Sermon for Contemporary Worship (Fifth Lent)

Preached at St. John's Lutheran, New Freedom, PA on March 22, 2015
Scripture: Matthew 25:31-46

Theologians of all stripes have analyzed, studied, read about, written about, the Christian faith from its inception until now. There are a lot of ways one can dissect the Church, a lot of ways we can look at things. Is the Church an institution of the world or the body of Christ incarnate in its members? Is the Church Methodist, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and all other denominations and dogmas, or is it something beyond it? Or this really a both/and thing, not an either/or thing?

These questions have been debated endlessly. For most of us, none of it really matters. But there is a question that does and it may be the most important division and distinction in Christianity. Are we a religion of glory or a religion of the cross?

It seems our inclination is to be a religion of glory. And, of course, God is glorious. God is transcendent. God is joy and blessing and all that. He’s powerful enough to craft this whole universe from nothing. So it fits.

And we like positive things. We like happiness and success. We like contentment and peace. We like health and wellness. Stability and calm. And a god that delivers these things, a god that promises these things, well, that’s a god we can get behind. A god we can believe in.

And therein lies the problem. Yes, that’s an appealing image of God. And turn on any of those TV preachers, odds are good that’s the God they’re talking about. One that blesses and enriches abundantly, that’s all about joy and success and pleasure. Many of us have been taken in by that and that may be the God many of us worship.

But that is not the God of Christianity or at least it’s not supposed to be.

You see, there’s a problem with a religion of glory. It’s nice and it’s convenient to associate God with the positives of life. God is present when there is success and wellness and prosperity. But that also predisposes us to believe that God is absent when there is failure, sickness, and poverty. A religion of glory has no place for the ugly parts of life and neither does its god.

So what happens to us when life goes south? Why did I get cancer? Why did my business fail? Why was my child killed in a car accident? A religion of glory has only one answer for this. God has abandoned you. You weren’t good enough for him.

You didn’t believe enough. You didn’t pray enough. You weren’t devoted enough. If the charlatans in the pulpits don’t say this outright, we tell it to ourselves. It’s all our fault. God must hate us.

But that’s not the God of Christianity. That’s not the God who created this whole universe. That’s not the God who sent his son into this world. That’s not the God revealed in the Holy Scriptures, in the waters of baptism, and in the breaking of bread.

You want to know where to find this God, the real God? Well, he tells us where. He tells us that he’ll be found in the last places we expect. He tells us that he is present among the poor. He is present among the sick, the injured, the dying. He says he is present in the midst of the hungry and thirsty. He is among the imprisoned and the forgotten.

You want to find the real God? Look to the place of suffering, to the place of failure, to the place of pain and poverty. That’s where he says he’ll be found.

I have to wonder what the charlatans say about Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats. I’m sure they’d say it’s a great and wondrous thing to care for others, which it is. But that’s the easy answer and a long way from the real meat of this text. But they, like us so often, don’t want to go where this story takes us.

We don’t want to come to terms with what it means for Jesus to be God incarnate. For him to be born of a human mother, just like we were. That’s messy and ugly and dirty and painful. We want Jesus to walk on air, not stub his toe on a rock. We want Jesus to be above it all, not down in the muck and the mire like we are. We don’t want to think about the Son of God having a stomach ache because he ate a bit of bad meat or having to go to the bathroom or stinking because he’s overdue for a bath. That’s too real for us.

And it’s certainly too real for us to think about Jesus being spat upon, laughed at, abandoned, and ultimately murdered on a cross. But guess what? That is real and that is what happened to him. And all of that reality, from toe stubbing to death, is our reality. You want to know what the incarnation means? It means God is one of us. It means he gets it when our lives fall apart. He understands when things get ugly and painful. He’s been there.

He’s been to the cross just like we have.

Faith is not escapism. It is not fantasy. It is reality. And just as life has its moments of wonder and its moments of pain, faith is there in the midst of all of it. Where is God in our lives? Everywhere, even and especially in the moments of ugliness. Where is God not in our lives? Nowhere. He’s a part of all of it.

Want to grow closer to him? Don’t race off to places of triumph and success. Instead, dive into the ugliness, the messiness, and the pain of the world. He didn’t hide away from the truth of life in this world. Nor should we. Because God is found in the least likely places. Amen.

