Holy Heavenly Air Fryer of Justice

Luke 21:5-19

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, Jesus said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them. “When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. “But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.

What do you WANT these lessons to be about?  Here’s what I WANT them to be about.  I WANT them to be about God showing up like Rowdy Roddy Piper did in the 1988 film “They Live” and I want God to live out the famous line from that movie: “I’m here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum.”  I WANT these lessons to be signaling God’s coming with the Holy Heavenly Air Fryer of Justice to crisp-ify the arrogant and the evildoers!  THAT is what I WANT these lessons to be about!  

There’s only one problem with that.  That is absolutely NOT what these lessons are about!  I know… Dang it!  It turns out what they ARE actually trying to tell us is that when we inevitably encounter arrogant evildoers (who happen along in every generation) and when, throughout history, we see people creating famine, and when natural disasters invariable happen, and when the powerful in every age perpetuate war just to stay in power… What these lessons are REALLY telling us is that NONE OF THAT is signaling God’s Coming with a Cosmic Toaster Oven or any other sort of Divine Kitchen Appliance of Smite, to broil, bake, blend, julienne, or fry anybody.  

But wait… it gets worse!  Because what these lessons ARE telling us, is that the way to deal with all of that horror… is to wait with endurance.  I know!  Not at ALL as satisfying as God sending “arrogant evildoers” for a spin in the Cosmic Cuisinart!Less satisfying.  But honest.  Now, the danger in hearing that we are called every day to wait, even while the world around us is falling apart or worse, being torn apart, is that we will make the mistake of confusing “waiting” with “inaction.”  That’s the mistake that some of the people in the second lesson were making.  You see, Paul believed that Jesus would return… and Paul believed it would happen before dinner THAT day!  Every day he woke up and HONESTLY expected Jesus to be standing there with a cup of coffee and a smile!  So, Paul passed that “its gonna happen literally any minute” expectation on to the people in Thessaloniki and some of those people took that so much to heart that they stopped EVERYTHING they were doing… they stopped working, stopped caring for their families, stopped caring for their neighbors… they stopped LIVING!  All they did was lay on the church lawn, look up at the sky, and wait for Jesus.  They honestly thought, THAT was faithful waiting.   

The second lesson was Paul’s correction of that particular misunderstanding and instructions on how we ARE supposed to wait.  We are called to wait in a way that gets you called before governors and kings.  You don’t get called before governors or kings for just lying on the lawn, dreaming about Jesus returning.  You get called before governors and kings because you’ve been waiting for Jesus by ACTIVELY and insistently living the Jesus Way out in the world!  It’s the ACTIVE loving of God… It’s the ACTIVE insisting on the dignity of the least, lost and last in our community… It’s the ACTIVE loving of our neighbors, feeding the hungry and giving the cold a warm place to stay… It’s THAT kind of ACTIVE waiting that gives governors and kings fits.  

Waiting as Jesus and Paul have called us to wait means living as Jesus lived, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, housing the homeless, caring for the widow and orphan and it is doing that work with endurance… doing what we can in a way that we will be able to do it today, and tomorrow, and the next day and the next… making what often feels like only a tiny, and often almost imperceptible difference, with an endurance that spans a lifetime.  It means working on justice like the Colorado River works on the Grand Canyon.  The Jesus Way is not a sprint.  It’s a relay race of back to back marathons, run by a multitude of runners over decades, centuries, even millennia…  each handing the baton off to the next one running the race.  

Nobody knows what’s going to happen next.  If someone tells you they do, they’re trying to sell you something you don’t need!  All we CAN know is that our hunger and thirst for justice is God’s own desire, and we are to wait for that justice by living the Jesus Way… actively doing what we can to share God’s love with the folks we run into each day right here in our everyday lives.  We are called to wait the Jesus Way… seeing Christ in our neighbors when others see our neighbors as “foreigners” or “enemies” “threats” or “terrorists”.  We are called to wait the Jesus Way, not sprinting a marathon but as Bishop Tutu said, “Doing our little bits of good where we are; because it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”

Malachi did not say God would swoop down and chuck all the arrogant and evildoers in an oven.  Malachi said the day is coming, burning like an oven, when the arrogant and evildoers will be stubble.  The way we get to that promised day is by waiting the Jesus Way, doing the little bits of justice and kindness we can wherever we find our feet walking humbly on each particular day… DOING THAT, we have been promised, will do nothing less than change the world into the world God desires, and THAT is what we are called to do.  Amen.    

