"The 'Chance' Behind Every "Change'" Pentecost 25A

Saint Matthew 25:14–30

Change is hard, says the stunningly naive pastor to a congregation who calls a pastor about once every biblical generation or so.  

Change doesn’t come easy when you go 83 years between the installation of Dr. Kretzmann, through Pastor Abrahamson’s, not one but two interim pastors, to where we are on this glorious day.  Change is coming and while there is an air of excitement there is also more than a little anticipation around this place as to what exactly that change will mean, what it will be like, how it will affect us not only as individuals but as a community of faith that we dearly love.  

Change requires more that a little courage.  

You can read all the clergy profiles that come your way and practice the fine art   of discernment until you are blue in the face but it takes courage to turn away from the status quo and move into a new day.

I am reminded of what the late Dr. Lewis Smedes said in the book Genesis: A Living Conversation, about what Sarah’s father might have said when he heard that his son-in-law Abraham had received a call from the LORD to go to some unknown, far-flung land that would eventually be shown to him.  Dr. Smedes imagined Sarah’s dad saying to her, “‘I know you shouldn’t have married that nut.’”1

Psychologists tell us that our brains like being in control.  And no matter how exciting the new opportunity is “change still means moving from the known to the unknown, and [no matter how much discerning you have done] that creates uncertainty and fear. Sometimes that fear is unfounded [as all of us hope and pray it is] sometimes it is not.”2\

Jesus told a story once about the uncertainty and fear to his disciples would experience between his life, death, resurrection, and ascension and his promised return.  We are still living in that time.  Facing a changing world where sometimes things are hard.

Body

This story has lost some of its punch “because of a most unfortunate translation of the Greek talanta. 

A “talent” isn’t a special ability I have, my passion in life or this little light of mine, and it certainly isn’t a mere $100. Jesus wasn’t saying, “Use what is in you, invest what you have for the kingdom.” He was talking about a coin that was the largest denomination of currency in the first-world system. We should translate talanta as “a huge bucket full of solid gold” or “a bank CEO megabonus” or “winning the Ohio Lottery.” Only the muscular could even pick up a talanton, which might weigh 50 or 75 pounds. Each was worth around 6,000 denarii.

This amount would stagger any recipient and send him into utterly uncharted territory.3

 So, to the first slave the man gives control of about one hundred years of wages. The second slave gets the equivalent of forty years’ wages, and the last slave about a year’s worth. So, in the end this isn’t just like leaving the neighborhood kid in charge of the plants and cat food. These are vast sums of money, and with them comes vast responsibility and authority. Jesus says the man entrusts the slaves with it. One translation says he “handed over” his property to them, which means it is implied they are supposed to do something with it. In fact, it sounds like they are supposed to do with the man’s property whatever he would have done with it while he’s away.4

The first two slaves did very well.  They invested wisely and made their master a little dough. In fact, they doubled the guys money! And he rewards them by inviting them to become, in effect, partners.  And who wouldn’t want these two guys as partners?  They believed that, no matter what, there was a bull market out their somewhere and, if there was, they were going to find it.

The third guy has let his fear of losing win the day.  He digs a hole and buries the money.  His fear is based on a total misconception of his master. For whatever reason he thought his master was harsh, unscrupulous, although it’s hard to know why a man who left slaves in charge of so much could ever be thought of as harsh. The master is generous and giving, willing to take enormous risks. And so, if the slaves are to follow the master’s lead, they, too, should be willing to risk.5

 His fear has paralyzed him to the point that he couldn’t even bring himself to bring the money to the bank, buy a CD and at least earn a little interest.  He takes the safest route and comes up more than empty all because he fundamentally misjudged his master.

The master Jesus tells us about it just the opposite.  He invests in the lives of his servants so that they can enter into his joy.  The only thing that held one back is fear of failure, the fear of losing what he had been given and labelled a loser.

Sudden, unexpected, and wonderful change came into his life, and he became so afraid of those changes that he took what he had been given and buried it in the backyard.

Everybody who thinks Jesus is talking about money here will get bogged down at the master’s harsh response.  If this is just about a guy who has been given and huge sum of money and didn’t know what to do with it we will have missed the point.  The punch line of the parable may become only “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer but, in the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got fun.”

Jesus’ huge use of hyperbole has led me to believe that the talenta we have been given is not individual talents and it is certainly not about money it is about something far greater.  This whole business, in fact the whole business of our faith, is about Jesus and his message.  This is about the Gospel.  

That is the biggest and best gift we have been given and it takes more than the 75 of the strongest people at the health club to move it around. It takes all of us!

That is a huge responsibility that can be frightening but is also something that just can’t be left to the professionals, the masters with Masters of Divinity.  It takes all of us.

Now that can be hard.  

What once was accepted, what once was the norm, may now leave your neighbours wondering why your getting a little more dressed up than usual on a Sunday morning to go off to a place called church.  Chances are very low that they will challenge your choice but chances are very high that they will ignore it.  Its just not the thing to do anymore.  But those of us who do it know where the treasure is.

Friends and neighbours might wonder why to people  need twenty-four cans of soup, sixteen loves of bread, and more sandwich fixings than you could possibly eat as they watch you load up your car at Costco.  They may raise their eyebrows even further when they find out its not for you but for the hungry and the homeless and that buying all that stuff and giving it away allows you to enter into the joy of serving Jesus.

People may wonder why the church you go to has bourn the extra burden of having a school for 140 years.  “There are schools all over the place.  Schools you pay for with your tax dollars!  Why burden yourself with another one?” they might say.  And the answer is that at this school, our school, there is an opportunity for the children to meet the treasure that is Jesus.

