Jesus' bottom line

Proper 29-A;Nov. 23, 2008

St. Paul’s

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24;Psalm 95:1-7a

Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46

Next Sunday is the First Sunday in Advent. This is Thanksgiving week. Christmas decorations are being hawked – rather frenetically – in the stores. No matter how old we are or how many times we pass through the seasons, it is always a surprise and a mark of how time itself seems to accelerate year by year. We close down yet another year in the church cycle. This is the Sunday of Christ the King. This is a Sunday of apocalypse, of mystery, of judgment.

Jesus completes his big trilogy today. Two weeks ago, with the story of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, we were warned to be ready, to keep alert, to keep our wicks trimmed and our lamps full. Last week we were warned to invest – that the master would come to us demanding an accounting of what we had done with what we had been given. Both of those stories took us off guard a bit – ready for what? Invest – how? What an appropriate story last week’s was for today’s economic market: just what is a prudent investment in volatile times? Just what does the master expect from us? Today we find out.

Today we complete our year’s readings of the Gospel of Matthew and Jesus tells of the final judgment. This is Jesus’ last teaching story before he is crucified. This is the story of the King, Christ the King returning to earth. This Shepherd divides the sheep from the goats, the ones who got it from the ones who didn’t, the ones who invested wisely from the ones who just buried their treasure, and their hearts and their heads, in the sand. This is Jesus’ story of the Last Judgment, and we are held accountable.

So what is it that Jesus wants us, his followers, to do? Are we supposed to say the Lord's Prayer every morning when we get up? Read the Bible cover to cover every three years? Go to church every week, take communion, teach, preach, evangelize? Bring people to church? Increase our faith or increase our pledge? What does it mean to act like Jesus? To set ourselves up as the judge of what is Christian and what is not Christian for other people?

I was told a story about a group of Christians who had come to the final judgment, they were gathered as a great crowd outside the gates of Heaven. They were joyful in their praise of the mighty God they serve. The air was full of loud alleluias, shouts of praise, Praise the Lord! The joy was intoxicating and growing louder and louder as the gatekeeper came down to the gate directed by the King of Heaven himself, King Jesus. As the Gate keeper approached in one direction a group of known sinners came in from behind and were first to come through the gate and then the shouts of joy suddenly and joltingly stopped and from somewhere within the crowd of the joyous good and pious alleluia-shouting people came a loud protest. "Who do they think they are? Coming in here like that!" The Gate of Heaven slammed shut with a mighty crash leaving the crowd on the outside.

That is what this last and final story that Jesus tells is about. Have you fed the hungry? Have you given water to the thirsty? Have you given shelter to the homeless, clothing to the needy? Have you visited the sick? the prisoner? Just what have you done?

This is what the story of the bridesmaids is pointing to – we are supposed to be ready when someone comes to us needing something important. This is how we are to invest – and not merely to invest in a modest way – giving a little here, a little there, skimming off the top so our own pot is not diminished. The master expects us to take all the abundance we have been given and to take big risks: to give profusely, abundantly, extravagantly to those in need.

The king who comes on this day isn’t interested in the niceties of social behavior, is not interested in how well we provide for ourselves, take care of ourselves, feel sorry for ourselves. The king cares only about the bottom line, and this is it: the hungry, the thirsty, the needy, the imprisoned, the sick. What have we done for them, with what we have been given?

Look: God has been good to us. We have blessings in abundance, and at the last judgment we will be called to account for how we have invested these blessings. Were you ready, Jesus will ask. What risks have you taken?

Risk-taking in; prudence out

Proper 28 A; Nov. 16, 2008

St. Paul’s

Judges 4:1-7; Psalm 123

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30

Times are bad.

Times are bad in ancient Israel. The people are living in the Promised Land, delivered there by Moses and Joshua, brought there by God, but the people are not living up to the promise. They can’t get it together. Enemies are attacking. Leaders falter and fail. The people live in hardship and difficulty.

Sound familiar? Times are bad these days, too, even for us living in our own nation blessed with abundant resources – our own “Promised Land.” With mortgages failing, banks closing, jobs ending, drug deals and shootings outside our homes – times are bad. We have elected leaders, who we hope will get us out of this morass – I was thrilled to hear the cheer go up in the dining room the day after the election. By all measures, everyone who comes to eat at St. Paul’s Table is at the bottom of society, working hard in a difficult world just to make ends meet, and for the cheer to erupt there – terrific! That is a sign of real hope.

But you know what? Times are still bad. When will they ever end? What is the way out?

