To Heal Divisions: Forgive Proper 19A

 

To Heal Divisions: Forgive

Chapter 18 in Matthew addresses our tendency to be a divided people. Whether it is a divided society, or a divided church. The antidote appears to be forgiveness. Mutual forgiveness. Which Jesus highlights when teaching us how to pray which in Matthew 6:9-15 goes like this: “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors…For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive others their offenses, neither will your Father forgive your offenses.”

 

It is in this context that Peter wants to know how often one must forgive another. Which, let’s be honest, is the kind of question that really means “how little forgiveness, or, how few times, can I get away with forgiving someone?” The Greek of Jesus’s answer is ambiguous as it can mean seventy-seven times, or, seven times seventy times. Which is to say, there is no limit. We are to just keep on trying and trying to forgive one another until it works. Until we truly behave as if we really mean to live are in the presence of God, God’s reign, God’s kingdom.

 

Matthew then has Jesus tell a story, which as it turns out seems simple, but in the end leaves it up to us to decide. A king decides to settle accounts with his doulos, translated “slaves.” Given the amount of debt owed by our particular doulos in Matthew 18:21-35, ten thousand talents, it seems he is among the highest level of the retainer class who provided bureaucratic services for the elites. Like the king who has succeeded the power struggles among equally ambitious elites so and is now “king.” He has won the most lucrative prize of all, control of the state or political apparatus. To maintain this power and protect himself from those who would usurp his power would require immense resources in the way of taxes, tribute payments (what in Chicago we would call “protection money”), and confiscating landholdings. Once one achieves kingship, the resources of the state were his to plunder for his gain. These agrarian kings stood at the apex of an authoritarian system, and believed themselves to be above the law, and beyond restraints.”

 

The retainer class like our doulos would head-up agencies, especially collection agencies, as operatives of the royal court. Below them were scribes, lawyers, and accountants who kept records of the king’s acquisitions and debts owed to him. At the lowest level were porters, jailers, and those who would run the most mundane errands of kingdom. All three levels owed their loyalty and existence to the king, and those in the top rung also shared in some of the wealth.

 

Our doulos-retainer is brought to the king. He owed the unimaginable amount of ten thousand talents and could not pay. No one could, really. The king ordered that the he, his wife and family, and all their possessions be sold to pay off the debt. The doulos-retainer falls to his knees and begs saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’  Despite the impossibility of raising such an enormous sum, the king has mercy on him, forgives the debt, and sets him free. He could be grateful, but instead the doulos-retainer runs across a man who owes him 100 denarii, an infinitesimally smaller amount than the ten thousand talents. He demands to be repaid. The man falls to his knees and begs, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He appears to have no appreciation for the king’s mercy and he orders the man to be jailed until the debt is paid. Some of the king’s other retainers were alarmed and told the king what had happened. Furious and in a rage, the king says, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. Referring back to the teaching on prayer, Matthew has Jesus pronounce, “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

 

Everything in the parable is beyond measure and beyond limit! Lots of hyperbole! There was no torture allowed in ancient Israel, other than not being forgiven by God. The doulos-retainer would simply have been demoted to the lowest level slave in the king’s apparatus. And even the lowest of those in the king’s bureaucracy had more power and status than those outside of it: peasants, artisans, tenant farmers, women and children. His offense threatened to disrupt the king’s entire bureaucratic system. But as it turns out, the king himself resorts back to type when the doulos-retainer makes just one misstep in failing to forgive his debtor. The king does not forgive him seventy-seven times. Not even two times. Together with his final pronouncement about torture, makes this a truly strange story.

 

By inviting people to a kingdom of God life, Jesus proclaimed a total reset to the status quo, and spent most of his time with those outside the bureaucratic system of people like our king; those who were victims of a brutal system that sought to consolidate all resources and wealth among the elite. Which is why the world awaited a messianic figure like Jesus to inaugurate a new age of forgiveness and love for all; especially the forgiveness of debt, which in Torah had been specified to occur every seven years. It seems, however, that the bureaucracy had internalized the system to such a degree that they, including the king, were irreducibly creatures of it. Retaliation and revenge remained the only behavior the elites could imagine to maintain their power. The dynamics of the system alone would force the cancellation of forgiveness of debts and any other policy that threatened the existence of the bureaucracy itself. Everyone, including us, the readers, are then ensnared in the experience of a kind of evil; not necessarily intentional evil, but the implicit, unanticipated ‘systemic evil’ of policies that ensured deep divisions within society.

 

The people with whom Jesus spends most of his time both hated and feared the retainers as the visible figures who carried out the policies of the elite, while they also prayed for someone or something that might force or inspire the elite to change their policies. The character of the kingdom Jesus announces is one of mutual forgiveness. This is the behavior required by the indwelling presence of God’s kingdom, and the presence God’s Son. The story seems to say that to receive forgiveness both enables and obligates one to offer forgiveness to others, not as an occasional exception to the rule but as a habit of life, and not without an awareness of the forgiveness one has received, but as a response to it. “For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you.”

 

The surprising answer to Peter’s question, the parable seems to say, is that the Christ the Messiah has come, but so far nothing has changed. And that it is up to people like us, as disciples of God’s Son to adopt a behavior of the forgiveness and love we have received from Christ; to respond with more forgiveness of others than we can possibly imagine. For it will take ten talents worth of forgiveness to begin to heal the divisions that plague society; for the entire system to change from one of retribution and revenge to forgiveness and love – love of neighbors and love of enemies. The parable seems to ask: How might we embrace love and forgiveness not as an occasional exception to the rule, but as a habit of life that can make the presence of God and God’s kingdom of mercy real for all of us?  For everyone? For ever and ever? Amen.

Who Are the Prophets? Proper 18A

 Who Are the Prophets?

I find myself reeling between grief and thanksgiving, as one after another men and women I and many have relied upon for so many years have moved on to their final resting place after lifetimes of inspiring the rest of us to be the best version of ourselves we can possibly be. In the span of a few days, Dolly Parton, Wendell Berry, Cassandra Wilson, and Gloria Steinem have departed this mortal coil. A country singer, a writer, a pioneering jazz vocalist, and a leader of what has come to be called Second Stream Feminism. All of whom cared deeply about the community of humankind and our responsibilities to love and support one another. All of whom could be said to have fulfilled the prayer for this Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost: they all in their own ways resisted pride in themselves, and never forsook their own particular place among those who rely on the Lord’s mercy and a concern for what we used to call “the common good.” How lucky we have all been to have had these four prophets among us for so long.

 

One does not take calling them prophets lightly. As we read in Ezekiel 33:7-11, a prophet’s role is to sound the alarm, to call out truth to power, to warn the general populace that we are on a wrong path – paths not congruent with the Lord’s way, the Lord’s dream of “a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky” as that Twentieth Century prophet and mystic, Howard Thurman once described God’s creation. Wendell Berry, principally a farmer, and a writer of novels and poems, was one of the earliest in our time to declare the damage we have done to God’s “friendly world and sky” with the poison of fossil fuels damaging the very air we breathe, and warming the planet to dangerous temperatures causing more and more violent weather, all while pouring more fossil fuel poisons into the very ground that produces the food we eat in so-called “modern industrial farms.”

 

As the Lord instructs Ezekiel, if you do not warn the people, the impending disaster is on you. If you do warn the people, and they ignore your warnings, the impending disaster is on them. You must call them to turn away from their evil and destructive ways and return to the natural Wheel of Life: everything living is born, has a life, dies, decays, and is reborn from the natural elements of its decaying matter. This responsibility to warn the people and speak truth to the powers that capitalize on damaging the friendly earth and skies is the fundamental message in the 176 verses of Psalm 119, a psalm that finds 176 ways of urging us to return to the natural created order of things – a caution that progress does not always eventuate in good for the friendly earth, the friendly people, nor the friendly sky.