Sermon for Fifth Lent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on March 22, 2015
Scripture: Numbers 20:1-13, John 3:1-8

-World Water Day-

Science teaches us that there are numerous criteria necessary for life to form. Climate, atmosphere, gravity, radiation, etc. But probably more than any of these other things, the things that astronomers say define the “Goldilocks zone” of a planetary system, what you need is water.

Without water, there is no life.

There are no exceptions. From the tiniest microbe to the tallest tree, from the whale to the mouse, the snakes I spoke about last week, and, of course, ourselves, none of us can survive without water. It is a vital component of our physiology. The biological machine that is our bodies will not function without it.

It can take two weeks or more for a human being to starve to death from lack of food. Go without water and you will likely expire in less than 48 hours.

None of this is a mystery to us. We’ve understood this long before we even knew what science was. Instinct taught us these things about ourselves. It is a fundamental truth of the human existence. Water means life. Lack of water means death.

The ancient Israelites in the wilderness were, as I said last week, wandering there to learn what it means to be God’s chosen people. But there were some things they didn’t have to learn because they knew them already. They knew, for instance, that they would not survive in that harsh environment without water. Thus we have the story of our First Lesson today where God provides that vital necessity by commanding Moses to strike the stone and bring forth water from the rock.

Once again, God proves faithful. He shows once again how the people can depend on him for their every need. This story, in many ways, echoes the one we had last week from the book of Numbers where God gave the people relief from the plague of venomous serpents. Once again, God came through for them.

God brought them from death to life. From the venom of serpents to healing. From dying of thirst to water for all. This is what he does. Death to life.

God has many tools at his disposal. Miracles such as these are certainly flashy and provide a nice counter-illustration to the dire circumstances the ancient Israelites so often found themselves in while wandering the Sinai. But that’s far from the only tool God has to see his goal of bringing his people from death to life. He has many others.

Of course, as Christians, we recognize that Jesus is by far the most potent of these tools. God’s only son came into this world to bring us all from death to life. Again this week, we find ourselves, in a sense, listening in on the conversation between Jesus and the Pharisee Nicodemus, the conversation John recorded in the third chapter of his Gospel. To this teacher of Israel, Jesus outlines his purpose, his mission. And it should come as no surprise that his purpose is to bring us from death to life and it should also be no surprise that he tries to explain this by an illustration pointing to two requirements for human life: air (wind) and water.

From suffocation to breath. From dying of thirst to water for all. From death to life.

We are disciples of Jesus. We follow in his footsteps and in his teachings. God sent him to bring us, all of us, from the death of sin to life eternal. That was Jesus’ job, his purpose, his goal. But we too have a job, outlined in the words of the covenants both old and new. And that job is this: just as Jesus has taken care of us for the next world, so it falls to us to take care of one another in this one.

You see, you and I, we’re tools in God’s arsenal too. We too can be a part of bringing life out of death for people throughout the world around us. And as time goes on and history plays out in the way that it will, we are going to find that water is going to be a big part of that job.

A few years ago, in one of his adventures, the fictional spy James Bond was in South America, in Bolivia, fighting against the evil Quantum organization. Their nefarious plan was to steal all the water in that country. Not a terribly glamorous dilemma for the super-spy and critics of the movie made sure to point that out. But that somewhat goofy bit of pop culture might prove to be somewhat prophetic. Historians have long argued that human wars of the past generations were over gold, our wars in the current generation are over oil, but the wars of the next generations will be over water.

And why is that? Because we’re running out of it.

Between overconsumption, pollution, and drastic shifts in weather and climate, sources of potable water are becoming more scarce worldwide. And this is no longer just a problem in the wildernesses of Third World with the people that live on the margins. It’s in our backyards. California, part of our own nation, is suffering a drought of Biblical proportions right now. Public officials have announced that they have only a single year of water reserves left. One of the most populous and wealthy states in our union is running out of water.

How many bottles of water do we drink in a week? A frightening number of them are being bottled in California. That industry has not slowed in the slightest in the midst of their historic drought. Is this convenience worth it?

Fracking is considered a godsend for the energy industry. We have a way to finally get to those sources of oil and gas that have so long been unreachable. Well, that’s all well and good until people can set their well water on fire. You can’t drink fracking chemicals. You can’t water crops with them. Are those fossil fuels really worth it?

