"You Can Be a Prepper, Too" Advent 1A

Matthew 24:36-44

I can always tell when a product is moving from the fringes to the mainstream when I see it advertized on television.

So it is that I have been seeing more and more commercials from The Wise Food Company who in the past have sold their products to two niche groups: Campers who plan to spend more than a week or so in the wilderness and those who are preparing for some kind of dire emergency where they will be cut off from food and water for a long period of time.

The second group are called “doomsday preppers.”

The late comedian John Pinette was spot on theologically when he said, “As far as the end of the world goes, I believe you’re prepped.  There is nothing you can do.”

“If I wake up, look out my window and say, ‘Oh, it’s doomsday.’  I turn off the light and I go back to bed.  There is nothing to be done.”

“But my relatives, they say things like ‘We got about six months of water, some ramen noodles, and we got a lot of firearms.’

And I think to myself, ‘It’s a good thing you got those guns because after six months of nothing but ramen noodles and water, you’re going to want to use them.”

“And, they think their cellar is in a different universe. 

They say, ‘You know we got a two foot thick door.’  And I look at them and think, ‘Well, I’m sure that  will stop the 30 mega-ton nuclear blast.  I’m sure nothing will happen to you.  You’ll be safe.  You won’t be doomed like the rest of us poor suckers ... scraping for a tomato.’”

The sad part Pinette’s comedy is that I have read about people who are preppers.  They are anxious preparing for the end of the world.  And that would be fine if they wouldn’t want me to be a prepper to too. 

But Panetta was right, and strangely enough Jesus seems to be in complete agreement with this 21st century stand-up comedian.

Jesus could not have been clearer on the subject.  “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

We don’t like the idea of “not knowing.” It makes us anxious.  We want to know what is going to happen to us.  We want to know not only what tomorrow may bring but the day after that and the day after that and the day after that. 

We want our lives to be neatly planned out so that we will know what to do.  We want to know how many bags of ramen noodles we should buy thinking that if we have a six months supply of those things in our cupboard we will be less anxious.  But we won’t be. 

Even if we somehow knew with absolute certainty that the end of the world would come three weeks from next Thursday we wouldn’t be less anxious.  If anything, we would be more anxious.  “Should I make the rounds of visiting my relatives or take the trip to New Zealand I always wanted to take?  Gee, I feel guilty if I didn’t go see the relatives one last time but, gosh, I always wanted to see New Zealand.” 

What to do?  Anxiety.

Listen! You know the exact day when Christmas is coming, don’t you?  Are you any less anxious about all the stuff you have to do between now and then?

Continue reading the words of Jesus, not those who want to add to those words with their predictions, and you’ll discover what you need to be doing. 

He describes some pretty mundane stuff.  People eating dinner and perhaps having a glass of wine afterwards. Couples  preparing to get married. Men and women working at home or in their business.  Jesus is talking about people who wait for his coming not by building bomb shelters but living out their lives.

And here is where even the next images Jesus uses which seem scary and cause great anxiety can even out if you know even just a little Greek. 

We have those very scary images that have given rise to the cottage industry of “preppers”. 

Two men in the field and suddenly one is gone and the other is left behind.  Two woman grinding at the mill, one is gone and the other is left.  And we think this is some kind of disappearing act.  One moment one person is there. The next moment, poof! Gone!

I almost never do this to you but I have to share with you the original Greek word that appears in this text.  That word for “taken” is paralambanomai  [para-lamb-ban-o-my]  and is doesn’t mean “to go up” or “to meet” but “to go along with.” 

The people who are with Jesus in then end are those who have decided to follow him now.  To put him above everything else in their lives now.

I couldn’t help but thinking about this one Thanksgiving morning when Lowell and I went downtown not to attend the Thanksgiving parade, or be the first ones at the Christkindlmarket in Daley Centre but to attend worship at The First United Methodist Church - Chicago Temple. 


It is located at Clark and Washington and so swirling all around us were people frozen solid from watching the parade, people searching stall after stall of items for just the right Christmas gift and inside the church people who were not raptured (a word that never appears in scripture) but enraptured by Jesus and who wanted to have their first feast of the day with him, gathered around his table before they gathered around their own. 
There were no more than a couple of hundred of us in that place while there were thousands outside.  And while we get no extra credit for this, we wanted to “go along with Jesus” before went along with the maddening crowds.

That is what separates us. 

There are some who will be too busy with and anxious over their businesses to go along with Jesus. 

There are some who are too busy toiling at and anxious over their daily grinds to go along with Jesus. 

There are even some who are sitting at home this morning as they have for weeks, months, or even years now, anxious over the state of the church and world and complaining over how bad things are but who still refuse to go along with Jesus and work for the betterment of his kingdom here, now, in this world, which is the only world we have to live in.

In his usual roundabout way Jesus is telling us that the questions about our future need not be answered because what matters is how we are going along with him now. 

Christ is breaking into our lives repeatedly.  Not just at some unexpected moment but repeatedly, every hour, every minute, every second, every nano-second, and our job is only to keep watching for those moments so we don’t miss them.