I’m going to let you in on a secret: God has other ideas about how the world is supposed to work. That is a secret, because it gets so covered up by so much other stuff: by greed, violence, power, exploitation, lies, jealousy, selfishness. Deep down in yourself, you know this secret, and you know what covers it up in your life, too. You know what darkness prevents you from seeing what God intends for you and for our world.

Paul does not have to remind the people in Thessalonica that times are bad. “You do not need to have anything written to you,” he writes. The people in Thessalonica know the precariousness of existence, how they delude themselves that they live in peace and security, when the all too real fear is of sudden destruction, of a thief in the night, of no escape. The people of Thessalonica know that the world they live in is dark indeed.

So what do we make of this parable from the 25th chapter of Matthew? This strange and difficult parable where God seems to be playing the part of a cruel and dictatorial tyrant, seemingly as unforgiving of poor financial management as any banker coming down hard on someone who cannot pay her mortgage?

As we try to make sense of this complicated and weird story, let us remember that the gospels, although accounts of the life of Jesus, were written down by people some time after Jesus’ death and resurrection. They were written down by people living in the joy and knowledge and reality of Easter – they are people of the resurrection, for sure. But they were living in bad times. The community who put together the Gospel of Matthew were city dwellers, probably from Antioch, a densely populated city, full of poor people; a cosmopolitan and diverse city, full of people from across the world – people of different cultures and languages, people crowded into a city where there is not enough good housing, not enough work to keep enough food on the table. The current reality of the world does NOT work for them. Why, then, do they still believe in Jesus? In the resurrection? In the Good News? Why do the people Paul writes to in Thessalonica, whom he rightly describes as knowing they have darkness all around them, believe him when he calls them children of the light, children of the day, people who are encouraged and hopeful and alert?

The Bible is written by and for people for whom times are as bad as can be imagined; why, then, are they people of hope?

The Bible is written by and for people who know that if they play the game by the rules the world sets down, they will lose, big time. That’s what this strange parable is about. The slaves do the bidding of the master, and they invest his money by the ways of the world. Some of the slaves are better investors than others; one is extraordinarily prudent, and just buries the money, keeps it just safe enough to return it to the master in tact. This cautious slave even has the courage to confront the master, to call this cruel system for the harsh and fear-mongering system it is. Yet the prudent slave, the one we think did safe thing with the master’s money, the one who took no risks, is called worthless and thrown into the outer darkness. What did the prudent slave forget? What did the prudent slave do wrong?

The prudent slave believed the world. The prudent slave believed he had to hide the money, to hoard it in darkness. The prudent slave believed there was no risk worth taking, that the best he could do was come out even. The prudent slave got caught up in the status quo; the prudent slave followed the rules of the world of scarcity and fear. The prudent slave forgot that God was the God of abundance. Like the bridesmaids in last week’s reading, who forgot to get the oil from the overflowing, never-ending source, the prudent slave thought there was only so much and no more. The prudent slave didn’t get the memo. Wake up. Come out of the darkness. Be alert.

This church, this tiny community, is a place of light. Just by being here we resist the darkness around us, protected, like St. Paul says, by the breastplate of faith and love. We wear our helmet of hope proudly. God has given us a treasure that we are investing boldly, in contrast to the rest of the world that tells us we should move. We should not be here, they say. We should forget the corner of Warren and Pleasant. We should have a church where the nice people live in a nice neighborhood.

But no: like the people who first heard the Gospel of Matthew, here we are, in the only place where that Gospel makes sense. It is only when we risk all that we have, when we invest all that we have, when we become who God truly wants us to be, that we know God’s abundance. This place, which the “powers that be” have abandoned and buried and forgotten, is where God’s light shines. Well done, God says, to us; well done. Now, do more.

Watching for the Word and Wisdom of God

Proper 27-A; Nov. 9, 2008
St. Paul’s
Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16; Psalm 70
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13

When Jesus tells us a parable, it is upsetting. When Jesus tells us a parable, he is shaking up the order of the story. We’re in the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, for crying out loud. The real story is the Easter story, or rather the march to Jerusalem, the passion, the cross, the death, the resurrection. That is the Jesus story, the big narrative of Christianity. When Jesus throws us these curve balls of parables, it shakes us all up. Gets us off track, off balance, off message.

Unless.

Unless we’re not really paying attention to what the story is really about.

You have to admit that today’s parable of 10 bridesmaids is a little odd. It says nothing about wedding customs of 1st century Palestine, or of the ancient Near East – this is not a story drawn from fact.
Yet. This story does come from the end of Jesus’ ministry. This 25th chapter of Matthew contains three important, big stories. They are full of urgency – Jesus is pulling out all the stops to get our attention – to pull what he is doing down to our level. God is acting in history, yes – but God is also acting in history down here, among the ordinary people of this world.

