No, THIS is the worst parable ever

A Sermon preached via Facebook Live Broadcast

Sirach 26:10: The Headstrong Daughter

Pentecost XIV - Proper 23 A

October 10, 2020

 

Last year – in September, 2019 – I preached a sermon I titled, “The Worst Parable Ever.” It was The Parable of the Shrewd (or, Crooked) Manager from Luke’s gospel.

 

I was wrong. That was not the worst parable ever. It was only one of the worst parables ever. 

 

Actually, THIS is the worst parable ever. This one right here: Matthew’s parable of the Wedding Banquet. (Matthew 22:1-14)

 

If you wrestle with this parable through the night, I can assure you that you’ll wake up in the morning limping, just like Jacob who wrestled with the angel. You may even have a headache from banging your head against the rock that was your pillow.

 

Seriously. Well, I tried to warn you two weeks ago about the upcoming gospels from here to the Feast of Christ the King just six weeks from now. 

 

Unfortunately, our minds are on the pandemic and whether the COVID will rob us of a full NFL season, and, perhaps, how to celebrate a safely distanced Oktoberfest, or whether or not Halloween masks this year will provide adequate prevention from COVID transmission and infection. 

 

Oh, and then there’s the matter of the presidential election. Indeed. 

 

So, who wants to wrestle with a contentious piece of scripture while we have so many other things over which to gnash our teeth and rend our garments and growl? 

 

The temptation, of course, is to take this scripture literally. I love the saying about us, that Episcopalians “take scripture too seriously to take it literally”. That posture really saves us, especially in this parable, from dangerous conclusions that defy the image of God as a God of unconditional love, a God who is capable of a change of mind as well as heart, which we saw in the first lesson from Genesis.  

 

I am assured by my Lutheran friends that Martin Luther did not like preaching on this parable. As Paul writes to the church in Philippi, how are we supposed to “rejoice in the Lord” who throws uninvited guests into the outer darkness?

 

The great theologian of the Reformation, John Calvin and others of his orthodox Protestant theological persuasion, have preached that the one ejected from the banquet represented the one who did not "put on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 13:14 and Gal. 3:27).

Calvin preached that we are all invited to the kingdom, but we are all under obligation to be clothed with Christ and to live lives of righteousness.  

 

Taken to its logical conclusion, that would mean that the message of this parable is that only practicing Christians are saved—everybody else is toast. 

 

I simply don’t believe that people like Gandhi aren’t in heaven right alongside Mother Theresa. Or that faithful Jew, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is still not respectfully dissenting from the opinions of devout Roman Catholic Antonin Scalia. Or that Jesus and Buddha, Mohammed and Brahma don’t walk and talk and discuss theology together on the same path in the Celestial City. 

 

Lutheran pastor, Mary Anderson reinterprets this parable with a modern one of her own – which, as you know, are my favorite kinds of parable. 

 

Imagine that an active member in a congregation has just heard a sermon on that gospel from an orthodox follower of Calvin theology – that the only ones going to heaven are devout Christians. She has tears in her eyes. She hears the judgment loud and clear. 

 

Her son-in-law is a self-proclaimed atheist and her granddaughter is unbaptized at age six. She has a wonderful neighbor who is Jewish; her longtime doctor is the best listener in the world—and a practicing Hindu. 

 

It turns out that she loves a lot of people who are going to hell. How can she be happy in heaven without them? She was told once that heaven will be so incredible that she won't miss these people, but she can't imagine rejoicing in the Lord under these conditions. She can't imagine her sweet grandchild in hell.

 

But the grandmother has accepted the invitation; she's put on Christ and considers herself clothed with righteousness. She has recommitted herself on many occasions to imitating Christ. So what would Jesus do, she wonders. 

 

The congregation rises to sing a hymn rejoicing in salvation, and worshipers dutifully recite the Apostles' Creed. The grandmother's voice catches on the words of faith, "he descended into hell." She's never had a satisfactory explanation of what Jesus was doing in hell between his death and resurrection. 

 

For her at that moment, after suffering through a sermon that sent her loved ones to outer darkness, she knew what the creed meant for her. Before he was raised from the dead, Jesus went to retrieve those who had not heard the gospel through no fault of their own. Jesus went to get those cast into outer darkness and bring them into the kingdom with him. 

 

If she was clothed with Christ, she reasoned, she was called to be like him.

 

By the time of the final hymn she decided that to really be like Christ, she would pass up heaven in order to comfort her grandbaby in hell. She would offer her eternal life for her grandchild's eternal life. 

 

She would descend into hell as Jesus did. She left church convinced that day that if we truly live a transformed life, we can't stand by and feast while others starve and burn. That just isn't the Jesus way!

 

Now, to tell you the God’s honest truth, I don’t know the right interpretation of this Gospel parable – much less if this woman (let’s give her a name – let’s call her Ethel – got it right –  but I do love what happened to the woman in this modern parable.   