John Pinette was in pretty good company when he gave his doomsday advice, “I’d turn off the lights and go back to bed.” 

Martin Luther said with confidence: “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” 

John Wesley when asked what he would do if he knew the world was going to end at midnight replied:  “Why, just as I intend to spend it now. I would preach this evening at Gloucester.  I would pray with my family as usual, retire to my room at 10 o’clock, commend myself to my heavenly Father and lie down to rest.”

What separates Luther, Wesley, Pinette, and I hope the rest of you from those who would anxiously stock pile water and noodles while building shelters with two foot doors is a trust that whatever is to come, whatever your future might hold, Christ will be a part of it.

That is what turns anxiety into hope, trauma into trust, and makes the future not something to dread but something to alertly anticipate knowing that you will be going along with Christ and Christ will be going along with you, every moment of time until the end of time. 

Now you're prepped.

Thanks for listening.

The Church & Miracles" - Pentecost 5b

Saint Mark 5:21–43

“The Church & Miracles”

I have never considered myself a prophet.  Neither am I a soothsayer  who can tell the future.  I couldn’t even conjure up a good magic trick for any amount of money.  But if six decades of watching the news and reading newspapers and now websites has taught me one thing it has taught me to wait until all the facts are in.

So it was on the emotionally strange Thursday we had in Chicago. In a city where the Chicago Blackhawks seem to be the only team with any kind of recent record for success when they won Lord Stanley’s Cup for the third time in six seasons it was a reason to party.  

A million or so people took leave of their senses and went downtown to watch the parade and go to the rally at Soldier Field.  They were excited and happy as they should have been.  (Though I point out again as I did the last two times the Hawks won – I am sure that some of those in the crowd who were yelling: “We’re Number 1!” and “We did it!” wouldn’t know icing the puck from icing the cake.)

But some of us, as we watched the celebration, couldn’t erase from our minds the events of the night before when a young man came to a bible study, was welcomed warmly, sat and listened to scripture, and talk of scripture for an hour, and then proceeded to shoot up the place.
It was an act of pure evil.  

That Thursday night I had an event where I knew some pastors would be present.  One in particular is a woman with a newly minted Masters of Divinity degree and ordination papers where the ink is barely dry.

She was upset over the shooting.  Only a heartless stone would not  have been.  And she worried about what she was going to preach about on Sunday.  “I’ve been immersed in the news all day and I don’t know what I am going to say about this.”  

I could guess what she was going to say because she had preached after a national tragedy before and shed more heat than light on the issue blaming all the usual societal culprits.

My prophetic words of wisdom were “It is usually a few days before I even attempt to write anything,” I said, “I like to wait and see how the whole story unfolds.”  

The facts usually get uglier but clearer as they did this time.  

The murder was a “white supremacist” with writing and plans clearly posted  a website for all the world to see.  His parents had long since separated  so his home life was unstable.  However a friend, who has been interviewed countless times, seemed to know everything he was planning.  Yet nobody did anything to stop him.

And I am not talking about governmental authorities!  I am talking about a responsible mom or dad.  I’m talking about his friends who might have told  somebody, “Did you know that my friend is ‘looking to kill a lot of people.’”  

We can’t ask government to monitor every website, nor should they.  We can’t ask government to infiltrate every deranged plot.  We can’t ask government to be the parent of every kid who comes from a broken home.  

It takes individual responsibility.  It takes parents, neighbours, girl friends, and boyfriends to act responsibly.  It takes people to take initiative to, when they notice that their white-supremacist friend friend named Dylann now has a gun to go along with his hate filled website and his desire to start a civil war, tell the police.

We can’t just stand around waiting for God to work a miracle.  Somebody has to take the incitive.  Miracles just don’t happen they are made.

Episcopal priest and professor, Barbara Brown Taylor, said “The problem with miracles is that it is hard to witness them without wanting one of your own.  Every one of us knows someone who could use a miracle, but miracles are hard to come by.”[1]

That is what today’s gospel tells us. 

The two recipients have to work to even get to Jesus.  Like the people who last Thursday jostled and endured shoving and pushing and pulling in order to see their favourite Blackhawk the crowd pressed in on Jesus.

One figure emerges from that crowd: Jaris, the leader of the synagogue makes his way through and literally throws himself at Jesus feet begging him to come and lay hands on his dear daughter who is at death’s door.

And without any fanfare Jesus just goes with him.  And they crowds follow to see what Jesus is up to next.

In that crowd is another desperate person.  Her bleeding disorder is apparently incurable.  We are told that she has spent all she has – money couldn’t help her.  She has been to countless physicians and so science and countless physicians couldn’t help her.  The two powers that figure so predominantly then and now, money and science, are of no help at all.

Both turn to Jesus.  And Jesus, he reaches across social and religious barriers to marginalised, rejected outcasts and restores them and the ones they love to wholeness welcoming them into the kingdom of God where there are no outcasts.

Professor Taylor suggests that miracles occur when “The Kingdom breaks through and for a moment or two we see how things will be – or how they really are right now in the mind of God.”

