Life is NOT fair

Proper 20-A
Sept. 21, 2008
Exodus 16:2-15; Psalm 105; Philippians 1:21-20; Matthew 20:1-16

Some of us here are old enough to remember when Jimmy Carter was president. Among the many things that Carter said that no one seemed to like was this comment about a woman on public assistance complaining that she was not getting something due her: “Life is not fair,” Carter said. The press went ballistic. Here was this Baptist, famous for being a born-again Christian, and he says to a poor woman, “Life is not fair.”

The Israelites, wandering in the wilderness, were convinced that life was not fair. Oh, they longed for the fleshpots of Egypt – captivity was better, thought some, than this wandering, lost and hungry, in the desert. They were beginning to doubt that Moses could come through on the promise from God, that he would lead these people to the Promised Land. If we had it bad before, we have it worse now; life is not fair.

So what does God do with these grumblers, these whiners who say life is not fair? God gives them bread – not just a fair portion of bread, but more bread than they can eat. More bread than they deserve. Manna from heaven. Bread upon bread upon bread; life is not fair.
That’s what Jesus is saying in this parable of the workers in the vineyard. Well, maybe he’s saying, Life is partly fair. The workers who labored all day get their full wages. That’s fair. The workers who only put in an hour get a full day’s wages, too. That’s not fair. Life is not fair, but sometimes you get more than you should.

There are a couple ways to look at this parable. The workers in the vineyard live on the bottom rung of the social ladder. Their daily wage, scholars think, was just enough to feed and shelter their families for one day. Jesus is therefore not implying that the landowner is paying his workers extravagantly. He is, however, generous and merciful to all these poor workers, even those who have not put in a full day’s work. Even they will get enough to live on. In the kingdom of heaven, therefore, everyone will get enough. There are no distinctions based on how much you earn; everyone who hears the call to go to the vineyard gets what each deserves, which is, enough. “Acceptance of that invitation – not worthiness to receive it – is all that matters.”

Another way to look at this parable is to place it in what some would say is its original context. Many people – Jewish leaders, Pharisees – criticized Jesus for spending time and eating with disreputable sinners. You can read this parable as Jesus’ making a case for his behavior against the pious who condemned him. If God (the landowner) is merciful to the poor, then I am just doing what God would do. Are you envious because I – because God – is generous? You have enough to meet your needs; why should I not care about these poor?
Both interpretations, slightly different, take us to the same place. In the kingdom of heaven, a different economic system operates. There is always enough to go around. You can’t get ahead, not matter how hard you work or how skilled you are. Your degree or your skill or your work experience don’t matter; in the kingdom of heaven, life is not fair.

I find it hard to live by these far out kingdom of heaven rules. For several years now we have had a few little sayings, printed nicely, framed and posted around the house, in hopes of inspiring our children to more responsible behavior. “Boredom is a matter of choice, not circumstance.” And “Shirkers get paid what they are worth.” These moral messages did not sink in very deeply with my children, who continue to scatter candy wrappers around, not pick up their dirty dishes, slack off on their homework and expect me to fund their excursions to some place where they can have fun! It sounds like they think they’re already in the kingdom of heaven, and I don’t think they’ve earned it! Why, the next time they complain about being hungry, God might just drop down some manna from heaven, just when I was trying to teach them a lesson about duty and responsibility!

If the kingdom of heaven is not fair, it is just, at least as God defines justice. God’s justice is merciful, abundant, generous, with compassion especially for those who do not appear to deserve it. Those of us who have more than we need don’t always like to hear God’s version of who should get what and how much is “enough.”

On the other hand, perhaps the “work” that is needed in the vineyard of the Lord has nothing to do anyway with what we think is important. Perhaps we are not the good “do-bees” we think we are after all. Perhaps the work Jesus wants us to do mirrors his behavior – his compassion, his mercy, forgiveness. Perhaps those things we think are important just don’t matter to Jesus, and by those standards, we are the shirkers. We are those lazy workers who come in at the end of the day, the ones who really have not put in our time laboring in the fields of the Lord. If we look at it from that point of view, God is being very generous to us who have not done our part. God is not fair.

These parables of the kingdom turn the world upside down. They offer a counter-cultural standard to what our world says is important. Shirkers do get paid what they are worth, but in the kingdom, they are worth very much indeed.

