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Sermon – Luke 23.33-43, P29, YC, November 24, 2019

27 Wednesday Nov 2019

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Fifty-one years ago, Mister Rogers Neighborhood debuted on public television.  Many people criticized the show, saying the show was too slow and too boring to keep children engaged.  For critics, children’s programming needed to be loud, action-packed, full of silly gimmicks, perhaps with a few characters that were made fun of or teased.  Knowing how frenetic young children can be, television producers had decided to mirror young children’s behavior in their television programming.  But not Mr. Rogers.  In the midst of frenetic behavior, Mr. Rogers sought a different environment for his show – something slower and more thoughtful, something kind and engaging, something simple and attentive.  Critics said the show would never last, that Mister Rogers Neighborhood was not what children wanted.

On this Christ the King Sunday, the final Sunday of the Church year, this Sunday of jubilant triumph, we find a similar conundrum.  As we read from Luke’s gospel, we do not find Christ the King on a throne – we find him on a cross, leaders scoffing at him, soldiers mocking him, a criminal deriding him, and a crowd of people just standing there watching.  Nothing about today’s lesson connotes victory or royalty.  Jesus’ critics put a sign over his head that read, “This is the King of the Jews.”  The inscription is written as a declarative statement, but I wonder if there should have been a question mark at the end of that sentence.  This is the King of the Jews?  This is what royalty looks like?  This is what a savior is to you?

Of course, I am not sure the people of God were any surer about what having a king should be like.  The people of God never really had a king until they reached the Promised Land.  They saw the neighboring countries with their armies and their admirable kings, and they wanted one for themselves.  That was their first mistake.  God granted them a king to rule over them, but inevitably, the kings, like all humans, were flawed – some more than others.  Hence, there are four books in the Hebrew Scriptures about the kings who ruled and the judges who tried to correct their behavior.  Most of the kings were corrupted by power, money, and greed.  Many abused the people.  Even the most revered king, King David, was a mess.  He was the one who coveted Bathsheba, slept with her, and then killed her husband when he got her pregnant and realized he would not be able to get away with it.

Having been through a horrible patch of awful kings, the prophets predicted the coming of a Messiah – the king of kings and Lord of lords.  This king would be triumphant and would make the people of Israel dominant at last.  You can imagine that with such a great promise, the people of Israel are not too pleased with the man who finally claimed be the Messiah.  Nothing about Jesus says “king.”  He is nonviolent, hangs out with sinners of all sorts, and travels with a sorry band of misfits.  Even his grand entrance into Jerusalem where he is heralded as a king is not so grand – he rides in on a donkey, for goodness sake!  This could not possibly be the king Yahweh had promised them.

And yet, this is exactly the king God sends.  The Lord, who never wanted God’s people to have an earthly king anyway, makes a king that represents everything that is kingly:  a man who loves the poor and cares for the sick, a man who sees through the pretenses of the temple and calls for authenticity, a man who loves deeply and forgives infinitely.  So why are the people of God not excited about this king?  Why can they not love this countercultural king as much as the king they think they need?

In talking to a William & Mary student a couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of one of the first Political Science classes I took in college called Political Theory.  When we started reading the first book in our Political Theory class, I knew I was in trouble.  We read John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice.  In the book, he presents the best way to create a just political system.  He imagines gathering a random, diverse group of people who are essentially blindfolded about what their lot in life will be.  They have no guarantees about whether they will be old or young, rich or poor, male or female, member of a minority group or not.  In the midst of this blindness, the people gathered are given the task to create a set of rules to govern society.  Rawls’ basic argument is that if those people are truly blind about what their lot in life will be, they will be more likely to come up with a system of governance that is the fairest for all – since no one would want to take a chance on being the one victimized by an unfair system.  Although I appreciated what Rawls was saying, I was immediately annoyed at his argument.  How could we ever recreate a system of justice from scratch, and truly blind anyone enough to create such a system?  The entire premise seemed impossible, and thoroughly frustrating.  Needless to say, my focus in Political Science did not become Political Theory!

