"Coin of the Realm" - Pentecost 20A

Saint Matthew 22:18-15

I’ve got good news and bad news for you.

First the good news.  There are only seventeen days left until the election.  Now the bad news.  There are still seventeen days left until the election.

Depending on how you look at it there are only seventeen more days or there are seventeen more long days of almost constant campaign ads on our televisions and radios.  Ads that extol the virtues of their candidate as if they were a saint complete with lighting and shadows worthy of a Holy Card.   Or the  grainy black and white ads that demonize their opponents making them look as if they were the spawn of Satan.

Seventeen more days of nonstop political punitory, talking heads who parse every word a candidate speaks as if it were holy writ that will last through the ages.  Everyone but these sages knows that the word of a candidate only lasts about as long as it take him or her to hang their sign on their office door.

Seventeen more days before we can move on to other things, important things, like what we are doing with our lives and how we can make life in the small section of the world we inhabit better.  

To make matters worse, I’ll bet you didn’t fire up your computer this morning or take the time and brave a virus to come to church to hear a sermon about politics yet this morning’s gospel in a hit you over the head way speaks to both and it speaks to our time.

According to the Pew Research Centre for Religion, when “asked about what kinds of things are important for a successful marriage, 44% of adults say shared religious beliefs are “very important.”1

In a recent survey 55% said that shared political party affiliation was very important. So, the author of an article on the study concluded: So don't be surprised if you hear someone say, “No child of mine will marry a Democrat!” Or a Republican, depending on party affiliation.  Political gridlock, it seems, has moved out of the voting booth and into the wedding chapel.”2

Whether political or religious the exchange about Caesar’s coin raises questions about obedience, loyality, and authority that faith has an inescapable political dimension, but not a partisan one.3

In fact it is a decidedly non-partisan crowd that tires to entrap Jesus that day.

Getting the Pharisees and the Herodians to form a coalition on anything would have been unthinkable.  It would be like getting the Democrats and Republicans to sit in a circle and sing “Bum By Ya.”  

The Herodians would have been supporters of paying the taxes because they supported the Roman regime.  

To the Pharisees the coin was a reminder that their God-given homeland was under foreign occupation and “payment of the tax meant the humiliation of Israel at the hands of Rome.”4

The coins used to play the tax were “a painful reminder of being in lands occupied by foreign powers who worshipped false gods. The tax could only be paid with Roman coins which were not just legal tender but also pieces of propaganda. Most of the coins contained an image of the Caesar with inscriptions proclaiming him to be divine or the son of a god. One common phrase on coins during the time of Jesus was: "Tiberius Caesar, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest."5

’ll miss the whole point if we don’t see the base instinct that brought these two groups together.  It was power!  They may not have had much power but whatever power they had they wanted to hang onto at an cost.

Eons ago, when I was an undergraduate, my Political Science professor invited Alderman Vito Marzullo “who ruled the West Side 25th Ward virtually unchallenged from 1953 to 1985.”6 He was a Chicago politician of the first order who personified the old-style machine politics of the day.

I have never forgotten what he told us as he summed up what politics was all about.  He said we could read all the books in world on the subject or study under the most learned professors but that we should never forget that politics is about “Who gets what, where, and when.”

That’s what brought the Herodians and the Pharisees together to entrap Jesus, they wanted to hang on to their power.  Jesus had a different vision for the people than the “who, what, where, and when” of the politics of their day and of ours.

It is not my job to tell you what to think but it is my job to tell you what it is important to think about.  And in the next two weeks it is important for you to think about that axiom of “who gets what, where, and  when” and see how diametrically opposed it is to the teaching of Jesus who was always on the side of the last, the lost, and the lonely.  It is important for all of us to remember that our ultimate allegiance is not to a politician or party but it is to Christ.  Politicians offer simple solutions and pat answers Christ offers us a different way of being.

The question, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”7 is a bogus one and Jesus sees right through it.

If Jesus says, “Do not pay taxes to the emperor,” the Romans will get him for treason. If he says, “Yes, we should pay taxes to the emperor, his own followers in that occupied country will call him a traitor."8

 “Here, show me a coin.”9 he says and I like to think that he took it, examined it, and then flipped it back in their direction 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.”10

Jesus response is so simple that we can miss it.  Don’t you see it? Give God everything that belongs to God.  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 partisan claims we make in election seasons, but 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.11

 And what does God ask of us in return?  It is something that no person who subscribes to the who gets what, where and when vision of life will ever understand.

For some reason stories about the great saints of the faith always strike me as too fanciful, too far-fetched.  But this one from the life of one of my favourite saints, because he is the patron saint of animals, is one that if it isn’t true it should be.

Every day Saint Francis would go off to pray all by himself.  Sometimes he went into the woods, sometimes he went into the chapel, some days he even went into a cave.

When he would come out Brother Leo would invariably ask him, “Did God say anything?” and Francis would say, “No.”  Day after day Francis went off to pray and always when Brother Leo asked the answer was the same, nothing.

Finally, one day Leo asked and Francis surprised him.  “Yes,” he said, “God did say one word to me.”  “What was it,” Leo asked excitedly!  And Francis replied, “God said, ‘More.’”

I love that!  In return for giving us everything all God asks of us in return is, “More.” More of Saint Francis. More of You. More of Me. 

God doesn’t ask for what is in our pockets God asks for our hearts.  God asks for us!

____________

1. “Religion in Marriages and Families,” Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project, May 30, 2020, https://www.pewforum.org/2016/10/26/religion-in-marriages-and-families/.

2.  Kevin Enochs, “In US, 'Interpolitical' Marriage Increasingly Frowned Upon,” Voice of America, February 3, 2017, https://www.voanews.com/usa/us-interpolitical-marriage-increasingly-frowned-upon.

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

4. ibid.

5. Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 22:15-22 Proper 24 A - Year A,” Matthew 22.15-22, accessed October 17, 2020, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt22x15.htm.

