“But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one father on earth, for you have one father – the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah.” These words from today’s Gospel are hard words! Do you hear the rebuke in them? As someone who has been called “doctor,” “professor,” and “dean,” I hear the rebuke, and it stings me! And now here I am a priest – with another set of titles: “reverend,” “pastor,” “chaplain,” and, God help me, “Mother” – me, who, as a feminist refused for years to call priests “father.”
But what is Jesus really telling me here? Is Jesus really that exercised about titles? Would he frown on those who are called “Herr Doktor” and smile on us informal Americans who call everyone by their first name? Or is there a more important message here?
As you know, Matthew’s Gospel was written about 85 AD for a Jewish Christian community. This community was in conflict with the pharisaic Jewish communities that had survived the destruction of the temple in 70. You remember that the puritanical Pharisees sought particularly to guard their own personal purity by keeping apart from Gentiles. They also wanted to ensure the survival of the Jewish community by conscientiously adhering to every iota of the Law of Moses. At the same time, the audience of Matthew’s gospel was struggling themselves to follow Jesus’ more inclusive model and to welcome Gentiles into the new Christian communities. In all our Gospel passages for the last several weeks, we have been hearing Jesus’ disputes with the religious leaders following his triumphant entrance into Jerusalem. In parable after searing parable, he has compared them to sons who refuse to obey their fathers, wicked tenants of a vineyard who kill the rightful heir, and ungrateful wedding guests. They in turn have tried to trick him with questions about paying taxes and keeping commandments.
Now Jesus has added fuel to the fire that will eventually bring about his death by once again criticizing the Pharisees. Now, let’s remember that criticism of the religious leadership has a long tradition in the Hebrew Bible. In our first lesson, we heard Micah castigate the prophets of his day. Did you hear him rebuking them for prophesying for gain and distinguishing among their hearers, for encouraging those who could pay and discouraging those who could not? Standing squarely in that same tradition, Jesus echoes Micah in castigating the Pharisees for excessive concerns about purity, for laying burdens on the backs of others, for making a great show in their personal devotion, and for expecting respect and honor from others. “They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets, and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.”
In case you’re wondering, phylacteries, called “tefillin” in Hebrew, consist of two small leather cases with leather straps attached, containing verses from the Torah on small bits of parchment. Then and now, orthodox Jewish males wear them during prayer time. One box is bound around the forehead and the other around the upper left arm. Jewish males also wore – and continue to wear – a long prayer shawl with long fringes, called a “tallis.” Both the tefillin and the tallis help to remind the man of God’s constant presence. So in wearing large, visible tefillin and tallises with long fringes, the Pharisees make a big public show of their piety. And Jesus rightly rebukes them. He then turns to the crowd and his disciples, and he warns them against proclaiming their religious superiority: don’t let yourselves be called rabbi, father, or teacher.
OK, Lord, I get it! No one calls me “Dr. Flemming” anymore. No “Mother Leslie” either. Is that what Jesus asks of me? Or of you? Perhaps, but I think there is something more important here than just titles. Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Thessalonian Christians gives us clues as to what Jesus really expects of his followers, of you and me. Two clues, actually. First clue: unlike the Pharisees, Paul took care not to lay burdens on the Thessalonians. “You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters, we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed the gospel of God.” In other words, not only did Paul not make excessive spiritual demands on the Thessalonians, he also supported himself through his secular trade of tent making, so that he would not burden them financially. And here’s the second clue to what Jesus expects of us: Paul did not proclaim the good news to the Thessalonians to make a public show or to win praise. He taught them, because he deeply loved them. “As you know,” he wrote them, “we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.” In contrast to the false prophets of Micah’s time, or the Pharisees of Matthew’s Gospel, Paul speaks God’s word not in self-interest, not because there is any reward or gain for himself in doing so, but out of deep love for those who hear the word and turn to God.
Now, I really get it! Jesus calls us to be servant ministers, people who minister to others like Paul, like Jesus himself, out of a deep love for others. Not arrogantly, not expecting honors. Not by tailoring our service to the social or economic status of those who depend on us. But with love and with sensitivity to the true needs of those around us, always trying to create with those in need true relationship and loving community.
Does the call to be servant ministers mean that we’re all alike, or that we’re all called to the same kinds of service? Does it mean that we should deny our education, experience, or unique gifts? Should we deny the titles that go along with our respective roles? I don’t think so. In fact, I think it’s just the reverse: the gifts of all of us – and we all have gifts, janitors, secretaries, homemakers, retirees, neurosurgeons, bus drivers, teachers, nurses – all have unique gifts, and all are needed to build up the Body of Christ. The late Dutch theologian Henri Nouwen reminds us that, “We all should have the mind of Jesus Christ, but we do not all have to have the mind of a school teacher, a carpenter, a bank director, a member of congress, or whatever socioeconomic or political group. There is a great wisdom hidden in the old bell tower calling people with very different backgrounds from their homes to form one body in Jesus Christ.” With our varied experiences we are all needed in the Body of Christ. But – and there’s always a but – Jesus also reminds us that whatever our contributions, whatever our accomplishments, no matter who we are, none of us is more important than another, none of us has intrinsic status, none of us can rightfully lord it over others. Rather, “the greatest among you will be your servant.”
“The greatest among you will be your servant.” When Oscar Romero was appointed the archbishop of San Salvador in February 1977, the prominent, wealthy families who controlled most of the land and money in El Salvador, offered to build him a palace where he could live in the splendor and security befitting an archbishop. But Romero would have none of it. Until the day he was murdered in March 1980, he chose to live simply, in the sacristy adjoining the hospital chapel in which he served.
