December 11, 2011 - Advent 3 - Beauty from Brokenness

Beauty from Brokenness

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Advent 3 – December 11, 2011

On Sunday, May 22, of this year a tornado ravaged the Missouri city of Joplin. Several people died in the destruction and its aftermath. Peace Lutheran Church was demolished – its sanctuary, offices, classrooms, and gathering place leveled. This was a congregation that had already been facing difficult times. They were between pastors, and member giving could only support a part-time pastor to begin with. The loss of their building, combined with the wreckage of so much of the town and the increasing number of deaths attributed to the disaster was devastating. It was a time of sorrow and mourning, a time to begin wondering about when and how they would rebuild and continue the ministry God had called them to. And while the people of Peace showed remarkable courage and spirit in the face of the obstacles before them, I imagine that there have been times when those obstacles seem insurmountable, when they consider the future and doubt how they will get to where they want to be and wonder if they will have what it will take to get there.

It's the same dilemma faced by the people of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, faced by the people of Japan after this past year's earthquakes and tsunami, faced by the people of North Dakota after spring flooding, faced by people in upstate New York and New England after Hurricane Irene turned into a tropical storm and skipped over Long Island, only to wreak serious damage further inland. How do you rebuild when everything you've ever known has been brought to rubble? Where do you even start?

These are questions the people of ancient Israel knew only too well. The prophet Isaiah speaks to and about them in our Old Testament lesson this morning – defining his mission as one anointed and sent to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of the vengeance of our God” (Is. 61:1-2) – to comfort and provide for all who mourn.

You see, this is after the time of the exile – when the ruling class and elite and wealthy had been carted off by the Babylonians as part of their divide and conquer war strategy. But now, God has sent a deliverer, Cyrus of Persia, who had defeated the Babylonians, and told the Israelites that they could go home – and not only that, but once they arrived there, they were to get to work rebuilding the city of Jerusalem and the Temple of God. But that wasn't as easy as it sounded. When they arrived home, they found the city in worse shape than they could have imagined. Rebuilding was an overwhelming prospect, complicated by the fact that they struggled to work together, to agree with one another on how to work toward their common goal. And so they languished there, hopeless, feeling helpless to change their situation, to restore and repair the ruin that surrounded them.

Even if we've never experienced that kind of literal devastation, we all know something of what it feels like to have your world turned upside down, to feel like the things you have worked so hard to build have been leveled, destroyed, laid waste – whether it was the end of your dream career, the disintegration of a marriage or close friendship, the lasting trauma of military service in a war zone, or the death of your spouse or child or parent. We've all come to those times when we feel our lives are in ruins, and we are surrounded by the wreckage of what should have been and wonder how it is that we are to begin rebuilding – how we can find the energy or stamina or strength – emotional, physical, or spiritual – to start over, when everywhere we look, there is destruction and devastation.


But it is into just such situations as this that God anoints and sends messengers to speak to God's people on God's behalf. In this part of the Bible, God sends the prophet Isaiah to bring good news, to speak words of courage and of hope, to offer comfort – to remind the people that God has come near, that God is turning things around! God is working a transformation – promising a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of faint spirits. In the face of all the trouble and challenges that are before them, God sends Isaiah to remind them that God brings light out of darkness, joy out of sorrow, hope out of discouragement, life out of death!

It's not for nothing that in Luke's gospel, in chapter 4, when Jesus is just beginning his public ministry, he stands up in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth and is handed the scroll. And he finds the place where it was written just these words from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor.” And he rolls up the scroll and hands it back to the attendant, and sits down, and with everyone looking, says to the crowd, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Jesus is the one that brings these words of Isaiah to fruition. God began this work with the leaders and the prophets of old, but in Jesus, it is completed. He is God's good news to a hurting world. He is the one who binds up our broken hearts. Jesus is the one who brings liberty and release from all that holds us captive. In Jesus, our mourning is traded for gladness, our dejected hearts replaced with hearts of praise. In him, we are clothed in salvation and righteousness.

But the story doesn't end with our own healing. Through Jesus, we are sent, as Isaiah was sent, to bring good news, to heal the hurting, to bring joy to the grieving. We are called to reach out to others from our own brokenness – to share the love of God that is healing us
.
Out of the devastation of Peace Lutheran Church comes this beautiful story of what happens when we do that. In the days and weeks after the tornado hit, as people from all over came to help begin the rebuilding process, a youth group from Christ and Trinity Lutheran Church came from 200 miles away in Sedalia, Missouri to help with the clean-up efforts. And while they were there, they saw pieces of broken glass where Peace had once stood. They were inspired to collect those fragments and take them back to their church, where they formed them into a huge, beautiful, illuminated cross – a gift that they delivered back to the people of Peace just two weeks ago as the season of Advent was beginning.

And that, right there, is a sign and symbol of what the gospel is – taking what is broken and shattered and destroyed and transforming it, reshaping it, rebuilding it into something new, a reminder of hope, something that gives life to those who encounter it.

This is what God does.

God brings beauty out of brokenness.

And then God sends us, God's beautiful, broken people, to do the same, in the name of the One who was broken for us.

Thanks be to God. Amen.


*If you are interested in seeing the cross & reading more about the youth involved in this project in Missouri, you can read an article about it here.

December 4, 2011 - Advent 2 - The Promise of the Promised One

The Promise of the Promised One

Mark 1:1-8

Advent 2 – December 4, 2011

People often ask me, since I'm not originally from around here, what I think of Long Island. Do I like it here? And in general, my answer is usually the same – “It's a good place to live. I like it here just fine – except when I wanna leave.” Because you know and I know that getting off this Island is a pain. Being on an island means that to leave it, you have to cross some body of water somewhere – and that means bridges or tunnels, which lead to toll booths and traffic. No matter how you go, unless you leave at just the right time and get very lucky, you're bound to get gummed up somewhere – and that's even without construction or accidents or repairs or who knows what else! It's not easy to leave this place. In order to do it and not lose our minds (or our tempers) we have to plan. We have to prepare.

Here we are, at the beginning of Mark's gospel – Mark, who doesn't give us any stories of Jesus' birth or family tree – but just starts in the middle of the story that is just the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Mark takes the camera and zooms in on a wild man, out in a wild place, John the Baptizer, who appears as the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,” and the crowds come a-running to see this man and to hear his voice, to embrace his call to repent and be baptized.

Now we may or may not realize the importance of where this scene takes place. When Mark tells us that John is out in the wilderness at the river Jordan, this is about more than geography. It is a harkening back to the story of Exodus, when God led the people out of slavery in Egypt under Pharaoh and into the Promised Land. But first, the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. It was there and then that they learned what it meant to trust God, to rely on God, to depend on God – for food and for water and for guidance. It was for them, both a time of purification and of preparation – there was a reason God had them wander in the desert for 40 years, after all! But finally, when a generation had passed and the time had come, they came to the river Jordan. Just across the Jordan lay the Promised Land – but they would have to cross through the water to enter into the promises of the Promised Land, into the new life God had been leading them to all that time. The river is a dividing line between their past slavery and their future freedom.

So when John the Baptizer shows up out in the wilderness baptizing in the Jordan, it's a clear reminder of their history, of their relationship with the living God. This is a place filled with meaning to this people. It jogs their memory of who they are and where they have come from; where they have been and where they are now and how far they have fallen away. It is a splash of cold water in their face, waking them up to reality: they are living in the promised land, but they were not living into God's promises to them or living up to their promises to God. This is a covenant relationship, but they haven't lived up to their end of the agreement – to love and to trust God above all else. It's as though they have set up roadblocks in their relationship with God, detours that cause delay, potholes of pretending. It's the opposite of preparing the way of the Lord and making his paths straight! Once again, the people find themselves in the wilderness, knowing that the way into new life with God is through the waters of the Jordan.

We have a lot in common with these, our ancient ancestors in the faith. We, most of us, have crossed through another body of water – the waters of baptism – and through that gift, we have entered into God's new life. We too are people of a promise – and yet all too often, we fail to live into these promises. We forget the promises God has made to us – that we are God's beloved children, that God claims us as God's own now and forever, that we have a place in God's kingdom forever, and that we are called to be kingdom people, bringing God's reality to life in our world. We fail to live up to the promises made at our baptism, the promises we make for ourselves at confirmation or whenever we affirm our faith – promises to live out this relationship with God in the presence of God's people, promises to tell everyone what God has done, promises to serve one another, promises to work for justice and peace in our world. Just as hard as it can be to get off Long Island because of tolls and traffic and construction and accidents – that's how hard it can be for us to prepare the way of the Lord. The roadways of our lives are strewn with sin and sorrow, the wrecks of regrets and wrongs.