 

So it is that one finds Wendell Berry addressing the Garden Club of America, apologizing: “But I must add I am sorry for getting here / By sustained explosion through the air / Burning the world in fact to rise much higher / Than we should go.” He writes that “Burning the world to live in it is wrong /As wrong as to make war to get along / to falsify the land / By sciences of greed, or by demand / For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify / The body’s health and pleasure…” Berry goes on to urge us to “play it cool”: “Why not survive / By nature’s laws that still keep us alive? …By going back to school, this time in gardens / That burn no hotter than the summer day…Life of our life, the garden lives and sings. / The Wheel of Life, … work, sweat, and hunger / Bring food to the table, food to the cellar shelves. / A creature of the surface, like ourselves, / The garden lives by the immortal Wheel / That turns in place, year after year, to heal / It whole.” (Leavings, Poems, p.22)

 

Saint Paul, in the thirteenth chapter of his majestic Letter to the Church in Rome poses the pivotal question in all eras: “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” No matter how many prophets the Lord sends to us, however, we resist waking up to the fundamental challenges that face us – challenges of our own creation, whether we choose to admit it or not. It took a young woman, a journalist, to recognize the ongoing fate of women both at home and in the workplace, to eventually create a journal for women called Ms. At the time, many people did not know how to even pronounce that title for a woman of whom you are not sure is married or not. It speaks of a kind of new independence in a time when women could not have their own credit cards, and only 15 women served our country in Congress. Today, thanks very much for the vision of Gloria Steinem and others on the staff of that magazine, 150 women serve in the U.S. Congress today – against a rising tide of so-called Christian Nationalism that wishes to send them home to their respective kitchens and deprive them of the vote altogether. Dolly Parton, along with Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda picked up the vision Steinem put forth, and used a comedic movie to call attention to the plight of working women everywhere. And Cassandra Wilson, amidst her vast and eclectic repertoire, featured songs that also called for a new day for women, for outsiders of all kinds, and for us all.

 

All the while, Parton, Berry, Steinem and Wilson persistently called us to restore a kind of community that seeks to serve the Common Good, looking out for the most vulnerable people throughout the land. Which is really the focus of this week’s gospel. What might appear as a kind of “manual of church discipline and conflict resolution,” [Matthew 18:15-20] a look at its place in all of chapter 18 of Matthew’s Story of Jesus suggests a larger and broader concern. The chapter begins with Jesus raising up children as the ideal model of a follower of his call to live according to God’s statutes. One can easily believe that Jesus was deeply familiar with the psalms, and Psalm 119 in particular. He goes on, in his parable of a lost sheep, to remind his would-be followers that it is of utmost importance to go forth and find, what he calls in chapter 25, “the least of these, my sisters and brothers” – outcasts of all kinds including the hungry, thirsty, sick, imprisoned, and immigrants and strangers of all kinds. Even to the point of leaving 99 others to find and serve every last one!

 

Against this background, verses 15-20 really seem to say something like, “There is much more important things for us to be doing than petty arguments over who sits where, is the bread and wine real flesh and blood or symbolic, and when is it appropriate to cross oneself during the Holy Eucharist? Settle it all, and get back to the work of the kingdom – which is a prophetic announcement if there ever was one.

 

I vividly recall sitting in a once abandoned house on an old logging road in Maine, where my musical companions and I would often spend a night or two while on the road. There was no electricity, no running water, no telephone. Nights were dark and quiet. What better place to pick up a little book titled, A Continuous Harmony, in which I discovered the vision Wendell Berry has for us all, and for God’s green earth. That was over fifty years ago, and I have never turned back from consulting Berry’s wisdom regularly. The other night I picked up an early book of his poetry, The Wheel, and on page 2, in the second portion of a Requiem Poem dedicated to his deceased friend, Owen Flood, I found words that might now best characterize Wendell Berry himself, and all the other prophets who scream out loud throughout the centuries trying to turn the rest of us back in the right direction; God’s direction; Christ’s direction:

In the day of his work

when the grace of the world

was upon him, he made his way,

not turning back or looking aside,

light in his stride.

 

Now may the grace of death

be upon him, his spirit blessed

In deep song of the world

and the stars turning, the seasons

returning, and long rest.

Amen.

Peter & Dolly Proper 17A

 

Peter & Dolly

Last week, Peter was the star pupil in the disciple’s class. When asked by Jesus, “Who do you say that I am?” he replied, “You are the christos, the anointed, the messiah, the Son of the living God.” Right. Now do me a favor. Do not tell anyone. And that’s where we left it.

 

And now, the rest of the story. Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

 

Poor Peter. It’s been a rough week. First, the failure at walking on water, and now this. He gets the right answer, and is the only one to state who Jesus is. Suddenly, he is “Satan.” We need to remember, when all this was written down, Satan was understood as an employee of the God of Israel. To be “Satan” is to be a tester or an inspector – someone who checks you out to see if you are still on God’s program. And to “get behind” Jesus is simply another way of saying, “Follow me,” which of course is how this adventure began back when Peter was a fisherman.

 

Where Peter went wrong in Part II of the incident at Caesarea Philippi is that he could not accept Jesus as christos could possibly face mortal danger in Jerusalem. The christos, the anointed one, the messiah Peter and others expected would be a fierce warrior king like David, or an almighty judge, who would drive the Romans, the current Goliath, out of Israel once and for all. You’ve got his all wrong, he seems to be saying. Those things cannot happen to you. Set aside that it appears he missed the part about being raised on the third day altogether, Peter says in effect, No, you cannot be that person you are describing.

 

It is safe to say, Jesus knows who he is, and knows exactly what he will face once inside the walls of the City of Shalom, Jerusalem. This is where I suggest Dolly Rebecca Parton comes in. She had tons of talent as a song writer, singer, and entertainer. She was a smart and even shrewd businesswoman. She could do concerts, movies, stage, and television. But her most important quality of all was her intention to accept everyone for who they are. In interview after interview, she would say something like, “We are here to love one another, not judge one another. Judging others is God’s business, not ours. And sure enough, I am not at all equipped to do God’s business. But I can love my neighbor – all neighbors. As far as I am concerned, if you are straight, you are straight. If you are gay you are gay. If you are trans, you are trans. And I accept that, and let’s all get together and make the world a better place for all God’s people.”

 

And it turns out, she not only talked the talk, she walked the walk. She knew what it was like to grow up in a remote town in Appalachia, and saw just how illiteracy could hold people back, like her own father, who could neither read or write. Rather than make money writing a book about the challenges of growing up in Appalachia, she created a nation-wide and world-wide program to send age-appropriate books to children every month from birth to age five so that when they went to school they were prepared to learn. When fellow entertainers and the U.S. government stayed away from the HIV-AIDs epidemic, Dolly was one of the first to step forward and support the LGBT community and raise money to help find medical interventions for them. She stood up for marriage equality; for better working conditions for women at work; took the royalties from one of her first songs made a world-wide hit by Whitney Houston, I Will Always Love You, and invested the millions of dollars in the African-American community in Nashville as a memorial to Whitney Houston’s name. And most famously, when she got wind that drag-queens were holding contests to see who could most look and act like Dolly Parton, rather than try to put a stop to it, she anonymously entered one such contest. And lost! She found it hilarious that there were contestants who somehow looked and acted more like her than she did herself! And when COVID-19 struck, she contributed one million dollars to the development and trials of the Moderna vaccine which went on to save millions of lives. I submit, this is what it means to carry her cross and follow Jesus.

 

All because she would wake up early every morning, and the first thing she would do is ask God, “Lord, what do you want me to do today?” Over and over again, it turned out that God wanted her to help people to be who God made them to be. Because long before her first appearance at the Grand Old Opry at age 13, where she got three standing ovations, she grew up singing in church, and she, unlike Peter, knew exactly who Jesus was and what it means to follow him.

