The Whistleblower Proper 28A

The Whistleblower   Proper 28A

Now that the harvest season is over, most of us who work in the vineyards have been following him from one end of Galilee to the other. I’ve been with him since the teaching on the mount where he told us we are all blessed, wretched as we are, indentured for life having lost our family farms to those urban-elites who lend us money during a slow season, and then foreclose on us when we cannot repay the loans on time. There they are in their big cities, in their mansions with all kinds of servants, and forever traveling all over the world while we slave away in their farms which seem to expand further and further every single day.

 

This Jesus fellow seems to know what we are up against: between tolls to move our goods, tribute-money paid to the empire, and more tributes to the support the Temple in Jerusalem, he knows we can never really catch up. The stories he tells, like the one about the banquet where the king destroyed a whole village, including a schoolhouse filled with children, while in a rage over those who turned down his invitation was all too familiar– as if anyone would want to attend his son’s wedding feast.

 

Right now, he is telling us a story about one of those urban elites who calls three of his dreaded retainers to assign them a task while he is off to one of the hot-spring health spas – wouldn’t that feel good to our tired and aching backs, arms, and legs. They are the same retainers who pester us all the time for rent money and loan repayments. In this story, he gives one retainer five talents, to another two talents, and to the third only one talent. Only one, I say! A single talent of gold or silver is about 33kg, the equivalent of 1600 denarii, and each denarius is approximately a day’s-wage, making a talent the equivalent of 16 years of labor! The thirteen talents he hands out, then, represent 208 years of peasant labor! You can be sure he has more where that all comes from. The instructions to his retainers is to invest the talents and make him more by the time he returns. It’s “Don’t stop till you get enough,” and for folks like him there is never enough!

 

The workers around me are buzzing, as we knew these guys were wealthy, but never knew that anyone could be that wealthy. Sure enough, when he returns, retainer #1 has doubled the five to be ten talents; retainer #2 doubled his two talents to be four talents. At seven more talents, that’s another 112 years of our back-breaking labor added to his wealth – which he will no doubt use to usurp another five or ten farms, while we remain in debt. These two retainers are well on their way to being promoted to handling better matters then collecting my rent and loan payments.

 

But what does he say about retainer #3? “Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’’’ The crowd and I give out a loud and long cheer! How long had all of us wished to say something like that to the dreaded retainers, let alone to the wealthy sod who owns all our family farms! #3 has some real nerve to tell it like it is! I’m not playing your game anymore. I’m not going to rip off any more of your farmer-slaves, and I’m not making more money for you. I’m not going to take it, so there!

 

He not only took the urban-elite’s money out of circulation where it couldn’t be used to dispossess any more of us, but #3 has in effect removed himself from the very system of exploitation, giving up his position of power and influence. He describes the master for what he is and acknowledges his fear of the landowner’s power. This whistleblower has exposed the whole system that keeps the rest of us enslaved. By disclosing the cover story of the urban elites for everyone to see he has risked everything. By acting alone, he has no one else to turn to, and has turned his back on the ‘self’ he was becoming. Indeed, he subjects himself to aristocratic wrath. But for the rest of us, he revealed that the retainers are necessary to the process of exploitation. I wonder, how many of us would risk being a whistleblower?

 

 Wow! Everyone is listening now as Jesus continues the story. You can hear a pin drop as he says, “But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’” The crowd all around erupts in “boos” and cries of “Unfair!” and even “Down with the Robber Barons!”

 

Then it all dies down as we all realize that like all of us, #3 is on his own. The master rejects him. The other retainers will have nothing to do with him. And he has long been despised by the rest of us. Might the other retainers come to realize that their interests really do not lie with the ultra-wealthy? That the people they work for only want to exploit them and us to gather more and more wealth and have no more care for the retainers than they do for the rest of us peasants – that they and we are no more than cogs in the machines that create greater and greater distance between all of us and all of those ultra-wealthy city-elites?

 

As the crowd begins to disperse, I find myself asking a lot of questions about all of this, while I am amazed to think there is this one hero like #3, the whistleblower, willing to pull back the curtain and reveal the multiple layers of exploitation. If he shows up in my village, though, how should I greet him? Ought I remain bitter toward him for his past? Or, does my bitterness toward him simply play into the hands of the ruling elite? Might we work together to try to build a better system; a more just system? Is it possible that the interests of my co-workers, peasants, and the rest of rural poor folks might be tied to the very class of people we have learned to despise?

 

Then it dawns on me – this Jesus fellow, with these strange stories he tells, is the whistleblower himself! As he tells the story of our lives, he pulls back the curtain and reveals the ongoing systems of exploitation that plays into the hands of the ruling elites. He is #3! What’s going to happen to him if he keeps telling these stories? Is it safe to keep following him and listening to what he has to say? He seems to have self-identified himself as one of us, all of us, calling us to grapple with all these questions while we all live in the outer darkness, far from the centers of power and prestige, struggling to survive day-to-day, one rent, mortgage, or tribute payment from total despair, all the while weeping and gnashing our teeth. What’s going to happen to him if he continues to tell such stories, hoping someone of us, hoping more of us, will listen and hear that each moment lived with him and with God his Father is worth more than all the talents in this world? There’s only one way to find out. I will follow him. Wherever he may go. There isn't an ocean too deep, a mountain so high it can keep me away from Jesus and his Good News! Amen.

Wake Up! See The Banquet! Proper 27A

 

Wake Up! See The Banquet!