 

Let me explain: When I was in seminary, studying scripture with the Jesuits, one of my favorite professors was Dan Harrington. 

 

He was an absolutely brilliant theologian and wonderful pastor but, honestly? What I love most about him? Well, he looked and talked like a truck driver. And yet, he had more scholarly articles published in the Jerome Biblical Commentary than any other professor at Weston School of Theology at the time.  

 

He was a big, burly Irishman whose face was covered in fading freckles, and the hair on his head had that wonderful tone Irish-red becomes after it turns grey. He had a thick Irish-Bawston lilt which made the occasional pearls of wisdom he would drop even more memorable. 

 

I’ll never forget his advice: Parables work best, he said, when we stop working so hard to interpret them and instead allow them to interpret us. 

 

Just let that sink in for a moment: Parables work best when we stop working so hard to interpret them and instead allow them to interpret us. 

 

Ethel, the woman in that story took the parable not literally but seriously (I suspect she may have been an Episcopalian). She took it as a challenge to take seriously her clothing in Christ. 

 

Indeed, Ethel took it so seriously that she was transformed from one who understood herself as saved and going to heaven to one who gave up heaven in order to save and protect those she loved. 

 

Isn't this what Jesus did and what Jesus would do? 

 

The parable interpreted her life. 

 

I don’t know about you, but when I grow up I want to be more like Ethel. 

 

Like Ethel, I want to take even the worst of the parables, no matter how grumpy and frustrated or conflicted or sad they make me feel or whether or not they come at a particularly bad season of the year, and have them better interpret my life. 

 

I suspect if more of us took scripture less literally and more seriously, we may find ourselves leaving worship, perhaps with a slight limp but still rejoicing in the transformative power of Christ to work through our worst parts of our stories to bring us closer to walk the path of the teachings of Christ.

 

May we all be less interested in changing God’s mind and more deeply committed to following the Spirit and changing our lives in Christ. 

 

Then we might be able to join St. Paul whose hymn of praise still sings to us throughout time and space: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say,Rejoice.

 

Amen? Amen.

New Rules

 

New Rules: A Sermon on Live FB Broadcast

Sirach 26:10: The Headstrong Daughter FB Page 

Pentecost XVIII - Proper 22A - October 4, 2020

Rules. Rules are important. Rules provide calm in times of anxiety. Rules provide focus when there is a crisis. Rules provide order in the midst of chaos.

 

The liberation of the Israelites from 400 years of bondage in Egypt was a miracle. Their crossing the Red Sea onto dry land was a miracle. The manna that came down from heaven and fed them when they were hungry and the water that flowed from the rock and gave them drink when they were thirsty were straight-up miracles.

 

In today’s reading from Hebrew scripture, God gives another miracle to the people of Israel. They are known as The 10 Commandments. They are ten rules, 10 ways to organize themselves as a newly liberated people so that order may be brought out of the immediate headiness of their newly gained freedom.

 

Once the Israelites reached the Promised Land, their priests began writing down more rules; they were called Purity Codes and gathered into a book called Leviticus. The dynamic which gave rise to these rules was the belief that the only reason God punished them with 400 years of bondage in a foreign land was due to the fact that they displeased God.

 

God forbid that should ever happen again! So, they would discern what God wanted of them – how to order their lives in every detail – so that God would not punish them again with slavery. Indeed, these rules would shape and form their identity as Jews.

 

Rules are important. Religious rules, especially those formulated in reaction to a traumatic event in the lives of a people, become central to individual and community life as the way to work out their salvation.

 

Over the centuries after the Exodus, the Levitical codes and rules and their interpretation and enforcement, were studied and revered and treasured and kept by the religious leaders of the Temple and taught by the Rabbis.

 

So, I’m going to ask you to do something this morning that you may not have considered before. I’m going to ask you to stand in the shoes – or, more accurately no doubt, the sandals – of the temple leaders.

 

This is the second parable Jesus has told them since he turned over the tables in the temples and took out the whips and told the money changers and temple leaders that they had turned his father’s house into a den of thieves.

 

When the religious leaders challenged his authority to have criticized their financial system, he told them the parable we heard last week, about the father and two sons in the vineyard. Now he tells them yet another parable, this one even more pointed and clear that he is criticizing them.

 

They are son who promised to work but didn’t. They are the tenants who steal from the landowner’s vineyard and kill his servants and even his son. That made the religious leaders so angry they wanted him arrested and thrown into jail.

 

Now, remember what I told you about rules and how especially important the religious rules are to the people of Israel, about how a whole group of people came together to write rules that they thought would not only be pleasing to God, but would give them their identity as a people and a nation. Indeed, the rules formed the pathway to their salvation.