Ideas vs. Beliefs

Luke 20: 27-38

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

The Sadducees were a sect of Judaism which only accepted the first five books of Moses.  They didn’t believe anything anybody had tacked onto those five books: no prophets, no history, no psalms, no angels, no resurrection of the dead, no nothin’.  They were very conservative, very wealthy, very powerful, and very faithful folks who didn’t want to hear about any “new” ideas because everything they did was correct and right just the way it was.  Thank you very much!

 

Which is why the question they had for Jesus in the Gospel today wasn’t a genuine question, but bait for a trap.  They weren’t looking for an answer.  They HAD the answer… the right answer… the only answer… and that answer was that this new fangled idea about there being a “resurrection of the dead” was just plain nonsense.  It was nonsense to them just like Jesus’ other wack-a-do ideas about justice, the poor being lifted up and the rich being cast down, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and caring for the outcast and foreigner.  The Sadducees, with a genuine belief as strong as anyone’s, thought it was all new fangled, human invented nonsense! 

Now, if that’s how they wanted to do religion… if that’s the way that worked for them… honestly… I’d just say go for it!  It’s not MY way!  I personally like those new fangled ideas like “the prophets” and “psalms” and “resurrection”, but I’d be fine letting it be THEIR way if we could all just leave it right there.  The trouble came because they couldn’t just leave it right there, could they?  They weren’t content saying “This is the way for ME.  You’re welcome to join in… or not… your choice, but I’m sticking with MY way.”  Instead they insisted that THEIR WAY be everybody’s way and if you couldn’t be converted you needed to be eliminated.

The Chief Priests and Scribes just a few verses earlier had tried to trap Jesus with a question as well.  “Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to the Emperor or not?”  If Jesus had said “no, don’t pay taxes” they would have turned him into the Romans as a rebel.  If he had said “yes, pay taxes,” they would have turned him over to the people as a traitor.  Again, they were simply baiting Jesus because his ideas challenged their beliefs, and they, like the Sadducees, simply wouldn’t be content doing their thing while someone else did something different.  They too insisted that THEIR WAY must be everybody’s way and if you couldn’t be converted you needed to be eliminated.

   

The Pharisees were yet another group who knew what they believed was right.  They KNEW the coming Messiah would think like them, talk like them, and live like them.  When Jesus showed up and didn’t think, talk, or live like them, they could have just said, “Hey, we don’t think you’re the Messiah, but you do you and we’ll just keep looking for our Messiah over here.”  They could have done that.  But they didn’t.  They too insisted that THEIR WAY be everybody’s way and if you couldn’t be converted you needed to be eliminated.

You see the REAL problem these stories reveal, right?  The real problem was never what the Sadducees, Chief Priests, Scribes, or Pharisees believed OR didn’t believe.  The real problem isn’t what the Roman Catholics, other Protestants, Jews, Shiites or Sunnis believe… The real problem isn’t what Buddhists, Sikhs, or even Zoroastrians believe or don’t believe!  This Parable is here to tell us that the REAL problem is NOT what people believe or don’t believe.  The REAL problem is insisting that MY belief must be your belief and if someone won’t be converted, then they need to be eliminated!  THAT, I think, is what Jesus wanted the people to take home with them.  Historically speaking, things like the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the 100 Year’s War are pretty good evidence that people DIDN’T take that message home, but I think that’s what Jesus WANTED them to take home.  

So, Pastor Erik, does that mean you believe anything goes?  Okay, so everyone’s clear and I don’t have to deal with being brought up on charges of heresy on top of all the other things going on in my life right now, let me say this:  I, William Erik Karas, am a full fledged Jesus guy.  FOR ME… Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  FOR ME… the Trinity… in particular the irony that the Trinity is a mystery I can’t fully wrap my brain around… hits right for me.  Is the Jesus Way the ONLY Way?  Well, since I just told you I can’t even fully wrap my brain fully around the mystery of what I BELIEVE, I don’t think there’s any chance I could say one way or another if there might be other ways for other people!  

All I am able to say, is that FOR ME… the idea of the Jesus WAY hits ME as TRUTH and I’ve found that the better I manage to follow in Jesus’ footsteps as I walk through this thing called life, the more abundant this thing called life seems to be for me.  So, if folks want to walk along this WAY with me for a bit and see if that idea hits right for them too… Great!  If folks want to do something else… Rock on!  Because the way I figure it… If God didn’t send Jesus into the world to condemn the world… and I’m trying to follow Jesus… it’s a pretty sure bet I haven’t been sent into the world to condemn it either.  Amen. 

Attempted Murder

Luke 6:20-31

Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said:

 “Blessed are you who are poor,

  for yours is the kingdom of God.