6. “Vito Marzullo and the Chicago Democratic Political Machine,” Media Burn Archive, August 25, 2020, https://mediaburn.org/lesson-plans/vito-marzullo-and-the-chicago-democratic-political-machine/.

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

8. Theodore J. Wardlaw, “Matthew 22:15-22. Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Teaching 3 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): pp. 405-406.

9. Saint Matthew 22:19.  (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971)]

10. Saint Matthew 22:20-21.  (TLB)

11. 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/.

"Proper Attire and Attitudes" Saint Matthew 22:1-14 “Read the Manuel”

Saint Matthew 22:1-14

One day last summer I was sitting in traffic when a bicycle ridden by some old guy zoomed past me.  By old guy, I mean he was about my age. However he was going at a breakneck pace almost as if he were in a race.

You know how this scene usually plays out a cyclist races past you while you are moving slowly but eventually you catch up to the person and pass him or her.  This time that didn’t happen.  When traffic started to move again I couldn’t catch him.  He was moving with the flow at about the same speed as the cars.  I was impressed.

Finally he had to stop for a light and I pulled up next to him. He wasn’t even perspiring!  I thought this guy must be trying out for the senior division of the Tour de France. 

Then I heard it.  The faint buzz of an engine.  He was riding one of those  new electric trail bikes where all you have to do is climb aboard, throw as switch, and maintain your balance.  All of a sudden you’re Lance Armstrong and the only kind of “juicing” you have to do is plug it in when you get home.

Even though I can’t go as fast or as far as I used to I enjoy a good bike ride but plopping on a motorized cycle seemed to defeat the purpose. Still I thought about buying one until I heard about Simon Cowell the sometimes surly judge on “America’s Got Talent.”

Cowell purchased one and on his first ride he didn’t get very far from home before he crashed.  In a tweet after a six hour surgery to repair his broken back he offered some sage advice: “If you buy an electric trail bike, read the manual before you ride it for the first time.”1

Reading the manual is excellent advice that my uncles never followed. Long before the days of Ikea they would purchase something unassembled and if there were parts left over when they were finished they would just declare them useless.  In our garage we had countless coffee cans full of “useless” parts.

That’s the problem for many preachers with this mornings gospel. Dr. James Howell came right out and told his people in the blog he writes to prepare them for Sunday morning: “I’m skipping the Gospel, which reveals Jesus in a not-so-beautiful tirade. Matthew 22:1-14 just strikes me as yet one more of Jesus’ angrier, mystifying parables.”2

However, it is in the manual as so we might not be so quick to declare this part useless.  

Jesus’ tirade comes between the events of Palm Sunday and his crucifixion.  As his inevitable end seems to be becoming clearer and clearer we can see why he is becoming more and more angry.  He is running out of time.  People need to listen they need to respond to his invitation.  The words of the prophet Isaiah are coming true in him.

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.3

 It’s all about to come true.  This long awaited dream is about to be fulfilled and still the people will not see it.  No wonder he’s upset! No wonder he’s angry!  But Jesus never gives up.  He tries another parable in the hope that maybe one more story will help them to see what is going on right before their very eyes.

He tells them about a King who throwing a lavish wedding banquet for his son and future daughter-in-law.

We know what Jesus is talking about because we’ve been invited to these.  They’re the kind where, if you are a woman, you almost feel compelled to go out and buy a new dress.  And, for the guys, they’re the kind were you dig your tux out of the closet, try it on, and discover that you’ve gained a little weight since the last time you wore it.  This is a big deal and if you’ve read the etiquette manual and you intend to attend you had better do so appropriately attired.

Biblical scholar Richard Baulkham wants us to see that there is a deeper problem here that guests who have decided they don’t want to join in the celebration exhibit.  Jesus lived in an honor/shame society.

The attendance of the great men of the kingdom at the wedding feast of the king's son would be expected not only as a necessary expression of the honor they owe the king but also as an expression of their loyalty. Political allegiance is at stake. To refuse the invitation is tantamount to rebellion. In refusing it, the invitees are deliberately treating the king's authority with contempt.4

Doesn’t take much see what is going on here in relation to Jesus. He is being treated with contempt.  Those in power have rejected him so he tries another way.

He, in the person of the king, throws away the manual on who should be invited and who should not and invites everybody.  The goal is a full banquet hall and a lavish celebration and our king will have what he will have.  Those who the manual says were worthy are not and so conventional rules must be broken.

 “So the servants went out on to the streets and collected together all those whom they found, bad and good alike. And the hall became filled with guests.”5

The place was packed and the king had to have been pleased until, out of the corner of his eye he catches site of one guest.  There is always one, isn’t there?  There is always one person who is out to spoil the party. They are like brown penny loafers with a tuxedo, they stick out.

And there is the one!  Everybody else has found something nice to wear.  They went home and found their best “Sunday go to meeting clothes” and put them on.  If they didn’t have a clean outfit of their own they may have borrowed one from a friend.  They respected the king and his invitation by dressing up as nicely as possible.

This story is not a manual about proper attire but a manual on proper attitude.  

I’ve never seen the dishevelled guy in this parable as sitting off in the corner, embarrassed.  I’ve always seen him front and centre at table 1 his appearance a deliberate poke in the eye of the king.   He’s there but he’s not going to honour the occasion. He’s not going to enter into the celebration.  He’s there to purposely look surly and out of place.

In this very strange year of 2020 there is a very simple way to understand this parable.  Change the words “wedding garment” to the word “mask.”

There is a manual for handling what we are going through and the first and perhaps most important instruction is that we wear masks.  I hope you saw the moment when, appearing before congress, Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centre for Disease Control,  held up a simple mask that looked a lot like the kind we give out at the door and said: "These face masks are the most important, powerful public health tool we have, and I will continue to appeal for all Americans to embrace these face coverings, if we did it for six, eight, 10, 12 weeks we'd bring this pandemic under control.”6

Yet I still see posts from people that seem to be in opposition. I know one that actually said:

“Please, don’t look back 5 years from now & have to admit that you spent an entire year of your life wearing a mask, cooped up in your house & avoiding all the people you love. A year in your life that you’ll never get back. We went from being a free nation to being told ... how far apart we have to be, what to wear... God is gonna call you home when it’s your time. Virus or no virus.”