And so we hear, with the people of John the Baptizer's own time, John's call for us to come to the water, to seek God in the wilderness places of our lives, to trust that we will encounter there the Promised One who is more powerful that John himself. We hear his invitation to step down into the water, to pass through to the other side and re-enter God's promised land, the promise of a new life and a renewed relationship with the One who is always at work to redeem and restore and repair. The call is to prepare the way of the Lord, but the promise is that the Promised One is on the construction crew, patching up the potholes and widening the roads, clearing the debris. Despite our roadblocks and our detours, the One who is coming, the One we wait and watch for, is the one who made the map. He knows all the back roads and alternate routes. He will blaze a trail through the woods and ford the rivers if he has to. He is the One who makes a way when it seems there is no way, and nothing will stop him from coming to save us, even our selves. The promise is that he is coming whether we are ready or not, prepared for him or not – because the truth is that we'll never be 100% ready. But we return to the waters of baptism, we reclaim God's promises of forgiveness and mercy and grace, we renew our efforts to prepare our hearts and our lives, trusting in the One who is coming.

Amen.

November 27, 2011 - Advent 1

Watching and Waiting

Mark 13:24-37

Advent 1 – November 27, 2011

It's funny the things you remember. But every time I read this gospel passage, I remember a bookmark my Aunt Renie bought me a LONG time ago, back when I was in elementary school, I think. It was your standard bookmark, with a white background and a kind of yarn-y tassel, with a funny little cartoon figure on it. “Be alert!” it said. “The world needs all the lerts it can get.” A silly little bookmark, but it cracked me up. It still makes me smile, and I really can't help but think of that phrase when we hear Jesus say to his disciples in the middle of this passage, “Beware, keep alert!”

It's strange to start off the Advent season with a reading like this. It's the beginning of a new church year, with a different gospel as its focus, and we are all primed to hear stories leading up to the birth of Jesus. People are putting up their Christmas decorations and getting their Christmas cards ready to go, Christmas shopping (for many) has begun in earnest – and then whack! In comes this story, with Jesus as a full-grown man, nearing the end of his life, talking about “those days” when “the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from heaven and the powers in the heavens will be shaken”. We hear Jesus encouraging his followers to “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come... keep awake – for you do not know... And what I say to you, I say to all: Keep awake!” It's a bit more than we bargained for on this Sunday after Thanksgiving – so mysterious and dark and foreboding. There's such urgency in Jesus' words, an urgency that goes far beyond the Christmas countdown and making sure we are ready for the big day with presents and food and decorations and everything that has become such a part of our society's celebration of Jesus' birthday. “Wake up!” Jesus is saying. “There's more at stake here than the perfect presents and parties and pictures. Be alert!”

For early Christians, the ones who were the first to read Mark's gospel, this sense of urgency was palpable. It was a tangible part of their every day living. Jesus speaks of what sounds like the end of the world, and to them, it probably seemed like the end of the world was upon them. Rebellion against the Roman occupation was rising up, tension was in the air – and history tells us it ends with the Roman troops coming into Jerusalem, crushing the insurrection and destroying the Temple. The future was uncertain – what would happen next? Where could they turn? Mark, writing down these stories of Jesus as Christians had begun to face persecution and early eyewitnesses were beginning to die, frames this story to speak to them and their situation. And though they may seem frightening and dark to us, as with all apocalyptic writing, these words were intended to bring comfort and encouragement and hope to people in distress & living under oppression. They looked forward to Jesus' return – they hoped it would be soon.

We have a hard time hearing Mark's words that way. Sure, we've been through our fair share of struggles, and the past few years with all its economic turmoil have brought our own anxieties and uncertainty to the forefront of our minds more than we'd like, but for the most part, we live in security. We don't worry about being invaded. We kind of scoff at the idea of the end of the world &; the people who try to predict when it will happen – just this year, according to 1 group it was predicted twice: 1st in May and then in October. There were some folks who believed so strongly that Harold Camping was right that they sold all they had and went on a mission to convince others to get ready, working it out so that their last cent would be gone the day the end was to come. We can dismiss them as gullible or naive, but I kind of have to admire their conviction, their willingness to put their money where their mouth was.

But I don't really think that's what Jesus was getting at when he told his followers to keep alert and awake. It wasn't for them to go stand on street corners with “The end is near” signs hung around their neck. No, the call of Jesus, the call we hear every Advent, is to prepare, to get ready – not out of fear for the end of the world, but with joy that Christ will return. The reason we celebrate Christmas is that in Jesus, we see God coming near, God coming to be one of us. Jesus reveals the God who has already begun the hard work of redeeming God's whole creation, who is already actively working to reconcile the whole world with the divine self. We see in that baby in a manger whose birthday we are waiting for the love of a God who comes down to us, who intervenes in our messy, messed-up human history to set the world right. This God is not someone to be afraid of, and his return is not something to be worried about – it's something we should look forward to. And when we do, keeping awake becomes not so much a duty as something we can't avoid – like the little kids in that Disney commercial from I don't know how long ago, where the little boy goes into his sister's room. “Are you asleep?” he says. “No.” “What do you think it will be like?” “Mom says it will be even more magical this time...” And just then they are interrupted by their mom, who tries to shoo them off to bed, but the little boy just throws himself back on the bed, exclaiming, “We're too excited to sleep!”
“We're too excited to sleep!” - because we are longing for the day when Jesus will return, when the powers of this world – the powers of sin and death – will be destroyed once and for all, when hurts will be healed, and hope will be restored.

And so we wait, with eager longing. And while we wait, Jesus reminds us we have work to do, for, “It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.” Engaged in our work in this world here and now, but always with our eyes open and our ears listening for signs of God on the move in this place, staying awake to witness the ways God is already among us, and then joining hands with the one who has called us into relationship, reaching out our other hand to a world desperate for some good news. So be alert. The world needs all the lerts it can get.

Amen.

November 20, 2011 - Christ the King Sunday

Jesus Cares for the Least of These

Matthew 25:31-46

Christ the King Sunday – November 20, 2011

This gospel passage is one of my favorites. I love it because of the vision it gives of what it will look like, at least in part, it gives us one aspect, when the kingdom comes and God's will is done – the place where the hungry are fed, and the thirsty given something to drink, and the naked clothed, and the stranger welcomed, and the sick cared for, & the imprisoned visited. And these, I think, are just a sample of the ways that the troubles and tragedies of this human life will be healed and returned to wholeness. They don't begin to speak of all of the ways people and creation are wounded and broken, but they remind us that God cares for the entire spectrum of human experience; that God is concerned for everyone, and is looking out especially for the last and the lost and the least; that God has not forgotten the lonely and the outcast and the neglected of this world.

Of course, this same passage – with God's vision of what the world will be like when the kingdom comes in its fullness – is a stark reminder that the kingdom has not completely arrived yet. We don't have to look far to know that we are surrounded by people in need – people who are hungry and thirsty, people who lack clothing and have no place to lay their heads, people who are sick or imprisoned physically, emotionally, or spiritually; people who are forgotten and ignored by the rest of the world; people who are powerless and voiceless in the face of the struggles and obstacles in front of them.

And that's where this passage goes from inspiring to challenging. Because what Jesus says to his disciples as he describes the end of time makes it pretty clear that we human beings have a responsibility to each other. We are expected to look out for each other, to help each other. We are called to move past self-interest and into compassionate action for the sake of those in need, in our individual and congregational and community lives – politically, economically, spiritually. And that's not easy to do, caught up as we are in living our own lives, in wrestling with our own problems, worrying about our situations. It's quite easy to turn a blind eye to the trouble we see around us – we're too busy to reach out and make the effort; we're afraid we'll be taken advantage of and made a fool – or worse!; we just don't see how whatever little thing we could do could begin to make a difference. We have lots of reasons for not getting involved, many ways to justify why it is we don't do something...

And then we read Matthew's gospel and it stops us short. Because Jesus says to those at his right hand (the sheep), “'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me. '” - And then he says to those at his left (the goats), “'...[the king] will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to
me.'  46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

Whew. Stark words – because we know we fail to live up to them. We know that there have been times when we have turned our backs on someone who needed help, when we have walked past someone, averting our eyes, pretending we can't see or hear their requests for help, when we have refused to see Christ in the least of these... and we really don't want to end up with the goats, going away into eternal punishment. We want to be put on the sheep side – righteous, entering into eternal life.

But eternal life isn't just something that starts when we die. In John 17, verse 3, Jesus says, “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Eternal life begins in knowing God the Father and Jesus the Son – and that starts here & now. We are invited into that relationship today – every day – continually. And if we know them, our lives will show the fruit of that relationship. Walking with them and living like them becomes a part of our daily living – so that we're not always fretting about being on our best behavior because we are afraid of being punished, but instead are being set free from fear, and formed to live like Jesus more and more every day. We learn to follow in his footsteps, to do the things he did and is still doing in the world – to see, really see those in need and stop to help, to show compassion and mercy. It's not so about making sure we complete a checklist – I said way back in the beginning that this isn't a comprehensive list – it's about the way we live our whole lives – leaving time and space in our day to day for relationships – so that we might be able to recognize the face of Jesus our King in the faces of the least of these. It's about honoring Christ, the good shepherd who looks for the lost sheep, who has a special concern for the downcast, the powerless, the voiceless, the victim.