So there are three important, career-topping parables Jesus tells – this one today, and the next two over the next two weeks – and the message for this one is … what?

Be prepared. Be watchful. Keep awake. Open your eyes. Figure out what is going on. Be wise.
Wisdom: it’s been around a long time – Wisdom was present at the creation. Wisdom is a characteristic of the Word of God, of the power of creation. The creation is full of Wisdom; it’s been there from the beginning. But we have to pay attention to find this Wisdom. We have to rise early. We have to be vigilant. We have to focus our minds and our hearts. That’s discernment. We have to be prepared, if we are to find the Wisdom of God.

There is a lot going on in the world, and it is easy to be distracted. Televisions, radios, Ipods, billboards, train whistles, sirens, telephones, chatter, bells, whistles – not to mention falling stock markets, collapsing housing values, foreclosures, jobs lost, bills unpaid – the whole litany of anxieties and worries. This is the world of business as usual, where the business of business tries to rule our lives. Where the dominant powers of greed and fear and violence try to fill our every waking hour.

It wasn’t all that different for the people Jesus was trying to reach, the people to whom Jesus first told this parable of the bridesmaids. Keep awake! He said. Be watchful. Be vigilant. The world will lull you to sleep, and now, right now, you need to pay attention to what is going on. You need to discern the movement of God in these times. You need to seek that ancient Wisdom of God, and it cannot be found if you doze off, or if you’re distracted by all this other stuff.

It’s kind of easy to read these parables of Jesus as being about some far off distant time, about God coming to reign in the by-and-by. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians describes the “rapture,” the archangels’ call, the sound of the trumpet, meeting the Lord in the clouds. Is that what we are to be prepared for? Something terrible and mighty, but something far, far off?

I think when Jesus tells a parable, he is talking about something right close to home, right close to the here and now. Be watchful, bridesmaids, not for some far off, distant event, but for something that is happening right now. Keep awake, right now, for God is doing a new thing, right now. The world you live in – the world of 1st century Palestine – might be bad, you might be suffering under the Roman Empire, taxes outrageous, work unending – you might think those rich and powerful guys have the upper hand in your life – but think again: God is working here and now. God is doing a new thing, here and now. This is how you’re supposed to live in the here and now, Jesus says. Be vigilant. Stay awake. Pay attention. You don’t want to miss it. God is coming. God is here.

Occasionally, even in the world of politics, big things break through. I think the drone of politics can lull us to sleep, and cause us to think nothing will ever change. But occasionally, a big thing breaks through even there, and the election of Barack Obama is such a big thing. And in the context of this big thing, this parable of Jesus’ is for us. It forces us to ask: what is going on here? Where can we find the Wisdom of God in this great movement of the body politic? Be awake. Be vigilant. Where can we find the Wisdom of God in the movement of our lives?

You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea

Proper 26-A/All Saints

Nov. 2, 2008

St. Paul’s

Revelation 7:9-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13; Matthew 23:1-12

Good morning, Saints!

Years ago, when Tim was sharing his church with a Pentecostal Holiness congregation, I was struck by the simplicity and directness of this way of greeting the congregation: Good morning, Saints!

It gets right to the point. And today, on this day when we remember All the Saints, we are making a new one: in a few minutes, Marilyn will be baptized.

All Saints Day is a time to look back: who are the saints in our lives? In our world? The first lesson asks, and answers that question for us:

"Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?" … "These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

It is this great chain of being, Marilyn, that you enter today. Saints who witness, to God’s great glory, and to great human tragedy. Saints who struggle for justice and for the freedom and dignity of every human being. Saints who resist Satan and all the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. Saints who sing and dance, who weep and mourn. Saints who trust and love, who follow and obey, who pray and serve. Welcome, Marilyn. All the saints of God rejoice that you are with us here today.

Marilyn lives here in Brockton, but she comes to us from Nigeria. And soon she will be going back to Nigeria, for a little while, for a great celebration: Marilyn is about to be married – to an Anglican pastor. During coffee hour you can find out more of Marilyn’s story. But the important thing is that today, we are standing here for all of Marilyn’s beloved family. We are standing here for all the saints in Nigeria, who are cheering her on, and waiting for her to come to their congregation.

Another phrase popped into my mind reading these lessons: Word. Have you heard young people say that? It’s another way of saying, Yes! Sure! Right! Right on! Ain’t that the truth! Word!

St. Paul, in his letter to the brothers and sisters in Thessalonica, talks about the Word, and gives the saints kind of a blueprint for what this Word means for Christian living.

“You received the Word of God,” Paul says. The Word is not something you have to work to get. It is the freely given gift of God. And, Paul says, “You heard it from us.” We receive that gift of God’s Word from the lips of other people, people who have heard it before we have, people who have come into our lives in all sorts of ways – people, like the hymn says, who come to us in school, or in lanes or at sea, or in church or on trains or in shops or at tea. The Word always comes to us from others, from people who have been saints to us, and Word! We are the ones to give it to those who need to hear it. That’s what Paul means when he says that God’s Word is at work in us believers. No matter who we are, or what work we do, or how far we travel, or how simply we lead our lives, the Word is at work through us.

But: the Word of God can work through us only if we let it. The Word of God can’t be heard by others unless we proclaim it. The Word of God can’t be seen by others if we keep our doors closed. The Word of God can’t be felt by others if we think we have to pick and choose who we will tell it to, or who we will invite in – or if we don’t invite anybody in.

Saints! We are the Word we have received. Now, let us act like we believe it.

How much can we do? How much do we need?

Proper 25-A Oct. 26, 2008

St. Paul’s Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Psalm 90 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

Matthew 22:34-46

In these recent days, with unimaginable sums of money being discussed, bandied about, lost, traded, borrowed, given, pledged – 700 billion dollars here, 250 million dollars there – I find myself frequently turning to the person next to me and asking, what IS money after all? Where does all this money come from? Is money real? Or is it all a shell game? Who can keep your eye on the ball?

The newspapers are full of stories of the anxieties of the times. Pieces of this huge financial puzzle seem to be crashing down around us – people are being thrown out of their homes, even if they pay their rent, because the people who own the houses are too much in debt to pay for their upkeep, or their taxes, or their mortgages. Far too many people, it seems, thought they could play the angles, rob Peter to pay Paul, keep this plate spinning while putting several others in motion at the same time, and now it is all crashing down like those jugglers we used to see on TV – when I was young, on shows like Ed Sullivan or Captain Kangaroo, back in the dark ages when simple things like that on TV amused us for hours.

This multi-tasking culture seems to have gotten a little out of hand, and people are beginning to notice the toll it is taking on us as individuals, and on us as a society. I’ve noticed several times recently, in the press, mention of studies that say people just can’t do more than one thing at a time. There are those terrible stories of young people sending text messages – this requires using two hands to type and look at the words you are typing on a tiny phone keyboard – while driving – and then losing control of their cars and crashing. Yet even talking on the phone while driving is distracting and dangerous. How often do people answer e-mail while talking on the phone, or students do homework while watching TV, downloading music, checking multiple facebook pages? Really, the scientists are telling us, it cannot be done. With all this stuff, this stimulation, these constant demands and interruptions, we lose concentration. Our brains and our bodies are not designed to work well with this frenzy of speed and stress. The way we are made, we can only focus on one or two things at a time. Multi-tasking does not make us more efficient: just the opposite. We are fragmented and unable to do what we are doing well. “As our minds fill with noise,” one scientist wrote, “the brain gradually loses its capacity to attend fully and gradually to anything,” inducing in us “a constant low level of panic and guilt.”[i]

The big international financial managers feel this; we feel this, even in our ordinary daily lives. Multi-tasking and its discontents are in the air we breathe.

Today’s gospel is for us:

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"

That question cuts through all the noise, doesn’t it? In the face of all that is around us, Teacher, all the confusion and crashing that affects even us little people here, what does God want us to do?

The Gospels present us with the picture of a changing world. The old understanding of faith in God – follow all the many laws, listen to the authorities like scribes and Pharisees – the ones who symbolically sat in Moses’ seat – is being challenged by this one particular teacher, this Jesus, who seems to embody in his person all the hope and good news and promise of God, the God who has been made known through the law and the prophets. Whom do we follow? We can hear the concern in the voices of the people: if we follow Jesus, do we have to abandon everything we have known about God up to now?

From the midst of all these questions and confusions and options and interpretations, Jesus breaks through with remarkable simplicity:

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

What Jesus is saying is, Keep your faith where it has always been: with God. As he spars with those religious leaders trying to entrap him into making some big mistake, he makes it clear that his faith is with God, and with the essentials that God has always, always, always been trying to get across to us. This is the big thing that everything hangs from. This is the start, the first, the banner headline screaming across the top of the newspaper:

Love God.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Everything starts with this. Anything else is distraction, multi-tasking with no result, mere interruptions that take us away from giving ourselves fully to the God who loves us and wants us to love back, and wants us to love all these other people whom God loves, too. In this ever-widening circle of care and concern lies our treasure, our heart, our true home.

