Of Landlords and Tenants

Proper 22A-23
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Jesus said, ‘Listen to this’ (Matthew 21:33a). An investor bought a three flat in Edgewater. They renovated everything right down the studs. New insulation, windows, plumbing, and electric. They opened the floor plan, refinished the floors, and installed an upscale kitchen and bathrooms. They leased it out and moved to Florida. When the rent came due, the tenants banded together, beat up one property manager, killed another, and stoned another. Finally, they even killed the landlord’s son. The end. That’s where Jesus stopped the story. He asked his listeners to supply the ending.

It doesn’t take much imagination. We all know what’s coming for those really bad no good, horrible tenants. The Temple leaders answered, ‘the landlord will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the three-flat to other tenants who will pay the rent on time’ (vs. 41). Problem solved. Right?

What was Jesus driving at? He was, of course, not talking about a three-flat, but a well-appointed vineyard. From ancient times, the vineyard was a symbol of the nation of Israel. “For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are God’s pleasant planting. God expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!” (Isaiah 5:7). In answering Jesus’ question, the Temple leaders pronounced judgement upon themselves. The faithful people of Israel and their leaders were behaving just like those violent, wicked, greedy tenants.

Jesus’ parable was not about a three flat, but perhaps our quick answer to Jesus’ question convicts us just the same. Is not the world and everything in it like a well-appointed garden God planted and entrusted to us? God is endlessly creative. God cultivates perfectly balanced, thriving, and resilient ecosystems filled with every kind of plant, creature, and organism, both visible and invisible, joined together in a beautiful harmony of contrasts that gave birth to us and continues to sustain all life. Yet where “God expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!”

We just experienced the hottest summer ever on planet earth. Yet, Public Religion Research released a survey on faith and concern for the climate revealing that, among U.S. religious groups, no single faith community exceeds one-third of its adherents viewing Earth’s current situation as a “crisis.”

What’s a loving God supposed to do? Evict us? Kill us? Replace us? No. God does not make the same choices that we would. You, wanderers. You lovers of leaving. Though you have broken your vows a thousand times God invites you again, to come. Come into my arms, I will hold you. Come take and eat, I will feed you. Come drink and be satisfied. Despite our faithlessness, here comes our Lord Jesus again in Word, in wine, bread and water. Here comes the paraclete, the teacher, the advocate, the Holy Spirit to fill us again with the truth of our own worthiness. You are welcomed with compassion and forgiveness into the inner circle of the Holy Trinity so that you may become compassionate and forgiving where you had neither. Here comes the Spirit to move us beyond enlightened self-interest into to Christ-consciousness.

Perhaps we should pause here to say what Jesus’ parable is NOT about. The parable of the wicked tenants is not about the transfer of Israel’s privileges to the Christian church as it has so often been portrayed. Jesus parable is designed not to condemn the Jewish faith but to provoke repentance all of us. In the course of Christian history, this passage, and others like it, tragically became fuel for fires of anti-Semitism. Jews were reviled with the hated nickname “Christ killers.” Popes and bishops taught that Jews were less than fully human. Most tragically, Martin Luther’s own teachings against Jews fueled the flames of the “final solution” of the Nazi gas chambers. This parable does not allow us to shift blame away from ourselves. That is too easy.

Instead, this gospel calls us to embrace God’s love to become love for ourselves and for others. Rather than retribution for sin, Christ Jesus has planted compassion deep within us. The Spirit, God’s Holy Advocate, has poured into your heart the truth of your own worthiness. Attuned to the mind of Christ, our bodies are flooded with gratitude and connection. The seed of compassion planted in us grows into nonviolence, non-judgmentalism, forgiveness, and mindfulness. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. God’s strategy for changing the world begins with self-care. Compassion and empathy for others grows in direct proportion to the compassion and understanding you have for yourself.
Look! Here is healing balm you don’t have to pay for. Here is healing you don’t have to add to your to-do list. Here is love for you, just the way that you are, in the body that you are, in abundance and without price, poured out for you in the fullness of every moment. Here is the love of God coming into our world and into our lives. Jesus opened his arms on the cross, bringing life into this world even where there is death; bringing hope where there is despair; and bringing resurrection to all creation.