WWJD????

Proper 19-A

September 14, 2008

Exodus 14:19-31; Ps. 114; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35

Do you remember the little slogan, “WWJD” or “What Would Jesus Do?” woven into friendship bracelets or embroidered on backpacks? Some people resonate with it, of course; perhaps they are VERY sure what Jesus would do in any situation and equally sure that they would do it, too. Others kind of cringe, recoiling from what they think smacks of fundamentalism and a simplistic reading of the Gospel.

Actually, I think it is a very good question, a proper and even an easy question to ask. It is, however, not such an easy question to answer, or to hear the answer Jesus might make.

Peter’s question to Jesus is a version of “WWJD.” Just how far should my forgiveness go when someone has really been bad to me? What would you do, Jesus?

As is the case with many of the parables in Matthew, Jesus tells a story to illustrate his position. The story comes from one world – the everyday world of economics, of right and wrong, of do’s and don’ts – but the meaning of the story lies in quite a different world, the world of unlimited, abundant, overflowing, embarrassing, foolish mercy and grace. The master is willing to forgive every last cent of debt owed him by the slave, but the slave does not learn this lesson well. This time, the master’s mercy turns to wrath. If Jesus is the master, we can then understand what Jesus would do when asked to forgive: he would forgive abundantly. It seems pretty clear that the one forgiven should also do as Jesus did: forgive the debts owed him. What does Jesus do then? I’m afraid it’s not a pretty picture.

Forgiveness is possible, easy, even, on the micro level. That’s what Peter was referring to, the church: how do we live in community with our sisters and brothers? Here, the ability to forgive is essential. But what about on the macro level? Do we dare take what we have learned “at home” and apply it to the “real world?”

Take a very current example: the foreclosure crisis. Lots of people got in over their heads in loans that they, in the long run, could not afford. Some people would say, these poor souls reached out for more than should have, they took out loans from shaky creditors, they bought more of a house than they should have, it’s too bad, but they will have to take the consequences. Others say, those mortgage holders were the victims of predatory lenders, who took advantage of the eagerness to own their own home, their unfamiliarity with how mortgage financing worked. No one should be thrown out of their home; the government should step in and help them keep their houses. What would Jesus do? If he were a banker? Or the Secretary of the Treasury? Forgive the debt? Force the one who made the mistake to pay?

Last week we talked about how Jesus the rabbi applied the concept of “binding” or “loosing” a commandment. We talked about how Jesus never advocated breaking a commandment – some, such as love of God and love of neighbor, would actually be strengthened – but the interpretation of others would be loosened. Forgiveness is more important than the amount of debt owed. The sabbath is made for man, not man for the sabbath. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

What would Jesus do? It’s a very good question. The answers, however, I think come from the commandments that emphasize relationships over hard and fast rules. The answers are best formulated in a community, in the push and pull of friendships and commitments, where what we think is the “right” answer is challenged by someone else’s opposite version of the “right” answer. What would Jesus do about the foreclosure crisis? What would Jesus do about health care? What would Jesus do about immigration reform? I might think I have the answer, but I just might learn more about what Jesus would do from the answer you have, or from the opinion you have formed from reading the gospel, or from the facts you bring to the table from your experience or point of view.

That’s life in community. We don’t check out brains at the doors of this church, because we realize the gospel presents us with some real challenges for our lives. In order to rise to those challenges, we have to be a community where all of us can ask hard questions and hear some answers, in the context of our conversations, our relationships, our listening to not only what Jesus would do but what Jesus would have us do.

Binding and Loosing, Part 2

Proper 18A
Sept. 7, 2008
Exodus 12:10-14;Psalm 149; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

Even the pastor of Sarah Palin’s church in Wasilla, Alaska, confesses to having a diverse congregation. The Bible is the Word of God, Pastor Kroon was reported saying in a newspaper article about the Wasilla Baptist Church[i]. “The task of believers is to ponder and analyze the book for meaning – including scrutiny, he said, for errors and mistranslations over the centuries that may have obscured the original intent.”

Oh, the Wasilla Baptist Church is definitely a socially and theologically conservative congregation, but even there, in that small town that a week ago none of us had heard of but that today is the bellwether for the “real America,” even there at the Wasilla Baptist Church, even that much latitude to discover what the words of the Bible really mean to us today, is too tight a fit for some people. People in Wasilla, like people everywhere, are searching for meaning, and wondering how their story fits with God’s story, or Jesus’ story, but many people can go only so far.