Those who were looking for miracles or answers in the Charlestown tragedy found them in the strangest of places last Thursday.  It happened in the courtroom of Chief Magistrate Judge James Gosnell who with wisdom beyond measure asked a representative of every person who was killed to speak to Roof.  Who could have predicted what happened next.

What was heard was not the irrational anger that have heard before which incites people to riot but honest expressions of hurt, pain and grief.  

Two quotes will be more than enough.

The first from Nadine Collier, daughter of Ethel Lance: “I forgive you. You took something really precious away from me. I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you and have mercy on your soul. It hurts me, it hurts a lot of people but God forgive you and I forgive you.”

And this from Alana Simmons, granddaughter of Daniel Simmons:  “Although my grandfather and the other victims died at the hands of hate, this is proof – everyone’s plea for your soul is proof they lived in love and their legacies will live in love, so hate won’t win.”[2]

“I forgive you.” Did they really say that?

Did they really say that to a young thug, who came into a church, a house of God, and for an hour was welcomed by these people of God, and then, after that hour was over opened fire on those same people and killed them?

Did the loved ones of the dead really say to the killer, “I forgive you.” 

Did they really say that?  I heard them.  And when I heard them expressing forgiveness in the midst of all they had been through.

“Whew!” I thought.  Now that’s a miracle. Thanks for listening

Endnotes:
1. Barbara Brown Taylor, Bread of Angels.  (Lanham, Maryland: Rowan and Little field Publishing Group, 1997), p.  139–140.
2. The Associated Press, “Representatives of Charleston Shooting Victims Forgive Dylan Roof.”  The Guardian.  June, 19, 2015.

"The Church & Vision" - June 21, 2015

1 Samuel 17:[1a, 4–11, 19–23] 32–49 and Saint Mark 4:35–41

Prudential Insurance has a wonderful commercial in which Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert asks people to write "life events" on blue and yellow magnets and stick them on a giant wall. The good things are written on yellow magnets and the bad ones on blue. "The results showed that the past was a pretty even mix of good and bad. Yet the future was almost all good things."

The group is asked what they make of the results. One man says, "We all want to think about positive stuff." But, a woman adds, "Realistically there will be down times."

Dr. Gilbert’s one sentence summation: "It’s great to think optimistically, but’s lets plan for whatever the future might bring."¹

We spend a lot of time planning. Our whole lives, at whatever age we are, may be spent in planning.

Parents start planning for their children’s futures before they are born. Children, willingly or (my guess is) mostly unwillingly are enrolled in all kinds of classes and sports leagues, hoping they will be the next Bryce Harper, Jonathan Toews, or Itzhak Perlman.

Then they start to plan for the future. What high school? What college? What field of study? What job? Where and how they will retire? Life can turn into one big strategy session.

The problem is that even Harvard professors and Prudential Insurance can’t plan for everything. They can’t plan for the unexpected storms that blow in while we are not looking. They can’t plan for the giant problems that may show up in our lives.

Few nations then, few nations now, are better at planning for war than Israel. They had to and have to be. Not much has changed since biblical times when "the Philistines – that warring, marauding people who lived on the coast land we now call Gaza, regularly invaded Israel to plunder and enslave it."²

To answer this threat Saul raised up quite an army. The problem was that the Philistines had an "unknown unknown" in their ranks. His name was Goliath and he was a giant.

For you Harry Potter fans think Rubeus Hagrid but with a bad attitude. For you sports fans, think an NFL linesmen times ten.

Not only was Goliath big he was massively armed. A biblical times equivalent of a nuclear weapon. But, most important of all, he was frightening.

Being afraid can stop even the best of us in our tracks. If we see or experience something that really scares us, fear is a perfectly reasonable response. But, fear can cloud our vision. It can make our thinking fuzzy. In can even freeze us in our tracks and cause us to do nothing.

That is exactly what the army of Saul did. They did nothing.

"For forty days Goliath walks down the mountain and shouts challenges and insults. And for forty days the soldiers of Israel quake in fear, wringing their hands, talking among themselves about how terrible and hopeless this all is, amplifying the fear by their talk, which has now immobilized them."³

They could not see a way around their problem. The only thing they could see was the giant. He clouded their vision. They couldn’t see past him so they thought there was no way around him.

Now here is the one thing I want you to take away from this message. I really do want you to store it in the back of your mind because someday you will need it. I hope you here will go home and watch this on YouTube so that is forever listed in your watch history. I hope our YouTube viewers will earmark this post because it has one thing in it that is very important. David was able to beat Goliath because he didn’t know any better.

He was absolutely untrained in his use of conventional warfare. In fact, the moment Saul gets the young man all armoured up he discovers that it won’t work. He can’t move. Armour limits not only his vision but his movement. If he is going to defeat the giant it is going to have to be by unconventional means.

There is New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell called: "How David Beats Goliath: When Underdogs Break the Rules." In it he says that David broke the rhythm of the of the encounter. We pay most of our attention to David’s great aim with the slingshot and forget the two things he did before.

