Footprints or Footsteps

John 8:31-36

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

Jesus said to those who were following him, “Keep walking in my footsteps no matter where they lead you.  You’ll find that it is in the WALKING… that you’ll really experience genuine living.  That’s the truth.  WALKING… that’s the way you’ll be free!”  

“But,” we say, “we’re literally standing in a set of your footprints right now, while you’re talking to us.  When you tell us to ‘walk in my footsteps’ we don’t know what more you want?”  Then Jesus said, “Look, yes, you’re standing in a set of my footprints right now which is great.  AND I’m trying to WARN you to be very careful not to mix up Standing in my Footprints with Walking in my Footsteps.”

 “I know you guys,” says Jesus.  “You’ll stand there just a bit too long and you’ll start to feel comfortable.  That spot will become familiar.  It will become ‘what you’re used to’ and you won’t want to move.  That one spot will become a place you want to go back to when life gets crazy.  You’ll even start defending that one spot as being the BEST spot… some of you will even start calling it the ONLY spot… the spot will become something you will fear to loose.”

“You’re my followers.  I love you all.  That’s why I’m warning you,” says Jesus, “because I know human nature.  You’ll stand there in that set of my footsteps so long, that without knowing it, you’ll end up standing and not following.  You’ll end up stuck in a place that I once was, but not where I am any longer.  That’s why I’m trying to tell you it is in the WALKING that you have life.”    

Jesus knew, that we humans like what we have become used to.  We humans fear what we do not know or have not yet experienced.  Sometimes what we’ve become used to is a good for us, like a regular morning walk or drinking lots of water.  Other times what we have become used to is harmful, like an abusive spouse, prejudice, or never ending war.  Rarely, however, will we ever take the time to honestly… honestly reflect on whether its good for us or not, we simply hold onto what we are used to and reject what we do not know.

Taking the time to honestly reflect on whether we are still walking on the WAY or if we have become stuck in just one spot is, at least in theory if not in practice, the point of Reformation Sunday.  It is supposed to be a day to honestly reflect on our faith practice and ask ourselves, “Is what we are doing, and how we are thinking now, and the way we are living now, really, truly, and genuinely still MOVING us in Jesus’ footsteps toward the life God created for us to live?  Or could it be that, because we humans like what we are used to, that we’ve come to confuse familiarity with abundant living… to confound recitation with genuine confession… to mix up the warm and fuzzies with the fire of the Holy Spirit? 

That is what Reformation Sunday is supposed to be about.  Ironically, we being humans who like what we are used to, mostly spend Reformation Sunday not examining where we are in the present, nor asking for insight into where we are called to go next.  We mostly spend Reformation Sunday looking back to where we were, way back when Martin Luther put words to a popular beer drinking song and nailing theology questions to a door.  

“Very truly, I tell you,” said Jesus “the longer you stand still in the same spot, the more addictive that spot gets.  You end up a slave to standing in that one place.  BUT, if you keep moving.  If you keep walking in my footSTEPS and don’t stand too long in my footPRINTS, you’ll be free and stay free, indeed.  Amen.  

Questions

Matthew 22:15-22

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

“Tell us, then, what you think.”  Asked the Pharisees, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”  They weren’t looking for an answer.  They were trying to pick a fight.  But either way that was one of the 183 questions Jesus was asked in the Gospels.  Out of those 183 questions, how many do you think he answered directly?  Turns out he answered three.  Just three.  How many questions do you guess Jesus asked?  307 it turns out.  307 questions asked.  Three questions answered.  I’m no math guru but I’d say that’s around 100 questions asked for every answer given!

Why is that?  Isn’t Christianity about giving answers and eliminating questions?  It seems like that’s what the loudest voices always say.  But it doesn’t seem to be the way Jesus lived, day in and day out.  So if Christianity is walking as Jesus walked day after day, then could it be that Christianity isn’t so much about giving answers as it is about asking questions… like Jesus did… 100 times more often than he gave an answer?  