This parable about people waiting for the arrival of a bridegroom so that the banquet may begin has been rendered throughout the ages as an allegory seemingly concerned with ten bridesmaids, or virgins. [Matthew 25:1-13] Usually five are described as wise, and five as foolish. Which is to miss the deeper sense of the original Greek. Not to get too deep into the weeds, five are described has having the well-honed ability to navigate in the real world, making the best of quick decisions that end up guiding a surprisingly chunk of a person’s life” – in a word, “prudent,” one of the Four Christian virtues. The Ruling Cardinal Virtue – the one virtue that rules them all! Whereas, the word for the other five bridesmaids is the Greek root for the English word, “moron,” which carries a sharper bite than the frivolous sounding “foolish.” To identify both groups can be problematic, as it causes us to think of them in particular ways that is often unhelpful.

 

The standard interpretation, based on which bridesmaids had enough lamp-oil to last all night and greeted the bridegroom, and those who did not, leaves us with the simple notion as the Boy Scout motto: “Be prepared.” Or, Don’t leave the task at hand to go out and find an all-night lamp-oil store – or you may be sorry. Which on the face of it, does not sound very much like Jesus who forever is assuring one and all, wise or foolish, not only that all shall be well, you are well, you are welcomed, you are beloved just the way you are.

 

It has been suggested that the oil in the story represents doing the work of God’s kingdom, which, by the way, is the subject of the final parable in Matthew 25, which says that one serves Jesus himself when you care for others, especially hungry, thirsty, imprisoned (for debts), naked, sick, and resident alien others – strangers fleeing dangerous places. All this is meant to be the hallmark work of communities, churches, who follow Christ – along with disciplines like regular prayer, scripture study, and sharing resources with others as well. But to say this is the essence of the story sounds too much like the bumper sticker that says, “Jesus is coming – everyone get busy!” As if busy-ness itself is more important than the four Cardinal Virtues of  prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.

 

No. The story ends, “Stay awake, therefore, for you do not know the day nor the hour.” Which he already had said just 21 verses earlier when discussing the trials, warfare and tribulations that may precede the arrival of a Christos, a Christ, or in Hebrew, a Messiah. In fact, there will be many false Christs. So, “Keep awake, for you know not when your Lord is coming.” [Matthew 24:42] Meanwhile, “this generation,” he says, will not pass away before all this chaos comes down. Indeed, those who first read Matthew’s gospel around the year 64 CE were already suffering the trials, tribulations, and persecutions under the Emperor Nero!

 

“Stay Awake,” then, appears to be the central message. And has remained the central message of mystics and people of faith throughout the generations of human development and human suffering. I remember my seminary advisor and Church History professor, Fred Shriver, suggesting that the breaking of the bread, the Body of Christ, in communion, calls us to a moment of waking up – the “crusts” that keep us asleep snap open! We mostly tend to be sleepwalking through life, he said, and rarely awake to the Good News of God in Christ; in fact, rarely awake to who we really are. It has been suggested by many, that until we solve the problem called “you,” we simply spend time trading one problem for another problem.

 

Anthony de Mello, S.J., was a Jesuit priest and psychologist from India. He also maintains that we are mostly sleepwalking through life. That we need to wake up, and hopefully stay awake once we do. He writes, “Many think the most important question in the world is, “Who is Jesus Christ?” Wrong! Many think it is: “Does God exist?” Wrong! Many think it is: “Is there life after death?” Wrong! Nobody seems to be grappling with the problem: Is there a life before death? Yet my experience is that it’s precisely the ones who don’t know what to do with this life who are all hot and bothered about what they are going to do with another life. One sign that you are awakened is that you don’t give a damn about what’s happening in the next life. You’re not bothered about it. You are not interested, period.” [de Mello, Awareness, Doubleday, p.42]

 

To change the world as Jesus calls us to, we must first be transformed ourselves. We do this, says de Mello, through observation and understanding. With no interference or judgment on your part. Because what you judge you cannot understand! When you call someone a communist, understanding has stopped at the moment you slap a label on him. “She’s a capitalist.” Understanding has stopped the moment you slap a label on her – or on yourself! Or, if you accept the labels people slap on you! You lose all true sense of yourself. This is a new world of no judgment, no commentary, no attitude: one simply observes, studies, listens, and watches without the desire to change what is, because if you desire to change what is into what you think should be you no longer understand – you no longer understand others or yourself. [ibid p.38]

 

He goes on to say that Jesus and others are concerned with this life, here and now. What Jesus calls “eternal life.” Eternal means “timeless.” Or, no time. Which we find difficult to understand. Yet, Jesus and mystics of all persuasions, tell us that eternity is “right now”! “How’s that for good news? Eternity is right now…When you hear “Repent for your past,” realize it’s a great religious distraction from waking up. Wake up! Wake up! That’s what repent means. Not “weep for your sins.” Wake up! Repent = Understand = Wake up!” [Ibid p.43]

 

To Wake Up, to Repent, is to put on a new mind. You no longer see yourself as Red or Blue. As Male or Female. As OK or Not OK. You are not OK; you are not not OK. You just are! Those labels only pigeon-hole us, and others, in ways that keeps us asleep, hypnotized, so that we miss what is really in front of us: that eternal life is now! That God’s kingdom is now! That life is a banquet, now! We need not wait for it or for anyone for it to start. The kingdom is here. As Jesus says it is “at hand.” My friend and mentor, N. Gordon Cosby, long-time and founding pastor of The Church of the Saviour in Washington D.C. describes our awakened self as if we are attending a banquet that he calls a Grace Party:

 

“When we hear the invitation to claim our membership in God’s family, it’s like we’ve stumbled onto a Grace Party. We can hardly believe our good fortune. The sights and sounds of it are pure delight. Abundance characterizes the whole shindig. The most delectable manna is falling everywhere, and wine overflows as though from an Artesian well Everyone is eating and drinking endlessly, yet not being harmed because this food and wine are not of the world but New Life.