In following Jesus, we become like him, and in becoming like him, we learn to live like him. And in learning to live like him we become fit for the kingdom, the kingdom that we wait for yet still finds ways to break in and break through even now. We learn to speak the language of God's kingdom – the language of self-giving love. We learn the customs of God's reign – acts of sharing and hospitality and mercy. We practice here and now so that when the kingdom comes, we'll be ready to live there, under the rule of the one who does “these things” to the least of these, even us.

He feeds us with his body. He nourishes us with his blood. He welcomes us to his table, not as strangers, but as invited guests. He clothes us with his righteousness, cares for us in our sickness, and sets us free from all that imprisons us. Knowing how deeply we are loved by him, may we learn to share that love with the world.

Amen.

November 13, 2011 - Pentecost + 22

The following sermon was delivered at St. Peter's, Baldwin, NY, as part of a pulpit swap with Pr. Ed Barnett for both churches' "Commitment Sunday" - the culmination of the fall financial stewardship program.

God Entrusts Us with Great Resources

Matthew 25:14-30

Pentecost + 22, November 16, 2011

Commitment Sunday, St. Peter's, Baldwin

Good morning. I'm glad to be here with you in worship this morning as you bring your annual stewardship program to completion. It's kind of funny that the theme of this year was “Enter into the Joy!” Joy isn't usually the thing most of us think about when we think about our financial giving at church, whether when we're in the middle of the yearly commitment or any other time.

I think that's because money is a source of great anxiety. Whether it's how we'll make it, or how we should spend it, or whether we'll have enough to keep if we give some of it away, money causes us stress. That's always been true, at least for most people I know, but especially in the past few years, with the financial crisis and the recession and the stalled economy, we tend to worry about money. Can I pay the mortgage and the heat and still have money left for food? What am I gonna do now that my retirement fund has dropped? How will I find a way to get the car fixed? Even if we're relatively secure in our jobs and financial situations, there's always that little voice in the back of our heads, the one that pipes up late at night when we're trying to sleep - “What if...?” With all the uncertainty about our finances that haunts us, it seems a bit ironic, not to mention bold! – for us to talk about financial stewardship and entitle it “Enter into the Joy!”

It's hard to be joyful when we're afraid. We see that in the life and actions of the 3rd slave Matthew's gospel tells us about. We have 4 main characters in this parable Jesus shares: the master and three slaves. The master is getting ready to go away on a journey, and he comes to these three servants and “entrusts his property to them”. One gets 5 talents, one gets 2, one gets 1 talent, each according to his ability. Then he goes away. He never tells them what to do with the money he gives them. I mean, we can assume that he wants them to handle it well and get him a return on his investment, but he doesn't give them specific instructions. He trusts them to take care of it. And so off go slaves 1 and 2 - “at once” they go and trade with the talents and come back having doubled it. But then we come to the third man. He goes and buries his 1 talent in the ground, and when the master finally comes back to settle accounts, he digs it up, brushes it off, and brings it back with these words: “Master... I was afraid, so I went and hid your talent in the ground.”

That's all the gospel tells us, but can't you imagine this poor man worrying about this money, constantly going back to check on the spot to make sure it was still there. It makes me think of that insurance commercial with the dog who couldn't sleep for fear that his bone would disappear, so he kept going and getting it from its hiding spot and putting it someplace new, only to go out again in a little while and move it to a new place. The bone & his fear of losing it took over his imagination until he could not rest for worrying about it. Of course, in the commercial, that all comes to an end when he gets it properly insured... but that's not the case here. So not only does he face this harsh critique and punishment at the end of the parable, but the whole time the money was in his care, you can almost guess that he was worried about it, fretting over it, obsessing, losing sleep. All for fear of what would happen if he lost it.

Compare that to the other 2 slaves. We don't get the sense that they were worried or nervous or anxious. They just went out boldly and got to work, using what had been entrusted to their care to be about the master's business. Now when the Master returns, they get praise and congratulations, and the invitation to enter into the joy of their master – but I'm betting the joy didn't start there – The joy starts when the master gives them these tremendous amounts of money and trusts them with it. And these were tremendous, immense, unimaginable amounts of money. One talent was worth 15 years of wages. So the guy who got 5 talents – 75 years worth of wages. The one who got 2 talents? - 30 years of wages! Even the slave who only got 1 talent had 15 years worth of paychecks at his disposal. Wow! That's trust! That's confidence in these men! What an honor, a joy, to realize how much faith the master has in you!

Even more amazing is when we start to realize the great resources God has entrusted into our care, in order for us to be carrying out God's work in the world. Not so we can double God's money – but so that the work of God's kingdom is multiplied and increased! Certainly we are blessed as individuals – but also as churches. The average Lutheran gives slightly less than 2% of their income to the church – yet look what we do with that tiny amount. We use it for God's work, through our congregations and the national church, to change lives, to make a difference, to open places where God's kingdom can break through – God's kingdom showing up wherever God's will is done – where, as we'll hear in next week's Gospel, the hungry are fed, and the thirsty are given a drink, and the stranger is welcomed, and the naked are clothed, and the sick are cared for, and the imprisoned are visited. We do all of these things – from food pantries to after school programs to disaster response and relief – and it starts with that meager 2% of giving from our members.

But imagine that instead of being afraid of losing what we have (as individuals or congregations), we took a leap of faith. Imagine if, instead of describing ourselves as prudent and cautious when it comes to money in the church, we decided to take a page from the 1st two slaves and became bold, willing to take a risk for the sake of God's work. Imagine if we began to see that we have been given what we have, not so hide it away in some hole in the ground to ensure its mere survival, but as a chance to partner with God in God's dream for the world!

And then imagine if we were all bold and brave enough to grow into tithing – that instead of 2% we each gave 10% of our resources. Imagine St. Peter's budget multiplied by 5 times what it currently is. Think about what that would mean for the mission and ministries for this congregation. Not only would you not be worried about money, and meeting the budget and making ends meet – but money would become a source of joy because of the ways you could bless God's creation through it, the difference you could make in the lives of your members, and your neighbors, and your community, and even the world!

There's one council meeting every year that I always look forward to. The rest kind of have their ups and downs, but every October, I am glad to go to council, because that's the month when we have our annual Harvest Festival. And when all the money has been tallied, and expenses paid, that's the meeting where we get to sit around the table and talk about where we get to give that money away. We do keep about 1/3 of it, but the rest of it, usually a couple thousand dollars, we use to bless other people and organizations. And how awesome it is to sit down and talk about money in a way that focuses on what we have to give, rather than what we are afraid we won't receive. That is when I rejoice, knowing we are doing what the Master longs for, that we are multiplying what God has given us for the sake of the other, for the sake of the world.

That joy can be ours. Jesus invites us to enter into this joy – the joy that is found in working with God, trusting deeply enough to take a risk. May the Spirit make us bold enough to put aside our fear and enter into God's joy! Amen.

October 30, 2011 - Reformation Sunday

God Makes A New Covenant
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Reformation Sunday – October 30, 2011

Marriage vows are meant to be kept. They're meant to be forever. That's built right into the traditional vows. The two people getting married promise each other something like this: “I take you to be my spouse; to have and to hold from this day forward, in joy and in sorrow, in plenty and in want, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish as long as we both shall live. This is my solemn vow.”

As long as we both shall live. This is my solemn vow. And yet we all know relationships where those vows are broken, where for one reason or another, the relationship ends before death. Some break-ups take us completely by surprise, the ones where everything seemed good from the outside. And then there are others that we can see coming from a mile away – there are plenty of warning signs along the way that let everyone around know that there's trouble ahead.

The relationship of God and the people of Israel was like that. It was like a marriage – a relationship built upon vows, built upon the covenant – the promises – of God and God's people. God had long ago taken the Hebrew people as God's own, to have and to hold, in joy and in sorrow, in plenty and in want, in sickness and in health, for all time. God promised to care for them, to lead them into the promised land of milk and honey, to provide for them. And in return, the Israelites had promised to love and serve God above all else.

But when we enter into Jeremiah's tale this morning, we find that God and God's people have come to a crossroads. The relationship has been strained to the breaking point. They're undergoing what we might call a trial separation. And everyone should have seen it coming a mile away. After all, God had sent prophet after prophet to them, reminding them of the promises they had made, pleading with them to return to the LORD God with all their hearts. And yet they had gone astray. They have been unfaithful. They have not kept the great commandments we heard Jesus talk about last week – the 2 great commandments that were part of the covenant relationship long before Jesus came along: To love God with all their heart and soul and mind, and to love their neighbors as themselves. They had turned to the worship of other gods. Fearful of the nations surrounding them, they had put their trust in human leaders and human power to protect and shield them, instead of trusting God. They had failed to care for the widow and orphan and stranger in their midst.

And so now here they are, carried into exile in Babylon, cut off from the God who loves them, wondering if there is a chance for reconciliation, if there is any way for love to conquer betrayal, for forgiveness to heal the hurt they have caused God.