First, says Gladwell, he sped up the encounter. He rushes his opponent. "The sudden astonishment when David sprints forward must have frozen Goliath, making him a better target,"⁴

When David didn’t approach his target slowly but ran at him, unencumbered by conventional armour and weapons he became quicker and more nimble than his opponent.

Second, and most important of all, after Goliath makes fun of him David reveals his most important asset: "You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts ... whom you have defied."⁵

What is important here is that this is the first time in a very long story anybody thought of calling on the LORD’s name. Read the whole 17th chapter of first Samuel and you’ll see it. The first and only time the LORD’s name is invoked in power is here. Right before his charge David shouts these words not only at the giant but for himself. He is reminding us who is on his side and it is nothing other than the LORD God of Hosts.

Often that is the last place we turn when a giant or a storm comes into our lives. We fail to remind ourselves to whom we belong – the LORD God of Hosts and the power that belonging entails.

The last thing the disciples do in today’s gospel, after battling the storm that has suddenly come into their lives, is look to Jesus. Waves are crashing in. The boat is being swamped and Jesus seems to be below deck, asleep, oblivious to it all.

They wake him and he does something just as audacious as David did. Instead of trying to sail the boat in a conventional way through the storm. Instead of taking command of the boat, Jesus wipes the sleep from his eyes and takes command of the situation. He sees more than just the storm. He sees an opportunity to put the power of God to work.

"Awake now, he told the wind to pipe down and said to the sea, ‘Quiet! Settle down!’ The wind ran out of breath; the sea became smooth as glass."⁶

That is the power of God we are tied too.

he story of David and Goliath and the story of Jesus stilling the storm are important to us because there will be times in all of our lives when we will feel like we are a very small boat on a very bring and rough sea. There will be times in our lives when we are feeling like we are surrounded by mountainous waves, or a problem so big it looks like Goliath, and we won’t know what to do. There will be times when all we have in our hand are the blue magnets of bad times.

It is then we must look for the new vision that God has given us in both of these stories. Sometimes we are just not going to be able to rely on all the technology or physical advantages that science has given us. Sometimes, we are going to have to act like we don’t know any better and like David rely on the power of the LORD God of hosts.

The new vision we receive in this place is unlike any we can receive anywhere else. Here we are given eyes to see the presence and power of God working in real life, to save and sustain real people. It comes when we trust ourselves to the LORD God of hosts and his new vision for our lives that comes, more often than not, in unexpected ways.

Nobody expected David to best Goliath but he did. Nobody expected Jesus’ voice really have an effect on the winds and waves when he told them to "put a muzzle on it" but it did.

We’re plugged into the power of God. And just a glimpse of that power, let alone a full-blown vision, will be enough to sustain you, and me, and the entire church against any giants or storms that may fill our lives and frighten us to death.

You and I will be able to defeat any force that comes our way when we, like David, admit that we really don’t know any better but to trust God and then listen to God say to our rushing hearts, and confused thoughts, what he said to the storm, "Peace, be still."

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts, and minds, and thoughts in the power of the living God who revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Thanks for listening.



June 21, 2015


Endnotes
1. From the transcript of the Prudential commercial, "The Magnet Experiment."

2. Dr. Fred R. Anderson, "The Slingshot Gospel." The Madison Avenue Pulpit. June 24, 2014.

3. Walter Bruggemann, David’s Truth. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2002), p. 35.

4. Malcolm Gladwell, "How David Beats Goliath: When Underdogs Break the Rules." The New Yorker. May 11, 2009.

5. 1 Samuel 17:45. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

6. St. Mark 4:39-40. (MSG) [MSG=The Message]

"Choosing to Stay Outside" - Philippians 4:1–9 and Saint Matthew 22:1–14

For Max Schultz’s fifteenth Birthday his parents decided to treat the young lad and some of his friends to an evening in Philadelphia that included an overnighter at the upscale Sheraton Society Hill Hotel. By all account Max and his friends all behaved admirably.

Several floors below however, in the hotel’s atrium lobby a hockey game quality fight broke out between two wedding parties. It was reported that one of the weddings booked at the hotel that evening had a cash bar while the other did not. One does not have to have a degree in hotel/motel management to wonder how that turned out. When it was discovered that guests from the " cash bar" wedding were availing themselves of the free libations offered just in the other room more than fisticuffs erupted. It was a full-blown battle royal involving more than 100 guests from both weddings.

Some of us have seen this because Max did what any fifteen year old, but no adult that I know of, thought to do. Max grabbed his cell-phone, and started the video recorder app, and then posted it for everyone to see on YouTube™ . He captured a scene of pure pandemonium that, were it not for Max’s play-by-play, could have been right out of a Hollywood comedy.

Men in suits and tuxedos, women in formals were involved in this " bench-clearing-brawl." The police rushed in batons and tazers. Some punches missed by miles but some landed. One in particular caught Max’s attention, causing him to exclaim, " Did they just deck the bride?" Indeed Max was right as a woman in a white wedding dress took one to the chin and fell to the floor.