I think that perhaps Jesus, being God and all that, might have known a thing or two about how human beings work and THAT might be why Jesus was very intentional about asking WAY more questions than giving answers.  I think Jesus knew that when people give answers, make statements, and declare, “this is how it is!” folks within earshot are only given the choice of  “Buy it and get on board” or “don’t buy it and get left behind.” 

Questions, on the other hand, open folks up to an infinity of other possibilities.  Questions have the power to open and then expand real conversations.  They lead to the possibility of deeper knowing… knowing one another, knowing yourself, knowing more of the various ways people see the world, even opening up new and different ways people might come to know and relate to God.  

Questions open possibilities.  Statements shut them down.  You don’t have to just take Jesus’ word on that either.  Brain research completely backs Jesus up on this.   You’ve heard me say it before, humans are hard wired to consider each and every question we are asked.  We can’t help but do it!  Even if its only for a second, it happens.  The other fact that science has learned about questions is that not only do our brains HAVE to consider them, but our brains can ONLY consider them in the higher, human-only, parts of our brain.  

Check out then what Jesus does in this week’s Gospel using the power of questions.  The Pharisees and Herodians come out to confront Jesus… to poke the bear… to pick a fight.  When humans are poked like that (including the human Jesus) we are hard wired in our brains to respond first out of our fight or flight brains.  But in this week’s lesson, Jesus demonstrates the power of questions.  He uses the fact that questions MUST be considered... and that they MUST be considered in the higher parts of the brain, to quickly move himself into his higher brain where he can calmly decline their invitation to fight.

Watch it again… “Is it lawful to pay taxes?”  The gauntlet goes down.  Jesus goes first to questions… several of them, “Do you have one of these coins you’re talking about?  Who’s this guy here on the coin?  Who’s name is on it?  At this point, these questions have allowed Jesus to fully access his human brain.  There, in his fully human brain, his possibilities for responding beyond just fight or flight are endless.  He has access to wisdom, to cleverness… he even has access to blessed sarcasm!  “Well, even kindergarteners know", Jesus tells them... "If it’s got his name on it, then you should give it to him.” 

What would our lives look like if we asked 100 questions before we gave one answer?  What would just driving through the roundabout be like?  What would social media be like?  What would Congress be like?  What would Israel and Palestine be like?  What would the world be like… if we all used the power of questions to choose to simply not show up for all the fights we are constantly being invited to attend?  What would the world look like, if we asked enough questions, in every human encounter, to move ourselves into a place of endless possibilities before simply picking “hit it or run from it” as our perpetual mindless options to everything?

Jesus asked 100 questions for every answer he gave.  He asked questions… well… religiously.  Which makes me wonder if the asking of questions might actually be a spiritual discipline, like centering prayer, journaling, walking a labyrinth, or meditation?  I wonder what it would look like to practice asking more questions… many more questions… many, many more questions before ever starting to consider giving an answers.  Where might that sort of practice lead?  What might that look like?  How to you think you might begin?  Who might even be willing to give it a try?  Amen.  

That is the Question

Isaiah 25:1-9

O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you, I will praise your name; for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure. For you have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin; the palace of aliens is a city no more, it will never be rebuilt. Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you. For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat. When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm, the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place, you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds; the song of the ruthless was stilled.

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.

It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

This passage from Isaiah is used often for funerals as an image of eternal life.  It’s my favorite image of eternal life, for what it’s worth.  But this passage is mostly NOT ABOUT eternal life in the sweet by and by.  It’s mostly about God’s frustration with people all over creation, continuing to act SO VERY DIFFERENTLY than the way we were created.  To continue to act so horribly to one another, that we have become nearly unrecognizable to God… like aliens!  This passage is mostly about God’s ongoing desire for us… all of us… to return to be what God made us to be… human beings filled to overflowing with love and life.   