 

Jesus was all about accepting people for who they are and what they are. Jesus was all about inclusion, including everybody no matter what. Dolly would tell others, all others: There’s never been a better you, and there will never be another person just like you. And you’re the only one who is capable no matter where you’re from of becoming whatever version of yourself you want to be. And you don’t need to be ashamed of it, even if others make fun of you, it does not have to be embarrassing if you don’t let it be. That part’s up to you. It takes a lot of bravery to totally be who you want to be to the world.

 

Which is exactly what Peter gets wrong. Jesus knows who he is and what he has to do. And he knows there will be opposition from all fronts in Jerusalem. It took a lot of bravery to walk from Galilee to Jerusalem, meeting opposition all along the way. Peter could not accept that, but it turns out Jesus knew what it meant to be God’s anointed, God’s Son, God’s beloved. And in her own way, so did Dolly Rebecca Parton.

 

Is it a coincidence that Dolly died just as we are given this confrontation between Peter and Jesus at Caesarea Philippi? We will never know for sure. Is it a coincidence that our opening prayer asks God: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; the very week that we learn the degree to which Dolly Rebecca Parton was doing all of that without telling anyone but the people she was helping day in and day out? We will never know. What we do know that is that she loved God’s name, had a deep understanding of true religion, and that her Jesus brought forth in her good works. So many that we may never know the full reach of her care for all sorts and conditions of humankind. She knew what it meant to pick up her cross and follow Jesus.

 

Scripture tells us that Peter continued to struggle with what it means to accept and include others – all others, no exceptions. This episode at Caesarea Philippi, and the events of the past week, suggest that when it comes to honoring the invitation to follow Jesus, it is better to be a Dolly than a Peter. And that in doing so, life becomes much more meaningful, and as Dolly showed us year after year, a whole lot more fun! Amen.

WDYSTIA Proper 16A

 WDYSTIA

John Shea, Catholic priest and enchanting storyteller, begins his book, The Challenge of Jesus, thusly: “The only excuse (a lame one at that) for another book on Jesus is that we are never quite through with him. When the last syllable of the last word about Jesus the Christ has been spoken, a small balding man who until now has been silent will say, ‘Just a moment, I….’ After two thousand years people still journey to Jesus. They bring a vaunting ego and last year’s scar, one unruly hope and several debilitating fears, an unwarranted joy and a hesitant heart – and ask Jesus what to make of it. We have only gradually become aware of the hook in Jesus’s promise, ‘I will be with you all days, even to the end of the world.’ This not only means he will not go away but that we cannot get rid of him. He continues to roll back the stone from the caves we entomb him in. It is only because Jesus insists on inserting himself into the thick of our plots that we insist on commenting on him. “

 

Jesus asks his closest followers, “Who do people say that I am?” [Matthew 16:13-20] It’s not a poll. He has been followed around by thousands of people. At this point in Matthew’s story of Jesus, he has fed crowds of 5,000 and 4,000, and restored the lives of many many more than that. He has done so much that the Pharisees and Sadducees, together, are trying to figure him out. It should be pointed out, those two groups NEVER do anything together, let alone interrogate someone together. They ask him for a sign at the beginning of chapter 16, which is their way of sounding like the Caterpillar asking Alice, “Who are you?” To which Jesus says, in essence, a sign? What more can I do that I have not already done?

 

Jesus is a small-town kid and has never anticipated this much attention. He wants to know what people are saying. The disciples respond: John the Baptist, who, by the way, had recently been beheaded by Herod Antipas, which would make Jesus a ghost. But to see Jesus as John is to see that something is moving in the world that is bigger than historical individuals, and which the Empire has no ability to control. Some say, say the disciples, that you are Jeremiah or one of the prophets. The prophets who spoke and acted God’s word as poetry. Jeremiah warning that unless people were to change their evil ways, we will all end up slaves in a new Empire, a new Egypt named Babylon. Or, Elijah, whom scripture suggests never died; who, in the same region in which we find Jesus, healed the son of a poor widow just as Jesus recently healed a Canaanite woman’s daughter; and whom the prophet Malachi says will return before the Day of the Lord, [Malachi 4:5-6].

 

The prophets throughout the centuries challenged God’s people to open their eyes and to see the realities of the present historical moment, and the realities of their responsibilities toward their neighbors. Which Jesus, always taking things a step further, commands that not only are we to love our neighbors, but to love and pray for our enemies as well. It is interesting, isn’t it, that different people among the thousands whose lives he touched all have different ideas of who he is. And that they tie him to the lives of those have gone before.

 

But this is now. And God is doing something new. Jesus knows this. Thus, he asks the pivotal question: Who Do You Say That I Am? WDYSTIA! Does not lend itself to fitting on a bracelet, but it is The question. Now, I served a total of nearly 23 years in churches named after St Peter, a central figure in today’s story, so that this story comes up two times every year to preach on, which means I have something like 46 sermons archived on just this story! Yet, one evening, I was sitting in the backyard getting a fire going in the Webber grill, reading the Sabbath Poetry of Wendell Berry, when out of nowhere it struck me! The answer to his question is in the question. I had never ever noticed that before, not in 46 iterations of this sermon! Even after I had preached on the numerous instances in John’s Story of Jesus and all of the “I Am” speeches: I am the Good Shepherd, I am the gate to the sheepfold, I am the bread from heaven, I am the true vine, etc. I had never noticed, the answer is in the question in the final two words: I Am. This Jesus is the one who spoke to Moses from the Burning Bush, who when asked by Moses, “Who are you?” replies, “I am who I am.”

 

Suddenly, out of the blue, Peter, bumbling Peter who lost his nerve and lost faith in himself out on the water, gets it: You are the Christ, God’s Anointed, the Messiah, “the Son of the Living God.” It’s the equivalent of saying, “You are ‘I am who I am’!” Those two words, “I am,” always, always, forever and ever are meant to point us back to the God of the burning bush. Who do you say that I am? Jesus is ‘I Am.’

 

Yet, there is an even more important truth implied in WDYSTIA! We and the disciples are meant to ask this pivotal question of ourselves. For when we are baptized into The Body of Christ, a cross is traced on our foreheads with oil blessed by our bishop, sealing us and marking us “Christ’s own forever. The Bond established in Holy Baptism is indissoluble.” [BCP 298] This suggests that all questions about Jesus are questions about us. About me. About you. About us. Who are we? Who are you? Who do people say that I am?  Can people see Jesus in all that I do and all that I say? Do I seek and serve the Christ in all persons, loving my neighbor as myself? Do I strive for Justice and Peace for All people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

 

The good news, perhaps even the Best News, is that to ponder just who Jesus is, is not that we will never be done with him, but that Jesus is not done with us! And our Risen Lord promises he will never be finished with us until that day and time when he reunites us with himself in his Father’s household of light, love and joy! For we are created, male and female, in God’s own image. I am who I am, says the Lord God of Israel. We are what we are. We are his, he is ours, we are what we are – creatures created to be stewards of God’s creation and lovers of all people and all creatures who are our neighbors in this best of all possible worlds. Amen.

Indigenous Gentile Women and The Good News Proper 15A

Indigenous Gentile Women and The Good News

I cannot help but think of this Canaanite woman, perhaps one of the most important figures in the Bible, while hearing about the underreported crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG), and the disproportionate rates of violence, abduction, human trafficking, and murder faced by Native American and Alaska Native women. Over 5,000 go missing per year, and it is estimated that 4 out of 5 indigenous American women experience violence sometime in their lives. The Canaanites were the indigenous people of the land before the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of which our mother is just one such Canaanite mother. [Matthew 14:10-28] 

She is an unnamed woman in the Gospels, much like the Samaritan Woman at the well. And yet, both of these women have a transformational encounter with Jesus – only this time he is the one who is transformed. It’s a story that means to invite us all to be transformed, and to let go of long held beliefs that hinder and fracture relations between different communities of people. 

Curiouosly, just before this scene of a mother desperate to find help for her daughter, Jesus is debating the Pharisees, saying it is not what you eat, what you put into your mouth, that defiles a person. Rather, he says, it is what comes out of your mouth that defiles you. Then, inexplicably, he turns around and calls this Canaanite mother, her daughter, and all of “her people,” dogs. 