 

Now, imagine being one of a group of people whose whole job it was to study the law and interpret the law and enforce the law and here comes this upstart young Rabbi – a Galilean, no less – and he not only ridicules them with parables but actually has the hutzpah to say to them, “Have you never read the scriptures!”???

 

Imagine! No wonder they wanted to lock him in jail and throw away the key.

 

But, what they don’t understand, what his disciples then and in every generation that has followed him for thousands of years, is that Jesus comes to offer us yet another layer, a deeper meaning of freedom.

 

I think St. Paul explains it best when he writes to the ancient church in Corinth that Jesus “has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (2Corinthians 3:6).

 

Jesus wants us to be obedient to the spirit of the law and that spirit is the love of God. Not the judgment of God. Not a God with an arbitrarily punitive nature.

 

No! Jesus wants us to know that God is a God of love – that God IS love – and the only way he can see to help us to know about the essence of the nature of God is to challenge and attempt to disassemble the religious structures that have, themselves, become oppressive and corrupt.

 

I want to tell you another parable – a modern one – about rules and our obedience to the spirit of the law.

 

It was 1986 and I was newly ordained and working in Boston, MA. I had been appointed by Bishop Johnson to the newly convened Interfaith AIDS Task Force. The AIDS pandemic had just reached Boston and ignorance and fear proved to be a deadly combination.

 

If you think people are behaving badly in this COVID epidemic, you wouldn’t believe how perfectly awful it was in the late 80s. The virus that causes AIDS – known as HIV – is a very different virus than COVID. HIV is transmitted through body fluid during intimate contact. COVID is transmitted by droplet which can be inhaled through the nose or mouth or transmitted through the eyes or skin.

Wearing masks prevent transmission of COVID. On the other hand HIV suppresses the auto immune system. In those days we had no real treatment for AIDS. A diagnosis of AIDS was a death sentence. Masks are worn by non-infected people to keep protect people with AIDS because even a common cold could mean their death.

 

In those days, my first partner on the Interfaith AIDS Task Force was a young man named Jimmy Mac. He was a 26-year old gay man – at the time that made him 7 years younger than I was. He could have been my kid brother. He was a very popular DJ on a local Boston radio station.  He and I would go to schools, churches, businesses – anywhere we could get our foot in the door, to raise awareness and teach what we knew about prevention and early intervention.

 

Working with Jimmy was amazing. His energy seemed unbounded and enthusiasm and spirit of generosity were inspiring. He knew he was going to die but he wanted to prevent as many deaths as he could before his time on this earth came to an end. I was utterly charmed and I came to love him dearly.

 

The last time I saw Jimmy, he was at Boston City Hospital, in strict isolation on the AIDS unit. He had called me and asked me to come visit saying that he had so few T-cells left in his immune system he had named them.

 

His good spirit on the phone did not prepare me for what I was about to see when I walked into his hospital room. He was thin – painfully, wafer thin – and there were angry, purple Karposi sarcoma all over his handsome but now emaciated face.

 

I had to dress in a white paper gown, manila colored plastic gloves, and green paper mask, hair and shoe coverings. As soon as Jimmy saw me, a smile crossed his face. He said, “Girl, you are a hot mess. Look at you,” he coughed as he laughed, “I’m calling the fashion police. Shame on you! Your gloves don’t match your shoes.”

 

I fussed around his sheets, straightening his pillow, when he suddenly grabbed my arm with surprising strength. “Elizabeth,” he said, “I know I don’t have much time left, so please, hear me out.”

 

“I’ve been here for two weeks. I haven’t seen a human face for two weeks. In all that time, I haven’t seen a human smile or felt the touch of human skin.” He coughed some more and it took him a few minutes to catch his breath.

 

“So, I have something to ask you, Elizabeth. Please don’t say no. I trust you. I’m counting on you,” he said, “Please, take off your mask and let me see your face. And, take off your gloves and let me feel your skin.”

 

“Besides,” he said, “that whole get up is supposed to protect me from you. But, you know, the people in this hospital act as if they have to protect themselves from me. You would think here, in the hospital of all places, they’d know that.”

 

“Will you take off that mask, Elizabeth?” he asked. “And, your gloves? Please?” 

 

And, even though I knew the rules, even though I knew the cost of breaking the rules, I listened to the spirit in the voice of Jimmy Mac calling me to a deeper obedience of the Law of Love. And, I took off my mask, and I took off my gloves, and I crawled into bed with him and held his skin-and-bone body in my arms.”

 

Soon, I heard him singing softly, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so.  . . . . . ”

 

I stroked his hair and his forehead as I sang with him, “Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.”

 

The next day, I got the call that Jimmy Mac had died. And even as the tears of grief fell I rejoiced that he was now free from his suffering. But I also rejoiced to know that I had also been set free from the letter of the law to a deeper obedience to the spirit of the law of Love.