 

“And get this: Everyone’s invited! That’s the really good news. No one has to crash this party. There’s no limit to how many of my friends I can bring along with me. Or, my enemies for that matter. It’s such a blast that I want everyone to come – those with wealth or not a penny to their name, those who are down and out or who thought they had some power. I do notice, though, that the so-called nobodies seem to be having the most fun. It takes others awhile to lay down everything they brought with them and start to play.

 

“What are people doing at this party? That’s the funny thing – We’re not ‘doing’ much at all. We’re just being. We’re being our real selves, relaxed and eager to help out with whatever the host asks of us. Love is flowing all over the place. Whatever you need, we’re ready:

 

“Do you want someone to listen? We’ll hear whatever you need to say.

Are you bleeding from wounds of the past? We’ll soothe and bandage your wounds.

Do you need to be held for a while, just being quiet in a safe place? Not a problem.

    We have all the time in the world.

Looking for respect, even reverence? You’ll get such a dose of it you’ll wonder

     if you can take it all in.

 

“In fact, there’s so much peace and joy at this party that it can be hard to absorb. Some of us just aren’t able to let in this much unimpeded Love and Goodness. That’s right. The host isn’t pushy. We can come and go as many times as we need to until we can handle this much joy.

 

“This is simply the nature of a Grace Party. None of us is here because we deserve to be. We haven’t earned any of it. And although some of us might keep turning down the invitation, the host will never stop inviting. And neither will we who have decided to stay. We’ll be spreading the news of this unbelievable Feast everywhere we go. Come to the party! It won’t be the same if you’re not there.” – N. Gordon Cosby

 

Indeed, I have always felt the Resurrection was Christ’s  Real Second Coming! He was here. He was gone, dead in a tomb for three days. Then, voila, he was here again for the second time. And if we remains asleep, we forget that Matthew’s story of Jesus concludes unambiguously, “Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age!”

 

This not only means he will not go away, but that we cannot get rid of him! To be awakened is to know this, and to live accordingly. To be awakened is to hear him calling us to his banquet, to his Grace Party, here and now and to spend our eternal lives spreading the news of this unbelievable Feast everywhere we go. Come to the party, he says! It won’t be the same without you! Amen.

All Saints Sunday 2026

 

All Saints Day 2026

It has been the habit of the church to remember certain individuals in its history who have in some way been examples of what it means to live in the kingdom of God, here and now. They are people who have stepped out with faith, hope, and charity to live the kind of life Jesus describes in his teachings, and lives in what he does.

 

At a time when some Christians want us to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms, in courtrooms, locker-rooms, I have even seen them left stuck on the walls of interstate-restrooms. It is curious that Jesus, as recorded, does not speak of the Ten Commandments. Rather, he sits people down and offers a series of nine blessings – or Beatitudes. [Matthew 5:1-12]

 

It is surprising that those who are blessed in these Beatitudes are people whom the world often ignores, or at least tries to forget: the poor, the meek, those who mourn, those who are persecuted for doing what’s right. As one Dr. Derek Penwell who manages a theological substack observes, “He challenges our assumption that wealth, security, and approval are signs of God’s favor. On All Saints Sunday, they raise a difficult question: What does it mean to call people blessed when they’re still suffering?”

 

When one looks at the people whom various church’s have designated as Saints, capital “S,” it’s true. Bishop Hugh of Lincoln stood between violent mobs of Christians who had targeted Jewish merchants and citizens after the coronation of King Richard I. Hugh risked his own life to save the lives of others – and his diocese was one of the few in which antisemitism was at least tamped down – but as we see now nearly every day, antisemitism appears to be still on the rise world-wide and here in the United States. Or, Martin Luther King, Jr., martyred on April 4th, whose life was dedicated to civil rights for all people, and yet we see naked attempts to roll back or get around nearly all provisions of both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act every day. Not only are people still suffering, the justice people like Hugh and Martin worked so hard to bring about remains a future hope that one day may be fully realized.

 

We remember people like Bishop Hugh and Martin King to keep the faith, hope, and charity we associate with their names alive. Because by virtue of our baptism, they remain important figures in our community of faith we believe is the Body of Christ in the world. I believe Jesus is saying they are blessed for they lived as peacemakers, as merciful individuals, and we who remember them are blessed when we hunger and thirst for the same righteousness they pursued; when we actively work to one day make the dreams they had of justice and peace for all people a reality; when we inspire others to meet the needs of those who suffer hunger, homelessness, farm foreclosures, homes wiped-out by hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and all manner of crisis and disaster in their lives.

 

These Beatitudes have sometimes been called Be-Attitudes – Attitudes of Being. That is, to be a person created in the image of God, one needs to be meek, humble, merciful, seek righteousness and freedom for all people, to be peacemakers, and in a word people who love others as we love ourselves. The Beatitudes list qualities of Being of those who already know what it is like to live one’s life in the kingdom of God here and now: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. As the First Letter of John states it, “Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” [1 John3:1-3]

 

As John writes elsewhere, we know what love is because God first loves us. Only when we accept the love of God can we even begin to know how we might love God in return by loving our neighbor – all neighbors, including, as Jesus says elsewhere in his Sermon on the Mount, our enemies and those who hate us.