We are facing some hard questions. As Christians we are called to bring people from death to life as our Savior has. But how many of our habits and behaviors do the opposite and hasten the lives of others and ourselves towards death? We cannot live without water. So what are we going to do about all this? What decisions are we going to make about our lives and lifestyle? The answers to those questions aren’t easy. But we do need to think about it and, for the sake of those we are called to care for, we need to give an answer. Amen.

Sermon for Contemporary Worship (Fourth Lent)

Preached at St. John's Lutheran, New Freedom, PA on
Scripture: Matthew 25:14-30

I have rather eclectic tastes when it comes to music. I like a lot of church music: hymns, praise songs, some Christian rock. I like Classical and some jazz. I like a lot of secular music: pop, rock; even more obscure genres like Goth, alternative, and Indie rock. The easiest answer to the question “what music do I like?” is to say “I like what I like.” There’s no one trend or theme that weaves through it all. It’s all over the map.

One of my favorite bands over the years is Genesis. I liked them during their gritty prog rock beginnings in the 70s and I liked their more commercial material in the 80s and 90s. They broke up about 10 or so years ago (retired really) and I remember hearing a radio interview with the band not long after they announced that. It was a fun interview; the band members talking about a lot of cool memories, stuff they did, how some of their songs came about. But then the interviewer moved to the inevitable question “What are you guys going to do now?”

Phil Collins answered. He said, “You know, we’re all still friends. We’ll probably get together. Play some music. Maybe even write some new material. But we’re done with recording and touring together.”

I remember being kind of angry over that answer. They’re going to write new material together. They’re going to make some new Genesis songs, but they’re not going to record them. They’re not going to share them with the world. They’re not going to let their fans hear that music. That seemed really unfair to me. How can you have such a wonderful gift for music and not want to share it with the wider world?

You know, when you really think about it, you could ask that question of a lot of people. How can you have such a wonderful gift and not want to share it with the wider world? There are a lot of different answers to that question. Some people are afraid to share. Some people are selfish. Some people are convinced they have no gift. Some people believe they’re not good enough when compared to someone else. Some people just plain don’t believe in themselves, even when others do believe in them.

Which brings us to tonight’s Gospel lesson. Jesus tells a parable about a wealthy master who entrusts his property to his servants while he goes off on a journey. He gives to each one “according to his ability.” To one, five talents of money. To another, two, and to a third, one. The first takes what he’s been given and doubles his money. The second does likewise. The third, however, digs a hole and hides the money in a field and does nothing with it.

Why does he do this? Well, that long list of answers I just gave about why people don’t share their gifts and talents in our world applies here just as well.

• Maybe he’s selfish? Well, the story doesn’t say that, but it’s an easy guess.
• Maybe he’s afraid? This, the story does say. The servant admits as much when he’s called to account.
• Maybe he thinks he doesn’t have a gift? He was only given one talent, but that’s still a pretty substantial amount of money. It’s somewhere between $30,000 and $120,000 in modern terms, depending on how you measure it. Hardly pocket change.
• Maybe he thinks he’s not good enough when compared to others? He does have less than his companions, but he still has between $30k and $120k, depending on how you measure it. Again, not pocket change.
• Maybe he doesn’t believe in himself? Well, the master did entrust him with a value between $30k and $120k. It’s pretty clear that the master does believe in him, even if the servant himself does not.

The simple fact of the matter is that this servant really has no excuse for his behavior. None of these reasons stand up to scrutiny. None of these reasons have any validity. The servant fails and fails miserably.

He fails because he completely misunderstands his master.

The servant complains because he says the master is “a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed.” But the story does not bear that out. If anything, the master that we see is a very generous and trusting individual. He gives over his property to others and responds with kindness when they prove faithful. Even the third servant is, as I’ve pointed out already, given a hefty sum to take care of. The master believes in him. The master trusts him. If not, then the third servant would never have received anything at all.

We spend a lot of time in churches like this one talking about faith. We talk about what God has promised. We talk a lot about what God has done. We talk about his word and we celebrate his sacraments and all this is intended to invigorate our faith in him and his promises. That’s good, but relationships are not a one-way street. And in our relationship with God that we each have, there is not just our faith in him and what he’s done, there is also his faith in us and what we can do.

