It's All About the Grapes

Matthew 20:1-16

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

7.2 BILLION Dollars

Matthew 18:21-35

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eating Hot Wings. Sinful or Not?

Matthew 18:15-20

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Discipleship Checklist

Matthew 16:21-28

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples
that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Last week, Jesus pulled the bus with all the disciples onboard into a rest stop just outside of Caesarea Philippi.  There was a cliff face at this stop where everyone carved a niche for their particular god.  Once they all piled out of the bus, Jesus waved his hand at all the possible god-options, and asked, “Who do ya’ll say that I am?”  Peter spoke up and said, “You are the Son of the Living God, the Messiah!”  Home run, Peter!

This week, the whole gang is back on the bus and Jesus has pointed the bus downhill in the direction of Jerusalem.  He tells the folks in the back of the bus, “I’m going down there.  The fundamentalists down there don’t like me because I include everyone.  The rich and powerful down there don’t like me because I’m always pointing out that they got rich of the backs of the poor.  And while the Romans don’t care about me one way or another, what the DO care about is having QUIET.  QUIET whatever the cost and when I drive this bus into town and show the grouchy people I’m never going to change, it will NOT be quiet.  All that noise will inevitably lead to suffering and even death, but I’m not going to abandon God’s truth.  No matter what!  To that, Peter yelled, “OH, HELL NO!”  Swing and a miss this time, Peter.

The check list for being a Messiah that Peter learned in Sunday shul, was that the Messiah would raise an army, go to Jerusalem, kick out the fundamentalists, the rich and powerful, AND the Romans and become KING!  NOTHING Jesus was proposing from the front of that bus was on that checklist he had known all his life.

 

While Jesus didn’t outline HIS checklist here in Matthew’s Gospel, Paul did a really nice job of laying out the Jesus checklist for anyone who wanted to follow him throughout their lives.  Just look at the Jesus checklist for life, as compiled by Paul:

• Let love be genuine - that means doing what is in the other’s best interest, no matter the cost to yourself.
• Hate what is evil - that means internal stewing about evil isn’t enough.  We must stand up to evil.  No matter the cost.
• Hold fast to what is good - even if it’s not popular or profitable.  ESPECIALLY when it’s not popular or profitable.
• Love one another with mutual affection - that’s actively caring for the folks around you.  
• Outdo one another in showing honor - that means don’t get the big head.  
• Don’t lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord - that means get out there and do this list, even when you don’t feel like doing it.  
• Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer - That means yes, it won’t be easy.  Keep going anyway.  
• Contribute to the saints and extend hospitality to strangers - that means there are no strangers, everyone is a saint, take care of everyone around you.  
• Bless those who persecute you - Also very hard.  Do it anyway. 
• Rejoice with rejoicers.  Weep with weepers.  Live in harmony with one another, don’t get the big head (it bears repeating) - That means you are all connected to each other.  You are all one.  Be empathetic.  
• Do not repay evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble - God gave you a human brain that you can use to override your lizard brain… use the human part!  
• Getting even will not make you happy or give you life. 
• Living the way the mean people live will not make you happy and will not give you life.  
• Your job is to care for all people with everything you've got.  Yes, the mean ones too.  That, believe it or not, WILL make you happy and give you life.  

    

There’s a flag or banner going around on social media that says, “We do this not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy.”  That was Peter.  He may not have had that exact checklist compiled by Paul with him on the bus, but he had been riding with Jesus, living out the checklist for quite a while.  But as the bus began that long decent toward Jerusalem the true enormity of being a disciple finally hit him.  He had begun this trip thinking it would be easy.  It was right here on the bus that he discovered it was not.

In last week’s Gospel Peter got it right.  In this week’s Gospel Peter got it wrong.  At the last supper foot washing he got it wrong and then switched to sort of being right but still a bit wrong, then outside the palace he got it wrong again and the roosters crowed.  Then when Jesus died he thought dead was dead, and that was wrong.  When the women came and told him Jesus was risen, he ran to see for himself, which you might want to say was wrong because he didn’t trust the women, but honestly, if someone said a person had been raised from the dead, wouldn’t you want to go see for yourself?  So maybe on that one he's both.  

The point of all that is this:  What discipleship looks like is very clear.  Paul even gave us this handy dandy checklist… its VERY CLEAR…  BUT it turns out that LIVING as a disciple day in and day out is REALLY HARD!  Peter, that completely hot mess of a disciple, got it wrong A LOT.  Yet, Jesus never kicked him to the curb.  In fact it was on that hot mess of a disciple that Jesus built the church.  For you and me, the latest generation of hot mess disciples, that's good news!  It means we too will never be kicked to the curb by Jesus either, no matter how well or how badly we do the discipleship checklist. 

SO, here's the take home message for today:  Sit down on the Jesus bus.  Work the discipleship checklist.  Yes, it's hard.  Yes, you'll get it wrong a lot, but work it anyway and for heaven’s sake, don't back seat drive when Jesus is at the wheel.  Amen.

We Need our Nose

Romans 12:1-8

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

I know, that just like me, you’ve been riveted by the readings from Romans over the last few weeks.  We’ve been reading from Romans the last few weeks?  Well, it was a surprise to me too, but it turns out that we have, and in today’s reading from Romans there is a “THEREFORE” that goes with a “BECAUSE” from back in those previous lessons.  

Over the last few weeks, Paul has been going on about how God’s grace and love extends to both Jews and Greeks (which is Paul’s way of saying it extends to everyone).  All the reasons that people fling at each other to keep THEM out and US in have been wiped away in Christ.  In God’s eyes EVERYONE… EV-RY-ONE has been made ONE because that's the way God created the world to be.  BECAUSE of what God has done first (and now we get to today’s lesson from Romans)  Because of all that, we THEREFORE have the opportunity to respond to God's gift of love and grace.  

Paul’s opinion in today's lesson is that BECAUSE God’s love and grace is total, complete, and without limit… our response to that love and grace ought to also be total, complete, and without limit.  Just as God has made us ONE, it is as ONE that we are called to be a “living sacrifice”… we’re to live like a burnt offering, the whole of ourselves given up to God.  Paul is challenging us to respond to God’s unconditional love and grace as ONE, in literally every moment of our lives.  

A very, very, very few people are called to do that by being ONE in church all the time.  Some contemplative monastic orders come closest to living out Paul’s challenge in that particular way.  Most of us, however, are called to respond to God’s love and grace as part of all the other things we are called to do in this life.  We’re called to respond to God’s love and grace while we’re parenting, playing, making music, reading legal briefs, keeping people safe, making, writing, building and growing things, cooking, serving, volunteering and all the other things we do.  So how do we do all those different things apart from each other, but still as ONE?

There’s a quote attributed to Martin Luther that goes like this:  “The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes.”  And another from Martin Luther King Jr. that goes like this:  “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

Each of us is called to this variety of things but not primarily for the thing itself, but rather for the connection it helps us make with others.  The cobbler is called to make shoes not just to create a great shoe, but to connect with someone who needs shoes to do the things they have been called to do.  The street sweeper is called to clean the streets, not primarily for a paycheck or even for a spotless sidewalk, but to facilitate others connecting on those streets.  Paul uses the human body as his example.  All of our various body parts have things they are good at.  Noses are better at smelling than ears.  Hands are better at picking things up than kidneys.  They do different things but it is in their connection that the body has life.

The more connected we are, the more we live into the world as God created it to be.  When the importance of human connection is lost or forgotten... when the shoes, the market, and the profits become more important than the people on whose feet those shoes will go... we distance ourselves from the abundance of life God created us to live.  Severing human connections is like cutting our nose off to spite our face.  When a nose is missing, it's hard for the whole body to stop and smell the roses.  Each of us matters.  That is true.  And each of us matters to one another even more.  

Paul says that God has joined us together in Baptism and that we are now one body.  We are reminded most clearly of that connection when we eat together at the Lord’s Table in “communion”.  There we taste and see how God's infinite love and grace has made us ONE and how it is as ONE that we are called to deepen and strengthen our connections with all of creation in the same way that God first connected us... with infinite love and grace, all the time, everywhere, and in everything we do. Amen. 

In-N-Out (Not Burger)

Matthew 15: 21-28

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.

Today’s lessons are about the never ending debate we humans seem to insist upon having over who is “in” and who is “out”.  The lesson from Isaiah was one side of this argument when the people of Israel returned home after exile.  Isaiah advocated for including anyone who did justice and treated others rightly.  For him, following Torah was about how you lived, not where you were born.  The Nehemiah faction, on the other hand, insisted that only Jews who married other Jews and who were born to pure Jewish parents could be included. 

The Gospel is the same debate just 500 years later.  Like the Nehemiah faction, the Pharisees were certain that only people born to two Jewish parents and were exacting followers of the letter of the Law could be “in” and that made this Canaanite woman in the story “out” before she was even born with no chance of ever being “in”!   

Jesus had tried other, less dramatic ways to change the Pharisees' minds but none had worked.  I suspect he chose this encounter with the Canaanite woman to try to shock them into a new way of thinking.  He pretended to treat the woman like the Pharisees would, “this woman is a dog!”  That was the bait.  I think he was hoping the Pharisees would say,  “Oh, look Jesus is coming around to our way of thinking.”  But then Jesus set the hook and in a micro second went from “Woman, you're a dog” to "Woman great is your faith!”  Jesus had hoped, I think, to give the Pharisees a theological whiplash so big that it would change their minds and hearts.  That, unfortunately, didn’t work either and as we all know very well, that same argument about “who’s in and who’s out” continues all around us even today.    

Last Sunday it was Kelly’s “at home” weekend.  Hanna came up… Maggie and Isaac came down and we did what all families do when they get together… we went to a Drag Brunch with friends!  But even there… at a drag brunch in the Berkshires… that same argument over who is “in” and who is “out” played out right there in front of us.  It turned out that one of the drag queens was not a man, crossdressing as a woman doing drag, but a woman, dressed as a woman, doing drag.  I didn’t know that was a thing.  It turns out that’s a thing!  But was that right?  Was it fair?  Was the woman who was doing a gay, male, art form practicing cultural appropriation?  What is drag?  What counts as drag?  Should she be counted as “in” or was she to be counted as “out” in the drag world?  

Different centuries, different millennia even, different peoples, different religions, different rationales…  Same old argument.  Who is in and who is out?  Isaiah didn’t settle it.  Jesus didn’t settle it.  You and I… I hate to tell you... we’re not going to settle it for the world either.  So what do we do?  

I think, as followers of Jesus, we do what Jesus did.  First, whenever he encountered people who wanted to count people “out” he didn’t ignore it.  He tried different ways to confront it, including shocking them into a new way of thinking and that’s where we are called to start as well.  When we encounter people looking to draw people outside of a circle, we too are called to confront it.  Jesus didn’t use violence, and that’s not for us either, but apparently trying logic, stories, and getting creatively shocking is all on the table.  In this story that tactic didn’t work, but we need to remember that Nicodemus was a Pharisee on which it did!  So it is possible and worth trying.  

Second, if it doesn’t work.  If you can’t convince the other to draw the circle around the “other” whoever that “other” might be, then we are called to do what Jesus did and draw that person into our circle anyway.  It is very annoying that we can’t “make” people be inclusive.  None of us and not even Isaiah or Jesus can “make” people be inclusive.  That is out of our control.  What IS in our control, however, is drawing those who are excluded into our circle of love, compassion, kindness, and joy regardless of the cost.  

You’ve probably heard these last two quotes but they pretty much sum up this whole lesson.  Come to think of it, I should have just read them both and then sat down!  Anyway the first is by Edwin Markham.

“He drew a circle that shut me out - Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.  But love and I had the wit to win:  We drew a circle and took him in.”

The second is by Rabbi Tarfon which says:  “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do justly, now.  Love mercy, now.  Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it”

The world continues to draw circles that shut people out for being heretics, rebels, and an endless list of other reasons.  But you and I are not to be daunted by the enormity of that painful reality.  Instead, we are to do what is within our control in each moment.  Doing justly, now.  Loving mercy, now.  Walking humbly, now because while we are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are we free to abandon it.”  Amen.