The newspaper article I read on the high cost of multi-tasking ends with this:

So the next time the phone rings and a good friend is on the line, try this trick: Sit on the couch. Focus on the conversation. Don’t jump up, no matter how much you feel the need to clean the kitchen. It seems weird, but stick with it. You, too, can learn the art of single-tasking.[ii]

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. You, too, can learn the art of single-tasking.

---

[i] “Multitasking can make you lose … um … focus” by Alina Tugend, The New York Times, Oct. 25, 2008, p. B7.

[ii] Ibid.

Proper 24-A 10/19/2008
St. Paul’s
Exodus 33:12-23; Psalm 99; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22

Whose head is this, and whose title?

I remember in the 1970s, a lot of people advocated not paying the federal tax on our phone bills, because that federal phone tax went right to the military. Tax resistance was one way people could resist war, and this passage from Matthew was often cited on both sides of that debate. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” No, said the tax resisters, Christians should not pay unlawful war taxes. Yes, said others. Taxes are of this world, and Jesus said we had a duty to support the rulers of this world, even with our taxes, even if our true loyalties lie with God.

I don’t know where you would land on the war tax resistance debate, but the point is, this passage is not about whether religious people should pay taxes; people in 1st century Palestine paid a lot of taxes. Jews had to pay the Temple tax – 21 percent! Everyone had to pay customs taxes on what goods they traded. If you were a farmer (and 90 percent of the population were farmers), two-thirds of what you earned went to the Roman and Jewish elite, through a combination of how much you were taxed and who owned the land you farmed. In those days, they really ensured that the rich got rich and the poor got poorer. But with this coin with the face of Caesar – this was really offensive to Jews, to all Jews, who lived by God’s commandment not to make graven images (remember last week’s story of the golden calf?). This coin with the face of Caesar had to be used to pay the tribute tax to the Roman Empire. If you used this coin with the graven image to pay the tribute tax, you were breaking one of the Commandments handed down by God to Moses. If you did not use this coin – if you did not pay the tax – the Romans would lock you up for sedition, and that is much worse than being audited by the IRS.

Just about everyone who reads this passage from Matthew acknowledges that Jesus knows that his opponents are trying to trick him with this question, and so he cleverly avoids the trap. He dismisses the problem with the coin as not a theological one at all: this coin obviously belongs to Caesar, so give it back to him. So what? It’s only money.

Then he lays out the theological problem: Give to God what belongs to God.

In our lives, what does belong to our equivalent to Caesar? In our lives, what does belong to God? Most of us, most of the time, pay taxes. “Caesar” has to know how much money we have, or how much we spend, in order to tax us, and here in the United States, many people spend a lot of money, both legally and under the table, to avoid paying taxes. A lot of people aren’t even “rendering unto Caesar” but shaving a little (or a lot) off the top before Caesar knows what’s happening.

So what do we do with that money that is NOT rendered unto Caesar? With that money that, in the United States at least, does not go into fixing the roads on which we all drive, or the emergency services we all hope will be there when we need them, or the schools where we learned to read and write? How many people seem to exercise a “preferential option for middle class living over living the gospel?” If we’re not giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s, are we giving to God what is God’s?

Think about it: What is God’s? What do we owe God?

Our good friends the Sisters of St. Margaret are here today to talk about the work they are doing with the people in Haiti whose lives, livelihoods and homes were destroyed or damaged by hurricanes, floods and landslides. I think many people in Haiti were very poor already, like those poor farmers in 1st century Palestine, and like 1st century Palestine, those who own the land and collect the taxes in Haiti get the first cut of whatever the people earn.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s; give to God what is God’s.

Brockton is not a wealthy community. Many of us in this congregation depend on the kindness of others to get through the week. Many of us count on that meal at St. Paul’s Table. Many of us know what it is like to have our homes threatened or even taken from us. Many of us know what it is to lose our jobs or not to be able to make a living. Many of us know the worry of not being able to take care of our children. Some of us cheat a little bit to evade paying taxes, and for others of us, Caesar is very harsh indeed.

We, more than many people, know what the people of Haiti have gone through. We also know how hard it is to offer care and food and shelter day after day to the people who have very little left after Caesar has extracted his due.

We thank you, sisters, for being here today, to remind us that the world is a very small place, and to remind us that as harsh as Caesar can be, this world, and all of us in it, belong to God. Thank you for helping us give to God what is God’s.

Whose image is this?

Proper 24-A

10/19/2008

St. Paul’s

Exodus 33:12-23,Psalm 99, 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10, Matthew 22:15-22

I started out the sermon by passing out coins, and asking the congregation,

Whose head is this, and whose title?

I remember in the 1970s, a lot of people advocated not paying the federal tax on our phone bills, because that federal phone tax went right to the military. Tax resistance was one way people could resist war, and this passage from Matthew was often cited on both sides of that debate. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” No, said the tax resisters, Christians should not pay unlawful war taxes. Yes, said others. Taxes are of this world, and Jesus said we had a duty to support the rulers of this world, even with our taxes, even if our true loyalties lie with God.

I don’t know where you would land on the war tax resistance debate, but the point is, this passage is not about whether religious people should pay taxes; people in 1st century Palestine paid a lot of taxes. Jews had to pay the Temple tax – 21 percent! Everyone had to pay customs taxes on what goods they traded. If you were a farmer (and 90 percent of the population were farmers), two-thirds of what you earned went to the Roman and Jewish elite, through a combination of how much you were taxed and who owned the land you farmed. In those days, they really ensured that the rich got rich and the poor got poorer.

But with this coin with the face of Caesar – this was really offensive to Jews, to all Jews, who lived by God’s commandment not to make graven images (remember last week’s story of the golden calf?). This coin with the face of Caesar had to be used to pay the tribute tax to the Roman Empire. If you used this coin with the graven image to pay the tribute tax, you were breaking one of the Commandments handed down by God to Moses. If you did not use this coin – if you did not pay the tax – the Romans would lock you up for sedition, and that is much worse than being audited by the IRS.

Just about everyone who reads this passage from Matthew acknowledges that Jesus knows that his opponents are trying to trick him with this question, and so he cleverly avoids the trap. He dismisses the problem with the coin as not a theological one at all: this coin obviously belongs to Caesar, so give it back to him. So what? It’s only money.

Then he lays out the theological problem: Give to God what belongs to God.

In our lives, what does belong to our equivalent to Caesar? In our lives, what does belong to God?

Most of us, most of the time, pay taxes. “Caesar” has to know how much money we have, or how much we spend, in order to tax us, and here in the United States, many people spend a lot of money, both legally and under the table, to avoid paying taxes. A lot of people aren’t even “rendering unto Caesar” but shaving a little (or a lot) off the top before Caesar knows what’s happening.

So what do we do with that money that is NOT rendered unto Caesar? With that money that, in the United States at least, does not go into fixing the roads on which we all drive, or the emergency services we all hope will be there when we need them, or the schools where we learned to read and write? How many people seem to exercise a “preferential option for middle class living over living the gospel?”

If we’re not giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s, are we giving to God what is God’s?

Then I handed out pieces of paper and pencils, and asked,

Think about it: What is God’s? What do we owe God?

Does anyone want to share with the rest of us what you think?

Our good friends the Sisters of St. Margaret are here today to talk about the work they are doing with the people in Haiti whose lives, livelihoods and homes were destroyed or damaged by hurricanes, floods and landslides. I think many people in Haiti were very poor already, like those poor farmers in 1st century Palestine, and like 1st century Palestine, those who own the land and collect the taxes in Haiti get the first cut of whatever the people earn.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s; give to God what is God’s.

Brockton is not a wealthy community. Many of us in this congregation depend on the kindness of others to get through the week. Many of us count on that meal at St. Paul’s Table. Many of us know what it is like to have our homes threatened or even taken from us. Many of us know what it is to lose our jobs or not to be able to make a living. Many of us know the worry of not being able to take care of our children. Some of us cheat a little bit to evade paying taxes, and for others of us, Caesar is very harsh indeed.

We, more than many people, know what the people of Haiti have gone through. We also know how hard it is to offer care and food and shelter day after day to the people who have very little left after Caesar has extracted his due.

We thank you, sisters, for being here today, to remind us that the world is a very small place, and to remind us that as harsh as Caesar can be, this world, and all of us in it, belong to God. Thank you for helping us give to God what is God’s.

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Notes: From Marcus Borg, “What belongs to God?” http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/2000/04/What-Belongs-To-God.aspx

From the Rev. Patrick Brennan, “30 Good Minutes,” http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/brennan_3711.htm

www.ssmbos.org

Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth: Economics in 2008

Proper23-A 10/12/2008 St. Paul’s

Exodus 32:1-14 Psalm 106

Philippians 4:1-9 Matthew 22:1-14

There is a party, at the bank. The bank president has mortgages to give out. He wants people to own their own homes. For some reason, the people he calls on first – people with good credit, with money in the bank – aren’t interested. They don’t come to the mortgage party. So the bank president sends the tellers out and they bring in all sorts of people, some with good credit and some with bad credit, people who had never owned homes, people who were new to American life and to American banking, as well as old timers, people who had all their paperwork in order and people who could not read or write English. All these people were called in, good and bad, and invited to get a mortgage. Then the bank president sees one of these unprepared people, no papers filled out, no credit, not much of a job, and he singles him out. “Friend, how did you get in here without papers?” The man was speechless. Then the bank president said to the security guards, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called to own a home and get a mortgage, but few are chosen.”

There is another party. This one is on Wall Street. This time the chairman of the Federal Reserve invites all the bank presidents, good and bad: the ones who loaned money to people with good credit, to people who could pay their mortgages, and the ones who loaned money to everyone, to people with no papers, no credit, no money. The ones who cared about people who wanted to own their own homes, even if they didn’t have too much money, the ones who wanted to help people, as well as the bad bank presidents, who just took advantage of people who didn’t have too much money. The chairman of the Federal Reserve looked around at the bank presidents, good and bad, and saw which ones were the best prepared for the party, which ones had made the most money. And then he grabbed one of the bank presidents by the scruff of the neck and said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without hedge funds or derivatives, without mortgage-backed securities or sub-prime loans?” And the bank president was speechless. Then the chairman of the Federal Reserve said to the Securities and Exchange Commission, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called but few are chosen.”

Someone has been having a party in the desert with our money. Someone has taken all our jewelry and our homes and our retirement accounts and our nest eggs, and melted them down into a big golden calf. And we were invited to this party, and we all went, the good and the bad. And just like thousands of years ago in that far off desert at the foot of Mt. Sinai, God is angry. God is ready to throw everybody into the outer darkness – more than weeping and gnashing of teeth: this time God’s wrath will consume us like a hot fire.

What lessons these are for an anxious time. Are we headed into a depression? Will we all be turned out into the streets? Are we nothing but sinners in the hand of an angry God?

Are these two stories, one from Exodus and one from the Gospel of Matthew, about God’s wrath? Or God’s judgment? Or is that the same thing?

Many people do believe that God is a punishing God, that God’s judgment means we can never measure up, that we have disobeyed, that God is angry, and that that is the end of us.

Look again at what Moses did. Moses is himself pretty angry with this golden calf-fest. He sees this seemingly irreparable division between God and God’s people – between God’s expectations for their living the way God would have them live and the people’s gold-crazed worship of something else – and Moses steps right into that breach. Moses asks God to change his mind, to turn away from that justifiable anger and remember how much God loves these people, however wayward and selfish and whiny and stiff-necked they are. Moses reminds God of the promise GOD made to these very same people, and God changes his mind. There could be no worse sinners than those people who took all their money, their future, their assets, their gold, all that they had, and dumped it into something as foolish as a golden calf. There are no worse sinners than these – but the hand that holds them is the hand of a God who loves them and who keeps his promises. The story of the golden calf is a story not of God’s wrath but of God’s grace.

When Jesus tells this very troubling story of the wedding banquet, the illustrations he uses – the kingdom of heaven, the king, the slaves, the guests the wedding, the wedding garment – these are not religious images. Today we think they are religious, because we have read them for 2000 years in the Bible. But in Jesus’ day they were illustrations from the secular world. People would recognize the powerful and capricious king, the kind of ruler who had absolute control over their lives. They would recognize the arrogant ones who refused to show up, the thugs who would follow violent, death-dealing orders without question, the slaves and poor people who would cower in fear, not understanding what was going on and not knowing what would happen next. And so is this a story of God’s wrath? Or of God’s judgment? And is there any difference?

This is a story full of symbols. The kingdom of heaven represents the way the world operates when God is in charge. The wedding banquet represents the abundance of God’s grace. Who gets invited in? Everybody: the good and the bad. Even after the first guests refuse to attend, God does not seek out only the good ones – God still invites everyone in. In the kingdom of heaven there is always enough to go around. Even though all is provided – not only food but wedding clothes as well – and even at that late hour, someone is not ready. Someone does not accept the full invitation. Someone still refuses God’s grace. Someone still doesn’t get it about how God wants us to live.

The people to whom Jesus preached lived in difficult times. They lived lives of insecurity and fear, under the threat of violence and in a land where powerful people called the shots. From the point of view of life in these United States this week, we can resonate with that kind of life.

When Jesus spoke to people around him about the kingdom of heaven, he didn’t mean something far off, pie in the sky by and by. He used language that described their current reality – a reality of fear and powerlessness and insecurity – and told them that the world did not have to be like that. He told them that God was on their side. That the king would throw the scalawags out, the ones not prepared to accept God’s invitation to live as God would have them live.

Yes, this is a story of God’s judgment, but it is a story of hope. There are things that God will just not put up with, Jesus says. The world as it is – of greed, and homelessness, and violence, and fear – is not the way it has to be.