 

Each year as All Saints Day comes around, I find myself thinking of Laurence, one of seven deacons of Rome. As Archdeacon of Rome, Laurence was entrusted with money to assist the blind, crippled, and indigent citizens of Rome. At the beginning of August 258, the Emperor Valerian issued an edict that all bishops, priests, and deacons should immediately be put to death. After Pope Sixtus II was captured and executed while celebrating the Eucharist, the prefect of Rome ordered Laurence to turn over the riches of the church to the Empire. Laurence asked for three days to gather the wealth, during which time he distributed as much of the church property to the indigent as possible so it could not be taken by the empire. After the three days, he stood before the prefect and was ordered to deliver the treasures of the church. Laurence presented the city's indigent, crippled, blind, and suffering, and declared that these were the true treasures of the Church: "Here are the treasures of the church. You see, the church is truly rich, far richer than your emperor! … To which I will add pearls and precious stones, those widows and consecrated virgins, which are the Church's crown." Laurence was martyred 10 August 258 CE (aged 32).

 

What does it mean to call Laurence, Martin, and Hugh of Lincoln, and all the Saints of the church “blessed” while the poverty and danger of those they sought to protect continues to this very day? They are each a blessing in the sense that they remind us that despite the many ways in which the Church has lost its way, there have always been, and will always be, those among us to remind us who we are and whose we are. They remind us of just what it means to be created in the image of God – to be ikons of God in this world; to dare to live a life of blessing and love of others – all others. Their lives, and the lives of countless others, remind us of the value and importance of these Attitudes of Being Jesus proclaims as Blessings - Beatitudes.

 

All of us are blessed that the Church has appointed the first day of November All Saints Day so that we can stop, block out the noise all around us, and recall the lives of those who in the day of decision answered the call of our Lord to be a blessing to those in need. For this is what it means to follow Christ. This is what it means to be living ikons of the living God. This is what love is – meeting the needs of others, all others.

 

What does it mean to call people blessed when they’re still suffering? They are blessed that God in Christ came to dwell among us to show us what it means to be “children of God” who do the work necessary to meet the needs of all who in any ways suffer: those who are indigent, those who mourn, those who are lonely, those who are persecuted, those who strive for justice and peace for all people, those who respect the dignity of every human being. We are baptized to be a blessing to them all. They are blessed when we do the work God in Christ calls us to do. Amen.

All You Need is Love? Proper 25 A

 

All You Need is Love?

A “lawyer” of the Pharisees asks Jesus, “What is the greatest commandment?” It seems straight forward. But the “lawyer” is more of an expert in biblical studies. Such experts recognized 613 commandments in Torah. No matter which one Jesus might pick, it would be easy to pick another one and then say, “But what about this one?” there being 612 other choices. It’s a trick question. Not unlike the question that was on my final exam in Christian Ethics: “All you need is love. Defend or critique.” Given Jesus’s answer to our expert in biblical studies, it might be easy to say, “Yes, all you need is love. After all Jesus answers with love: “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

 

Love God. Love neighbor. He seems to be saying, “All you need is love of God and love of neighbor.” But Jesus is clever. Part one comes from Deuteronomy chapter six, and is the opening line of a prayer that the Jewish people pray several times a day. It is the foundational prayer of the people of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus. Jesus establishes that he is four-square rooted in the traditions of the Pharisees and Sadducees. And he goes on to quote Leviticus 19:18 which says that love of God means loving those God loves: your neighbor, understood as most especially those without resources: widows, orphans, and resident aliens. And loving God means listening to and acting upon the critiques of society issued by the prophets.

 

That is, the love Jesus is talking about demands acts of kindness, acts of mercy, and active advocacy for a just society. Our prayer for this 22^nd Sunday after Pentecost calls us to embrace faith, hope, and charity for all people. This means housing people, feeding people, providing meaningful employment for people, guaranteeing civil and social rights for people – all people. As the prophet Micah put it long before Jesus, the love of God and neighbor might be summed up as “to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”

 

It ought to be noted that during Jesus’s lifetime, he was not alone in giving such an answer to questions like that of our expert in biblical studies. It is said that Rabbi Hillel was asked by a student, “Teach me all of Torah while I stand on one foot.” Hillel responded, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Get down on two feet and go study the rest!" That is, biblical “love” demands a lifetime of studying “all the rest” of Torah and the Prophets – and Jesus – and then take action on behalf of others.

 

As one commentator notes, the First Letter of John more specifically than any other New Testament voice spells out the role of the second commandment in relation to the first by his statement: “Those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20). A failure to honor the second commandment while claiming to observe the first makes one a liar. The First Letter of John also says, "We love because he first loved us" We can only love God and neighbor because God first loves us. Jesus came to dwell among us to model what such love looks like when lived out day by day.

 

As Jesus himself outlines it, those who care for the least of our sisters and brothers are those who feed the hungry, provide a drink for the thirsty, visit those who are unwell and in prison, clothe the naked, and welcome the stranger – those who are not just like ourselves. To say, “All you need is love” is to overlook our need to be merciful, humble, compassionate, kind, just, and forgiving as we strive for justice and peace for all people. As we learn to respect the dignity of every human being. As Saint Paul famously wrote to the Corinthian church, we need to live lives of faith, hope, and charity.