I could go on and on because there are countless ways that we can put the treasure of the Gospel we have been given to good use and discover that it is what sustains us through all the changes of life.

Before we discern whether the change we are about to make is pleasing to him it might be good, very good, for us to come forward and be gifted by the treasure that is Jesus again that we might rise and then live into the changes of life facing them as Jesus did, bravely, and with confidence that amid all the changing years of life, Jesus, our priceless treasure, will be with us.

Come forth and forward. Led by Jesus let us live everyday as servants “that say loud and clear, with each breath that what is given by [Jesus] is greater and more generous than we could ever imagine…that say with each day that what is given by [Christ] can never be truly lost, but only goes on to more extraordinary adventures.”

Through all the changes of life, some fearful, some glorious, the promise is that Jesus is with us and for that we say, thanks be to God.

________________

1. Bill D. Moyers, “‘Call and Promise,’” in Genesis: A Living Conversation (New York, NY: Broadway Books, 2002). p. 163

2.     Unattributed, “Emotions in Change: Leadership Success,” Emotions in change | Leadership Success, May 29, 2022, https://www.leadershipsuccess.co/change-management/emotions-in-change.

3. James C Howell, “What Are ‘Talents’? (Matthew 25:14-30),” The Christian Century, November 1, 2005, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2005-11/trojan-horse?code=cJ9T6A8ThE5EFLZwDLoe&utm_source=Christian%2BCentury%2BNewsletter&utm_campaign=444370135b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_SCP_2023-11-13&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-31c915c0b7-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

4. Philip Martin, “‘Parable of the Talents,’” A Sermon for Every Sunday, November 15, 2020, https://www.asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Phillip-Martin-Parable-of-the-Talents-1.pdf.

5. Ibid

 

"Wedding Banquet Memories" - Pentecost 24A

 

Saint Matthew 25:1-13

Whenever Jesus talked about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like he did so in parables for a very good reason.  The Kingdom of Heaven is a big, broad, amorphous topic that defies description except in vivid little stories that get and keep our attention.  Jesus was a master at getting and keeping our attention.  He’s done that for over two centuries so when he talks about the Kingdom of Heaven we are bound to pay attention.

Sometimes he describes it as a treasure.  It is a pearl of such great price, he says, that there once was a fellow who found one in a field and sold everything he had to buy that field.   Thus, the Kingdom of Heaven is such a treasure that one would give everything you had to posses it.

Or, it can be something that you already have which has great power.  It is like yeast for bread dough, absolutely essential.  It is like a little mustard seed that when planted grows into a scrub that gives us something that some of us can’t live without.  Think yellow mustard on your hot dog or Dijon mustard for your brat.

He told us once about a crazy farmer that we talked about a few weeks ago who, instead of carefully placing seed in the ground in a nice orderly fashion just flings the seeds about in such a haphazard way that cause any farmer of his time or ours to yell: “Hey dude! Your wasting seeds.”  

That last parable left the disciples so wide eyed that Jesus had to explain it to them. Almost as wide eyed as the Saint Luke Academy children were last Wednesday when in acting out this parable for them I wildly threw seed all over the sanctuary.  After that is was I who had to do the explaining to our custodians why, after children’s church, there were seeds all over the place.

Some parables need a little explanation while others need a lot and todays, for me at least falls into the category of one, in which, in the words of that great theologian Ricky Ricardo, there is “some ‘splainin’ to do!”

Today Jesus offers up another parable that might leave us scratching our heads and very puzzled.  Today Jesus is telling us the reign and rule of God is like a wedding celebration.  Essentially, a wedding banquet.  “A wedding banquet”   Jesus, you can’t mean a wedding banquet!

Jesus, you can’t mean one of those events where we have to get all dressed up on a Saturday afternoon and, even though the bride and groom may be relatives or friends that we love more than anything else in the whole world, still require us to engage in inane conversations with people we do not know on a topic that hold absolutely no interest to us. 

Jesus, you can’t mean those events where some distant relative gets so “three sheets to the wind in gale” that he is either falling over complete strangers telling them how much he loves them or punching them in the eye because he disagrees with them politically.

Jesus, you can’t be talking about those events that often involve rubber chicken and peas, cheap booze, and bad cake.

Don’t look at me like that!  

I know you have been to events exactly like the one I’ve just described.  I can tell by the look on your faces that you have and furthermore I can tell that they are the farthest thing from any kingdom of God event that you can think of. In fact, you may liken them more to the “kingdom of some other place.”

To make matters more difficult Jesus seems to be describing an after-wedding celebration that is far worse than anything we have ever experienced.

Weddings in Jesus day were grand celebrations that involved the couples’ entire community and went on for days. There was feasting, dancing, and revelry beyond measure.  Being asked to participate in the event was a high honour.

An important part of the wedding ceremony was the procession of the bride and groom with their pathway lighted by maids-of-honour holding lamps to illumine their path at night.  Being asked to be a light-bearer was a high honour and it was expected that you do the job well.

Something happens and the groom is delayed. 

I am sure all you have sat in churches, cooling your heals waiting for a member of the wedding party to show up.  Any pastor can regale his or her congregation with one horror story after another about such untoward events. 

In one I was called to officiate the couple forgot the rings at the hotel and insisted that they could not exchange vows with borrowed rings.  It seemed like forever until they returned.  The poor organist played every piece of music he knew and some he didn’t.  It was about thirty minutes of uncomfortable waiting.

Some of the bridal party, in Jesus’ story, made themselves comfortable – too comfortable.  The day was moving into night and eyelids weighed down by rich food and probably an open bar were growing heavy. 