It is quite a video and while it made tens of thousands of YouTube viewers, including myself, laugh out loud I am sure than none of the guests at either wedding, especially those arrested, were laughing or have laughed about it even to this day.

Jesus might have been a little proud of this wedding because he once created a story, right off the top of his head, about one that was just as crazy.
 It was our Gospel reading for today and I have to quickly point out that this wedding never actually happened, it was the product of Jesus’ fertile imagination.

Biblical scholars, who have nothing better to do with their lives, have spent enormous time speculating about whether this is a parable or allegory. Without turning this into an English literature class, you all remember that in an allegory all the characters or details represent something else.

So, in this case the king would be God. The banquet would be life in God’s kingdom given in honour of his son, Jesus. The messengers would be the prophets who issue invitations to the perennial fall guys – the scribes and the pharisees – who turn them down. The allegory breaks down for me when those invited kill some of the messengers who bring the invitation and in an act of obvious over retaliation the king sends in troops and burns their town to the ground. Finally, God seems to be acting more like " The Godfather" when he takes one of the guests and throws him out with the trash.

I think this is a pure parable because, where it an allegory it would be a terrible one and it would leave us off the hook. And, as I have said to you many times, Jesus does not leave us off the hook. This is a parable and it is a parable that is as perfect for our day as it was his.||

For instance, most recent polling done by the Pew Research Religion and Public Life project found that: "Nearly three-quarters of the public (72%) now thinks religion is losing influence in American life, up 5 percentage points from 2010 to the highest level in Pew Research polling over the past decade. And most people who say religion's influence is waning see this as a bad thing."¹

While in the same report and increasing number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.

This means that every week, in countless places and countless ways, the king is giving a banquet, and people have better things to do.

We know who they are and what they are doing. They’re bowling, or boating, or golfing, or fishing, or sleeping, or immersed in the Sunday political talk shows all the while bemoaning the fact that religious influence is waning.

Do you see the same inconsistency here as shown by those invited by the king in Jesus’ story? They had other things to do. They had more pressing business to carry out. The invitation was an imposition. Their lives are full of more personal concerns that they think are more important than the king’s invitation. It’s not that they can’t come it is just that they don’t want to. But by not coming they dishonour the king.

It has been speculated that perhaps the king was unpopular and this was a way to get back at him. Most of us could understand this.

There is always a tendency on our part to try to get even by staying away. Something has happened to make us angry with another person in the church so we lock ourselves behind our doors and really do say to ourselves, " Boy those people at the banquet must be having a lousy time because I am not there. I wonder if they are wondering where I am?"

Or, and this is the saddest thing of all. Troubles come to our lives and we decide that we’re not going to have anything to do with God or God’s banquet anymore. " We’ll show, God. We’re going to be mad at him and stay away from this banquet God throws for us every week because we’ve been hurt or are hurting and we want God to know it."

Wise people do just the opposite. When disaster strikes their lives they don’t move away from God they move toward God. Maybe they turn back to the faith that they once held, never really lost, but also never really maintained. Maybe they show up at the banquet hall and are treated like the long lost friends that they are as they feel the warm embrace of a new community or old friends who really do love and care about them.

What we cannot miss in Jesus parable is the absolutely crazy part of the kings invitation. He scratches out the words, " black tie only" and tells his servants, " ‘ Now go out to the street corners and invite everyone you see.’

" So the servants did, and brought in all they could find, good and bad alike; and the banquet hall was filled with guests."²

This new invitation is issued to everybody both good and bad.

Those people who never thought they would see the inside of a king’s banquet hall in a million years were welcomed. And the good? Maybe, some of those good people where ones who had turned down the king’s original invitation but had a change of heart. Maybe they looked back over the totality of their life with the king and said, " Hey! The guy wasn’t all that bad. Let’s give him a second chance." And when they did, they were welcomed with open arms and open hearts.

But, there is always one wiseacre is every crowd, and even he is addressed by the king as " Friend." This guy got his invitation and didn’t even bother to put on his wedding garment.

I could quote boring theologians at length about what this is all about but instead I will share a brief internet conversation between Lowell’s cousin, Aaron Wester, who writes a fashion blog called " The Modern Otter" and his mother.

His mother bragged on her Facebook page that she had worn her pair of Converse tennis shoes to the Symphony and " when it came time to walk home I felt like a woman 20 years younger than myself. Practically running past those women teetering on little heals and grimacing in pain"

To which her younger and much hipper son replied, " I don’t believe it is right ... there are certain institutions that should be elevated. There is a certain respect due ... the work happening on the stage."

Aaron got it right. To wear a t-shirt and dirty jeans to a party thrown by a king shows no small amount of disrespect to the host – especially if the party is in a palace and the host is a king.

But I don’t think that Jesus is trying to make a fashion statement here. I don’t think he’s talking so much about what you are wearing on the outside but what you are wearing on the inside.