 

Speaking of the apostle Paul, our portion of his letter to the Thessalonians, the earliest of his letters that we have, has been a passage that I have tried to live up to in my 40+ years of ministry. In the official search documents of the Episcopal Church, clergy are given a box in which one can use something like 150 characters to describe one’s vision of ministry. I wrote something like, “I believe in the mutual ministry of lay persons and clergy in the spirit of I Thessalonians 2:1-8.”  My intention was to get the most out of less than 100 characters, while inviting those on search committees who might be interested in interviewing me to do some bible study themselves on the nature of relationships within the church community. Paul, like Jesus, seems to be embracing relationships of mutual love and care for one another, when he writes: “…we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”

 

A church leader needs to be humble and gentle, not imperious and demanding. We aret o share not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves. That has always struck me as the minimum standard of life in a community that strives not only to believe in Christ, but to follow Christ Jesus in all that we say and all that we do with each other, and with all those neighbors and strangers God in Christ sends our way. Paul sets the standard very high – for himself, and for us all. And throughout his letters to the earliest Christian communities, he often admits how difficult it is to live up to the standards he sets for himself, which, as a former Pharisee, he knows is based in love of God and love of neighbor. As one who had once persecuted the followers of Jesus, Paul was honest and contrite in his repentance, his turning, from one way of life to a whole new way of loving God, loving neighbor, and becoming a leader in the early church.

 

I have no idea what I wrote in that Christian Ethics final exam back in 1982. What I do know is that even then I knew that what I need and what we all need is more than just love, however that might be defined. We need hope. We need faith. We need compassion and empathy for others. We need forgiveness. We need mercy. We need a discipline of charity and giving. And we need one another – which means we need those others, those who are strangers, as well as, and in addition to, those we already know, care for, and love.

 

Most of all we need to acknowledge and accept God’s love. For it is only that God first loves us that we even begin to know what love is. As Ilia Delio concludes in her little book, The Primacy of Love as she describes God’s love for us: “What more do we need than the power of love to turn the tears of this world into a heartfelt song that endures beyond time and space? Where there is love, death has no power over us. It is love alone that sets us free, and in this freedom of love we can know unspeakable joy, for we see with the eye of the heart what remains forever closed to the finite mind. Through the eyes of love, we see the face of God.”  [p.82-83]

 

That is, once we accept the love of God for us, we will see the face of God in others – all others.

Come Labor On Proper 24A

Come, Labor On  - Matthew 22:15-22

Paul’s letter to the church in Thessaloniki is believed to be the first of his surviving letters to be included in the Bible. This makes it the earliest existing example of Christian writing about Jesus and the emerging community of his followers. Evidence in the letter suggests that the Thessalonians have questions for Paul: There are believers who have become idlers, non-productive members of the community just waiting for Jesus to return—what should we do? What about those who have returned to worshipping idols? And some have died before Jesus’s return in the end of days—what will happen to them when he does? 

Before addressing these issues, Paul butters the Thessalonians up. He compliments them for their “work of faith, labor of love, and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ”—which contradicts the earlier-named problem that some of their number have stopped working at all! 

Note his emphasis here on “work” and “labor.” Paul knows what we all know: Faith, hope, and love do not come easy. Ongoing hard work is an important component of the life of any faith that is grounded in love for others—all others. We have to work at this. We work at this in all kinds of ways, including such mundane tasks as cleaning the house, washing the dishes, etc. Sister Joan Chittester addresses this connection in her book, Illuminated Life: 

Work does not distract us from God. It brings the reign of God closer than it was before we came. Work doesn’t take us away from God. It continues the work of God through us … I must work as if the preservation of the world depends on what I am doing in this small, otherwise insignificant space I call my life.

 Paul knows there is no time for idlers on the harvest plain, no time for worshipping idols, and no time to sit around and speculate on the future. Today, idols tend not to be made of wood or stone overlaid with silver and gold. The idols that lure us today are distractions of all kinds: money, greed, envy, consumerism, hatred of those not like ourselves, and inflexible ideologies. Even our obsessions with religion and politics can become idolatrous! 

In this letter, Paul reminds the Thessalonians of the reputation they have as hard-working evangelists who have “turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God.” They have a reputation to maintain as those who have followed Paul’s example, who have persisted in doing the work of God’s kingdom despite hardships along the way. ‘It’s time,’ he encourages them, ‘to continue the work you have begun.’ Again, the gentle art of leading people where you want them to go by showing them the best version of themselves. 

We see a different tactic at play in this morning’s gospel lesson. There, we pick up the ongoing narrative of Jesus in Jerusalem, and witness his ongoing confrontations with various authorities. This time he is confronted by the Pharisees, concerned with keeping Torah faith despite the ongoing Roman occupation. And there are also gathered some Herodians, those who support the ruling family of Palestine, and therefore are seen by others to collaborate with the Roman Empire. It might seem odd that these two groups would be joining forces, but we know politics and religion often make for strange “bedfellows.” In this case, the Pharisees and Herodians both, for different reasons, have common cause to derail the Jesus Movement.

 Together, they set about to test Jesus in public. They no doubt think they have a fool-proof plan to discredit him, bringing forth a question to trap him: about paying the tribute tax to Caesar. If he says Jews ought not pay the tax, some will agree with his sticking to Torah ideals, while others will question his sense of what is practical for survival in the Empire. (This was likely the position of the Pharisees.) On the other hand, were he to say “Yes” to paying the tax, such a practical answer will cost him both politically and religiously, possibly to the point of losing the support of his own followers. For in encouraging Jews to pay taxes to the Roman emperor, he would be siding with the descendants of Herod, who, at the beginning of Matthew, slaughtered all of Jesus’s young cousins! 

