Right Between the Eyes

Matthew 21: 23-32

When Jesus entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, ‘By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?’ Jesus said to them, ‘I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?’ And they argued with one another, ‘If we say, “From heaven”, he will say to us, “Why then did you not believe him?” But if we say, “Of human origin”, we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.’ So they answered Jesus, ‘We do not know.’ And he said to them, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things. 

 ‘What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” He answered, “I will not”; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, “I go, sir”; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?’ They said, ‘The first.’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, the tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax-collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him. 

Last week Jesus told a roundabout parable involving a landowner/winemaker/artist who cared more about making great wine than pretty much anything else.  It was a parable, like all parables are, that tells us a bit about how God works.  But last week’s parable needed to be pulled apart, examined, and sifted through to get all the way down into its nooks and crannies in order to extract all of its parable-y goodness. 

This week Jesus tells another parable.  It also tells us something about how God works.  The difference is that while last week we needed to dig around in the vineyard to figure out what Jesus was saying, this week there's no digging required.  There’s absolutely nothing to pull apart, examine, or sift through with this one.  Jesus just shoots this parable right between the eyes of the rich and powerful Chief Priests and the God and country Pharisees in a way they simply couldn’t miss.

This week’s parable comes on the heels of a confrontation with the Chief Priests and Pharisees.  They went out with the intention of tricking Jesus into saying something incriminating.  Jesus, however, wasn’t having it.  He asked them to answer a question first about John the Baptist.  He didn’t ask, we should notice, if they liked John the Baptist's theology.  He asked them if they had started LIVING as  John the Baptist had called people to live!  Clearly they hadn’t and that fact set the Chief Priests and Pharisees right up against the third rail of Palestinian politics.  The rich, powerful, and puritanical hated John, but the people LOVED him.  So with the rich, powerful, and puritanical all set back on their heels, Jesus shot this little, tiny, parable right between their eyes with all of Jerusalem watching.

One son, Jesus told them, SAID he would get right to work but didn’t.  The other SAID he would NOT go to work... but then, in the end actually went out and worked.  With this completely non-subtle parable, Jesus said to rich and powerful Chief Priests and the God and country Pharisees, “you guys are all TALK and no ACTION… BUT… God cares ONLY about WHAT YOU’RE DOING, NOT about what you say or how you look.  So, big shot Priests and Pharisees… Are you DOING something?  Are you DOING ANYTHING? 

For Jesus, faith isn’t something that happens up here in the ol’ noggin.  It isn’t a list of things to agree to.  It isn’t putting a sticker on your car.  It isn’t liking and sharing Jesus stuff on social media.  For Jesus, faith isn’t something that happens in your head or comes out of your mouth.  For Jesus, faith is what you DO in self giving love, with your feet and your hands and with all of your being as you walk step by step through this life we’ve been given.  God, Jesus told them, wants to see the walk we walk.  Not the talk we talk.  Basically Jesus was asking the people watching this confrontation, "In all the time these rich and powerful, God and country people have been flapping their gums, have you ever seen them DO anything"?  Nobody had.  They were all SHOW and no GO and Jesus was reminding them and everyone gathered there that day that God doesn’t have any time for show.  God is all about the GO.  

That’s the down and dirty, straight between the eyes parable for today.  But, since this is only page six and we usually go to eight pages for a full length sermon, we can do just a tiny bit more with this for today.  We can take a minute to remind ourselves what GO actually looks like.  It looks like deep gratitude for what we’ve been given.  It looks like SEEING people other folks treat as if they don’t even exist.  It looks like hearing, listening, and acting when that quiet voice that says, “this doesn’t feel right” even while the rest of the world sticks their fingers in their ears and turns away.   It looks like a life lived in service… not necessarily Mother Theresa level service, but simply a life of doing little things for the people around you… the people you know and the people you don’t know.  It looks like doing those little things for others who might never know and will never be able to pay you back.  It looks like boosting a small voice, if we have a large voice, so it might finally be heard.  It looks like bringing healing, wholeness, and life to all people, whether the world thinks they “deserve” it or not; whether the folks who receive it will appreciate it or not; whether they'll ever even thank you for it or not.

But even with this parable shot right between the eyes, Jesus' goal was not to shame or demean anyone.  His goal, like with every other parable, was to get us to give up the God we have made in our own image, and instead… turn and live!  And turning means GOING and going is what is needed to move us toward a life filled with meaning, worth, and dignity. So may we turn and live.  May our minds be the same as Christ Jesus.  May we talk less and GO more.  And may we continually go with one another into Abundant life.  Amen.  

