If you sat with me in math class in 7th and 8th grade at Parcells Middle School in Grosse Pointe Woods, MI, you would recognize that phrase, and probably chuckle a bit. That is how Mr. Ciaravino would end class every day...and as the year progressed, we would join in on the concerns bit. Oh, memories.
This year I began requiring that the confirmation students take sermon notes, one per month. I did this when I was in confirmation and find it a good practice for the youth and it is helpful for my preaching. The last part of the form asks if they have any questions that they would like to ask about God, etc. And they ask the BEST questions. Whether we know it or not, they are thinking about issues regarding faith, but are we giving them the encouragement that they need to voice this?
How can we do better at giving them the groundwork and the vocabulary to speak about their faith, question it, explain their doubts so that when they are in situations in which their faith is tested, they have something to lean on?
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Sunday, December 11, 2011
“John the Witness”
December 11, 2011
Advent 3B
John 1:6-8, 19-28
In 1970, a musical debuted at Carnegie Mellon University, it was called “Godspell.” Musical was written by Stephen Schwartz and based off of the Gospel of Matthew, with some parables thrown in from Luke. The musical found its way to Broadway and even had a film version made, staring Victor Garber as Jesus. The movie version of the musical begins with a random selection of New Yorkers being visited by a John the Baptist character, who sings “prepare ye the way of the Lord.” After he blows his shofar, a ram’s horn used in the Jewish culture, the group gathers in central park and is baptized in a fountain all the while dancing around the fountain and singing “prepare ye the way of the Lord” aloud for all that could hear. This is not the John that we hear about this morning from the Gospel of John…well in a way it is, but not really.
What I mean by that is this, the John that we find described in the Gospel of John is the same person that we heard about in Mark last week…but John views him in a very different way than Mark, Matthew and Luke do. In Mark, Matthew and Luke, we see meet John the Baptist in the wilderness eating locusts and wild honey, wearing camel’s hair and pretty much looking like a mad man. This John baptizes people for the repentance of their sins, preparing them for the coming of the one greater than he. He is the loud, audacious man with the shofar, baptizing people in a fountain in Central Park, dressed like a circus entertainer. The John that we meet in the Gospel of John, however, is not so much a baptizer as he is a witness. Yes, he baptizes here and there, but that is not his primary function. This John is a much more subdued, humble character who does his work at Bethany, along the Jordan. And he was sent by God to witness to the light that was coming into the world, to the Word become flesh, to Christ.
As we meet John the Witness, we hear an account from him of who he is. “I am not the Messiah.’ And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ Then they said to him, ‘Who are you?... He said, ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord” ’, as the prophet Isaiah said.
With the exception of his last statement about his identity, John responds to those who had been sent to him with the words “I am not.” I am not the messiah, I am not the prophet, I am not Elijah. He identifies himself by stating who he is not, the one who he bore witness to used the opposite tactic, saying “I AM”…and when John does identify who he is, he ties his identity to the one who sent him “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “make straight the way of the Lord.” And, as much as it is in his power, he is faithful to his calling to be a witness to the Word made flesh, to testify to the light coming into the world.
Soon after his encounter with those sent from the Pharisees, John sees Jesus and says, Look! There he is! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And again, just a few verses later he repeats this confession of who Jesus is. Behold, the Lamb of God. The witness of John to who Jesus is in the Gospel of John is the earliest witness that is found in the Gospels as to the identity of Jesus as the Son of God. It is John who gives his witness to what happened at the baptism of Jesus when the dove descended upon Jesus and remained upon him. And it is because of the witness of John that many came to believe in who Jesus was.
As we grow ever closer to the Nativity of our Lord, which is just two weeks away, we hear in the call of John the witness a call of our own. A call to be witnesses to the light that has come in to the world and who will come into the world again. A call to testify to the Word made flesh and where we see him at work in the world. We have a call as followers of Christ to join our voices to John the Witness and proclaim “Look! There is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” But how do we do that when some are so ready to shut us down at the mere mention of Christmas? How do we testify to the light when for so long it has been seen as the Pastor’s job…? How do we witness to who we are and how we fit into God’s story and Jesus’ story when, quite frankly, it has become an intimidating task? Am I going to say the right thing? Are people going to take my testimony seriously? Will they think less of me because for some reason, I haven’t seen God this week?
There was a study that came out a couple years ago, called the National Study of Youth and Religion, that became the basis of a book called “Almost Christian.” The study was aimed at talking with teenagers about their faith, or lack thereof, and their feelings toward the church. The study found that while a majority of teenagers they spoke to claimed that they were people of faith and had positive feelings about the church, most of were also very apathetic to the practices of their faith tradition. The small percentage who were not apathetic towards religious practices had a powerful story to tell about their faith and came from faith communities that had a very strong sense of mission that challenged these youth to think outside of themselves. This study has led to the claim that Christianity as a victim to “moralistic therapeutic deism,” a belief in a higher power that we call upon occasionally when we get in trouble and who helps us to feel better about ourselves, but demands little from us in return. There really is no unique vocabulary with which to voice this belief, and it is a belief system that fails to challenge us into deeper faith. And it is something that we, the church, have passed down to the youth of the church after years of missional understanding and teaching being watered down. But it doesn’t have to stay that way…we have some unlearning to do as a church, though.
We have been called by virtue of our baptism, to join our voices with John the witness to testify to where we see the light of Christ shining in the world. We are called to be witness to who the light is. Now, I’m not saying lets all go down to Mass Street and stay there until we have convinced all of Lawrence who Christ is…as exciting as that might seem. But let’s take the time to share with each other our God moments, the times and places in which we have seen God at work, in which we have seen the light shine in the darkness. Spend some time at the dinner table talking to your spouses and friends and children about your faith, about questions and concerns, and pray with each other about them.
God sent John into the world to testify to the light that was coming into the world. God did that to get the attention of humans around John that something wonderful was coming into the world, a light that would shatter the darkness for good. The Word of God was becoming flesh in order to redeem us, to save us from ourselves.
God has called us to the same task, that we may be stirred up by the Word of God and go out into the world and bear witness to Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It’s not just an Advent thing, it’s a lifelong practice…so let’s get practicing!
Advent 3B
John 1:6-8, 19-28
In 1970, a musical debuted at Carnegie Mellon University, it was called “Godspell.” Musical was written by Stephen Schwartz and based off of the Gospel of Matthew, with some parables thrown in from Luke. The musical found its way to Broadway and even had a film version made, staring Victor Garber as Jesus. The movie version of the musical begins with a random selection of New Yorkers being visited by a John the Baptist character, who sings “prepare ye the way of the Lord.” After he blows his shofar, a ram’s horn used in the Jewish culture, the group gathers in central park and is baptized in a fountain all the while dancing around the fountain and singing “prepare ye the way of the Lord” aloud for all that could hear. This is not the John that we hear about this morning from the Gospel of John…well in a way it is, but not really.
What I mean by that is this, the John that we find described in the Gospel of John is the same person that we heard about in Mark last week…but John views him in a very different way than Mark, Matthew and Luke do. In Mark, Matthew and Luke, we see meet John the Baptist in the wilderness eating locusts and wild honey, wearing camel’s hair and pretty much looking like a mad man. This John baptizes people for the repentance of their sins, preparing them for the coming of the one greater than he. He is the loud, audacious man with the shofar, baptizing people in a fountain in Central Park, dressed like a circus entertainer. The John that we meet in the Gospel of John, however, is not so much a baptizer as he is a witness. Yes, he baptizes here and there, but that is not his primary function. This John is a much more subdued, humble character who does his work at Bethany, along the Jordan. And he was sent by God to witness to the light that was coming into the world, to the Word become flesh, to Christ.
As we meet John the Witness, we hear an account from him of who he is. “I am not the Messiah.’ And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ Then they said to him, ‘Who are you?... He said, ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord” ’, as the prophet Isaiah said.