We too, break covenant with God. In our baptism, God makes promises to us – claims us as God's own children, vows never to leave us or forsake us, cleanses us from the power of sin – and yet time and time again, we succumb to sin's death grip on us. Like the siren's song, we hear sin singing, and it lures us to our doom, but often we go willingly. We turn away from the God who created and loves us to follow our own path. We fail to be faithful to the promises we make at our baptism – promises which boil down to the 2 great commandments – to love God and love our neighbor. We fall into greed and anger and self-righteousness, into apathy and judgment and harshness. As Jesus says, “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” And there are times when we find ourselves at the crossroads, face to face – finally – with the depth of sin, with our own brokenness, forced to admit that we have turned away from God, and wondering how to make it right. Wondering, as the series in Ladies Home Journal says, “Can this marriage be saved?” Can this relationship between God and humankind be healed? Can it be restored?

We hear God's answer to the people of Israel in the words of Jeremiah this morning. It is an announcement and an open invitation for the people to come to the renewal of vows ceremony. Sometimes we do renewal of vows to mark an important anniversary. But sometimes, people who have been through a rough time in their marriage, who have been on shaky ground and come through it want to recommit, want to publicly make promises, to renew their relationship. That's what's happening here: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” God promises a new covenant, a renewed relationship – not based on laws written and recorded on stone tablets, like the Ten Commandments, but a law written on their hearts, inscribed on their souls, where it cannot be lost or misplaced or broken, but is carried within them, built into who they are, revealing their relationship to God, spilling over into their relationships with each other.

This is God re-committing, renewing the vows, through this tremendous willingness to forgive and forget, to put the past behind them and move forward, to grant grace and compassion and mercy that opens the way for the people to return, not just to their homeland, but to God.

God calls us to the same vow renewal ceremony – offering us a new covenant – not one written in stone, but one that comes to us in flesh and blood, the Word Incarnate – Jesus Christ who offers us his body and blood, and with it, forgiveness, mercy, love – this great, undeserved free gift of grace – always free, but never cheap, this grace that cost Jesus his very life.

May we come before God and renew our vows, offering our lives and our love, giving thanks for the love of the One who has promised to love us and be with us - in joy and in sorrow, in plenty and in want, in sickness and in health – all the days of our life.

Amen.

October 23, 2011 - Pentecost + 19

Jesus Loves God – and Us Too!

Matthew 22:34-46

Pentecost +19, October 23, 2011

Years ago, Bonnie Raitt sang a song lamenting an unrequited love, and the chorus went like this: “I can't make you love me if you don't. You can't make your heart feel something it won't...” It's a beautiful, moving song – I liked it a lot, but it reveals a pervasive belief or opinion about love – that love is all about how you feel, that love is primarily an emotion. And not only that, but that it is an emotion you don't have any power over it – you can't help yourself when you are in it, you can't manufacture it if it isn't there - “You can't make your heart feel something it won't,” after all.

And while that may be true of the emotion that we call love, when that's the main thing we think or believe about love, it makes hearing and understanding the gospel lesson for today quite a challenge. Because we hear the lawyer question Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” - the most important. And Jesus replies, “'You shall love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the 1st and greatest 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.” 

So, it all boils down to this: Love God, and love your neighbor. And we all know that we should love God with all that we are, and we all know that we should love others – but our minds protest - “Have you met some of my neighbors, God?” Could be our literal neighbors, the ones we may or may not appreciate living nearby, or it could be the mouthy kid at school or your co-worker who always tries to make himself look good at your expense, or the stranger halfway around the world who seems to live in a way completely contrary to our way of life... Jesus considers everyone our neighbor – And we think about those people we have a hard time even being in the same room with, and then hear Jesus say, “Love them as yourself” - and think, “That's impossible!” 

But when Jesus talks about love, he's not talking about the way that we feel. It's not about passion or warm fuzzy feelings. No, biblical love is about action. Biblical love is not about the way that we feel, it's about the things that we do!

Now, I'd bet that the Pharisees probably knew that already. What Jesus says here about loving God and loving neighbor was hardly a new concept – you can see it way back in the lesson from Leviticus. But the Pharisees struggled as much as any of us do to put those commandments into practice. They made it their life's work to try to tell people how to correctly live to show their love for God, but they didn't do so well with loving their neighbors. We're not gonna get to read chapter 23 in church any time soon – we have readings for Reformation Sunday next week instead – but I went ahead and took a sneak peak. (You can too, if you want!) But what comes next is Jesus just lambasting the Pharisees and scribes for a whole host of things. You get a whole series of “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” from Jesus there. He really goes after them – because they teach the law, but they don't live it out. They don't love their neighbors as themselves. Instead, he says, you tie up heavy burdens and lay them on others, and then don't lift a finger to help them. “You lock people out of heaven,” he says, and stop them from entering if they somehow figure out a way in. You focus on the little things of the law, like tithing mint, and dill, and cumin (have you looked at dill or cumin lately?) - but neglect the weightier matters of the law – things like justice and mercy and faith. “You strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel!” Jesus goes after them, because they hold everyone else to impossibly high standards, but then don't follow through themselves. They make it harder for people to come to God, to love God with all they are, instead of helping them to experience God's love. They are an example of what it looks like when you are not loving your neighbor.

And by Jesus' explosion against them that we start to see what it does mean to love our neighbor as ourselves. It means extending grace, instead of adding guilt. It means offering to help, instead of laying on more burdens. It means attending to things like justice and mercy and faith every day, in our actions, in our decisions, in our words. It means considering the other and their needs and giving them at least as much weight as our own wants and desires. Loving our neighbor is not about a feeling towards the other, but rather, how we act and live and how we treat each other – with dignity and respect, striving to see a child of God in each person we meet, even, and especially when that is difficult.

Loving our neighbor is also part of what it means to love God. You can't love God if you don't love your neighbor, because God loves our neighbor as much as God loves us, and wants us to treat one another well. And loving God with all we are and have – with all of our heart and mind and strength – well, that will help us to become the kind of people who love our neighbor, because as we draw closer to God, God changes us. We become more like God – we grow into the love that God shows us.

These commandments aren't easy. There's so much that would pull us away from these ideals – both in the world around us and in our own inner lives. So we look to Jesus, and there we see what it looks like for someone to fully love God and his neighbor as himself. His whole life was devoted to God, to loving God – and that love overflows to us. In loving God, Jesus loves us all, to the very end. He loves us with everything that he has, loves us so much that he holds nothing back, and he proves that love by dying on the cross to save us.

May he lead us to love God and our neighbor in the same self-giving, selfless way.

Amen.

October 16, 2011 - Pentecost + 18

Jesus Doesn't Play Gotcha

Matthew 22:15-22

Pentecost + 18, October 16, 2011

If ever there was a “gotcha” question, the one we hear in the gospel this morning is it! “Gotcha” questions, of course, are designed to show someone up in front of an audience, asked to catch them off guard and trap them with their own words, and certainly, that is what the disciples of the Pharisees who come with the Herodians to Jesus, who's still in the temple, are trying to do. If you've been here in the past month or so, you might remember that Jesus has been having a big ol' showdown with the Pharisees, and now it seems, halftime had come – the Pharisees went back into the locker room and came up with a new game plan. This time, they'll send their followers back to Jesus with this very tricky question. And they send them with the Herodians – a very interesting pairing, since the Pharisees were opposed to Roman rule, and the Herodians had a big stake in keeping Herod and his clan in power, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, as they say, and both groups were about done with Jesus and the way he was stirring up the crowds. So they come back to Jesus in the temple, determined to trip him up.

They begin with flattering words, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere and teach the way of God in accordance with truth...” and then comes the punchline - “tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?” It's a trick question of course. If he says it is, the crowds may turn away from following him; if he says it isn't, then he risks arrest by the Roman authorities.

But Jesus won't get sucked into their gotcha scenario. He asks to see the coin, asks whose head and title are on it, and hearing their reply that it is the emperor's, he comes back with this classic reply, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's.”

Now on one level, this seems simple enough. It sounds as though Jesus is dividing the world up between church and state, as though they were two different realms; that the political and secular does not have anything to do with the spiritual; as though Caesar and God are 2 equal beings. But Jesus' answer goes deeper than that – because on the heels of his answer, you can hear the implied follow-up question. “What, then, belongs to God?”

And we know the answer to that question. The Pharisees certainly would have known. If the coin with Caesar's image on it belonged to Caesar, then it would stand to reason that whatever has God's image belongs to God. And in case you haven't looked at the book of Genesis lately, it says there, that way back, in the very beginning, when God was busy creating everything and calling it good, God created humankind in God's own image, male and female God created them. You and I – we were created in God's image. That means we belong to God. That's the plain and simple, black and white answer to the question, “What belongs to God?”. Everything we have, everything we are – it's all God's. So when Jesus says, “Give to God the things that are God's,” what he's really saying, is give yourself to God. 