It's All About the Grapes

Matthew 20:1-16

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Parables are meant to help us understand how God really works.  Jesus also tells them in a way that shocks the audience into really questioning what they have come to believe about God.  That shock opens a brief window of opportunity where they might… just might… be able to see God as God is, rather than the way they have made God out to be.

Seeing God not as God is, but as we have made God out to be wasn't only a problem of the ancients.  It's very much a problem of today as well.  Anne Lamont sums it up this way:  “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”  Parables in general, and this one in particular, crack wide open a god made in OUR image and calls us back to see God as God is.    

This parable is about a landowner… but not just any sort of landowner… this one is also a winemaker.  That means he’s a little bit of a businessman, and a whole lot of an artist.  An artist whose artistic medium is grapes... their sugar, their acid, and their fermentation.  The perfect balance of sugar and acid in the grapes on the vine happens at only one, perfect moment.  When that moment comes, the winemaker wants every single grape off the vine and into the crusher as quickly as possible.  That’s why our landowner in the parable keeps going out to get more workers because THIS is that ONE… PERFECT… MOMENT.

He gets everyone he could find to start at 6 a.m.  They agree on one denarius for a 12 hour day.  But those workers he found then just weren't enough.  He goes to town again and grabs a second bunch and promises them whatever’s “right.”  Still, there aren’t enough workers… the grapes keep changing until they’re picked, you know!  He is obsessed with getting the grapes in perfect balance… there’s no time to talk about pay, THE ONE… PERFECT… MOMENT is slipping away!  He needs EVERYONE picking… he even hires people at “the eleventh hour”… that last hour’s push, after all, might make the difference in this vintage being Chateau LaFeat Rothschild or Bartels and James! 

Then the day is over.  The grapes are in and it’s time to pay the promised wages.  Everyone gets a denarius.  The one hour folks, the six hour folks, the nine hour folks and the twelve hour folks.  One denarius to each and every one.  Well, that’s just not fair, is it?  It’s socialism!  But the winemaker doesn’t care.  He agreed on a denarius with the first group and said he’d do what’s right for the rest.  A living wage for each is what he thinks is “right” regardless of what anyone says is “fair” or “socialism” or any other “ism”! 

That’s lesson one of this parable.  God cares NOT about FAIR.  God gives what is RIGHT… and what is right is what is needed for life!  But wait, there’s more!  Because a layer or two beneath that lesson, lies another, even more outrageous one.  That first lesson was taught by the businessman side of our landowner.  But just look at what the artistic side of our landowner has to teach.  Imagine that little town the next morning.  Everyone would, of course, already know the story... it's a small town after all!  They know when old Jim stops to get his newspaper.  They're certainly going to know about that nutty winemaker’s crazy payday!  It will have blown up social media over night and in the morning the whole town will be unanimously convinced!  This guy’s crazy!  And… AND they’ve already thought about next year… and oh boy!  Next year this guy’s going to be sorry when every worker in the tri-state area shows up at this guy’s vineyard at the eleventh hour to work for one hour to get a whole day’s pay!  To the folks in the town this winemaker looks like a complete idiot, right?  He’s done something crazy and he's going to pay for that crazy next year and everyone in town can't wait to watch! 

 

But is our winemaker crazy-crazy?  Or is our winemaker crazy-brilliant?  What’s the ONE THING this artistic winemaker cares about most?  Not his reputation.  He could not care less.  It’s certainly not holding onto his cash.  Maybe doing what’s right?  Yeah, a bit.  But what this artistic winemaker wants, more than anything else in the whole wide world is to get his grapes to the crusher in that ONE PERFECT MOMENT when every grape is absolutely perfect.  And what this crazy-brilliant guy has just done is to trick every single person in the WHOLE county to show up for just one hour of work next year at harvest… show up in that one PERFECT hour… the hour in which every grape has reached perfection.

THAT’S the sort of outrageous God we have!  A God who will do literally ANYTHING, spend ANY amount, disregard what ANYBODY thinks, to make sure, on that one perfect day, in that one perfect hour, by hook or by crook, by faith or even by crazy-brilliant flimflam that EVERY SINGLE PERSON in all of creation will end their day standing in the front yard of the Divine Winemaker’s Kingdom and receive everything they need to have an abundant and eternal life.  Amen. 

7.2 BILLION Dollars

Matthew 18:21-35

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. 