Now Jesus is travelling in majority gentile territory, the very same area to which God once sent Elijah to a widow and mother in need. Elijah heals her son. Jesus seeks a well-deserved rest when suddenly this woman shouts out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, haShem, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” Actually, the Greek text says she “screams out,” giving us a deeper understanding of just how painful it is to watch her daughter suffer. We are meant to feel her desperation. Of note, she recognizes Jesus as Kyrios, “Lord,” which is the same as calling him haShem, the Hebrew circumlocution for God. And identifies him as “Son of David,” acknowledging him as Messiah, God’s anointed. This stranger, an outsider, seems to know more about who Jesus really is than the insiders like his disciples, as we will find out in the following scene in Caesarea Philippi: when Jesus asks them, “Who do you say that I am?” 

At first Jesus tries to ignore her. This alone seems cruel. Then the disciples beg him to dismiss her “because she is screaming after us!” Jesus also ignores their plea, but says, “I have been sent to find the lost sheep of Israel.” Not a promising sign for this gentile woman. But now she kneels  in front of him – blocking his advance on the road toward rest. “HaShem, help me!” she cries. This is when what comes out of his mouth sounds defiling. “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” The children are the Israelites he believes are his one and only concern; she, her daughter and gentiles are “dogs”. Since she is blocking his way, Jesus is forced to address her. 

We may as well admit, many of us would either give up at his insult, or get angry. But this mother is strong, and is desperate to find relief for her daughter. Once again, she addresses him as Lord, as haShem, as God, with dignity and reverance. “Yes, but haShem, even the dogs are eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.” Imagine the disciples watching this gentile, Canaanite mother talk back to Jesus! This takes moxie, determination, presence of mind, and a commitment to securing her daughter’s future, her very life. And yet, it is like a lightning bolt has struck Jesus when she says this! 

She has not only stopped Jesus in his tracks, but she appears to be the first to remind Jesus to see the bigger picture, the greater mission that lies ahead of him: to rescue gentiles as well as Israelites! A vision long ago advanced by the prophet Isaiah. There are to be no “her people” and “our people.” “Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come,” says Isaiah, ‘and my deliverance will be revealed… for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” [Isaiah 56:1,6-8] All peoples. Not some. Not many. But all peoples. 

Suddenly, Jesus lets go of long held biases and beliefs that had hindered relations between his people and hers. Suddenly, he seems to remember the word that came to Isaiah that we are all to be one people in the House of the Lord. Jesus will eventually share this broader mission to all people to his disciples after he rises from the dead! He recognizes the depth of her faith and dispels the demon that possesses her daughter. It is a new life for her daughter. More importantly for all of us gentiles, it’s a new life for Jesus as well, and for all of us! 

So utterly unlike Peter who loses faith in himself and Jesus, and begins to sink into the surf, Jesus recognizes this Canaanite, this gentile, this woman has faith in herself and in the God of Israel. And once again, perseverance furthers! From that moment on, Jesus is changed even more significantly than anyone else in the story. Matthew foreshadows this experience all the way back in his genealogy of Jesus, which uniquely includes other gentile women: Tamar, who through trickery preserved the line of Judah and King David; Rahab the harlot who played a significant role in the battle of Jericho; Ruth, the immigrant Moabite who becomes the great-grandmother of David; and Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite. These women, according to Matthew, were crucial to the line that leads to Jesus. And now another indigenous woman plays a significant role to broaden the mission of Jesus to go beyond the boundaries of Israel! 

This mother retains her Canaanite and gentile identity. She does not need to ‘convert.’ She joins herself to the God of Israel, but remains forever a Canaanite. She also proves herself more faithful than the insiders like the disciples. She takes to the road to do whatever she needs to do to secure relief and safety for her family, even physically making herself an obstacle Jesus needs to get past; forcing him to address her directly. She changes the future direction of our Lord’s mission from being a parochial affair to a universal mission to all people everywhere! Jesus recognizes her as a model for us all – faithfulness is not what we say, or what we believe, but what we do on behalf of others – all others, no matter who they are or where they come from. 

Her daughter was healed that very hour. Isn’t that what we all want? To be freed from the demons that beset us and our society? Isn’t what our American indigenous communities desire during the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls? How many faithful American indigenous women like this Canaanite mother have been lost without a trace? Aren’t we called to stand with her and other indigenous and immigrant women like Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth? Are we not called to live out the vision Isaiah proclaims: “Thus says the Lord: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed. And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord…these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer.” To this we say, Amen; it is Truth; it is so! 

The Night-Sea Journey Proper 14A

 

The Night-Sea Journey

We are mistaken when tempted to think that this journey we call life is meant to be a time to find something – or, rather someone – or The SomeOne. That is to ignore a great cache of literature that seeks to direct us in a different way. Rather than a quest, they suggest, we are best to abandon all that we think we know and even that which we “think” we are. Such abandonment of “self” is often experienced as darkness, as aloneness, as stillness, but may result in being found.

 

The prophet Elijah, for instance, on the run for his life having challenged the Canaanite God Baal, and having slaughtered the prophets of Baal after a contest on Mt. Carmel, hides himself in the darkness of a cave on Mount Horeb – the only person in the Bible to have gone back there since Moses left after his encounter with YHWH several hundred years prior. [1 Kings 19:9-18] Jezebel, wife of king Ahab and worshipper of Baal, had set a price on Elijah’s head. In this darkest moment of his soul, it is the Lord God YHWH who comes to find him, and summons Elijah to come out as He promises to pass by. There is a great wind, splitting rocks, tossing trees and shrubs all around, but God was not in the wind; then an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake; then fire, but God was not in the fire; finally, Elijah barely hears a still, small voice – the sound of sheer silence. It turns out that when things are bleakest, life is at its darkest, most precarious ebb, God comes to us. God seeks us out. God gives Elijah new “marching orders” and sends him back into the fray!

 

John Matthias, later known in sixteenth century Spain as Juan de la Cruz, Saint John of the cross, famously wrote, “Upon a gloomy night/With all my cares to loving ardors flushed/(O venture of delight!)/With nobody in sight/I went abroad when all my house was hushed.” For John, it was Elijah all over again. It was a “dark night of the soul,” having been jailed in a tiny cell by rival friars. This led him to discover that once he allowed himself to be “entirely burned away,” God came to him in the midst of the hushed darkness: “Oh night that was my guide!/Oh darkness dearer than the morning’s pride/Oh night that joined the lover/To the beloved bride/Transfiguring them each into the other.” John felt rescued from his despair by the “beloved bride,” the alive-again Christ, who had come to shine light upon John’s night of deep darkness.

 

In this season of renewed interest in Homer’s Odyssey, and directly related to our gospel for today, we are reminded of that other metaphor for spiritual growth and mystical experiences of God: the darkness and potential dangerous wildness of the “wine-dark sea.” There may be no other life as lonely as that of one of the prophets and those like John of the Cross than those who sail the often roiled and wild seas. The Seafarer, by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet describes life on the open sea while others on land spend nights in the mead-hall enjoying lavish banquets before a roaring fire:

 

“I can sing my own true story/of journeys through this world/ how often I was tried/by troubles. Bitterly scared/I would be sick with sorrow/on my night watch as I saw/so many times from the prow/terrible, tall waves/pitching close to cliffs./My feet were frozen stiff/seized and locked by frost/although my heart was hot/from a host of worries./A hunger from within/tore at my mind, sea-weary. But men on solid ground/know nothing of how a wretch/like me, in so much pain/could ever live a winter alone/exiled, on the ice-cold sea/where hail came down in sheets/and icicles hung from me/while friendly hall-companions/feasted far away./The crashing sea was all/I heard, the ice-cold wave.” [translated by Mary Jo Salter in The Word Exchange]

As the night-sea journey continues for our Anglo-Saxon poet, he is struck by just how “Terrible and great/is the Lord, and the very world/turns to him in awe….Blessed is he who lives in all/humility, what comes to him/in Heaven is forgiveness…” The Seafarer then concludes: “Let us ponder where our true/home is, and how to reach it./Let us labor to gain entry/into the eternal/ to find the blessedness/of belonging to the Lord/joyfully on high./Thanks be to God who loved us,/the endless Father/the Prince of Glory forever. Amen.”