Half the bridal party fell asleep.   In the honour/shame society of the time it would have been seen as the greatest of insults which is why the groom reacts so unkindly to the women when they finally showed up.

He was angry because the bridesmaids had neglected their duty.  They had only one responsibility – to light the way – and they failed.  

By the way, this is a classic case of misplaced aggression on the part of the groom.  He was the one who was late!  It was his fault the wedding got delayed.  But in the male dominated society of his day boys who said in the words of song sung by NPR’s Ari Shapiro  “Now I’m Back” “they just went out for a snack...I was feeling famished... then I vanished, but now I’m back.”   The bridegroom is back and he just can’t understand why the party isn’t immediately starting up on his return and the crowd probably agreed with him.

While we are taken aback by the severity of the groom’s reaction of slamming the door in the latecomers face every one of Jesus’ original listeners would have been nodding their heads and saying, “Serves them right.”

Neither should they have expected any help from those who had prepared.  Some bridesmaids may have known the groom and known he was prone to wander whenever he felt like it so were ready for any eventuality. They had brought along enough oil to accommodate the delay but even they may have been running short.

One group asks the other for help and their request is met with derision.   “They answered, ‘There might not be enough to go around; go buy your own.’”

Remember this was a first century village.  There were no late night convenience stores open.  These woman were in real trouble.  They were in trouble with their families for whom their irresponsible actions brought shame.  They were in trouble with their community whose celebration they ruined. And, they certainly were in trouble with the groom who unceremoniously slammed the door in their face.

This wedding has turned into a first class nightmare and this parable has turned into a puzzle of major proportions.  

The message of Jesus’ seems only to be a harsh one.  Be ready! Be prepared or else!  And if you are like me you might be thinking: There had to have been other options.

One of those other options, which I had never thought of before was put forth by Aimee Moiso, a Ph.D candidate at Vanderbilt.  She was really thinking out of the box when she suggested.  “Light cast by a flame is not a zero-sum resource; if the oil could not be shared, surely the light of the lamps could have been.”

She suggests that instead of shrieking at each other.  Instead of worrying about how much oil they have they share each other’s lamps.  They walk together, side by side, hand each hand, each one holding on to each other’s torch carrying the light for and with each other. 

What a wonderful idea!  What a beautiful scene!  The bridesmaids walking next to each other, each helping the other out, caring for each other, still lighting the way.

I honestly can’t think of a better way to apply this parable to our lives in-so-far as what Jesus is asking us to do to advance his message to the world.

Standing around keeping awake and watching for the hour that no one knows seems to be about as pleasant as a wedding reception with very few people I know on a beautiful fall afternoon.

But looking for Jesus in every moment, in every face, always watching for him, keeping awake for revelations of his presence in our lives that makes more sense to me. 

Those around us don’t need boozy banquets they need our love, they need us to bear the light of Christ for them and with them.  And, if they are standing in the dark with their oil running low in their physical, or emotional, or spiritual lamps they need us to hold them and love them until they can once again see the light.

When we become light-bearers and light sharers we will be the kind of people of which the kingdom of heaven is made.

"Blessed Balcony Saints" - Pentecost 23A

 

Saint Matthew 5:1-12

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was an American writer and humorist known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels such as Slaughter-House Five and Breakfast of Champions.

It turns out that he was not only a fine satirist, a keen observer of life in general, but a pretty good theologian.  He wrote once:  If you want to discover the meaning and potential of human life, you might start with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes. “That one about the meek inheriting the earth,” Vonnegut said, “is the best idea anyone ever had.” He went on to observe:

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandmentssbe posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.1

Fourth Church’s Dr. John Buchanan, had an answer to that.

The reason is that while they are poetically beautiful, they are radically subversive. They challenge, head on, the values and ethical structures of the world in which we live. You don’t get ahead in this world by being poor in spirit or poor in anything. In fact the defining value of a consumer culture is to not be poor but to earn, buy, accumulate, consume. The meek don’t get anywhere in this world; the aggressive do. Can you imagine a job interview that begins with the applicant saying, “Actually, I’m rather meek”? And peacemakers are not blessed; they are ignored, if they’re not being roughed up by bullies in the employment of the powerful.2

 So we have to remember who Jesus was speaking to. He was not just speaking to the crowds gathered there long ago on the green, green grass, Jesus is talking to us.  He is talking about us as we tried to be merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers.  He is talking about us when, while we may not have been meek exactly, we have tried to be less proud.  He’s talking about us when we have not measured up or have downright failed at being at all these things and proclaiming us blessed, anyway.  

It’s important to understand “this text is not prescriptive, it’s not a list of commands, like ‘Go be meek!’ or ‘Go make peace!’ Jesus simply blesses people.”3

Because it is All Saints Sunday we are drawn to two of the blessings we most need this day: “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and “Blessed are those who mourn.” All the names we will read, all the candles we have lit, all the pictures on display remind us that when someone is lost to us there is, as the title of a book by one of our own Dr. Martin Marty, names A Cry of Absence.

As Dr. Scott Black Johnson observed a couple of weeks ago in a sermon from his pulpit perch at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York.

Occasionally I hear critics of religion argue that the Christian faith is too happy, clappy, too dog-gone naive to be embraced by anyone who is actually paying attention in this hard, hard world.  Occasionally, if I am on my game I allow that this is true and some of the faithful do gravitate toward fluffy-headed optimism.  But then I point out that rose-coloured glasses are hard to come by when you actually pay attention to the tradition. Almost without exception the Good Book recounts the experiences of individuals and communities whose faith was shaped by turmoil.4

 Listen again to the characteristics that Jesus names.  He’s talking about people who are “at the end of their rope” in their longing to be “just and good.”  He’s talking about  those who feel that they have lost something that is most dear to them.  He’s talking about us at our darkest hours in our darkest days.