 Yes, I trust that God will indeed call me home but my intention is to make that later rather than sooner. I wear a mask and in my case have been tested three times not for my safety but for yours!  We wear our masks and are inconvenienced in countless other ways by this pandemic not just for our sake but for the sake of the people we love and people we don’t even know.

In this strange and terrible year when over 215,000 of our brother and sister citizens have died we understand perfectly why the guy at the king’s banquet had to go.  We know that if someone came to worship on Sunday without a mask and refused to wear one of the free ones we offered we would have to ask them to leave.  

It would break my heart as I am sure it would break yours but they would have to go.  As I think about it, the health and safety of others is the only reason I would deny anybody the sacrament. It would make me sad but I would have to do it.

New Testament scholar “Luke Timothy Johnson has said, ‘When we say that the Bible has authority for us we mean that even when we think it’s wrong, we believe the Bible has something to teach us. We pay attention to it,’ Even when we think it’s wrong.”7

This is in the manual!  We cannot declare this part useless!  It tell us how we the chosen ones act.  We care for each other.  We care enough for each other to suffer a little inconvenience for a season.  And we respond to God’s gracious invitation with joy and not in rebellion.

This is the part of the manual we may not like but it warns us of the dire consequences of accepting the unmerited invitation of God’s grace and then doing nothing but showing up.

I love the way Tom Long in his commentary on Matthew summed this up.  

To come into the church in response to the gracious, altogether unmerited invitation of Christ and then not to conform one’s life to that mercy is to demonstrate a spiritual narcissism so profound that one cannot tell the difference between the wedding feast of the Lamb of God and happy hour at a bus station.8

We’ve read the manual!  

We’ve taken even the parts we do not like to heart!  We understand that even in the gracious reign and rule of God things are still required of us.  So, wedding garments on, masks in place, and the manual not just in our hands but on our minds and in our hearts, we are ready to celebrate the great supper of the Lamb.  

We’ve been invited. Thanks be to God. 

 ____________

1. Jessica Coulon, “Simon Cowell Breaks His Back After Falling Off an Electric Motorbike,” Bicycling (September 19, 2020), https://www.bicycling.com/news/a33563310/simon-cowell-breaks-back-in-ebike-accident/.

2. James D. Howell, “What can we say October 11? 19th after Pentecost” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions (blog) (Myers Park United Methodist Church, July 1, 2020), http://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.

3. Isaiah 25:6-8a. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

4, Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 22:1-14 Proper 23 - Year A,” Matthew 22.1-14, accessed October 10, 2020, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt22x1.htm.

5. Matthew 22:9. (PHILLIPS) [[PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English: a Translation (London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1960).

6. Peter Sullivan, “CDC Director Says Masks More Guaranteed to Work than a Vaccine,” TheHill (The Hill, September 16, 2020), https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/516686-cdc-director-says-masks-more-guaranteed-to-work-than-a-vaccine.

7. Karla Pratt Keyes, “Such a Terrible Story,” A Sermon For Every Sunday (A Sermon for Every Sunday, October 6, 2020), https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Carla-Pratt-Keyes-Wedding-Banquet-1.pdf.

8. Thomas G. Long, Matthew (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 248.

"Killing the Messenger" - Pentecost 18A

Isaiah 5:1-7

Saint Matthew 21:33-46

The first celebration of World Communion Sunday took place in 1933 at the beautiful Shadyside Presbyterian Church in an upscale suburb just outside of Pittsburgh where Dr. Hugh Thompson Kerr served as pastor.

Since quarterly communion or, at best weekly communion, was the common practice among Protestant  churches at the time the Session at Shadyside put forth the proposal as their “attempt to bring churches together in a service of Christian unity—in which everyone might [be reminded] how important the Church of Jesus Christ is, and how each congregation is interconnected one with another.”

Dr. Kerr’s son, Donald, remembered that “The concept spread very slowly at the start. People did not give it a whole lot of thought. It was during the Second World War that the spirit caught hold, because we were trying to hold the world together. World Wide Communion symbolized the effort to hold things together, in a spiritual sense.”1

In the church I grew up in, where communion was only celebrated once a month, World Communion Sunday was a big deal.  Later, when I joined a church where communion was offered every week not much was made of the day.  I always thought it was an opportunity missed to see the church as something bigger than the little plot of land we occupied.

I like to think about Christians gathering around the Lord’s table in large cathedrals and small country churches.  I like the idea that whether they came forward and knelt at the altar rail, as we used to, or sat quietly in their pews with eyes closed and heads bowed, waiting for the ushers or elders to bring them the elements we were united in our belief that there was something greater than ourselves.  It didn’t matter if it was grape juice or wine, a loaf of bread as big as a bowling ball or perfectly formed wafers punched pressed out with uniformity we were submitting ourselves to receive a gift of grace.

In the age of Covid we realized how much we missed these moments. 

At Faith here in Bellingham, where this sermon is being taped, they are not back to regular worship or even ready to practice the small group communions that had to satisfy us until we felt comfortable enough to gather.

There is a longing to get back to being in the good vineyard that God  gave us but has clearly become a royal mess. Both Isaiah and Jesus speak of such a vineyard.

The first words of our reading from Isaiah speak of a beautiful place, almost bucolic, loving tended by ”the beloved” who has worked hard to make it perfect.  Everything that could be done was done to make it a vineyard whose grapes would be exceptional and whose wine would exceed all expectations. It is truly a vineyard fit for its owner who is nothing less than the LORD of hosts.