When I was preparing this sermon, and first read over the lessons, I thought that Philippians lesson -- I can’t preach on that. Too simplistic, too happy for the news of the week. But now I think just the opposite. The Philippians passage is what the wedding banquet is all about. The Philippians passage describes the life God invites us to share, for the abundance of the wedding banquet is all around us. Rejoice, God says. Be gentle. The Lord is near. Don’t worry. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, whatever is excellent, whatever is praiseworthy: think on THESE things. In times like this, this may pass all understanding, but this truly is the peace of God.

God's Economy

Proper 22-A Oct. 5, 2008 St. Paul’s
Exodus 20:1-4,7-9,12-20 Philippians 3:4-14 Psalm 19 Matthew 21:33-46

What if the Federal Reserve, or the U.S. Treasury, or the House Banking Committee, ran by God’s rules? God cares a lot about the economy, if the Gospels are any measure of God’s interests and activities. So think about it: in this perplexing and violent parable – sometimes titled “the wicked husbandman” – Jesus is making the case that God cares about what we do with what we have been given. “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”
What if God said that to the Federal Reserve? To the U.S. Treasury? To the lenders of sub-prime mortgages? To derivatives traders and hedge fund managers – who ever they are and whatever they do?

“God’s economy” means the way God organizes God’s household, and so what are the rules for living in God’s household? This text reminds us that the penalty is pretty stiff for breaking them – “a miserable death” – so let’s look a little closer at what we have here. If God’s household is this vineyard, then one of the crisis points in the year is the time of harvest. The crop has ripened at once, and there is not a moment to lose to get in all in. Such a crisis is fraught with opportunity and peril. “The harvest is plentiful,” Matthew has Jesus say elsewhere, “but the laborers are few.”

The vineyard, in Biblical imagery, represents sacred land, God’s land, the symbolic place where the people live in obedience to God, to the Torah, the comprehensive way of life that marks what it is to be a Jew. The Torah, or the Law, begins with those 10 Commandments God gave to Moses, and you could say that for a faithful Jew – a faithful Jew like Jesus, or his disciple, Matthew – obedience to the Law is like living always in God’s sacred vineyard. Outside the vineyard, beyond the hedge, is the land of the unfaithful, the wicked, the disobedient, the alien.

But as we read this story, God is not pleased with those who were given the vineyard, who were given the great gift of this relationship with God, this great abundance of the goodness of life. They have squandered all these opportunities. The grapes are sour, wild, useless; all will be laid to waste, the laborers sent “to a miserable death.” All that privilege, all that power, all those riches – all will be taken away from the original tenants and given to those who know the rules of God’s economy, to people who will produce “the fruits of the kingdom.”

Another word for the “kingdom” or “reign” of God is “commonwealth.” It came into English usage around the time of the reformation, the 16th century, and refers to the welfare, or wealth or weal, held in common by all the people. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was indeed that kind of “commonwealth.”

When we talk about the kingdom of God, or the reign of God, we know who is on top, who is King of kings, Lord of lords. But the more I think about it, the more I find the word “commonwealth” gets to the heart of what God has in mind for us. God has a created the world, which the people of God hold in common. We are all stewards of this common wealth. The vineyard is an especially rich and blessed part of this commonwealth, and God sends some stewards in just to care for it. But they have neglected their duty to the common good. They have squandered the resources, or kept the wealth to themselves, rather than producing the fruits to be shared for the general welfare of all the people.

When we think of this world as a “kingdom,” our lines of responsibility or accountability only go up, to God. Or take the more modern image of “corporation,” where the managers are accountable only to the shareholders and their bottom line. But by using the word “commonwealth,” those ties of accountability and responsibility reach out to all the community, as well as up to the one who has created this wonderful world we all share.

Maybe this is where “secular” economists have gotten into trouble. They were hoarding this wealth as “theirs alone,” rather than understanding that the wealth belongs to God, and that the uses to which we put this wealth should be God’s uses, for God’s people, for the restoration of the vineyard, for the repair of God’s broken world. I have a hymn from that “commonwealth” tradition in England, a hymn that I think should be the theme song of the people during this time of crisis: when we see people thrown out of their homes, the value of their retirement savings crashing, jobs disappearing, city and state governments not able to pay their bills:

God is the only landlord: a response to the mortgage crisis

4. God is the only Landlord
To whom our rents are due.
God made the earth for everyone
And not for just a few.
The four parts of creation --
Earth, water, air, and fire --
God made and ranked and stationed
For everyone's desire.

5. God made the earth for freedom
And God alone is Lord,
And we will win our birthright
By truth's eternal sword;
And all the powers of darkness
And all the hosts of pride
Shall pass and be forgotten
For God is by our side.