Mr. Kroon said the Alaskan spirit of go-it-alone individuality gives the church a mix of joiners and resolute nonjoiners. The church offers full-emersion water baptism, which some people want and others do not.

“I have people who’ve been here since I got here [30 years ago], and they still say don’t put me on the membership roll,” he said. “There’s definitely a cultural element.”

Just what does the Bible mean to us today, and just how much of it do we have to take as, you should pardon the expression, “Gospel truth?”

Now the Gospel of Matthew, our first Gospel in the New Testament, is in many ways the most Jewish of the Gospels. Reading it from cover to cover, as it were, we can discern that Matthew sees the community around Jesus as a community of disciples around a rabbi – a substantially different rabbi, for Jesus truly is the manifestation of God on earth – Emmanuel – God with us – but a rabbi nonetheless. A teacher who stands in the tradition of generations of teachers, and who is well versed in how scripture has been read for generations. A teacher who, like all the other rabbis, knows how to make a good argument.

For thousands of years, people have been wrestling with what the Bible means for them in their lives. The people at the Wasilla Baptist Church have no corner on that. And like the pastor at the Wasilla Baptist Church, people have been struggling to figure out what the words in the Bible originally meant, and what has been added on over time, and how to apply what the words in the Bible originally meant to today, where we live, light years away from the people who originally heard those words.

Our Gospel lesson today is a little déjà vu from our lesson of two weeks ago. Both passages have a lot in common. In both passages we find the only time “the church” is mentioned in Gospels. In both passages, we hear Jesus talking about “binding” and “loosing.” So these passages are important. They say something about the character of Christian community, something about how Jesus wants his disciples to live.

Today, Jesus is talking about how to resolve conflicts. He lays out some rules, which some people and some churches take quite literally. If church members disagree in some churches, this is what they have to do, to the point of expelling the one who resists this “Christian” method of conflict resolution. But then Jesus says,

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on early will be loosed in heaven. If two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.

Binding and loosing. For generations rabbis had debated about the law. All of the law is sacred, every jot and tittle, which means every comma and squiggle of punctuation. But in some circumstances, the strict application of the law can be loosened a bit, and Jesus was famous for that. Take, for example, the commandment to love your neighbor. Remember Jesus’ summary of the law: “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and to love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” When the question arose about, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus bound that law, strengthened it, tied it, to a universal understanding of neighbor that included even enemies. “‘You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” Similarly, starting from those two commandments – love of God and love of neighbor as self – Jesus, the rabbi, would loose the law, such as the law prohibiting work on the Sabbath. If people are hungry and it is the Sabbath and they have no food, or if someone is in need of healing, then they may loose the law and do those works. That does not break the law, for it is still forbidden to work on the Sabbath – but the demands of the circumstances – the time, the place, the burning need of the neighbor – demand that the observance of the law be stretched on this occasion.[ii]

And so how does Jesus want us to interpret the Word of God? Do we do everything he says? Do we have to work out our conflicts just like this? St. Paul lays out some of the original 10 Commandments given to Moses as part of Exodus story: “You shall not commit adultery. You shall not commit murder. You shall not steal. You shall not covet.” But then Paul, himself a rabbi, loosens those commandments, even as he binds the one that is more important: “’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

We may not agree with what the Bible means to, say, the people of the Wasilla Baptist Church. Even within this congregation we may find that the words of the Bible mean different things to different people. If the wisdom of generations of rabbis is any clue, these differences of opinion are nothing new. We are able to disagree – even when two or three of us are gathered together – because we are embraced in unity and in love by the one who has gathered us together, the one who is Emmanuel, God-with-us, the One who insists that we follow his commandment of love.