Yet, when harvest time came, it yielded only wild grapes that were not good for making fine wine but good for nothing.  And the LORD gives up.  The walls are torn down, the hedges are ripped out, no more attention is given to it and no more rain is allowed to fall upon it.

It soon is allowed to return to its natural state.

At this point we must be very careful in reading Isaiah and listening to Jesus because it would be all too easy to see the vineyard and the vineyard workers are being only those people who lived somewhere off in another land at another time.  And it becomes dangerous when we succumb to the temptations to cast the scribes and the Pharisees as the heavies. The warning must come with these texts that they have been used by the unscrupulous as an excuse for such extremist antisemitism that would label our Jewish brothers and sisters as Christ killers.

The frightening thought for today is what if Jesus wasn’t talking about the people he was constantly tangling with but was talking about us?  What if we’re the labourers in the vineyard who have come to believe  that we own the place.

Bernard Brandon Scott, in Hear Then the Parable, suggests “that the time between planting the vineyard and the first payment was probably about five years.”2

So there they were, for a half-a-decade, working the land, tending the vines, keeping the place in tip-top shape.  It is easy to see how they could forget that it wasn’t theirs.   In their minds, they were the owners.  Then suddenly someone comes, a slave with less status than they had, arrives and wants to take all the fruit just as harvest time is near. When we see it in this light it might be more understandable that they openly rebelled. 

Remember the line from theme song to the movie Exodus: “This land is mine, God gave this land to me. This brave and ancient land to me.”

Anytime we forget that the land or anything else we have comes from God and does not really belong to us we get into trouble.

That is why World Communion Sunday in our day, in the year 2020, is a more powerful idea than ever before.

We remember a day when we did not commune in each other’s church. A Roman Catholic would no more take communion in a Protestant church than a Protestant would in their’s.  We know that in some Lutheran churches, you as faithful Lutherans and even I as an ordained Lutheran clergy person would not be admitted to the Lord’s supper.  Even within denominations, within congregations, there was and is exclusion.

I remember a sermon preached by Calum MacLeod, who is now the Senior Minister of St. Giles Cathedral that bills itself rightly as “the high kirk in Edinburgh,” who told of the tradition of “Fencing the Table.” 

Fencing the Table means that those who [wish] to receive Communion are examined, and [only after they are deemed worthy are] they are admitted to a part of the church, so that they can receive Communion. And then there is a fence; it’s often a tablecloth placed along certain pews, and people who are deemed not fit to receive Communion would sit behind and not receive the elements of bread and wine.3

Think of what those poor people seated behind that sheet must have thought of themselves. This table, these gifts of bread and wine are for good people, worthy people, and not a sinner such as me.  While the people in front of the fence thought this is our table, these gifts belong to us.

In Jesus’ parable the vineyard workers shot the messengers.  If we believe that something God has given us belongs exclusively to us, we do exactly that.

That is why something like World Communion Sunday is so important. If we allow it can remind us that when we gather for worship is is not just us who worship but all of God’s people around the world.  

This video underscores that we worship with the people at Faith in Bellingham and the people of Faith worship with their brothers and sisters in Aurora.  We may never meet each other but we all confess the same thing: That Christ is the cornerstone of our lives.

Just as almost every church celebrates Holy Communion almost every church has a cornerstone. 

Somewhere in the archives of any church there is the picture of the setting of the cornerstone.  Sometimes memorabilia is placed inside. The names of the members when the stone was laid, perhaps a bible, a copy of the blueprints, all kinds of stuff. “Its position sets the orientation of the building, the reference point for all the other stones. It signals the beginning of a new project.”4

Never in memory have we needed a cornerstone more than now. 

After the events of this past week we need something solid to cling to. As our anxieties mount and fears increase that the foundations of the institutions that we have relied upon for so long look like they are beginning to crumble.  As the divisions between people and their parties seem to be becoming wider and deeper.  When there doesn’t seem to be anyone who we can find to be trustworthy we have to find something to hold onto.

We need something solid.  We need a cornerstone and that cornerstone in Christ.  

He comes to us in the smallest of things like the bread and wine of communion to remind us he has given himself for us and if we are of such great worth to God we must treat each other as something that God calls precious. 

He comes to us in the most solid of things like a cornerstone of a building laid firm in its foundation to reminds that amid all the adversities of life, the turmoils that seem to beat us down, there is still something we solid. 

There can be little doubt that the vineyard we live in is a mess and so holding on these gifts of bread and wine we affirm that in the end the stones of civility, and goodness, and kindness will become our cornerstone once again and heaving a sigh of relief we’ll affirm that it was the LORD’s doing and it was amazing, marvellous, in our eyes.

May God make this so, soon.

____________

1. “World Communion Sunday: Special Days and Emphases,” Presbyterian Mission Agency, August 18, 2020, https://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/worship/special-days-and-emphases/world-communion-sunday/

2.  Bernard Brandon Scott, Hear Then the Parable: a Commentary on the Parables of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 249.

3. Calum  I. MacLeod, “A Place at the Table” Morning Worship at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. (August 4, 2012).

4. Whitney Bodman, “Matthew 21:33-46. "Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Teaching 3 (Louisville: Westminister | John Knox Press, 2020): pp. 367-369.

"Sour Grapes" - Pentecost 17A

Philippians 2:1--13

Saint Matthew 21:23--32

All of us have heard of the Aesop’s fable about the “Fox and the Grapes”

One afternoon a fox was walking through the forest and spotted a bunch of grapes hanging from over a lofty branch. "Just the thing to quench my thirst," said he.

Taking a few steps back, the fox jumped and just missed the hanging grapes. Again the fox took a few steps back, ran, jumped, and tried to reach them but still failed.Finally giving up, the fox turned up his nose and said, "They're probably sour anyway," and proceeded to walk away.

The moral: It is easy to despise what you cannot have.1

 If it weren’t so sad it would be funny that in our time – at this moment right now – people who have so much despise so much.  It is like we live in a world where people always seem to be  looking for sour grapes.