“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

This Gospel starts off with Jesus telling Peter he needs to forgive “77 times.”  Jesus wasn’t being literal.  He was using a sort of numerical symbolism.  In that day and age, “7” was seen as a perfect number and “77” would have been, well, super perfect.  Jesus was telling Peter he needed to forgive the perfect amount of times… the way God forgives… in other words, as many times as it was needed.  

Then to cement the true enormity of God’s grace, Jesus tells them a parable.  A parable that requires a calculator.  So we’ll start parable math class with the second slave first.  He owed the first slave 100 denarii, but what’s a denarii?  A denarius (singular) is a day’s wages for a field worker, so at Massachusetts minimum wage, which is $15 an hour, working for 8 hours…  that’s 120 bucks.  He owed 100 of those denarii (plural), so in ‘Murican money, he owed… 12 grand.  Ouch.  But wait, there’s more math in this parable.  That first slave owed his King 10,000 Talents… but what’s a Talent?  Well, it takes 6000 Denarii to make just ONE Talent… so 6000 times 120 bucks makes…  $720,000!  But that’s just ONE Talent.  This guy owed how many Talents? 10,000!? Holy National Debt, Batman!  Okay, so 10,000 times $720,000 turns out to be… 7.2 Billion dollars!  I don’t know about you, but even imagining 7.2 billion dollars boggles my mind.  To un-boggle the mind, here are some things you can get with that amount of cashola.  First you could buy enough ships to have your own navy.  A navy larger than 59 other countries’ navies.   You could buy 233,333 cars at $30,000/each or 35,000 houses at $200,000/each.  AND if that slave had tried to pay back that debt to his king (without interest mind you) at $100,000 a year, it would take him 70,000 years to pay what he owed.  

This parable is doing what parables always do… telling us something about the way God works.  Jesus uses this “can’t wrap your mind around it” amount of money… the GDP of entire countries… to show us the mind blowing extent of God’s forgiveness.  When we pray the Lord’s prayer and it says in one version “Forgive us our debts” THIS is the level of debt it talks about God forgiving!  To do 7.2 billion dollars worth of sinning in a single lifetime, by the way, you’d have to do $800 of sin every single second of your entire life, both awake and asleep!  This was Jesus’ way of saying one more time that there is absolutely, positively, no possible way for any of us to do anything, anything, ANYTHING that God would not or could not forgive.

But now we need to go back to the second slave and his encounter with the first slave over his debt of a measly 12 grand.  Even though the first guy had just been forgiven his 7.2 billion dollar debt, he refused to pass on the same compassion, grace, and forgiveness that he had first received.  Jesus added this part to the parable because he knew very well that we’d all very much like receiving God’s unlimited, unconditional, 7.2 billion dollars worth of forgiveness, love and compassion BUT we’d also have trouble passing it on to others, even at a minuscule fraction of what we first received.  

Jesus knew that even though the King in the parable simply forgave without condition, the rest of us regular humans very often would rather get even, rub it in their face, or get them to learn their lesson.  But this part of the parable is here to remind us that passing on only PART of the love, grace, and generosity that we’ve first received is not God’s way and it’s not the way to abundant life.

It’s not the Way because IF we only pass on a piece of what we’ve received, then we will inevitably find that it is US who are not free.  It will be US who will be tortured.  Not tortured by God in some cosmic hot place, but by the simple truth that when we don’t let all the debt, hurt, pain, or resentment go, the part we hold onto just grinds away inside of us.  We churn it over and over in our minds.  We work ourselves up into a lather.  We torture ourselves.  

Jesus gets his point across here very clearly… the more we forgive… the more we let go of the wrongs that have been done to us… the more we strive to be generous, even when others have not been so generous with us… the more we will experience the freedom, fullness, and abundance of life God created us to live.  The tighter we hold those wounds, the longer we grind those grudges, the more we hold back the compassion, generosity and love we have first been given by God, the more our lives will feel tortured, as we stew in old resentments and burn with anger. 

But how do we do that?  It’s really, REALLY hard to let it all go!  Again, this parable reminds us the answer to that is found in community because we just can’t do it alone.  We all need help living toward that mind-blowing 7.2 billion dollar level of forgiveness, given without conditions.  We all need help dying to our past hurts and rising toward being ever more generous and ever more compassionate.  

May we help one another to let go of the hurts, the pains and the wounds we’ve been dealt in this life, and instead live more generously, more graciously, more compassionately, and more lovingly toward the people around us.  Because in doing that, we will live each day toward a much less tortured, and infinitely more abundant, life.  Amen. 