With the exception of his last statement about his identity, John responds to those who had been sent to him with the words “I am not.” I am not the messiah, I am not the prophet, I am not Elijah. He identifies himself by stating who he is not, the one who he bore witness to used the opposite tactic, saying “I AM”…and when John does identify who he is, he ties his identity to the one who sent him “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “make straight the way of the Lord.” And, as much as it is in his power, he is faithful to his calling to be a witness to the Word made flesh, to testify to the light coming into the world.
Soon after his encounter with those sent from the Pharisees, John sees Jesus and says, Look! There he is! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And again, just a few verses later he repeats this confession of who Jesus is. Behold, the Lamb of God. The witness of John to who Jesus is in the Gospel of John is the earliest witness that is found in the Gospels as to the identity of Jesus as the Son of God. It is John who gives his witness to what happened at the baptism of Jesus when the dove descended upon Jesus and remained upon him. And it is because of the witness of John that many came to believe in who Jesus was.
As we grow ever closer to the Nativity of our Lord, which is just two weeks away, we hear in the call of John the witness a call of our own. A call to be witnesses to the light that has come in to the world and who will come into the world again. A call to testify to the Word made flesh and where we see him at work in the world. We have a call as followers of Christ to join our voices to John the Witness and proclaim “Look! There is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” But how do we do that when some are so ready to shut us down at the mere mention of Christmas? How do we testify to the light when for so long it has been seen as the Pastor’s job…? How do we witness to who we are and how we fit into God’s story and Jesus’ story when, quite frankly, it has become an intimidating task? Am I going to say the right thing? Are people going to take my testimony seriously? Will they think less of me because for some reason, I haven’t seen God this week?
There was a study that came out a couple years ago, called the National Study of Youth and Religion, that became the basis of a book called “Almost Christian.” The study was aimed at talking with teenagers about their faith, or lack thereof, and their feelings toward the church. The study found that while a majority of teenagers they spoke to claimed that they were people of faith and had positive feelings about the church, most of were also very apathetic to the practices of their faith tradition. The small percentage who were not apathetic towards religious practices had a powerful story to tell about their faith and came from faith communities that had a very strong sense of mission that challenged these youth to think outside of themselves. This study has led to the claim that Christianity as a victim to “moralistic therapeutic deism,” a belief in a higher power that we call upon occasionally when we get in trouble and who helps us to feel better about ourselves, but demands little from us in return. There really is no unique vocabulary with which to voice this belief, and it is a belief system that fails to challenge us into deeper faith. And it is something that we, the church, have passed down to the youth of the church after years of missional understanding and teaching being watered down. But it doesn’t have to stay that way…we have some unlearning to do as a church, though.
We have been called by virtue of our baptism, to join our voices with John the witness to testify to where we see the light of Christ shining in the world. We are called to be witness to who the light is. Now, I’m not saying lets all go down to Mass Street and stay there until we have convinced all of Lawrence who Christ is…as exciting as that might seem. But let’s take the time to share with each other our God moments, the times and places in which we have seen God at work, in which we have seen the light shine in the darkness. Spend some time at the dinner table talking to your spouses and friends and children about your faith, about questions and concerns, and pray with each other about them.
God sent John into the world to testify to the light that was coming into the world. God did that to get the attention of humans around John that something wonderful was coming into the world, a light that would shatter the darkness for good. The Word of God was becoming flesh in order to redeem us, to save us from ourselves.
God has called us to the same task, that we may be stirred up by the Word of God and go out into the world and bear witness to Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It’s not just an Advent thing, it’s a lifelong practice…so let’s get practicing!
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Advent Dissonance
November 27, 2011
Advent 1B
Mark 13:24-37
It’s happened once again, we’ve survived a weekend of Turkey and football and parades and door-buster deals and have run straight into the Christmas season or, as Johnny Mathis refers to it, “the most wonderful time of the year”. The Christmas trees and lights have been illuminated, Christmas music is now playing 24/7 in stores, Christmas movies have been dominating the television… punctuated by the oh so clever holiday commercials…and the holiday flavors are selling like hot cakes at Starbucks. Yes, the Christmas season is in full swing. Soon calendars will be filled with parties and get togethers, counters will be filled with baked goods, mailboxes will be filled with Christmas cards and Christmas trees loaded with lights. Yes, Johnny Mathis, a most wonderful time of the year, indeed. But wait, aren’t we missing something?
As the Black Friday deals fade into Cyber Monday and the Christmas season swings into action, we in the church begin our observation of Advent. It is a time of preparation and active waiting and watching for the coming of our Lord, whose birth we celebrate on Christmas. And while the world around us is singing “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” we sing hymns like “Savior of the Nations, Come” and “Wake, Awake”…hymns played in keys that cause a bit of eerie dissonance when heard. And while the world is reading stories like “Twas the Night before Christmas” and “Frosty the Snow Man,” we hear different tales from the Bible…tales that cause the same dissonance when heard as our Advent hymns. We hear uncomfortable tales about suffering and wars and stars falling from the heavens, the sun being darkened and the moon failing to give light…about prophets praying that God would tear open the heavens and come down so that mountains would quake. Doesn’t really fit next to “Have a Holly, Jolly, Christmas,” now does it?
And yet, as the year grows older, the hours of daylight reach their shortest, and the earth becomes dormant, we break from our cheery secular traditions and take a step back to hear reminders to keep awake, to watch and to hope.
We start Advent off this year in the year of Mark, the shortest of the Gospels. And our Gospel text for this morning puts us smack dab in the middle of a discourse of Jesus that consumes the entire thirteenth chapter of Mark and is called “the little apocalypse.” Exciting huh?
In the first half of the chapter, we hear Jesus speaking with the disciples about things that are to come. He tells of the destruction of the temple, about persecutions and false messiahs, about wars and rumors of wars, nations rising up against nations, peoples against peoples, earthquakes, famines…and I quote “great suffering such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, no, and never will be.” (Mk 13:18). Fa La La La La, La La La La.
“But after those things, after that suffering, the sun will go dark, the moon will not shine, the stars will fall from the heavens and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. 27Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”
Some, like the writers of the Left Behind series, have co-opted Mark’s Little Apocalypse and have turned it into a prediction of what is to come with the rapture…likewise, when we look at this text, the temptation for us is to think about what is to come, to look at the signs around us and speak about the end being near. But here is the thing, Mark was writing to a people who were living in the midst of the dust that was the temple of Jerusalem. They were living in the midst of the desolating sacrilege that Jesus described in this text…and that’s part of what makes this text apocalyptic, it speaks to what was going on in the world using the language of the faithful.
For Mark’s audience, the end of the world as they knew it had come. The temple had been destroyed, they were being persecuted, false prophets where abundantly present. And yet, even at the heightened state of alertness that comes when the world seems to be falling apart around you, they were charged with the task of keeping alert, keeping awake. Keep awake for signs of God around you, know that in the incarnation, the temple is no longer God’s dwelling place…it is no longer the center of wisdom. In God’s coming into the world in Christ, God made his dwelling place amongst humans, and the center of wisdom is found in the wilderness. In the incarnation, God reminds us that God’s preferred mode of operation is in the unexpected places.
One of the most awesome things that the confirmation students have told me they have learned so far this year in studying the Old Testament ancestors is that God is present and works in unexpected places and people. One of the temptations of being people who live in the world and in sin is that we want to see God in people and places that we expect to see God…and we use human standards by which to frame our expectations of our God become human. And so we have a tendency to put God in a box, assign him or her attributes and stick a picture of God into our pocket so that we have a reference point for when we think we see God at work in the world. But we are Advent people, and as such, we need reminders like the one we have from Mark this morning. Reminders to keep awake and be alert to God’s work in the world where we least expect it. But also, keep alert for ways in which we think that we have figured God out.