All too often we are hesitant to share what we’ve been given. And what have we been given? Well, each one of us has something. Perhaps it is a wondrous talent for the arts. Perhaps it is a skill that we’re really good at. Perhaps it is knowledge or wisdom or particular way of looking at the world. Perhaps we have great wealth. The possibilities are as diverse as there are people in the world. We didn’t come by that thing by accident or chance. It was given to us by our master, by our God. It has been entrusted to us to be used for his purposes.

Key word: entrusted. Trust is the core of that. God trusts us. God wants us to use what he’s given us for the betterment of his kingdom. For the aid of his people. That’s why he gave us that gift. That’s why we have it.

We hem and haw about what to do with what we have. And like the third servant, none of our excuses really stand up to scrutiny. Our God is kind and loving and generous and trusting. He shows us the truth of all that in Jesus, who went to the cross for our sakes.

He gives everything to us, even his very life. He’s the one who created the whole universe, who can count even the number of the hairs upon our heads. He is fully aware of our potential, even if we are not. It is no accident that we have come by the gifts we have. They are meant to be shared. They are meant to be used. They are intended for God’s glory, to tell others about him and his love, to bring them into that relationship with him as well.

And none of that will happen if we stick them in a proverbial hole and never ever share them with the wider world. God believes in you. Trust him. Amen.

Sermon for Fourth Lent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on March 15, 2015
Scripture: Numbers 21:4-9

“Snakes! Why did it have to be snakes?”

Okay, yes, I just quoted Indiana Jones at the beginning of a sermon. He doesn’t like snakes much. I do. I’ve always had a fascination with reptiles of all kinds. I was the kid who was into dinosaurs before that was a thing.

One of my favorite daddy-daughter moments centers on a reptile, a snake in fact. A couple summers ago, Em and I went hiking out at Spring Valley park. As we turned a bend in the trail, there in the middle of the trail was this huge 6-foot long black rat snake sunning itself. It wasn’t very happy to see us. It hissed at us and rattled its tail against the leaves, trying to pretend it was a species it wasn’t. Emily was delighted; she’d just done a report on that very animal in school and now she was getting to see it very up close.

Yes, this is that very snake. I snapped a photo of him before he slithered off.

I love snakes. I love reptiles. But there are a lot of people that don’t. A lot people that are creeped out by them. And, in truth, I get where that comes from. Reptiles are a more primitive order of life form. Their minds are not as developed as we mammals. A dog, a horse, even a rat, and certainly a human, has a mind that’s developed to feel emotion and to use that emotion to evaluate a situation. Are we afraid? Angry? Do we feel affection? Love? How do we respond because of that feeling?

Reptiles, snakes, have no such emotions. The things they encounter fall into one of three categories. They are either food, a threat, or nothing at all. A reptile will eat you if it thinks it can. A reptile may flee from you or perhaps even attack you. Or, perhaps the best option of all, a reptile will ignore you because you simply do not matter to it at all.

And because snakes, like reptiles, respond to us humans with either hostility or apathetic neglect, we don’t have many warm feelings about them. We fear them because they can be dangerous. Many have very potent venoms or muscular strength far in excess of our own.

And that’s a lesson the people of Israel learned rather dramatically in our first lesson today. In one sense, there is a bit of black comedy in this story. No matter how bad your situation is, there is always a  way it can get worse. The people are grumbling and it’s hard to blame them in some ways. They’re out in the wilderness, where it’s hot and dry and probably pretty boring. But then the snakes show up and things go south right quick.

Now the author of Numbers claims the serpents arrive as God’s response to the complaining. I’m not sure I put a lot of stock in that, given what we see God do later in the story. One thing is clear. God is fully aware of the complaints. He’s been hearing them for decades. Manna tastes terrible. The wilderness is hot. We were better off in Egypt. And so on and so forth. It never stops. The people are frustrated. It’s taking them 40 years to travel a distance, by the crow flies, of 100 miles. Even the roundabout way they go only triples that distance. I can do 300 miles in a day in my car but even back then that’s maybe a journey of two weeks tops.

So, again, there is a certain logic to their complaints. This is hard living and it may have seemed at the time that there was no purpose to it. But there was a purpose. There was a reason. Because here in the wilderness is where the Chosen people are learning what it means to be the Chosen people.