The blessedness in the list Jesus gives isn’t something we can conjure up on our own. 

This isn’t, as Robert H. Schuller of all-glass church and possibility thinking fame titled one of his books, The Be-Happy Attitudes.  Get the play on words there?  Beatitudes.  Be-Happy Attitudes. 

This is about Christ inviting us to gather around him this day, to allow him to hold us close, and hear him call us blessed. We can say this because Christ is near us, in everything. 

It is one of the fundamental assertions of our faith that we are not alone, we are surrounded by the presence of the resurrected Christ, who is his life experienced everything we will or ever have experienced.  

He knew what it was like to have to flee from the country of his birth be a refugee in Egypt until the coast was clear.  

He knew what it was like to live in a family of mixed emotions.  Remember how once at a wedding his mother thought he should show off a little of his God-stuff and make more wine for a party that was running low.  Jesus as sommelier!  

Remember too that he also had a family who saw the dangers his preaching and proclamation presented and came to take him home.  There was always that temptation to give up the radical rabbi business, pick up his hammer and saw, and become a carpenter again.

He knew what it was like to make friends and loose them and, in the case of his beloved buddy Lazaris, to have his spirit groan in despair, until he stared death in the face and brought his friend, still wrapped in his graveclothes, forth from the grave.

He knew it all!  He is with us!  We are not alone.

Furthermore, we are surrounded by all those who have loved us, some of whom are alive and with us, and whose loving presence in our lives is more precious and important than we can say. And we are surrounded by the loving presence of all those who have gone before us, ones we loved and lost, ones who loved us and imprinted us forever with their love.

We are surrounded by all those we loved . . . the great cloud of witnesses. I love that image. This church, surrounded by a cloud of witnesses: those who sat in these pews, and preached from this pulpit, and played the organ, and sang in the choir, and taught the children, and visited the sick, and wrestled with the finances. A cloud of witnesses surrounding us, encouraging, cheering us on to be faithful in our day.

And each one of us is surrounded too by our own cloud of witnesses: our parents, our grandparents, our aunts and uncles, our teachers, mentors, friends near and far who inspired us and loved us enough to expect much of us and prodded us to be all we could be.5

 The late Carlyle Marney, a southern Baptist preacher, called them “balcony ... people who have exerted good and positive and gracious influences in your life. He encouraged his congregation. ‘Walk outside and look up and see who’s up there on your balcony looking down at you,’ he suggested. ‘Wave to them. They are your saints.’”6

The saints closest to us, who blessed us by showing us the love of Jesus who called us blessed, “are the regular ones, the broken and beautiful ones, who walked as faithfully as they could.  Those are the ones Jesus calls us to pay attention to as living, breathing examples of faithful living.”7

Fred Rogers, of television neighbourhood fame, a humble Presbyterian pastor from Pennsylvania, was awarded numerous honorary doctorates and often was also invited on such occasions to be the commencement speaker.  On the fiftieth anniversary of his television program he was invited back to his alma mater, Dartmouth to give the address. At this and on other occasions he concluded by saying he wanted to give the graduates an invisible gift.  Rogers said in his soft, soft, voice.

A gift of a silent minute to think about those who have helped you become who you are today. Some of them may be here right now. Some may be far away. Some ... may even be in Heaven. But wherever they are, if they’ve loved you, and encouraged you, and wanted what was best in life for you, they’re right inside yourself. And I feel that you deserve quiet time, on this special occasion, to devote some thought to them. So, let’s just take a minute, in honor of those that have cared about us all along the way. One silent minute.8

Now you have a minute, one silent minute, to remember and perhaps even wave to your balcony saints who blessed you in this life.  Remember them in now in this one silent minute.

______________

1.    Kurt Vonnegut, “Cold Turkey,” In These Times, May 10, 2004, https://inthesetimes.com/article/cold-turkey.

2. John M. Buchanan, “Blessed Are You.”  Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. 6 February 2011

3. James  C Howell, “What Can We Say November 1? All Saints Day,” James Howell’s Weekly Preaching Notions, January 1, 2023, https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/2019/01/what-can-we-say-november-1-all-saints.html.

4. Scott Black Johnson, “Unbearable.” Sermon preached at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church of New York. 22 October 2023.

5. John M. Buchanan, “Surrounded.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. 6 November 2005.

6. John M. Buchanan, “Lofty People: A Crowded Balcony of Saints,” The Christian Century, November 15, 2003, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2003-11/lofty-people.

7. Shannon Kershner, “Dislocation and Saints.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. 2 November 2014.

8. Fred Rogers, “2002 Commencement Address,” Dartmouth, March 27, 2018, https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2018/03/revisiting-fred-rogers-2002-commencement-address.

"Creating Value" - Pentecost 22A

 

Jeremiah 31:31–34 and Saint Matthew 22:34–46

“Creating Value”

This afternoon we are going to have an ordination in this place.  In fact, we're going to have four ordinations.  This is something we Lutherans consider to be of enormous importance.  

These candidates have spent three academic years in seminary.  The same amount of time, it should be noted that it takes to earn a law degree, with far less financial remuneration at the conclusion.  They have spent a year being supervised by another pastor and learning about congregational life on their internship.  They have jumped through academic hoops but, perhaps most importantly of all they have been interviewed and reviewed numerous times by what we call “candidacy committees” that ask them important questions about what they believe with their entire careers and futures hanging in the balance.