If you show up at the king’s castle looking for a fight. If you show up, like a guest at a Philadelphia wedding, waiting for something to happen so that you can turn a banquet into a brawl then you are always going to be on the outside looking in. You are always going to be on guard for the slightest slight, the minor misdeed, that can turn a person who is so kindly disposed to you that they call you " friend" into an enemy. And the weeping and gnashing of teeth will be your fault, not theirs.
 The good news is that those of you who have gathered this day is that you have accepted the king’s invitation. And even those of you who are watching on your computers or reading these words via our weekly mailing are acknowledging that you need what the king has to offer.

You may have been battling God for awhile. You still may not be sure about him. You may wonder if you even have a place in his banquet hall anymore. But the assurance is that if you want it, it is still there. There is room for everybody at God’s great banquet.

And Saint Paul might just give us the best clue of all about what your wedding garb should look like. He isn’t talking about your shoes, or your shirt, or your blouse or your tie. He’s talking about your mind set. Don’t think about something that happened so long ago that you can hardly remember the details. Don’t think about all the trouble you might have had in your life. Rather, Saint Paul suggests: " Fix your thoughts on what is true and good and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely, and dwell on the fine, good things in others. Think about all you can praise God for and be glad about."3

Or, if you can’t remember all that, remember what Auntie Mame once said, " Live! Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!"

Christ doesn’t want you slugging it out in the lobbies of life. He doesn’t want you " weeping and gnashing your teeth" out by the trash. He doesn’t want you to " starve to death" emotionally and spiritually. Christ wants you to live!

And to do so all you have to do is accept his invitation to come inside. Come to Christ’s banquet and live!

Thanks for listening.

_____________________

Endnotes:

1,   Pew Research Group, " Public Sees Religion’s Influence Waning." September 22, 2014.
2.   St. Matthew 22:9-10. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible]
3. Philippians 4:9. (TLB)

"Pity the Angels" - Revelation 12:7–12 and Saint Matthew 21:33–46

And war broke out in heaven..."[1]

If ever there was a line in scripture designed to make people – especially people of our day – sit up and take notice that was it. "

In heaven too?" we might ask as a war weary world looks again to the middle east and sees the same battles being waged among the same people who have been waging them for the last decade.

We look and we do not understand. We do not understand the difference between Shiite and Sunni. We wonder if even they understand.

The capitalists among us, of which I count myself as one, shake our heads and wonder why they don’t work together to build rather than destroy? Their countries have great climates. They have historical sites that would draw tourists by the thousands if not hundreds of thousands. "

"Hey! Hey!" we want to shout, " there is money to be made here people. Lots of money! From oil! From tourism! There is enough for all if you would just put down your guns and stop trying to blow each other to smithereens."

And now we hear, in scripture no less, that a war once broke out in heaven. It is a war of almost mythological proportions between the angels and a dragon. The good news in this story, that most biblical scholars believe is a myth, is that the angels prevail. The dragon was defeated! The angels win and cast the beast out of heaven.

It is the age old struggle of the epic battle between good and evil and in literature, certainly more often than in life, good wins out.

That is the way we want it to be. That is the way we hope it is in our time,

Rick Marshall, was a writer for Disney and an editor at Marvel Comics, who admits that he " spent a lot of time trafficking in the contemporary versions of civilizations’ epic confrontations and traditional fairy tales."

"But, I have to report that I wondered during my Marvel days, why millions of readers were so invested in superheroes, forever asking " what if?" about characters with super powers, invincibility, the ability to defy nature, fighting life-threatening foes and defeating evil, as good as good guys can be … but how so many of those young (and older) readers could be indifferent about Jesus."^[2]

That may also be why people are drawn to angels over Jesus -- at least of the Hallmark variety. They are the quintessential winged good guys who protect us when they function as our guardians, and find us good parking spots when they are functioning as our G.P.S. devices. They would never get their hands dirty, much less bloody, in a battle for territory. And, if they did, those would not be the angels we would want to purchase to hang around our neck as costume jewelry or keep in our curio cabinets.

It also may be why people do battle to keep the real Jesus out of their lives.

For some it is just easier and I understand them. I actually understand them better than fiercely fundamentalist Christians. In fact, I gravitate to their kind even though I am somewhat disappointed in them.

For instance, one of my intellectual heros is Pulitzer Prize winning columnist George F. Will who, up until last week, I thought was an Episcopalian. Turns out that even though Will majored in religion in college he describes himself now as an " amiable, low-voltage atheist."[3]

Only George F. Will could come up with the phrase, " amiable, low-voltage atheist" and in so doing also give us a huge clue as to why wars break out if not in heaven, at least on earth.

They break out when people, nations, tribes or cultures become less than amicable, high-voltage groups – holding on to land, political positions, religious affiliations, no matter what the cost.

Take the tenants in today’s parable who certainly were no angels.

They had made a deal with the landowner that seemed at first to be not only fair but friendly. They would work the land for him – not without pay but certainly not for 100 percent of the profits. The problem is that somewhere along the line they got to believing the land and crops belonged to them.

It’s a strange little leap in logic but one we make all the time. We look over our lives, our accomplishments, our treasures, and begin to believe that since we have worked hard for them they belong to us.