It seems a foolproof trap they have laid for him. What could go wrong with their plan? 

Plenty as it turns out! All Jesus has to say is, “Show me the coin used for the tax.” 

Gleefully, his opponents produce a denarius—which shows an image of the emperor on one side, and an inscription on the reverse: “Tiberius Caesar, august son of Augustus, and High Priest.” 

Now for the important context: This coin, for the Jewish people, is itself a forbidden idol. Such coins were not permitted to be used for offerings at the Temple—thus the reason for the money-changers and currency exchanges in the Temple courtyard. 

That the Pharisees and Herodians would produce such a coin on the Temple Mount exposes them as hypocrites. Jesus calls them out as “actors” or “role players,” which is the root meaning of the word, hypokritai (hoop-ok-ree-tahee). Simply by producing the coin, they expose themselves as religious role players or posers, breaking the rules of the very system they seem to be protecting with their questions! 

Jesus could stop there, but no. After getting them to say whose image appears on the coin, he replies, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Like any respectable rabbi, Jesus turns their question back on them: Knowing what you should know, you decide about the tax. The real question is not about taxes. It’s about who you serve. 

Now the familiar epigram in these lines is worth lingering over: “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” The parallel construction of the phrase might seem to suggest that the realms of Caesar and God are of equal significance. But the effect of the phrase is actually the reverse. Jesus does not suggest that the religious realm and the political realm deserve equal respect. Instead, the second clause all but nullifies the first. The realm of Caesar is vastly inferior to the significance of God’s realm, and in setting them in opposition like this, Jesus underscores that fact and ridicules the original question.

Jesus is saying in effect, ‘We bear God’s image. We belong to God as surely as your coin belongs to Caesar. Who do you actually serve?’ Remember what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “You cannot serve God and mammon!” That is: ‘You cannot serve God and money!’ (Matthew 6:24). Essentially Jesus takes the question posed to him about right practice in tax payment and turns it on its head: ‘Go ahead and toss Caesar a few denarii, but remember that life does not consist in wealth, possessions, and power, but rather in living according to the will of God.’ 

Jesus, like Paul after him, has one chief concern: Give to God what is God’s. 

Their teaching echoes down to us with a strong imperative. This is no time for idle chat. No time for idlers. No time for returning to the worship of idols. There’s no time to worry about Caesar. Nor Herod. No time for posers and schemers. It’s time to continue the work of faith, the labor of love, and the steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 

As we sing,

Come, labor on!

Who dares stand idle, on the harvest plain

While all around him waves the golden grain?

And to each servant does the Master say,

“Go work today.”   (Jane L. Borthwick, 1859, 1863) 

Work we must, as if the preservation of the world depends on what we are all doing in this small, otherwise insignificant space we call our life. 

Because it does matter. The world does depend on what we are doing in the small, otherwise insignificant space we call our life. 

Our life is God’s life. And God’s Life is ours. 

Amen.

 

  

What If Proper 23A

 

Matthew 22:1-14

This week's Sermon That Works by The Very Rev. Thelma M. (“Nikki”) Mathis does a terrific job making sense of an otherwise difficult parable.

What If?

It’s possible that the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” referred to at the end of this parable is being performed by anybody who has to preach on this Gospel passage this morning. The kingdom of heaven is like … a king with anger issues, a vicious aristocracy, and a guest with poor taste in clothing who gets thrown into everlasting torment? How is this good news?

 

Where’s the Jesus who says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28)? The one who gave us the Beatitudes; the one who heals all the sick; the one who says, “Let the children come to me” (Matthew 19:14)?

 

Believe it or not, this is the same Jesus who is speaking to us this morning, but this time, the verbal form he’s using can be trickier to understand. Unlike a wise proverb or a beautiful promise, parables are stories that are meant to be weird. They are undomesticated by design. They have no clear answers tied up in a bow. Instead, they have outrageous characters doing ridiculous things, all for the purpose of expanding our holy imaginations.

 

And yes, of course, we first use intellect, study, and analysis to understand the foundational context of the parables—that of the original culture and language—and all the implications thereof. But then, springing from that foundation, parables invite us to feast on “what if?” And in that “what if,” we can explore new ways of living and loving outside the stifling, normative box created by our own cultural assumptions, conventions, and any self-righteous sense of moral certainty. Author and New Testament theologian Amy-Jill Levine, in her book, Short Stories by Jesus, offers this key to our exploration of multi-faceted truth in parables:

 

Like a poem (another simile), a parable will evoke numerous interpretations; it is our job to sort through them. When we seek universal morals from a genre that is designed to surprise, challenge, shake up, or indict and look for a single meaning in a form that opens to multiple interpretations, we are necessarily limiting the parables and, so, ourselves.

 

We might be better off thinking less about what they “mean” and more about what they can “do”: remind, provoke, refine, confront, disturb.

 

And disturb is exactly what this parable does. Here we find a dismissive and murderous aristocracy that kills royal servants for the crime of inviting them to a dinner. Here’s a king who has apparently never heard of de-escalation, so he destroys a city. Here’s a royal social order so rigid that commoners are coerced to come and party while unburied corpses—and what little possessions they may have had—are still burning in the city’s rubble. And we can’t forget the guy without a tux who gets tortured for all eternity. Not to mention all the elegant foods prepared for the gourmet feast—the fatted calf and slaughtered oxen waiting to be consumed like some time-sensitive parmesan and truffle double-baked soufflé—across the time it took for a monarch to assemble troops and commit war crimes against his own people!