How many times have we turned away from God’s grace? How often have we rejected God’s love, taken the gifts of God’s Garden for granted, used its fruits for personal gain even as the garden was being harmed or destroyed? How often have we remained silent as others suffered to create the material wealth we enjoy? See, Christ, the cornerstone, is breaking our small self in pieces. We are being crushed, like grapes. Our hearts and minds are being transformed into new wine. (Matthew 21:44)
New wine must be stored in new wineskins. Filled with God’s compassion and love, our voice changes from proclaiming selfishness to justice. There, on the back altar, is an icon of one of my heroes, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. While standing behind the altar presiding at communion, he was shot and killed forty-three years ago by those who considered him a rebellious tenant of the land. Archbishop Oscar Romero will have the last word.

It is very easy to be servants of the word without disturbing the world: a very spiritualized word, a word without any commitment to history, a word that can sound in any part of the world because it belongs to no part of the world. A word like that creates no problems, starts no conflicts.
What starts conflicts and persecutions, what marks the genuine Church, is the word that, burning like the word of the prophets, proclaims and accuses: proclaims to the people God’s wonders to be believed and venerated, and accuses of sin those who oppose God’s reign, so that they may tear that sin out of their hearts, out of their societies, out of their laws—out of the structures that oppress, that imprison, that violate the rights of God and of humanity. This is the hard service of the word. But God’s Spirit goes with the prophet, with the preacher, for he is Christ, who keeps on proclaiming his reign to the people of all times. (Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love, 1977, pg. 18)

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That’s Crazy!

Proper 20A-23
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Jonah. And. The. Whale. God told Jonah to preach the good news to his enemies, to the people who had invaded his country, slaughtered his neighbors, and carried off friends and family into slavery by the thousands. God said to the prophet Jonah, “Get thee to Ninevah.” Jonah says to God, “No way!” He booked a ship to Tarshish –which is completely in the opposite direction, and about as far away from Ninevah as any person in the ancient world could get.
Ninevah (which is the modern city of Mosul in northern Iraq), was the capital city of Assyria, with a population of 120,000 people. It was possibly the largest city in the world in those days. Its sinfulness was legendary, as was its cruelty: The people of Ninevah were known to burn their enemies alive and to decorate their walls and pyramids with the skins (Jacques Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah, 1971, p. 26).

You know what happened. Jonah’s plan to run away from God was met with disaster. No one is beyond the reach of God’s hand. He is thrown into the sea, got tangled up in sea weeds and was about to drown, when, at the last moment, he was swallowed by a great fish then, finally, after three days, he is vomited out upon the sandy shore. He didn’t even have time to wipe himself off when he hears God repeat the command, ‘Get up, and go to Nineveh!’ (Jonah 3:2).

The only thing more preposterous than this big fish story is what happened next. When Jonah finally arrives at Ninevah, his half-hearted preaching had amazing results. The evil Assyrian king and all the people repent. Even the animals repent! They repent in the same way an observant Jewish person would –only they did it much much better!

And rather than being overjoyed, Jonah complained bitterly: “I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity” (Jonah 4:2). God’s equal-opportunity mercy disgusted Jonah.

An interesting aside is that Jonah comes up in our lectionary only twice every three years. But this week, in addition to being read by Christians at worship across our city and around the world, it is also read in worship by Jews everywhere for the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur. God offers Jonah forgiveness by which he may be purified and cleansed from all his sins before God. In typically Hebraic fashion, God didn’t rebuke Jonah for his anger, but playfully attempted to broaden Jonah’s horizons, so that Jonah might see the Ninevites as God sees them.

God asked Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Jonah’s answer, of course, is yes! God’s little object lesson using a weed, a worm, and the wind did nothing to dispel Jonah’s bitterness. Disgust and rejection at God’s mercy finds an echo in our own time among people of faith. The news this week includes a story of a preacher who quoted Jesus Sermon on the Mount, saying things like “Turn the other cheek” and “Blessed are the peacemakers.” A parishioner asked, “Where did you get those liberal talking points from?” The pastor said, “I was literally quoting Jesus Christ.” The parishioner responded, “That doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.” (Martin Thielen, “The real religious crisis in America,” 9/21/23).

Shock and dismay at the love and mercy of God is the tie that binds our readings together. Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to an owner of a vineyard who hired day-laborers to take in the harvest. Some worked twelve hours, some worked nine, others worked for six hours; while others only worked for three; and some for only one hour! And yet, he paid them all the same, beginning with the last ones hired to the first. To add insult to injury the landowner insisted on paying the workers in reverse order, thereby making sure that the first workers saw what their less deserving counterparts received. Their reaction is not surprising. ‘Hey! No fair!’ they complain.