That being said, many years later, I think I may finally understand what Rawls was trying to communicate.  Our political system, or even this earthly life in general, is governed by a set of human-made standards that do not look out for the poor, create injustices, and benefit very few.  This is why so many of us get frustrated when we talk about justice or trying to make a difference – we see the system of injustice that fights against us and we can end up feeling helpless.  This is the very injustice that our king – Jesus – comes to fight.  Maybe Rawls saw this too.  Perhaps this world we can only achieve through blindness is the same world Jesus could see through God’s eyes.

In Rawls’ argument, when the blinded people make the rules, and then have their blindfolds removed, some are relieved to be well-off and others are dismayed to see themselves in poverty or at a disadvantage.  But all have some sense of acceptance because the rules they made do not make rich-life as advantageous and do not make poor-life as unbearable.  This is the kind of fairness into which Jesus invites us.  Jesus shows us a world where a humiliated man can look at his persecutors and forgive them.  Jesus shows a world where a man is willing to suffer for the salvation of others.  Jesus shows us a world where even a criminal can see truth in the last hour, can admit his guilt, and turn to Christ for leniency.

This is why we celebrate Christ as King today:  not because he is victorious in putting us in control over others, but because he invites us into a life that evens the playing field – the life of the kingdom of God.  There are certainly going to be days when we wish Jesus would just mount a mighty horse and triumph over evil.  Lord knows, in these days of political strife, of country-wide division and derision, of a time in our country where we say nasty things to one another, and the actions of the other side (whichever side we see as “the other”) are seen as the cause of all our troubles, we could use a Messiah, a king to come in and just “fix it” – to be a decisive, strong, powerful king to clean the slate.  But what Christ the King Sunday invites us to remember is we do not need a king on a throne; we need a king on a cross who enables us to create a world of fairness here and now – a world that is much more similar to the kingdom of God than the kingdom of humankind.

So why do we honor this not-so-kingly king today on the last day of the liturgical year?  I think the very best reason we close one year and prepare to start another with today’s gospel lesson is so that as we can more humbly approach the Christ Child.  If we can imagine ourselves gathered around that manger on that most holy of nights, not eager for vindication, but instead humbled by the path we will all walk with this king, then we enter into Advent with more reverence, less arrogance, and a healthy dose of gratitude.  This king – Christ the King – is the most sobering, challenging, merciful, joyous, steadying king for which we could hope.  He is not the king we always want, but he is certainly the king we always need.  Today we celebrate the wise gift by God of a true King – a king who makes us all better versions of ourselves, who helps us see there are no easy solutions, and who encourages us to embrace justice as fairness, not justice as vindication.  Our invitation today is to take a seat at the foot of the cross, to prepare our place in the hay surrounding the manger, to change out our shoes, to take off our jackets and zip up our cardigans, and to make a calm, quieter space for ourselves to hear how a real king can help us create not the kingdom we may want, but certainly the kingdom we need.  Amen.

Sermon – Exodus 16.2-15, Matthew 20.1-16, P20, YA, September 24, 2017

27 Wednesday Sep 2017

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This week in Discovery Class, we did a review of Holy Scripture.  We talked about how many years writing the Bible took, the content in each section, the types of literature we find in scripture, and what scripture reveals about us as God’s people.  Our homework was to study today’s gospel lesson, being sure to read the text immediately before and after the text we hear today as a way of helping us interpret the passage.  That tip was especially telling in today’s Old and New Testament lessons

In our lesson from Exodus last Sunday, we heard the story of the parting of the Sea of Reeds.  We heard of that dramatic moment where God allows the Israelites to pass through on dry land, but destroys the Egyptians as the waters return.  The last line in last week’s lesson from Exodus is, “Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians.  So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.”  Today, the first sentence from our Exodus reading is, “The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’”  Israel’s groaning and complaining today are much more grievous when we read the great heights of their praise and faithfulness last week.