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[i] “In Palin’s Worship and Politics, a Desire to Follow God’s Will” by Kirk Johnson and Kim Severson (The New York Times, September 6, 2008, p. 1,A12)

[ii] Mark Allan Powell, “Binding and loosing: a paradigm for ethical discernment from the Gospel of Matthew;” Currents in Theology and Mission, 2003

Binding and Loosing, part 1

Proper 16-A August 24, 2008 St. Paul’s

Exodus 1:8-2:10;Psalm 124;Romans 12:1-8;Matthew 16:13-20

When my daughter was seven, she went to church with some Roman Catholic friends. The mother explained to Laura that since her friend hadn’t made her first communion, the girls wouldn’t take the sacrament today. Laura, who had been receiving communion since she had been baptized as a baby, Harumphed, and said, “Who’s in charge here?” Her friend’s mother was taken aback, and after the service went to the priest and introduced Laura as her daughter’s friend, who was used to receiving communion in her own church. Then Laura spoke up, “I just wanted Jesus in my heart.”

It seems to me that that kind of authority trumps something that is merely imposed by a set of church rules. Who, indeed, is “in charge” over someone who knows the reality of Jesus in her heart?

Jesus does give Peter such authority over binding and loosing – so much authority that whatever Peter says, goes. I can’t quite imagine what it means that something bound on earth is bound in heaven, but indeed, Jesus gives Peter the keys to this kingdom. And over two millennia this authority has been given to Peter’s successors. To the question, “Who’s in charge here,” some people give a very definite answer.

Rules. We all live by rules. Nations rise and fall by rules, by definitions of who is in charge, and during the centuries when the Egyptians were building the pyramids, Pharaoh was in charge. What he said, went. And when he said, there are too many of those Hebrew children around here; kill the boys – that rule was supposed to be followed.

This is the beginning of the Exodus story, the story of God pulling the Hebrew children out of Egypt and into their own nationhood as Israel. This is the beginning of the most important story in the Hebrew bible – and look at what a fragile and precarious beginning it has. A baby ordered killed is hidden in a basket, floating in the very river in which he should have drowned. And this child is saved because of a conspiracy of women who broke the rules. Who’s in charge here? Pharaoh. But who is in the hearts of the Hebrew midwives, and the baby’s mother and the baby’s sister? God is in their hearts. The God of love, whose love causes them to find a way around the rules to save the baby’s life. And then Pharaoh’s daughter, who sees the baby and wants him for her own. She breaks the rules, too. She must know this is a Hebrew baby, a boy hidden in a basket among the reeds. Who’s in charge here? Compassion rules her heart, and through a marvelous twist, she takes the boy home, along with a woman to nurse him who just happens to be the boy’s mother, and the child of slaves is raised as a prince in Pharaoh’s household. This boy of illegitimate beginnings grows up to be just the leader to bring the Hebrew nation out of bondage into freedom.

Who’s in charge here? It’s not always who we think it is – and if God is ultimately in charge, if we take our authority from these rules of love and compassion and empathy and mercy which God puts in our hearts, then hey: there are often some surprising changes about who is in charge here in earth.

Listen to this story told to me by a friend, a retired priest who once served a parish on the West Side of Chicago.

One morning many years ago I went out of the apartment house where I lived … and found a little ten year old neighbor, whose nickname was "Boo", sitting in his grandpa's old Cadillac car, with a set of keys in his hands, busily working to get the padlock off the steering wheel. Little Boo looked guilty to me, and he did have a criminal record, for he had swiped an apple from my refrigerator the week before. So I said to him, "Michael, did your Grandpa give you those keys? Does he know that you are out here in the car?" Boo slowly shook his head, No. I at once had a vision of Boo careening around Union Park in this huge vintage Cadillac, his little head bobbing over the dash board. I triumphantly retrieved the keys and took them upstairs to Grandpa's apartment, next to my own. I knocked on the door, and soon learned that indeed Grandpa had not given him the keys, but Grandma had! She had told Michael to go down and get the padlock off the steering wheel and to wait in the Cadillac for her to come down in a few minutes. When I went back downstairs, Michael had recovered his dignity along with his Grandma and the keys. And I had a bit of a red face, for not having recognized his received authority to have the keys in the first place, from another with the power to give them.

“The keys to the kingdom are something like that,” my friend went on to say, “for Jesus has been an indulgent Grandma, who has handed over the keys to the likes of us, and to a variety of others, some of us juveniles too young to drive, but with the benevolent counsel to go ahead and open the vehicle, and wait for the wise ones to come down and accompany us."[1]

Frankly, I’m not too good with change. When the rules are set, I like them to stay that way. But the world I live in now is not the world as I thought it would be when I was ten years old. Pharaohs and Josephs come and go, and what we thought secure is now precarious. How difficult to imagine that our salvation will depend on a baby in a basket, or the wily, subversive women who hid him there. But imagination is just what we need. With every new age, every change in time or circumstance, with every new Pharaoh, God entrusts us with a new set of keys. But the kingdom those new keys unlock remains the same: love, justice, and the reign of God.