 

Which certainly needs no analysis to lead us into a deeper look at what is the Second Night-Sea Journey in Matthew 14:22-26. Earlier, Jesus had invited others to join them in the boat, but who had other things to do before getting in [8:18-27]. This time, Jesus “made the disciples get in the boat and go on to the other side” while he took a very much needed time-out to recharge after healing and feeding thousands. Not for long, though. These men, among them fishermen, found themselves rowing against a mighty wind, with the boat in danger of foundering. It is dark. It is night. Waves batter the boat. The going is rough. The going is exhausting to be sure. We try to imagine what was going through their minds as they continued to fulfill their mission to get to the other side. When all of a sudden, a vision appears. They suppose it is a ghost. They cry out in fear! But immediately the vision speaks to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Actually, it says, “Take heart, I am.” They would recognize “I am” as the voice of God to Moses from the bush that burns but is not consumed. Like our Anglo-Saxon poet, they recognize that in the darkness on the wind-blown sea they are in the presence of the Lord God, “I am who I am.”

 

This is where it gets a bit strange. Peter demands proof as their Lord stands upon the battering waves before them. He wants to be like Jesus, standing on the roiling sea. OK, says the Lord. Give it a try. So, Peter gets out of the boat, starts to walk toward Jesus when suddenly, he noticed the strong wind and begins to sink. He has been rowing against the strong wind all night. How is it just now that he notices the wind? Or, is he suddenly struck oblivious? Or, is he thinking only of himself and not the great “I Am” who stands before him? Or, is this really a ghost? A vision of overly exhausted rowers on the boat? Or, is this a resurrection appearance of Christ that Matthew has for some reason inserted back into the middle of the story? And if so, why?

 

So many questions, all of which are worth tracking down. Of important note, in any case, once again, in the dark of night, in the despair of near-drowning, it is the Lord who comes to us. For we are the disciples. He sends us off, thinking perhaps we now know what kingdom living is really like. And, when they finally get there, with Jesus in the boat, they get back to the work of healing all those in need. But in the darkest hours of the night-sea journey, they seem to have forgotten who they are and whose they are. Matthew seems to present this second night-sea journey as a step-along-the-way to fully knowing who God in Christ is.

 

Unlike John of the Cross, Peter has yet to have let go of all he thinks he is to allow Christ to gather him fully into the life of the kingdom. As it is for Peter, it is, no doubt, for all of us. We think we know the Christ, and perhaps we do, but we allow personal and social distractions to forget who we really are, and whose we are. We all experience “dark nights of the soul” – a night sea journey. Matthew offers this story so we might take the Seafarer’s lesson to heart: “Let us ponder where our true/home is, and how to reach it./Let us labor to gain entry/into the eternal/ to find the blessedness/of belonging to the Lord/joyfully on high./Thanks be to God who loved us,/the endless Father/the Prince of Glory forever. Amen.”

 

A Magic Loaf of Bread Proper 13A

 

A Magic Loaf of Bread

When you were four years old, I had a dream about you.

In the dream you had found a loaf of bread.

You worried for the poor of the world, and you decided to

feed everyone from your loaf. From one loaf of bread?

Yes. It was a magic loaf. And it was a dream.

Story by Jumana Emil Abboud, a Palestinian-Canadian artist and collector of folk tales, in the book Bread for the Living, Bread for the Dead, edited by Alexander Strecker 

I grew up across the street from an elementary school. Before I was in kindergarten, I had a lemonade stand at the corner for all the older kids on the way to school. I kept going into the kitchen to get more lemonade. My mother said, “You must be making a lot of money!” I replied, “Money? I’m giving it away to all my friends!” 

You may have noticed, from one end of the Bible to the other, the story is often about bread. When Father Abraham is in the middle of almost nowhere, the mysterious King of Salem, that is the King of Peace, arrives with bread and wine, which they share. Then the king  blesses Abraham, and off Melchizedek, Hebrew for King of Righteousness, goes never to be seen again. Except in the curious New Testament treatise called Hebrews which states categorically that Christ is a priest “after the order of Melchizedek”: Christ, the King of Peace, Christ the King of Righteousness. 

There is the manna in the wilderness, after the Great Escape from Pharaoh’s Egypt. It appears every morning. Everyone gets enough. No one gets too much, for if you try to hoard it, it sours and becomes infested with worms. Utterly unlike life in Egypt where the bread supply was controlled by the empire, this manna, this bread of life, is freely given by YHWH, the God of the Passover-Exodus journey to freedom. 

The prophet Isaiah remembers this as he poses the question: Why do you work 24/7 like slaves again for this new Empire’s bread which will never satisfy? Why don’t you return to the Lord’s bread, milk, and wine that is given freely, without price? The bread that has sustained God’s people, our people, for millennia? “Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live,” says the Lord. 

Several hundred years later there is Jesus. The Christ. God’s anointed. God’s beloved. Who comes to dwell among us, as one of us, with a dream. Not just any dream, but the Dream of God. He calls it a new kind of kingdom – the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven. He says it is here. It has been here all along. Yet, we allow ourselves to become tenured ways of the Empire such that we no longer see that it is right here, at hand, here and now, available to those who share in God’s dream – a dream in which everyone gets enough, no one gets too much, or it begins to sour and spoil. The Empire’s bread will never satisfy nor sustain us. Jesus says, Follow me. Remember the challenge of Isaiah: Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? I am the true bread that comes down from heaven, from the hand of God my Father. 

Matthew chapter 14 confronts the reader with two very different meals: Herod Antipas’s birthday and Jesus feeding a multitude of hungry, sick, and disabled people. Herod’s party devolves into a brutal act of revenge with the beheading of John the Baptizer who disapproved of Herod having made off with his brother’s wife, Herodias, amid a context of the Empire’s plenty with copious amounts of food and drink, more than the assembled party-goers could ever possibly consume. 

In the other corner, wearing the white trunks, one finds Jesus who has heard of John’s demise and seeks to get away from the brutality of the empire. A crowd of thousands seem to know where he is going, and get there first on foot. He sees them, and has compassion for them. He  gets out of his boat and immediately begins to heal and cure the sick and disabled. The disciples come to him and say, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” This is the point really. This is what disciples and followers of Jesus are meant to do. They whine. “But we only have five loaves an two fish!” Bring it to me. Jesus takes the loaves, blesses the loaves, breaks the loaves and gives them to the disciples to give to the more than 5,000 people – if you count the women and children. Which we always should.

 

“And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.” Everyone is satisfied, just as Isaiah had said. There are plenty of leftovers for others to be fed. We find it difficult to understand such a story. I suspect you may have noticed that we act out this very story every Sunday, at this table which is open to all who are hungry, all who are in need of healing, those who seek the true bread of life. We take, bless, and break the bread, and give it away, “without money, without price.” Week after week after week. 

The kingdom living, in which we are invited to live here and now, is not about “every man, woman, and child for themselves.” Jesus tells us that his Father imagines that people who are made in God’s image are to operate as a mutual aid society. Those who follow Jesus are to find ways to meet the needs of others, especially those who are sick, disabled, and otherwise living at the margins of society. Disciples, or followers, always means us. We also know he feels the same way about healthcare. At one end of the Sea of Galilee are hot springs, spas, where people came from all over the ancient world and paid large amounts of money to experience the healing waters of the hot springs. And there is Jesus, on the banks of Galilee, just giving away food and healing people of all kinds of dis-ease. For free. No wonder he was locked up. He was bad for business, and bad for the local economy. The early church never forgot these moments, witness that it is one story repeated in all four gospels. The meal the church chose to share recalls this story. It is the memory of this story that explains that we read in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles that the church grew by the thousands every day! It was a mutual aid society, utterly unlike life in the empire.