Likewise, in our gospel lesson today, we hear the familiar story of the generous landowner, who gives the same wage to those who work an hour and those who work all day in the broiling sun.  We can read this passage, and criticize the envious, hardworking laborers for their lack of gratitude.  But the power of the story is heightened when we realize immediately before Jesus’ parable, Peter interrupts Jesus’ teaching and basically says, “But what about us?  We left everything behind and we have been following you.  What’s in it for us?”  And right after Jesus’ parable, the mother of James and John approaches Jesus and basically says, “Listen, if it’s not too much trouble, can my boys sit at your right and left hand in the kingdom?”  So, when Jesus says to Peter, “many who are first will be last, and the last will be first,” and when the landowner says to the workers, “the last will be first, and the first will be last,” what do you think Jesus is trying to address?[i]

I do not know about you, but both of these texts have left me pretty uncomfortable this week.  Watching the Israelites go from faithful, obedient, loyal followers, to whiny, unappreciative, complaining messes hits a little too close to home.  Admittedly, part of me cringes at this text because we have been hammering home the importance of gratitude with our own children.  No sooner is the ice cream cone finished before the complaint comes that we never do anything nice for them.  But as much as we fuss at them, we know the same is true for us.  We are great at praise and thanksgiving to God – when things are going well.  When seas are parting, and enemies are defeated, our God is awesome.  But when we cannot seem to make ends meet, when our loved one is sick again, or when our relationships are falling apart, gratitude is the last thing on our lips.  We find ourselves in what one scholar calls the “spiritual wilderness of ingratitude.”[ii]  We cringe at these readings because we are no more masters at gratitude than our children are.

What both of these lessons do, ever so brutally, is lure us in with stories about abundant, underserved generosity, and put under a microscope our deeply buried discomfort with abundant, underserved generosity.  Part of the reason we are uncomfortable is because God’s generosity often bumps up against our notions of fairness.[iii]  I do not know if we understand the concept of fairness innately or if we are taught fairness by our community, but somewhere along the line, we learn the concept of fairness and apply the concept with exacting scrutiny.  I remember when I was a child and wanted a treat, my dad would make my brother and me share the treat.  One child was allowed to split the treat in half, but the other child got to pick which half he or she wanted.  You can imagine how precise my cuts became when looking at that cookie.

But our notions of fairness evolve over time.  One could take that same cookie and give a slightly larger half to the older child since they are bigger.  Or one could take that same cookie and give the slightly larger half to the child who was better-behaved.  Or one could give the larger half to the one who was physically weaker and needed more nourishment.  There are all sorts of ways to determine fairness.  But God’s measure, in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures seems to be that everyone receives God’s generosity despite worth or effort – or even the showing of gratitude.

Take our lesson from Exodus.  The people have clearly approached mutiny.  Their love for God is buried in their physical hunger and their self-centered greed.  But instead of punishing the Israelites, God lavishes them with all they need.  God gives them bread every day and meat every night.  In fact, God even gives them a double portion on the eve of the Sabbath so that they can observe the Sabbath without having to work for their food.  The feast is not a rich feast of wines and marrow, but their feast is gloriously generous and enough.

The same is true in Jesus’ parable.  Yes, the landowner has a weird way of putting the day-long workers in the awkward position of watching his generosity, but ultimately, the landowner gives everyone enough.  He gives the wage he promised to the day-long workers – a wage that will fill them and their families for days.[iv]  But he also gives the same wage to the hour-long workers.  Sure, they did not deserve the wage, but the same wage that feeds the other workers feeds them too.  The landowner is gloriously generous and gives enough.[v]

I have been wondering all week where these texts leave us:  maybe a bit guilty, perhaps a bit convicted, and definitely “last” in the pecking order Jesus describes.  But what I realized this week is both in Exodus and in Jesus’ parable, perhaps being last is not all that bad.  You see, Jesus does not say, “The last shall be first, and the first shall be ejected.”  No, Jesus says, “the last will be first, and the first will be last.”  So even on our worst Israelite days, when we are moaning and complaining about the very God who miraculously saved us, or even on our worst vineyard days, when we are complaining about an unfair, albeit generous, owner, we are still not ejected.  We are not taken out of God’s generosity; we are not stripped of our blessing.  We may be last, but we still have enough.  Our abundantly generous God takes care of us when we deserve God’s care and when we do not.  Our abundantly generous God gives us enough when we think God’s generosity is fair and when we do not.  Our abundantly generous God loves us whether we embrace God’s generosity or we do not.

