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.