And the most important lesson of all in that process is learning to trust God’s mercy. And it starts from the very beginning. Oh, no, Pharoah’s army is nearly upon us. Well, here’s the sea parting to let you escape. We’re starving to death. Well, here’s manna and quail to eat. The snakes! The snake are killing us. Look upon the serpent of bronze and live.

Time and time again, the people run into some trouble and God comes through for them. In spite of their complaints. The people spend most of their time in the wilderness mad at God. And sometimes he gets mad back. But that anger never stops God from showing his mercy, never stops God from teaching the people that they can depend on him. Never stops him from saving them from the dangers of their environment or from their own poor decisions.

When Nicodemus and Jesus are meeting by night in our Gospel lesson, Jesus runs into some frustrations of his own in trying to teach his student. When his initial words don’t work, Jesus turns to something that Nicodemus would understand. He is, after all, a “teacher of Israel.” He knows these Old Testament stories of the people in the wilderness. He’s an inheritor of all the people learned in their wilderness school. So when Jesus tells him that his purpose in coming is to be like the serpent of bronze in the wilderness, Nicodemus finally gets it.

Because it’s all about trusting God’s mercy.

That’s why Jesus came. To be that mercy. To show that mercy at work in the world. Nicodemus talks about the signs that Jesus has done. That’s what brought him to meet with Jesus in the first place. Well, what are those signs? The blind seeing, the lame walking, the sick restored, the demonic cast out. All powerful acts of mercy. Jesus tells Nicodemus and, in turn, us that this is just the beginning. Soon the Son of Man will be lifted up as the serpent of bronze once was, so that all the world can learn what the Chosen ones once did.

That we can depend on God to save us. That even in our complaints and disobedience and even in the midst of God’s anger at that, his mercy trumps all. God will forgive. God will save for the sake of Jesus, his son. That’s what this is all about.

God’s going to take care of us. It’s really that simple. That’s why the promises were given to Abraham. It’s what his descendants learned in the wilderness first hand. And it’s why Jesus came. Death, life, doesn’t matter. God will be there for us. Always. Amen.

Sermon for Contemporary Worship (Third Lent)

Preached at St. John's Lutheran, New Freedom, PA on March 8, 2015
Scripture: Matthew 22:1-14

Years ago, in my ever present nerdy habits, I tried to expand my repertoire of  fantasy reading by trying out Terry Goodkind’s famous Sword of Truth series. I only got through the first novel, Wizard’s First Rule, which I thought was pretty terrible. But there was one moment in that otherwise forgettable book that stood out to me.

The hero, Richard Cypher, has a lengthy strategy session with his allies on how to defeat the evil tyrant Draken Ral. At one point in the midst of this conversation, Richard is astonished when his mentor, the wizard Zeddicus, reveals that Ral believes his actions to be for the greater good. "How can someone so evil even think that what he is doing is good?" Richard asks.

Zeddicus laughs in reply. "Most of the greatest evils in the history of the world have been done by those who believed what they were doing was good."

That idea has stuck with me. It applies to the real world as much as it does any fictional universe. Within their own minds, all the great villains of history believed what they were doing was right. Even they did not wake up each morning thinking, "You know, I think I'll be evil today." They all believed in something, a vision of a world they believed was better, even if only for themselves. Hitler, Stalin, Caligula, even and perhaps especially ISIS and their ilk. All believe or believed that what they were doing was good and a better world would emerge as a result.

Scary, huh? It gets worse. Because there’s also those who start out good but lose their way somewhere along the line. What’s that famous line from the Batman movies? “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Well, that does happen. The French Revolution comes to mind. Life under Louis XVI was pretty brutal, so it’s hard not to sympathize with the goals of Robespierre and the other revolutionaries. At least at first, but it wasn’t long before they lost their way and became as brutal and vicious (perhaps even more so) than the tyrant they deposed.

When I preached this text back in October, I critiqued a Christian commentator who offered up a solution to the problem of ISIS. He suggested we wipe out every Muslim in the whole world. Hitler killed 12 million people in his death camps and we regard the Holocaust as one of the worst atrocities of human history. There are one billion Muslims worldwide and this guy’s solution is the Holocaust 200 times over to deal with the “problem of Islam.”