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[1] Grant Gallup, Homily Grits, 14th Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, Proper 16; gallup@tmx.com.ni

Who's after Isaac?

Proper 10 A; 7/13/2008

St. Paul’s

Genesis 25:919-34; Psalm 119: 105-112; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

When you go to get ordained in the Episcopal Church, you have to write your spiritual autobiography. You talk about your teenage years, your schools, your jobs, your addictions and obsessions, where you met the love of your life, what church you wandered into one day and decided to stay. The way the questions are framed, you are encouraged to see every scintilla of your life as planned by God to lead you straight to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church, no detours, no sidetracks, no multiple choice options. Your life is a pattern that led you to this moment. Such a way to think about “vocation” almost implies that you – or God – had no choice at all.

Today’s lessons present a challenge to such a fixed world view, because today’s lessons are all about choice. Paul seems to put it rather starkly. On the one hand: … the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free … from, on the other hand … the law of sin and of death. Paul continues, … To set the mind on the flesh is death; BUT, he says, … to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

In the story of Esau and Jacob, we have the story of a choice, the consequences of which will last for centuries. Esau seems to be throwing away his birthright, his inheritance, his fortune, his future – for a bowl of lentil stew. Jacob seems to be a trickster, pulling a fast one on his slightly older twin brother.

And in the parable of the sower, Jesus seems to distract us with all this talk about seeds falling on different kinds of ground, but the real point of the parable is between those who hear the Word of God and those who don’t. Life for the first; death for the second.

Over the years, we have read these stories as though God only intended one thing by them, like those spiritual autobiographies we construct to make our case that we have always been destined to be Episcopal priests. What if we saw that in our lives there were many choices to make, many doors to open? Maybe even God saw that there were several paths to take, several choices to make, along even the divine way?

For example, Jewish tradition has it that Esau was bad – that he chose the superficial and material – a good meal after a hard day’s work – over the spiritual and God-given. But look at the text: God tells their mother, Rebekah, that her sons will be the fathers of two nations, two peoples, and yes, the one of Jacob, the younger twin, becomes Israel. Esau’s offspring become the Edomites. Later Jewish tradition emphasizes the bad side of Esau; his offspring become Israel’s enemies. Jacob, the revered patriarch, may be a trickster, but Esau became the enemy of Israel for all time. That’s not quite so in the text: God does not curse Esau for his choice; Esau later marries, prospers, and forgives his scoundrel brother Jacob for tricking him out of his inheritance. Is the choice of “conventional” interpretation of this story the only choice that tells us something about what God had in mind?

In the gospel, we have the choice of three bad kinds of gardens, and one good. The “conventional” reading of this text is to say that if we do what God wants us to do, we will be blessed. We’ll get more stuff – we individuals will prosper. There are lots of Christians who ascribe to this theology that says that if they are rich, they have done the right things, and God has blessed them. The rest of us are just that old, rocky dried-up ground and it’s our own fault that we’re poor.

But what did Jesus mean by the “word of the kingdom” which we must hear and understand? “Kingdom” in Greek is basileia; but it does not imply a kingdom in a worldly, top-down, dictatorial kind of power-hungry sense. This basileia is a heavenly ideal, yet one rooted in this world, in the hope that God has intended this kingdom, this world, to be for the common good. It is a world of abundance, a world in which God’s will is done, God’s purposes are fulfilled. It is the world of the prayer Jesus taught us: your basileia come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven; give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. In this kingdom of God, no one person gets rich as a sign of God’s blessing; we all do. God doesn’t save us one at a time by ourselves; God saves all of us. In this basileia we live on earth – here, now – the way God would have us live in heaven.

I think that’s what Paul means when he says to choose the Spirit over the flesh: not that our bodies are bad, but that the choices we make for them should move us toward the basileia, the way God would have us live. And there is not just one choice, forever made, forever casting us out of God’s love, forever condemning us to rocky, dried-up ground. We’re not stuck in our addiction, trapped in poverty or doomed to unhappiness. The descendents of Esau do not have to be enemies forever with the descendents of Jacob. “If we blow one choice,” we’re not out of the game. “We get another choice, and another …” *and another. It’s not just about one fatal decision, one determining moment, one false move, or one missed opportunity. It’s about continually making choices, listening for the Word of that kingdom, of that great, big, fat basileia, where there is room for all and lots to go around.