When you were born, God had a dream about you.

In the dream you had found a loaf of bread.

You worried for the poor of the world, and you decided to

feed everyone from your loaf. From one loaf of bread?

Yes. It was a magic loaf. And it wasn’t a dream.

God’s dream came alive in you as it did for Jesus.

And the world has never been the same.

Righteous Individuals? Or, A Just Society? Proper 10A

 

Righteous Individuals? Or, A Just Society?

“Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them… As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing.” -Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

This Parable of the Sower sowing seeds poses several important questions: What type of soil are we? Do we hear God’s Word? Does our hearing lead to living a kingdom of God kind of life? I say “we” instead of “you” because in English one cannot distinguish between “you” singular and “you” plural. But Matthew’s Koine Greek does. It is therefore important to note that in the Beatitudes [Matthew 5] and in the parable of the Last Judgement [Matthew 25] the “you” is also always plural. And I would suggest that the Beatitudes and the Last Judgement bracket the entire ministry of Jesus. Matthew understands the Good News of Jesus Christ to inaugurate a new age in which we finally learn to love and truly care for one another as God loves “us.” We are especially to love those living at the margins of society.

 

There have been recent disagreements as to what these bookends are talking about. The Last Judgement, of course, finds Jesus self-identifying with those who are hungry, thirsty, sick, in prison, and strangers – and that as we address their needs we are serving him directly. The disagreement is whether these are instructions for individuals, or for society and nations at large. Which should be clear, since the parable opens by saying, “When the Son of Man (Jesus) comes in all his glory he will gather the nations before him [for judgement and sorting].” In some Bibles it is even called The Judgement of Nations. It is not judgement of individuals.

 

There are streams of American Christianity who see it just this way: that we are to become a nation that looks out for one another, and most especially those most vulnerable and in need of assistance. There are, however, other streams of American Christianity who think the nation as a whole ought not be involved in helping those in need; that rejects the idea that helping others is a moral duty, and teaches that rational self-interest is the highest moral purpose. Giving to others is acceptable only if it is voluntary, you can afford it, and the recipient is worthy. This might be called the Gospel of Ayn Rand’s brand of objective individualism which rejects altruism and all notions of living to serve others and self-sacrifice to help those in need.

 

This latter stream of American Christianity represents the “thorns” into which the seeds of God’s Word are choked out by “the cares of the world and the lure of wealth” Jesus speaks of,  yielding nothing more than self-preservation, self-happiness, and self-interest as the highest moral values that ought to concern us. I would further suggest that it is the American pre-occupation with what Hebert Hoover called “the rugged individual,” the idea that anyone, by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, can live a rags to riches Horatio Alger sort of self-improvement and success. Yet, even the author Horatio Alger’s young protagonists most often succeeded with the assistance of a wealthy benefactor!

 

Nevertheless, Scot Loyd, PhD, author of "The God I Was Given," and scholar of race, religion, culture, and communication has outlined how the cult of rugged individualism has reinterpreted Biblical religion: “For much of my life, I inherited a version of Christianity that instinctively read almost every passage of Scripture through the lens of the individual. Salvation was personal. Sin was personal. Holiness was personal. Evangelism was personal. Faith was primarily about the condition of my own soul and my own relationship with God. Looking back, I now realize that I was reading an ancient, communal faith through the eyes of a thoroughly modern Western culture. The more I have studied Scripture, the more convinced I have become that the biblical writers simply did not think the way we do. We tend to imagine ourselves as autonomous individuals who occasionally gather into communities. Ancient Israel understood itself first as a people. Identity was shared. Responsibility was shared. Blessings were shared. Even judgment was often shared.” [i]

 

If there was ever a time when America shared a common identity, a shared responsibility, shared blessings, and shared judgement, it is safe to say that that time exists somewhere in a distant past. That does not absolve Christians, however, to forsake the Bible’s vision, and thereby the vision of God in Christ Jesus, of our shared responsibilities to be peacemakers, to be humble, to offer, as we heard last Sunday, even a cup of water to “the least of these,” Jesus’s self-adopted sisters and brothers in need. Nor are we absolved from advocating for we, as a nation, as a society, to find ways to provide for all who are in need of assistance of any kind. For not everyone can be as lucky as those boys in the books of Horatio Alger to find a personal benefactor.

 

A careful reading of the Bible from one end to the other reveals that the dream and purpose of God is, as Jesus summarizes, “to love one another as I love you.” The Gospel of Rugged Individualism always results in the kind of self-interest focused on worldly desires and the lure of wealth, which chokes God’s word, and thus, it yields nothing but self-aggrandizement and greed. It yields a society of a few Righteous, Rugged individuals, rather than a Just Society.

 

This is why Jesus describes the Final Judgement as a Judgement of Nations, not of individuals. He deliberately frames His teaching in communal terms. The question is not merely whether particular people showed compassion. The question is what kind of society those people together have created. Which is the concern of all the prophets of the Bible with whom Jesus also self-identifies. Again, as Scot Loyd observes, ‘When Amos cried out, "Let justice roll down like waters," he was not addressing private devotional lives. He was confronting a nation whose religious worship had become disconnected from justice. Isaiah condemned elaborate worship services while widows and orphans were neglected. Jeremiah repeatedly warned kings who [trusted religious rituals while exploiting the vulnerable. Micah summarized true faith with words that have echoed across the centuries: "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God."’ [ii]

 

It seems that the Word of God in Christ Jesus has landed among the thorns of America’s various myths of Rugged Individualism, choking out any and all notions of the communal nature of Jesus’s teaching and the central focus of the whole Bible: to create societies and nations that care for all people, not just some, not just many, but “all.” This Parable of the Sower asks us as a community and as a nation: What kind of soil are we? Do we, plural, hear the Word of God? Do we, plural, allow the Word of God to grow and influence how we address the needs of the greater society in which we live? Can we, plural, hear the Word of God take us beyond our own personal needs to establish the kind of society and nation that reflects the kingdom of God Jesus imagines can be possible here and now? Do we, plural, want a nation of a few righteous individuals? Or, a just society for all people? I am grateful to Scot Loyd who helps us to recognize just how the thorns of individualism have obscured Jesus’s and the Bible’s vision for a society and a nation that truly wants to be one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. Amen.

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[i] https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fscotloyd.com%2F2026%2F07%2F02%2Fmy-own-personal-jesus-rejecting-a-privatized-gospel%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAYnJpZBExbkpERlFiV21CTEpORk5MM3NydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR7Z-HYJbtS0mZ6qvSCqVx9KBOKI7jTTHJHbnokXGM8lU1721lKtttnEJ6oUNA_aem_dusZgU6ImtuskLQX0BvsJw&h=AUCUf0tux7SXH5RTuLuUA3SSKCH40oXDdKsZEthCZrzxcgXS_c9WzltYnE0nvOFtkL_VQ4cqy7LFZ9gpOYF8k03MjLkhPlRgKD_3W0O4VB2MBrD-4RjHJFAoFEPOl5JxO0HP4NjrX11oGA&__tn__=-UK-y-R&c[0]=AUBTLdAP-icjCITTZLsHpJGhe4w9fuSuEA9jYAKQzoRgAbPLD8k5vqtJ3T5kOjJLcLeyKKBiLPmCOSrQpKUCv5gzXO63wOfBYdmi5lCEovOlCNJ9P7m7s1tF-7a42ggyUogQbbrsKqeDrOAplfYJS-j5pQNmjSDnqlBaNQV4yRM6Fpb-K0I6V28uvdWp8zFhwuJJWayLpco6WvJWHTY 

 

[ii] Ibid, Scot Loyd

Whose Yoke Guides You? Proper 9A

 

Whose Yoke Guides You?