Lutherans along with our Roman Catholic and our Reformed Church brothers and sisters take ordained ministry very seriously if not scrupulously.

You can’t, as so many people – some well-meaning and some charlatans – go online and get ordained for a fee or even for free.  Friends of mine have done this, with no malice intended, in order that they can preside over the weddings of their friends who were unchurched.  I usually smile when people tell me they have done this because these ceremonies almost never occur in a church but rather as destination weddings whose locations can range from mountaintops in faraway lands, to some beach in the Caribbean (where I would love to go) to some barroom (where I wouldn’t)!

The charlatans sometimes get ordained online and then throw in a couple of extra dollars for a piece of paper that grants them the title of Doctor – usually of something obscure like Doctor of Metaphysical Sciences. Soon after some of them try and pass themselves off as the good reverend doctor something-or-another.  It isn’t long before they are hanging out their shingles over the entryway of a store-front and starting their own church with little or no theological training where all manner of mischief and mayhem can occur.

Serious churches don’t do that.   We ask a lot of our candidates.  We put them through the same kind of “hazing rights” that any career requires.  Just like you can’t wake up one morning and announce to the world that you are a Medical Doctor, or Dentist, or lawyer, or Certified Public Accountant, you can’t in no-nonsense churches, announce to family, friends, and least of all, your bishop that suddenly, without anyone’s consent, you are a pastor.

There are questions to be asked.  Important questions.  As important as the one asked of Jesus in today’s gospel.

Matthew is portraying Jesus “as participating in activity that was common for rabbis. Considering that the Torah contained 613 commandments ... the question ... is not so much about ranking, but a way for teachers to communicate what they believe to be the central calling of the law.”1

In his commentary Dr. Theodore J. Wardlaw imagines “that the man standing there in the face of Jesus was a lot like him. He knew that there were 613 laws in the tradition, and he was sure that Jesus would be tongue-tied by discerning, on the spot, which of those laws was the greatest.”2

Jesus isn’t.  Instead, he gets right to the heart of the matter.

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”3

Jesus is simply quoting “Deuteronomy 6 which is the basis for theShema, a prayer recited daily by observant Jews.  “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”4

So important was this commandment that the writer of Deuteronomy continues:

Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.5

 If you ever visited an Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood you might see  men wearing two boxes known as phylacteries (the Greek word) or in the Hebrew a Tefillin.   One is strapped to the head to represent thought and the other is strapped to the arm at the same level of the heart.  “The head-tefillin imbues ... the idea of subjugating [the] intellect for the love of God.  The arm-tefillin, focuses on devoting the person’s strength to the Almighty."6  I admire not only what Tefillins stand for but the courage of those who wear them especially in recent days when they might make themselves targets for hatemongers.

What they represent is just like Jesus said, we are to love God above all things. 

Then Jesus remembered something else in the law of equal importance. He remembered a verse from Leviticus, Leviticus 19 to be exact. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”7

Jesus concludes, “All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.” That seems reasonable to us. Why wouldn’t the Law, the Torah, God’s commandments for God’s chosen people, and the Prophets, God’s words to Israel through God’s human messengers, depend on loving God and loving neighbor as self? Really, when we think about it, loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves doesn’t sound like particularly revolutionary moral guidance either. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do anyway? Isn’t that what nice people regardless of denomination, creed, religion, sexual orientation, nation of origin, or political party are trying to do? To be loving of God, neighbor, self?8

 No.  We know that is isn’t.  We wish that is was but it isn’t.  There is a lot of meanness in the world and a lot of divisiveness.  

In the lands where Jesus walked nobody seems to be loving of anybody else but only seem to be hell-bent on committing acts of terror that inevitably lead to acts of revenge which leave innocents on both sides dead, or dying, or cowering in fear.

People with access to the kind of guns nobody should have shoot up schools, churches, synagogues, schools, movie theatres and now, even a bowling alley in acts of pure hate leaving us to think that love may be a commodity that is in short supply.

People bludgeon each other with selective versus from the Bible leading an awful lot of people to conclude that if this is what it means to be a part of the faith, they want none of it.

Times like these remind us of what is important.  And what is important is the love we have seen in Jesus Christ and then been called upon to share with others.

As the late Dr. William Sloan Coffin, of the Riverside Church in New York once said: “Of God’s love we can say two things: it is poured out universally on everyone from the Pope to the loneliest [person] on the planet, and secondly, God’s love does not seek value, it creates value.”9

Since probably  its very earliest days people have debated what is the greatest gift the Reformation has given us.  

Like the question to Jesus there are more than 613 answers but my favourite, especially on this day is as obvious as the one that Jesus presented.  It is that we are saved by grace alone. Sola gratia.  

As my former Pastor Shannon Kershner pointed on once in a sermon that “the truest thing about who you are is that you are so loved and so chosen by God. God is absolutely smitten with you, but not just you. God is absolutely smitten with all those who have been created in the very image of the divine—with all people. Sola gratia. By grace alone."10

And my second favourite is “like unto it.”  

It is the concept of “The Priesthood of All Believers.”  It is that radical notion that is not just the four people who will be ordained this afternoon who are entrusted to proclaim the message of the gospel.  It is the radical notion that is not just a stole around the shoulders, an ordination certificate, and an advanced degree diploma on that wall that calls one to proclaim the message of the gospel. It is the radical notion that is is not just my job or the job of our new pastor, Pastor Niketh’s to proclaim the messages of the gospel.  It is your job to do that, too.  

