"Light the Way" - Pentecost 22A

 

Joshua 24:1 & 14-15

Saint Matthew 25:1–13

I don’t know about you but if I live to be 1,000 I hope I never hear the words, “to close to call” ever again.  I has been a harrowing week in a harrowing year.

No matter what side you are on it has been like a visit to Disneyland. There have been roller-coaster rides of emotions with one moment being up and the next being down followed by excruciatingly long waits.  It’s the waiting that was the hard part.

We can tolerate a little waiting.  Some of us can even remember the year when we waited 36 days until the Supreme Court decision in which President George W. Bush’s victory over Vice-President Al Gore was verified.  We remember the wait but we had to be reminded of Mr. Gore’s graciousness in defeat when he said: “history gives us many examples of contests as hotly debated, as fiercely fought, with their own challenges to the popular will.

Other disputes have dragged on for weeks before reaching resolution. And each time, both the victor and the vanquished have accepted the result peacefully and in the spirit of reconciliation.  So let it be with us.

I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country.1

 That is where we are at now.  The election has been decided after a difficult week of waiting, watching, and for some of us constantly checking our Twitter feeds for the latest update.  It has just been more waiting in a year of waiting.  Waiting for the pandemic to end and discovering that at one moment we are making progress while at the next we seem to be sliding backward.  Waiting for jobs to come back.  Waiting for schools to open.  Waiting for congregational singing to return to our churches. Waiting for word on the health of people we love.

We don’t wait well.  

Jesus once told a story about that.  It was remembered by the gospel writer because the original readers were anxiously waiting for Jesus to return at any moment to establish his reign and make all things new. They were growing impatient, restless, about to give up and so he told them a story to remind them of the need to be ready and never forsake the faith.

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. 

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 ever 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 honor/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.

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.  These bridesmaids 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.’”2

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.

And so the message of Jesus’ parable is 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.”3

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.

There is little doubt that for the original audience the was a parable about judgement, pure judgement.  For us, in our day, we need something else.

Bishop Yehiel Currey wrote wisely and well in a letter he sent to members of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod.

As we look closely ...we see clearly that, as a society (and likewise as a church), we remain polarized and polarizing, separated, unable to perceive our neighbors, hear our neighbors’ pains, view our neighbors as humans like us, and invite them into the life-saving work of Christian community.  Like society, we the church remain possessed by a spirit that disallows us from encountering and responding to our neighbors with attentiveness, authenticity, and love.

 Conservative columnist Erick Erickson reminded his readers last Wednesday.

Both sides are convinced that if their guy loses, the country is going to hell in a handbasket. I assure you, despite the hysteria, that is not really the case. But it is the case that someone in your community is falling through the cracks and you can help.

Whoever becomes President and whichever party controls the Senate or your state legislature will be unable to fix those things. They will have zero impact in any meaningful way on the lives of those people.

We have all obsessed with this election. We are all fretful. We all have an interest in it. But the homeless, the battered wife, the child, the hungry, and the isolated do not need a president, a senator, or a congressman. They all need your commitment to your local community. They need a neighbor’s love. . . .4

They need us to bear the light for them and with them.  For as the hymn writer puts it. “It’s not with swords loud clashing, or roll of stirring drums, but deeds of love and mercy, God’s heavenly kingdom comes.”

Now is our time to be light-bearer and light sharers for it is then we will be the kind of people the kingdom of heaven is made.

____________

1. CBSNews.com staff, “Text Of Gore's Concession Speech,” CBS News (CBS Interactive, December 14, 2000), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/text-of-gores-concession-speech/.

2. St. Matthew 25:9.  (MSG) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2018).

3. Aimee Moiso, “Matthew 25:1-13. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with the World,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Teaching 3 (Louisville, KY: Westminister | John Knox Press, 2020): pp. 473-474.

4. Erick-Woods Erickson, “Can I Have Your Attention for a Minute, Please?,” Erick Erickson's Confessions of a Political Junkie, November 3, 2020), https://ewerickson.substack.com/p/can-i-have-your-attention-for-a-minute.

"Saints" Pentecost 22A

 I John 3:1–3

Saint Matthew 5:1–12

Recently a friend and a very fine pastor in the ELCA posted on his Facebook  page this little bit of doggerel: “Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November, all the rest have 31, except any month in 2020 all of which have 5,328.”

This year we’ve dealt with a pandemic, hurricanes, wildfires, murder hornets, political turmoil, economic turmoil, and online church. Parents and teachers struggle to know how to care for their children, pastors struggle to know how to care for their parishioners, and none of us knows completely what the future holds.1

 Tom Hanks proved he was as good a writer as an actor in a collection of short stories called Uncommon Type.  In one of the stories he writes about man who “has a short, stressful relationship with a hyperactive woman: ‘Being Anna’s boyfriend was like training to be a Navy SEAL while working full-time in an Amazon fulfillment center in the Oklahoma Panhandle in tornado season.’”2

That sums up what this year has been like for “those of us who have led worship in empty churches, for those who have faithfully attended church from their living rooms, to those who have kept daily prayers, to those who have lost jobs, freedoms, and loved ones to the pandemic, to all of those who go through”3 the seemingly endless days of 2020.