Eating Hot Wings. Sinful or Not?

Matthew 18:15-20

“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, 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.”

Alright, let’s see what we have this week… We’ve got “Oh wicked ones, you shall surely die!” from the first lesson.  A bit dark but alright.  Let’s try the second… “reveling, drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness…” sounds interesting.  And in the Gospel we’ve got “If another member of the church sins against you…”  So, sin it is, and if it's going to be sin, we first need to completely throw out our “helpful” Puritan ancestors’ warped ideas about “sin” and we need to ignore everyone who preaches about sin with perfect teeth in fancy suits.  Instead, we need to do this radical thing called “read the Bible” because what’s in the Bible is WAY different than the puritanical or fundamentalist notion of sin.    

In all three of these lessons, the particular details of WHAT someone has done is very much beside the point. The POINT, is that SIN is anything that creates a rift, a separation, or a falling out between you and another person, between you and your community, OR between you and God.   Think of it this way.  You order a dozen hot wings and eat them all.  Is that a sin?  Biblically it could go either way at this point.  IF you ordered them for yourself and you ate them all that’s not a sin.  BUT if you and your friend ordered 12 wings to share and you ate them all before they got even one… THAT’S a sin.  It’s a sin, not because hot wings are sinful (thank God), but because eating the whole dozen when you were supposed to share creates a rift between you and your friend!

What makes ANYTHING sinful depends ENTIRELY on whether or not a separation, a rift, or a falling out has happened as a result.  God genuinely cares absolutely nothing about this or that particular act.  God genuinely cares entirely about the state of the relationship between people, within communities, and with God.  In Bible times the state of a relationship had literal life or death implications.  Living apart from others, you simply didn’t have the food, shelter, clothing, or the protection you needed to survive.  In Bible times sin led not to some eternal torment or existential death, but to genuine, keel over and kick the bucket, death.  

Now, over the years folks have agreed that there are some things that pretty much always end up wrecking a relationship.  There are even lists.  Killing, for example, is a genuine relationship wrecker.  Adultery also not good for a relationship.  But even with those, it is the broken relationship, the separation, that grieves God the most. 

Broken relationships grieve God because, as all these lessons and all of Scripture bear witness to, “alone” is not how God created us to live.  It’s unfortunate that all too often it takes disaster and horrible tragedy to remind us we really aren’t made to go it alone.  We’ve always been and still remain today, deeply dependent on one another for any sort of life that is actually worth living.  

You and I were created to be deeply dependent upon one another.  That’s not a flaw, as the “rugged American individualists” would have you believe… it’s not a human shortcoming… it’s the way God created us to be!  We were dreamed up, designed, and loved into being to be interdependent… to live in relationship… in community… together and not apart.  

That's why all these lessons tell us how to do that… how to live together… AND they tell us how we can go about mending the rifts that inevitably happen as we work our way through life.  The key to that repair should not be a surprise… it’s love.  The kind of love that drives us to do the hard and sacrificial work of living for the other, and doing whatever is in their best interest.  

This is the kind of love that understands that forgiveness is not forgetting someone ate all the wings before you got even one!  This is the kind of love that is strikingly honest with the other about the rift that has been created, AND being open and willing to work relentlessly to find a way that you can share some wings with one another once again.  This is the kind of love that speaks hard truths… sets clear, firm boundaries… and offers healthy, mutually respectful ways back, and not ways that bury the past, or ignore the other.

We live in a world that seems each day intent on creating division, widening rifts and digging the chasms that separate us ever deeper and deeper.  Those divisions, rifts and chasms… THOSE are the true and horrible sin of the world.  As Christians, we're called to show the world that the way to abundant life is not separation and kicking people out, but to treat people the same way Jesus treated tax collectors and gentiles.  See them, welcome them, sit with them, talk with them, eat with them, and work to restore the community to wholeness so there will be life for all. 

I know, that feels like an insurmountable task!  But over the last few years I’ve come to understand that focusing on the entirety of the world's sin, nearly always leads not to healing, but to despair.  Jesus reminds us in this Gospel that our calling is not to start globally, but to simply gather two or three together, sit in some rainbow chairs at the fair, or under a tent on the AT, or make people smile as you hand them a barbecue sandwich.  It is in those seemingly insignificant acts that Christ is present with us… holding us, guiding us, and leading us into even more ways we can bring life out of death and genuine healing to our sin-sick world.  Amen.