Maybe we can take a hint from the words of the writer of Deuteronomy and tell others about Christ’s love beginning with our children and then “talk about [Christ’s] love when you are at home or out for a walk; at bedtime and the first thing in the morning.”11

It is the call upon on all baptized believers to show forth Christ’s radical inclusion, radical love, radical grace to all people. 

When we do this, all of us together, we will be living into our real Reformation heritage.  We will all be a part of the priesthood of all believers helping all of Christ’s children see the value Christ has created and is creating in them. 

It is all of our jobs to do that and when we do the spirit of the reformation will indeed live forever.  

________________

1. Michael E Lee, “Matthew 22:34-46. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture,” Connections. A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, 3 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): 420–22.

2. TheodoreJ. Wardlaw, “Matthew 22:34-46. Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World,” Connections. A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, 3 (Louisville, KY:Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): 422–23.

3. St. Matthew 22:27-40. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

4. Deuteronomy 6:4-5. (NRSVUE) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

5. Deuteronomy 6:6–9. (MESSAGE)  [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament Palms and Proverbs [Colorado Springs,, CO: NavPress, 1998]]

6. Shraga Simmons, “Tefillin: A Primer,” aishcom, accessed October 24, 2020, https://www.aish.com/jl/m/pb/48969816.html

7. Leviticus 19:18. (NRSVUE)

8. William H. Willimon, “Christ Shaped Love,” Pulpit Resource 48, no. 4 (2020): pp. 12-14.

9. William Sloane Coffin, Credo (Louisville, , KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 6.

10. Shannon J. Kershner, “Sola Gracia. Only Grace.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, October 15, 2017.

11. Deuteronomy 6:7. (TLB) [ [TLB=The Living Bible.  Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, Publishers, 1971]

"Whose Is This?" - Pentecost 21A

 Saint Matthew 22:15–22

“Whose Is This?”

At this moment in history, it might be well for us to revisit the 1960 film by Otto Preminger which told the tumultuous story of the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 called “Exodus.”  

If you don’t have the three-and-a-half-hours it would take to watch the entire movie pay particular attention to the words of its theme song written by Ernest Gold:

This land is mine god gave this land to me / This brave this golden land to me /And when the morning sun reveals her hills and plain / I see a land where children can run free / So, take my hand and walk this land with me / And walk this lovely (golden) land with me...

It all sounds so beautiful, placid, almost idyllic, until it’s closing lines when the lyrics take an ominous, almost prophetic tone: With (by) god’s own hand I know I can be strong If I must fight / I'll fight to make this land our own /Until I die this land is mine.

This land is mine!  What we have witnessed these past couple of weeks is two peoples singing the same song: “This land is mine, god gave this land to me.”  That is a recipe for more than disaster, it is a recipe for war.  It is a recipe for terrorism and retaliation that saddens our hearts and confuses our minds.  

Pick a side?  It’s hard to amid the bloodshed, and carnage, and inhumanity.

If we had the power, we would be like the furious but fair parent who breaks up a schoolyard battle that is leaving both combatants bruised and bloodied by grabbing them by the scruff of their necks and scolding: “Stop it! Stop it right now!”

It is an indisputable fact that humans have this propensity to squabble, to pick fights, to quarrel, and when the minor becomes the major, to start wars.  Most of those wars, whether they between neighbours arguing over property lines, or nations battling over boarders, are based on the mistaken notion that “this land is mine.”

Few people believed this more than the guy whose image was on the coin at the centre of this morning’s dangerous dust-up between Jesus and two groups of guys who couldn’t agree on anything except that Jesus was a threat to what they believed to be theirs.  

The other threat to their existence was Caesar who not only firmly believed that the land was his but had the power to make it so.

Caesar made sure everybody knew this every time they reached into their pocket for a coin. “In Jesus’ time, the most common denarius was stamped with the image of the emperor Tiberius, and its inscription read, “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus, high priest.”1 No god gave the land to him he ruled it by his own divine right.  In fact, he kind of thought of himself as a god.

To make matters worse the people often had to reach into their pockets to pay taxes to the occupiers of the land they believed to be theirs and who worshipped false gods. “Thus paying taxes with Roman coins raised both political and religious issues.”2

And this brought together two very diverse political groups – the Pharisees who saw Rome as an occupying force in their God-given land and the Herodians, whose name implies, were just a political shills for a government that was a puppet of the Roman Empire.  They both saw Jesus as a threat, one as a threat to their religious way of life and the other as a threat to their political stability.  Who knows?  If this Jesus guy kept up his message and movement maybe this land wouldn’t be theirs anymore.

So, they ask him this politically and religious charged question under the guise of “We were just wondering.”  No harm, good sir, we are only asking questions.”  And the loaded question they ask is: “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”3

“The trap set by the Pharisees and Herodians is twofold: they not only hope to get him in trouble with the Roman authorities, but also get him in trouble with the popular people.” Nobody I know loves paying taxes and what is true in our day was certainly true in Jesus’ day. “They were not as concerned about his potential violation of the religious codes as his going against the popular sentiment."4

Jesus is on to their malicious schemes right away and asks: “‘Why ae you playing these games with me? Why are you trying to trap me? Do you have a coin? Let me see it.’ They handed him a silver piece.”5

In his commentary on the text Dr. Thomas G. Long points out something many miss. 

When [Jesus] asks them for the tax coin, they unsuspectingly reach into their purses and withdraw the evidence that exposes them -- not him -- as deceptive and hypocritical compromisers. They are the ones carrying around Caesar's money, not Jesus; they are the ones who have the emperor's image in their pocketbooks; they are the ones who have already bought into the pagan system.6

 So, here is what I like to think happened.  I’d like to think that Jesus took a long look at the coin, turned it over a few times just to be sure, and then tossed it back at them with a question of his own.