But just because that's the plain and simple answer doesn't mean that our questions are done. It just brings more questions – like how we go about living this way. It's one thing to say that everything belongs to God; I think that most of us can agree with that in our heads. But how do we really live it out? It's not just about our money, although that's certainly a big part of it. It seems to be the part that most of us struggle with most of all when it comes to our relationship with God and trusting God. We in the church talk about tithing – that's giving 10% of what we earn back to God – as the biblical model for stewardship, and yet the average Lutheran gives slightly less than 2% of their income. But no matter what we give, sometimes we act as though the part we keep is ours to do with whatever we want. And yet, since everything belongs to God, that means God cares what we do with everything we have. Does the love and Lordship of God show in the decisions we make about where we live and what kind of food we eat and where we shop and what kind of car we drive? Do those decisions reveal who and what we believe in? Do they show us growing into the kind of people Jesus calls us to be – people who love God with all their heart and mind and soul and strength and our neighbors as ourselves? Do we consider the impact our decisions make, not just in our lives, but in the lives of the people around the world? Are we growing in humility and service to others because of our relationship with Jesus? Or are we as selfish and self-seeking as the rest of the world?

Now these aren't “gotcha” questions. I'm not trying to trip anyone up or trap anyone – just to help us take an honest look at whether or not we're giving to God the things that are God's through the everyday ways we live our lives. And the good news is, no matter where you're starting from today, Jesus isn't playing “gotcha” either. We could spend way more than 10 or 15 minutes talking about what this story means for our lives, exploring how Jesus wants us to live out this instruction to give to God what belongs to God, but it's not a test. It's not a trap. It's an invitation by Jesus into a deeper relationship, into living more fully the life God created us to live. It's a call to consider what it means that you were made in the image of God and to discover, with Jesus, what it looks like to live as people who bear the image of God in the world. It's a reminder that we were intended to live our lives in deep, unbroken connection to God, sustained, supported, upheld by the One who made us and loves us, an offer to grow into lives of honor and honesty and generosity, not always trying to figure out what we owe and who owes us, but rejoicing in the love of the One who gives everything save us, and sharing that love with everyone we meet. It's all of these things and more – and trusting that we do belong to God, and that in giving everything to God, Jesus gave himself to us, opening the doors of mercy and grace and second chances, inviting us to follow, to walk in his footsteps, to learn to live in his way. That's how we give to God what belongs to God. 

Thanks be to God who walks with us along that way!

Amen.

October 9, 2011 - Pentecost + 17

The King Invites Everyone He Sees

Matthew 22:1-14

Pentecost + 17 – October 9, 2011

Guest lists are tricky things, aren't they? When Andy & I got married, the guest list was the subject of much conversation and debate, and - sometimes - verged on the edge of outright argument. We had a limited budget, so we had to limit who could come, and what with both of our big extended families and our friends and the seminary community, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out who we needed to invite and who we wanted to invite, and ultimately we ended up going the route that the wedding planning advice industry suggests – we had an A list and a B list. We sent out our first round of invitations to the A list, and as we started getting RSVPs and found out who would not be coming, we were able to send out more invitations to the people on the B list.

See, we were working from a limited set of resources. We only had the money to host a very certain number of guests, and so even though that felt kind of bad to sort our family and friends that way, it's what we had to do to keep the reception from getting out of control. And even then we weren't able to invite everyone we wanted to invite – and there was a whole group from the seminary that we invited to the wedding ceremony at the church, but not to the reception.

We human beings usually do work from a sense that there are limited resources. If we're going to invite this person, then someone else is going to be left out. Not just with weddings, but in so many other ways. We see it in the ways people talk to each other about politics and economics and immigration and a host of other topics. If one person is to be a have, then someone else ends up being a have not.

We even do it in the spiritual realm. We get this sense that there's not enough room for everyone, or that some people are more worthy of being part of God's kingdom than others. That's part of what's going on underneath this parable Jesus tells in the gospel this morning. This is still part of the on-going confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees and other religious leaders. I forget at this point what round we're in – and we've got at least another to come next week. But remember, in the timeline of the Bible, this is Holy Week. We're fast approaching the climax of all of these events in the last days of Jesus' life, and everything is heating up. The Pharisees have been pushing Jesus about who is he and what authority he has to be coming in and messing up their system and their ideas and teachings about God – and Jesus has been pushing them right back. And part of what he is pushing back against is their preconceived notion that they have the direct line to God, that the laws and rules and rituals they depend on and teach others will be what gets them invited to be a part of God's kingdom. They think that because they are stingy in their invitations that God must be too. Their way of thinking implies that God's resources are limited, that God's love is limited.

And so Jesus tells this parable to shake them up, to shake them out of that line of thinking. He wants them not to rely so much on what they think they know and instead open their minds to a new understanding, a new experience of who God is.

“The kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says to them, “may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.” The king has great joy in this day, long-planned and prepared for. The save-the-date cards had gone out; now everything is ready – the hall is decorated, the food is cooked to perfection, the band is warmed up and ready to go – “Come to the party!” the king says. There are those who refuse to come – they're too busy, they have more important things to do.

The party is still ready and waiting, but in order for there to be a party, you need to have guests. And so what does the king do? He sends his servants out into the streets, with this instruction, “Invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.”

Invite everyone you find. Well, they may be the B list, but it's certainly not the way Andy & I treated the B list. Even with openings in our invitations, we still had to be careful how many additional people we invited. But the king says, Invite everyone you find!! Fill the hall to overflowing – there's more than enough room, more than enough food, more than enough drink.

That's what we see Jesus doing throughout the gospels – always going out and inviting everyone he saw, always crossing the line to invite the B-listers – and the C-listers, and the D-listers – and as far down the alphabet you wanna go – the way Jesus lived and treated everyone he met showed that his Father's banquet table had enough room for everyone. Everyone is invited. We think that God operates out of the same limited resources that we have, but God's love does not have limits! God's love is infinite. God's love expands to all, beyond our wildest dreams and expectations, certainly beyond our longest guest-list. The invitation to be part of God's party is open to everyone – you just need to come, and put on God's wedding robe of grace and mercy and forgiveness.

The banquet is ready! Ya'll come!


Amen.

October 2, 2011 - Pentecost + 16

Giving Back to Jesus 

Matthew 21:33-46

Pentecost + 16, October 2, 2011 

Several years ago, Mark Alan Powell, a professor of mine at seminary, wrote a book called Giving to God, and in it, he tells a story about how he and his wife sometimes go away, and need someone to come stay at their home – both to keep an eye on their house and belongings, but also to take care of their cats. Typically, he says, they would find a responsible seminary student to do this, and they encouraged the student to treat their home like it was their own. They could eat the food, listen to his extensive music collection (this was before everything went digital), watch their movies, etc. And having been a poor seminary student living in the adequate, but less-than-spacious dorm apartments, I can tell you, this type of arrangement would have been a welcome change!

Now, Dr. Powell says, that of course, none of the students who house-sat for them took unfair advantage of the situation. When Dr. & Mrs. Powell returned to their home, it was always in as good of shape as they had left it, the cats were fed and well-cared for. But imagine, he suggests, coming home to find that a student had taken literally their request to treat the Powell's home as their own – and had rearranged the furniture, dug up the landscaping, changed the locks! Obviously, they would have misunderstood what the arrangement was. They would have forgotten what they were supposed to be doing and whose house it really was.

That's what's going on in the parable that Jesus tells in the gospel. A landowner plants a vineyard, puts a fence around it, builds a watchtower, and then leases it to some tenants & goes away. He puts them in charge. He invites them to treat the vineyard as their own. And so they do. They work hard there. They put in a lot of sweat equity to make sure that the vineyard has a bountiful harvest. But by the time that harvest comes in (which I read somewhere could have been as long as 5 years after the vineyard was 1st planted), but that time, the tenants have long-since forgotten whose vineyard this is anyway. They've put in the long hours, they've worked and slaved in the sun, they've tended those grape vines as if they were their own – so when the owner sends his servants to collect his due, they do some unimaginable things. They beat one, kill another, and throw stones at the 3rd as he runs away. So the landowner sends another round, Jesus says, and they treat those servants the same way. So the landowner decides to send his son, thinking somehow that they will respect him – but just the opposite happens. The tenants figure if the heir dies, they will stand to inherit the land – so they kill him. “And what do you think the landowner will do to the tenants when he comes,” Jesus asks?

Now the Christian Church has generally understood this parable as an allegory, where everything in the story stands for something else – so here the landowner equals God, the vineyard is the people of Israel, the tenants are the religious leaders of Jesus' time, the servants are the prophets of God, and the son, of course, is Jesus. But it is good for us to put ourselves into this story and to ask, who are we? What does God have to say to us? And I don't know about you, but I know that I tend to fall into the same camp as the tenants. I'm like Dr. Powell's house-sitter who mistakenly comes to believe that the invitation to treat his home as my own means that the house is literally mine to do with as I wish. I tend to act as though all the things God has given to me really belong solely to me – and I resent it when I realize that the landowner actually expects his fair share of the produce. I expect that's true of most of us. Especially in this economy, we work hard for what we have, and we don't want anyone, even God, to take any of it away from us. It's easy for us to forget who everything belongs to – who all of this stuff we value so much came from.

