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.