 

I do believe this is what Jesus came to teach us. I believe the Christ in Jimmy Mac came to help me to learn that. I believe that sometimes you have to break a few rules in order to be obedient to the spirit of Love incarnate in Jesus.

 

The life of faith we are called to is not about blind obedience to Ten Rules carved in stone. A life of faith is about breaking open our hearts of stone to find ways to more deeply love in the name of The One who gave us a new Rule: Love One Another as Jesus has loved us.  

 Amen.

Quid Potuit Fecit

 

A Eulogy for Ralph William Peters, Jr.

St Peter's Episcopal Church, Lewes, DE

October 3, 2020

There is an old, abandoned monastery outside of Paris – well, there are many no doubt – but the memory of my visit to this particular monastery comes to visit me every now and again.

 

I was there with several girlfriends of mine – we had just graduated from high school and were taking the summer to hitchhike through Europe which was very trendy (and very cheap) at the time.

 

We had stopped in town and purchased some bread and cheese and wine – and a tin of Gauloises cigarettes, as I recall.

 

We decided that the tree-shaded cemetery of the abandoned monastery was the perfect place to have lunch.

 

As we looked around the headstones, we noticed that each one was carved with the name of the monk, the date of his birth and death, and then the same three words, in Latin.  

 

Quid Potuit Fecit*. 

 

We had just completed four years of required Latin and two years of French but it took us a while before we were able to make the translation.

 

Quid Potuit Fecit translates literally to “What he could do, he did.”

 

When we talked to the locals, however, they, in their very French attitude, translated it (with a shrug and that way the French have of pouting their lips and pleading with their eyes) to mean, “Ah, mademoiselle, you see, it means, ‘he did the best he could.”

 

“C’est ca, ne’st pas? Eeh deed the best eeh could!”

 

He did the best he could!? Well, I was 18 years old and convinced, as all 18-year-olds are, that the world was a mess and all the world needed – what the world had been waiting for, really – was for me to come and fix it. 

 

I was outraged, as were my girlfriends.

 

We thought, ‘He did the best he could’? Seriously? That’s it? That’s what dedicating your life to God gets you? Your name and time on the earth carved onto a slab of stone and the acknowledgment that “Well, the poor soul didn’t have much but, you know, he did the best he could”???

 

No different from all the other poor souls buried here???   

 

“Outrageous!” we thought.

 

I think it was in that very moment that my heart hardened against the institutional church, which served to cement the obligatory young adult period of church abandonment. Those who have survived their own or their children’s adolescence will understand.

 

It wasn’t until years later when I finally grew up – okay, years and years and years later – okay, maybe just a few years ago (when I finally grew up) – that I started to understand that perhaps I was overly influenced by the attitude of the French.

 

That, perhaps, there was a deeper, spiritual meaning of the phrase which could be better found in the original Latin.

 

What he could do, he did. He did the best he could. Actually, that’s more than can be said of the lives some people live, isn’t it?

 

Some people do squander the gift of what Mary Oliver called “this one, wild, precious life”* we are given. They don’t do what they can. They don’t even seem to try, much less do the best they can.

 

As I’ve sat with that phrase in the weeks following Ralph’s death, I’ve come to understand that it is not only high praise, but it really captures, for me, Ralph’s life. 

 

What he could do, he did.

 

I’ve come to know that a person’s life is more than their obituary. It’s much more than their resume. It’s what one has done with what’s merely listed on one’s resume and obituary – the stuff you can’t or wouldn’t list – that is the real stuff of life.

 

What you can do, you do. You use the gifts and talents you’ve been given. It’s the stories that are the glue that holds the list together. Indeed, as those of us who come to church every Sunday have discovered, stories hold the world together.

 

The stories of a person’s life tell us how they took what God has given them and used them, to the best of their abilities – to do what they could.

 

Sometimes, we succeed more than our wildest dreams. Other times, we fail so miserably that we are lead to the brink of despair, to peer into the abyss, there to contemplate meaning and purpose as well as the absurdities of life.

 

We’ve heard some of the stories of Ralph’s life here earlier this morning, from his family. We saw various facets of the uncut diamond that was Ralph William Peters, Jr. 

 

I hope we hear more stories later at the Repast and even later as the years roll on and holidays and birthdays are celebrated and we feel his spirit and we remember.

 

Ralph did what he could with what he was given and built a life on the foundational stones of kindness and generosity.

 

That did not mean that he disabused himself of the creature comforts and luxuries, large and small, of life. He loved his boat, even though he once admitted to me that it was a “money pit”. He frowned when he said and waved his hand dismissively but the flash of the light of joy in his eyes told a different story.

 

No one loved good food and wine as much as Ralph Peters. The few times I cooked for him, I was rewarded with lavish praise, a clean plate and that high-wattage smile.