If you don’t like  who is going to appoint the next person to an important position, change the rules.  If you like the person doing the appointing, change them again. 

If it looks like you might loose an important vote resort to character assassination and never mind if innocent people get hurt.

Don’t like the people in the next neighbourhood, pick up arms to defend your turf but beware because they are plotting the same thing against you with little regard that innocents might be caught in the crossfire. 

Remember what Maria asked at the close of “West Side Story”?

“How may bullets are left? Enough for you? For you?” she says as she points at each one of the members of both gangs, “All of you? You all killed him. Not with bullets and knives! With hate!”2

Some use bullets.  Other people use words but “no matter how sophisticated packaged, human authority is a matter of raw power.  If you have enough people behind you or guns with you, you have it, and what you say goes, period.

“But there is still another authority at work in the world. It is divine authority and it has to do with truth, the truth of God, the truth about who God made us to be.”3

These two have been in conflict since the beginning of time and they are readily apparent in today’s confrontation between Jesus and the rulers of his world.

The day before, Palm Sunday to us, Jesus had ridden into the Temple in a peaceful protest that became a small scale riot when he turned over tables and drove out the money changers as a rejection of the regular activities of buying and selling  replacing them with his own business of restoring people to wholeness.  He stands at the very intersection of religion and politics which, in our day, is a very dangerous place to be.

I’ve always wondered how Jesus got back in. Why in the world would  the leaders who saw someone cause such commotion one day to give him free access to the place the next?  Why didn’t they call out the guards and have him arrested?  Why didn’t they build barricades to keep him and his followers out?  Why didn’t they try to do something to stop his reentry?

Maybe it was because overnight they had thought up a question. It was a trick question but it was surely a question that would bring him down. “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”4 they want to know.

Dr. Brian Blunt, President of Union Presbyterian Theological Seminary, lays the scene and the predicament out for us perfectly.

The point of the question is to make him confess that he doesn’t have any authority. At least not the right authority. Unless he has forged himself a really good fake resume, he’s got nothing. How do they know for sure he won’t be able to produce any credentials? How can they be so certain? Because they are the ones who give out the credentials. 

But the chief priests and the elders also know that Jesus thinks that he speaks for God. They just want him to say it. Out loud. That is the trap behind the question. If we didn’t authorize you to do the crazy new things you’re doing, Jesus, who did? Say it, Jesus. Say it! Say what you believe. Say God authorized you! Tell everybody loudly and clearly that you think you are working for God. That’s the trap behind the question.

In our day, you say you speak for God, people mock you. In Jesus’ day, you say you speak for God? They kill you.5

Good rabbis in Jesus day always answered a question with a question. And so he asks his interlocutors:

Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.”  So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.”6

You can always tell if somebody isn’t interested in the truth when they are afraid of public opinion.  

We don’t know” is the lazy answer of students who haven’t studied and believers who are afraid. The chief priests and the elders are afraid. They know the answer, they just don’t want to give the answer. They treated John like a fool because they thought John was a fool, but they are afraid to give that answer in the circumstance they find themselves. “We don’t know,” is the answer of people who don’t have the courage of their convictions.7

The people who knew who Jesus was and where his power came from were the ones who were not in power. They were the sinners, the tax-collectors, the ones whom society shunned.  They were the ones who were open to having “the mind of Christ” 

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,”8 encourages Saint Paul.  Or, as it has been paraphrased: “Let Christ himself be your example as to what your attitude should be.”9

How would that look?  How would that effect how we treated each other.  How would that end the “sour grapes” cycle of hate and violence.

I can think of no better example than the life of the late Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsberg and her good friend and ideological opposite Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. 

Scalia’s son Eugene would say of them:

They had a bond, I think, in that they both grew up as outsiders – to different degrees – to the elites who had ruled the country: she as a Jew and woman, he as a Catholic and Italian American.10

They bonded over opera and travel and they both fought for what they believed in.  She said once to a Harvard University luncheon: “Fight for things you care about but do in a way that will lead others to join you.”

But if you go onto the internet to explore the endless array of RBG-themed tchotchkes — mugs, T-shirts and even face masks — you’ll find that many of them omit the second part of her comment. All we need to do, apparently, is fight for what we believe in. Getting others aboard isn’t as important.11

Justice Scalia, who could be as acerbic as anybody, had this maxim which I may have embroidered on a pillow: “I attack ideas. I don’t attack people. Some very good people have some very bad ideas.”

Its all “sour grapes” when we label each other as evil or stupid and believe the best we can do is bring them to heal.  However, the grapes loose their edge when we begin to believe that while their ideas may be “off the wall” it doesn’t make them a bad person.

Maybe there is another way, a better way.  Maybe there is a way that more clearly reflects “the mind of Christ”.

I posted this little story, parable on my Facebook page. It was an encounter between Judge Scalia and  Judge Jeffrey Sutton. 

As Sutton prepared to leave Scalia’s chambers, Scalia pointed to two dozen roses he was planning to deliver to his friend “Ruth” for her birthday. Sutton was surprised: “So what good have all these roses done for you? Name one five-four case of any significance where you got Justice Ginsburg’s vote.”

Scalia’s reply? “Some things are more important than votes.”12

When civility becomes more important than votes and deep affection overcomes hate maybe bridges can begin to be built once again.  When “Christ himself is our example as to what our attitude should be” toward each other we’ll be on the right road to recovery of our spirits.

 May the day come soon when our “sour grapes” are turned into God’s good, sweet wine.

____________

1.   “The Fox and the Grapes,” Aesop's Fable: The Fox and the Grapes, accessed September 26, 2020, https://aesopsfables.org/F258_The-Fox-and-the-Grapes.html.

2.   Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim. “West Side Story.” at The Lyric Opera of Chicago. May 2019. 

3.   Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 21.23-32 Proper 21 - Year A,” Matthew 21.23-32, accessed September 26, 2020, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt21x23.html.

