God's Not Fair

 The Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew the 20^th Chapter

“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.”

The parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard is one of Jesus’s “Parables of Judgement.” These parables use a story, set in a familiar, comfortable setting to draw people in deeply. Then, just when the listeners get settled in and began to feel that Jesus thought and believed just like they did, he’d throw in the giant plot twist! Jesus did that to SHOCK the people out of the place where their faith had become twisted and entrenched. A place where they were certain they knew exactly how God worked and what God wanted... which  just happened to be exactly the same as what they wanted.

The truth was that many of them had some very twisted ideas about God. Some had twisted God into a shape that would support their unbridled pursuit of wealth and power. Some would twist God into a shape where they believed that they and God hated all the same people… agreed completely on who was “in” and who was “out”. Others twisted God so they were sure that God supported their particular political platform… justifying either the violent support of a rebellious Jewish Nationalism or an unquestioning collusion with the Romans. For folks like that, faithfulness to God was the same as faithfulness to country or party.

Now, the players and parties may have changed over the last 2000 years but the twisting of God to meet a particular prejudice, bias, or party agenda is pretty much the same. Because I’m a clergy nerd, it is very interesting to watch posts and comments online that demonstrate that trend these days in both Lutheran and Episcopal circles. But we’re not the only culprits.  The Evangelicals and Roman Catholics and every other flavor play this game too: “You can’t be a faithful (fill in denomination here) and vote for a (fill in political party here)!” “Person X is not a good/faithful member of (denomination X) because she supports (Position Y)!”

When we do that, we become exactly like the people Jesus was trying to SHOCK back then with this and other Parables of Judgement.  He is challenging us, as he challenged the people back then, to stop trying to make God in OUR image… a God who loves who we love, thinks what we think, acts like we act, hates who we hate.  Instead Jesus is challenging us with this story to let the authentic and admittedly radical nature of God shape and transform US!

There once was a vineyard owner who needed his grapes brought to the crusher NOW. They are prefect...NOW and would NOT be perfect tomorrow. He hires all the workers he can at the beginning of the perfect day and offers them a living wage but it’s just not enough hands! The second bunch is hired later for “whatever’s right” and the others he just sends out into the field in a mad rush to get the grapes to the crusher before sunset without any talk of pay. At the end of the day, with the grapes safely in the winery, he pays everyone a full day’s wage regardless of how much time they worked. This was the plot twist of the story and the people hearing it would be outraged! “People who don’t deserve it are getting it?!”

Jesus told this story 2000 years ago but I’ve heard that exact reaction from folks in our country AND right here in River City, just in the last six months! “If you pay people $600 a week unemployment (a living wage) they won’t want to go back to work!” “How will we know if each of those school families really needs a Marketplace meal or if they’re just trying to get something for free?” “So and so shouldn’t get a meal from John Andrews! They have tons of money!” Both then and now we try to force God to think like we think and act the way we act and when God just goes off and does God’s own thing we yell out, just like Jesus’ original audience did, “People who don’t deserve it are getting it!” “It just isn’t fair!”

The people who yelled then and the people that yell now are exactly right!  Not everyone does deserve it.  It isn’t fair... and that is EXACTLY the point Jesus makes with story of vineyard owner… God doesn’t care who you think deserves it and God doesn’t care what you think is “fair!” God is... GOD!... and so God does what God wants with what belongs to God... which is everything.  

For the vineyard owner it was his money.  He could do what he wanted with it regardless of what anybody else thought.  Turns out he thought differently than the others and only cared that everyone got what they needed. In the story that was one denarius… the means to have food and shelter for one more day. I’m sure the people listening to Jesus thought, “They got something they didn’t need!” “Someone else needs that more!” “They got something they didn’t deserve!” But the hook in this parable is that neither the vineyard owner NOR GOD care what national, cultural, family, traditional or civic values people want them to follow! Neither the vineyard owner NOR God will conform to what WE want them to be or act how WE want them to act. 