Can we live up to Oscar Romero’s model? Can we live up to Paul’s model? Can we live up to the model of servant minister that Jesus offered us? Can we love our neighbors as ourselves, as Jesus commanded us in last week’s Gospel? Can we fulfill the promises that we made at our Baptisms, to seek and serve Christ in all persons and to respect the dignity of all people? Can we too be servant ministers? Can we make our lives and gifts available to all, regardless of who they are? Can we be faithful disciples of Jesus without expecting special recognition or honors in return? We can, with God’s grace, if we believe, as surely as Paul believed of the Thessalonian Christians, that God’s Word is also and always at work in us. Thanks be to God!
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Do We Put Him to the Test?
“Are you official or one of us,” Mrs. Smith asked pointedly.1 They were upright and honest people in Colville County, and they didn’t think people ought to “get above themselves.” They also had a tradition of holding their elected officials to strict account, especially where money was concerned. Rumor had gotten around that last year one of their county commissioners had claimed commission expenses for attending the county Fourth of July parade. It felt to the plain people of Colville that not only had the commissioner gotten “above himself,” but that he had wrongly taken county funds. Now the organizer of the parade wasn’t particularly politically astute. He was about to shake the commissioner’s hand at this year’s Fourth of July parade, when a group began to gather around the commissioner. Mrs. Smith, a well-known leader of the local senior citizens, asked, “Are you here on official business?” “I’m here for the parade,” the commissioner answered. “Oh right, we’re all here for the parade. But are you official or one of us?” “I represent the Board of Commissioners,” the bewildered commissioner answered. “Of course you do. But are you getting paid to be here, like you were last year?” The commissioner began to perspire. “Well, yes,” he said, “but it’s the system.” As the people around Mrs. Smith began to murmur, the commissioner imagined the headlines in the next day’s newspapers: “Riot at Fourth Parade,” “Senior Citizen Arrested for Assaulting Commissioner.” But the commissioner was a wily politician. How else would he have gotten elected? So he played his trump card. ‘But, you see, this year I’m giving my expenses for today to the VFW – and last year’s expenses as well. It’s the right thing to do, isn’t it?” So far, so good. “To the VFW,” Mrs. Smith asked. “Yes, to the VFW, if that’s best, if they can use the funds,” the commissioner replied. The people around him nodded to each other and began to disperse. The relieved commissioner was led to the parade viewing stand. A few weeks later, the local VFW leader got a check in the mail from the commissioner. Whether it was the full amount of the commissioner’s expenses for the two years he didn’t know, but he did make sure that Mrs. Smith was the first to hear about it.
A wily politician nimbly eluding a trap. Perhaps the Colville County commissioner had read his Bible. He certainly could have taken a lesson from Jesus. In both today’s Gospel reading and the reading for next week, the Pharisees plainly wanted to trap Jesus into incriminating himself. They posed the question about paying an especially onerous tax that went straight to the emperor. Clearly, neither obvious answer to their question was acceptable. It wasn’t that the people didn’t already pay many taxes – in the currency of their Roman occupiers. But this one was particularly hated. If Jesus had answered directly that it was O.K. to pay the tax he would have alienated his own followers. And if he had answered that it was not lawful for observant Jews to pay the tax, he would have risked reprisal from the Roman authorities. So like our wily county commissioner, he first flung a question back at his questioners: “Why are you putting me to the test?” Then making them produce the Roman coin and observe its face, he gave the most enigmatic answer possible to their question: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
His answer has haunted us ever since. What is Caesar’s? What is God’s? If we give to Caesar what has Caesar’s image on it, and we give to God what has God’s image on it, then what belongs to God? Everything! We are made in God’s image, and, ultimately everything we are, and everything we have belongs to God: all our resources, all our time, all our personal talents and gifts. “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.” How, when, and what to give back to God is a question that every serious Christian must answer.
Yet this reading poses to us an even more difficult and ultimately more important question: how are we like the religious leaders who have been questioning Jesus’ identity and authority. Their questioning of Jesus, their disbelief, and their attempts to entrap Jesus have been running motifs throughout the entire latter part of Matthew’s Gospel, so that at the end the Cross seems inevitable. Ironically, the challenges to Jesus’ identity and authority did not stop with the Cross or the Resurrection. In its earliest centuries, the church was beset by heresies in which various thinkers tried to deny in different ways that Jesus was the Word made flesh. Indeed, the Nicene Creed is a distillation of the responses to those heresies and was composed with the hope that the question of Jesus’ identity would be settled for good. The medieval church, with its idolization of the Latin language, controlled people’s access to Scripture, almost usurping the authority of Jesus himself. In our own era, many modern thinkers have dismissed Scripture, God, and Jesus as irrelevant and unnecessary, hypotheses of which we have no need.
Are we anything like the religious leaders in the Gospel reading who challenge Jesus’ identity and authority? Perhaps we identify Jesus with a particular social position. “What would Jesus do?” was a popular question a few years back. Perhaps you are certain of what Jesus’ views would be on abortion, sexuality, divorce, market capitalism, the United Nations, Medicaid, or a host of other social issues. Conversely, perhaps you believe that Jesus has no authority over your social and political choices. We believe in the separation of religious institutions and government: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." But does that separation mean that our faith has no impact on how we carry out our lives in society? Does it mean that Jesus has no authority over us?
Ultimately, the question we are dealing with here is how do we obey God? What does God expect from us? And the answer is simple: God expects of us nothing less than obedience to God’s Word. Eight centuries before Jesus the prophet Micah suggested an answer to that question: “Listen here, mortal: God has already made abundantly clear … what God needs from you: simply do justice, love kindness, and humbly walk with your God.” Jesus knew the prophetic writings well, and in his own life he fulfilled their message. In his self-giving and his self-sacrifice, in his death on the Cross, Jesus models for us the complete obedience, the giving of all we are, that God expects of us as well. And more to the point, just as Jesus challenged the religious leaders who questioned his identity and authority, so he challenges us: to examine our lives and to frame them according to God’s expectations. Can we look at our spiritual lives? Is there more to our relationship with Jesus than Sunday worship, nourishing as that might be? How about our use of our resources? Are we returning to God anything of what God has given us? Is our giving of our resources of treasure, time, and talent intentional and proportional to what we have? How about our action on social issues? Do we pray about our choices both in and out of the voting booth? Do we ignore the needs of those around us or elsewhere in the world, or do we ask the Holy Spirit to guide us into the causes where our prayerful participation might help to further God’s kingdom? And is our obedience to God grudging or grateful? Do we lovingly present to God “ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice” to God?