The great evils in the history of the world have been done by those who believed what they were doing was good.

All this has been in my mind as I read our Gospel lesson this Sunday. This is an odd parable to say the least. It starts out somewhat conventionally. King gives out an invitation to his wedding banquet, the ones invited refuse to participate, so he invites another less worthy but more receptive group to arrive. This fits Jesus’ frequent theme of opening the kingdom more broadly than people expect. It also fits his theme of thumbing his nose at the “good religious folk” of his day (and ours to some degree).

But then it all goes strange. The king comes into the banquet hall and find one of these new guests dressed in his street clothes, not in his celebratory wedding garment. Seeing this, he throws this newly invited guest out on his rear, to join the other invitees who had previous refused to come.

Why this ending? It certainly makes this parable different from the others, but what is this last part meant to tell us? There's where I keep coming back to those today and throughout history who start out with noble goals but lose their way at some point. I keep thinking that this parable is a warning, to us.

The Old Testament is replete with examples of the ways the people failed to uphold God's will, even before Jesus came along. Prophets came to call them back, and were often ignored or even persecuted. They lost their way. And now Jesus has come and part of his purposes is to expand the Chosen people to include so many others, people that had previously been excluded. But as he expands the Chosen to the least and the lost, he reminds them that they too can fail. They too can lose their way.

That's who the disrespectful guest is. And he is being disrespectful. In the ancient world, if you attended such a wedding banquet, it was considered very poor taste to upstage the bride and groom. So your host would provide you with a wedding gown, a robe that somewhat plain so that you would not appear to be dressed more ornately or more fabulously than the happy couple. As the masses come in, they receive their gowns, put them on, and go into the feast. All except this one, who when the king sees him so flagrantly disrespect his son and his new bride, has him cast out of the feast into the darkness.

Jesus is telling this parable during his final week of life. He’s in Jerusalem and the cross casts a big shadow over his dealings during this time. He’s drawing a line in the sand with the Pharisees and his other opponents. They are the ones who should be most receptive to his message. They are the ones who claim and boast of their closeness to God. Yet like the nobles and rich in the parable, they reject the king and his invitation. But when the doors are opened to the common folk, to us, there are those among us who treat this gift with the same scorn and contempt as the guest who refused to wear his banquet gown.

How many of us Christians, in our fear and in our anger and in our hatred, have taken the gown given us in our baptism, washed white in the blood of Jesus Christ himself, and have sought to soil it anew with the blood of innocent people who are in some way different from us? How often have we let our zeal for good turn us into monsters? How often have we lost our way? The king’s invitation to his feast is a gift beyond price. And yet, how often do we cheapen it?

When the king invites us to his banquet, it is a gift that we have not earned nor deserved. We are brought to this font, washed clean in the waters of baptism, and we called by those waters and those words to be something different than what we were before. We are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ and to live by his command and example. To care for those in trouble. To welcome the stranger. To embrace the outcast. To love even our enemies.

That is how God defines good. Our human impulses drive us to hate, to retaliation, to the destruction of evil, and yet the story of God’s salvation is a story of the redemption of evil. That is what it means to truly be “good.”

Christ died and rose again for the sake of all people, you, me, and for all the villains of the world, including the monsters in ISIS. This is our story. This is our calling. We are Christians. We are the baptized. We are those called to be something different. Called to trust. Called to believe. Called to love. To not be darkness like all the rest, but to be light in the midst of darkness. To wear our wedding gown proudly at the Lamb’s high feast and to show the world there is a better way than hate and destruction. That is who we are meant to be. That is who we are called to be. That is what it means to be Christian. Amen.

Sermon for Third Lent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on March 8, 2015
Scripture text: John 2:13-22

What makes God angry?

Now that is a question, isn’t it? A scary question really. Who wants to think about what infuriates the one who created the whole universe, who wove into existence the stars and galaxies? Compared to which we are little more than dust. We’re nothing. We’re tiny, insignificant, in the grand scheme of the universe in which we live. God could sneeze and wipe out a million worlds just like this one. That’s all it would take. Barely any effort at all.

If it’s any consolation, God himself is not too keen on anger. He doesn’t like it. In many ways, he battles against it, always looking for an out for his rage; a reason not to act on his fury. Luther called God’s wrath his “alien work,” because it is so contrary to his loving nature. God doesn’t want to get angry. He doesn’t like it anymore than we do.

