Calfapolooza!

 Exodus 32:1-14

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.

The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!

The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

I love the story Ed just read from Exodus but, of course, they left off the best part!  When Moses finally worked his way down the mountain and saw the Calf-apolooza Party himself, he totally lost it!  He smashed the tablets on the ground, burned the golden calf, ground it up into a powder, mixed it with water, and made the people drink it!  The god they had made BY themselves and FOR themselves would literally be getting flushed down the toilet in the very near future!  

As a kid, this lesson seemed easy. I didn’t have any gold or a foundry and if my school clay projects were any indication, I wasn’t much of a sculptor either.  I figured I was safe from the dangers of idolatry!  

As I got a bit older I realized, of course, idol worship wasn’t limited just to golden calves.  Idols are the things we turn to when God is either NOT doing what we want, OR is moving much too slowly for our taste.  They are not literal golden cows but they are still pretty easy to spot… at least when they belong to someone else.  

Idols using the language of Christianity but without the unconditional love, grace, and inclusion that Christ was all about are all around us.  These modern idols allow their followers to claim, for example, they are pro-life and still hold children in cages.  These idols allow the follower to embrace racism and claim that poverty is the poor person’s fault.  People turn to idols because only idols will go along with their limited and conditional sort of grace.  Only idols allow their followers to tell a person to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and not care that they have no boots.  Only idols allow their followers to tell a person they should learn to fish if they are hungry and at the same time deny them access to a safe, clean, lake.  

Genuine Christianity is about following in the footsteps of Jesus, the One who gave EVERYTHING… both FOR us and TO us, without condition, as a free gift.  LONG before we were even a glimmer in our great great great grandma’s eye, this gift was completely ours!  Jesus didn’t conditionally die for only the ones who look like you!  Jesus didn’t rise on Easter for a few and stay dead in the tomb for all the rest!  Dying with conditions and rising only for some... that's a golden calf thing… not a Jesus thing, not a Christian thing.  

Back then they cast a calf in gold, proclaimed it to be the same God who led them out of Egypt and called it Lord.  They created a false god that would work on their schedule and used the methods they wanted to use!  Today we make idols for exactly the same reasons.  Is it an accident that a literal golden bull is Wallstreet's idol of unbridled capitalism? The God who gives gifts of love and grace is not okay with us hoarding them all for ourselves.  The idol of White Nationalism is made because only an idol can promise a salvation to just those who look like them.  The idol of American Civil Religion is made by those who are enamored with the words of Christianity but find living lives of compassion, grace and love not to their liking.  Others make idols of guns.  Idols which falsely promise them security.  Others make idols of money which give them permission to get rich at the expense of the poor.  Still others make idols of other human beings and demand if you’re not for them, then you’re against them!  People build these idols so that they can have a god in their lives that God and Jesus refuse to be for them.  Only these idols will promise them what they want, when they want it, and that whatever they can grab, they can keep for themselves. 

Idols and golden calves made by others are easier for us to see.  The most difficult golden calves to identify, of course, are the ones we make for ourselves.  Most people don’t sit down one day and say, “today I’m going to make an idol!”  But as we get frustrated and impatient with the One True God... as God feels far away, we slowly begin to decide that we need to take this god business into our own hands and we begin to shape an idol in a form of our thinking and our liking and our way of getting things done.  

So much hatred, a pandemic, denial of science, poverty, hypocrisy, racism, climate crisis, putting others at risk of sickness or death… AND even literal nazis for crying out loud!  THAT'S our world!  So it's VERY understandable that we ALL want God to BE HERE NOW... FIX IT NOW!  It is incredibly tempting to make a god who will fix ALL this the way WE want it fixed!  We live in very real and very desperate times!  Not at the base of a stormy mountain like the people of Israel, but in the stormy year of 2020!  We want… we NEED God to act!  NOW!

And still with all that understandable temptation, here is God's promise God's call for you and me.  God knows what we are enduring and God is acting.  Idols will promise to get you there faster but they never deliver.  Idols will show you another path filled with lies and tricks and force and anger, but following that path is not one of loving God or neighbor.  So be patient my friends.  Keep walking God’s path... loving God and loving neighbor.  God is working as you and I are walking.  God is even working while we take a day off every week!  God is working... working to fully include all of creation in God’s compassion, grace, and love... ideas of really living which idols know nothing about.  Stay with the path God has given us, because God knows, it's only on a path of love, compassion, grace and inclusion that we will get through whatever lies ahead.  Amen. 

Crisis Rules

 Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20

Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work.

Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.”

The entire people of Israel ran out of Egypt. They ran because they knew Pharaoh had been stung and soon he might recover. Recover he did, and Pharaoh’s army gave chase, backing them against the sea. In what seemed to be a hopeless crisis, a path through the sea was opened and the people passed through with Pharaoh’s army swallowed up in the wake. But that turned out to be far from the end. Disaster followed disaster. Crisis followed crisis. Bitter, undrinkable water, a shortage of food, blazing hot weather, and an endless stretch of wilderness and sand with an unseeable end to it all. Imagine what they would have left us if they had been able to create MEMES!

It was in the midst of all of that crisis, trauma, and trouble that they were given the commandments. They didn’t get them back when they believed Pharaoh was the worst thing that could ever happen, nor after they had finally made it to the Promised Land. No, these commandments were given IN and FOR a long term time of crisis. When the people of Israel cried out in crisis after trauma after horror, “How can we possibly remain the people of God in times like these? Is there any way for us to retain our humanity and dignity with an onslaught like this?” THIS is the answer God gave them, “Live together in relationship with God and each other using this set of rules.”

God knew their temptation would be to sink to the selfish and destructive ways of those around them.  God knew (because God made them after all) that diving deeper into the water currently swirling down the drain was NOT the path to better days! God knew the real way to better days was through the crises, through the horrors, through the traumas.  

To make it through, God laid out a path paved with these commandments.  This path, God promised, would get them through when all the world around wqs determined to keep swirling them ever deeper. And… spoiler alert… God’s way turned out to be right! It worked. They got through it all by following this set of rules… through each crisis and each horror and every trauma and in the end, they stepped into the Promised Land.

So what does that have to do with us? After all, we’re a people far removed in time, culture, and circumstance from the people of Israel way back then. We’re not like them, swayed back on our heels by the awesome power of thunder and lightning (very, very frightening) coming from the top of a mountain. And yet, if you tilt your head just a tiny bit and honestly look again, they end up looking a lot more like you and me than we might have first thought.

Could it be that a world wide pandemic has driven God’s people into a new wilderness time? Could it be that we’ve been backed up against a wall of political chaos, rather than backed up against the Red Sea? That we face an unknown time before a safe vaccine is developed, rather than an unknown time in the sun and sand? Could it be that Pharaoh’s injustices and irrational behavior in the face of a threat to his power isn’t all that strange after all and that Federal police in riot gear don’t actually look too terribly different than Pharaoh’s charioteers? Could it be, that in our own way, we too have been knocked back on our feet, fearful not of constant lighting but of each new terrible flash of white supremacist dog whistle… not of thunder but of each new crashing bombshell news revelation? Could it be that these rules given to God’s people to see them through THEIR ongoing set of crisis after crisis THEN, might just be the rules that we need to see us through OUR ongoing set of crisis after crisis NOW?

If that is true... if this is our path through, then our path includes not using or manipulating God’s name to get our way. Others do it all around us…“You can’t be a faithful Christian and vote for this person or party”… but we are called to not sink to that level. We are called to use God’s name instead as a means to spread the selfless, steadfast love and compassion that we have first been given by God so that it might give light in the darkness and hope to the hopeless.

If these are our rules too, then we are called to take time out, ESPECIALLY when we think the world can not spare us for a moment. As Eugene Peterson reminds us that, “If you don’t take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You’re doing too much, you’re being too much in charge. You’ve got to quit, one day a week, and just watch what God is doing when you’re not doing anything.”  This will strengthen us for the long road ahead.  

If these are our rules too, then we can not dismiss the lives of the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions. Dismissing over 210,000 deaths by saying “COVID wasn’t the only condition they had” or “that is just a tiny number compared to everyone who dies each year” does not honor those fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, EACH of whom was a precious child of God.

If these are our rules too, then we must look beyond just me, myself, and I. That greed and selfishness has resulted in the hoarding of resources from toilet paper to health care, stealing from our neighbors with tactics from phone scams to unjust policies and tax dodges. Wanting what others have and hoarding what others need always leads to breaking other commandments.  Our path instead is to bring life and build up our neighbors and their resources.

And lastly, if these are to be our rules to see us through our own time of crisis, horror and trauma we must remain impeccable with our word. In these dark times when so many treat bearing false witness as a sport where the goal is to continually drive up the score… if these rules are to be our rules, then that can not be our path.

These commandments pave the path that will see us through this time. Many around us seek to race to the bottom in a fatal downward spiral, but that is not what God wants for us.  So, if you are willing, I would ask that you help me to follow THESE rules. Rules that saw God’s people to the Promised Land and I will help you do the same. I believe it is loving God and loving neighbor, Jesus’s own summation of this path, that will pave a Way in Truth toward the Light of a world ruled in justice... a world of healing, wholeness, dignity for all. May the One who calls us to this path through these difficult times give us the strength to walk it, all the way to the end. Amen.

Continue

Romans 12:9-21

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

In 2016 Maya Angelou wrote a poem titled “Continue” for Oprah but I’d like to believe she would let us in on it as well. It goes like this:

Into a world which needed you

My wish for you

Is that you continue

Continue

To be who and how you are

To astonish a mean world

With your acts of kindness

Continue

To allow humor to lighten the burden

of your tender heart

Continue

In a society dark with cruelty

To let the people hear the grandeur

Of God in the peals of your laughter

Continue

To let your eloquence

Elevate the people to heights

They had only imagined

Continue

To remind the people that

Each is as good as the other

And that no one is beneath

Nor above you

Continue

To remember your own young years

And look with favor upon the lost

And the least and the lonely

Continue

To put the mantel of your protection

Around the bodies of

The young and defenseless

Continue

To take the hand of the despised

And diseased and walk proudly with them

In the high street

Some might see you and

Be encouraged to do likewise

Continue

To plant a public kiss of concern

On the cheek of the sick

And the aged and infirm

And count that as a

Natural action to be expected

Continue

To let gratitude be the pillow

Upon which you kneel to

Say your nightly prayer

And let faith be the bridge

You build to overcome evil

And welcome good

Continue

To ignore no vision

Which comes to enlarge your range

And increase your spirit

Continue

To dare to love deeply

And risk everything

For the good thing

Continue

To float

Happily in the sea of infinite substance

Which set aside riches for you

Before you had a name

Continue

And by doing so

You and your work

Will be able to continue

Eternally

You hear it don’t you? Maya Angelou’s call to take a step and then another along our lifetime’s long path? To Continue. Continue with steps of laughter, love, kindness, justice, humility, prayer, service, and dreams… all walking toward a vision… a vision not yet achieved. A vision still far off. Often much, much too far off. But still we are called to continue… step by step even when that vision seems fleeting, like a mystery engulfed in flames and smoke.

Paul too reminds us that this is God’s call for us too.  He too would have us... Continue  

                                                                                                                

To let love be genuine; hate what is evil                                                                                             Hold fast to what is good, love one another                                                                                      Outdo one another in showing honor.

Continue

To be tireless, enthusiastic, passionate                                                                                            Glowing in your service to the other

Continue

To rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering,                                                                                    and persevering in prayer.

Continue

To care for the sisters and brothers we know                                                                                      Show hospitality to the strangers we have yet to meet                                                                                                 Shower blessings, not curses on those                                                                                                 who persecute you.

Continue

To live, bound to your neighbors                                                                                                   Laughing with them when they laugh,                                                                                            Weeping with them when they weep,                                                                                           Rejoicing with them when they rejoice.

Continue

To live in harmony                                                                                                                                     Free from arrogance,                                                                                                                        Learning from the lowly,                                                                                                                       a life humble of heart.

Continue

To go high when they go low,                                                                                                                    A living example of a better way.

Continue

To leave vengeance and wrath                                                                                                                 and the heaping of burning coals                                                                                                                       to God’s hands.                                                                                                                                  Our hands are meant for feeding our enemies,                                                                                                                              and giving water to our foes.

Continue

To not become the evil you fight,                                                                                                                 To count the means and not only the ends,                                                                                          To drown evil with rivers and lakes and oceans of good.

Eternally

You hear it again don’t you? Paul’s call to each next step on the long path? It is God’s call for you. To Continue… even in the darkest of times. To Continue, even with 180,000 dead American neighbors. Even with racism proclaimed as patriotism. Even with yet another unarmed black man shot in the back by police. God calls us through all of that, out of the smoke and inexplicable fire... God calls us to Continue.

Continue with one step and then another… a step of laughter, a step of love, then one of kindness.  A step of justice, one of humility, and then one of prayer. A step of dreaming. A step of service. All of those steps... one at a time... one after another... all walking toward a vision… a vision which the world raging around us has not yet been able to grasp. A vision that yes... is still painfully, terribly, dishearteningly at times, very far off. A vision as hard for mortals to hold as smoke from a burning bush.  

But still, it is a vision.  A vision which points us to something that is very, very real. It IS out there. It WILL come. This one is for us, but it like the visions given and fulfilled through countless generations in innumerable forms.  Each time a vision was given, it has been followed by a promise fulfilled.  Each time the God who knows the people’s sufferings, comes down to deliver and brings up God’s people, out of the place, the time, the struggle, the plague, the hatred, the brokenness, the fear, the pain, the injustice… The God who has ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS brought God’s people out of whatever sort of Egypt they were in and into a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.  Out of death and into abundant life.  Even now that same God is doing it once again!  And so we Continue.  

I know you are weary.  We are all weary these days. Weary of this pandemic. Weary of the death, the hate, lies, uncertainty, violence, racism, injustice and all the rest. All that you endure now is real.  You feel tired because ALL of what you endure is too much!  Often much too much.  All that is true...AND… AND… AND… THIS WILL END. There will be a vaccine. The pandemic will end.  The hate, violence, racism and injustice will end. Those promised lands are real! They exist! They are out there! An so today we take one more step and remind one another that we are NOT walking toward nothing!  We walk to the Promised Land... to Resurrection... to Abundant Life! So let us all... Continue... with a step in love, then another in kindness, one in service, and one in humility... always guiding one another to Continue.  Amen.

Jesus Said the "D" Word!

 The Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew, the 15th Chapter

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

Jesus used the “D” word! Just like the racist word that is so awful it only goes by it’s first letter in our day, calling someone the “D” word was in that same category in Jesus’ day. It was bad. Really bad. So, did Jesus have work to do? Did he, like us, need to grow in his awareness of his own bias, prejudice, and privilege? OR, was Jesus using the “D” word as bait to hook the Pharisees?

Of course we can’t know what Jesus was thinking but we can learn from both of these possibilities. It could be that the fully human Jesus was not fully enlightened when it came to his own bias and prejudice. After all, he grew up and lived in a time, culture, and faith that drew clear and exclusive boundaries and no one even pretended they were separate but equal. She was not Jewish, she was not from Israel, she was a woman… a huge part of the population would have easily concluded… she was a “D” word! If this is what was going on with Jesus in this story, it is still something we can learn from. Because even while Jesus was acting out of what he had learned, as all of us do, when he was confronted with his bias, he was open to begin to see the world in a new way.

If, living in his learned prejudice and privilege is where Jesus was at in the beginning of this encounter… If Jesus was drawing the circle of God’s love and grace in a way that excluded this woman and her child... then this lesson reminds us again that EVERYONE has work to do in widening the circles of inclusion we draw in this life. To do that work, Jesus was willing to hear the cries of a mother in pain. To really listen and engage in conversation. He was willing to stick with that conversation even when it got hard. It took time. It was hard. It was a process. But it was worth it. Because at the end we see the healing power of transformation that can happen when we open our ears and eyes, hearts and minds and begin to draw the circles we have always drawn in ways that include people we had never considered including before.

The other option is that Jesus knew EXACTLY what he was doing and used this situation as bait for the Pharisees to get them on the hook and then to reel them in to dramatically finish the argument Jesus had been having with them in this chapter. Point. Set. Match. The Pharisees, you see, were certain that only people like them… people born to Jewish parents and perfect followers of the Law, could be drawn inside God’s circle.  That Canaanite woman was not inside that circle because she had the wrong parents. Jesus and the disciples might have had the right sort of parents but they were failing miserably at following the law in the eyes of the Pharisees. Jesus had tried to reason with them earlier in this chapter but when that didn’t work, perhaps Jesus tried a different, more shocking approach.

Maybe Jesus treating the woman in the same way the Pharisees would, was Jesus dangling the bait.  “Oh, look” the Pharisees would say, “Jesus is finally coming around to our way of thinking.”  But then Jesus did what Jesus did all the time… First he dangled the bait…  “Woman, you're a dog"!  Then, when they bit, he set the hook!  "Woman great is your faith!”  The Pharisees had been caught!

Regardless of whether this was Jesus confronting his own bias, or Jesus hooking the Pharisees to try to get them to confront theirs, when people first begin to confront thier bias, privilege and prejudice, it can be very scary. Drawing a circle to include more people, we often worry might mean less for me! The fear of scarcity is a powerful fear. But as Christians we believe in a radical abundance from God. Even when the human math won’t work, we are reminded of what God’s math can do with just a couple of mackerel a some sesame seed buns! With reminders like that, we believe that God’s abundance is SO inclusive… SO wide… that it draws a circle large enough to even include even the likes of me and you!  And if that circle includes us, then who could be excluded!

The Pharisees had trouble with ALL. One glimpse of the news and you know the whole world still has trouble with a circle that includes ALL. The defacing of the Black Lives Matter sign on the Sheffield Green shows us that even in little ol’ Sheffield there are people who have trouble with the idea of drawing a circle that includes people who are different in any way. The Gospel message for today… the GOOD NEWS… is that Jesus has already drawn the circle of God's love so it includes us ALL!  Jesus lets all us dogs in!  His death and resurrection has thrown open the kennel door and let even the mangiest of us feast at God's Table.

So no matter if we read this lesson as Jesus himself being challenged to grow, or as Jesus setting a hook to challenge the Pharisees to grow, the message for you and for me is the same. We are called to do the work to see and to hear the people we have not previously been able to see or hear or include because of our bias, privilege, and prejudice. We are called to enter into difficult conversations and stick with them even when they become hard… Even when those primal instincts swell up and tempt us to be fearful of scarcity. We are called each day to draw the circle of who is “in” ever wider. And then we are called to move that work beyond ourselves, standing with, shielding, advocating, singing and eating, laughing and crying with, all those who the world attempts to draw outside of the circle. We are called to do this work, for as long as it takes until the demons of exclusion are cast out, until everyone’s child is healed, and the circles of this world look as wide and welcoming and inclusive as the circle God has drawn for God’s Kingdom.  Amen.

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.