Obeying God, measuring up to God’s expectations, modeling ourselves on Jesus, giving ourselves to God, all of this is difficult, so difficult that we all fail. Limited human beings, sinners, that we all are, all of us challenge Jesus’ authority over us, and none of us can give to God all that is God’s. All of us are disobedient, idolatrous, and weak. Yet, my sisters and brothers, the good news is that even when we are disobedient, even when we give God less than God’s due, even when we are unsure of who Jesus is and how our faith in him should make a difference in our lives, God still loves us. All of today’s texts remind us that God remains good, and gracious to us, and ever present. God is the one who never forgets our names, our addresses, or our needs. God is the one who is always ready to answer our call. When we ask that those who seek God or a deeper knowledge of God will find and be found by God, we can be sure that that prayer will be answered. Thanks be to God, always!
1. The following story is adapted from “Reds Under the Beds,” by Tom Gordon, in Welcoming Each Wonder (Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications, 2010), 270-73.
A wily politician nimbly eluding a trap. Perhaps the Colville County commissioner had read his Bible. He certainly could have taken a lesson from Jesus. In both today’s Gospel reading and the reading for next week, the Pharisees plainly wanted to trap Jesus into incriminating himself. They posed the question about paying an especially onerous tax that went straight to the emperor. Clearly, neither obvious answer to their question was acceptable. It wasn’t that the people didn’t already pay many taxes – in the currency of their Roman occupiers. But this one was particularly hated. If Jesus had answered directly that it was O.K. to pay the tax he would have alienated his own followers. And if he had answered that it was not lawful for observant Jews to pay the tax, he would have risked reprisal from the Roman authorities. So like our wily county commissioner, he first flung a question back at his questioners: “Why are you putting me to the test?” Then making them produce the Roman coin and observe its face, he gave the most enigmatic answer possible to their question: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
His answer has haunted us ever since. What is Caesar’s? What is God’s? If we give to Caesar what has Caesar’s image on it, and we give to God what has God’s image on it, then what belongs to God? Everything! We are made in God’s image, and, ultimately everything we are, and everything we have belongs to God: all our resources, all our time, all our personal talents and gifts. “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.” How, when, and what to give back to God is a question that every serious Christian must answer.
Yet this reading poses to us an even more difficult and ultimately more important question: how are we like the religious leaders who have been questioning Jesus’ identity and authority. Their questioning of Jesus, their disbelief, and their attempts to entrap Jesus have been running motifs throughout the entire latter part of Matthew’s Gospel, so that at the end the Cross seems inevitable. Ironically, the challenges to Jesus’ identity and authority did not stop with the Cross or the Resurrection. In its earliest centuries, the church was beset by heresies in which various thinkers tried to deny in different ways that Jesus was the Word made flesh. Indeed, the Nicene Creed is a distillation of the responses to those heresies and was composed with the hope that the question of Jesus’ identity would be settled for good. The medieval church, with its idolization of the Latin language, controlled people’s access to Scripture, almost usurping the authority of Jesus himself. In our own era, many modern thinkers have dismissed Scripture, God, and Jesus as irrelevant and unnecessary, hypotheses of which we have no need.
Are we anything like the religious leaders in the Gospel reading who challenge Jesus’ identity and authority? Perhaps we identify Jesus with a particular social position. “What would Jesus do?” was a popular question a few years back. Perhaps you are certain of what Jesus’ views would be on abortion, sexuality, divorce, market capitalism, the United Nations, Medicaid, or a host of other social issues. Conversely, perhaps you believe that Jesus has no authority over your social and political choices. We believe in the separation of religious institutions and government: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." But does that separation mean that our faith has no impact on how we carry out our lives in society? Does it mean that Jesus has no authority over us?
Ultimately, the question we are dealing with here is how do we obey God? What does God expect from us? And the answer is simple: God expects of us nothing less than obedience to God’s Word. Eight centuries before Jesus the prophet Micah suggested an answer to that question: “Listen here, mortal: God has already made abundantly clear … what God needs from you: simply do justice, love kindness, and humbly walk with your God.” Jesus knew the prophetic writings well, and in his own life he fulfilled their message. In his self-giving and his self-sacrifice, in his death on the Cross, Jesus models for us the complete obedience, the giving of all we are, that God expects of us as well. And more to the point, just as Jesus challenged the religious leaders who questioned his identity and authority, so he challenges us: to examine our lives and to frame them according to God’s expectations. Can we look at our spiritual lives? Is there more to our relationship with Jesus than Sunday worship, nourishing as that might be? How about our use of our resources? Are we returning to God anything of what God has given us? Is our giving of our resources of treasure, time, and talent intentional and proportional to what we have? How about our action on social issues? Do we pray about our choices both in and out of the voting booth? Do we ignore the needs of those around us or elsewhere in the world, or do we ask the Holy Spirit to guide us into the causes where our prayerful participation might help to further God’s kingdom? And is our obedience to God grudging or grateful? Do we lovingly present to God “ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice” to God?