Jesus comes to people just like you and me with words of comfort and assurance.

As a preacher I can imagine this scene from Jesus’ perspective. I can see the people’s reactions with smiles or tears of recognition as one person after another turns to their neighbours and says: “He’s talking about me!  This man is talking about where I am in my life!”

Up until this dreadful year we may not have seen ourselves in much of what Jesus was saying.  We may have exhibited some of those characteristic at one time or another but if this year has taught us anything it is that everything we value can be ripped away from us by something so small it can only be viewed under a microscope.  Now we know, in the words of the hymn writer, “all the vain things that charm us most” can disappear so fast that we might even feel the need to “tie-one-on” only to discover that all the saloons are closed.

Now, like it or not, we are in that crowd with Jesus hanging on his every word and discovering what he really means.  

The Beatitudes, as we have come to refer to them are not The Be Happy Attitudes as Robert Schuller once called them in the title of a book.  They are not something we can conjure up. They are not a product of our wishful thinking.

The Beatitudes are not a sacred checklist to organize and download into a Google calendar.  The Beatitudes reflect who is honored and exalted in God’s eyes. It is not that being poor in spirit earns the kingdom of heaven or being merciful means that mercy lands on your doorstep.  God’s purposes are to lift up those who are burdened and broken. The Beatitudes are not about trying to “get on the list.” The Beatitudes reflect what God values, not how to curry God’s favour. [Following them] we begin to value what God values. We come to honor what God honors.4

 That is what it means to be a saint.  

We don’t think of ourselves as saints because of all of the baggage associated with the word.  Saints are celebrated with statues and appear in stained glass windows.  We’ll be lucky if our relatives and friends will be willing to pay for an obituary in the Beacon.  

Saints live exemplary lives; ours by comparison are quite ordinary. 

Saints do great heroic deeds; ours may be only only the deeds done in daily living.

Saints are known by their unwavering devotion but sometimes our faith, in the words of another hymn writer, causes us to “tremble, tremble, tremble.”

Yet we had something in common with them and the author of the epistle of John tells us what it is.  “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”5 “Think of it!” another paraphrase of this passage virtually shouts, “we really are!”6

All those people we lit candles for this morning they were children of God.  All of those people you will light a candle for later in the chapel, they were children of God.  All of those whom you are closing your eyes for now and remembering, they were children of God.

They followed Christ in this world knowing that death would not be the final word spoken about them.

We follow believing that things will not always be as they are now. We follow believing that we will not always be surrounded by a shadow of a death toll that grows by the day.  We follow knowing that we are children of God and our lives are in God’s hands.  We follow, even amidst the tumult and uncertainty of an upcoming election believing that we  live with one foot in this world and one foot in the kingdom of God.

In the next few day and weeks it might be more emotionally and spiritually healthy for us to lean into the foot that rests in the kingdom of God.  To turn off the television, read a book, rest awhile, shut off all of those talking heads who have both feet firmly planted in the world and do something that reminds ourselves that are are children of God for that is what you are even in what seems to be the longest year of your life.

____________

1. Charles  Lane Cowen, “Holy! Holy! Holy!,” Modern Metanoia (modernmetanoia.org, October 19, 2020), https://modernmetanoia.org/tag/allsaintsday/.

2. George Will, “Opinion | The Coming Decade of Democratic Dominance,” The Washington Post (WP Company, October 28, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-coming-decade-of-democratic-dominance/2020/10/27/538d4cb2-188e-11eb-82db-60b15c874105_story.html.

3. Cowen, loc cit.

4. Sammy G. Alfaro, “Saint Matthew 5:1-13. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture.” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Teaching 3 (Louisville, KY: Westminister | John Knox Press, 2020): pp. 437-439.

5. 1 John 3:1. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

6. 1 John 3:1. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible]

"What's Important" - Pentecost 21A

 

The 503rd Anniversary of the Reformation

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Saint Matthew 22:34-46

If there is anything these past ten months of pandemic has forced  us to do is decide what is important and what is not.

Is it important that we go out for dinner, gather at a house party with friends, attend a concert, play or sporting event or not?  We’ve had to decide if the wedding we were planning to attend or, for some couples even have, is worth the risk to family and friends.  

Even as a church we have struggled are struggling still with just how important is it to gather for worship.  There is no doubt that we want to it is just that we wonder if it is safe.

There is a certain level of emotional maturity to has to be exhibited by people of every age in realizing that we can’t always do what we want to do when we want to do it.  Emotional maturity forces us to ask if what I want to do safe.  And true emotional maturity requires us to ask not only is it safe for me but is it safe for those friends and strangers around me.  

Every parent of a teenage son or daughter has had to say to their offspring at one time or another: “You may want to do it but you can’t.” And that is a struggle that we face as individuals, as a society, and even as a congregation.

Is coming together safe?  Should we continue to gather in person or would it be better to only offer online worship experiences?  Will we be like restaurants open at limited capacity one Sunday only to be closed the next.  Will we get confused, frustrated, fatigued?  Will we want to throw caution to the wind, rip off our masks, sing at the top of our lungs and say, “It the Lord wants me let him take me!”  Or will we wait it out patiently?