“Blessed are you who are hungry now,

  for you will be filled.

 “Blessed are you who weep now,

  for you will laugh.

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

 “But woe to you who are rich,

  for you have received your consolation.

 “Woe to you who are full now,

  for you will be hungry.

 “Woe to you who are laughing now,

  for you will mourn and weep.

  “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

“But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

A group of cows is?… a herd.  A group of fish?… a school.  A group of flamingos? … a flamboyance.  A group of three or more crows?… a murder.  A group of two crows?…  an attempted murder.  A group of Lutheran pastors?… that’s a Conference.  A group of Episcopal Priests?… a Clericus.  At my last Clericus I had a revelation.  It wasn’t mystical… more mathematical.  I realized I’m now the oldest, active, Episcopal Priest and Lutheran Pastor in Berkshire County… ordained in the last century!  Now, I’ve still got a lot to learn, but I’ve also picked up a couple things since I started this work way back in the late 1900’s!   

In this “Clericus” the other clergy were rightly angry over the federal government’s treatment of the poor.  They knew that when Jesus said, “Blessed are the Poor” it wasn’t a spiritual poverty he was talking about… it was a “not enough money to live” kind of poverty.  They knew too, that when Jesus said “Woe” that the word “Woe” in Jesus’ day was used then in the same way the middle finger is used in our day.  In Luke’s Beatitudes… Jesus was NOT messing around!  God has a distinct preference for blessing the poor, the foreigner, the widow, the orphan, the hungry, the persecuted, and those who weep… and God’s preference is to bless them OUT of those terrible situations!  Those who work with the Divine to lift people OUT of their troubles are doing Holy work.  Those who throw people into poverty, hunger, and terror… are doing evil.  Jesus could not have been more clear.

My colleagues knew that’s what Jesus was about in these Beatitudes and were ready to charge into battle with an all out frontal assault.  But what the old guy in the room wanted them to do was to ALSO look at the piece of scripture we get with the Beatitudes here for All Saints Sunday that we DIDN’T get when we had Luke's Beatitudes back in February.  Both times we get the full list of blessings and woes but here in November, we get them with an added How-To Manual.  It’s that How-To Manual I wanted my colleagues to consider, because the world these days is different.  The evil these days is different and in that How-To Manual Jesus recommends confronting evil, in times such as these, in ways that are different.  Ways that are cunning… sly… even a bit tricksy.  In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus sends the disciples out in times like these as “Lambs into the midst of wolves” and tells them to be “as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.”

Here in Luke’s Gospel.  Jesus tells them that if anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.  But this isn’t Jesus calling us to ask for more abuse.  In Jesus day, a person of status would strike their “inferior” with the back of their right hand.  To “offer the other cheek” was to sarcastically invite that person to hit them with the palm of their hand, and in doing so, elevate them to the status of an equal.  In Jesus day, the only clothes people wore were a shirt and a coat.  When a person came to collect a debt and all the person had was a coat and a shirt to their name, the debt collector would take their coat, but if you gave them your shirt as well that would leave you naked!  To us in our culture that would be shameful.  But in THAT culture it was MORE shameful to CAUSE someone to become naked in public than it was to BE the one who was naked in public.

What I wanted my colleagues to see… what I want us all to see… what I think Jesus wants us to see… is that we are being called not ONLY to join with the Divine in blessing the poor, the foreigner, the widow, the orphan, the hungry, the persecuted, and those who weep… OUT of the evil they have been cast into!  But ALSO, in times like these, we are called to do that work in ways that are smart, strategic, crafty, and even a bit sneaky.

 

You see, in these increasingly horrible times I don’t think we have the luxury of doing that work with a brand new frontal assault born out of white hot rage and blind passion each time we encounter injustice.  In times like these we need to think strategically and if we are, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, but to drive a spoke into the wheel itself” we need to be cunning in the use of our time, tactics, and resources.  We need to lend our support to people and organizations who are experts in Blessing people out of evil rather than reinventing something someone else has already perfected.  The evil we face these days is Legion.  You and I are called to bless our neighbors out of that evil but always while “doing to others as we would have the do to us” so we never fall into the temptation of doing evil to fight evil.  Instead we must bring blessings and proclaim “woes” with the cheekiness of turning the other cheek and the shamelessness of whipping of our shirt when asked for our coat.  

Bishop Desmond Tutu once said, “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”  Milton Berle said, “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”  I think what Jesus is saying in this Gospel is, “If someone is knocking on the door with bits of good, don’t waste your energy building a new door!  Just open the door they're knocking on!”  May we all be strengthened to continually do those little bits of good, and may we do them with all the cheekiness and shamelessness these times demand.   Amen.   

A Friend in Low Places

Psalm 46

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.

God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.  The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.

The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Come, behold the works of the Lord; see what desolations he has brought on the earth.  He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.

“Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.”

The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Very little feels like solid ground these days.  Rock solid things have been shaken right down to their roots.  The usual ebb and flow of good times and hard times, now seems stuck in relentless-raging-storm mode.  Black masked secret police are in our streets.  People think about the Ann Frank House, not as a historical place to visit in Amsterdam, but as model for remodeling their basement here in Sheffield.  I can’t remember a time where more people felt so tossed and battered by the world.  The storms are deadly.  They feel unending.  The earth changes, the mountains in the seas shake, the chaos of the sea rages and the solid earth that you thought you could always count on is shaking.  But today’s Psalm contains a promise from God for times such as these:  The God of Jacob (that’s the God that wrestled with Jacob in the river and gave Jacob the new name of Israel) THAT God, is with us, through it all.    

Julian of Norwich, a nun back in the 1300’s was tormented by the raging storms in her world.  Why was there sin, brokenness, tumult, and all the horrors rampaging though the world?  In a vision, Jesus spoke to her saying:  "It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well".  This was Jesus reminding Julian of the truth of today’s Psalm, that there is no storm… no amount of unbelievable brokenness… up to and including even death itself that will keep us from ending up right where God wants us to end up… in joy and peace, light and life.  

The hard part is remembering to keep your eye, not on the storm, but on Christ.  I have trouble with that, but to be fair, even the disciples had trouble with that!  Do you remember the story of Peter wanting to walk on water?  He wanted to walk to Jesus across the water, so Jesus told him to come on!  The chaos of the sea was kept firmly under Peter’s feet when he kept his eye on Jesus.  But when his focus moved onto the chaos… when the storm became his focus, rather than Jesus… that’s when he was sunk.  

We’re living in a time where people work very hard to move our focus onto the chaos.  Media these days is built and finely tuned for the purpose of turning our focus onto the chaos… to sink our heads in the raging storm.  We try to simply to stay informed but end up doom scrolling in worry, hate, and vitriol.  Inevitably, like Peter, we end up drowning in it.  Which is one more reason why we ALL need reminding that the shaking mountains, raging seas, and even drowning in the sea is NOT the end of the story!  Even after Peter sank into the chaos of the ocean, he got pulled out.  The Lord of Hosts was with him.  The God of Jacob was his refuge.  Jesus pulled him out… Jesus ALWAYS pulls us out, no matter how deep into the world’s STUFF we might have sunk.  So, as Julian was reminded by Jesus, all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

All WILL be well… BUT… there’s always a but, isn't there?  Even though all WILL be well… and it really WILL be well… that doesn’t mean the raging seas and the shaking mountains are set to all magically disappear.  Jesus didn’t dry up the ocean with magic to rescue Peter.  He reached right INTO the depths of it and pulled him out THROUGH it!  All WILL be well.  That is true.  The God of Jacob IS with us.  That is true.  But it is also true that the noise of the shaking mountains and raging storms in our world is not going to magically disappear over night.  

Julian of Norwich, after her vision of Jesus reminding her that all will be well, had another vision.  It was a vision of the devil attacking her… trying to take away the hope she saw in Christ.  I know, I’m not a big fan of a personified devil either, BUT sometimes, giving a NAME to hard-to-pin-down things like, chaos, fear, doubt, and insecurity can be a very powerful way to fight against those shadowy forces.  The finite name of “The Devil” can remind us that everything that brings darkness, chaos, and storms into our lives is finite as well!  All of it has limits.  All of it has an end…  and no matter how the chaos and darkness rages, the God of Jacob IS our refuge AND all will be well, AND all will be well AND all manner of things will be well. 

Martin Luther’s own struggles with the storms that raged around him in his world plagued by chaos inspired him to set this same Psalm to the tune of a popular beer drinking song.  He knew his people needed an easy way to remember that the God of Jacob was their refuge.  I wonder every year at this time what beer drinking song of our time I should set this Psalm to so that we might be easily reminded of that very same thing.  Tom T. Hall’s “I Like Beer” or maybe Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places”…  can you imagine?  But honestly, if it would help us remember the truth… that no matter how much the world rages, God’s got me.  God's got you.  God's got US…  If it would help us remember that all WILL be well, and all will be well and all manner of things will be well!  That the Lord of hosts is with us.  That the God of Jacob IS our refuge.  If it helped us remember THAT… well, a new tune for Psalm 46 might just be in order.  Amen.

God's Low Blow

Luke 18:1-8

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.  He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.  In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’  For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone,  yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ”  And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says.  And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?  I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

This week Jesus isn’t doing a “Jesus living a story” sort of parable.  This week we’re back to the more usual, “Jesus telling a story” sort of parable.  But again, regardless of the sort, all parables are meant to tell us something about the way God works.  Parables are also often a softer… sometimes even a tricksier… way Jesus uses to tell us something about how God works that we might have trouble swallowing if Jesus just gave it to us straight.   

This week’s parable is one of those.  The news, that as a judge, God is a complete and total failure might have been really hard for the people to hear if it had been given to them straight.  It’s just hard to hear that God’s a failure at anything, isn’t it?  But that’s where this parable ends up!  That’s also why Jesus (unlike me) didn’t give away that ending at the beginning of the story!    

So, let's go back to the beginning.  God, in this parable is the unjust judge.  It’s a judge’s job to hear a case and decide the case fairly, regardless of how people beg or plead or pester.  Right?  It’s a judges duty to give out fair and impartial verdicts and judgments without regard to feelings, emotions, or anything else.  But in this parable, the only thing this judge is concerned with is whether or not he’s going to keep being bothered by this pesky widow.  In the end this judge decides to completely flush all jurisprudence down the toilet, chuck fair and honest judgment in the bin, and instead just give this annoying woman what she wants... just so she’ll get off his back… for crying out loud! 

In doing that, the judge in the parable has become a complete and total failure as a judge.  He wasn’t giving a fair and impartial hearing of the case.  He no longer ruled in favor of the side that the law and precedent directed him toward.  He no longer paid attention to the facts.  In short, the judge just stopped judging!   

But this strange and uncomfortable parable is here to tell us something about the way God works, right?  What this parable is telling us is that God too has stopped judging.  God too, no longer gives an impartial hearing of our failings and shortcomings.  God too, it seems, is no longer judging each of us by our actions or by the way we live our lives.  In short, Jesus tells us, God has become a complete and total failure when it comes to judging us as well.

I don’t know what you want to say about God becoming a complete and total failure as a judge, but what I have to say about it is… Thank God!  I mean, think about it.  Where would we be if God gave us exactly what we deserved?  What if God treated that "break one commandment and you’ve broken all of them" thing as an originalist?  How would your case turn out if God was to judge you strictly by the letter of the law?  What would happen to you if God was the most impartial and unswerving deliverer of Justice?  I don't know about you, but I’d be doomed even before the opening arguments! 

The Good News from this parable is that God has decided to become a complete FAILURE at being a judge.  The Good News is that God has fixed it so there is no way we could ever possibly expect a fair trial from the Divine.  Thanks be to God!  But even with that Good News, Jesus knew this parable would be a hard sell.  He knew people much more easily wrap their minds around a God of judgement than a God of love.

That’s where Jacob was in the first lesson for today.  Jacob could not imagine his brother as someone who erred on the side of love and grace.  He could, however, easily imagine his brother’s judgement.  His brother was big.  REALLY BIG!  And Jacob had been a tricky, manipulative, jerk.  A REALLY BIG tricky, manipulative jerk!  God insisted that things would be okay, but Jacob insisted they would be anything BUT okay! So there in the middle of the river, Jacob fought with God for an entire night, trying to get God to understand how his brother and the world really worked!  Grace and love was NOT how the world worked, Jacob insisted.  Judgement and punishment was the way of the world.  Jacob insisted for a whole night that God had NO idea how the world worked and finally, when God saw that Jacob would not let go of his insistence on judgement… when God saw that Jacob would not stop fighting no matter what, God kicked him right in the “hip-socket” and yes, Virginia, it was not the “hip-socket”… It was indeed the “HIP-SOCKET”!  And then strangely enough after that, Jacob stopped fighting God… go figure!  

This parable and that story about Jacob tell us something about the way God works.  They tell us that when it comes to fair and impartial judgement… God is simply not interested.  Whether that is because judgement is too much work, or because God is just DONE fighting with us, or simply because God enjoys doing grace and love way more than doing judgement and punishment, I don’t know.  But I’ll take it! 

What I do know is that you and I are the bless-ed recipients of that Divine decision to step down from the bench.  You and I are the beneficiaries of the Divine judge’s judgement to permanently retire from the job of judging and just go with grace and love across the board.  To THAT I say… Thanks be to God.  Amen.