While the current horrors in Israel and Palestine will inescapably come to mind when we talk about humans being horrible to one another, the truth is that people being utterly ruthless and completely awful to one another is far from confined to this time and that place.  The truth is that no matter where you might find yourself, the powerful of our world blast the powerless with, as Isaiah writes, the unrelenting brutality of a winter rainstorm.  And what’s the result?  The result today, is as it was in Isaiah’s time... cities in ruins… homes lying in a heap… clouds of dust… the smell of death… bitter loneliness… and tears… oh my God the tears… rivers and rivers flowing into bottomless oceans of never ending tears.  

And should we be tempted to once more fool ourselves into thinking that we have the power to route and direct ruin, death, and tears FROM us exclusively TO them (whoever play those roles in the moment)… this passage from Isaiah reminds us that destruction and tears always rebound on the sender.  Destruction and tears caused by profound, prolonged, abusive, and violent treatment inflicted by one group ALWAYS rebounds on the other with unjustifiable but totally predictable, fear filled retribution which in turn invokes a nothing to loose violent reaction and more retribution that then unleash new torrents of tears until everyone is drown.  

It’s a broken record of human misery, playing without ceasing now for countless millennia.  An endless tune that makes God weep for God’s beloved creation.  A human madness which God has been calling us to end with God's word delivered from patriarchs and poems, prophets and parables since God's feasts were first abandoned for Human death by Cain and Able.  I often think that if our God could be driven stark raving mad, this evil and injustice, blood and death, and our constant obsession with ruthlessness, revenge, retribution, and reprisal leaving all of creation a smoldering tear-stained ruin would surely do it.  

Thankfully God is not driven to madness as easily as I am… and so, even in the midst of the world's latest still-smoking ruins, strewn with bodies, and soaked with tears, God reminds us all once again of God’s true desire for all of creation.  It is God's desire to make a feast for all peoples… ALL PEOPLES… ONE People, as God created them.  A feast which has the power to repair the chasms cut into creation by the ever repeating pickaxes blows of human retribution.  God’s desire is for us to stop trying to out-dig one another to hell, and instead to come to God’s FEAST… a completely top notch feast at that… where all of humanity sits down TOGETHER, eats divine food TOGETHER, at God’s table TOGETHER and return TOGETHER from living as aliens, to living as the sisters and brothers God created us all to be.

ONLY THERE and ONLY THEN… at our Divine Parent’s Table, will ALL the death, we claw at one another for as if it were gold... Only there at God's Table will all of that death be swallowed up and the death we've been eating for so long be replaced with rich food filled with marrow and well aged wines strained clear!  THAT, Isaiah reminds us, is what The Lord desires.  THAT is the Word of the Lord that has been spoken.  THAT is what the Lord continues to call us toward, even as humanity continues the race to dig my grave faster than you dig yours! 

Its overwhelming!  What can WE do?  

We always seem to ask that question in times like these, don't we?  What can we do?  But that's not really the right question.  We know what to do, don’t we?  We’ve been reminded of what to do for thousands of years by patriarchs and poems, prophets and parables, saints and sages.  We know what to do.  Do justice.  Love kindness.  Walk humbly.  We KNOW what to do.  Start right here, right now, in the one square foot in which you are standing and begin to Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul.  Do that by living God's Way.  A Way that puts the other’s needs ahead of ours.  A Way that does what is in the other’s best interest.  A Way that fully adopts God’s ways of thinking and builds on reconciliation not retribution, forgiveness not fury… takes joy in feasts not fighting.  What can we do is not the question.  To be what God created us to be, or not to be? THAT is the question. Amen.  

Botrytis Cinerea

Matthew 21:33-46

“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

We are now three for three in winemaking Gospel lessons.  Some might say that’s because Jesus “just happens” to have stopped outside a vineyard… that if he had stopped outside a Brussels Sprouts farm all these Gospels would have been about Brussels Sprouts.  But here’s the thing.  I don’t like Brussels Sprouts.  Plus, I think there’s something to the interplay of art and science with winemaking that you just don’t get with those smelly mini-cabbages on a stick!  So I’m sticking with wine!