Obeying God, measuring up to God’s expectations, modeling ourselves on Jesus, giving ourselves to God, all of this is difficult, so difficult that we all fail. Limited human beings, sinners, that we all are, all of us challenge Jesus’ authority over us, and none of us can give to God all that is God’s. All of us are disobedient, idolatrous, and weak. Yet, my sisters and brothers, the good news is that even when we are disobedient, even when we give God less than God’s due, even when we are unsure of who Jesus is and how our faith in him should make a difference in our lives, God still loves us. All of today’s texts remind us that God remains good, and gracious to us, and ever present. God is the one who never forgets our names, our addresses, or our needs. God is the one who is always ready to answer our call. When we ask that those who seek God or a deeper knowledge of God will find and be found by God, we can be sure that that prayer will be answered. Thanks be to God, always!
1. The following story is adapted from “Reds Under the Beds,” by Tom Gordon, in Welcoming Each Wonder (Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications, 2010), 270-73.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
A Rich Feast
I don’t like today’s Gospel. I don’t like the parable in today’s Gospel. Actually, I don’t like any of the parables of judgment that we’ve been hearing these past few weeks: not the one about the two sons, nor the one about the wicked tenants, nor this one with its frightening ending. Where’s the grace? Where’s the good news? Why are we hearing these lessons? What does the Church want us to hear in them?
It’s not hard to guess Jesus’ intent in these parables. All of them clearly indict the religious leadership and suggest that those who are on the edges of society, who have been deemed poor, insignificant, or unclean by the fastidious Pharisees and other leaders, are closer to full enjoyment of God’s love than the religious leaders are. Perhaps Jesus was hoping that such an indictment would induce the religious leadership to change course and join his disciples. Perhaps he was upping the ante and pushing his conflict with them closer to its eventual outcome. Nor is it difficult to guess why the early Christian community preserved these parables of Jesus, and why writer of the Gospel of Matthew included them in his Gospel. Writing in the ‘80’s, when tensions between the fledgling Christian community and the synagogue leadership were increasing, the Gospel writer’s primary goal was to announce that God’s Kingdom had indeed finally arrived in the person of Jesus. At the same time, the writer also sought to explain to a mixed-ethnic community why the religious elite of Judaism had largely resisted the Christian message, and why the early Christian community should continue to attract an increasing number of Gentiles.
I still don’t hear much grace or good news, do you? And as we ourselves begin to shiver a little in fear of judgment, perhaps we’re tempted to ask ourselves where we fit in this parable. Take a minute and think about it: with whom do you most closely identify in this parable? Sitting here in a pew of this beautiful church, having committed yourselves to Jesus, having committed yourself to this parish, waiting to be nourished with Christ’s Body and Blood, perhaps you identify with those servants – we resist calling ourselves “slaves,” don’t we – those servants who faithfully do the king’s bidding and go out issuing invitations, first to the previously invited guests, then to any and all willing to come in. Do you see yourselves out there, for example, inviting friends to St. Peter’s, or perhaps welcoming our Loaves and Fishes guests? Or perhaps you identify with the previously invited guests who can’t come to the banquet for various reasons. Perhaps we are some of “the great intenders,” the ones not committing crimes or abusing anyone, just going about our business. Are we one of those ones who blithely pursue a life of perfect intending? “Yes,” we say, “someday, sometime, I’ll get around to accepting God’s invitation, just not now.” Or perhaps, like many of us, you identify with the rag-tag bunch rounded up by the next set of servants, thankful that you’ve been accepted by God. Does anyone here identify with the wrongly-clad guest? Perhaps we worry that we don’t follow all the rules, or don’t measure up to God’s expectations, or are still living an old life unacceptable to God. Or perhaps you’re even now saying to yourself, “I’m glad I’m not that person.” Perhaps you’re wondering if our parish has on a wedding garment. Are we doing what God expects of us? With whomever I identify myself in the parable, though, I’m still left wondering, where’s the grace in this parable? Where’s the good news?
My brothers and sisters, as long as we focus on ourselves in this parable, we can’t hear the good news. The truth is that this parable is not about us: it’s about God. Like most of Jesus’ parables, this one has something to tell us about God and about what God hopes for in us. The good news is that God’s realm is open to all: there is no A-list for God’s party. All are invited. Actually, we hear the same good news in our reading from Isaiah, don’t we? Writing about eight centuries before Jesus, Isaiah gave us a wonderful vision of the celebration that God has prepared for God’s people. Didn’t God promise us, in Isaiah’s words, a feast of rich food and well-aged wine for all peoples? Jesus uses that same image of a banquet, here a wedding banquet, one of the most joyous human occasions most of us can imagine, and Matthew reinforces it, to proclaim that God has invited all of us into God’s realm, not just the religious elite, not just those who have the time or resources to be especially punctilious in their practice of holiness, not just those who can take a week-long retreat every year, wonderful as that might be. God invites all of us: rich and poor, busy and idle, black, white, yellow, red, brown, all ethnicities, all genders, all, bad, lukewarm, good.
And God doesn’t stop inviting us to the feast: God continues to extend invitations to join God’s blessed community to all who would hear, at any and every time. God invites us into God’s community by encouraging us to allow ourselves to be open to God’s presence in our own personal prayer time, perhaps even to venture into the mysterious realm of contemplative prayer. God has a standing invitation for us to feast at the Eucharistic banquet, taking in God’s word and tasting Jesus’ Body and Blood. A pastor of a small rural parish would say at the end of the liturgy, “Go in peace, this has been the highlight of your day; it’s all downhill from here.” God also has other ways of inviting us into God’s realm. God invites us to share with others when we reach out to those in need, when we give of ourselves and our time, for example, to feed the hungry at Loaves and Fishes, or when we help the victims of natural disasters. God invites us to use our skills in organizing and advocacy by speaking up for those who have no voice and through responsibly exercising our voting rights. God invites us into God’s realm when we gaze on God’s creation with awe and appreciation, when we forgive one another, when we bravely bear the various struggles of our lives. In all our fears, frustrations, sadness, desires, accomplishments, and joys, God invites us into a realm of peace, where we center our attention on the One who loves us deeply enough to come among us in the flesh.