The idea that God isn’t “fair” is hard. The idea that “those people” didn’t get what we think they deserved at the “end of the day” is harder. But wait, it gets harder still! Because you and I are called to work with that “unfair” God to make “Thy Kingdom come and Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven!” That means that you and I are called to set aside what WE think our neighbors deserve… set aside what WE’VE been taught by the world is right or fair, and instead work to make sure that our neighbors get from us, exactly what God has first given us… exactly what they need without any of our personal, party, or patriotic conditions that we are perpetually tempted to impose.

Now, I can see you there through the camera shaking your head.  Telling God, “yeah but”.  You’re thinking this is crazy!  It just can’t work!  But God was so sure this is the Way that DOES work that he sent his Son to bring each of us and the entire world, not what we “deserve” or what is “fair” but just what we need, so that having what we need, we can then pass it on to others.  Untangling what we have learned from the things like our Puritan Founding and our American Civil Religion... things like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, teaching someone to fish instead of giving them a fish and that God and country have the same agenda, is VERY hard. But untangling those notions from the genuine teachings of Christ’s radical, unconditional, all inclusive love and grace is exactly the challenge Jesus has given us today. Amen.

Chasms, Rifts, and Brokenness

 The Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew, the 18th Chapter

“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.”

These days you can’t turn on the TV without someone accusing someone else of something horrible.  But as tempting as that is, these three lessons remind us that, at least for Ezekiel, Paul and Jesus, the “act” itself, while bad, now lies in the past and therefore can not be un-done.  However, the rift, the separation, the fracture in relationships which the act created between you and another person, the community, or God...  THAT part is still in the present, and so THAT is the part we are called to work on and repair.   

In Bible times that was a practical, life or death necessity. Living apart from others, you just didn’t have the things you needed… like food and shelter to survive. In Bible times we needed each other to just stay alive! Today we hear that idea and think, “Well, that was then! I can do it all myself now!” The trouble with that idea is that it’s not true!  The last six months have horrifically and graphically demonstrated to the world how not-true that really is! People are discovering once again, that “alone” and “living only for myself” still literally leads to death and even today continues to be NOT how God created us to live. It has been one of the horrible aspects of this pandemic that we are having to re-learn this truth even though it’s been around since Bible times:  That we’ve ALWAYS been and always will be, deeply dependent on one another for life. That’s not a flaw. That’s not a shortcoming. That’s the way God created us to be! We have been designed and loved into being to be interdependent… to live in relationship… to need each other.... to sacrifice for one another... to live in community… together.

That's why the first lesson, the psalm, the second lesson and the gospel all tell us how to do that… how to live together and how to confront sin and repair the rifts that inevitably happen between individuals, between communities and between us and the One who loved us into being. The key, it turns out, is love. Not a Hallmark Channel, blurry camera lens, sappy sort of love. Not a Poker Buddies or a Cosmos with Friends kind of love either. But the kind of love which compels us from the depths of our bones, to creatively put ourselves in the other’s shoes, listen deeply to our neighbors, and imagine life in their skin.  Then, show up and do the hard and sacrificial work of love.... which means thinking about and then doing what is in the other’s best interest.

This is the kind of love where owning up to the hurt we have done as individuals, or the hurt we have inflicted as part of a community or system is only the beginning. The real work comes on the heals of that very difficult honesty, when we must work relentlessly to find ways to come back together and rebuild… or maybe build for the very first time… a healthy, honest, genuinely mutual relationship with the person, community, or Divinity with which our actions have created a rift. This is the kind of love that speaks hard truths… holds each other to account… sets clear, firm boundaries… and offers healthy, humble, honest, and mutually respectful ways to return. It is the sort of love that demands truth AND reconciliation.  It is the sort of love that is determined to be relentless until it has both.

To do that, Jesus calls us to treat those who seek to dig the world’s rifts deeper as he treated tax collectors and gentiles. He saw them. He sat with them. He talked with them. He ate with them. He leaned into this hardest sort of work, offering a Way toward truth AND reconciliation.  He did all he could… including sacrificing his life for them… to heal the rifts and restore the community to wholeness so there would be life for all.