“Whose picture is stamped on it?” he asked them. “And whose name is this beneath the picture?”  “Caesar’s,” they replied.“Well, then,” he said, “give it to Caesar if it is his, and give God everything that belongs to God.”7

Jesus knew more about the kingdoms of this world that these “tossers” ever would.

Remember the the time “the old satanic foe” led Jesus up to a high mountain “and spread out all the kingdoms of the earth on display at once. “Then the Devil said, ‘They’re yours in all their splendor to serve your pleasure. I’m in charge of them all and can turn them over to whomever I wish. Worship me and they’re yours, the whole works.’”8

You can almost hear the tempter singing a Siren’s song: “This land can be yours. I’ll give this land to you.  This brave and golden land to you.”  

Jesus response to the diabolical one is simple: You can’t give me anything because all these lands belong to God.   

The same is true with the coin and if we don’t get this it will only become just another in a long line of confrontation stories between Jesus and his adversaries.

Jesus response is so simple that we can miss it.  Don’t you see it? “Give God everything that belongs to God.”  

Do you see it now?  Everything belongs to God! That coin! Those two diverse political parties! Rome! Even the emperor! They all belong to God.  That is the profound testimony that is at the heart of our faith: we belong to God.

We belong not to the charms of our secular world; we belong to God.

The reality is that everything belongs to God. Of each person who has ever walked on this earth, male and female God has said, “This one. This one. This one is mine.”  Of every plant and animal of every species and subspecies God has said, “This is mine, too.”  Everything belongs to God.

Your lunch break at work. Your shopping this afternoon. Your conversation with a neighbor. The stuff in your closet. Your anxieties in the night. 

Your portfolio, or your debt, or your fantasies. Your time, your energy, your brokenness. It’s all God’s.9

To those who are blowing each other up in the vain notion that the land belongs to them. Nope.  It belongs to God.

To those who made their way across our nation and displaced native tribes and First Nations’ people in the name of manifest destiny thinking that the land belonged to them. Nope.  It belonged to God.

To those who invade other countries thinking that the land belonged to them because once upon a time in a land far away it was a part of the empire that they wished now to restore so they were going to take it back at all costs?  They thought that land belonged to them. Nope.  That land belongs to God.

It’s all God’s. We all belong to God, to Christ.

That, I believe, is what Jesus envisions as I see him flipping that coin back into the hands of the Pharisees. He isn’t all that impressed with the power of cash or currency, or who is laying claim to what but rather the beauty of our understanding that this land, this life, our loves and dreams belong to him.

While we may want to be content to go around singing about how “this land is mine, god gave this land to me” and killing each other for a broken-down piece of it, Jesus wants us to see each other and the world we have be have given differently.  

See it the way Christ sees it. See it where it really is a place “where when the morning sun reveals her hills and plain [it can be] a land where all of God’s children can run free.” 

Really free, because we have heard Jesus say: “These. These beauties, all of them, every single one, are mine.”

________________

1.  Michael E Lee, “Matthew 22:15-22. Connecting the Reading With Scripture,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Leading Worship, Year A, 3 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): 403–5.

2. Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 22:15-22 Proper 24 A - Year a,” Exegetical Notes, accessed October 20, 2023, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt22x15.htm.

3. St. Matthew 22:17. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

4. Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 556.

5. St. Matthew 22:18-19 (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament Palms and Proverbs [Colorado Springs,, CO: NavPress, 1998]]

6. Thomas G. Long,  Matthew (Louisville , KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 251.

7. St. Matthew 22:20-21. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible.  (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, Publishers, 1971)]

8. St. Luke 4:5-7. (MESSAGE)

9. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say October 18? 20th after Pentecost,” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions (Myers Park United Methodist Church, January 1, 1970), http://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/

"Unsnatchable" - Pentecost 18A

 Celebration in Honour of the Dedication of The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke

1 Kings 8:22–30

Saint John 10:22–30

One of my favourite books is Ken Follett’s classic Pillars of the Earth.  

It is an historical novel based around the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Knightsbridge, England.  It should be noted that it has been banned in several more conservative communities which usually means it is a book well worth reading.

One of the main characters is a builder named Tom who because of his job is known as Tom the Builder.  He is a journeyman stone mason at best who has a hard time keeping his family fed, much less alive, in the murder and mayhem of 12th century England.  He is a highly skilled labourer but he soon finds out that when it comes to building a cathedral his skills are somewhat wanting.

Follett writes of him:

At first he had treated it like any other job. He had been resentful when the master builder warned him that his work was not quite up to standard. But then he realized that the walls of a cathedral had to be not just good, but perfect. This was because the cathedral was for God... The combination of a hugely ambitious building with merciless attention to the smallest detail opened Tom’s eyes.1

Cathedrals, churches, places of worship whether simple or grand and glorious open our eyes to something bigger, greater, than ourselves.  They serve to give us a sense of transcendence. Their goal is to lift us out of the ordinary into the extraordinary story of Jesus Christ.

My guess is that from the beginning of time people have looked for places where the holy could be found.

The Celts, long before they were Christian, called them “thin places” where heaven comes close to earth.

Humans, being human, like to know where those places are so we build buildings and say, “Here a thin place can be found. Looking for a thin place?  It’s right over here!”  

For some that works and for others it doesn’t. One person’s thin place can be a formidable and imposing structure to another.  Still we try our best, come as close to perfect as we can, to have places where our eyes can be opened to the presence of the Holy One.