Are we alert to God’s invitation? We may refuse or misunderstand God’s invitation, but God continues to extend God’s invitation to us, hourly, daily, weekly, continuously. And if we hear God’s invitation, if we do accept it, and if we realize that God’s invitation is for all, then God can begin to transform us. Perhaps we fear to accept God’s invitation because we know that ultimately it must be actualized in our lives. God’s grace is unending, but it is not free of cost. Ultimately, we must do more than stand speechless on the threshold without the needed clothes. Ultimately, we must put on that wedding garment and let God change us. Ultimately, we must let God work through us, gradually changing us into the persons God created us to be.
Are we as a parish alert to God’s invitations? God’s invitation to the feast was not extended only to size A-size parishes, parishes like Redeemer or St. Thomas in Cincinnati. God’s invitation is extended to all of us, even to small parishes like St. Peter’s. God’s invitation is extended to all people, not just those who wear a clerical collar. I believe the Common Ministry program is one way that God is inviting us as a parish to bring God’s kingdom nearer. If we accept God’s invitation, if we enter joyfully into the wedding hall, God will transform us. Are there other ways God is extending invitations to us a parish? We are an outpost of God’s kingdom right here in Gallipolis, Ohio. If we can stay alert to God’s invitations, and if we can accept and actualize them, be assured that God will change us, grow us, and strengthen us to share God’s invitations with others. Can we do it? Here’s my answer, John van de Laar’s poem, “The Amazing Invitation.”
No special qualifications needed;
No particular connections or exclusive memberships required;
No secret passwords or unique attributes expected;
No campaigning or canvassing,
no examinations or reference checks;
Just an amazing invitation to a feast;
to find our place at Your table
Alongside these other unworthy ones,
these other beloved ones;
these others humble enough to accept the invitation
without asking who else will be there.
Well, Jesus, Lord of the Feast.
with thankful and open hearts,
we accept Your amazing invitation.1
1. Accessed at http://sacredise.com.
It’s not hard to guess Jesus’ intent in these parables. All of them clearly indict the religious leadership and suggest that those who are on the edges of society, who have been deemed poor, insignificant, or unclean by the fastidious Pharisees and other leaders, are closer to full enjoyment of God’s love than the religious leaders are. Perhaps Jesus was hoping that such an indictment would induce the religious leadership to change course and join his disciples. Perhaps he was upping the ante and pushing his conflict with them closer to its eventual outcome. Nor is it difficult to guess why the early Christian community preserved these parables of Jesus, and why writer of the Gospel of Matthew included them in his Gospel. Writing in the ‘80’s, when tensions between the fledgling Christian community and the synagogue leadership were increasing, the Gospel writer’s primary goal was to announce that God’s Kingdom had indeed finally arrived in the person of Jesus. At the same time, the writer also sought to explain to a mixed-ethnic community why the religious elite of Judaism had largely resisted the Christian message, and why the early Christian community should continue to attract an increasing number of Gentiles.
I still don’t hear much grace or good news, do you? And as we ourselves begin to shiver a little in fear of judgment, perhaps we’re tempted to ask ourselves where we fit in this parable. Take a minute and think about it: with whom do you most closely identify in this parable? Sitting here in a pew of this beautiful church, having committed yourselves to Jesus, having committed yourself to this parish, waiting to be nourished with Christ’s Body and Blood, perhaps you identify with those servants – we resist calling ourselves “slaves,” don’t we – those servants who faithfully do the king’s bidding and go out issuing invitations, first to the previously invited guests, then to any and all willing to come in. Do you see yourselves out there, for example, inviting friends to St. Peter’s, or perhaps welcoming our Loaves and Fishes guests? Or perhaps you identify with the previously invited guests who can’t come to the banquet for various reasons. Perhaps we are some of “the great intenders,” the ones not committing crimes or abusing anyone, just going about our business. Are we one of those ones who blithely pursue a life of perfect intending? “Yes,” we say, “someday, sometime, I’ll get around to accepting God’s invitation, just not now.” Or perhaps, like many of us, you identify with the rag-tag bunch rounded up by the next set of servants, thankful that you’ve been accepted by God. Does anyone here identify with the wrongly-clad guest? Perhaps we worry that we don’t follow all the rules, or don’t measure up to God’s expectations, or are still living an old life unacceptable to God. Or perhaps you’re even now saying to yourself, “I’m glad I’m not that person.” Perhaps you’re wondering if our parish has on a wedding garment. Are we doing what God expects of us? With whomever I identify myself in the parable, though, I’m still left wondering, where’s the grace in this parable? Where’s the good news?
My brothers and sisters, as long as we focus on ourselves in this parable, we can’t hear the good news. The truth is that this parable is not about us: it’s about God. Like most of Jesus’ parables, this one has something to tell us about God and about what God hopes for in us. The good news is that God’s realm is open to all: there is no A-list for God’s party. All are invited. Actually, we hear the same good news in our reading from Isaiah, don’t we? Writing about eight centuries before Jesus, Isaiah gave us a wonderful vision of the celebration that God has prepared for God’s people. Didn’t God promise us, in Isaiah’s words, a feast of rich food and well-aged wine for all peoples? Jesus uses that same image of a banquet, here a wedding banquet, one of the most joyous human occasions most of us can imagine, and Matthew reinforces it, to proclaim that God has invited all of us into God’s realm, not just the religious elite, not just those who have the time or resources to be especially punctilious in their practice of holiness, not just those who can take a week-long retreat every year, wonderful as that might be. God invites all of us: rich and poor, busy and idle, black, white, yellow, red, brown, all ethnicities, all genders, all, bad, lukewarm, good.