In the next few weeks we will be preparing to celebrate the birth of a King who was born in a barn, not in a royal palace. He was a king who exercised his power by going outside of the social norms and boundaries and reaching out to the outcast, the sick, the unclean, the prostitutes. He was a king who showed the world his glory by dying on a cross, a crown of thorns on his head. The king we look for and celebrate a king who doesn’t rule in the way that we expect him to…there are no conventional tactics used by Jesus. And that is why Jesus asks us to keep awake…not just now, in this advent season, but always. Keep awake for the signs of God that you normally would not expect. Be alert and keep watch for a God who has brought an end to the world as we know it, and a beginning to a better world.
As Advent people in a Christmas world, let us live fully into the dissonance, let us look for the fullness of the incarnation around us and let us look for the presence of God in the unexpected places…it’s a greater gift than dreams of a White Christmas.
Wishing you a blessed and dissonant Advent. Amen
Advent 1B
Mark 13:24-37
It’s happened once again, we’ve survived a weekend of Turkey and football and parades and door-buster deals and have run straight into the Christmas season or, as Johnny Mathis refers to it, “the most wonderful time of the year”. The Christmas trees and lights have been illuminated, Christmas music is now playing 24/7 in stores, Christmas movies have been dominating the television… punctuated by the oh so clever holiday commercials…and the holiday flavors are selling like hot cakes at Starbucks. Yes, the Christmas season is in full swing. Soon calendars will be filled with parties and get togethers, counters will be filled with baked goods, mailboxes will be filled with Christmas cards and Christmas trees loaded with lights. Yes, Johnny Mathis, a most wonderful time of the year, indeed. But wait, aren’t we missing something?
As the Black Friday deals fade into Cyber Monday and the Christmas season swings into action, we in the church begin our observation of Advent. It is a time of preparation and active waiting and watching for the coming of our Lord, whose birth we celebrate on Christmas. And while the world around us is singing “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” we sing hymns like “Savior of the Nations, Come” and “Wake, Awake”…hymns played in keys that cause a bit of eerie dissonance when heard. And while the world is reading stories like “Twas the Night before Christmas” and “Frosty the Snow Man,” we hear different tales from the Bible…tales that cause the same dissonance when heard as our Advent hymns. We hear uncomfortable tales about suffering and wars and stars falling from the heavens, the sun being darkened and the moon failing to give light…about prophets praying that God would tear open the heavens and come down so that mountains would quake. Doesn’t really fit next to “Have a Holly, Jolly, Christmas,” now does it?
And yet, as the year grows older, the hours of daylight reach their shortest, and the earth becomes dormant, we break from our cheery secular traditions and take a step back to hear reminders to keep awake, to watch and to hope.
We start Advent off this year in the year of Mark, the shortest of the Gospels. And our Gospel text for this morning puts us smack dab in the middle of a discourse of Jesus that consumes the entire thirteenth chapter of Mark and is called “the little apocalypse.” Exciting huh?
In the first half of the chapter, we hear Jesus speaking with the disciples about things that are to come. He tells of the destruction of the temple, about persecutions and false messiahs, about wars and rumors of wars, nations rising up against nations, peoples against peoples, earthquakes, famines…and I quote “great suffering such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, no, and never will be.” (Mk 13:18). Fa La La La La, La La La La.
“But after those things, after that suffering, the sun will go dark, the moon will not shine, the stars will fall from the heavens and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. 27Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”
Some, like the writers of the Left Behind series, have co-opted Mark’s Little Apocalypse and have turned it into a prediction of what is to come with the rapture…likewise, when we look at this text, the temptation for us is to think about what is to come, to look at the signs around us and speak about the end being near. But here is the thing, Mark was writing to a people who were living in the midst of the dust that was the temple of Jerusalem. They were living in the midst of the desolating sacrilege that Jesus described in this text…and that’s part of what makes this text apocalyptic, it speaks to what was going on in the world using the language of the faithful.
For Mark’s audience, the end of the world as they knew it had come. The temple had been destroyed, they were being persecuted, false prophets where abundantly present. And yet, even at the heightened state of alertness that comes when the world seems to be falling apart around you, they were charged with the task of keeping alert, keeping awake. Keep awake for signs of God around you, know that in the incarnation, the temple is no longer God’s dwelling place…it is no longer the center of wisdom. In God’s coming into the world in Christ, God made his dwelling place amongst humans, and the center of wisdom is found in the wilderness. In the incarnation, God reminds us that God’s preferred mode of operation is in the unexpected places.
One of the most awesome things that the confirmation students have told me they have learned so far this year in studying the Old Testament ancestors is that God is present and works in unexpected places and people. One of the temptations of being people who live in the world and in sin is that we want to see God in people and places that we expect to see God…and we use human standards by which to frame our expectations of our God become human. And so we have a tendency to put God in a box, assign him or her attributes and stick a picture of God into our pocket so that we have a reference point for when we think we see God at work in the world. But we are Advent people, and as such, we need reminders like the one we have from Mark this morning. Reminders to keep awake and be alert to God’s work in the world where we least expect it. But also, keep alert for ways in which we think that we have figured God out.
In the next few weeks we will be preparing to celebrate the birth of a King who was born in a barn, not in a royal palace. He was a king who exercised his power by going outside of the social norms and boundaries and reaching out to the outcast, the sick, the unclean, the prostitutes. He was a king who showed the world his glory by dying on a cross, a crown of thorns on his head. The king we look for and celebrate a king who doesn’t rule in the way that we expect him to…there are no conventional tactics used by Jesus. And that is why Jesus asks us to keep awake…not just now, in this advent season, but always. Keep awake for the signs of God that you normally would not expect. Be alert and keep watch for a God who has brought an end to the world as we know it, and a beginning to a better world.
As Advent people in a Christmas world, let us live fully into the dissonance, let us look for the fullness of the incarnation around us and let us look for the presence of God in the unexpected places…it’s a greater gift than dreams of a White Christmas.
Wishing you a blessed and dissonant Advent. Amen
Sunday, November 13, 2011
“The Kingdom of Subversives” - Sermon for Confirmation Sunday
Pentecost 22A
November 13, 2011
Matthew 25:14-30
How much do you tell people when they ask about your weekends? Are there certain people that you are willing to tell anything to? Are there others to whom your only response is “it was good”? Rachel, Nick and Sidney, what will you tell your friends about what you are about to do this morning? Will you talk about the details of what confirmation is and how God was at work this morning? Or will it just be something you did at church? And what will the rest of us tell folks about what we are about to witness these three young people do and God do in them?
I ask these questions because the stories we tell on Monday morning about what happens on Sunday morning speak volumes to the power of how God is at work on Sunday mornings…that is, if we let them.
When we meet up with Jesus this morning, he is in the middle of a series of teachings that began in chapter 21 of Matthew. There are responses to questions and parables and the further he gets into this discourse, the more and more he speaks of the end times and the quicker he segues from one parable to another as if he knew he was being timed and that time was about to run out so he has to squeeze everything in that he had planned to say into this short amount of time. And it’s near the very end of this discourse that Jesus tells those who are with him the parable of the talents.
For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. When he returned, the slave with the five talents came back with ten, and the slave with the two talents came back with four…but the slave who had been given one talent returned with only that one talent after having buried it in a field to keep it safe so that he wouldn’t lose it while his master was gone. The two slaves who returned with more than they had been given were praised…while the one who hid his talent had it taken from him and was cast into outer darkness.
Some text for confirmation Sunday, isn’t it? Nothing like Reformation Sunday where the texts lift us up, speaking of God as our fortress and our rock and about Jesus being the truth that sets us free.
But, here we are, a master, three slaves and some talents. Happy Confirmation…
Actually, there is a lot of good news in this story…but it’s one of those where you have to dig a little deeper to get to the nugget of the good news that it very present. When the master goes out on his journey, he entrusts these three slaves with gifts…each talent representing about one year’s worth of wages. Just imagine what you would do if you had been given five years’ worth of wages, or even two or even one year’s wages…all in one shot. Now, pull this parable into modern times. Say the slaves who had been given the five talents and two talents played the market…and what if they lost it all?? It would be a totally different parable, but given the times we live in, it would have been a distinct possibility with stocks fluctuating on a daily basis. And yet, they took those risks, played those odds, and came out on top…doubling the gift that their master had given them, and they are told to enter into the joy of their master. The slave who had the one talent, however, was so afraid of what his master would do if he lost the talent, that he played it safe and hid it in a field until his master returned…and it is this one who gets the short end of the stick, as it were, losing his talent and getting tossed into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Is there good news there? There sure is…but like I said, we just have to dig a little deeper to get to it.