 

But, to have a good meal and a glass of wine?  On his boat? Especially with friends? As God was painting a sunset? Ah, now, there are luxuries whose value is simply beyond mere mathematical calculation.

 

Even the grad from M.I.T. knew that.

 

He sometimes valued what others questioned the value of – like the grandfather clock that was a wedding gift of his father to his mother that was damaged in The Fire (could that only have been two years ago?).

 

Ralph paid perhaps twice the value of that clock for the parts and labor for repairs, but to his mind, he was saving a memory, salvaging a legacy and tradition, protecting and guarding the love that loved so much, it brought him and his brother into being.

 

His parents wound that clock every Sunday night and then shared a kiss. Ralph and Rita continued that tradition, that liturgy, every Sunday night, complete with the kiss.

 

It was fitting, somehow, that Ralph left this earth listening to the sound of it chiming down the hall. What he could do, he did.

 

Ralph’s life was a life that valued life – so much so that he worked to better the lives of others in big way like trying to provide permanent solutions to the problem of homelessness. 

 

But there were also small ways, like making the coffee for coffee hour every Sunday, a kindness for which he is fondly remembered at St. Philip's, Laurel.

 

What he could do, he did. Mistakes? Sure, he made a few. It’s the unspoken and little mentioned flaw in the qualities of kindness and generosity. 

 

Sometimes, kindness and generosity can lead to being fooled and taken advantage of. 

 

Sometimes, it leads to believing your own press releases and being foolish with the gifts you’ve been given. Even the most precious of gifts. Like, love.

 

Sometimes, that leads to things falling apart. As the poet JmStorm once wrote*:

 

“Sometimes falling apart/

is the way we shake loose the pieces/

that don’t belong anymore.

It’s as natural as the wind and rain. /

So cry if you need to./

Scream if you must./

But never lose sight of what it really is:/

a thunderstorm that clears the air./

 

Through it all, Ralph did what he could and, over the years of sunshine, showers and thunderstorms, he developed what only can be described as an inner glow.

 

It wasn’t always visible. Like the light of the moon, it was hidden, sometimes, by clouds of distress. But, when Ralph smiled, well, his whole face lit up, didn’t it?

 

And, when you were loved by Ralph, you could be assured of basking in the warmth of his smile. 

 

Oh, he’d also take you on and stubbornly argue his point, but even in the heat of  passionate disagreement, his love for you was never in doubt.

 

At least, not for him.

 

Shortly after Ralph died, I asked Rita if they had a song that was ‘their song’.

 

She didn’t take 5 seconds to answer. “You Light Up My Life,” she said. I smiled. My first thought was that Debbie Boone, good evangelical Christian girl, said that every time she sang that song, she always thought of Jesus and sang to him.

 

I smiled again. I know they both loved Jesus, but don’t think that was what Ralph and Rita were thinking when this became their song.

 

I should have known that would be their song. When Ralph and Rita were together, the wattage was enough to light up any room.

 

I imagine that when Rita eventually – not soon, please God, but eventually – joins Ralph in that great somewhere out there some call ‘heaven’, he’ll be free of his walker, and there he’ll be, waiting on a boat to ask her for their first dance together in Paradise. 

 

Quid potuit fecit. What he could do, he did. And, he did the best he could.

 

I’m old enough now to appreciate the full spiritual depth of that ancient phrase. And, like any good dissident daughter, I still have issues with Mother Church, but I’ve obviously gotten over my abandonment of her.

(I don’t know about you, but I always come back for the stories, like all the ones we have heard this morning, and how they are all gathered together – the ancient and new stories – and, once gathered up by the priest or bishop and blessed and offered to God at the altar, become food and drink and nourishment for our weary souls.)

 

What he could do, he did. That will be my word of prayer for him, whenever I visit him here. Or, when his memory comes to visit me.

 

What he could do, he did. And we who loved him could not be more grateful for all that he did, because he did the best he could do.  

 

If we’re lucky, if we do what we can do with this one, wild, precious life, when the time comes for us to take our leave from this earth, the same will be said of us.

 

Amen. 

 

Here's the video of the sermon and eulogy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCoqvKFF7bI

 

*With heartfelt gratitude to the Rev. Tobias Haller, BSG, who helped me remember Latin: "Perhaps influence by Anselem of Canterbury and John Duns Scotus’ Medieval view of the Immaculate Conception of Mary: Pontuit, decuit, ergo Fecit

(God could do it, it was appropriate, therefore, it was done.)"

 

* Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean--

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down --

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life? ~ Mary Oliver  “The Summer Day”.

 

*“Sometimes falling apart

is the way we shake loose the pieces

that just don't belong anymore.

It's as natural as the wind and rain.

So cry if your need to.

Scream if you must.

But never lose sight of what it really is:

a thunderstorm that clears the air.

It is not enough to dream, we must also act.