And God doesn’t stop inviting us to the feast: God continues to extend invitations to join God’s blessed community to all who would hear, at any and every time. God invites us into God’s community by encouraging us to allow ourselves to be open to God’s presence in our own personal prayer time, perhaps even to venture into the mysterious realm of contemplative prayer. God has a standing invitation for us to feast at the Eucharistic banquet, taking in God’s word and tasting Jesus’ Body and Blood. A pastor of a small rural parish would say at the end of the liturgy, “Go in peace, this has been the highlight of your day; it’s all downhill from here.” God also has other ways of inviting us into God’s realm. God invites us to share with others when we reach out to those in need, when we give of ourselves and our time, for example, to feed the hungry at Loaves and Fishes, or when we help the victims of natural disasters. God invites us to use our skills in organizing and advocacy by speaking up for those who have no voice and through responsibly exercising our voting rights. God invites us into God’s realm when we gaze on God’s creation with awe and appreciation, when we forgive one another, when we bravely bear the various struggles of our lives. In all our fears, frustrations, sadness, desires, accomplishments, and joys, God invites us into a realm of peace, where we center our attention on the One who loves us deeply enough to come among us in the flesh.
Are we alert to God’s invitation? We may refuse or misunderstand God’s invitation, but God continues to extend God’s invitation to us, hourly, daily, weekly, continuously. And if we hear God’s invitation, if we do accept it, and if we realize that God’s invitation is for all, then God can begin to transform us. Perhaps we fear to accept God’s invitation because we know that ultimately it must be actualized in our lives. God’s grace is unending, but it is not free of cost. Ultimately, we must do more than stand speechless on the threshold without the needed clothes. Ultimately, we must put on that wedding garment and let God change us. Ultimately, we must let God work through us, gradually changing us into the persons God created us to be.
Are we as a parish alert to God’s invitations? God’s invitation to the feast was not extended only to size A-size parishes, parishes like Redeemer or St. Thomas in Cincinnati. God’s invitation is extended to all of us, even to small parishes like St. Peter’s. God’s invitation is extended to all people, not just those who wear a clerical collar. I believe the Common Ministry program is one way that God is inviting us as a parish to bring God’s kingdom nearer. If we accept God’s invitation, if we enter joyfully into the wedding hall, God will transform us. Are there other ways God is extending invitations to us a parish? We are an outpost of God’s kingdom right here in Gallipolis, Ohio. If we can stay alert to God’s invitations, and if we can accept and actualize them, be assured that God will change us, grow us, and strengthen us to share God’s invitations with others. Can we do it? Here’s my answer, John van de Laar’s poem, “The Amazing Invitation.”
No special qualifications needed;
No particular connections or exclusive memberships required;
No secret passwords or unique attributes expected;
No campaigning or canvassing,
no examinations or reference checks;
Just an amazing invitation to a feast;
to find our place at Your table
Alongside these other unworthy ones,
these other beloved ones;
these others humble enough to accept the invitation
without asking who else will be there.
Well, Jesus, Lord of the Feast.
with thankful and open hearts,
we accept Your amazing invitation.1
1. Accessed at http://sacredise.com.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Let Me Sing for My Beloved
When the rain is blowing in your face
And the whole world is on your case
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love.
When evening shadows and the stars appear
And there is no one to dry your tears
I could hold you for a million years
To make you feel my love.1
How do you understand God? Is God an abstraction for you, an intellectual puzzle, or an intriguing idea? Is God some impersonal force for you? “The Force be with you,” they said in the Star Wars films. Is that how you experience God? Perhaps you think of God as transcendent, totally beyond this world, above all human experience, except perhaps for the Word made flesh. Or maybe you think of the Deists’ “watchmaker.” God set the world in motion, and it has run by itself ever since? Perhaps you think of God as unchanging. After all, doesn’t one of the prayers in our Compline service ask that we may rest in God’s “eternal changelessness?” In some respects, all of these ways of talking about God have some truth in them, since at some point we humans acknowledge that God is unknowable and indescribable. “Neti, neti,” say Hindus, “not this, not this.” “Utter mystery,” say many practitioners of contemplative prayer. To say anything more about God surely risks anthropomorphizing God, reducing God to purely human terms. And yet today’s Scriptures beg us to ask a poignant and utterly necessary question. Does God feel? Does God have emotions, as we do? If we are created in God’s image, and emotions are intrinsic to our nature, must they not also be intrinsic to God’s nature? Doesn’t God also feel?
The Hebrew Scriptures – and remember that they were Jesus’ Scriptures, and they are our Scriptures too – contain many, many examples of God having feelings. Think of God in the Garden of Eden, lonely, wandering around looking for Adam and Eve. How about all the many times God gets angry at the Israelites, especially during the long trek in Sinai? How about the psalms? For the psalmist, God can be impatient, jealous, sympathetic, compassionate, merciful, and loving. The prophets show God providing both warnings and reassurance. Through the prophecy of Hosea God grieves for unfaithful Israel. And, of course, the Song of Songs portrays God as a young man in springtime, passionately in love with his fair beloved.
Does God have feelings? Judging by our reading this morning from the prophecy of Isaiah, God has very deep feelings. The prophet has just castigated Israel for the corruption of its priests. Seemingly changing tone, the prophet then begins a love song in God’s name. God has created a vineyard, which God has lovingly tended: planted it with the best vines, put up a guardhouse, built a wine press. But did the vineyard produce the sweet wine that God expected from such loving care? Contrary to God’s expectations and hopes, the vineyard produced wild grapes, i.e., inedible grapes that only scavenger birds would deign to eat. Then the prophet lets God give voice to God’s despair and disappointment: “What more could I have done for my vineyard that I didn’t do? Why did it yield wild grapes?” Despite God’s best efforts, despite all of God’s love and care, God’s project has failed: the vineyard is unproductive. Giving in, God will let the vineyard be, let it produce wild grapes, let its protective hedges fall down, and send no more rain on it.