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* From Jeanyne B. Slettom, Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary, July 13, 2008; Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Proper 10; http://www.processandfaith.org/lectionary/YearA/2007-2008/2008-07-13.shtml

Proper 9-A; 7/6/2008

St. Paul’s

Genesis 24:34-38,42-49,58-67; Psalm 45:11-18; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

St. Augustine, the 4th century African saint, spent a lot of time reading St. Paul, and perhaps especially St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. St. Augustine was notorious for his living large – that is, until he turned his life around as a Christian and a theologian.

Augustine is famous for his Confessions, in some ways similar to this section of the Epistle to the Romans which we read this morning: “I do not do what I want but I do the very thing I hate.” What a common human cry of despair! How often have any of us said such a thing? Augustine knew that in his life he had sown some pretty wild oats, and in his Confessions he can be detailed about them. Like Paul, he beats his breast about the sin and evil which seems to have taken over his life. He knows what he should do but evil lies close at hand. Paul is eloquent: “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Paul talks about the law as taskmaster, but perhaps he is yearning for the law as rest, as Sabbath rest. The law mandates that all faithful people rest on the day God rested after the creation of the world. Yet Paul seems so consumed by the evil he has done, and cannot help doing, that he has forgotten that rest is part of the law.

St. Augustine, no stranger as I said, to bewailing his manifold sins and wickedness, wrote these words, among the most beautiful in sacred literature:

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."*

Augustine reminds us that we are part of the creation in which God delights, and that no matter how much we do what God would have us NOT do, God has created us with a homing device, as it were: the true rest we seek we find at home, and our home, our hearts’ home, is with God. Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.

Our Old Testament and Gospel lessons would seem, on the face of it, to have nothing to do with each other. Matthew gives us some sayings of Jesus; Genesis tells us the story of how Isaac, son of the patriarch Abraham, and patriarch-to-be, got himself a wife.

These lessons do have something in common: they talk about rest, Sabbath rest, rest that leads to salvation.

In the desert lands of the Near East, where one finds water one finds salvation.

A river flows through the garden of Eden, and later splits into four rivers, which flowed to the corners of the earth. For the inhabitants of the arid ancient near east, water is a restoration of Eden. … In the Bible, if you’ve found abundant water, you’ve found your way back to paradise. If you find water, you’ve entered sabbath.**

Isaac, the one God promised to be the father of many nations, is looking for a wife, a worthy partner with whom to fulfill this promise. And where does he (or the servant he sent) find her? At a well. This is not just a story about an ancient version of matchmaker.com. This is a story of God fulfilling God’s promises with the abundance of flowing water, an oasis in the desert, the living water that leads to eternal life.

And what is Jesus saying? Don’t miss that well in the desert. Don’t miss the signs that point to it. Don’t miss out on your chance for the abundant life! What will it take for us to recognize Jesus for who he is? He points to the contrast between John the Baptist, the forerunner – the ascetic, desert-hardened one who first brought the Good News of this new world. “You called him demon-possessed!” Jesus says. And then he goes on, “And then here I am! I eat and drink, I hang out with sinners and unsavory people. I bring the same message as John, and yet you pay no attention to me, either! You think you are so wise? Hah!” Listen to how another Biblical scholar interpreted what Jesus said:

… sit out the dance in your pseudo-wisdom if you want to, but the blind are seeing, the deaf are hearing, the lepers are made new, the dead are raised, and the poor have finally heard some music they can kick up their heels to – and that is the essence of wisdom...***

We can lay down our burdens, Jesus says, at the wellspring in the desert, and there we will find rest. We will find eternal life. We will find a terrific party – a feast to end all feasts. There at the well, we can put things in proper perspective. We can leave behind our tortured lives, doing what we know we should not. We can let our troubles just dry out there on the hot sand. We can forget our tension and anger, and take on the gentleness and humility that Jesus offers. We can meet the love of our lives, the one in whom God’s promises for our lives – for life itself – can be fulfilled. We can cast off all our restlessness, for here, at this well of refreshment, of easy burdens and light duties, our hearts can finally find their rest.