Two weeks ago we talked about the good scientific calculations needed to pick grapes at just the right balance of sugar and acidity.  Good scientific calculations, it turns out, do work most of the time and not just in winemaking.  This past Wednesday, for example, the good scientific calculations that the 5G Emergency Broadcast on our cellphones would NOT activate a secret virus hidden in our COVID vaccines and we would NOT, in fact, turn into zombies, as some believed, also turned out to be correct.  So good scientific calculations do work MOST of the time.  MOST of the time.  This week’s parable reminds us, however, that there are always exceptions that prove the rule.  

This week the vineyard owner calculated that sending his servants and a son to get what was expected from his tenants… calculations made on a lifetime of observations… suddenly turned out to be deadly wrong.  The tenant’s calculations… also based on a lifetime of observations that “might-makes-right” is how our world works, calculated that they could somehow inherit the vineyard through assault and murder.  But as the examples show, even calculations made from centuries of observations, don’t always add up.  

The folks listening to Jesus were also living out of their scientific calculations and their own centuries of observations.  From those calculations and observations Jesus was CLEARLY not the Messiah.  They had calculated that the genuine Messiah would come and work by the numbers… work the way they had all come to understand the world to work.  They wanted, and they expected, a Messiah that would knock heads together and boot out the Romans.  Might makes right is the world’s tried and true scientific formula, and they were committed to the world’s formula.

  

But in grape growing, and in abundant life growing, scientific calculations aren’t always everything.  Sometimes in both, there is work to be done on the other side of the brain… the artsy side… or else we humans run the risk of missing God doing a new thing and worse… winemakers run the risk of making predictable and boring wine!  God, this parable reminds us, is constantly leaning toward the artistic side when it comes to helping humans grow toward abundant life.  God is always looking to do a new thing with us. That’s why God didn’t send a by-the-numbers, tally sheet marking, knock heads together, sort of Messiah.  God sent Jesus, who simply invited the people to follow his artsy fartsy Way of walking through this life guided by the principle of loving God and loving neighbor.  Jesus told this parable to remind us to expect the unexpected from God, and that the unexpected CAN be an incredible blessing, even if at first the unexpected looks like “CHANGE” which we all know is  pretty much always very, very wrong.  

The unexpected turning into a blessing, even when it looks at first glance like something has gone horribly wrong also happens in winemaking.  Such is the case with Botrytis Cinerea, or Bunch Rot… a fungus among us that gives you dark and hairy shriveled up grapes.  Can you imagine the first winemaker to see it?  The science side of their brain screaming, “NOPE, nope, that’s a big, hairy, gross, shriveled up NOPE” and at the same time the artistic side of her brain saying, “WHOA!  THAT is SUPER weird.  LET’S THROW ‘EM IN AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS!”  Now, I don’t know which side won that first time around, but at some point the artsy side of the brain DID win and those hairy, gross, shriveled up grapes got thrown in and when the wine was finally tasted… it was something so unbelievably wonderful, that gross hairy fungus became known as the “Noble Rot” because in the olden days, only the Nobility could afford wine made with those grapes.  It was that good!  

A Messiah who would suffer and die rather than fight and win, was just as impossible as gross, hairy, shriveled up grapes making great wine!  The Chief Priests and Pharisees could not grasp God working this way.  They could not wrap their minds around their by-the-numbers-God sending a throw-the-math-out-artistic-loser named Jesus as the Messiah. 

That is really the message in the Gospel for today.  We are being invited to accept and embrace a Messiah that doesn’t add up.  We are being invited to accept and embrace a completely unexpected Savior that makes absolutely no sense in a world run on a fundamentalist following of the might-makes-right formula.  We are being invited to accept and embrace the One called Jesus, who gathers up all our hairy, gross, and shriveled up selves and transforms us into Nobility!  Brothers and Sisters of the King of King and Lord of Lords!  Gifted positions of Nobility that make us fit for the surprisingly abundant, joy filled, and everlasting life God first created us all to live.  Amen.