We ‘ve been trying to build perfect places for the Holy since almost forever and in scripture since King David, one day, got the bright idea to bring the Ark of the Covenant indoors.

One morning he wakes up and says to his friend Nathan, ““Look! Here I am living in this beautiful cedar palace while the Ark of God is out in a tent!”2

Surprisingly the LORD doesn’t jump at the idea.  Apparently, there is no interest in camping, not even glamping.  Nathan is asked in a dream:

You’re going to build a ‘house’ for me to live in? Why, I haven’t lived in a ‘house’ from the time I brought the children of Israel up from Egypt till now. All that time I’ve moved about with nothing but a tent. And in all my travels with Israel, did I ever say to any of the leaders I commanded to shepherd Israel, ‘Why haven’t you built me a house of cedar?3

 Still because we are human King Solomon, David’s Son, and a master of public works projects, still builds the temple.  

Today’s first reading comes after the dedication when the Ark of the Covenant [think of the famous Raiders of the Lost Ark movie] is placed in the Holy of Holies and once and for all it is settled –  if you want to find God, this is the place.  The perfect place and perhaps the only place. No need to look for a thin place, this is the place.

That is where we get into trouble.  When we think that our place, our way, is the only way, people get excluded.  People get left out.  Good people are shunted aside because they are different.  

In the final parish directory of my home church before it closed someone really wrote these words:

[When the] congregation entered into its fourth quarter-century ...ominous changes were underway. The very nature and character, or more inclusively, the demographics, of ... the constituent neghborhood continued to slowly evolve. 

In other words: The neighbourhood changed.  But the author went on completely unaware of how their words sounded.

In the parlance of the new demographics, many of the younger residents who would be classified as the “upwardly mobile,” left traditional neighborhoods for a new lifestyle offered by areas adjacent to downtown, or, more likely, in the suburbs. Older residents pondered retirement homes as an alternative to the increasing maintenance of their aging houses.

 Then here came the key sentence for any who drove past and wondered, “Didn’t there used to be a Lutheran congregation in this building?” 

 “Their houses and apartments ... were ... filled by people with different ethnic and religious backgrounds, many directly from foreign countries.”4

I’ll give you a moment to ponder that last sentence.  Different ethnic backgrounds?  Many “directly from foreign countries?”  In other words, people who were not like us and with whom not only did we not to associate with we didn’t even want to reach out to!

I honestly have a hard time not only believing that somebody actually wrote those words but may have even showed it to another member and asked: “How’s that sound to you?” And that person replied, “Sounds fine to me.” 

No, it doesn’t!  It doesn’t sound fine at all.  It sounds like we have our little community, and we don’t want anybody with different backgrounds, or different ways, or different ideas, to come in and upset our tried-and-true ways of doing things.

It sounds like, we have enough of “them” and “their kind” why would be actively reach out and try to get more.  

It sounds like we have built the perfect place, and we don’t want anybody to come in and mess it up.

I still live one-half-block from that church which is now an Hispanic Charismatic congregation who every year throws the best block party for the entire neighbourhood – everybody, churched or unchurched, even those of us who don’t particularly like block parties –  with a far more interesting variety of foods than were offered at the white-on-white, mushroom soup based, cover dish suppers offered at that now closed congregation’s usual “pot-luck” suppers.

The reason I called an audible and read more of the appointed Gospel than was advertized is that amid all the great and grand theological debate in John’s gospel we hear Jesus say: “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”5 “I give them eternal life,” he said, “and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”6

Jesus was the shepherd of all those good Swedes and maybe even some of the Norwegians who snuck in when nobody noticed. But Jesus is also the good shepherd of that Hispanic Charismatic congregation.  

Jesus is also the good shepherd of our brothers and sisters down the block at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and St. Peter’s Episcopal, and First United Methodist, and Fourth Presbyterian, and Trinity United Church of Christ and all the other churches in between.  

And Jesus is proclaiming that all of them, all of us, are “unsnatchable.”  “No one will snatch them out of my hand,” he said.  They are mine! They belong to me!  So do we! And nothing, or no one, can snatch us out of Jesus’ hands.

I must confess to you that church anniversaries have always made me a little nervous if not downright uncomfortable because they tend to be just a celebration of us, what’s going on in our lives, who we are and what we’re doing.  They can cause us to believe that we are God’s gift to the world.

What we are doing – educating children, caring for seniors, feeding the hungry, reaching out to the least, the lost, and the lonely is important, but it is only carrying out the work that Christ has called us to do.  That is what churches and cathedrals are for.

What we are called to do from this beautiful building, of which a pastor in Bellingham said when I told him I was the interim at Saint Like, “if the Lutheran’s had a cathedral in Chicago, St. Luke would be it.”  What we do from this place is to proclaim to any and all who watch and listen, by our words and our deeds, that they are “unsnatchable” from Christ love and his embrace.  When we tell people, and show people that they are unsnatchable we are building a cathedral that is open to everyone, everybody.

No one can snatch any of his beloved and hard-won children from Christ’s hands and that should be not only enough good news for this day but for all the days of this church and for all the years to come.

_____________

1.  Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth (New York, NY: New American Library, 2007).

2. 2 Samuel 7:2 (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible.  (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, Publishers, 1971)]

3. 2 Samuel 7:4-7.     [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament Palms and Proverbs [Colorado Springs,, CO: NavPress, 1998]]

4. The Parish Directory and History of Nebo Lutheran Church, 1998.

5. St. John10:16. (NRSV)  [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

6. St. John10. 28. (NRSV)