But he does, from time to time, get angry. It does happen.

Our Gospel lesson today is probably the most famous story of God’s anger. Jesus comes to Jerusalem and goes to the temple for worship. It is Passover and many devout and observant Jews have come to this place to offer up sacrifice to God.

Of course, it didn’t take long for some charlatan to figure out there was money to be made on this devotion. A few bribes to the priests to make them friendly and they got a good racket going. Of course, many observant Jews knew the law, they knew their faith. They knew the criteria for a proper temple sacrifice and they would bring with them an appropriate animal for that purpose. But then the priest would declare their animal unfit for some reason and there was little debate to be had. After all, the priest would be performing the rites and they had final say. But, there’s a solution. My friend over here has perfectly qualified animals for sacrifice at bargain basement prices. Ditch the unworthy offering you brought with you (which would likely be offered up to the next sap who came along), buy one off the market, and everything’s cool.

That was the scene that Jesus came upon in the temple that day. The chaos of a market and not just any market, a corrupt and crooked one that exploited people’s sincere faith for profit. Didn’t have the money to buy a “proper” sacrifice? Well, too bad. Pay up or go home.

You want to know what gets God angry? Well, this definitely qualifies. Jesus blows his stack. He makes a whip and attacks the merchants. He goes to the tables of the moneychangers (another scam that preyed upon the Jews who came from foreign lands) and overturns their tables. He’s a one-man riot and, in his fury, he drives these thieves and con men from the temple.

But what’s behind the anger? It’s easy to see the villainy here. Economic exploitation is an everyday thing even now. Employers stiffing their workers their well-earned pay. Grifters calling up lonely and elderly people with some new scam to defraud them of their money. People pay for their whole working lives into pensions that they think will be there when they retire, only to find their money vanish when a company needs cash for a golden severance package for their CEO or a governor needs cover for their financial mismanagement of state funds. Happens all the time. I wonder what percentage of the news stories each night are about someone taking money from someone else through illicit and unethical means. Probably at least half, if not more.

But is that what really ticks God off? Well, yes and no. This scam has created a barrier between the people and God. They can’t get to him without going through this wall of greed. You have to pay to play. You want to tick God off? Put something in between him and the people he loves. Do something to stand in the way of his grace.

Money has often been that barrier. It was no accident that Luther got angry over the sale of indulgences in the Middle Ages. It was another variation on this “pay to play” scheme and when Luther realized the church had reduced to faith to “pay up so God will love you,” he attacked with all the fury and zeal that Jesus himself shows in this story.

But even today, money stands as a barrier between God and his people. If you’re wondering where your next meal is coming from...If you’re worried about whether you’ll have a roof over your head tonight or not, you’re not going to be all that concerned about God. You’ve got other things on your mind. Other worries. Other concerns.

This may be the reason the Bible speaks so much about poverty and why we, as God’s followers, are commended to do all we can to aid those inflicted by it. We’re here to tear those barriers down, just as Christ himself did.

God doesn’t want anything between him and the people he loves. Not money. Not illness. Not fear. Not greed. Not failure. Not hate. Not anything. I said at the beginning of this sermon that we are but dust in the cosmic order. And that’s true in terms of the cold scientific reality of this vast universe. But it’s also false when you consider the immense and unlimited love of the one who created that universe. We aren’t dust to God. We are EVERYTHING to him.

There are not words to describe how badly he wants to be with us. No language of humankind has the means to describe this desire. God had to demonstrate this hungering passionate unyielding love to us by the sending of his son into this world. God demonstrated this hungering passionate unyielding love to us by that son going to the cross to die for our sins. God demonstrated this hungering passionate unyielding love to us by rising from the dead on the third day. All that was because of love. All that was to show us how badly he wants to be with us.

What makes God angry? When his love is thwarted by the evils of this world. That’s what ticks him off. Who can blame him? We know what that’s like. How aggravated to we get when we are denied time with our spouse or children? How hard is it when we are parted from them? It’s the same for God, only more so, for his love is so much greater than ours. It has no limits, no boundaries, and its sole focus is you and I and the whole human race. God will do anything to be with us, even die on a cross. Amen.

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.