But don’t be fooled. This in no way makes Jesus or those who follow his ways a pushover! He never simply let those who were hurting others, lying, oppressing the weak, cheating the poor, or dividing the people off the hook. He was even known to lead protest marches riding on a colt into the capital city, confront the corrupt Roman government’s lies to the point they confessed “what is truth” and he even wrecked other people’s property, turning over tables in an attempt to get the people who were breaking the world apart to SEE what they were actually doing! But Jesus also never gave up hope that the people who were digging a new bottom for the world each day might one day wake up and those relationships could begin to be repaired.

Personally, I find that “Jesus Way” of living to be hard on the best days. When I turn on the TV and see the death, the hate cranked up past 11, generations of service members including a member of my own family buried in the cemetery at Belleau Wood, called “losers” and “suckers”, I find living the “Jesus Way” incredibly hard!  Even when I manage to let go of trying to fix the world and just focus locally it’s still really hard!  Even when I try to just fix me, it’s hard!  I suppose that’s why many are hesitant to even begin.  And yet this is the work to which we are called. Not to fix the whole world at once. (unless you have the power to do that, because then you should TOTALLY DO THAT!) But to come together as best we can in groups as little as two or three and trust that even as imperfect humans, Christ is there with us guiding us in a Way where captives are set free, exiles are brought home, and life is brought out of death.... Guiding us in ways we have never imagined before to inject kindness, love and healing into the world.  God’s done it before you know? Given hope to the hopeless. Healing to the sick. Justice to the oppressed. Food to the hungry. Water to the thirsty. That’s what our God does!  It is God's ongoing promise... to be with us and guide us with a light more powerful than any darkness.  May we come together, with Jesus among us, and bravely begin anew each day the healing our world so desperately needs.  Amen.

AMAZING!

Matthew 14:13-21

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Three years ago this Sunday was my very first Sunday at Christ Trinity and the Feeding of the Five Thousand was the Gospel story you and I started with together that day. In that sermon I told you that while the miracle was indeed amazing, AMAZING was not the point. Instead, the miracle was meant to be more like a sign in the road… an acted out parable to show the disciples how they were to be in the world going forward.

Just as it was for those original disciples, that sign for how to move forward is our calling too.  Our calling is to “Give them something to eat!” Feed the people. That’s what I told you that very first Sunday.  Our calling together is to feed the hungry… ALL the vast multitudes of people with hunger of every sort. Some, I said, would be “need a fish sandwich - belly hungry.” But many others were hungry beyond the belly.  They were hungry to know God’s unconditional love for them, or hungry to be welcomed and included.  Others were hungry for justice, peace, deeper relationships, authentic community, a sustainable planet, or deep meaning for their lives.

I told you back then that we too would be tempted like the original disciples to say, “HOW are we going to do ALL THAT!?” I told you back then we’d be tempted to look around and see a whole lot of NOTHING for us to work with to fill all those hungers! But I also told you then, that if we didn’t panic… If we took some time to look around, focus on what we DID have around us rather than what we lacked... If we thought together prayerfully, creatively, and maybe even think a little oddly… and if we too brought the little we did have and offered it to those who were hungry, we too, like those first disciples might just find that Jesus could work something amazing with the Christ Trinity equivalent of five loaves and two fish.

And I gotta tell ya! Apparently you all paid attention in church that day! You must have really listened to the sermon, and over the last three years, I’ll be danged if you didn’t go out and do it! Not just once either! You’ve done it over and over and over!

One of the times you all looked around you saw people hungry to be included, welcomed, told they are loved and a vital part of our community. You looked around to see if there were some loaves or fishes around and you found the church’s original welcome statement from 1866.  Then you found some rainbow Adirondack chairs and some summer annuals in rainbow colors. Then we looked around and found some lobster and some rolls and in “genuine feeding the five thousand style” we ate seafood on the lawn together! The miracle though, wasn’t the lobster roll lunch (although we should totally do that again!)… no, the miracle was that when we looked around and put together what we could find and then offered that from the depths of our hearts to those who were hungry.  It was blessed!  People were fed!  That hunger you saw for community, love and radically inclusive welcome was lavishly fed AND is STILL being fed to this day!