Chapter 11 of Matthew explores at least two identity crises going on at once: who is John the baptizer, and who is this Jesus? Two upstarts that the credentialed religious professionals and the powerful political elite relegate to irrelevance: one for fasting and eating bugs dipped in honey, and the other for letting anyone and everyone sit at the dinner table with him. One is an ascetic, the other a glutton and a drunkard. The present generation, Jesus says, just does not understand. We are that “present generation” as Matthew understands it.

 

Jesus answers the detractors, “You have fallen for my Father’s strategy to keep the central message among the “little ones,” “the children,” the uncredentialed, the unprofessional, those exhausted from endless labor with no time for Sabbath, and weary from the multi-tiered taxation of the Empire, of Herod Antipas, of the priest’s tithes, and the Temple dues. These children are not darling, innocent post-Victorian waifs and little Lord Fauntleroys. They are the land and tax poor of any and all generations. Which is why in Matthew when Jesus teaches us to pray he says, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Debt is how they ended up in Egypt in the first place: by the foreclosure of their farms and herds they became slaves for Pharoh; for the empire.

 

We may notice five verses missing from our portion of Matthew 11. It seems those who set up the lectionary thought we might not be up for hearing Jesus go into an unscheduled tirade against some of the villages where he had been teaching in the region around Galilee. Considered, perhaps, too indelicate for our Sunday morning ears to hear him castigate these towns where he he also had healed people, but they refused to repent and follow him. To refuse to put off the yokes of the Empire and Jerusalem, and try another. His yoke. Missing the tirade makes it difficult to understand what happens next.

 

After praying for his Father to continue to confound the credentialed, rich, and powerful, and continue to point to what life in God’s kingdom looks like among the “little ones,” rather than Caesar’s kingdom. Jesus also prays that he will announce what his Father is really looking for, and that he will “choose” to whom to impart this wisdom from on high. Jesus then concludes with familiar words: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

 

For generations of our Anglican tradition, we have called these “comfortable words.” We tend to heave a sigh of relief when we hear them, missing the deeper inner meanings of a saying one might embroider on a pillow. Yokes are physical implements to guide and control beasts of burden, and had long become a standard metaphor in biblical religion to refer to having one’s life, and one’s community’s life, guided and controlled by Torah, God’s commands, which Jesus regularly boils down to love God, and love neighbor – which for God and Jesus means “all” neighbors, all people, everywhere, all the time.

 

One of the pesky words in these final words is the word “all.” Like his behavior at the dinner table, Jesus invites all, everyone and anyone, to sit down with him. This means the taxed and tax collectors; the land-poor, and those who have foreclosed and usurped their family farms; the religious conservatives and religious liberals; the undocumented resident aliens and those whose tribe and clan has been in the land for generations; those whose work, poverty, illness, or social location made Torah observance difficult or just plain impossible, and those for whom Torah observance was a kind of fetish and personal luxury. Shared meals created belonging in the ancient Mediterranean world of Jesus. They marked who was included and who was excluded, Yet, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you… all y’all,” crossing the lines that organize the world into binaries: clean and unclean, acceptable and unacceptable, respectful and disposable.

 

“You who are exhausted and weary” of being asked to fund tributes to Caesar, to fund vanity building projects for Herod Antipas (the king of the Jews) such as a building named after the Emperor Tiberias, and to maintain the demands of the Temple. It has been estimated that one-third to one-half of one’s yearly produce went to these overlapping demands, keeping families in chronic debt and vulnerable to foreclosure. When Jesus speaks of those who are weary and heavy-laden he speaks to those who are being ground-down by the dominant economic systems. Those who work half a year to satisfy the multiple yokes around their necks.

 

Come try my yoke instead, says Jesus. It’s still a yoke. There will still be responsibilities. You will have to lay down all the hatred and mis-trust, and love one another as I love you. As my father loves me. As the psalmist sings, “8 The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great kindness. 9 The Lord is loving to everyone and his compassion is over all his works.” [Psalm 145] You will find that in loving all others as I love you there will be rest for your souls. The word for rest, anapausis, is used in Old Testament texts to mean Sabbath. Sabbath was not understood as a personal practice of piety, but rather represents a break with the dominant economic system and to attend to loving our family and neighbors: the hungry, thirsty, unhoused, undocumented, in prison, disabled physically or emotionally, and in any way ground down by work under the pressures of the Empire, and the state and religious elite.

 

In the very next verses in chapter 12, one sees Jesus pilloried for allowing people to work: to harvest food for the hungry while he heals people on the Sabbath day. He issues the challenge: is not relief and release from whatever exhausts one and makes one weary a kind of Sabbath in and of itself? Was humankind made for the Sabbath? Or, is Sabbath mandated for humankind?

 

Finally, he says, “My yoke is chrestos,” usually translated “easy.” Yet, it more often means useful, good, kind, or benevolent. It’s a Greek word used for the Hebrew ahavah, or “love,” as in “love thy neighbor and the sojourner in the land.” True love means actively giving to others rather than just having a feeling. It means doing something useful or kind for them. Which is consistent to the kind of Sabbath “rest” Jesus not only advocates, but encourages and actually acts out. This also may be a play on words to suggest that Jesus the christos (anointed) is also chrestos, benevolent 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Christos is Chrestos!

 

Who are Jesus and John? They do not support the status quo of dividing people into binary categories, a practice that is still prevalent in our “generation.” They share his Father’s will, love, mercy, and compassion with whomever they choose whenever necessary. Jesus insists that both he and John, and their respective followers, will be judged not by what they say or believe, but by what they do day in and day out. Jesus exposes the trappings of political power and religion as just that: traps that exhaust everyone but the elites. We all wear a yoke. The question is not whether we do or don’t, but rather whose yoke is it, and who profits from our labor? Jesus asks, “Are you ready to try my yoke?” Our answer will make all the difference in the world! Amen.

To Serve the Little Ones Proper 8A

 

To Serve the Little Ones

Jesus concludes his instructions to those who would be his disciples, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”  [Matthew 10:4042] This may also be translated, “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” Which instructions began back in 10:14, “If anyone will not welcome/receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.”

 

From the outset, Jesus warns us that to be a disciple of his, one who carries his message from town to town, household to household, you will face rejection just as he did at the hands of Rome. This broadens the scope of these instructions in that they are not just about the disciples, but also have something to say about those who welcome or reject those of us who are sent by Jesus to be co-workers of God’s dominion – over against the dominion of the Empire, the dominion of Caesar. We need to remember that Matthew has chosen to include these instructions in an atmosphere of sheer terror. To quell opposition to the Roman occupation of the land, the Roman Legions set siege to the central city of Jerusalem, resulting in the destruction of the Temple, the center of Jewish life, and the death of up to a million sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was a literal holocaust.

 

To remember this makes it reasonable to assume that some folks may be leery to open their doors to anyone not familiar, let alone those who represent an alternative to life in the Empire which has shown the full depth of its wrath. The comparison to Sodom and Gomorrah for those who do not welcome the Good News. God’s wrath rained down on them for the sin of not welcoming nor  offering hospitality to strangers, nomads. Whereas, Jesus’s practiced extraordinary Holy Hospitality by welcoming everyone, especially those routinely ignored by the establishment: those who are poor, disabled, strangers, prisoners of the Empire, the unhoused, and those who hunger and thirst. The very people with whom Jesus self-identifies in Matthew chapter 25.

 

These final instructions raise two questions for all of us: Are we willing to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ, door-to-door, proclaiming the dominion of God’s love, mercy, compassion, justice, and forgiveness despite possible opposition? And, are we willing to open our doors to welcome the very same people Jesus self-identifies with in Matthew 25?