 

Why would Jesus offer any part of this absurd nightmare as an example of the kingdom of heaven?

 

Let’s start at the foundation.

 

The foundation for this parable derives, at least in part, from an argument unfolding after the time when Jesus lived and taught. At the time when Matthew’s Gospel was being written, there was an intramural cultural and theological argument between two sides of the Jewish community: about whether Jewish Christians or Jewish non-Christians were the ones truly following God.

 

By having the parable’s king destroy the city of those who “would not come” to the wedding banquet he had prepared, Matthew is weighing in on the debate. The destroyed city in the parable recalls the Roman decimation of the city of Jerusalem—and the absolute razing and defiling of temple—in 70 ad. The application seems to be that, in the destruction of Jerusalem, God’s judgement has been enacted on the Jewish religious leaders who rejected Jesus. The parable could be Matthew’s way of arguing that Jewish believers in Jesus are the ones truly faithful to God.

 

Now this historical context doesn’t necessarily mean that we should read this parable as a wholesale allegory, but that’s most often how this parable is explained in pulpits, Sunday School, and Bible studies. And unfortunately, from that interpretation, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to many false and anti-Semitic notions: about how Christians and Jews fit into the unfolding of God’s plan of salvation.

 

What if, for us here and now, Jesus is also doing a new thing? The great thing—the good news—about Christ’s invitation to the “What if?” of parables is that—once we honor the foundation—we’re set free to listen to whatever else the Holy Spirit has to say. Is this parable about existence of judgment? The fact of Jesus’s rejection? The inclusion of others who are often rejected, now being fed and honored at God’s table?

 

What if this parable is a mirror held up for us to see our sometimes-distorted notions of God and God’s kingdom—or shall we say God’s “commonwealth”? (Remember: parables invite us to think about God in fresh and vivid terms, asking, “What if…?”)  What if God operates outside of our notions of power and control, of scarcity and fear? What if God rejects being depicted as angry or power hungry, rejects being used as an excuse for the crusades or the slave trade or the Doctrine of Discovery? What if Jesus isn’t the bridegroom as depicted in this story—a royal so inconsequential to the lives of his subjects (and to our daily lives now), that he’s ornamental rather than functional? What if Jesus isn’t a prince so negligible that we can offer worship on Sunday and then uphold empire on Monday?

 

If this parable can function as a mirror, the reflections we see in it are not for the purpose of beating up on the church, using shame as a punishment for judgment. What if judgment isn’t exclusively about punishment, but about clear sight and honest repentance, leading to love and liberation?

 

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said it best: “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

 

What if the ridiculous cruelty of this parable is meant to remind us of the simple fact that God is love, and we are beloved? Jesuit priest and author Gregory Boyle addresses this beautifully in his book, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion:

 

God, I guess, is more expansive than every image we think rhymes with God … The God, who is greater than God, has only one thing on her mind, and that is to drop, endlessly, rose petals on our heads. Behold, the one who can’t take his eyes off of you. Marinate in the vastness of that.

 

Following love’s logic to its conclusion, let us look again at the parable’s mirror.

 

Perhaps Jesus isn’t king or son, but a conscientious objector to empire. Jesus is the one who won’t go along with status-quo maintenance and the terror that comes with abuse of power.

 

Lutheran pastor and author Nadia Bolz Weber describes Jesus in the parable like this: “At Calvary he (is cast out into) the outer darkness of empire, the outer darkness of our self-obsessions, the outer darkness of our secret addictions, the outer darkness of our sins and sorrows, the outer darkness of our human competition extravaganza. He goes to Calvary, rather than play along.”

 

What if we, like Jesus, refuse to “play along” with empire, and with our projections on and emulation of God as tyrant?

 

What if—among the many who are invited—the few chosen are the ones who choose to follow Divine Love incarnate, so that we can all—every human being everywhere—may be called “beloved,” God’s children with whom God is well pleased?

 

What if, because of what was done by Jesus in the outer darkness of Calvary, we really do get to, as Father Boyle says, “marinate in the vastness of a God who can’t take their eyes off of you, and who endlessly drops rose petals on our heads”?

 

Amen.

 

The Very Rev. Thelma M. (“Nikki”) Mathis is the Rector of St. Gregory the Great Episcopal Church in Athens, GA, Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta. She is also Dean of the Oconee Convocation in this diocese. For more than a decade, she has served on the faculty for the Episcopal Preaching Foundation and is currently faculty for the Learning to Lead program in her diocese. She is a contributor to Forward Day by Day, The Sewanee Theological Review, Graymoor, and the Episcopal Preaching Foundation publications Kerygma and Preaching the Beatitudes.

 

 

 

 

 

The Futility of Violence Proper 22 A

 

The Futility of Violence

It’s not a parable about wicked tenants. It’s about the futility of violence. How one approaches a parable like the one in Matthew 21:33-46, beginning on giving it a title, is problematic. A title which the parable, when told, it never had. Neither Matthew nor Jesus says, “This one is called: The Parable of the Wicked Tenants.” The title labels the tenant farmers as wicked for being unhappy about their situation. Most, if not all of them, have had their family ancestral farmland foreclosed due to debt and gobbled up by an absentee landlord. They are frustrated, not wicked. The lands the tenant farmers had lost was inherited land. It had been in the family for centuries. At the time of Jesus, and even more profoundly at the time Matthew’s gospel appears, farms and vineyards were often foreclosed and now owned by city-elites of the Roman Empire.