Can we relate to this story? Surely all of us have had parallel experiences, experiences where we have poured our best efforts into a project, only to see it fail. I can think of numerous examples from my time as dean at Ohio University: grant proposals that we thoroughly researched, lovingly and carefully wrote up, and submitted well before the due date, only to be bypassed by the powers that were or given only a small fraction of what we’d requested. I think of a few young faculty members – fortunately only a few – to whom we gave reduced teaching assignments, summer support, travel to workshops, coaching and mentoring, and still they couldn’t sufficiently improve their teaching or write the needed articles to be eligible for tenure. Although we pray to be spared this feeling of disappointment and despair, many parents of adult children know it well: for all our care, attention, love, and support, our adult child just can’t seem to take hold, can’t make a go of life, can’t shake free from addiction, or, worst of all, commits a horrible crime. Did you ever wonder, for example, what the parents of Jared Loughner must have felt, when they heard the news of what he’d done? With God, we too can wring our hands and cry out, “What more could I have done that I haven’t done?”
My sisters and brothers, fortunately for Israel and for us, God’s despair and disappointment are not the end of the story. Yes, the vineyard becomes “a waste,” and falls into ruin. And yet, for all that, God still cares deeply for God’s people. The vineyard of Israel and Judah are God’s planting, God’s creation. The rest of Isaiah’s prophecy goes on to remind us of what the Gospels also tell us: that God is not a remote, uncaring God. Rather, God is deeply caring, deeply involved with God’s people. And not only with Israel and Judah, but, ultimately with all nations, all humanity, all of creation. Despite Israel’s faithlessness, despite the unsuccessful alliances with Assyria and the exile into Babylon, ultimately God cares so much for God’s people, that, Isaiah assures them, God will deliver all of them from war, oppression, and death. “O Lord, you are my God,” Isaiah will sing to God, “for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.” And ultimately all people and all creation will be included in the saving work of God.
But – there’s always a “but,” isn’t there – God’s love for Israel and Judah carries expectations. God tended the vineyard of Israel and Judah expecting justice and righteousness, but the vineyard produced only bloodshed and cries of pain. God expected the vineyard to bear good fruit, not the wild fruits of injustice and suffering, nor the fruits of greed, gluttony, dishonesty, and arrogance, as the later verses of this chapter detail. No wonder God was disappointed! As Christians, we can certainly relate to the image of bearing good fruit. Jesus himself used this image. We remember especially what he told his friends in the Gospel of John: “I am the vine; you are the branches; those who live in me and I in them will bear abundant fruit…. It was not you who chose me; it was I who chose you to go forth and bear fruit,” to love one another as Jesus had loved them.
And so ultimately we are faced with a challenge. We who have been grafted on to Israel – as St. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Roman Christians – what good fruit have we produced in our lives? God loves us as deeply as God loved Israel and Judah, but God’s love for us is not for our own self-aggrandizement. We do not hear in this Scripture – nor anywhere in the Bible – a prosperity Gospel. What we do hear is the question that is at the heart of God’s love song. How have we returned God’s passionate love for all people and for the world that God created? Have we produced the inedible grapes of greed, over-consumption, dishonesty, and war? Have we turned away from those in need? Have we trashed this beautiful earth that God has given us? Or do our lives reflect God’s passionate love? Do we try to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind? Do we strive actively for justice and peace, equity and well-being? Do we aim to be good stewards of all the abundant resources that God has given us? Do we try with all our being to love others as God loves us?
As we grapple with these questions, as we engage in the self-examination to which the prophets of Israel call us, to say nothing of the part of Matthew’s Gospel that we have been hearing these last several weeks, we do so with the assurance of God’s deep, continuing, and abiding love. God does feel – deeply. And God’s deepest feeling is passionate love for God’s people. When we truly commit ourselves to God and strive in our lives to return God’s love, we can be assured that, as one writer put it, “we are characters in a divine love song.”2 And so, we are bold to pray,
Lord, you have called us to know you,
you have called us to love you,
you have called us to serve you.
Make us worthy of our calling.
May we proclaim your power and your peace.
May we rejoice in your light and your love;
through Christ the living Lord. Amen.3
1. Garth Brooks, “To Make You Feel My Love,” quoted in Celebration Preaching Resources, for October 2, 2011.
2. James Burns, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2011), 127.
3. David Adam, Clouds and Glory (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2001), 126.
And the whole world is on your case
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love.
When evening shadows and the stars appear
And there is no one to dry your tears
I could hold you for a million years
To make you feel my love.1
How do you understand God? Is God an abstraction for you, an intellectual puzzle, or an intriguing idea? Is God some impersonal force for you? “The Force be with you,” they said in the Star Wars films. Is that how you experience God? Perhaps you think of God as transcendent, totally beyond this world, above all human experience, except perhaps for the Word made flesh. Or maybe you think of the Deists’ “watchmaker.” God set the world in motion, and it has run by itself ever since? Perhaps you think of God as unchanging. After all, doesn’t one of the prayers in our Compline service ask that we may rest in God’s “eternal changelessness?” In some respects, all of these ways of talking about God have some truth in them, since at some point we humans acknowledge that God is unknowable and indescribable. “Neti, neti,” say Hindus, “not this, not this.” “Utter mystery,” say many practitioners of contemplative prayer. To say anything more about God surely risks anthropomorphizing God, reducing God to purely human terms. And yet today’s Scriptures beg us to ask a poignant and utterly necessary question. Does God feel? Does God have emotions, as we do? If we are created in God’s image, and emotions are intrinsic to our nature, must they not also be intrinsic to God’s nature? Doesn’t God also feel?