Without action, a door is just a wall.

and remember:

When life closes a door, just open it again.

It's a door.

That's how doors work.

~ JmStorm

 

*But, I can still conjugate in Latin: 

amo amas amat I love, You love, He/she/it love

amamus, amatis, amant: We, you (plural), they, love

Is The Lord With Us Or Not?

 

Is the Lord with us or not?

A sermon on Facebook Live Broadcast

Sirach 26:10 The Headstrong Daughter

Pentecost XVII - Proper 21 A - September 27, 2020

 

As we follow the story of the ministry of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel, we find ourselves today at a turning point.  Jesus has been in northern Israel and the area of Galilee. The story of the father and sons in the Vineyard is significant because it marks the beginning of Jesus' ministry in Jerusalem.

 

The story also marks a shift in the intensity and trajectory of Jesus’ ministry. Just before this story, we hear that Jesus overthrows the tables in the temple and severely scolds the religious leaders there, reminding them of the purpose of the temple as a house of prayer and not a den of thieves.

 

Jesus continues by telling the leaders of the temple the story of the two sons. It seems pretty clear that he’s telling the temple leaders that they are not doing a very good job. Indeed, he declares that tax collectors and prostitutes are getting into kingdom before them.

 

As a reported tax collector himself, this must have been particularly delightful for Matthew to hear. That said, it’s little wonder that the temple leaders hardened their hearts toward Jesus.

 

As Jesus begins to turn his attention away from northern Israel and toward the urban capitol of Jerusalem, it’s not at all surprising that this story marks the beginning of the turn toward the end of his earthly life and ministry.

 

So, buckle up everybody. In the next eight weeks, we’re going to be hearing Jesus quarrel with the Pharisees and Sadducees, the religious leaders in the temple, as he begins to turn his face toward Jerusalem.

 

Yes, you heard that right: eight weeks. Eight Sundays of testing and quarreling, back and forth, between Jesus and the temple leaders.  Eight weeks of unpleasantness.

 

If you’re paying attention, that coincides with the unpleasantness of the Presidential Election Cycle, which is projected to be longer than the usual one day. That means there will be no escape from the testing and quarreling, the unpleasant back and forth, either in our country or in church.

 

Even though you can hear me but I can’t hear you in this Facebook Live Broadcast, I can still imagine your groans in my head. It’s gotten really awful, hasn’t it? The world – our country in particular – seem chaotic and hell-bent on destruction.

 

It’s not a pretty picture, not unlike the scene we witnessed in the first lesson from the Book of Genesis. The Israelites are finally free. They have made it out of four hundred years of slavery in Egypt after surviving seven deadly plagues and a miraculous journey through the raging waters of the Red Sea that parted for them at God’s command until they were on dry land and free from Pharaoh’s soldiers.

 

And now, now that they are free, they haven’t stopped complaining. Last week, they complained about hunger and were miraculously fed bread from heaven.

 

This week, we read that they complained about thirst and quarreled with Moses and tested God saying, “Is the Lord with us or not?”.

 

But, God had Moses use the same staff which God had commanded Moses to use in the Nile and strike the rock at Horeb. Moses did as the Lord commanded and water flowed from the rock, giving all enough to drink.

 

Moses named that place near Rephidium “Massah” because they tested the Lord and “Meribah” because the Israelites quarreled with him.

 

It seems part of the human condition to be incapable of enjoying our freedoms for two long. My grandmother would say, “Some people just have to spoil their bed after they’ve made it.” In other words, some people just can’t leave well enough alone.

 

“Is the Lord with us or not?” Some of us spoil our bed after we make it to see if anyone notices – if anyone really cares. Sometimes, negative behavior gets more attention than positive behavior, and sometimes, like children, we’ll do something negative just to get the attention.

 

There was a kid in my junior high school class, a goofy looking kid named Calvin Hopkins. He looked an awful lot like Alfred E. Neuman. People of a certain generation will remember him as the fictitious mascot and cover boy of the American humor magazine, “Mad”.

 

Except Calvin had blond hair. And, his eyes were blue. But, he parted his hair straight down the middle, had a gap-tooth smile, and big, protruding nose in the middle of his freckled face. His ears stood at an acute angle to his head and his body was scrawny.

 

Calvin was the 8^th or 9^th child of a family of 12 or 14. Nobody really knew. In fact, I’m not entirely sure their parents were ever quite certain how many kids they had.

They lived on a big dairy farm with which also produced goat milk and cheese. In the summer, you could always rely on Hopkins Farm Stand for fresh vegetables and some of the best homemade ice cream that ever hit your palate.

 

With all those kids and all of the work on the farm, I’m quite certain Calvin didn’t get the attention he needed – or, at least, wanted. So, Calvin found that it was just as enjoyable – at times, perhaps more so – to get attention by being a naughty prankster.