 

There is a Jewish principal of shaliach: the appointed representative of someone is to be understood as the legal embodiment of the one who sends him or her to you. In this case, Jesus makes a profound statement: those of us who are sent by Jesus, who is in turn sent by God, are act and be received as if we are Jesus, and thereby, as God as well. As difficult as it may be to think of ourselves in such terms, it is Genesis that tells us we are imago Dei, created in the image of God. This is who we are meant to be – the very embodiment of God’s love, justice, compassion and forgiveness to all to whom we are sent. This is what compels Paul to write: “So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God.” [2 Corinthians 5:20] And therefore, by the principal of shaliach, all we say and do on behalf of Christ, we also say on behalf of God’s very self! The contrast is impossible to overlook. The Empire speaks only on behalf of the Emperor. Those who are sent by Christ speak on behalf of Jesus, and thereby on behalf of God who cares for all people, all creatures, and all of creation. Especially the “little ones.”

 

Not to get too deep into the weeds of the original Greek text of Matthew, but it is worthwhile to consider several key-words. The Greek for “welcoming one” is a present participle, which describes an on-going orientation, not a one-time act. The word for “reward” is actually a labor term meaning wages owed to a worker, which was a concretely economic promise in a world shaped by debt and the constant threat of being cheated out of what you’d earned. And the word for “little ones” points to those at the bottom of every social hierarchy Matthew’s community knew, and are still with us to this day, as Jesus himself says to the disciples in Matthew 26:11: “For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.”

 

This seems to be the central point of these two verses that conclude Jesus’s instructions to his disciples, which for Matthew always means for us, those who read and hear the word. I’ve noticed during this enigmatic season for Baltimore Orioles baseball that every time Pete Alanso is interviewed after a game for having made a key hit or homer to win the game, when asked what was his approach; what was he looking for as he stood in the batter’s box; he always praises those who got on base before him, the pitching staff, and everyone else but himself.

 

Matthew’s Jesus does the very same thing here: through the principal of shaliach, and his careful choice of words, we are directed not just to the disciples, and in turn to us; not to those who may welcome or reject those who carry on Jesus’s mission on behalf of God his Father; we are directed to those who are to be the primary focus of living in a world of God’s dominion, not the dominion of emperors from Caesar to the present day.: the little ones. Those at the bottom of every social hierarchy throughout all time, which includes women and children as well. As he says in Matthew 25:

34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’ 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You who are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.”

 

May God’s Word enter our hearts, and our minds, and show forth in all we do and say on behalf of the one who sends us to be his messengers of God’s dominion, now and forever. Amen.

Reality Check for Us All Proper 7A

 

Reality Check for Us All

Jesus does not mince words. In Matthew 10:24-39 he lays out the consequences of what it really means to follow Jesus. It’s what is often called “a hard saying.” To be a disciple, to be a faithful Christian, is not for the faint-of-heart. Just ask Dietrich Bonnehoeffer. Just ask Martin Luther King, Jr. Ask Archbishop Oscar Romero and Joan of Arc. Ask the very first martyrs as witnessed in Matthew’s gospel, The Innocent Children of Bethlehem.

 

In his final instructions, Jesus and Matthew introduce some powerful language: Beelzebul, Sword, and here is the first mention in Matthew of the Cross – a reminder that long before it became a symbol of personal piety and a common piece of jewelry, it was a sign of terror, brutality; a sign that the Empire can execute whomever it deems a problem to the pax romana.

 

Evidently ours is not the only era in history in which name-calling has been used to damage the reputation of a perceived opponent. First century Israel was a deeply divided territory before the endless occupations by other middle eastern empires. Rome was just the most recent. Within Israel itself you had the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and various militia-like Zealots which often included their own self-appointed messiahs. And like any other political parties, there were always divisions within these major political and religious parties.

 

Jesus, it seems, had been call Beelzebul – literally, Lord of the Flies. This is not another name for the satan – God’s tester. Nor was Beelzebul a challenge to the God of Israel, but rather a lesser being who is lord of all that plagues humankind, and his flies buzz around the corpses of his victims, and crawl on the faces of hungry children who starve in his famines. A formidable foe for humans, but no match for God. [Swanson, Richard W., Provoking the Gospel of Matthew, p.155] Jesus’s point is that if he is declared demon possessed by either political or ecclesial authorities, so will the members of his “household” – that is, his followers, his disciples, and anyone who dares to call themselves Christians. Sounding like one of God’s messengers, the angels, he tells us to “Fear not!” They can call us names, even kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul, “rather, fear him who can kill both body and soul!” That is, fear only God, and God will protect you. God’s eye is on the sparrow, and he’s watching over you – able to count each hair on your head, for like me, says Jesus, you are God’s Beloved.

 

Perhaps most shocking for modern Christians is Jesus’s announcement that he does not come to bring peace, but a sword. Shocking only because we forget all too soon that the mere mention of the birth of Jesus to be the “king of the Jews,” sets the tyrant Herod, Caesar’s appointed King of the Jews, into a rage, sending his forces into the village of Bethlehem to slaughter all children two years-old and younger. The Slaughter of the Innocents are the first martyrs as a ham-handed attempt to murder the future messiah and king. The sword was swiftly deployed early on, and eliminated a generation of Jesus’s cousins and potential aunts and uncles. It is no metaphor.

 

Indeed, the “sword” appears long after the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord in the treatise titled simply, “Hebrews” where we read: Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. [Hebrews 4:12 nrsvce] As we all remember from Christmas, John’s gospel tells us that Jesus is “the Word of God,” and he himself says he is capable of dividing father from son, mother from daughter, mother-in-law from daughter-in-law, “and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” Lest this strike us as overwrought, let us remember how many Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners have recently been ruined as during the pandemic with squabbling of vaxers and anti-vaxers, or MAGA and anti-Maga, red vs blue, etc. It goes all the way back to slave-holders vs abolitionists, patriots vs loyalists, nativists vs internationalists, and on and on and on it goes. One’s devotion to Jesus also has, and continues to have, the capability of causing such division, even within one’s own household. By the time Matthew is writing such divisions are already a reality.

 

An Important Caution: This text is often manipulated by demagogues and cult leaders who are not at all proclaiming and living the kingdom of God life Jesus encourages. They will tell someone something like this, “Of course your family does not understand us. They do not have the secret knowledge we can give you. Don’t listen to them, and see, Jesus says this is how it will always be for his followers.” I have seen it too many times. And texts like this one in Matthew is all too easily perverted to mean exactly what it does not mean.

 

Jesus is quoting the prophet Micah, a contemporary of Hosea and Isaiah, from chapter seven. The prophet declares that households are falling apart, and the fabric of society is falling apart due to the faithlessness of the people. Which does not mean keeping the appointed sacrifices at the Temple. In chapter six he defines faith like this: He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? It is important to remember: when Jesus spoke these words, one’s entire identity was with one’s family, clan, and tribe. Any modern notion of “the individual” was a long-way off in the future, so that the very threat of being cut-off from one’s family was in fact tantamount to a kind of death sentence among those early followers of Jesus.

 

Which brings us to the first mention of “the Cross” in Matthew’s gospel: “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” The cross was not a symbol, nor was it a metaphor. It was an execution device. Roman crosses were to be seen throughout the empire, along roadsides, in important public spaces, as a reminder of the power and brutality of the Empire. But to take up Jesus’s cross is to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. It is to live a life shaped by God’s own mercy, compassion, justice, and forgiveness.

 

He then says those of you who follow me expecting some kind of personal gain, personal glory, or recognition, will as much as lose their life. Those who follow Jesus in giving away God’s mercy, compassion, justice, and forgiveness will gain everlasting life with God in Christ. What  at first sounds like bad news is ultimately good news. For, as he says earlier, “Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven.” Be not afraid. Despite all possible consequences, I have your back. I am with you always, to the end of the age! In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places – there is room for everyone. Not everyone will appreciate what we are doing, but remain faithful to my Father’s mercy, compassion, justice and forgiveness, and I will have your back, just as he has my back. I am with you now. I am with you always. Together we do make a difference in the lives of others, and in the life of the world.  Have no fear. We have this! Amen.