And I'm not just talking about money. I'm talking about our families and our health and our unique gifts and abilities that we put to work in our employment and our recreation. (Which is not to say that we don't usually get hung up on the money part, of course. We do.) God expects a share of all of that back – certainly of our money, but God also expects to have a part in our relationships and to have some of our undivided time and attention – that whole remember the sabbath thing, you understand...

And so time and time again, God speaks to us. God sends servants to remind us of what God has given us, and what we owe in return. It's there in the stories of the Bible, from creation to Revelation, it's in the promises of our baptism, it's in the words of the Holy Meal we share each week. We have an obligation to give back to God out of the abundance God gives us. But lest we rise up in mutiny and revolt, let me remind you that God's gifts come first. The gift of creation – the planet we live on, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the bodies we inhabit. The gift of covenant promise – when, as the water is poured over us, we hear God's word that we are beloved children, that God claims us forever as God's own, that God will never abandon or forsake us, no matter what. The gift of communion – Christ's own body and blood, given and shed, for you! – All of these things sheer gift before anything we can say or do, given in love, but also given to be shared, given so that we might live out our lives in relationship and response to the One who gives us his very life.

See, that's the thing about this parable. Jesus asks the Pharisees and other religious leaders what they think the landowner will do after the servants and the son have been mistreated and killed, and they understandably, logically suggest that he will kill the tenants off and hand over the land to a new batch. And that works in the story – but it's not what God did. Because God did send the Son, and we humans did put him to death, thinking that somehow that would set us free. But instead of retaliation and revenge, God raises Jesus the Son to new life, and he comes once again to us all, offering us another chance, dying and rising again so that we might enter into that new life with him, so that our relationship with God the Father might be set straight, put right. In Jesus, God makes us heirs with him, so that all God has may be ours. He gives us the house keys and says, come on in, make yourself at home. It's crazy. It's not what we expect. It's not what we deserve. But that's how much God loves us – enough to send the Son to die, enough to offer us forgiveness over and over. May we offer our whole lives in return.

Amen.

September 18–Pentecost + 14

God Gives Grace Generously
Matthew 20:1-16
Pentecost + 14, September 18, 2011

Years ago there was an investment company – I don't remember which one –but the tagline of their commercials was, “They make money the old-fashioned way – they earn it.”

The idea as I remember it was that the investors worked hard for their money, that nobody gave them anything for free – and I guess by extension, that they would work hard to make you money too – they would earn it.

That could have been the motto of the first workers in this kingdom parable Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew's gospel this morning: “We make money the old-fashioned way – we earn it.” And certainly, they did work hard to earn their daily wage. Lucky enough to be among the first chosen for a day's work, they were out in the vineyard all day, working through the hottest part of the day, earning their pay by the sweat of their brow and the strain in their backs and the ache of their feet. This was no cushy, sit-around-an-air-conditioned-office all day kind of work; this was hard physical labor. And at the end of the day, they lined up with everyone else to receive their pay.

That's how it worked, you see. These men working in the vineyard were day laborers. They had no other source of income. And each day's pay was enough to provide for the next day. They were literally working for their daily bread. This was subsistence. This was about survival. There was no extra to set aside for a rainy day – every day of their lives was rainy, if you know what I mean. So the manager lines them up in reverse order – the ones the owner had hired last at the front of the line, and the ones who had been there from the early morning at the end. The workers watch the money as it's doled out, and you know that when they saw the guys who only worked for an hour get paid the standard day's wage, they started to get excited. Because if they got the usual wage, surely they would get more. It would only be fair.

But of course, Jesus says that's not what happens. They end up getting the same amount as everybody else. And that ticks them off. How dare the landowner make the last workers equal to them when they were the ones who had done the hard work and had been there all day. Where was the justice? Where was the equality? If the landowner thought those Johnny-come-lately's had earned the usual wage, certainly they had earned more!

Oh, how familiar this whole scene is! It's built right into our fallen human nature. We see it in little kids from a very early age, right? this “it's not fair” mentality, but we don't necessarily grow out of it as adults. We too want to get what we've earned, and we've got a keenly-developed skill for keeping score and figuring out where everyone is on that continuum, who has earned their place, & who hasn't. It's powerful, this tendency to rank ourselves and everyone else in comparison to each other and in line with some internal sense of what is just and fair and right.

Trouble is, we think and want and expect God to operate the same way. At the end of this life's day, we want God to look us over and say something like, “You got your salvation the old-fashioned way – You earned it.” And of course, by extension, we just know that there are some folks who haven't earned it, who have been too bad or sinful or just plain lazy to have earned their way into God's good graces. I'd guess that most of us put ourselves in the early worker camp – maybe not the 1^st round, but at least we've been working in God's vineyard for longer than an hour come the end of the day. So when we hear this story Jesus tells, our sense of justice is offended! How dare Jesus say the kingdom of God is like a landowner who pays everyone the same amount, no matter how much time and effort they have put in? How dare Jesus imply that God doesn't keep score, tallying up what we have earned on some divine cosmic balance sheet but instead gives generously to everyone? How is that justice? How is that right? How is that fair?

But this is God's kingdom, God's ruling, God's economy Jesus is talking about here. And in God's kingdom, things don't always line up with our sense of what is fair. Things often seem upside down and backwards to us in this place where the last will be first and the first will be last.

And how like us jealous, competitive humans to judge this story and our own lives by looking around at how much God gives to others and weigh it in comparison to what we think we and they deserve! How like us to look around, and instead of seeing the generosity of God, be drawn to see what seems to be lacking! How like us to grumble along with those first workers, protesting that we deserve more than we have been given! And yet thanks be to God that none of us gets what we deserve!

See, this parable is less about the workers and more about the landowner. In this story Jesus tells, the landowner is the one who decides who gets what – not the workers. The landowner has the right to decide what he wants to do with what belongs to him – and what he wants to do is to provide generously out of his own abundance, to give to all as they have need, which in this story is everyone. Every single person hired that day needed that full day's wage to make it through to the next day, the next possible job. And so the landowner chooses not to be a miser, not to just pay what they seem to deserve, but instead to share what he has. He is lavish. He is extravagant. He is gracious.

This parable is meant to help us learn that again about the God we serve – that he doesn't just give to us in return for our effort – he gives to us out of his love. The good news in this story is that God does not give us what we deserve. We like to think we can look around and judge who is or isn't worthy, who is or isn't deserving, who has or hasn't earned God's love – but then we come to the foot of the cross, and standing there, seeing what God has done for us in Jesus, how can any of us say we deserve that? Who can look at Jesus as he lays down his life for us and think that we could ever do anything to earn a love that deep, a love that wide, a Love who stretches out his arms to embrace the whole world? Not one of us deserves that kind of love, and yet, at the end of the day, that is the love each of us receives, whether we're at the front of the line, or way in the back. This is the love that God gives to each, doing what God chooses with what belongs to him – generously, extravagantly, lavishly – beyond what we could expect, beyond what we can earn. May we live our lives in gratitude for that love, learning to see the abundance God has poured out on us, and rejoicing that God gives abundantly to fellow workers in the field. Thanks be to God. Amen.

September 11, 2011–Pentecost +13

God Forgives without Limits
Matthew 18:21-35
Pentecost + 13 – September 11, 2011

It's pretty clear to me today what the take home message of this gospel lesson is. I'll admit that there are lots of times that I have to spend a lot of time trying to dig below the surface of the various stories in the Bible, trying to figure out what God's word is to us, to our congregation, in our day and time. Sometimes, Jesus' words seem mysterious, wrapped up as they are in images and understandings from a context that is so very different than our own. Some days, I'm right there with the disciples in the stories, saying to Jesus, “Explain to us this parable.”

But this isn't one of those days. The “Parable of the Unforgiving Servant” isn't one of those parables. It's pretty obvious, isn't it? “Forgive one another as you have been forgiven.” That's it. “Forgive one another as you have been forgiven.” A simple message, but even with all its clarity, it's still a tough one to hear. These are hard instructions to live out. Oh, we like the part about how we ourselves have been forgiven well enough. It's just that other part, the part about how we are to forgive others that gives us pause.

We pick up this story where we left off last week, where Jesus was talking to the disciples about reconciliation and restoring relationships, where he was giving them some guidelines about how to handle a situation where someone had sinned against them, how they could go about trying to bring that one back into the fold. So it's not terribly surprising when Peter follows up with this question about forgiveness.