In most cases, you have worked very hard for what you have. I know precious few people who were born with silver-spoons in their mouths. And, even those people of means who I do know are not on a beach in Greece somewhere drinking Ouzo but are going to work at something, somewhere, everyday.

We’re the workers in the vineyard and our only requirement is to remember that the vineyard doesn’t belong to us it belongs to God.

That’s what the servants in today’s parable forgot and the Pharisee’s (who are not the bad guys here but rather the voices of truth) tell what happens to people who will go to any lengths to keep what belongs to them – up to and including murder. They end up with nothing.

Think of the lands in which wars have been fought. Think of those pictures we see every evening on the news. One word sums it all up: rubble.

Think of churches where people come to the believe that it belongs to them and their kind. They become social clubs dedicated to people who are only like us no matter what the us might be. Strangers are viewed as people whose strange ideas just might upset our tried and true ways of doing things even if those paths have lead to a desolate landscape barren of new ideas.

Pastors sometimes are put in the position not of leaders but adversaries who are to be opposed at all costs.

Church Council is not seen as a place where people go to think creatively on how to solve problems but a place where people go to create problems.

And what happens to nations and institutions whose deepest desire it is only to do battle with one another. God takes what they have away from them and gives it to others who will use it wisely.

Some of those who have toiled so hard in the church for years only to come to believe it was their own sometimes find themselves in exile wondering what is going in on the inside but still choosing to remain on the outside.

The problem with all of Jesus’ parables is that much as we would wish they are not about those people way back then they are about us. They are not about just the people in his original audience, they are about you and me.

They are warnings to us that war can break out at any time in any place – from heaven to earth – whenever we begin to think that any part of heaven or earth is ours and ours alone.

Pity the angels and the God they serve who have to spend enormous time and effort to keep us from destroying our neighbours and eventually ourselves.

Pity them, but then follow them, God and God’s angels, I mean. For what they are telling us is simple.

Work as hard as you can in this world that God has given you, but work for the causes God cherishes – justice, love and peace – otherwise you shall have none.

Work for your church, your family, your friends, your neighbours, your vocation, yourselves but know that all of them, every single one belongs to God.

Work for the cause of Christ but do so knowing that Christ isn’t just your personal Saviour but the redeemer of the world.

Be amiable to each other but not indifferent to the cause of Christ which is nothing less than bringing all of us under his reign and rule until we gather as one around his throne and feel the touch of angel’s wings bringing us finally what we have longed for all along, God’s great heavenly peace.

Work until the day the promise we sing about every Christmas is realized because " man, at war with man, hears not the love song which they bring. So, hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing."

Thanks for listening for them and to me.

__________

Endnotes:
1. Revelation 12:7. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
2. Rick Marshall, " Pity the Angels." Www.realclearreligion.com September 22, 2014.
3. Nicholas G. Hann, III, " George F. Will: The RealClearReligion Interview." www.realclearreligion.com. September 22, 2014.

"Task Rabbits" - Philippians 2:1–13 and Saint Matthew 21:23–32

Everybody here knows what outsourcing is. It is something that we used to think only large companies do but, I hope you realize that, small companies and individuals have also been doing it for years.

Mark Twain wrote about a form of outsourcing in a famous scene from Tom Sawyer. Remember? Tom, is ordered by as his aunt Polly to whitewash her fence on a beautiful summer’s day just made for swimming. Tom’s friend Ben comes along and Tom convinces him that he likes whitewashing the fence so much that there is nothing he would rather be doing at that particular moment. Ben begs Tom to let him try and Tom hands him a brush. Twain writes:

The retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with -- and so on, and so on, hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth.[1]

Tom knew how to outsource – except that he made money at it. For most of us hiring a landscaper, a cleaning person, a plumber costs money. And if it is a skilled trade it can cost lots of money. 

That is why I was so intrigued when I heard columnist Joel Stein talk about how he had outsourced his entire life. He did it through two websites called TaskRabbit™ and Fiverr® . As Stein writes:

Got some shopping you want to do, but just don’t have the time? A site like TaskRabbit can help you find someone else to handle it at rock-bottom prices.

If your needs are more design or technical ... that’s not a problem either, on Fiverr you can get a 500 word article written or a graphic drawn for five bucks.[2]

Stein went a little overboard. He bought a logo, a press release, a ukulele jingle, 500 posters spread through-out the University of Chicago campus, a translation of his column into Chinese and a rap song. He also outsourced the writing of one of his columns of which he said, " I believe, per amount of work I put in, this is my best column ever."

We've just read the parable and it is pretty simple but a little context will be helpful.  Jesus had just
wreaked havoc in the temple in the famous scene from Palm Sunday. The religious leaders are pretty miffed – as we would be if somebody came in started to upset the tables and chairs of this place. They question his authority, and in true
rabbinical form, Jesus turns their question back on them with one they cannot answer without risking the ire of the people.
The parable Jesus leaves them and us to ponder is about two sons who both, in their own way, begin to have second thoughts about doing the will of their father.