I cannot promise we will ever get in line with God’s generosity.  I am not sure we will ever be cured of our sense of fairness or even our ill-conceived notions that we could earn God’s generosity.  But what I can tell you is that we are not alone.  Our people thousands of years ago did not master God’s generosity.  The disciples two thousand years ago did not master Christ’s generosity.  And I suspect we will not either.  But every week, we try.  Every week we continue on our journey toward generosity – seeing God’s generosity in ourselves and others – being inspired to try again.  I am not sure we will ever be first in line.  But the good news is we get to stay in line – which means there is always room to try again.  Our generous God will make sure we have enough until then.  Amen.

[i] Barbara Brown Taylor, The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons on the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 100-102.

[ii] Deborah A. Block, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays, Year A  (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 2.

[iii] Taylor, 103.

[iv] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (New York:  Harper Collins, 2014), 224.

[v] Block, 4.

Sermon – Luke 13.1-9, L3, YC, February 28, 2016

02 Wednesday Mar 2016

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My dad, a retired Methodist Minister, and I have always disagreed about the use of the Revised Common Lectionary.  He always felt that the pastor’s duty was to listen to the movement of the Spirit and select scripture lessons that were relevant to what was happening in the life of the parish.  I argued that his method was rife with pitfalls.  The pastor could end up confusing personal preference with the movement of the Spirit, could push one’s own agenda too far, or could end up avoiding hard texts out of laziness or fear.  Instead, I argued, following the lectionary forces the preacher to be truly open to the Spirit – totally giving up control over what text is offered on any given day, trusting that the Lord will provide the message.

This week, I wished I had adopted my dad’s practice.  I looked at the gospel lesson and immediately, said, “Nope!  No way, now how.  There is no way I am going to preach that text to my people when we are in the midst of transition!”  My list of reasons for avoiding the text from Luke were long and, I believe, well-reasoned.  I did not want to preach about a tree not bearing fruit because in no way did I want to infer that I think St. Margaret’s is not bearing fruit, especially because my pending departure has created a sense of insecurity about the strength of St. Margaret’s.  The truth is, St. Margaret’s is bearing fruit.  There is the literal fruit that we are bearing in our Garden of Eatin’ which is feeding our hungry neighbors.  And then there is the figurative fruit:  the children we are raising up through reinvigorated Christian Education programs, the pastoral ministries we are offering to our cemetery families, and the love and care we offer to each other.

But I didn’t just want to avoid talking about barren trees.  I also had no desire to talk about manure today.  Quite frankly, I could just imagine how in the midst of transition a community could feel like they are getting a whole lot of manure dumped on them.  A gardener knows that to keep plants thriving we have to aerate the soil, pull out weeds, and double up with nutrient-rich manure.  But anyone who has driven by a recently tended garden knows that the stench of manure can make you want to quickly run in the other direction.  As we think about the burdens of a transition, the last thing I wanted to talk about today is the gardener’s suggestion of piling on hot, smelly manure.

Besides wanting to avoid talking about barren trees and smelly manure, I had zero desire to talk about trees getting chopped down.  For all of the conversations I have had with parishioners over the past few weeks, the most common one has been about fear for the future of St. Margaret’s.  Many of you are worried about our viability and fear what the instability of transition and new leadership will bring.  On one hand, your fears are not unwarranted.  We have watched neighboring churches decline to the point of closure.  We also know that we are in a time and culture when churches have to work a lot harder to grow and thrive.  But I do not think St. Margaret’s has to fear the ax in our passage today.  If we were having this conversation five or six years ago, I could see where the damage of past leadership could have been the end of St. Margaret’s.  But even that challenge did not pull St. Margaret’s under.  And we are in a much stronger place – we have changed so much for the better and grown into a tree producing fruit.  Are we in a transition?  Yes.  Is change coming?  Yes.  Is our tree going to be cut down?  I do not think so.