The question before us is simply what is important.  The question put to Jesus in today’s gospel can help us answer the “what’s important” question that has been  before us throughout the year 2020.

Jesus and the leaders of his day have been asking the same question of each other ever since he began his ministry.  

Mostly Jesus has been the one doing the asking.  He heals people whenever the need arises be it on the Sabaoth or not asking, “What’s more important keeping the law or alleviating someone’s suffering?”  He talks and dines with anybody and everybody who comes his way and in so doing asks, “Is it really important that there be insiders and outsiders?”

It is no wonder that the leaders wonder to themselves, “What is important to this guy?  What truths does he hold to?  Where are his guardrails?”  

The Pharisees have failed to figure Jesus out.  The Sadducees haven’t done much better and so a lawyer tries his hand.  Remember this is long before one the characters in Shakespear’s play Henry VI suggests that one of the ways the band of pretenders to the throne can do to protect their country is: “The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.”1

Jesus doesn’t appear willing to do even this because he treats the learned man’s question with respect giving him a direct answer.  

You want to know what’s the most important, what matters to God, out of all that God commanded what’s the biggie, the first? It’s exactly the command that God said to bind on your arms and your forehead for prayers so that it’s as close to your mind as possible, so that you can’t forget it even if you tried: Love God with all you’ve got to love God. God gave you heart and soul and mind for that reason: so that you’d be able to love God. “This is the first and greatest commandment,” Jesus says.

We can almost hear the Pharisees listening in as their lawyer examines Jesus start to sigh as Jesus gives this answer. It must be what they were hoping to hear, a nice traditional answer, hearkening back to one of their favorite passages.

Jesus continues, “And the second is like it,”  raising some eyebrows. Didn’t the lawyer only ask him which was the greatest? What’s he mean, “the second?"

The second is, “You must love your neighbor as you love yourself”. The pharisees sigh a second sigh of relief. He’s just quoting Leviticus. He knows Israel’s scriptures, quotes the Torah. Maybe he’s not such a novel and dangerous teacher after all.

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?

 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.  

That’s why some churches don’t make much of Reformation Sunday any longer.  It was only used to be another way of dividing Christians one from another. We try not to do that anymore because there are enough divisions already in the world.  

Jesus upped the anti of what’s important by adding this “loving our neighbour” business.  We may like our neighbours!  We may tolerate our neighbours! We may wave to them over the fence on occasion, but love them? 

The guy with the bigger than a billboard yard sign with the name of a candidate I oppose if not downright hate, I’m supposed to love him?  The family down the block who seems to have a never ending summer of barbeques (even in an age of Covid!) all accompanied by the boom, boom, boom of loud music, I’m supposed to love them?  The person at work who is a pain, them?  “Yes,” Jesus says, “Them.”

And we say, “Wouldn’t it have been better if you would have stuck with the original ten commandments rather than adding this condition?”  

In his commentary biblical scholar Douglas Hare reminds us:

In an age when the word 'love' is greatly abused, it is important to remember that the primary component of biblical love is not affection but commitment. Warm feelings of gratitude may fill our consciousness as we consider all that God has done for us, but it is not warm feelings that Deuteronomy demands of us but rather stubborn, unwavering commitment. Similarly, to love our neighbor, including our enemies, does not mean that we must feel affection for them. To love the neighbor is to imitate God by taking their needs seriously.3

 That kind of love calls us to speak out when we see a neighbour hurt, or devalued, or treated poorly because, like them or not, we see them as a child of God deserving of love, and care, and compassion.

That is something that is so hard it can’t just be somewhere in writing it has to be in the words of Jeremiah: 

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.4

 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."5  I admire not only what Tefillins stand for but the courage of those who wear them.

What they represent is just like Jesus said. Love of God and Love of neighbour. Love with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.  As Dr. James Howell reminds us:

God is just pivoting around you, asking you to love God with every fiber of your being, not casually, not when it’s convenient, or just when there’s trouble.  To be sure they understood God wishes to be loved all day long, every day, in everything.”6

And God wishes us to show that love to each other as well.

 Times like these remind us again of what is important. 

Jesus never said that if we loved him he would take away any challenge but he reminds us that we do not face these challenges on our own because we know that on our own because we know that on our own we don’t have any chance of facing what life throws at us.  No one can, or should, ever say, “I alone can do it.” 

We need to remember that God is with us and God will show us how to face adversities step by step, day by day, linked to Jesus.  And God has given us each other – brothers and sisters – trying to follow God by staying close to Jesus.

Today Jesus has reminded us to hang on to these two most important things during these times and at all times: To love God with all of our heart, and soul, and mind and strength. And to love our neighbours as ourselves.  

All the law and the profits hang on these two commandments for they remind us what is important now and forever. 

____________

1. William Shakespear, Henry VI.

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

3. Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew: Interpretation: a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 260.

4. Jeremiah 31:31 & 33. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

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

6. James  C. Howell, “What Can We Say October 25? 21st after Pentecost,” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions, January 1, 1970, http://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.

"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.