The Hebrew Scriptures – and remember that they were Jesus’ Scriptures, and they are our Scriptures too – contain many, many examples of God having feelings. Think of God in the Garden of Eden, lonely, wandering around looking for Adam and Eve. How about all the many times God gets angry at the Israelites, especially during the long trek in Sinai? How about the psalms? For the psalmist, God can be impatient, jealous, sympathetic, compassionate, merciful, and loving. The prophets show God providing both warnings and reassurance. Through the prophecy of Hosea God grieves for unfaithful Israel. And, of course, the Song of Songs portrays God as a young man in springtime, passionately in love with his fair beloved.
Does God have feelings? Judging by our reading this morning from the prophecy of Isaiah, God has very deep feelings. The prophet has just castigated Israel for the corruption of its priests. Seemingly changing tone, the prophet then begins a love song in God’s name. God has created a vineyard, which God has lovingly tended: planted it with the best vines, put up a guardhouse, built a wine press. But did the vineyard produce the sweet wine that God expected from such loving care? Contrary to God’s expectations and hopes, the vineyard produced wild grapes, i.e., inedible grapes that only scavenger birds would deign to eat. Then the prophet lets God give voice to God’s despair and disappointment: “What more could I have done for my vineyard that I didn’t do? Why did it yield wild grapes?” Despite God’s best efforts, despite all of God’s love and care, God’s project has failed: the vineyard is unproductive. Giving in, God will let the vineyard be, let it produce wild grapes, let its protective hedges fall down, and send no more rain on it.
Can we relate to this story? Surely all of us have had parallel experiences, experiences where we have poured our best efforts into a project, only to see it fail. I can think of numerous examples from my time as dean at Ohio University: grant proposals that we thoroughly researched, lovingly and carefully wrote up, and submitted well before the due date, only to be bypassed by the powers that were or given only a small fraction of what we’d requested. I think of a few young faculty members – fortunately only a few – to whom we gave reduced teaching assignments, summer support, travel to workshops, coaching and mentoring, and still they couldn’t sufficiently improve their teaching or write the needed articles to be eligible for tenure. Although we pray to be spared this feeling of disappointment and despair, many parents of adult children know it well: for all our care, attention, love, and support, our adult child just can’t seem to take hold, can’t make a go of life, can’t shake free from addiction, or, worst of all, commits a horrible crime. Did you ever wonder, for example, what the parents of Jared Loughner must have felt, when they heard the news of what he’d done? With God, we too can wring our hands and cry out, “What more could I have done that I haven’t done?”
My sisters and brothers, fortunately for Israel and for us, God’s despair and disappointment are not the end of the story. Yes, the vineyard becomes “a waste,” and falls into ruin. And yet, for all that, God still cares deeply for God’s people. The vineyard of Israel and Judah are God’s planting, God’s creation. The rest of Isaiah’s prophecy goes on to remind us of what the Gospels also tell us: that God is not a remote, uncaring God. Rather, God is deeply caring, deeply involved with God’s people. And not only with Israel and Judah, but, ultimately with all nations, all humanity, all of creation. Despite Israel’s faithlessness, despite the unsuccessful alliances with Assyria and the exile into Babylon, ultimately God cares so much for God’s people, that, Isaiah assures them, God will deliver all of them from war, oppression, and death. “O Lord, you are my God,” Isaiah will sing to God, “for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.” And ultimately all people and all creation will be included in the saving work of God.
But – there’s always a “but,” isn’t there – God’s love for Israel and Judah carries expectations. God tended the vineyard of Israel and Judah expecting justice and righteousness, but the vineyard produced only bloodshed and cries of pain. God expected the vineyard to bear good fruit, not the wild fruits of injustice and suffering, nor the fruits of greed, gluttony, dishonesty, and arrogance, as the later verses of this chapter detail. No wonder God was disappointed! As Christians, we can certainly relate to the image of bearing good fruit. Jesus himself used this image. We remember especially what he told his friends in the Gospel of John: “I am the vine; you are the branches; those who live in me and I in them will bear abundant fruit…. It was not you who chose me; it was I who chose you to go forth and bear fruit,” to love one another as Jesus had loved them.
And so ultimately we are faced with a challenge. We who have been grafted on to Israel – as St. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Roman Christians – what good fruit have we produced in our lives? God loves us as deeply as God loved Israel and Judah, but God’s love for us is not for our own self-aggrandizement. We do not hear in this Scripture – nor anywhere in the Bible – a prosperity Gospel. What we do hear is the question that is at the heart of God’s love song. How have we returned God’s passionate love for all people and for the world that God created? Have we produced the inedible grapes of greed, over-consumption, dishonesty, and war? Have we turned away from those in need? Have we trashed this beautiful earth that God has given us? Or do our lives reflect God’s passionate love? Do we try to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind? Do we strive actively for justice and peace, equity and well-being? Do we aim to be good stewards of all the abundant resources that God has given us? Do we try with all our being to love others as God loves us?
As we grapple with these questions, as we engage in the self-examination to which the prophets of Israel call us, to say nothing of the part of Matthew’s Gospel that we have been hearing these last several weeks, we do so with the assurance of God’s deep, continuing, and abiding love. God does feel – deeply. And God’s deepest feeling is passionate love for God’s people. When we truly commit ourselves to God and strive in our lives to return God’s love, we can be assured that, as one writer put it, “we are characters in a divine love song.”2 And so, we are bold to pray,
Lord, you have called us to know you,
you have called us to love you,
you have called us to serve you.
Make us worthy of our calling.
May we proclaim your power and your peace.
May we rejoice in your light and your love;
through Christ the living Lord. Amen.3
1. Garth Brooks, “To Make You Feel My Love,” quoted in Celebration Preaching Resources, for October 2, 2011.
2. James Burns, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2011), 127.
3. David Adam, Clouds and Glory (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2001), 126.
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