But wait, there’s more!  Looking around we saw some generous families looking to use memorial money to do something meaningful for the church. From a long list of ideas,  “Make Christ Trinity Solar Powered” was the one thing they all chose (without talking with each other mind you)! Their generosity inspired more generosity and the congregation decided that even though there wasn’t enough money to fund the whole project, we’d be thankful for what we had and offer it up to feed that hunger.  Who knows, we thought, maybe Jesus can do something with this sort of loaves and fish?  

Well, the next thing that happened was that to do the project we first needed a new roof under where the panels would go!  This project was going to be even MORE expensive!  But the NEXT thing that happened after the roof, was that we got a grant for $15,000 to pay it all off and we’ve been making electricity, collecting rebates and cashing National Grid’s checks ever since! Sunshine loaves and electric fish enough to power the church AND the Rectory!

But wait, there’s more!  This Spring we took this calling back to it’s more literal roots and we started feeding hungry bellies, but in a brand new way. We didn’t have money, but when we looked around we found our community was aching to help with no way to do it!  So we asked our whole community if they could look around and maybe find about $26 to sponsor a meal for a school family. (You know, come to think of it $26 would probably buy a couple of fish and and five loaves of bread these days… interesting….)

Anyway, out of that appeal came the miracle of our Sheffield feeding program. But wait, there’s more!  Because of what the people in our church and our town did, by looking  around and finding 26 bucks… today’s equivalent of five loaves and two fish… and offered that in love to our neighbors in need, others saw what we were doing and wanted to join in as well!  Giant gifts came in from Sheffield neighbors.  We got a grant from the Berkshire United Way and Berkshire Taconic Foundation.  Our idea got borrowed and adapted by others to expand it further into South County...  and you know what? Over the first ten weeks we did this... 4,786 servings of food were served to hungry bellies. Now, math is not my best subject, but by my calculations, that’s pretty darn close to 5000 and that seems pretty AMAZING to me!  

May we continue to look around and see in which ways our neighbors are hungry.  May we continue to think prayerfully, creatively, and a bit oddly (hey, it seems to be working!) and may we offer what we find, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant, to our hungry neighbors and then may we watch God’s amazing miracles continue to happen all around us in the years to come.  Amen.

No! Listen!

Matthew 13:1–9, 18–23

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!” “Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

A farmer went out to plant seeds in his field so that he might have a harvest of thirty, sixty or maybe even a hundredfold, right? “No” Jesus says, “LISTEN!”  A SOWER went out to sow!  This parable is called the Parable of the SOWER, but what I think a lot of us are tempted to do with it is to turn it into the Parable of the FARMER.  Farmers have a goal of maximizing a harvest.  They plant to maximize the return on their investment.  To achieve that goal farmers understandably care only focus on the GOOD SOIL.  But Jesus says “LISTEN!”  

“LISTEN!”  This is the Parable of the SOWER, not the Parable of the FARMER.  The Sower sows!  And she sows with a much broader vision than the vision with which the farmer farms.  The Sower cares only about sowing the seeds of God’s infinite and unconditional love, grace, forgiveness and compassion in EVERY kind of soil EVERYWHERE!  The Sower knows, you see, that seeds have important work to do in EVERY kind of soil… work much broader than just a simple harvest.  

When Farmers come to the hard packed soil of a path, a farmer wouldn’t plant there because hard packed soil would not produce the harvest he is looking for.   The Sower, however, has a greater vision for her seeds.  The Sower intends, in addition to a harvest, that the birds of the sky will be fed when they eat the seeds on the path and eventually those same birds will “deposit” those seed, along with a healthy dose of fertilizer right where they need to grow.   The Sower loves, values and has important work for that hard packed soil do, and for the hard packed places in each of us, Jesus has love, value and use for those as well, because the work to be done there can’t be done in any other sort of soil.

The same is true of the Rocky Soil.  A farmer would never plant in Rocky Soil where the plants would spring up but fail to take root and wither away.  But the Sower knows that even quick growing plants without deep roots have something to give.  Even plants that quickly whither in the sun make compost and the compost builds the soil making a place for another seed to grow.  The same is true for the Rocky parts of each of us.  God has use for enthusiasm that launches out in a particular moment.  We all know that the energy to turn out to protest in the past month will not be sustained by everyone for the long run, but that quick reaction, that short lived energy made things happen I never thought I’d see!  Mississippi took down their state flag with the confederate battle emblem!  That had never happened before, even with decades of work by people with deep roots in anti-racism.  