Now, I give Peter a lot of credit. He's been paying attention all these days and weeks and months that he's been with Jesus. He knows by now that if you're gonna be a follower of Jesus, forgiving others is part of the package. Being a disciple of Christ means that you will be expected to forgive other people. He was listening way back at the Sermon on the Mount, back in what we call chapter 6 of Matthew, when they asked Jesus to teach them to pray, and he did. And part of that prayer was to teach them these words, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

So, what Peter wants to know is, “Just how far do I have to carry this forgiveness thing? Just exactly how many times to I have to forgive the same person who sins against me? Seven?”

Now seven was actually a pretty high number. The standard expectation was that you should forgive someone 3 times, but after that, they were on there own. So Peter's gone quite a bit beyond that. He's raised the expectations by a large margin.

But despite that, despite his good intentions, what Peter is trying to do is the same thing we all do – he's trying to put a limit on forgiveness. He's trying to figure out how far he has to go before he's off the hook. And Jesus comes back with the answer, “No, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” In other words, as many times as they need to be forgiven, Peter, that's how many times you are to forgive them.

And that right there, that idea that we are supposed to forgive without limit, is where we struggle. Because as wonderful as it is to receive forgiveness ourselves, it is so hard to forgive someone else. And never mind forgiving them 77 times or 7 times – sometimes forgiving even one time seems too much. Some things seem completely unforgivable.

It's a beautiful, ironic coincidence that these words would come to us on this day, of all days, that the lectionary, planned out years in advance, would schedule these readings about forgiveness and mercy and compassion for the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. There are many other situations – global inn scale down to the community level and even more intimate, on the personal level – where we find it nearly impossible to forgive someone or several someones for what they have done to us. But the events of that day 10 years ago are staring us in the face this morning; the media has been filled with recollections and reflections and retrospections all week, still trying to make some sense of those horrific events that touched our nation so deeply, that wounded us – physically, emotionally, relationally – so badly that we still carry the scars. And it is hard to hear these words on this day, challenging to hear God speaking to us through these words of scripture, reminding us to forgive one another as we have been forgiven. Because forgiveness does not come naturally to us. We incline toward revenge and retribution, making the other pay what they owe us.

And that is an option left open to us – not just regarding 9/11, but in all of those painful situations of life where someone hurts us so badly that forgiving them seems impossible. We see it in this parable – God does not force us to forgive. Like the servant forgiven his huge, immense, unimaginable debt (what he owed the king was like 30 or 40 lifetimes of wages), yet who goes after the man who owed him a relatively minor amount in comparison, we can choose not to forgive. But that leaves us in a prison of our own making, trapped by the past, unable to embrace the new life that God offers, to be embraced by the healing, forgiving love of God revealed on the cross, the love that died to make itself known.

There's the good news in this take home message from Jesus today. “Forgive others as you have been forgiven.” Forgiveness may not come so naturally to us, but it is offered freely to us, offered time and again without limit by the one who commands us to forgive from the heart. That's what Jesus does, over and over again – in his encounters with people in his earthly ministry to his final moments on the cross, we see him offering forgiveness. Mercy. Compassion. New life. A fresh start. Setting us free from our sinful selves, releasing us from our grudges and grievances so that we experience this new life in him, so that in following him, we may be formed to live a life like his – learning even to forgive, because we know that we too have been forgiven. May the Spirit move us toward that life-giving forgiveness, today and everyday.

Amen.

September 4, 2011–Pentecost +12

Resolved to Reconcile
Matthew 18:15-20
Pentecost + 12, September 4, 2011

Last weekend, while we were cooped up waiting out the hurricane,
Andy & I watched a movie called You Again. It centered around a young woman named Marni. Now poor Marni had had a rough go of it during high school. For whatever reason, she was singled out by the popular kids in her school, and made fun of, tormented, bullied really – told she was a loser and treated like one too. But after graduation, she put the awkwardness of adolescence behind her, went on to college, got a great job. High school was a part of her life she wanted to forget, and she thought she had – until on her way home for her brother's wedding, she discovers, much to her dismay, that her brother is marrying none other than Joanna, her arch-nemesis, the head cheerleader, the ringleader – and in an instant, all the pain and anger and hurt and insecurity of those years just come flooding back.

Now when they meet up again, Joanna pretends not to recognize Marni. She pretends she has no idea who she is – but of course she does, and eventually, she and Marni have it out. All Marni wants is for Joanna to admit what she had done and to apologize, but Joanna won't do it – and of course, everything spirals downward from there. That's the kind of stuff movies like this are made of!

You know how this kind of thing goes, when someone hurts you in some major or on-going way and you don't address it. You've seen that undercurrent of conflict unresolved, when we just try to sweep it under the rug and pretend that everything's okay. Here in this church, or perhaps some other church you've been a part of. Or at your job. Or in your neighborhood. Or in your extended family. You know, the problems and fights that lurk just below the surface, the ones that everyone knows about or at least senses, the same ones nobody talks about – or at least not to the person or people involved. It's pretty typical for us to complain to everyone else about how we've been wronged. It's so easy to do that. And yet it doesn't solve the problem. Worse yet, it doesn't make room for the relationship to heal.

Conflict. Sin. Hurt. Jesus isn't a stranger to any of these things. They're as old as humanity. We are sinners. We hurt each other. It was true of the disciples too – and Jesus knew it would be that way in the church that was to come, just as it happens in all kinds of relationships.

Jesus knows this. He knows also that this fledgling church will need each other. What is translated here as “member of the church” is really the word brother – and I'm sure the scholars responsible for this translation have good reasons for saying “member of the church” instead, but we miss out on some important connotations when we drop the word brother. Because in the early church, in that society, following Jesus often meant leaving your biological family behind – or having them cut you out of their lives. And family was everything back then. It told you who you were; it told others who you were. It gave you status and standing. Family gave you your whole identity. They were your support – your lifeline; there was no health insurance or social security or pension or retirement savings. Family took care of you. So to be cut off from your family was serious business. When you became a follower of Jesus, when you joined the church, those people became your family. They became your brothers and sisters. There was a closeness, an intimacy between the people in those small groups that we can hardly imagine based on our experiences in church. They were deeply involved in each other's lives. They counted on one another. And if one sinned against the other and they didn't make peace, the whole group would suffer. It was like poison, weakening the whole system, eating away at their unity, breaking down their witness to the wider world.

That's what the family in You Again found out. When Marni and Joanna couldn't get past their past, it worked its way out to the whole family. Marni outed Joanna to the whole clan at the rehearsal dinner – but the way she did it, you knew she was out for revenge. She wasn't seeking reconciliation.

And that, really, is at the heart of Jesus' words in Matthew's gospel today. He is offering his disciples and us a course in Conflict Resolution 101. If a brother sins against you, go and point it out, 1 on 1. If that doesn't work, take a few others along. And if that doesn't work, tell it to the whole group. Logical steps. It's a method lifted up in all sorts of groups – from the model constitution for congregations in the ELCA to the group home I used to work in to grievance boards in unions. They make sense, even if they're not all that easy to put into practice, but even more important than teaching a method, Jesus is trying to get at motivation. Why bother to do anything so personal, so time-consuming? Why not just write them off or ignore them or put up with it? Why go to such lengths? The point of all of this, Jesus is saying, is not to rub the sinner's nose in what they have done wrong, but to bring about reconciliation! It's about providing an antidote to the poison that's invading the wider body so that wholeness can be restored, not just to the individuals involved, but to the entire group.

Over and over again, this is what we see Jesus doing – prizing relationship over being right, desiring reconciliation instead of revenge. It's hard to live out, but it shouldn't be a surprise to us that this is what Jesus teaches us to do, what he expects us to do. After all, that is exactly the reason he came – not to rub our noses in our sins, but to make a way for our relationships with God the Father to be restored. The whole arc of the Biblical story can be summarized this way – God makes people, God loves people & enters into relationship with them, people screw up, there is distance between God and people, God reaches out to draw people close again. Over and over and over, this is what happens, until finally God sends Jesus the Son – to knock down the walls that grow between us and our creator, to show us the depth of our brokenness and how we have sinned, but always, always, always doing so to restore our relationship; always reaching out to re-create us; always seeking reconciliation. It's hard work. It's not without a price. Jesus lays down his life to make it possible. He calls us to become the kind of people, the kind of community, where this hard work is done, where we seek not the easy fix, but true repentance and reconciliation, so that we may be a reflection of God's deep love for us and for all creation. Jesus said, Wherever 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, I am there among them. May we experience his presence among us, may we be filled with his Spirit, strengthening us to to work for restoration and reconciliation.

Amen.

August 21, 2011–Pentecost + 10

Jesus Tells Us Who We Are
Matthew 16:13-20
Pentecost + 10 – August 21, 2011

“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” This question crosses Jesus' lips in our gospel this morning, but it's not a question unique to Jesus. Sure in that particular form, it is, but all of us at one point or another have found ourselves wondering who people say that we are. Maybe not all the time, but at those crossroads moments, when we are feeling insecure, uncertain, in those times of great change or crisis, when we're not sure who we are anymore, we wonder what the world thinks of us. And the world will try to tell us.