 

Mostly, it was innocent stuff. Goofy kids stuff. Spit balls. Sticking signs on other kid’s backs that said, “Kick me”. Pulling girl’s pigtails and running away. Putting a frog in the toilet in the girl’s room. Smearing the toilet seat in the teacher’s lounge with Vaseline. Stupid stuff like that.

 

One day, Calvin outdid himself. Almost literally. I’m not sure why but one year, we spent quite a bit of time in the library – study time, even a few classes. Calvin discovered that almost every magazine had a page – some even a few pages – where you could order stuff. Anything from maps of Ancient China to replicas of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria.

 

So, Calvin ordered them. But, he ordered them in the name of the librarian and teachers to be delivered to our Junior High School. Well, it didn’t take long before chaos ensued. The library went into lockdown. All the magazines were removed. Extra teachers were assigned to police the library. And yet, stuff continued to be ordered and delivered to the school. It didn’t stop.

 

Teachers were being called into the office daily and taken to task for ordering things and charging them to the school. The head of the library, Ms. Thelma Chase, a small, quiet, stereotypical librarian-looking woman, came under heaviest scrutiny because Calvin ordered most of the things in her name.

 

The bickering and arguing among the teachers could be heard outside the brake room. Then, the word was out that they were looking for a scapegoat among them, which made some of the kids snicker and snort – Calvin the loudest among them. That was when some of us who had been wondering, knew.

Hundreds of dollars were involved before one day, Calvin snickered just a little too loudly and something clicked in the mind of one of the teachers and Calvin was found out. Which didn’t bother Calvin one bit. He saw himself as a rock star for having pulled off his prank for so long without having been discovered.

 

That wasn’t true for Calvin’s parents who pulled him out of school and put him in a Christian military academy. I often wonder what happened to old Calvin. I also wonder what happened to all those teachers who bickered and argued among themselves, looking for a scapegoat.

 

Is the Lord with us or not? I believe that God was in that situation with Calvin who tested the limits. I believe that God was in the midst of the bickering and quarreling among students and the teachers. I believe God heard the cries of Ms. Thelma Chase, who practically suffered a nervous breakdown over that foolish but expensive prank.

 

Is the Lord with us or not? I believe that the same God who was in the midst of the bickering and quarreling of ancient Israelites is the same God who was in the midst of the bickering and quarreling of the religious leaders in the Temple with Jesus.

 

It is Paul who provides the key to the dilemma of the human enterprise of quarreling and bickering and testing. He says, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

 

Let that sink in for just a red hot New York minute. “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” That would be the same mind that was as capable of calling out injustice and corruption when he saw it. He was also capable of calling people to him, calling out the better angels in them, and calling them to their best selves to accomplish things they could have never asked for or imagined.

 

Is the Lord with us or not? 

 

I believe the same God who was in The Garden as Adam and Eve bickered and quarreled about who gave the apple to whom is the same God who is in the midst of the crisis and chaos and cacophony of our lives today.  

 

And, what of the next eight weeks of bickering and quarreling in the world as well as what we will hear in the church as we listen to the Gospels and follow Jesus as he sets his face toward Jerusalem?

 

Not to worry. Or, as Alfred E Neuman would say, "What? Me Worry?" 

 

God will be there in the midst of us to see us through.

 

As St. Paul tells us, “. . . .for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

 

Amen.

 

It's not fair!

 

Laborers in the Field - 11th Century Byzantine art

 It’s Not Fair!

A sermon preached on Facebook Live Broadcast

Sirach 26:10 The Headstrong Daughter

Pentecost XVI - Proper 20 A RCL I

September 20, 2020

 

Excuse me while I stamp my foot with my hand on my hip and say, a little louder than is polite, “It’s not fair.”

 

No, seriously! This gospel passage is so far from what I’ve been taught – what I suspect we all understand – about what is “fair” that it makes my head spin.

 

Our first lessons about fairness usually come from our parents about our siblings. We learn to “share, fair and square.” Which means, if you get two cookies I get two cookies.  

 

Later, we learn, if you have two cookies and I have no cookies, you have to share one with me. Which is fine, until the cookie is in the other hand, as it were. If I have two cookies and you have none, I have to share with you. 

 

Wait! What? How is THAT fair? Shouldn’t you have to do something – like, maybe, EARN your cookies?

 

Which surfaces of memory of my kid brother, John. He was about 4. I was about 8. He had two cookies. I had none. He saw me coming and shoved both cookies in his mouth and devoured them even before I got close enough to him to swipe one away or complain to my mother who would slap him upside the head and tell him to share. 

 

I mean, I AM the oldest. Does seniority count for something? 

 

Still later, we learn to navigate the cultural layers of what it means to be fair.  

 

We’ve been trained to believe that seniority is superiority. Those born into privilege would like us to believe that legacy is its own currency. The American ethic is born of the belief that, “If you work hard and pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, you too can be successful. 