4.   Saint Matthew 18:23. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

5.  Brian K Blount, “What Do You Know?,” A Sermon for Every Sunday.com, September 22, 2020), https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Brian-Blount-Jesus-Authority-Questioned.pdf.

6. Saint Matthew 19:25-27. (NRSV)

7. Blount, loc. cit.

8. Philippians 2:5. (NRSV)

9. Philippians 2:5. (PHILLIPS) [[PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English: a Translation (London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1960).

10. Eugene Scalia, “Opinion | What We Can Learn from Ginsburg's Friendship with My Father, Antonin Scalia,” The Washington Post (WP Company, September 20, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-scalia-rbg-friendship-oped/2020/09/19/35f7580c-faaa-11ea-a275-1a2c2d36e1f1_story.html.

11. Jonathan Zimmerman, “Commentary: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Practiced Anti-Cancel Culture,” chicagotribune.com (Chicago Tribune, September 21, 2020), https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-cancel-culture-rbg-ruth-bader-ginsburg-20200921-eky2wgdiefgepp5jws7jdwnvk4-story.html.

12. Jerry Windley-Daoust, “RBG and Antonin Scalia Taught Us Civility Matters More Than Votes,” Medium (Medium, September 19, 2020), https://medium.com/@windleydaoust/rbg-and-antonin-scalia-taught-us-civility-matters-more-than-votes-bfe3bc2eabc.

 

"Jesus' Business Plan" - Pentecost 16A

 

The Eve of the Feast of Saint Matthew

Saint Matthew 9:9-13

Saint Matthew 20:1–16

One of the times this gospel was the subject of a Sunday at my former parish a very successful general contractor said while shaking my hand, “I don’t believe it! If I would have run my business like that nobody would have shown up on time.”  He was giving his pastor “the business” as some of you delight in doing sometimes after church but we both knew he was right.

Jesus’ business plan left a little to be desired not that it hasn’t been tried. 

In 2015 Dan Price, the CEO of Gravity Payments who had been raised in a Christian home, announced that he was slashing his multi-million dollar salary to raise the base rate for all the workers at his company to $70,000 per year. Price said in an Inc. Magazine interview that he saw “establishing a $70,000 minimum wage is a moral imperative, not a business strategy.”

He was immediately criticized.

Then the inevitable backlash came. Price has been ... trashed by [a] multimillionaire radio personality who said, "I hope this company is a case study in MBA programs on how socialism does not work, because it's gonna fail". A Times story in July was so laden with quotes from disgruntled customers and staff that Price's worried friends called to say he could always come and stay with them if things don't work out. Others accused Price of orchestrating a clever publicity stunt. "If it was," he replies, "I'm a genius." Shortly after Price announced his minimum pay plan, his brother Lucas sued him.1

Gravity Payments is a credit card processing firm that caters to to the small business economy with much of its services being delivered to the hospitality industry – restaurants, bars, and hotels.  By May of this year that part of the business was down 65 percent with total revenue down 55 percent.

So Price went to the 200 employees of the Seattle-based company looking for ideas. The solution to stemming Gravity’s hefty losses was voluntary pay cuts, with employees choosing how much they could sacrifice individually. [While] as many as a dozen people opted to take no pay at all.  Price said. “Many of our employees stepped up, and to me it’s humbling.”

“While this is the craziest and most horrible crisis maybe of our lifetime, it’s also a really, really big opportunity to make a difference if we can stick to our values,” Price said. “Our whole thing is sticking up for people who are being squeezed, sticking up for underdogs,” Price said.2

 That is exactly what the landowner who went out early one morning looking for workers in his vineyard did.  

While I am not sure what happens here in the suburbs but on any given morning in Chicago one can go the parking lot of any big-box home centre and see countless labourers waiting around in the parking lot.  They are day labourers, often immigrants, and they are looking for work.  

If you hang around long enough you will see other guys with large pick-up trucks or multi-passenger vans pull up.  They are contractors looking for help.

Unfortunately for the landowner in Jesus’ parable when he gets back to his vineyard he discovers that he has more work than he has workers. So back he goes a little later in the morning, then again at noon, at 3 o’clock, and finally as the sun was setting and he really begins to feel the crunch he goes back again around 5 o’clock hoping that someone will be left.  

Some labourers are still waiting   and so he asks them a question that has been grossly mistranslated.  The Greek word he uses is argos which doesn’t mean “idle” but only “not working.”

 “‘Why haven’t you been working today?’ [he asks.] “‘Because no one hired us,’ they replied.  “‘Then go on out and join the others in my fields,’ he told them.”3

The hour was growing late for the vintner but it must have seemed  like a far later hour for those workers “still standing there, tools around their waist, faces looking long and realizing they’ll be going home to their kids without any food that night.”4

Their being hired was literally a godsend.

As you know, things begin to go south real fast when all the workers line up at the payroll window.  I find it interesting that it is the manager and not the owner who calls the workers together and gives them their pay envelopes.  

Really, this is the owners fault!  If he had paid the first ones first and the last ones last they all would have gone home happy and no one would have been the wiser.  Instead he pays the last first and this causes the others to start thinking about overtime, double-time and triple-triple time until they look at their pay-stubs and realize that everybody received the same amount.

“And when they received it, [those hired earlier] grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’”5

They feel ripped off and begin to turn on each other making a distinction between “us” and “them” and that “we” are better than “they.” “We” deserve more than “they.”  They are also giving the vineyard owner the stink-eye for the literal translation is “Is you eye evil because I am good?”6

We know what that is!  It’s the side-ways glance that says with a look, “I’m being cheated.”  Or, it may even be the death-stare that glares at another person never and leaves any doubt that the person feels like they are being ripped off.

