He acts on the truth that was given to him by God. Simon Peter is not more righteous or stronger than the other disciples. Jesus confers on him the charge of grounding the church, but for Peter this does not denote a magical shift to personal flawless dedication. This is the same Peter who will deny Jesus three times not many days hence. But Peter gives to Jesus of the gifts that he has (in Simon Peter the most notable of which may be hot-headed impetuosity). And the world is transformed.

It is so easy to sit back safely in our own established selves. We are children of God. Salvation will be forever. Yet, through his question to the disciples, Jesus challenges each individual follower, “Who do YOU say that I am? What is your testimony of me? As “Feasting On The Word” states it, “What is your experience of the living God through my witness and presence?”

Testimony is not just words. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans that we must live that testimony. It doesn’t mean you have to preach on street corners, if that is not your gift. To give of yourself to God is your spiritual worship, as Paul says. That may mean ministering, teaching, leading, offering time, resources or simple cheerful compassion. In the actions of the followers of the Messiah, a teaching will go out from God, and God’s justice for a light to the peoples.

What is your experience of the living God through Christ? How will the world see the living God through you? Will you act on the gift of our Father in Heaven and become the rock on which his church is built?

To paraphrase Marcus Borg, Let us go forth into the world, and change it.

THE CAANANITE WOMAN

8/14/11

Proper 15, A

Isaiah 56: 1, 6-8

Matthew 15: 10-28

The lesson from Matthew today is odd and somewhat disturbing. In the first section, Jesus is doing his usual radical re-evaluation of the religious beliefs and practices of his day. He claims the Pharisees are “blind guides of the blind” who will of necessity fall into a pit.

He goes on to tell the crowd that it is not what goes into the mouth, but what comes out of it that defiles a person. Now, this was incredibly radical, because in that day the purity laws of the religious authorities were many and strict. They went far beyond the business of not eating pork. If you know any Jews today who keep a kosher household you’ll have some idea of how complicated it gets to follow all the rules.

Jesus cuts through all that and says, It is not what goes in that defiles, it is what comes out, for what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what may defile you. When the disciples don’t get it, he explains it in a very literal fashion.

This part makes sense to our generation. But what are we to think of the story of the Caananite woman. Only a few verses later, Jesus is first ignoring this woman, and then essentially calls her a dog. What is this coming out of his mouth? Why?

Let’s see if we can figure it out. First, try to put yourself in the place of the woman. Remember she is a Caananite, which means pagan. She is female, which puts her somewhere below the cattle in her village. She shows up because she has a daughter who is “tormented by a demon.” She’s asking for healing for this daughter, not even a son.

How do we understand what that might be like? Well, think of a Mom whose child is seriously depressed. . . or maybe a Mom whose teen ager is showing signs of what we would call schizophrenia and claims to hear voices. . . . or a daughter who is bipolar. A miracle healing is her best and only hope, and she’s obviously heard about Jesus.

When she comes shouting after him, Jesus does nothing and the disciples do their usual – they tell him to send her away.

Jesus says to them, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” When she kneels before him and begs for help again, he says to her, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Wow! Now it’s known that it was common among the Jews to call the Caananites “dogs.” But Jesus? This insult right to her face is about like calling a woman a bitch.

We have no way of knowing what tone of voice Jesus used here. Somehow, when I read it for the first time this week, it reminded me of how I felt and sometimes spoke when I’d had a three year old hanging on me or talking at me for hours. Was Jesus just sick of everyone wanting from him? Of everyone begging for something from him. Was he just tired of it all?

I’ve had two interesting debates about this reading in the last few days, and it seems to depend on how you view Jesus; whether you think he was so perfect that he couldn’t ever do anything wrong or whether you think he was fully human and had to struggle with the same things we do.

One friend said that no matter what the story says, Jesus could do no wrong – that is, he would be incapable of speaking unkindly or sharply no matter how tired or fed up he might feel. My problem is that if I take that approach I have no explanation that makes sense to me for what is reported here.

The woman is too desparate to take offence at anything Jesus says, and she’s quick witted enough to come back with a very clever reply. When Jesus say to her, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” she comes right back with, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” She’s willing to accept the down position in which he has cast her to further her plea.

I think that besides being clever, this quick reply sort of wakes Jesus up to what he has been doing. “Woman, great is your faith!” and her daughter is healed.

When I said I thought that this woman taught Jesus something (meaning, that even gentiles could be people of faith and were deserving of his mercy), another friend said, “Oh no, my Christology is too high to go there.” I assume that meant that Jesus had no need to learn anything, that he knew it all already.

Then why does the author of Matthew put this story right after the one about defilement? All the gospels do things differently and in various sequences. At least if the stories had occurred far apart, I would not think that perhaps Jesus is demonstrating exactly what he just preached against. I know from experience that that happens to us human preachers!

Another consideration: back in Chapter 10, Matthew tells us that Jesus sent his disciple out to spread the good news with these instructions: “Go nowhere among the gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Even the language is the same as what Jesus says here. But at the very end of this Gospel, the last speech of the resurrected Jesus to his disciples includes this: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”

Moreover, there are plenty of comments in the prophets that suggest that Israel was to set an example to all the others – that their God, the God of Israel, was also to be the God of everyone. It’s probably not a coincidence that today’s Old Testament lesson is one of those. Third Isaiah is speaking to the Jews returning from exile in Babylon.

“Thus says the Lord: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed. And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant – these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.”