You see, if you take a look at Jesus’ teachings as a whole, you will find that there is a certain element of subversion to them…a kicking back against the established order of things…and that’s what gives Jesus’ teachings the power that they have. Jesus wasn’t afraid to question the status quo and then he offers something better. This parable comes right before Jesus’ arrest, his trial, his death and resurrection. He knew his time was at an end when he began his discourse and so he just keeps talking and talking and hoping that someone will soak things up. And so, when read in the context of Jesus’ death and resurrection, this parable oozes good news…it oozes good news because the ultimate gift that we receive as servants of God is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can play the market all we want with our talents, allowing God to use them to change the world…or we can squander them and keep them hidden…but the gift of life through Christ and the joy of our Lord is something that we will never lose.
This is what gives what we do and what God does on Sunday morning its power…and makes us subversives along with Jesus. I mean, think about it…where else do we celebrate a king who gained his victory by dying? Where else do we talk about a Lord who teaches us about the importance of caring for the poor and reaching out to the outcast? Where else do people bring their children so that they can be bound with Christ in his death and, in essence, enact a dying to sin and rising to new life, as St. Ambrose once said “we’d baptize you with dirt, if it didn’t kill you”? Where else to people come to a table to eat and drink the body and blood of their savior and do so next to people that they wouldn’t have anything to do with the rest of the week?
Where else, do teenagers…still at the beginning on their lives…come and stand before their faith family and re-affirm the vows that their parents made at their baptism…vows that join them in Christ to his death and resurrection?
When you were baptized, your parents brought you forward to have you washed in water…but it was much more than that. In that moment you were joined with Christ into his death and brought to new life in Christ, one where you have the freedom to live and trust in God’s love that has been working and will continue to work in you to make you the people that God made you to be.
As confirmands, you will stand before us shortly and be subversives…young people challenging the status quo by affirming the vows made for you the day you died to sin and were made alive again in Christ through his own death and resurrection. The day you were free to live in the joy of your master. This is not the end of something, it isn’t a graduation of sorts…but rather a beginning, where you will continue to grow and be challenged and be changed by the love of God.
So, what story are going to tell tomorrow at the water fountain, the coffee pot, the lockers? Are going to going tell a quick story that hints at what happened today, or are you going to tell the story of the transforming power of the love of God, who has given you the ultimate gift in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, so that you may live as his servants and trust that God is going to love you from death into life and God is going use you and your talents to transform the world?
Amen
November 13, 2011
Matthew 25:14-30
How much do you tell people when they ask about your weekends? Are there certain people that you are willing to tell anything to? Are there others to whom your only response is “it was good”? Rachel, Nick and Sidney, what will you tell your friends about what you are about to do this morning? Will you talk about the details of what confirmation is and how God was at work this morning? Or will it just be something you did at church? And what will the rest of us tell folks about what we are about to witness these three young people do and God do in them?
I ask these questions because the stories we tell on Monday morning about what happens on Sunday morning speak volumes to the power of how God is at work on Sunday mornings…that is, if we let them.
When we meet up with Jesus this morning, he is in the middle of a series of teachings that began in chapter 21 of Matthew. There are responses to questions and parables and the further he gets into this discourse, the more and more he speaks of the end times and the quicker he segues from one parable to another as if he knew he was being timed and that time was about to run out so he has to squeeze everything in that he had planned to say into this short amount of time. And it’s near the very end of this discourse that Jesus tells those who are with him the parable of the talents.
For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. When he returned, the slave with the five talents came back with ten, and the slave with the two talents came back with four…but the slave who had been given one talent returned with only that one talent after having buried it in a field to keep it safe so that he wouldn’t lose it while his master was gone. The two slaves who returned with more than they had been given were praised…while the one who hid his talent had it taken from him and was cast into outer darkness.
Some text for confirmation Sunday, isn’t it? Nothing like Reformation Sunday where the texts lift us up, speaking of God as our fortress and our rock and about Jesus being the truth that sets us free.
But, here we are, a master, three slaves and some talents. Happy Confirmation…
Actually, there is a lot of good news in this story…but it’s one of those where you have to dig a little deeper to get to the nugget of the good news that it very present. When the master goes out on his journey, he entrusts these three slaves with gifts…each talent representing about one year’s worth of wages. Just imagine what you would do if you had been given five years’ worth of wages, or even two or even one year’s wages…all in one shot. Now, pull this parable into modern times. Say the slaves who had been given the five talents and two talents played the market…and what if they lost it all?? It would be a totally different parable, but given the times we live in, it would have been a distinct possibility with stocks fluctuating on a daily basis. And yet, they took those risks, played those odds, and came out on top…doubling the gift that their master had given them, and they are told to enter into the joy of their master. The slave who had the one talent, however, was so afraid of what his master would do if he lost the talent, that he played it safe and hid it in a field until his master returned…and it is this one who gets the short end of the stick, as it were, losing his talent and getting tossed into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Is there good news there? There sure is…but like I said, we just have to dig a little deeper to get to it.
You see, if you take a look at Jesus’ teachings as a whole, you will find that there is a certain element of subversion to them…a kicking back against the established order of things…and that’s what gives Jesus’ teachings the power that they have. Jesus wasn’t afraid to question the status quo and then he offers something better. This parable comes right before Jesus’ arrest, his trial, his death and resurrection. He knew his time was at an end when he began his discourse and so he just keeps talking and talking and hoping that someone will soak things up. And so, when read in the context of Jesus’ death and resurrection, this parable oozes good news…it oozes good news because the ultimate gift that we receive as servants of God is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can play the market all we want with our talents, allowing God to use them to change the world…or we can squander them and keep them hidden…but the gift of life through Christ and the joy of our Lord is something that we will never lose.
This is what gives what we do and what God does on Sunday morning its power…and makes us subversives along with Jesus. I mean, think about it…where else do we celebrate a king who gained his victory by dying? Where else do we talk about a Lord who teaches us about the importance of caring for the poor and reaching out to the outcast? Where else do people bring their children so that they can be bound with Christ in his death and, in essence, enact a dying to sin and rising to new life, as St. Ambrose once said “we’d baptize you with dirt, if it didn’t kill you”? Where else to people come to a table to eat and drink the body and blood of their savior and do so next to people that they wouldn’t have anything to do with the rest of the week?
Where else, do teenagers…still at the beginning on their lives…come and stand before their faith family and re-affirm the vows that their parents made at their baptism…vows that join them in Christ to his death and resurrection?
When you were baptized, your parents brought you forward to have you washed in water…but it was much more than that. In that moment you were joined with Christ into his death and brought to new life in Christ, one where you have the freedom to live and trust in God’s love that has been working and will continue to work in you to make you the people that God made you to be.
As confirmands, you will stand before us shortly and be subversives…young people challenging the status quo by affirming the vows made for you the day you died to sin and were made alive again in Christ through his own death and resurrection. The day you were free to live in the joy of your master. This is not the end of something, it isn’t a graduation of sorts…but rather a beginning, where you will continue to grow and be challenged and be changed by the love of God.
So, what story are going to tell tomorrow at the water fountain, the coffee pot, the lockers? Are going to going tell a quick story that hints at what happened today, or are you going to tell the story of the transforming power of the love of God, who has given you the ultimate gift in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, so that you may live as his servants and trust that God is going to love you from death into life and God is going use you and your talents to transform the world?
Amen
Sunday, November 6, 2011
“Remember, Remember”
All Saints Day
Revelation 7:9-17
Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot.
This poem, which originated in the 17th century in England, was inspired by the day in which Guido Fawkes was caught guarding explosives in the House of Lords which were intended to be used by Fawkes and his partners in an assassination plot against King James I. The poem was written to remind future generations that treason was not an act that would be praised. However, the reason that Guido Fawkes and his compatriots attempted to assassinate the King was in reaction to the injustice they saw enacted by the crown. All the members of the Gunpowder plot were Catholics living in a country that, under King James, had become intolerant at the least, and at best, dangerous to Catholics. Priests who remained in England and continued to practice their religious tradition did so under threat of torture or death. The men who engineered this plot hoped that it would bring about greater religious tolerance…the plot failed however, and to this day the 5th of November is celebrated in England by fireworks, bonfires and burning effigies of Guido Fawkes, a man reacting to an injustice of his day.
Today, the 6th of November, is also a day of remembrance…but for a different reason. We remember and celebrate all the saints, the saints who are here now, the saints that have gone before us and the saints who are not yet born. And as we do so, another poem rings in our ears. “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
In our reading from Revelation, John of Patmos shares with us a vision of what is to come in the end. It is a vision of people from every tribe and language and nation gathered together at the throne of God worshiping God and the lamb. A multitude dressed in white and palm branches in their hands indicating the victory of their King. A song arises from this gathering telling of the salvation that belongs to their God and to the lamb. It is a beautiful scene, one that serves as an interlude between the judgment and destruction that come in John’s vision in chapters 6 and 8. In chapter 6, we hear about the opening of the first six seals that secured the scroll of Revelation and the judgments that they release…the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the cries of the martyrs, a devastating earthquake that turned the sun black, the moon the color of blood and caused the stars to fall from heaven to earth. (Anyone who says the bible is boring has not read the book of Revelation)
But before the seventh and final seal is opened, unleashing more judgment and wrath, John sees a vision of the angels of the four winds holding those winds back from destroying the earth…and of an angel ascending with the rising sun with the seal of God ordering the angels of the four winds to hold the winds back until the servants of the Lord have been sealed. John reports of hearing that there were 144,000 sealed…12,000 from each of the tribes of the 12 sons of Israel.
And then his vision turns to that which we heard this morning, a vision of a multitude so big that no one could count of all tribes, all nations…a vision of martyrs who had come out of the great ordeal and had washed their robes white in the blood of the lamb…a vision of adoration of God and the lamb that speaks to the salvation that belongs to God. A vision of a conversation that reveals what salvation looks like in the eyes of God.
Most frequently, we hear John’s description of the multitudes robed in white when we gather together to celebrate the life of someone who has left this life for life eternal. There are words of comfort in this passage that can help us as we mourn a loss of a loved one, words about an end to tears and about streams of the waters of life, all wonderful images to conjure when tears seem endless and waters of life seem far away.
And it seems that words of comfort are what John intended it when he wrote of these visions to the people of the seven churches in Asia. At the time that John was writing, the people were literally going through a great ordeal. They were being persecuted and killed by Rome because they were followers of the lamb. Their robes were soaked red in their own blood and it is quite possible that to these people it seemed as if the sun had turned black and the moon the color of blood. And yet, the members of the seven churches that John was writing to did not cease their worship of God…even if that worship was a little lukewarm at times.
The vision that John shared with them and that he shares with us is one that is totally countercultural to how the world was seen, both then and now. It speaks of Salvation that belongs to God and to God alone and what that salvation looks like.
In its original form, salvation is a word that is not limited to just the spiritual realm, but instead it refers to total wellbeing and wholeness. For the people living in the grasp of the Roman Empire, the “official” source of salvation, of wellbeing, was Rome...but that was not the experience of John’s audience who routinely were the victims of injustice. There is no wholeness and wellbeing when you are being persecuted and slaughtered. So John shows them a vision of God’s empire, where salvation comes from God and God alone.
In God’s empire, there is no room for the injustices and persecutions that the Roman Empire used to dehumanize the early Christians. In God’s empire, salvation means the end of injustice and the restoration of every aspect of human wellbeing for people of all nations and tribes and tongues. In God’s empire, there is no more hunger or thirst…there is no more threat of scorching heat, a wonderful promise for desert dwellers…and God will wipe away every tear, tears of anger, of distress, of sorrow, of bitterness and anguish. Every tear will be wiped away by God himself.
As people who live in the midst of very visible, worldwide, outcries against the injustices of our day and our own great ordeal, we do well to remember, remember the vision of John of a day when there will no longer be room for the things that divide us. Of a day when racism, sexism, ageism and all the other –isms that bring about injustice will no longer have a place where they can thrive and cause people to be seen as less than human in any way, shape, or form. It will be a day in which people of all tribes and nations and peoples and tongues will all come together around throne of God and sing of the salvation that comes from God and God alone and of the victory that has been won for us by the lamb in whose blood we have been washed. And as we remember the saints that have gone before us, the saints with us now, and the saints yet to be born, we remember the song that binds us all - “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
Revelation 7:9-17
Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot.
This poem, which originated in the 17th century in England, was inspired by the day in which Guido Fawkes was caught guarding explosives in the House of Lords which were intended to be used by Fawkes and his partners in an assassination plot against King James I. The poem was written to remind future generations that treason was not an act that would be praised. However, the reason that Guido Fawkes and his compatriots attempted to assassinate the King was in reaction to the injustice they saw enacted by the crown. All the members of the Gunpowder plot were Catholics living in a country that, under King James, had become intolerant at the least, and at best, dangerous to Catholics. Priests who remained in England and continued to practice their religious tradition did so under threat of torture or death. The men who engineered this plot hoped that it would bring about greater religious tolerance…the plot failed however, and to this day the 5th of November is celebrated in England by fireworks, bonfires and burning effigies of Guido Fawkes, a man reacting to an injustice of his day.
Today, the 6th of November, is also a day of remembrance…but for a different reason. We remember and celebrate all the saints, the saints who are here now, the saints that have gone before us and the saints who are not yet born. And as we do so, another poem rings in our ears. “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
In our reading from Revelation, John of Patmos shares with us a vision of what is to come in the end. It is a vision of people from every tribe and language and nation gathered together at the throne of God worshiping God and the lamb. A multitude dressed in white and palm branches in their hands indicating the victory of their King. A song arises from this gathering telling of the salvation that belongs to their God and to the lamb. It is a beautiful scene, one that serves as an interlude between the judgment and destruction that come in John’s vision in chapters 6 and 8. In chapter 6, we hear about the opening of the first six seals that secured the scroll of Revelation and the judgments that they release…the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the cries of the martyrs, a devastating earthquake that turned the sun black, the moon the color of blood and caused the stars to fall from heaven to earth. (Anyone who says the bible is boring has not read the book of Revelation)
But before the seventh and final seal is opened, unleashing more judgment and wrath, John sees a vision of the angels of the four winds holding those winds back from destroying the earth…and of an angel ascending with the rising sun with the seal of God ordering the angels of the four winds to hold the winds back until the servants of the Lord have been sealed. John reports of hearing that there were 144,000 sealed…12,000 from each of the tribes of the 12 sons of Israel.
And then his vision turns to that which we heard this morning, a vision of a multitude so big that no one could count of all tribes, all nations…a vision of martyrs who had come out of the great ordeal and had washed their robes white in the blood of the lamb…a vision of adoration of God and the lamb that speaks to the salvation that belongs to God. A vision of a conversation that reveals what salvation looks like in the eyes of God.
Most frequently, we hear John’s description of the multitudes robed in white when we gather together to celebrate the life of someone who has left this life for life eternal. There are words of comfort in this passage that can help us as we mourn a loss of a loved one, words about an end to tears and about streams of the waters of life, all wonderful images to conjure when tears seem endless and waters of life seem far away.
And it seems that words of comfort are what John intended it when he wrote of these visions to the people of the seven churches in Asia. At the time that John was writing, the people were literally going through a great ordeal. They were being persecuted and killed by Rome because they were followers of the lamb. Their robes were soaked red in their own blood and it is quite possible that to these people it seemed as if the sun had turned black and the moon the color of blood. And yet, the members of the seven churches that John was writing to did not cease their worship of God…even if that worship was a little lukewarm at times.
The vision that John shared with them and that he shares with us is one that is totally countercultural to how the world was seen, both then and now. It speaks of Salvation that belongs to God and to God alone and what that salvation looks like.
In its original form, salvation is a word that is not limited to just the spiritual realm, but instead it refers to total wellbeing and wholeness. For the people living in the grasp of the Roman Empire, the “official” source of salvation, of wellbeing, was Rome...but that was not the experience of John’s audience who routinely were the victims of injustice. There is no wholeness and wellbeing when you are being persecuted and slaughtered. So John shows them a vision of God’s empire, where salvation comes from God and God alone.
In God’s empire, there is no room for the injustices and persecutions that the Roman Empire used to dehumanize the early Christians. In God’s empire, salvation means the end of injustice and the restoration of every aspect of human wellbeing for people of all nations and tribes and tongues. In God’s empire, there is no more hunger or thirst…there is no more threat of scorching heat, a wonderful promise for desert dwellers…and God will wipe away every tear, tears of anger, of distress, of sorrow, of bitterness and anguish. Every tear will be wiped away by God himself.
As people who live in the midst of very visible, worldwide, outcries against the injustices of our day and our own great ordeal, we do well to remember, remember the vision of John of a day when there will no longer be room for the things that divide us. Of a day when racism, sexism, ageism and all the other –isms that bring about injustice will no longer have a place where they can thrive and cause people to be seen as less than human in any way, shape, or form. It will be a day in which people of all tribes and nations and peoples and tongues will all come together around throne of God and sing of the salvation that comes from God and God alone and of the victory that has been won for us by the lamb in whose blood we have been washed. And as we remember the saints that have gone before us, the saints with us now, and the saints yet to be born, we remember the song that binds us all - “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Pentecost 18 - Untitled and Incomplete
Pentecost 18
October 16, 2011
Matthew 22:15-22
A rich man went to his rabbi one day in the midst of a personal crisis. So he asked his Rabbi, what must I do to inherit eternal life? The rabbi spoke with him about the commandments, specifically the second table commandments, honor your father and mother, do not steal, do not kill, do not bear false witness, do not commit adultery. At the end of this list of commandments, the young man wiped his brow in relief…he had not broken any of the commandments that the rabbi mentioned. He thanked the rabbi and was getting up to leave when the rabbi spoke up “there is one more thing you need to do…” Hesitating, the man turned around, “Sell all your possessions and give your money to the poor…” The man could feel drops of sweat form on his forehead…the rabbi had never mentioned do not covet because he knew that the man was so possessed by his possessed that to have made this last statement would be a challenge that the young man was not ready to take on yet. And so the young man left the presence of his rabbi, his head hung low in grief over his wealth.
I tell you this story because I think that the interaction between the rich young man and Jesus can help us frame the encounter between Jesus that the disciples of the Pharisees that we just hear about.
It had been a long day for Jesus when the disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians came to speak with him. It was the morning after Jesus had entered Jerusalem and turned the temple upside down…and up to this point in the day, Jesus cursed a fig tree, had his authority questioned by the Pharisees when the returned to the temple and then he told them the parable of the two sons, the parable of the wicked tenants and the parable of the wedding banquet. Earlier that day, the Pharisees had wanted to arrest Jesus…but they did not do so because they were afraid of the crowds because the crowds regarded Jesus as a prophet. But it seems that now the Pharisees have come up with an idea that they think will entrap Jesus in what he says.
So the Pharisees send their disciples, along with some Herodians (a group that almost nothing is known about except for that they were probably Roman sympathizers) to Jesus to ask a simple, but VERY loaded question. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the Emperor?”
Now to those of us living in a society where it has been said that nothing is quite as sure in life as death and taxes, had we been there, we probably would have looked at these guys and said “are you kidding? Taxes are a legal obligation.” And in Israel, there were also taxes to be paid. Each year people were expected to pay the temple tax…however, taxes paid to a civil authority was a relatively new thing.
In the year 6 AD, a census tax was instituted by Rome. It is the tax we hear about in the beginning of Matthew that sent Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. According to Roman law, every adult was responsible for paying this tax, the equivalent to one day’s wages, each year. This tax was the source of quite a bit of anger from the people of Israel, especially the zealots, who had gotten quite violent in their protest.
For Jesus to have responded to the disciples of the Pharisees by saying that paying taxes to the emperor was lawful would have upset the people who had been following him so loyally for years. The zealots who followed him would have especially have taken him to task. On the other hand, for Jesus to have responded that paying taxes to the emperor was unlawful, it would have upset the Herodians, who would have run back to the Roman authorities and reported that Jesus was getting ready to take his “occupy temple street” protest outside of the temple, which the Roman authorities would not have liked very much.
Knowing that they were out to get him, however, Jesus gave neither of these responses. Instead he asks for a coin used to pay the tax. His questioners procure for him a denarius, the currency of the Roman Empire. Whose image is this and what is his title? They answer that the currency bore the head of the emperor on it along with his title, “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus, High Priest.” In a few words, it was a coin with a graven image that equated the emperor with a god. This secular currency was very different from the religious currency used by the Jews.
And so, in one of his more diplomatic moments, Jesus responds “The give to the emperor, that which is the emperor’s, and to God, that which is God’s.” In this one short statement, Jesus shuts down the aim of the Pharisee’s and their cronies. Instead of giving them what they wanted, Jesus acknowledged the civil authority of the emperor…but he also reminded them that God’s empire is bigger than the Roman Empire.
So what does this mean for us who live in a time hundreds years after the fall of the Roman Empire? We who live in a time of economic uncertainty considered to be the worst since the great depression, where “occupy wall street” protests have spread throughout the country, and both sides are crying “class warfare”? And what does this all have to do with the story of the young rich man and Jesus?
I would propose that it all connects through a question that is not asked in this encounter with Jesus and the Pharisee’s cronies but that I wish that Jesus had asked.
“Whose image do you bear, and what is your title?”
We live in a time when our civil currency and the currency with which we give our financial gifts back to God is the same. It is a time when we are being blasted with ads saying that we need the newest and the best things now…and if we miss the boat on the newest gadget we’re going to lose significant status points. Me and mine have caused many to become like the rich young men, guilty of coveting more and more things, letting their possession take possession of them and their lives. The almighty dollar is in a competition with Almighty God for loyalty and sometimes it looks as if we have let the almighty dollar win.
…and it makes you wonder what Jesus would say if he came back now…it would probably be something that would make us want to kill him again, even though he is really just telling us the truth about our situation.
“Whose image do you bear, and what is your title?” Jesus asks us
When we stop to listen to the truth that Jesus has for us, there is some good news…and the good news is that even with the broad grip that civil authority seems to have, God’s authority is bigger and better than civil authority. And not only that, there is good news in the reminder that the image we bear is the image of God…and the title that we bear is child of God. With everything going on in this world, it is the perfect time for us to be reminded we are not defined by our things, we are defined by the image of God that dwells in us. We have been created and claimed by God to go be caretakers of the things that we have been given, but more importantly, we have been called to be caretakers of one another.
This sermon is unfinished in it's written form. In my process of crafting it, I became so frustrated with coming up with a good ending that I decided that it was time to walk away and let the Holy Spirit take over. I have never done this before, but it worked. God is Good.
October 16, 2011
Matthew 22:15-22
A rich man went to his rabbi one day in the midst of a personal crisis. So he asked his Rabbi, what must I do to inherit eternal life? The rabbi spoke with him about the commandments, specifically the second table commandments, honor your father and mother, do not steal, do not kill, do not bear false witness, do not commit adultery. At the end of this list of commandments, the young man wiped his brow in relief…he had not broken any of the commandments that the rabbi mentioned. He thanked the rabbi and was getting up to leave when the rabbi spoke up “there is one more thing you need to do…” Hesitating, the man turned around, “Sell all your possessions and give your money to the poor…” The man could feel drops of sweat form on his forehead…the rabbi had never mentioned do not covet because he knew that the man was so possessed by his possessed that to have made this last statement would be a challenge that the young man was not ready to take on yet. And so the young man left the presence of his rabbi, his head hung low in grief over his wealth.
I tell you this story because I think that the interaction between the rich young man and Jesus can help us frame the encounter between Jesus that the disciples of the Pharisees that we just hear about.
It had been a long day for Jesus when the disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians came to speak with him. It was the morning after Jesus had entered Jerusalem and turned the temple upside down…and up to this point in the day, Jesus cursed a fig tree, had his authority questioned by the Pharisees when the returned to the temple and then he told them the parable of the two sons, the parable of the wicked tenants and the parable of the wedding banquet. Earlier that day, the Pharisees had wanted to arrest Jesus…but they did not do so because they were afraid of the crowds because the crowds regarded Jesus as a prophet. But it seems that now the Pharisees have come up with an idea that they think will entrap Jesus in what he says.
So the Pharisees send their disciples, along with some Herodians (a group that almost nothing is known about except for that they were probably Roman sympathizers) to Jesus to ask a simple, but VERY loaded question. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the Emperor?”
Now to those of us living in a society where it has been said that nothing is quite as sure in life as death and taxes, had we been there, we probably would have looked at these guys and said “are you kidding? Taxes are a legal obligation.” And in Israel, there were also taxes to be paid. Each year people were expected to pay the temple tax…however, taxes paid to a civil authority was a relatively new thing.
In the year 6 AD, a census tax was instituted by Rome. It is the tax we hear about in the beginning of Matthew that sent Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. According to Roman law, every adult was responsible for paying this tax, the equivalent to one day’s wages, each year. This tax was the source of quite a bit of anger from the people of Israel, especially the zealots, who had gotten quite violent in their protest.
For Jesus to have responded to the disciples of the Pharisees by saying that paying taxes to the emperor was lawful would have upset the people who had been following him so loyally for years. The zealots who followed him would have especially have taken him to task. On the other hand, for Jesus to have responded that paying taxes to the emperor was unlawful, it would have upset the Herodians, who would have run back to the Roman authorities and reported that Jesus was getting ready to take his “occupy temple street” protest outside of the temple, which the Roman authorities would not have liked very much.
Knowing that they were out to get him, however, Jesus gave neither of these responses. Instead he asks for a coin used to pay the tax. His questioners procure for him a denarius, the currency of the Roman Empire. Whose image is this and what is his title? They answer that the currency bore the head of the emperor on it along with his title, “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus, High Priest.” In a few words, it was a coin with a graven image that equated the emperor with a god. This secular currency was very different from the religious currency used by the Jews.
And so, in one of his more diplomatic moments, Jesus responds “The give to the emperor, that which is the emperor’s, and to God, that which is God’s.” In this one short statement, Jesus shuts down the aim of the Pharisee’s and their cronies. Instead of giving them what they wanted, Jesus acknowledged the civil authority of the emperor…but he also reminded them that God’s empire is bigger than the Roman Empire.
So what does this mean for us who live in a time hundreds years after the fall of the Roman Empire? We who live in a time of economic uncertainty considered to be the worst since the great depression, where “occupy wall street” protests have spread throughout the country, and both sides are crying “class warfare”? And what does this all have to do with the story of the young rich man and Jesus?
I would propose that it all connects through a question that is not asked in this encounter with Jesus and the Pharisee’s cronies but that I wish that Jesus had asked.
“Whose image do you bear, and what is your title?”
We live in a time when our civil currency and the currency with which we give our financial gifts back to God is the same. It is a time when we are being blasted with ads saying that we need the newest and the best things now…and if we miss the boat on the newest gadget we’re going to lose significant status points. Me and mine have caused many to become like the rich young men, guilty of coveting more and more things, letting their possession take possession of them and their lives. The almighty dollar is in a competition with Almighty God for loyalty and sometimes it looks as if we have let the almighty dollar win.
…and it makes you wonder what Jesus would say if he came back now…it would probably be something that would make us want to kill him again, even though he is really just telling us the truth about our situation.
“Whose image do you bear, and what is your title?” Jesus asks us
When we stop to listen to the truth that Jesus has for us, there is some good news…and the good news is that even with the broad grip that civil authority seems to have, God’s authority is bigger and better than civil authority. And not only that, there is good news in the reminder that the image we bear is the image of God…and the title that we bear is child of God. With everything going on in this world, it is the perfect time for us to be reminded we are not defined by our things, we are defined by the image of God that dwells in us. We have been created and claimed by God to go be caretakers of the things that we have been given, but more importantly, we have been called to be caretakers of one another.
This sermon is unfinished in it's written form. In my process of crafting it, I became so frustrated with coming up with a good ending that I decided that it was time to walk away and let the Holy Spirit take over. I have never done this before, but it worked. God is Good.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
God's Crazy Love
Pentecost 16A
October 2, 2011
Matthew 21:33-46
Isaiah 5:1-7
It’s kind of unsettling, isn’t it? A man sends some of his servants to collect his share of the harvest from the tenants that he has leased his vineyard to…when the tenants kill the servants, the landlord doesn’t send in an army to retaliate but instead sends more servants who meet the same fate. Again, the landlord doesn’t seek revenge or send army or guards or even a small gang of men out to the tenants to deal with the tenants and collect the landlords share of the harvest…instead, he sends his son. The tenants foolishly think that if they remove the son from the scene, they might be the recipients of his inheritance…the vineyard…so they throw him out of the vineyard and kill him too.
But why is this story so unsettling? Depressing even? Is it because of the actions of the father to send more servants to meet the same fate as the first servants? Is it because he then sends his son into that dangerous situation to meet the same fate as the servants? As a land owner, he was obviously a wealthy person, being able to lease out land and then go to a distant country…he could have just as easily hired an army or at least a small group of intimidating men to go to the tenants and collect what the landlord was owed. He didn’t have to send his son, or even the second group of servants. Or is it so unsettling because the tenants have an all too familiar attitude.
The behavior of the landlord is definitely hard to accept because of how easily he was willing to sacrifice his servants after the first group had been killed…and it’s even harder to accept that he was willing to send his son into the mix after seeing what had happened to the servants. The attitude of the tenants should be the behavior that gives us the wakeup call, though. The tenants have entered into a lease agreement with the landlord and then, between entering into the lease and harvest time, they become convinced that the vineyard that they are leasing is theirs to do with as they please. They begin to believe that this absentee landlord doesn’t deserve his cut of the harvest…but maybe, just maybe, if they remove his son from the picture, they will be rewarded with his inheritance and be able to live high on the hog from here on out.
But what do these tenants have to do with us that would give us a wakeup call? We certainly are not tenants in a vineyard. Well, this may be so in a literal case…but if you were to think of this world as God’s vineyard, then yes, we are tenants in a vineyard…and because sin has entered into the picture, we have come to believe that this vineyard is ours to do with as we wish. Over the years, we have polluted the water, the land and the air, we have brought on greater disparity between the rich and the poor and have denied justice to the most vulnerable among us. And when God sends prophets into our midst to help us see where we have gone wrong, we either ignore them or send them a painful message that we’re in charge now and we don’t need anyone’s help to get us out of the mess we are in. That was certainly the reality for the prophet Isaiah, the apostle Paul and it was also what we attempted to tell Jesus. We don’t like God’s servants, his prophets, coming and telling us what we do not want to hear…that we have forgotten the truth of God’s reality, either because we chose to forgot it or because it is so hard to carry out that we ignore it until it seems to go away. But in order for that to happen, those prophets need to go away too. And so we cut the Isaiah’s in two, we behead the Paul’s and hang the Dietrich Bonhoeffers…because when their voices are silent, we can live in blissful ignorance running things the way we want them run…giving to our landlord only when we see fit and how much we see fit.
But the parable of the wicket tenants didn’t end with the death of the landlord’s son, it ended with a question. Now when the owner of the landlord comes, what will he do with those tenants? And we are offered two suggestions. The first suggestion is that the landlord will come and deal those tenants a miserable death and then rent out his land to other tenants. Notice that this suggestion is not offered up by Jesus, but by the Pharisees…the very ones whom this parable is aimed at. Retaliation was a very real reality then, just as it is now…which is why in the old testament we hear about eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth…this text actually limited the level of retaliation that could take place…so if someone knocked out your tooth, the most harm you could do to them would be to take that same tooth from their mouth.
Jesus, however, offers up another solution. One in which the landlord does not give up on the tenants or sink to their level. The solution that Jesus offers is that it was necessary for the son to be rejected so that he might become the foundation of what is to come. He takes his words from the Psalms “the stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; and it is amazing in our eyes.” What Jesus is offering up is an alternative to what comes naturally to humans…an alternative in which the landlord so desires to have a relationship with his tenants that he is willing to risk everything, his servants, even his own son, so that he can reach out to them. Retaliation is not an option to the landlord, only love…crazy, unreasonable, unfathomable love.
These texts from Matthew that we have heard in the last weeks and will be hearing in the next few weeks are incredibly dangerous…they invite the temptation of self-vindication…they invite an attitude of “you got what you had coming.” But that’s not what Jesus is about, it’s not what God’s about…that’s not what the Gospel is about, even if we have to do what Martin Luther said is necessary sometimes…squeeze a text until gospel leaks out of it. Jesus cannot help but share the good news of the Gospel, even in challenging texts like the one for today.
As inhabitants of God’s vineyard, it is incredibly tempting to forget that we are just tenants and that can lead us to behavior that is self-serving and dangerous. It can lead us to hoard the gifts that we have been given by God and it can lead us to want to silence the prophets among us to remind us of the hard work that comes with being God’s people, the tenants of God’s vineyard. But as people of God, we are called to do the hard work of tending God’s vineyard and producing good fruits, justice, righteousness, equality, love. We are called to never give up on this work because we have a God who has never given up on us. God is willing to give us an infinite number of chances, knowing that we cannot be forced into anything. God has a crazy, unreasonable, unfathomable love for us, a love that is willing to risk anything to have a relationship with us. A love so strong that God was willing to destroy his choicest vine in order that life may become available to us.
As Christ hung from the cross, God stood at the foot of that cross with dirty, blistered hands, holding a wilted vine and hurting from the pain of his son, knowing that the rejection of his son by the people was not the end of the vineyard…it was just the beginning.
October 2, 2011
Matthew 21:33-46
Isaiah 5:1-7
It’s kind of unsettling, isn’t it? A man sends some of his servants to collect his share of the harvest from the tenants that he has leased his vineyard to…when the tenants kill the servants, the landlord doesn’t send in an army to retaliate but instead sends more servants who meet the same fate. Again, the landlord doesn’t seek revenge or send army or guards or even a small gang of men out to the tenants to deal with the tenants and collect the landlords share of the harvest…instead, he sends his son. The tenants foolishly think that if they remove the son from the scene, they might be the recipients of his inheritance…the vineyard…so they throw him out of the vineyard and kill him too.
But why is this story so unsettling? Depressing even? Is it because of the actions of the father to send more servants to meet the same fate as the first servants? Is it because he then sends his son into that dangerous situation to meet the same fate as the servants? As a land owner, he was obviously a wealthy person, being able to lease out land and then go to a distant country…he could have just as easily hired an army or at least a small group of intimidating men to go to the tenants and collect what the landlord was owed. He didn’t have to send his son, or even the second group of servants. Or is it so unsettling because the tenants have an all too familiar attitude.
The behavior of the landlord is definitely hard to accept because of how easily he was willing to sacrifice his servants after the first group had been killed…and it’s even harder to accept that he was willing to send his son into the mix after seeing what had happened to the servants. The attitude of the tenants should be the behavior that gives us the wakeup call, though. The tenants have entered into a lease agreement with the landlord and then, between entering into the lease and harvest time, they become convinced that the vineyard that they are leasing is theirs to do with as they please. They begin to believe that this absentee landlord doesn’t deserve his cut of the harvest…but maybe, just maybe, if they remove his son from the picture, they will be rewarded with his inheritance and be able to live high on the hog from here on out.
But what do these tenants have to do with us that would give us a wakeup call? We certainly are not tenants in a vineyard. Well, this may be so in a literal case…but if you were to think of this world as God’s vineyard, then yes, we are tenants in a vineyard…and because sin has entered into the picture, we have come to believe that this vineyard is ours to do with as we wish. Over the years, we have polluted the water, the land and the air, we have brought on greater disparity between the rich and the poor and have denied justice to the most vulnerable among us. And when God sends prophets into our midst to help us see where we have gone wrong, we either ignore them or send them a painful message that we’re in charge now and we don’t need anyone’s help to get us out of the mess we are in. That was certainly the reality for the prophet Isaiah, the apostle Paul and it was also what we attempted to tell Jesus. We don’t like God’s servants, his prophets, coming and telling us what we do not want to hear…that we have forgotten the truth of God’s reality, either because we chose to forgot it or because it is so hard to carry out that we ignore it until it seems to go away. But in order for that to happen, those prophets need to go away too. And so we cut the Isaiah’s in two, we behead the Paul’s and hang the Dietrich Bonhoeffers…because when their voices are silent, we can live in blissful ignorance running things the way we want them run…giving to our landlord only when we see fit and how much we see fit.
But the parable of the wicket tenants didn’t end with the death of the landlord’s son, it ended with a question. Now when the owner of the landlord comes, what will he do with those tenants? And we are offered two suggestions. The first suggestion is that the landlord will come and deal those tenants a miserable death and then rent out his land to other tenants. Notice that this suggestion is not offered up by Jesus, but by the Pharisees…the very ones whom this parable is aimed at. Retaliation was a very real reality then, just as it is now…which is why in the old testament we hear about eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth…this text actually limited the level of retaliation that could take place…so if someone knocked out your tooth, the most harm you could do to them would be to take that same tooth from their mouth.
Jesus, however, offers up another solution. One in which the landlord does not give up on the tenants or sink to their level. The solution that Jesus offers is that it was necessary for the son to be rejected so that he might become the foundation of what is to come. He takes his words from the Psalms “the stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; and it is amazing in our eyes.” What Jesus is offering up is an alternative to what comes naturally to humans…an alternative in which the landlord so desires to have a relationship with his tenants that he is willing to risk everything, his servants, even his own son, so that he can reach out to them. Retaliation is not an option to the landlord, only love…crazy, unreasonable, unfathomable love.
These texts from Matthew that we have heard in the last weeks and will be hearing in the next few weeks are incredibly dangerous…they invite the temptation of self-vindication…they invite an attitude of “you got what you had coming.” But that’s not what Jesus is about, it’s not what God’s about…that’s not what the Gospel is about, even if we have to do what Martin Luther said is necessary sometimes…squeeze a text until gospel leaks out of it. Jesus cannot help but share the good news of the Gospel, even in challenging texts like the one for today.
As inhabitants of God’s vineyard, it is incredibly tempting to forget that we are just tenants and that can lead us to behavior that is self-serving and dangerous. It can lead us to hoard the gifts that we have been given by God and it can lead us to want to silence the prophets among us to remind us of the hard work that comes with being God’s people, the tenants of God’s vineyard. But as people of God, we are called to do the hard work of tending God’s vineyard and producing good fruits, justice, righteousness, equality, love. We are called to never give up on this work because we have a God who has never given up on us. God is willing to give us an infinite number of chances, knowing that we cannot be forced into anything. God has a crazy, unreasonable, unfathomable love for us, a love that is willing to risk anything to have a relationship with us. A love so strong that God was willing to destroy his choicest vine in order that life may become available to us.
As Christ hung from the cross, God stood at the foot of that cross with dirty, blistered hands, holding a wilted vine and hurting from the pain of his son, knowing that the rejection of his son by the people was not the end of the vineyard…it was just the beginning.
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