For some, deciding to do something or not, is more than saying to yourself " I need a TaskRabbit to help me with my lawn. Or, maybe a Fiverr can punch up my writing a bit." It is a decision that has implications far greater than one would expect.

You simply can’t outsource being a Christian. I read an article by Niki Whiting who several years ago walked away from church to follow her own spiritual path. She said " no" to the father’s invitation to follow. But now she misses it. She misses getting lost in the beautiful liturgy, the rhythm and flow of the services, the chants and the singing, even the incense.

She was a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church but now is practising her faith at home, in isolation. And what she misses most is the kindness of the people who surrounded her in worship and the beauty of the space – especially the altar. She writes:

It’s different from my altar, which I clean once a month. It’s different because my altar shares space with shoes and bags of outgrown baby clothes waiting to be donated to Goodwill. It’s different because sometimes when I’m chanting in a Christian liturgy I can feel the weight of two millenia of believers chanting with me.[3]

Do you have the feeling that someday Niki just might be back? Do you have the feeling she is going to be one of the brothers and sisters we all know who say " no" to God only to rethink their position and, before they know it, find themselves again working in the vineyard of their Heavenly Father.

It happens all the time you know. It happened to Pastor Bob Fuquay, Senior Minister at Saint Luke’s United Methodist Church in Indianapolis.

For a brief moment in his life he took an interest in alpine climbing so his wife Susan sent him to a climbing school because " if I was going to risk my life it might be good to get some training. Besides, my life insurance wasn’t paid up."

So off he went to Washington State where he was to spend a week on a glacier in the Cascades learning how to be a mountain climber.

On his first morning at the Starbucks he met a couple of his fellow would be mountaineers. A guy from New York, significantly bigger than Pastor Fuquay, turned to him and said.

" Okay, I understand you’re a pastor. Is that right?" I could tell by his tone he was not excited about this possibility. I said, " As a matter of fact I am." He continued, " Well, let me get this straight right now. I don’t want to hear a bunch of religious stuff all week. Got that? My girlfriend and I are on vacation, and we don’t want to be preached to!"

I responded, " It’s a deal. I’m on vacation and I don’t feel like preaching." He swallowed a shot of espresso like it was whiskey and then ordered a extra large dark roast. This was not someone to mess with. I would learn later that he was Jewish but not active in his faith.

You probably know what is coming. The group honed their climbing skills in twelve-hour days until their instructors felt they were ready to take on the summit of a local peak.
Pastor Fugual reported. " Right before we departed the guy from New York said, ‘ Wait! Before we start we need the Rev to say a prayer.’ Yes, this was the same guy who threatened me five days earlier about preaching. I just about fell out of my harness! A prayer request from this guy?"[4]

That may sound like a whitewash job where the good Reverend was being used as a TaskRabbitt. " Here Padre, for a fiver will you say a prayer before we run the risk of falling off a mountain?"

Tempted as we might we can’t use God as our Taskrabbit, there when we need a little help and then asking God to mind God’s own business when we don’t. Neither can we outsource our faith and we certainly can’t say one thing and do another as far as our relationship to God goes. The world is full of people who can say yes. What God wants, what God requires, what God demands are people who can live yes.

With Jesus there is always a surprise. He says to those who think they have their religious act together that they too have some decisions to make, too. He says to us, as we may be tempted to judge Niki and her ramshackle altar that looks like it is about to host a garage sale rather than the presence of the living God, don’t be so quick to come to any conclusions. She knows she’s missing something and today’s " no" may be tomorrow’s " yes".

He says to us who might judge the guy shaking in his boots at the foot of a mountain, don’t be too quick to come to a final conclusion. He may look like all he has is a Fiverr faith as he gazes up at the climb before him and decides he might just need a little Jesus right now. But, who knows, this one yes may be just the beginning of a life of yeses.
 The problem with Jesus is that he keeps welcoming people that good upstanding folk would rather not be around. He keeps welcoming people whose view of life, and the life of faith, we can’t even begin to comprehend. He keeps welcoming people like you and like me. And, because we have been welcomed, we can’t pawn the job of welcoming others off on someone else.

A lot of people think that they can TaskRabbit their faith off on another – their parents, their cousins, their aunts or uncles. A lot of people approach their faith like the people who use Fiverr – its great to use it when they need it but otherwise it is enough to know it is there when, or if, they will ever need it again.

But God never gives the task of saving our lives to anyone else. God takes the initiative and God will not, God does not rest until " at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow ... and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."[5]

That is not a task that can be hired out but it something that all of us need to be about everyday – confess Christ as Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Thanks for listening.

___________

Endnotes:

1.  Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer. (New York: Barnes and Noble Classic Series,2003), p. 32.
2.  Joel Stein, " Here’s What Happened When I Outsourced My Entire Life." Time. September 11, 2014.
3.  Niki Whiting, " What I Miss About Being a Christian." www.realclearreligion.com. September 14, 2014.
4.  The Rev’d Robert Fuquay, " The God We Can Know." www.realclearreligion.com. September 17, 2014.
5.  Philippians 2:10. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible]