Sermon for Contemporary Worship (Second Lent)

Not preached due to inclement weather (Scheduled to be preached at St. John's on March 1, 2015)
Sermon text: Matthew 20:1-16

I have a question. Who was it that decided to name the parables? I mean, I know there’s nothing official about the names that have been given to these stories of Jesus, but my goodness whoever decided what they would be called did a really horrible job of it.

Truly, they did and we, at least in part because of these bad titles, have been misunderstanding Jesus’ intent in these stories ever since. Probably the best (worst?) example is the Prodigal Son. Given that the parable is really about both sons and both of their interactions with their father, it’s title should be more about dad than the one kid. The father is the unifying the element of the story and it is his actions that Jesus wants us to understand the most. But, instead, we’ve always thought this to be the son’s story because of that title someone somewhere slapped onto this parable.

Tonight’s parable from the Gospel of Matthew is another example of this horrid misnaming. This story is known as the parable of “the workers in the vineyard.” And again, it’s not about them. They’re not all that important to the story. Jesus isn’t telling this tale to talk about them and how they act or what they think or what they believe. Instead, he really wants us to look the landowner himself, what he does, and why he does it.

So, tonight’s message comes to us from the parable of the generous landowner. There! That’s much better.

This is one of a handful of parables that only Matthew records for us and it fits in large part with some larger themes in his Gospel. Matthew is the only Gospel that is specifically and deliberately addressed to what we might call the “first Christians,” those people of the Jewish faith who have become disciples of Jesus and converted to Christianity.

Like so many people of all stripes, these folks carry with them their prejudices and their privileges. (We today are certainly guilty of similar biases.) Matthew makes a strong argument throughout his Gospel that their place as the first to hear Jesus’ message gives them no special standing. Elsewhere in his Gospel, Matthew points out that “rain falls on the just and the unjust,” that Jesus calls “tax collectors and sinners” to be a part of his kingdom, and here in this parable he records that Jesus tells a tale where the last and least of the kingdom receive the same reward as everyone else.

How dare he!

When you really think about this though, it’s really unfair. Come on. Isn’t God good? Isn’t God determined to rid the world of sin and evil? Why then doesn’t he do something about it? How dare he! You mean I, who have been a Christian all my life, who have done my best to live a moral and upright life, am going to be hobnobbing in heaven with those horrible sinners who waited until the last minute to repent of their evil (and maybe not even then)? I’m a good person. How dare he save the bad and the rotten along with me? You mean I potentially get to stand side by side before God’s throne with Nazis, and ISIS soldiers, and that high school bully that I still despise all these years later?

Yep, that’s exactly what it means.

When Jesus tells the truth of God’s kingdom, he usually ends up offending people in some way. He unsettles the Pharisees all the time, but we don’t mind that since we’re not them (or so we think.) But this parable offends EVERYBODY.

The landowner’s question to the angry workers then becomes Jesus’ question to us. “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” God is generous, extravagantly so. But the piece we always miss is how much we benefit from that.

The simple fact of the matter is too often, when we read this parable, we presume (for a whole variety of reasons) that we are the laborers who started the work at the beginning of the day, when the truth is we’re those who’ve only worked the last hour. In terms of history, there are a hundred generations of Christians who have come before us. In terms of morality, there are many who do a far better job at this whole Christian thing than we do. In our own analysis, we love to overlook or excuse our own sins while condemning others for theirs. We often presume in our own arrogance a place of primacy that we do not deserve.

But in the end, it’s not about morality or time or dedication or church attendance or piety or anything else that we use to puff up our spiritual bona fides. It is not our delusions of grandeur that win for us the kingdom of God. It is the generosity of the one who holds salvation in his hand. Heaven is God’s alone to grant. He is the one who chooses who’s in and who’s out and, if this parable is any indication, his choice is far more expansive and generous than we could ever realize.

God chooses to be generous. In the end, if we look at things from his perspective, we see that is good and that is fair. Justice is about equality and fairness and when God looks out over the vast sea of humanity what he sees is a whole lot of desperate sinful hurting people. Some worse than others, but none of us perfect or whole. All of us prone to mistake and vice in some way. And if God holds one to account for their sins, he must hold all to account.

But that’s not the path God chooses. He chooses instead the path of grace and forgiveness, the path of generosity. Rain falls on the just and the unjust and all are paid the usual daily wage because of this. This is extravagant grace at work. God’s choice. God’s decision. God’s generous giving of his gifts and blessing to all. We who come late to this party, we who have done only a fraction of what others have done, we are those who benefit. Heaven is ours because God chooses it to be ours. That is grace. Amen.

Sermon for Second Lent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on March 1, 2015
Sermon text: Mark 8:27-38

A week or so ago, there was an article published in the magazine Atlantic about ISIS. It was arguing a number of points, not the least of which is how we Western-thinking Americans truly do not understand what makes these people tick. I think there’s a lot in the article that’s up for debate, but our lack of understanding of what motivates these people is rather disconcerting. There is a certain illogic to them. The author of the article summed up this illogic by comparing them to the Nazis of 1930s Germany and quoting from George Orwell.

“Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,” Hitler has said to them, “I offer you struggle, danger, and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet … We ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.”

Utterly alien to us, isn’t it? The idea that people would seek out torment and suffering for its own sake. And yet, as the Nazis and ISIS and countless other groups have proven, there is an appeal here. We continue to hear stories of people from all over the world who are seeking out these ISIS barbarians to join up. The notorious killer in their beheading videos is a British national. Three men in Brooklyn, NY were arrested for trying to sign up and three young women from London hit the news this week after disappearing while trying to smuggle themselves into ISIS territory.

This make no sense to us. Why would people like us want this?

We don’t understand it because our culture has evolved (not always in a good way) to being all about our own self-fulfillment. Orwell was right. The economic systems of the Western world, capitalism and socialism both, offer different variations on a life of ease and pleasure. It’s all about us. They promise to look out for #1 and #1 is, of course, ourselves.

But there is another worldview and it is the worldview that says there are things in life that are bigger and more important than ourselves. Things worth fighting for. Things worth dying for. And while ISIS may have perverted this hunger to serve a greater cause into something monstrous, it is the heart of their appeal. Serve us and your life will have meaning and true value.

They are not alone in making this appeal. It is also at the heart of what Jesus offers to his disciples, to us, in our Gospel lesson.

“If any wish to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.” You do realize what he’s asking here right? Remember what the cross is to people of his day. It’s a device of execution, an instrument designed to inflict upon those nailed to it a most painful and horrible death. “If you follow me,” he essentially says, “I will promise you pain, suffering, and death.”

Scary to see the parallels, isn’t it? He’s calling us to give up our very lives for something greater than ourselves. He’s calling us to die for the sake of his kingdom. Not exactly something that would make most folks jump up and down to sign on to this Christianity thing.

So we’ve done our best to try to mute Jesus’ call here. We’ve tried to “Westernize” his appeal, to make our faith and our religion about something far more important than God, love, and compassion for others. We’ve made it about us.

First off, we’ve made the cross a whole lot less scary. In some ways, that happened naturally as history passed from one generation to the next. It stopped being used as an instrument of torture and execution. We no longer see the brutality of it except when someone decides to recreate it on film. Most crosses we see today are decoration, a piece of jewelry. Ours here behind me is nice and pretty, not scary at all.

Secondly, we’ve had to play up the worldly benefits of a life of faith and downplay all that pain and self-sacrifice. During the middle ages, the monastery and the convent became marketing tools. Sign up with the church and escape the horrors of the world. Get away from tyrannical nobles, plagues, constant war, and hide away on a mountaintop.

Of course, as history again evolved, that appeal had to change too. Nowadays, it’s all be a Christian, and you’ll gain riches, and popularity, and a beautiful spouse, and a great family, and you’ll have no problems in life. God will just love you so much because your devotion and loyalty that he’s just waiting to shower you with everything you want.

We make it all about us.

And yet, deep down, we soon come to realize just how empty that is. Life is more than escapism. Life is more than wealth. Life is more than success. Life is more than putting on appearances for the sake of others. All these things are fine and good for their own sake, but they don’t give life meaning. They don’t give life purpose. When we make of ourselves an idol, we quickly find that our god is much too small.

Deep down inside of us, I believe there is a hunger to be a part of something greater, something with more meaning and value than ourselves. Charlatans of all sorts have tapped into that desire. It’s the reason you have murderous cults like ISIS and diabolically evil political movements like the Nazis. For better or worse, they offer people meaning to their lives and people in droves respond to that.

Jesus does the same, but in a far better way. He says to us to “take up our cross, and follow him.” He asks us to leave behind our distractions and our isolation. To leave behind our comforts and delights. Leave them and go forth into the world, to do as he did, to confront the ugliness, the pain, and the suffering of the world. Not for our sake, but for the sake of others.

He is asking us to be agents of healing, as he was. He is asking us to be agents of justice, as he was. He is asking us to be speakers of the truth, as he was. And when you do these things, when you spend time with someone dying of AIDS, when you stand against the evils of bigotry, when you speak the truth when it is not popular or fashionable, you will feel the weight of the beam. You will feel the nails pierce you wrists and you will know the cross.

Why would we do this? Why would we put ourselves through such painful experiences, through such hardship? You already know the answer, because each one of us has something in our lives that we have already regarded as greater than ourselves. Something we already see as worth dying for: A child, a spouse, a country, a cause. Why is that important to us? Love.

Love. We loved those people. We love those things. Had we the power, we would spare those we love from all their troubles. We don’t often have that power, but we do what we can. We do all we can to make them better.

This is what it means to love. And because we love so deeply and so dearly, we endure every heartache, every tear. We would go into the very depths of hell for them, that’s how great our love is.

And that is what Jesus is asking of us, not merely for that one person or thing, but for everyone in the world. The way of the cross of which he speaks is nothing more than the way of love. He asks us to love his people as he does. He asks us to stand up for them. He asks us to embrace them. He asks us to be with them in their hours of need. No matter how painful. No matter how hard. He asks us to love.

And what Jesus asks is no more than what he himself has done. He heals the sick. He eats with the outcast. He challenges the powerful and unjust. And at the last, he took upon his shoulders the beam of the cross. He took into his wrists and feet the nails. He took on the anguish and the mockery. He embraced his own death, for by doing so, he saved the world and everyone in it. And all this he did out of love for us.

That, my friends, is the way of the cross. Amen.

(Pastor's notes: I owe something of a debt for this sermon to one I preached way back in 2006. I also have some additional reading that helped inform my ideas in addition to the two articles linked in the above text. The first is The 12 worst ideas religion unleashed on the world, paying particular attention to the nonsense there about the evils of "Glorified suffering" and notice how our "new morality" of self-fulfillment is at work in the critique. The second is this more political article about American conservatism and the Tea Party. Note in particular the quote from the anti-vaxxer in the third paragraph and his lack of concern his actions have on others. Self-fulfillment at work again.)

Sermon for Contemporary Worship (First Lent)

Not preached due to weather (Was to be preached at St. John's on Feb 22, 2015)
Scripture text: Matthew 18:15-35

We enter into the season of Lent with an extended passage from the Gospel of Matthew on the value of reconciliation. That this is the theme of these texts is not always obvious to us at first, especially given that we begin this extended discourse with a Scripture passage that is often used by the Church as a mechanism for discipline and addressing misbehavior.

Jesus outlines a four stage process for dealing with a transgressor in the church. First, address the transgression with the one who committed it privately. Secondly, do so with appropriate witnesses. Third, do so before the whole community. Fourth, if none of these work, treat this one as a “Gentile and a tax collector.”

If we’ve reached step four, it’s easy to see this as failure. We have not fixed the problem. We have not reconciled this sinner, and now the only option is removal from the community. Banishment, exile, rejection. But that’s not actually what’s supposed to happen at this stage. To fully understand what Jesus is asking here, you have to step outside its boundaries somewhat and remember first off who it is that is reporting this teaching to us: Matthew. And what was he before he became a disciple and an evangelist? Oh, yeah, a tax collector. So he presumably has first hand knowledge of how Jesus treats tax collectors. And how does Jesus treat people like him? “Follow me.”

Reconciliation is the goal. If the first three steps fail, you start over at the beginning. You go back to the basics. What does it mean to be a disciple. What does it mean to be a Christian. All that. It’s less rejection than it is retooling. It’s starting over and trying again to bring this transgressor into the community.

Peter’s question and the parable that follows are logical progressions of this chain of through. Peter seems to understand what Jesus is saying here. To reconcile requires forgiveness, but how often? He offers up the comparatively generous number of “seven times,” thinking that’s surely hyperbole enough (The Jewish Talmud of his day suggests only 3 times by comparison.) Jesus goes even further with by saying “seventy-seven” times. Occasionally we’ll hear this translated “seventy times seven.” But the point Jesus is making is not the exact number, but the pure extravagance of forgiveness that is required for reconciliation.

And the parable drives home this point, leaving no doubt as to Jesus’ intention. Ten thousand talents is an outrageous sum, an amount no person could ever repay. (If you want to talk math, at the usual daily wage of ancient Israel, that sum would take 200,000 years to repay.) And yet, the king does the unthinkable; he shows mercy and forgives the debt. The servant however sadly refuses the same mercy over his colleague who owes a paltry (in comparison) 100 denari, for which he is then held to account for his cruelty.

Reconciliation requires extravagance. Time and again, Jesus teaches us this lesson. We hear it in other parables as well, perhaps most famously in the Prodigal Son. The younger son has done the unthinkable, demanded his inheritance while his father is still alive (essentially telling dad to “drop dead”) and then squandered it. When he returns in remorse, the father likewise does the unthinkable and forgives him. An interesting side bit of trivia. Some scholars have argued that this famous parable should be called the Prodigal Father, since the word “prodigal” (a word not common in modern English) means “extravagant.” Reconciliation requires extravagance.

Forgive, forgive, forgive. Reconcile, work it out. Try again and again. Never stop. Never give up. Never allow a lost one to remain lost. Treat the lost as Jesus treated Matthew and Zacchaeus and the woman of Syro-phoenicia and the Roman centurion and countless other “Gentiles and tax collectors.” Follow and forgive.

This is Jesus’ lesson to us in these stories. But it isn’t just a demand he makes of us. He is the merciful king in the parable. He himself goes out of his way to forgive extravagantly. He is the embodiment of the Biblical concept of hesed, a Hebrew word we often translate as “mercy” or “loving-kindness.” More than one Biblical scholar finds these translations inadequate, because the word really means something to the effect of “expecting nothing from someone and yet receiving from them everything.” We should expect nothing of God, sinners as we are, and yet he grants us everything.

Jesus is at the center of that. How far will God go to forgive us? How far will God go to be with us? How far will God go to reconcile with his people? How extravagant will he be? You have only to look to the cross to see the answer. That’s God’s extravagant reconciliation. He wants us so badly, he’ll die for us. He, like so many in these parables, does the unthinkable. God dies for his people. God dies for us.

Unthinkable extravagance. That is God’s way. Whatever it takes to bring us together. He and us. We and him. “No greater love,” Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospels, “has anyone than to lay down his life for his friends.” That’s what God does for us. He gives everything to be reconciled to us. This generosity, this mercy, this hesed is unthinkable, and yet it is true. God is the prodigal father, God is the merciful king, God is the unthinkably extravagant reconciler, and we are those who benefit from his grace. Amen.

Sermon for First Lent

Preached on February 22, 2015 at Canadochly Lutheran Church
Sermon text: Genesis 9:8-17

There are certain stories in Scripture that it seems everyone, regardless of how diligently or not they read the Bible, seem to have some passing knowledge of. We all know in this secular age that many people, inside the church and out, have little understanding of what the Bible actually says. But regardless, there are some tales that seem to be unavoidable. Even if your only encounter with Christianity or the Bible is to walk past the windows of a Lifeway bookstore, you still might have learned a tiny bit about some of these tales.

The story of Noah and the flood is one of these. Maybe because it seems so marketable to children. Hey, it’s got cute animals. The fact that the story is really about the genocide of nearly the entire human race seems to get overlooked to those who build Noah’s Ark playsets and pop-up books. Truth is, it’s really not a very nice story.

But with its popularity comes a certain scholarly scrutiny. Biblical scholars of all stripes have picked over this tale and are, not surprisingly, divided about what it’s all about. There are those, of course, who take this story literally. That at some point in our distant past history, God flooded the entire planet to destroy the wickedness of the human race, with one small exception. Others say this cannot be so, that it is scientifically impossible to flood the Earth. There is neither enough water nor enough time to accomplish such a feat as the story is presented to us. But these are likewise divided as to whether the story should then be read as entirely metaphorical or whether it is a theological treatise on some flood event that did, in fact, take place but is somewhat smaller in scale than what the Bible presents to us.

For my part, I lean towards the latter of these options. There is some geological evidence of multiple flood disasters in the ancient middle east, any one of which (or perhaps all of them fused together) formed the basis of a memory that lead ancient priests and mystics to wonder about God’s role in it all. (Not all that different from the musings we do in the face of natural disaster.) In the end, it is their wisdom that I believe is the most important piece of this story. They came to understand a vitally important piece about God and his way of interacting with the world. They came to realize that if God is love and that if God (because of love) wishes to rid the world of evil and suffering, it cannot happen through destruction.

That is why God makes the promise he does at the end of the flood story, which is what we have as our first lesson this morning. “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God will never again destroy the Earth to rid it of evil.

Ah, some might argue, it only says the world will not be destroyed by a flood, not that it will never be destroyed. But that’s the sort of hair-splitting argument that I’d expect of some ambulance-chaser in an American courtroom, not the sort of thing a God of compassion and mercy would do. Throughout the Scriptures, God makes even clearer his intention NOT to destroy evil, but instead to save it.

The first example is what happens a few chapters after the Noah story in Genesis. God makes another covenant, this time with Abraham, where he promises a coming blessing that will be for “all the families of the Earth.” Note the word “all.” It shows up a lot in these passages.

Later still, we have Jesus teaching Nicodemus in the 3rd chapter of John, a text we heard read and preached on this past Wednesday. In that, Jesus says openly that God loves all the world, that he sent his son to save it, NOT to condemn it.

And still further on in the Scriptures, we have the vision of John of Patmos in Revelation. John witnesses a great multitude of those saved by God, greater than anyone can count, from every tribe, race, and language. All of the world standing before God, lauding him for his salvation.

Time and again, we see the Scriptures map out God’s intention. Destruction does not work. God seems to conclude at the end of the flood story this simple truth. He cannot rid the world of evil without destroying everything. Yet God wants fellowship with humanity. He wants to be with us. That’s his greatest desire. He tries, the flood story tells us, to have it both ways: death to evil and salvation for the “good.” But Noah is only good in a relative sense; he may be better than the rest of the sorry lot of humanity, but he’s still a long way from perfect. And once the dry land is back and Noah and his family sets foot upon it, sin begins again almost immediately.

The flood did not accomplish what it was supposed to. It failed to rid the world of evil. So God had to figure out another way.

And his new way is redemption. Instead of destroying evil utterly, he will transform it into good. He will change the world. He will show mercy and compassion and patience and love. And it is with this in mind that he speaks his covenant to Abraham, that all families will be blessed by God through him. It is with this in mind that he becomes incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth, the promised blessing made manifest. It is with this in mind that he goes to the cross and declares from it forgiveness as he breathes his last. Life instead of death. Mercy instead of punishment. Redemption instead of destruction.

This is what it’s all about. For many people, there is hunger for God to come down and smite all the unworthy sinners: the unbelievers, the poor, the rich, the lazy, the sexually different, the people of other nations or political beliefs. They want the fire-and-brimstone. They want the lake of fire for pretty much everyone else who isn’t like them. I get the feeling they’re going to be very disappointed when we’re all standing before God’s throne at the end of time and we’re all rubbing shoulders with gays, liberals, foreigners, and the soldiers of ISIS.

Now I’ll admit I don’t know if that’s precisely how it’s going to play out, but I do know that’s how God wants it to be. We’re all sinners in our own way. We all have our vices and mistakes, all have our ways of looking the other way in the face of evil. But despite that, God wants to save us all. God wants to redeem us all, regardless of what kind of sins we commit.

That’s why Jesus came, the blessing for all the people of the world, the one who came because God so loved the whole world, the one who came so God didn’t have to condemn the world. He’s came to save us all. He came to die for us all. He came to give us life, not death. He came to forgive, not to punish. He came to save the world, not to destroy it. Amen.