“Are you envious because I am generous?” the landowner asked. Again, scripture confronts our righteous indignation with a question. Is it right for you to be angry?” Is it right to be envious? Whatever else it may be, the Kingdom of Heaven is not a meritocracy. God plays by different rules. Jesus’ way opens into a life of grace and not merit, of status reversal instead of status reverence, of underserved generosity rather than pay for services rendered. The parable of the generous landowner offers a concrete example of living out Jesus’ Sermon the Mount. Following the way of Jesus will challenge us. Indelible human dignity doesn’t come from merit, or righteousness, or power, or even fairness, but only from God’s grace. Surrender your envy, your moral judgements and join the party.
The story of Jonah teaches that no matter our past behavior, God’s benevolence and mercy awaits us. God’s grace covers all people, everywhere, no matter their religion or place of origin. The Book of Jonah stops short of telling us how the prophet decided to respond to God’s challenge. We are left to wonder whether Jonah’s heart is in some way our own heart. Will we also be more severe than God, begrudging the forgiveness God so freely extends?

In the surprising way it always does the gospel found application this week among members of my extended family upon the death of my uncle. My uncle suffered from bi-polar disorder, and, in recent years, also from dementia. He had a history of violent outbursts and erratic behavior. Some had washed their hands of him. Others were determined to stay by his side. Everyone was conflicted. Sometimes there were bitter fights. This week he was in full manic mode. Two security guards were stationed at the door of his hospital room. Yet, the night he died, as if by some miracle, there was peace. There was love. Why? Because they had read the gospel for this Sunday, they chose to put aside their righteous anger and support one another in their grief and, for those few hours, that changed everything.

God has given us the profound gift of unending love and mercy. Even now, little by little, and all at once, God is working to fashion a heart in all of us to match. By God’s grace, the Holy Spirit is kindling in us a new humanity. It’s not the old rat-race humanity. It’s the new humanity we have through our baptism into Christ Jesus. It is a humanity not rooted in fairness, but in grace. ‘Faith begins by letting go. Faith endures by holding on. Faith matures by reaching out, stretching minds, enlarging hearts, sharing struggles, living prayer, binding up the broken parts,’ we find God’s grace dwelling in the common place rising up to meet us.

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Grateful for Forgiveness

Proper 19A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Some of you may be reading, Grateful, by Diana Butler Bass. I invite you to read it on your own and/or to discuss it with friends.  (Three small groups this month) Extensive research claims that gratitude is profoundly good for you. Around the world people who practice living gratefully experience deeper peace, greater well-being, and an increased capacity for joy and greater resiliency. When we orient ourselves to gratefulness, we strengthen our spiritual musculature. Moving through life with a grateful heart has the power to uplift us, make a difference for others, and bring transformation to our world. (Grateful Living.org)

Giving thanks seems simple and obvious, yet somehow, like many instructions we find in scripture, it can be strangely difficult to sustain as a lifestyle or heart-style.  Obstacles rise within us, often subconsciously, to pop our balloon.  Righteous anger, self-certainty, and cynicism can be so much more seductive in the moment than an ‘attitude of gratitude.’

Most of us need help to cultivate gratitude slowly over time. That’s why the quote I received this week from the Grateful Word of the Day was so welcome.  It comes from Robin Wall Kimmerer, biologist and Native American, author of Braided Sweetgrass. Kimmerer weaves together the wisdom of her ancestors with insights of Western science.  She writes: “Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”

It occurs to me that to receive this gift, whether from the earth, or from Native peoples, we must learn forgiveness. We must learn how to ask for it, as well as how to give it. Here is another teaching the bible holds as fundamental to faith which, for me, seems more difficult than gratitude.  Forgiveness is for saints and heroes –not for ordinary Christians—right?

Historians and anthropologists have begun to point out our prized, so-called “Western” ideals of individual liberty, political equality, and the rejection of arbitrary authority were inspired more by Native American sources than by the Athenians of ancient Greece (p. 37).  The words ‘equality’ and ‘inequality’ did not exist in Latin, nor their English, French, Spanish, German and Italian cognates until after the time of Columbus and the European encounter with the peoples of Native America. For the Europeans who landed upon these shores, unquestionable hierarchies ruled the day at every level.