The landowners response in the J.B. Phillips paraphrase is masterful.  He says.  “‘My friend, I’m not being unjust to you. It is my wish to give the latecomers as much as I give you. May I not do what I like with what belongs to me? Must you be jealous because I am generous?’”7

What Jesus is talking about here is the generosity of God.  This is not a business plan unless we see the business as the kingdom of heaven where grace is always the coin of the realm.

That is why I paired today’s gospel with the one for tomorrow which is the feast day of Saint Matthew.  

Before he was called Matthew was a tax collectors and the charge most often leveled again Jesus was, “he eats with sinners and tax-collectors.”  It was “the insiders” versus “the outsiders”.  It was the “us” versus “them”.  

Jesus is telling us that there is no first or last in the Kingdom of God. There are no “insiders” nor “outsiders.” God has more than enough grace, more than enough love, for everybody.  You’re neighbour doesn’t have more or less of God’s love than you have and you don’t have more or less of God’s love than your neighbour.

And for me that is great news because as Greg Delosch reminded us on this morning’s Day1 program:

This really isn't about you or me or what time we show up to work. This is really about day after day the goodness of God keeps showing up - in the morning, in the evening - all day long - to lepers, to prostitutes, to prodigal children, to Samaritans, to thieves on the cross, to outsiders - to you and me too. It is not about merited work, but generous inclusion.

[When] God shows up and settles up, and it is not always what we expect but it is more than we understand.8

 There are no grace cuts in the kingdom of God like there are pay cuts in the world.  God’s business plan is always on the side of outsider and the person feeling squeezed. We all get the same amount and it is always there in good times in bad, in prosperity and adversity, in crises or calm, God’s grace and love sustains.  

In Jesus’ business plan there is enough grace and love for today and there will be grace and love enough for tomorrow.  

So, it turns out that Jesus’ business plan is a good one after all. Don’t you think?

____________

1. Paul Keegan, “Here's What Really Happened at ThatCompany That Set a $70,000 Minimum Wage,” Inc.com (Inc., October 21, 2015), https://www.inc.com/magazine/201511/paul-keegan/does-more-pay-mean-more-growth.html.

2. Kurt Schlosser, “Gravity Payments Employees Volunteer to Take Pay Cut as Revenue Drops 50% during COVID-19 Crisis,” GeekWire, March 31, 2020, https://www.geekwire.com/2020/gravity-payments-employees-volunteer-take-pay-cut-company-sees-revenue-dive-50-crisis/.

3. Saint Matthew 20:6-7. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971]

4. Philip Martin, “Not My Favorite Parable,” Sermonforeverysunday.com (A Sermon for Every Sunday, September 15, 2020), https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Phillip-Martin-Laborers-in-the-Vineyard.pdf.

5. St. Matthew 20:11–12. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

6. Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 20.1-16 Proper 20 - Year A,” Crossmarks.com, accessed September 19, 2020, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt20x1.htm.

7. St. Matthew 20:12-15. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English: a Translation (London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1960).

8. St. Matthew 20:12-15. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English: a Translation (London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1960).

 

"Haywired Grace" - Pentecost 15A

Romans 14:1-12 

Saint Matthew 18:25-35

Before the start of this year whenever one of those multi-state super lottery jackpot drawings my friends and I would play the game, “What would you do with all that money?”  And then we would all sit around and fantasize of what we would buy or where we would go. Sometimes we got so caught up in our dreams that each of us would pitch in a dollar or two and a volunteer would be sent off to buy the lucky ticket.  When they returned from the convenience store with a fistful of tickets in hand our imaginations would shift into overdrive.

Lotto tickets sell us hope.  It may even be hope again hope and it built on the almost perfect slogan enticing us to try: “Somebody’s gotta win and it might as well be you.”

“Yeh!  Why not me?  Remember what they say: “You can’t win if you don’t play!” and so we produce another dollar so that the daydreaming can begin again.

What would you do if you won the 17 trillion, bazillion dollars in offered up as the latest jackpot in the Lottery?
That question has been changed over the past nine months.  No longer are we asking each other about what we would do if we became unbelievably rich; now we are asking each other what we are going to do when this virus comes under control.

I’ve been asking this of friends, aquaiintences, and even the young man bagging groceries at the check out line of my local grocery.

The answers have been heartbreaking.  “We were going to get married,” said one couple, “but now that’s on hold.”  A friend said that he and his partner were planning a trip to Brazil.  A woman and her partner had to postpone their honeymoon in Paris.  The young fellow behind the counter at Happy Foods told me that he was scheduled to start at the University of Cincinnati this fall but instead he’s taking online courses at Wright Junior College.  One person you know very well was hoping for a transatlantic crossing but has only been able to cross the county line between Cook and Kane County on more than one occasion.

These are but trifles compared to the big picture.  I cannot imagine what it would be like to have a loved one hospitalized and have them disappear into their restricted ward never knowing if you would see them again.
I cannot imagine what it would be like to be “an essential worker” who went to work every day never knowing if you would become infected. For them, “what are you going to do when the quarantine is lifted” must have a special, deeper, meaning.

While we may console ourselves with the thought that we we’ll finally be able to take that vacation we have been meaning to take since March.  That we’ll be able to eat out until you are as tired or fine dining as you were of home cooked meals.  Invite friends and family over for a huge party and when the arrive greet each with a long and lingering hug. Have Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving and Easter all rolled into one as soon as we have received your all clear.

What would you do with your new found freedom and your life restored?  That’s the issue behind Jesus’ parable that comes hard on the heels of Peter’s important question.

Peter is still working out his theology of forgiveness left over from last week.  He hasn’t had six days to mull over Jesus’ teaching on restoration of a fallen member of the church like we have. Probably no more than a minute has passed between when Jesus taught about restoring a wayward brother or sister to the life of the community and the question coming to Peter’s mind.

Peter’s question is perfectly rational: “Lord, when someone has sinned against me, how many times ought I forgive him? Once? Twice? As many as seven times?”1

The rabbinical standard in Peter’s day was three.  “Three strikes and you’re out!” Peter decides to double the standard and add an extra one for good measure.  Seven is a very good guess except when you are dealing with Jesus.