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*The Confessions of St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo: http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/augconfessions/bk1.html

** Peter J. Leithart, from Blogging Toward Sunday, July 6 (6/30/2008) in Theolog, the blog of The Christian Century: http://www.theolog.org/blog/2008/06/blogging-towa-4.html

***From “Sacred Rest” by Kate Huey, from Weekly Seeds, the Bible study blog of the United Church of Christ: http://i.ucc.org/StretchYourMind/OpeningtheBible/WeeklySeeds/tabid/81/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/67/Sacred-Rest.aspx. Kate Huey quotes Thomas Long’s commentary on the Gospel of Matthew from the Westminster Bible Companion Series

Biblical Family Values, pt. 2

Proper 8-A June 29, 2008 St. Paul’s
Genesis 22:1-14 Psalm 13 Romans 6:12-23 Matthew 10:40-42

As I was driving down Pleasant Street on Friday, I saw a boy sitting at his lemonade stand. His hand-written sign said a cup of lemonade was 25 cents. I almost stopped. Seth and Laura used to do lemonade stands, and Simon has great plans for one this summer.

As enterprises go, lemonade stands don’t make a lot of money. Simon did figure out that he needed someone to front the initial investment, but after that he could be on his own, replenishing his supplies out of his profits. But even so – you probably couldn’t say that Bill Gates starting Microsoft was like that little boy on Pleasant Street with his lemonade stand. Lemonade just isn’t the same as a revolutionary software system.

The part of Pleasant Street where the little boy had set up his stand was one of the not particularly pleasant blocks of Pleasant Street. You could say, then, that that little boy was a prophet: he saw, on his block of Pleasant Street, that that was the sort of place where people would need a cup of lemonade. He also saw Pleasant Street as a place where people would stop and drink some lemonade, and he’d get a quarter and maybe a nice conversation out of it. That little boy saw hope on Pleasant Street. He saw Pleasant Street the way all of us would like to see Pleasant Street. He saw Pleasant Street the way God sees Pleasant Street.

No one sets out to be a prophet; prophets can only be recognized from the outside, when people see their prophet-nature in what they say and what they do. That little boy didn’t set out to be a prophet; he just set out a lemonade stand. But he is a prophet. He sees Pleasant Street as it is going to be. The little boy is a prophet of the resurrection.

There is another little boy in our lessons today: Isaac. If you thought things were bad for Ishmael last week, sent out with his mother into the wilderness to die, then you will have your breath taken away by this story. God tells Abraham to take his remaining son, the one on whom he and Sarah have placed all their ancient hopes, to Mt. Moriah, and sacrifice him as a burnt offering.

What images this story raises in all of our minds, what questions about the motives of God, the obedience of Abraham – cruel? Foolish? Mindless? What kind of God is this – is God, this God, no better than the other cruel desert ones he seeks to replace with his majesty and omnipotence, with all his talk about making great nations from these two sons. Those desert gods demanded cruel sacrifices all the time; was this God to be no different?

Amazingly, I think Abraham trudged up that mountain with confidence. He had known death – he and Sarah were as good as dead when God told them they would have a son. If God could pull life out of death once before, he would do it again. “Where is the lamb?” Isaac asked. “God will provide,” Abraham answered. It is nearly impossible for us to get inside that sense of utter confidence, the confidence of one who lives now on the other side of death, the place where tragedy is no longer a possibility. Abraham is one who expects the impossible.

God did provide. In the binding of Isaac, that near-death experience, the impossible occurred. God proved that God was not going to be one of those blood-thirsty desert gods, but a God who kept promises, who gave life, who pulled life out of death, a God of resurrection, a God of hope.

In cups of water, or cups of lemonade, a prophet is one who brings us tangible proof of God’s promises of hope. Prophets come from where we least expect them, and when we least expect them – when we, like Abraham and Sarah, are as good as dead. Prophets with lemonade stands point the way to a tree-lined, safe, drug- and crime-free Pleasant Street. Can we dare to hope? Could Abraham?

Biblical Family Values

Proper 7-A June 22, 2008 St. Paul’s

Genesis 21:8-21 Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17
Romans 6:1b-11 Matthew 10:24-39

No matter what Hallmark says, you just can’t reduce the Bible to a greeting card. Family values? Just what kind of Biblical family values do we glean from patriarch Abraham and matriarch Sarah?