Our orthodox faith says that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. I don’t know how we can prove it either way, but I know that my bias is toward the fully human. Not that divinity would be a detriment, but just that what Jesus did and taught was so extraordinary I want to know that he did it in spite of being human, because that means I can work towards that kind of goodness too.

If Jesus didn’t learn something new from this Caananite woman, then he at least was reminded that his exclusion of her from his mercy arose from the Jewish habit of mind in his day, and not from the real purpose of his life and work. It is in relenting and healing her daughter that he inspires us to treat the outsider, the foreigner, and the outcaste, with similar compassion and mercy. AMEN

Lynn Naeckel +

JESUS WALKING ON THE WATER PROPER 14, A, 08/07/11 Matthew 14:22-33

This story of Jesus walking on the water never made much sense to me. Feeding people makes sense; healing people makes sense; what’s the purpose of walking on the water?

There’s a trick I learned from someone, although I can’t remember who it was. When a story like this one doesn’t seem to make sense, try treating it like a parable. So let’s imagine this as a story told about a religious leader who sent his followers off in a boat so he could go up on the mountain to pray.

Just think, Jesus puts all 12 of his disciples, every one of them in a boat and sends them out into very rough water. Granted, some of them were fishermen and had experience, but still they were having great difficulty in the midst of wind and waves.

Might this be an early experiment – send the followers off by themselves to see how they do? What else do they need to learn before the master really leaves? Maybe the boat is an image for the early church? Or even the church today?

In the Jewish tradition the sea represent chaos, maybe even evil. Karl Barth said this about water in the creation story: “ It is the principle which, in its abundance and power is absolutely opposed to God’s creation. . .representative of all the evil powers. . .” Think not only of the creation story but also that of Noah, the deliverance of Israel through the parting of the waters, and the entry into the land across the swollen Jordan River. In all of these the Lord triumphs over the waters.

So here is the church, surrounded by chaos, having trouble making headway against the wind and waves – hmmm, sound familiar? And if this relating of the boat to the church sounds far-fetched to you, consider that where you are currently sitting is called the NAVE. Haven’t you seen churches that especially remind you of an upside down boat?

And in this story Jesus not only calms the storm, but also walks on the water. Is this not a startling image of who is in charge?

Still, it’s no wonder that the disciples are afraid when they see Jesus. Is this a ghost? Is it some sort of evil apparition? In response to their fear, Jesus says, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

In the Greek original, the phrase translated, “it is I,” is ego eimi. This is the same phrase, I AM, that was spoken to Moses out of the burning bush as the name of God. So Jesus is implying, at least, that I AM is here, walking safely through the waves.

The injunction not to fear is a familiar one, with echoes throughout the Bible. We are not to be afraid in the face of God’s mighty acts, but rather be called to action and worship. Isaiah says (43:1-3):

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

We are already redeemed and have no cause to fear. But that is not the end of the story is it? Now we have Peter, in his usual brash manner, saying, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus says, “come.” Peter jumps out and walks on the water —- until he is distracted by the strong wind that is still blowing, and in spite of himself becomes fearful and starts to sink into the water. Notice it is fear that causes the difficulty. Jesus links this to lack of faith, but it’s important to consider how Jesus speaks to Peter.

When Jesus reached out his hand to lift Peter up, he says, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” How do we know what his tone of voice was? We don’t, but I tend to think it was gently chiding rather than severely critical – sort of like we are apt to use the phrase to chide someone – Oh ye of little faith.

After all, when Peter began to sink, he did have the faith to call out to Jesus, “Lord, save me!” And it was only Peter who had the gumption to respond to their experience by taking the risk to try it himself. And in the end, when Jesus entered the boat and the sea calmed, all the disciples worshiped him.

Would that have happened if Peter had not done what he did? Maybe it takes one person responding to the call, taking the risk to step out into the void, trusting in God, to convince the others.

Certainly, when I consider the history of our faith, there have always been Peters who lead the way, who provide examples for the rest of us to follow, who take the risk necessary to step out in faith. And I’m not just talking about saints and martyrs. There are folks like this in every congregation.

It seems to me that one point of this story is that even people who don’t have enough faith, who only have a small amount of faith, are capable of leading others to God.

I think about the novice priest who agreed to do confession with me, without ever having done it before, and provided for me a significant turning point in my own spiritual life. I think about the associate pastor who preaches the tough sermons about what the teaching of Jesus implies for our political life, because the Rector dare not preach them for fear of being fired.

I think about the woman I knew years ago who befriended a neighbor and gave her the money needed for her survival, even at risk of her own future. I think of the gray haired women fixing a meal at another church here in town discussing homosexuality, wondering why the church was making such a fuss about it. “Aren’t we all God’s children?” someone asked. I think about all the people who staff the clothes closet, the food shelf, the shelter, who fix food for the hungry or for the bereaved.

Clifton Kirkpatrick, in his commentary on this passage, says this: “The key to faith and fullness of life in Christ is to follow Peter’s example and be willing to step out of the comfort and security of the boat and head into the troubled waters of the world to proclaim the love, mercy, and justice of God that we find in Jesus Christ.. . If we get out of the boat we can count on the accompaniment of our Lord. . .Getting our of the boat with Jesus is the most risky, most exciting and most fulfilling way to life to the fullest.”

By all means, let’s come into the boat, into the nave, to worship God regularly, but then let’s get out of the boat and do some earthly good in the world around us. AMEN

Lynn Naeckel +