Depending on what translation you are reading Jesus either says 77 times or seventy times seven times.  Either way that is a lot of forgive­ness for one person.  Seventy-seven is a considerable number but (for those of you who did not bring your calculators to church or can’t do challenging math in your heads) seventy times seven is 490.

Most preachers I’ve read leave it there.  Don’t keep score. Be forgiving.  They throw at their listeners some examples of people who are more forgiving than they will ever be.  Like a magician they cause us to conjure up in our minds all the gruesome details of those times when we have not been forgiving.  They conclude with “God loves you and so do I” and send their people on their way.

Jesus never seems to want to leave well enough alone.  He is not going to send us on our way before we hear a little parable about a guy who, even though he had been forgiven, just could not be forgiving toward others.
The servant who is dragged before the king owes more than a tidy sum of money.  He owes the equivalent of the national debt.  Ten thousand talents? The entire budget for the province of Judea for a year was 600 talents.  This guy must have been quite the high-roller.  Cue Edie Adams for a chorus of “Hey big spender, why don’t you spend a little time with me.”

It would take a lot of time, effort, and moxie to come up with that kind of money.  It is the stuff of which at least a half-a-dozen corporate bankruptcies could be made.  And for a minute there we might think that the guy had learned his lesson.

With a jail sentence looming over not only his head but the heads of his wife and children he throws himself at the mercy of the king.  “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything."1

Considering the amount of the debt what the servant is promising is impossible.  This isn’t a promise the guy is just blowing smoke. There is no way he is going to be able to come up with that kind of cash.

Jesus doesn’t give us any hints about what the king was thinking. Did the king honestly think that the servant would turn his life around? Did the king really believe that the servant would be so chastened and embarrassed at being called out that he would mend his ways?  Or, did the king start an office pool with overs and unders as to how long it would take the servant to get in trouble again.

Those who had “less than a minute” in that lottery are the winners.

The newly liberated man doesn’t even make it to the sliding-doors before he finds a slave that owes him a paltry sum of money in comparison, grabs him by the throat and yells, “pay me what you owe.”

This guy had just won the lottery of all lotteries.  He had walked away absolutely free of debt.  He owed nothing to anybody.  He could start his life all over again.  All those worries he might have had at night about his tremendous debt were gone.

I’d like to think I would have sailed out of the king’s palace happier and more relieved than I had ever been in my life.  I’d like to think that coming upon a fellow slave that only owed me a paltry sum by comparison I wouldn’t have attacked him but invited his and his whole family out for dinner and drinks.  I would have been walking on air and would have gathered all my friends together to share my good-fortune.

Instead of celebration this guy practices retaliation.

His entire life may have been built around them principal of using fear as a weapon. Free as he was, he thought that the only way he could hold on to whatever power he had left was through fear.  As one politician was quoted as saying: “Real power is – and I don’t even want to use the word – fear.”3 He may have equated fear with respect.

Or, and this one puzzles me even more but Dr. Brian Blunt, President of Union Presbyterian seminary, made me realize something obvious and something deeper.

There are a lot of angry people out there in our city, our country, our world. And you can’t convince me that they don’t enjoy the anger that they’re feeling. they’re angry. They’re mad. And they can’t let go because it’s become part of them. Anger is like that. It gets in you. It becomes you.4

I honestly don’t want to believe that some people live their lives like that as they angrily going about attacking others for the least little thing. I don’t understand the person who spends their time on the internet to expressing their ire at anybody they believe has wronged them. 

I cannot understand how, for some, anger is their dominate word.  They wake up angry, they go to bed angry, and they spend most of their day angrily trying to get back at those they believe have slighted them. They demean and degrade others with a contemptuous attitude.  They are angry, period.

For them God’s grace has gone haywire.  They never ask for forgiveness because they don’t think they need it.  God is a talking point not a reference point. Their life is centered on whatever money they can make and whomever they can use to achieve their ends.

But this dastardly slave gets done in by some whistle blowers, fellow slaves who saw what he did and not only said to themselves but told the king, “something’s not right here. Your grace has gone haywire.”

The king investigates and adjudicates and before the servant can plead for mercy he hears the bars of the jailhouse doors clanging shut behind him.

He wasn’t put there by the king but by his own actions.  He has caused the grace which was shown to him to go haywire.

It is never God’s intent to cut us off from God’s love but humans have an infinite ability to do it to ourselves and when we do it is nothing less than torture.

There are some people who by all outward appearances have it all. They have titles, fame, and fortune beyond measure but they are angry, unforgiving, and always on the lookout for the slightest slight.  They live in a prison of their own making.

We don’t have to be like that.  We’ve heard the good news!  Even in the midst of these difficult days we have the assurance of God’s love and forgiveness for us and for those we love.

We have the assurance of God’s presence in our lives that has brought us through the tough times of the past and will bring us through these days as well.

God’s grace to us, God’s love for us, never goes haywire and for this day and for all the days to come that may be better news than winning the lottery.  For God’s grace and love is a sure thing, a sure bet.
____________
1. St. Matthew 18:21. (VOICE) [VOICE=Ecclesia Bible Society (Nashville: TN Thomas Nelson and Son Publishers. (2012)

2.St. Matthew 18:26. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

3.Austin Sarat, “Trump Says He Wanted to Avoid COVID Panic‑But Panic Is His Whole Shtick,” The Bulwark, September 10, 2020, https://thebulwark.com/trump‑says‑he‑wanted‑to‑avoid‑covid‑panic‑but‑panic‑is‑his‑whole‑shtick/?utm_source=afternoon‑newsletter.

4.Br3. Brian K Blount, “Extravagant Forgiveness,” A Sermon For Every Sunday, September 8, 2020, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp‑content/uploads/2020/09/Brian‑Blount‑Extravagant‑Forgiveness.pd