Even the seeds that are sown among the thorns... and you know who we are!  Even us, in our thorniest soil, have value and is important to the Sower.  The realists, the prophets, the truth tellers, those that hold up mirrors we are loathe to peer into.  They challenge us, refuse to allow us to get off easy, keep us from falling into cheap grace.  They insist we work meticulously through our history and our fears. 

In the end, when Jesus says “LISTEN!” he’s challenging our narrow vision of what we think God is up to in our world and the narrow ways we believe God has in the Divine tool box to get that work done!  This parable tells us that the power of God’s infinite love, compassion, grace, forgiveness and the transformational power of what God is sowing among us reaches WAY beyond our limited idea of what “good soil” looks like and is actually at work.... in, with and under every person, every type of soil, in each one of our churches, and in every red, blue, and purple part of the world.    

  

Our call as people of God, as we confront the plagues of our day… pandemic, denialism, white supremacy, injustice, hate and despair is to talk and dream and plan and work in the way of the Sower!  That as we meet and talk with others and build relationships and ask questions and plan how to move forward, we are called to do that by sowing the seeds of God’s love and God’s promise literally everywhere… into everything… with reckless, uncalculating abandon and then do our best to help each other trust that God will get each of those seeds, no matter where they have landed to do whatever it is God needs that seed to do in that particular place, person, church or corner of the world.  

The Gospel calls us in this lesson to be SOWERS not Farmers.  We are called by Jesus to recklessly cast into the world God’s love with the same generosity with which God put stars in the sky… remember, God put stars in the sky that we can’t see from where we live!  It is that level of reckless sowing we are called to.  It is that far flung we are meant to distribute God’s love and grace.  

What will happen when we recklessly spread God’s love even more than we do now?  I have literally NO idea!  But this parable reminds me that we’re called to be the SOWER, not the Farmer and that God will certainly see that none of what we sow goes to waste.  Amen.  

I Don't Like It!

Genesis 22:1-14

After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”

So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together. When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son.

But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

It’s horribly disturbing… this story from Genesis… and I don’t like it. I don’t. A “testing” God is not the sort of God I’d pick. A “go kill your son” God is not the sort of God I’d pick either! And while we’re on what I don’t like, I also don’t like that Abraham mindlessly responds to God’s insane request to kill his son, by saying, “Alright, sure.” I don’t like ANY of it. But, there it is… this horribly disturbing, awfully confusing, terrible story… just sitting there… demanding that we deal with it. Have I mentioned I don’t like it?

Well, I don’t! Because it just sits there.  It doesn’t suggest or even ask… it INSISTS that faith in THIS God will not be simple nor can it be casual. It will be deadly serious… “Go and sacrifice your son” serious… and God must be taken as God is. God is not a buffet from which we can pick and choose the parts we want and leave the rest behind. This story DEMANDS that somehow, we, like Abraham, hold all of God together in our faith. The God who makes impossible and deadly demands, AND ALSO the God who promises to provide not just life, but a life that is as abundant as the stars in the sky and as infinite as the grains of sand on the beach. Sound impossible? You’re in good company! I haven’t been able to do it! Even Martin Luther confessed he couldn’t do it, but still the story insists that is exactly what we must do to be faithful!

Because it’s SO VERY HARD we often try to cheat and just pick just the one part of God we want for the moment. Sometimes we pick the God of deadly demands, insisting that God hate exactly the same people we hate. In those moments we dismiss any idea that God is, at the very same moment, also a God of unlimited, unconditional love and grace. In those moments we imagine that we have the power to tie God’s hand of grace-filled providing behind God’s back and send God out to do some serious smiting! But this story insists, that’s not God!

In the next moment we attempt to lock up the God of deadly demands saying, “That’s the OLD Testament God, not my God.” My God is only a God of only unlimited love and grace, compassion and forgiveness, generosity and abundance. We don’t have a God who makes deadly demands or gives life or death tests!  But this story insists, that’s not God either!

In this story, as Abraham reaches the top of the mountain in Moriah, he also reaches the pinnacle... the goal of our faith. There, he does what Luther couldn’t do… certainly what I have never been able to do! There on the mountaintop he holds together these seemingly dispirit aspects of God, and accepts that God will always be God. Abraham says “yes” to the God of impossible tests and deadly demands and walks toward the mountain of sacrifice AND with every step he is also absolutely sure… completely convinced… totally certain… that God… and this God alone without any help from Abraham, will provide exactly the right thing… and will provide it with as much generosity as God used when God put stars in the sky and sand on the beach.

I don’t know about you, but my faith is not yet an “Abraham on the mountain top” level. I still try to “help” God out, give God advice, or try to strong arm God, insisting God should do things my way in the world. It doesn’t ever work. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still try! I still want God to change the people I want changed, the way I want them to change! (maybe even some selected smiting?) I still want God to be more grace than consequences, more gospel than law, more resurrection than death, more light than darkness. And all the time God just keeps being the God of ALL of it, ALL of it... TOGETHER… grace AND consequences, law AND gospel, death AND resurrection, light AND darkness, all at the same time.

I do think, however, there is Good News in this story which calls us to what seems like an impossible destination... this mountaintop level of faith. And that is that this God of ours… this God of both command and promise, is accepting of us even though we’ve not yet reached the mountaintop. This God of both command and promise is willing to work with us. To meet  us right where we are today. To help us and hold us, pulling us and pushing us with both command and promise to move us along the Way in this life of ours. God is accepting of where we are, but is also determined that where we are, is NOT where we will stay! After all, Abraham wasn’t ALWAYS at this mountain top level of faith either, you know! There are 11 chapters before this story describing a series of epic faith plants that Abraham made as he walked toward this mountaintop!

The path toward faithfulness is a journey. Growing deeper in relationship with God takes a lifetime. It takes a lifetime to grow toward a place where we can trust that God to use both deadly serious command and unfathomable providential promise in order to keep us moving along the Way. Getting moved along by God will not always feel good. It will sometimes, actually, look and feel and BE full-on horrible! But we walk this path, just like Abraham walked his path, pushed with commands and pulled with promise, ALL while living within the covenant which God has made with each of us.  That covenant that promises each of us has been created in Divine love. That God will be with us always as we walk, and as we fall… all along the path of this life. That God will meet us where we are, but never leave us where we were found. That God will push us and pull us, not for some Divine twisted pleasure, but so that we might experience the abundant life God created us to live!  And that no matter how long it takes, God will never leave us stuck along the way. Amen.   

You Are Entering Hope

Romans 5:1-8

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

We find ourselves on the road this morning. In the first lesson, Abraham and Sarah are camped out at the Oaks of Mamre. In the second lesson Paul shares with us his journey from suffering to endurance, from endurance to character and from character to hope. Then, in the Gospel, Jesus and the disciples are on the road as well, going from city, to town, to village, proclaiming the Good News and healing the harassed and helpless.

Paul’s road trip is especially interesting since it begins in the town of Suffering, which from my personal experience is a terrible little town. He continues on through the little villages of Endurance and Character, which are better than Suffering but not really places anyone would want to settle down forever. Then finally… finally he ends up in the town of Hope.

Hope is the place we’d all like to end up I think.  In fact, I think we’d all rather just race past the exits for Suffering, Endurance and Character, at well over the posted speed limit, and just go straight to Hope. The trouble with that particular travel plan is that life rarely allows that to happen. Paul wrote his little travel log out of his own personal experience. Sarah laughed in the face of God at the idea that Hope was even a place they could get to, in what little bit of time they had left in their advanced ages, and the disciples, told to travel with neither case nor cash, didn’t see how getting to Hope would ever be possible either.

But I think all of these lessons are here to remind us as we journey through this life, of something Rich Simpson, one of our Canons, wrote this week. He wrote as he reflected on the lesson from Genesis that “God is in the business of doing laughable things on God’s own timetable.” I see that truth in all of our lessons today and I think all of these lessons have been gathered here together on purpose to help remind us that our role in this life is to find our part in joining with God to accomplish God’s laughable agenda and learn to accept that God’s agenda WILL HAPPEN, but in God’s own time and not ours.

God’s agenda is, as Bishop Curry would say, “to change the world from the nightmare it is for so many, into the dream that God has for it.” That agenda is laughable because it seems utterly impossible. I mean, have you looked outside lately, God? You’ll need to completely dismantle the current culture of policing in our country and raise up a new one! Nice idea, but laughable. Then, completely undo 400 years of systemic racism! Noble and needed and also totally laughable in its enormity. And, oh yeah, lots of folks have forgotten it, but there’s still a pandemic raging out there as well!  So HOW? How are we… how CAN we… even BEGIN to join with God in trying to accomplish God’s completely wonderful but also completely laughable agenda? 

The answer this week, turns out to be the same as it was last week.  We begin by taking one, first, step. We Go! We Move On! We take that first step with what feels like nothing for the journey, just like the disciples did.  We take that first step with not nearly enough time, like Abraham and Sarah did. And we start, as Paul honestly tells us, by taking our very first shaky step into the terrible little town… called Suffering.

To begin the journey we must start, with neither the things, nor the time we think we need.  From there, with nothing, we just step right into the world of our neighbor’s nightmare. We begin by stepping into our neighbor’s suffering. As we do that we know we will never fully feel what they feel, but we are still called to sit and listen and eat with those who long for the nightmare to end. It’s what those three mysterious travelers modeled for us at the Oaks of Mamre… finding Abraham and Sarah right where they were, sitting with them in their childless suffering… THAT is where we begin. We begin by sitting down and listening… listening not to respond, but to understand. That is where this journey of doing God’s laughable agenda begins. Paul reminds us however, that starting here, in that terrible little town called Suffering, is not for nothing. By staying in Suffering and hearing all the disappointments and betrayals encrusted into our neighbor’s story… by listening… really listening to their experiences… that is the way… the only way… we will get through that terrible town and move down the road... on to Endurance and Character, and then, in God’s own timeline, we eventually enter into Hope.  And as we finally enter into the town of Hope, we’ll not be alone.  We will be arm in arm with our sisters and brothers, who we’ve picked up along the way, way back in that terrible town of Suffering.

God’s agenda ain’t easy. No money, no staff, no sandals or fashionably matching bag! But even without the usual things the world leans on, Jesus tells the disciples then, and tells us disciples now, that even without the world’s usual things, we don’t step onto that road with nothing. We won’t have the “usual” resources, but to be honest, the “usual” resources haven’t done much to change the world yet, have they?  But as we step onto that road, we step out with something different.  The different thing we have is the Holy Spirit blowing at our backs and Jesus’ permission to be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves. 

Now, what does that mean? That stuff about serpents and doves. Well, the really smart people (who are not me!) can’t decide what it means!  But I think it’s Jesus way of telling us... if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always got! I think it’s Jesus way of telling us... that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and still expecting different results. I think it is Jesus’ way of telling us... that we can’t use the same thinking to solve our problems that we used to create them. 

Jesus is telling us to put the Holy Spirit’s rushing wind at our backs and try new ideas ranging from those that are wise as serpents to those as innocent as doves in order to change the world from the nightmare it is for many into the dream that God has for it. I think Jesus is telling us to leave the old thinking, the old baggage, the old concepts of time at home and step out on the road with the Holy Spirit blowing at our backs.  Jesus is telling us to step out on the road and into our neighbor’s suffering... gather them up in our hearts and minds and arms and start walking from Suffering toward Endurance and then on toward Character and then all the way into Hope.  Because it is in Hope where we will find God’s promise that ALL of creation is meant to share in God’s beautiful dream. Amen.

Go!

Matthew 28:16-20

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

A week ago I could not have imagined what could drive a global pandemic with over 100,000 dead Americans out of our minds and off the front page of every paper in the nation. Now we know. Over 400 years of the evils of white supremacy expressing itself in its latest evolution of horror, sin, and systemic racism. THAT is what.

Even in my extremely privileged position, sitting here in the Berkshires, away from the overflowing ICU units in Alabama... away from the tear gas that forced my fellow Episcopalians from the steps of their own church… even here… far away from all of it... it is hard to know how to process it… what to say… what to DO. So I understand the disciples in this reading, both worshiping, and doubting… after all, how do you KNOW what to do when you are face to face with something so overwhelming.  What do you say? What do we think? What do we do?

The answer, Jesus tells us…. is to start.  “Go!” he says.  Take a step. Even before we’ve begun to wrestle with our belief and doubt, let alone have it resolved… we are called by Jesus... to GO! Steven Sondheim, in his musical, Sunday in the Park with George, wrote it this way:  “Move on… Stop worrying where you’re going… Move on. If you can know where you’re going, you’ve already gone… Just keep moving on.”  

The truth that Jesus and Sondheim are teaching us is that we will only make the road ahead of us… the road through a global pandemic... the road through the horrific legacy of white supremacy in which we are all tangled… we will only make that road by walking it… by moving on… by going. By taking one first step toward doing justice, and then another step in loving kindness, always walking humbly toward the hope filled vision we have been given by Jesus.  The vision of a Promised Land, a New Jerusalem, a place where love is stronger than hate, healing is greater than infection, justice is stronger than oppression, peace is stronger than violence and life is stronger than death.

Part of the truth of taking each of those steps, is that we must take each one in both wonderful faith and terrible doubt.  We will never be completely sure before we go.  But GO we must! Taking one first trembling step toward making disciples by SHOWING people the Way Jesus taught us to live. SHOWING the world that disciples are not made in our minds but in our lifting up the lives of those who have been thrown down and thrown out.  Today we focus particularly on black lives which is right.  But as disciples we GO to lift up the lives of all who can not breathe.  Whether that is due to the crushing knee of Caesars or Presidents, occupying armies or combat troops, corrupt police or authorities, implicit bias or systemic racism.  Our calling is to Go!  To take a step toward those who have been thrown down and lift up the lives of those who have been labeled and treated as if they are the least or the lost or the last to matter.

Our call is to Go! To Move On!  To lift and heal, feed and comfort, confront... and yes, even turn over tables when that is the only thing left to get their attention!  Oh, I know. Raised voices and turned over tables... not very stoically Lutheran.  Not too properly Episcopalian. Does GOING and DOING ALL of what Jesus did… have to include the hard bits?  “Yes” Jesus tells us...  GO! Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. GO! Take a step! Move on!  That step might turn out to be right!  … Or wrong.  But it is our Baptisms that free us to GO! To step out right... or wrong but to KNOW either way that we remain forever intimately connected to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! So, Move on! As Sondheim says, the choice you make may turn out to be mistaken. The choosing is not. You have to move on. Look at what you want. Not as where you are, Not at what you’ll be.

To Go!  To Move On!  I know it is hard!  I am sure that you, like me, would rather KNOW what to do next, not just guess.  To figure it out BEFORE we commit to that first step. You, I am sure, like me want to do RIGHT by George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and David McAtee as well as the centuries old pile of broken black and brown bodies that this country has knelt on to death... the pile of black and brown bodies that are buried in the foundation of this “land of the free” and “home of the brave.”  All of those black and brown lives... They DESERVE our next step to be a RIGHT step. I… we… literally owe it to them to step RIGHT so I don’t want to make a WRONG step... but how CAN we know?

Jesus teaches us in this lesson that we can not know.  But we still must Go.  I know, we want to do justice RIGHT… to love kindness RIGHT… to walk humbly RIGHT… but Jesus commands us, his beloved Baptized disciples, not to wait until we are sure we will get it RIGHT because if we wait to be sure we are RIGHT we will simply never Go.  So Jesus says GO! Move On!  Take a step!  Go and do your best to bind the whole world to God’s promise that love is stronger than hate and life is stronger than death. GO! Do your best in each moment to teach the world the Jesus Way of Abundant life for all of creation by living as examples of that Way, that Truth, that Life.  And as you GO, loaded down with doubt and fear along with your genuine intention to do it RIGHT... REMEMBER... with every shaky, doubt laden step you take toward God’s promise... with ever fear filled step you take to lift the least, the lost, and the last...  Jesus is with you... ALWAYS... always... always, to the end of the age. Amen.