 

Another problem is a history of the church reading these stories as allegories – each character in the story, we say, is code for someone else. Looking at the allegory in Isaiah 5:1-7 some six centuries before Christ, one might have a legitimate point of making the owner of the vineyard God; the tenant farmers to be the kings and leaders of Israel, some of whom were notoriously corrupt; and the vineyard itself is Israel. Oh yes, and for centuries in Church preaching it has been assumed that the new “people who produce the fruits of the kingdom” was in fact the Church itself. To interpret the parable in this way, and cast Israel, or “the Jews,” as “wicked tenants,” means the Church established the very roots of anti-Semitism and Christians as “God’s new people.” Such interpretations persisted through The Holocaust, and today feed the increase of attacks on Jewish people and synagogues here in the U.S, and throughout the world.

 

As already noted, at the time of Jesus, and four decades later when Matthew’s gospel appeared, an unjust system of wealthy city elites who lent money to struggling family farms foreclosed them. The tenants needed to borrow money because of taxes to the Temple, toll-booth taxes, or tariffs, to move their goods to market, and further tribute taxes, or protection money, to be paid to the Roman Empire. Further, the Empire now “owned” the entirety of Judea, Galilee, and most of the surrounding territories. Any notion that “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything therein” had been usurped by the Empire and its need for more and more resources to sustain its power. God was no longer viewed as “the owner” of the vineyard. And the kind of violence one hears about in the parable is aimed more and more against the Empire, not God, eventually resulting in a sort of peasant revolt beginning in the year 66 CE, and crushed by Rome in the year 70, with Jerusalem and The Temple burned to the ground. Thus, the nearly 4,000 years of Yahwism and Abrahamic religion came to a halt – for there was now nowhere to make the appointed sacrifices.

 

This means that after the year 70 CE what we know as Rabbinic Judaism became normative. It had its origins in the years of captivity in Babylon and rabbis led the study of biblical texts while developing several different groups of texts to interpret what the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob willed for creation and the people appointed to care for creation and one another. And although there were home communities of people who followed Jesus as a movement within this new form of Judaism, it would be sometime in the late 1^st century or early 2^nd century that anything like “the church” as an organized entity appeared. That is, the parable is not about Christians and Jews as we think and know of them. It’s not about God. It is about the Empire, or the State’s, oppression of the people of the land – peasant tenant farmers – through systems of property foreclosures, taxes, tolls, tariffs, and an armed military enforcing it all. The church’s collective misreading of this parable has not only caused the sustained existence of anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, but also blinded much of the church from recognizing the signs of what in the 20th century became the origins of authoritative, corporate fascism in Italy and Germany. Only a handful of Protestant Confessing Churches resisted the fascist oppression.

 

Standing among the ashes of Jerusalem, however, there are still deeper lessons to ponder. The futility of armed rebellion and violence was revealed. By the year 70 CE, some four decades after Jesus, the peasant revolts had failed spectacularly. This appears to have resulted in a never-ending spiral of violence up to the present day. In one corner, we hear Vladimir Putin just this week threatening to use “tactical” nuclear weapons against Ukraine and countries of the NATO alliance, calling into question just what constitutes a sovereign nation-state. In the other corner, is the president of the United States threatening to “annihilate” Iran and its entire civilization – one of the oldest civilizations on the face of the Earth – while also threatening to make all countries in north and south America client states. This also calls into question what constitutes a sovereign nation-state.

 

The parable also explores the themes of inheritance and who are rightful heirs of the land, and frankly, calls into question the very credibility if ancestral lands. At the micro level this means homes and farms, but at the macro level it means Empires absorbing more and more countries and territories. Willliam Herzog III, in his book, Parables as Subversive Speech, suggests the parable raises these still relevant questions: How can people and even sovereign nation states reclaim their honorable status as heirs, or as sovereign nations, if violent revolts always end in futility? Are there other ways to reassert their claims? [page 113]

 

The oldest strands of the four gospels are the Holy Week narratives in which Jesus eschews armed revolt, and instead, in proclamations like the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer, and other teachings, does exemplifies another Way – the way of non-violent resistance. It is how the early church operated until in the fourth century the Emperor Constantine elevated the church to Empire status. Others like Ghandhi and Martin Luther King Jr achieved at least temporary success through non-violent resistance. But even those gains are currently in danger of being reversed as the violence of empires appears to escalate.

 

Jesus asks us to pray for bread that is given daily. To pray for our debts to be forgiven as we forgive the debts of others. To hallow God’s name. For God’s will to direct all that we do and all that we say.

Blessed are those who know their need for theirs is the grace of heaven.

Blessed are those who weep, for their tears will be wiped away.

Blessed are the humble for they are close to the sacred earth.

Blessed are those who hunger for earth’s oneness for they will be satisfied.

Blessed are the forgiving for they are free.

Blessed are the clear in heart for they see the Living Presence.

Blessed are the peacemakers for they are born of God.

[The Casa del Sol Blessings of Jesus based on Matthew 5: 3-9, by John Philip Newell]

 

May our prayers be for the peoples and nations of the world to find a Way beyond the futility of violence so that all persons may live in peace and security.

Amen.