Unfortunately for me, we actually do follow the lectionary.  And since we do not get to pick and choose what scripture fits our needs at a particular time, we look for the ways that a text speaks to us despite our personal preferences.  The good news is that some of our initial reactions to this text are rooted in a misunderstanding of the allegory Jesus gives us.  Many of us assume that the landowner is God and the gardener is Jesus.  But nowhere in Luke’s gospel is God portrayed as an angry, vindictive God that needs to be placated or negotiated with by Jesus. Instead, God is the one who waits every day for the prodigal son to come home.  God is the woman who leaves no pillow unturned looking for her lost coin.  Luke’s depiction is of a God who rejoices over one who repents than over the remaining ninety-nine who need no repentance.

Instead, as one scholar suggests, “Given Luke’s consistent picture of God’s reaction to sin, then perhaps the landowner is representative of our own sense of how the world should work.  That is, from very early on, we want things to be “fair” and we define “fair” as receiving rewards for doing good and punishment for doing evil.  (Except of course, when it comes to our own mistakes and misdeeds – then we want mercy!)”[i]  But our God is a God of justice, not fairness.  When I struggle with these two words, I always remember a cartoon that has floated around.  The cartoon has three people trying to see over a fence.  One is short, one is medium-height, and one is tall.  All three are given two boxes to stand on.  Of course, the tall person can easily see over the fence.  The medium-height person can just barely see over, but the short person cannot see, even with the two boxes.  This frame is called fairness or equality.  But the next frame is called justice.  In this frame, the short-statured person gets three boxes, the medium-height person gets two boxes, and the tallest person gets just one box.  All three people can now see over the fence equally.

I tell you this story not because as short-statured person I totally get this cartoon!  I tell you this story because I do not think our God is an angry landowner demanding results and expecting everyone to figure things out themselves – to produce fruit without adequate help.  No, I think the gardener is actually God – our advocate looking for justice, not just fairness.    Perhaps God is the one raising a contrary voice to suggest that the ultimate answer to sin is not punishment – not even in the name of justice – but rather mercy, reconciliation, and new life.[ii]  So, in the threat of danger and even death, God is a god who intercedes, who demands mercy, and in fact, is willing to get down in the manure to make sure we thrive and bear that delicious, life-giving fruit.

Now, even the gardener is not naïve to think that our window for productivity is unlimited.  Even the gardener submits to the owner that if after a year, the tree does not produce, the owner may cut the tree down.  But I do not think God will let that happen.  God is “all in” with making sure we are redeemed – whether by getting dirty with us to help us grow, or by interceding again, even when the produce is just not there.  Not unlike Abraham who argued and argued with God to spare ten, twenty, even fifty people, our gardener is one of mercy, reconciliation, and redemption.

And that is why I love the lectionary.  Even when I fight, and kick, and say, “No way!” God finds a way to speak despite my reservations.  Where I had feared sending the wrong message about our walk with Christ, God comes through bringing good news of mercy, reconciliation, and redemption.  Bishop Curry says this about our text today, “The task of the disciple is to witness and then wait, to take our best step and leave the rest to God…We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.  Being freed from managing the results of our actions enables us to do something, and do it well.  We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.  We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.  We are prophets of a future not our own.”[iii]  I do not know about you, but I am over the moon that our God is one who is willing to fight to the last pile of manure to encourage and strengthen us.  If our God can do that, we are bound to rise again in hopeful new life.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

[i] David Lose, “Lent 3 C:  Suffering, the Cross, and the Promise of Love,” February 22, 2016, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2016/02/lent-3-c-suffering-the-cross-and-the-promise-of-love/ on February 25, 2016.

[ii] Lose.

[iii] Michael B. Curry, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 97.