Because of his wife’s jealousy of the “other woman,” Abraham casts his first-born son into the wilderness to die. Hagar, the Egyptian slave woman who is the child's mother, has run out of food and water. She lays the exhausted, parched and famished boy under a bush, and says, to no one, for there is no witness to this act, "Do not let me look on the death of the child." She then cries aloud and weeps.

This could be a scene from contemporary Darfur, or from countless desperate places on our planet today, where mothers and children are abandoned by family, by warring governments, by economic forces beyond their control, and sent out to many kinds of wilderness to die.

If the day's Gospel lesson reflects Jesus’ “family values,” it does not fare much better. "I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." Jesus declares. "One's foes will be members of one's own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me."

This passage comes from a section in the Gospel of Matthew concerning discipleship: what does it mean to follow Jesus? What would it look like in my life, the disciples are asking themselves, to take part in the breaking in of this kingdom of heaven? What does it mean to take up my cross, to lose my life, to understand God not as the bringer of peace but as the wielder of a sword?

As important as family is to us today, our modern ears cannot hear it quite the same way as Jesus’ followers would have. We moderns are all about “ME,” about self-actualization and self-realization. We strike out on our own, we value independence and self-reliance: the Lone Ranger, the pioneer on the frontier, the corporate raider, the “Army of One.” But in the world in which Jesus lived, you were not an individual apart from your family. Your family gave you your identity, gave you not just your name but your place in the community and in the world, and your family protected you from that world. Your family was a good thing, a precious thing; you didn’t just strike out on your own. Jesus isn’t some 1960s hippie cult leader telling you to tune in, turn on, drop out, from a family that oppresses, abuses or bores you.

There were plenty of bad things in first century Palestine, plenty of things that Jesus might exhort you to leave behind, but the family was not one of them. The Romans were bad, because they were an occupying army in your homeland. The temple authorities were bad, because they colluded with the Romans in exchange for privilege and protection. The civil bureaucracy was bad, because it taxed the people nearly to death. Indeed, death and fear were the operative social norms. The family was the refuge from all that. No one could survive without a family.

So when Jesus says, “Follow me,” he is asking the disciples to leave behind one of the few institutions in society that works. Jesus’ call upsets every apple cart there is, and then he says, don’t worry. Don’t be anxious. Consider the lilies, remember the sparrows. The kingdom of heaven means the whole world is about to be re-ordered. Everything will be uncovered. There will be no more secrets, no more power brokers, or back-room deals. This news is so good that it must be shouted from the rooftops – no matter what the consequences. No matter how many authorities you anger, no matter how many armies they unleash. God’s kingdom HAS to challenge this kingdom, and even the blessed and good family, the loving parents, the bonds of affection and kinship – even these can get in the way of this truth of God which cuts like a sword. The new thing which God is doing is even deeper, even more important, even more powerful that the deepest, most important and most powerful parts of our lives, the parts of our lives that make us most truly human. God is a sword which pares away even our relationships, our kinships, our families.

Where is God taking us with this confusing, and maybe even terrifying, lesson? Is discipleship some sort of desert wilderness? Are we called to be like Hagar and Ishmael, stumbling around until the water runs out, cut off from family and security and hope and the future?

Look again at this astounding story of Hagar and Ishmael – and God. Even though God has apparently blessed the dismissal of the two into the wilderness, God will not let them suffer. The voice of the angel of God raises Hagar’s hopes, and promises that even this discarded son of Abraham will be the father of many nations. Even these two hopeless creatures, these outcasts and discards, this tiny remnant of a broken family will have a great future in store. Abraham may have cast out Ishmael but God stayed with him.

If Jesus calls us as disciples to turn away from even the good parts of our lives, if they distract and keep us from the gospel, it is because being a disciple leads us into so much more. We see this broken world now as Jesus sees it. Freed from our own particularity, we can act as perhaps Jesus would have us act. We can even take our families with us. We can see the Hagars and Ishmaels of today, in the countless desert places, the violent streets, the lonely corners. We can resolve to be that angel of God who shouts from the rooftops that it doesn’t have to be this way, the angel who brings God’s gifts of water, sustenance and hope to a world that too often cries in despair.