 

Unfortunately, very little is ever said about the fact that not everyone’s bootstraps are the same length. Or, quality. Or, level of durability. Or, if you even have bootstraps.

Those who know me have heard me tell stories about my immigrant roots. We worked hard. We had a strong work ethic that was actually a source of no small amount of pride. It was not uncommon in my family for people to have two, sometimes three jobs, not counting a side hustle of selling Avon or Amway or Tupperware or Corning ware products, or “stuff that fell off the truck” and found its way into the trunk of an uncle’s car. 

 

As immigrants, members of my family took jobs in the factories and sweatshops of New England, the owners of which attracted immigrants to this county specifically for their cheap labor and expected grateful silence about unfair wages, long hours and dangerous work conditions. 

 

Indeed, my uncle Gus, the firstborn son of my grandparents, died in a factory explosion at the age of 19, leaving a young, wife pregnant with a son he’d never live to see. Everyone who was at the factory that day, including the owner and his son, died in that fiery inferno.

 

My grandfather had identified his son by his shirt and his shoes and socks. Oh, and the handkerchief in his shirt pocket on which my grandmother had embroidered his initials. All they had left of his body was an arm and a leg for a proper burial. 

 

I remember visiting his grave every year. I remember my grandmother crying and wailing as if he had died just that morning. Seventy years later and on her deathbed, his was one of the names she called.

 

What the owners of those factories and sweatshops didn’t expect was what my family did about their plight: they became involved in organizing labor unions which advocated for fairness and safety and changed the working environment and the compensation and benefit package for everyone.

 

So, you’ll understand and forgive, please, if this daughter of Mill Girls has an initial reaction, every time this gospel lessons appears, to cringe as I stifle the desire to yell, “But, that’s not fair!”

 

Truth be told, that’s exactly the reaction Jesus wants.

 

As my colleague, Kentina Washington-Leapheart writes, 

“This parable is just one example of many in which Jesus uses the power of story to upend the status quo. It’s one that on first reading can feel a bit clunky to understand and apply in our daily lives.”  

 

“Legacy and seniority don’t matter when you have to take two buses and a train to get to the vineyard. Legacy and seniority don’t matter when your citizenship status precludes you from applying for employment for fear of deportation. Legacy and seniority don’t matter when, in the age of COVID-19, going to work everyday can mean, for the most vulnerable people in our society, the difference between life or death.”

 

In the parable of the laborers in Matthew20:1–15, the laborers who were hired first are envious. They don’t see why they shouldn’t get more—a lot more—than those hired late in the day. Our sympathies are with them. 

 

The issue seems one of pure justice: if you work hard and long you get rewarded; if you work just as hard and twice as long you get doubly rewarded.

 

Indeed, the system of our economy depends on us desiring what we don’t have and acquiring something similar or better of our own. That finds its application in a theology of scarcity which informs our image of God.

 

But this is a parable. Jesus is upending our social construct in order to make a larger point – beyond mere justice – a theological point with practical implications about the lavish abundance of God’s creation.

 

What if we thought about “daily wage” differently? What if we understood that the agreed daily wage is forgiveness and eternal life?

 

Ah, now that makes a bit of a difference, doesn’t it? Remember, it’s a parable; it’s meant to provoke imagination and thought.

 

If God is “compensating” us, no matter when we “arrive” at the fullness of the gospel life, the only reasonable response is overflowing gratitude and indescribable joy – not envy or greed.

 

Envy and greed. They are and have always been part of the human condition. These two human dynamics always lead to a theology of scarcity.

 

We saw it in the first reading in Exodus when the Israelites complained to God against Moses and Aaron. We hear echoes of it in Paul’s letter to the ancient Christians at Philippi. My brother knew it when he stuffed two cookies in his mouth rather than share with me.

 

The good news is that God’s grace can’t be halved or multiplied. It’s ridiculous to demand “double eternal life” or “triple forgiveness.” There’s only one reason we’d ask for such a thing—even demand it—and that’s because our envy has so consumed us that we can’t enjoy what we have for fear that someone else might have something better.

The good news is that our God is a God of abundance who lavishes the fruits  of creation upon all of God’s children. 

 

The only reason that a child goes to bed hungry at night, or that some families don’t have their own home, is because we do not trust in the abundance of God. Instead, we allow the dynamics of greed and envy inform the ways in which we live our lives.

 

What if we lived abundantly? What if we loved lavishly and, in fact, wastefully as God does with us? What if we followed God’s lead and gave what we have and expected nothing in return?

 

What if we chose to live our lives so generously and lavishly and wastefully that people – God’s children, just like you and me – are no longer hungry or homeless but people call us fools? 

 

I suspect Jesus would say tous: “Others are envious because you are generous. So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

 

Amen.