I don't know if you've seen this report that I read and heard a few weeks ago, about the want ads, and how there's a whole set of employers out there who are looking for workers – but they only want people who already have a job. And so in the ads, they say things boil down to “the unemployed need not apply”. This mindset got to be so prevalent out there that it made the news, and I was listening to a call-in show about it. And it was sad, because one man called in who had been out of work for months and years with no hope of getting hired, and you could hear his discouragement. He said that these kind of ads made him feel worthless. Less than. Of no value – to the point that at times he considered suicide. An extreme response, perhaps, but it reveals how much weight we give to the way we are seen in the eyes of the world.

We may not have all felt these questions to this degree, but we've all had them. Am I doing what I was meant to do? Is this the right job? The right person for me? Is it worth it to stay in a job I hate but that makes me a ton of money? Am I valued for what I am or for what I can produce or what I can consume? Even kids and teenagers face these questions. Am I wearing the right clothes, listening to the right music, hanging out with the right people? Who am I? And am I who I think I am, or who others think I am? We all wanna have enough self-esteem and self-worth to think we are above worrying too much what others think, and yet there are times for all of us when we are dogged by that question, “Who do people say that I am?” The world will give you 101 answers about who you should be, about the kind of person who is valuable, worthy, important – and too often, they will revolve around what kind of clothes you wear, or what job you have, or what neighborhood you live in, or what important people you know.

“Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asks the disciples this question, and they have a lot of answers. “People think you are John the Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” All of them, pivotal figures. Loud voices in the story of the people of Israel.

“But who do ya'll say that I am?” Jesus says. And as always, there is Peter, ready to pipe up with an answer – and he says, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Peter gets this answer as a revelation – he didn't figure it out for himself, but God the Father enabled him to see Jesus as more than a prophet or forerunner in the faith.

Peter's confession of faith is an important one. It's not the first time the gospel has called Jesus the Messiah, not the first time Jesus has been referred to as the son of God, but this is the first time these words have come from the lips of one of this followers. But what I want us to focus on today is the way Jesus responds to Peter's answer. Because in his answer, we see that Peter gets an answer to his own, unspoken question, “Who do you (Jesus) say that I (Peter) am?” Because as soon as Peter makes his confession of faith about who Jesus is, Jesus turns it right back around and tells Peter who he is: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah!... and I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church...”

When Peter, by the gift of faith, identifies Jesus, he is himself given a new identity. He is blessed. He is given a new name, a new responsibility, a new role.

So it's not just a pivotal, hinge moment for Jesus, but for Peter too. This marks a new direction for him. When Jesus tells him who he is, it doesn't so much matter who others say that he is, who he has been, who he will be. Jesus gives Peter, the rock, a rock to build the rest of his life on – based on his identity in Christ, not on what the world will try to tell him. And that's good news, because the road ahead for Peter, and for all of the disciples, will often be a challenging one, one that will call into question what they are doing and why they are doing it – but they are able to continue because they know who Jesus is and who Jesus says they are, and that makes all the difference.

Jesus does the same thing for us. When, by the gift of faith, we see that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the Living God, when we learn Jesus' identity, he gives us a new identity too. He reminds us that we are more than the sum total of our job or our house or our clothes or anything else that the world would use to tell us who we are and what we're worth. No, in Jesus, we are more than what others see. In Jesus, we receive an answer to the most important question – who does Jesus say that we are? And he says to us – you are blessed. You are beloved. You are a child of God forever. And with Peter, we are given a new role, deeper responsibilities – to become living stones in Christ's church – partners with him in expanding, called to be witnesses, right at the gate of Hades, that the power of Christ living in us is stronger than the power of death. We are who Jesus sees us to be, with all of our flaws, all our uncertainties, all our insecurities. We are who Jesus says we are, gifted through our relationship with him and through our faith in him, to do things we never would have imagined we could do, gifted to serve God and others, building up the body of Christ and sent to carry the good news of God's love into the world.

Thanks be to God!

Amen.

August 14, 2011–Pentecost +9

Jesus Brings Outsiders In
Matthew 15:10-28
Pentecost + 9, August 14, 2011 

Today's gospel with its story of this persistent Canaanite woman made me think of the movie What About Bob?. It starred Bill Murray as Bob. Now, Bob was kinda crazy. He had a list of phobias as long as your arm. He's so afraid of so many things that it's hard for him to leave his apartment. Bob really relies on his therapist, to the point that he drives his original one crazy, and finds himself pawned off on Dr. Leo Marvin, played by Richard Dreyfus.

Well, shortly after Dr. Marvin takes Bob on as a patient, he goes on vacation. He leaves, thinking everything's taken care of, but he's never had a patient like Bob before. Bob is so needy, so desperate, that he goes to great lengths to find out where Dr. Marvin is, and travels to New Hampshire to find him. And when he arrives in Lake Winnipesaukee, he doesn't know where the doctor is, so he just wanders up and down the main part of town, calling his name.

Well, of course, Dr. Marvin tries to ignore him. But Bob will not be ignored, and the rest of the movie is basically Bob doggedly seeking help, and Dr. Marvin trying to figure out how to get rid of him.


That, of course, is where the similarity with the gospel ends – but you see what I mean, right? We have this woman, this Canaanite woman, who is desperately in need of help, and much like Bob, she knows there is only one person who can help her, and so she comes looking for him. Granted, he came into her region first, but once she finds out he's there, she comes straight to him, calling out to him, like Bob in the town square, refusing to stop until she has gotten his attention. At first, Matthew tells us, Jesus doesn't say a word. He just ignores her. Then his disciples come to him; they've had enough, the woman is making a scene - “Send her away, Jesus; she's driving us crazy, she keeps shouting after us...” But Jesus, not yet realizing the scope of his calling, says, “She's not who I came to help; I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” This Gentile woman doesn't meet the eligibility criteria.

But that doesn't stop her. She is so desperate to get the help her daughter needs that she just keeps pleading, “Lord, help me.” And here's where we tend to cringe, but Jesus says, “It's not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.” This is not what we have come to expect from Jesus, who elsewhere in the gospels is forever and always reaching past the humanly constructed boundaries of religion and gender and class to help whoever is in need, no matter who they are.
This story sets up so clearly the distinction between insiders and outsiders. Who gets to be a part of God's healing and mercy and love, and who doesn't? It seems so clear-cut sometimes. Obviously the disciples are insiders; the Canaanite woman is an outsider. Who is she to dare to ask for help from Jesus, a Jew?

We have all been in the Canaanite woman's shoes. We know how it feels to be on the outside looking in. We know what it is to be left out, ignored, dismissed. We know what it is like to need something desperately – friendship, understanding, healing, hope, and to have it denied or delayed for some reason. And yet how many of us have the strength, the courage, the determination, to put ourselves out there, again and again, like this woman did, until the people on the inside notice, until they pay attention?

But for as often as we have been the outsider, how easy it is to draw lines between ourselves and the “other”, how easy when we find ourselves on the inside to forget what it felt like to be an outsider. We've seen ourselves do it. We see the disciples do it. Here in this story for just a few moments, we even see Jesus do it.

And yet, it doesn't last. Even though Jesus starts out by pushing the Canaanite woman away and keeping her outside the people he is sent to, through their interaction, his vision is expanded. Because of his conversation with this woman, and her urgent need to have her daughter made well, this woman who will not be kept outside, Jesus comes to see that his mission isn't one of exclusivity, but of inclusiveness – that the love of God he has come to proclaim and share and live is not just for one particular people, but for all people.

It's an amazing revelation – one that changes him and changes his ministry. And it reminds me again of What About Bob?, because by the end of the movie, there's been a complete reversal. Bob, who had always been on the outside because of his mental illnesses and all of his annoying personality quirks, finds himself on the inside, welcomed, accepted as a part of Dr. Marvin's family, made whole through their acceptance of him, their willingness to bring him inside the circle. They embrace him in all of his brokenness. And Dr. Marvin, well, he finds himself in Bob's shoes – because Bob has driven him crazy.

We don't see it in just this short gospel story, but we know that this role reversal is part of Jesus' story. I'm not saying we drive him crazy, but I am saying that because of his love for us, Jesus puts himself in the place of the ultimate outsider, outcast by the leaders of his people, a criminal hung on a cross to die by the political forces of his day – the ultimate rejection and insult.

And he does it so that none of us ever has to be on the outside again. In his willingness to become an outsider, he makes it possible for us – all of us – to be brought to the inside. None of us has to beg like a dog for scraps, because Jesus makes us all God's children and welcomes us all to the table – this table where we share in the bread and the wine, his body and blood, given and shed for us – not just the crumbs, but all he has – shared with us, shared for all.

This is the call of the gospel for us this week – to remember when we were on the outside and then to know how it is to be welcomed at God's great banquet. May our ears and eyes be open to the cries of those desperate for this good news – and then let us share with them the story that at God's table, no one is an outsider. All are welcome. God's love is for everyone. No exceptions.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.