Forgiveness is not simply a moment of apologizing and being forgiven. It is a process of grace to live into. Asking for forgiveness from Native peoples for genocide and the campaign of cultural erasure at Indian boarding schools can open a door to learning our own history and to healing wounds we may not have known we had—for us as individuals and for us as a people.  Forgiveness is not for heroes but for each of us.  Gratitude and forgiveness are fruits of the Spirit. These are among the gifts given to us in baptism. Such is the food we eat at the Lord’s Table. This is the path we walk by way of the cross.

We all know forgiveness was important to Jesus. Peter knew it. That’s why he asked.  Wanting to impress, he picked a really big number.  ‘How many times should I forgive someone? As many as seven times?’ (Matthew 18:21) Jesus’ answer was shocking.  “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” In other words, stop counting.

To underscore his point, Jesus offers Peter a hyperbolic parable and about a fictional king settling accounts with his servant.  10,000 talents is an enormous sum.  It is ten times the amount King Herod received every year from all his territories—which was around 900 talents (Brian P. Stoffregen, CrossMarks).  A talent is about 130 lbs. of silver and is the equivalent to about fifteen years of a laborer’s wages.  By contrast, the 100 denarius the servant was owed by his fellow servant is a tiny fraction 1/600,000 the size of the first.

Like Peter, I suspect most of us are gracious enough to forgive neighbors, friends, or family members again and again.  But, sooner or later, the ledger fills up and the bearer of forgiveness can become the carrier of a grudge.  You may feel righteous and justified in carrying that grudge, but the truth is, Jesus says, carrying that grudge eventually becomes its own offense. Stop keeping score.

This parable challenges us to imagine a world without vengeance but also without economic debts and burdens. Here Jesus was not inventing something new but reasserting the central hope of Jewish tradition which is “…a vision of a debt-free world, an economic system based solely on God’s provision and generosity, a moral response of gratitude and humility on the part of God’s people, and regular rituals of debt abolition and freedom from contractual obligations. This was to be the economic and moral rhythm of Israel, linked together in a single social fabric and practiced through weekly Sabbath, Sabbath years, and the Jubilee” (Diana Butler Bass, Sunday Musings, 9/17/23).

The cross was God’s critique of worldly power and all petty religious and moralistic score keeping.  On the cross God stands with the crucified, the cast-offs, the lynched, the broken, and the broke. By way of the cross, God has broken the wheel of vengeance and opened a pathway to healing, reconciliation, and generosity. By way of the cross Jesus has shown us the way to resurrection, transformation, gratitude, forgiveness, and joy.

Some of you will remember reading The Book of Forgiving (2014) by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu tells us what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not easy. It requires hard work and a consistent willingness. Forgiveness is not weakness.  It requires courage and strength.  Forgiveness does not subvert justice.  It creates space for justice to be enacted with purity of purpose that does not include revenge. Forgiveness is not forgetting.  It requires a fearless remembering of the hurt.  Forgiveness is not quick. It can take several journeys through the cycles of remembering and grief before one can truly forgive and be free of the hurt.

As outlined by Tutu, forgiveness begins with a willingness born of the Holy Spirit to walk a fourfold path. First, you must tell our story.  Second, you must name what hurts. We must do these things if we are to reach the third point in our journey of granting forgiveness, by which Tutu simply means seeing our abuser as part of a shared humanity. Only then do we reach the fourth step and either release or renew the relationship.

We cannot create a world without pain or loss or conflict or hurt feelings, or financial hardship but with God’s grace we can create a world of forgiveness and gratitude.  We can create a world of forgiveness to love our enemies, to heal our losses and repair our lives and relationships. We can build upon habits of heart like gratitude which lead to greater generosity. All of us must walk our own path and go at our own pace to discover the power forgiveness and gratitude. Little by little, and sometimes all at once, this how God is changing us. This is how we change the world. This is how we live into the kingdom of God.

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Leaving Margaritaville

Proper 18A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

It was a smash hit in 1977. I learned every word sitting in the back seat of my family’s big yellow AMC Matador on a summer road trip from Colorado to Washington D.C., to Chincoteague Island, Williamsburg, and Monticello, Virginia and back again. Wherever we went, Jimmy Buffet was on the radio wasting away again in Margaritaville and always searching for his lost shaker of salt.

Jimmy Buffet died the week before las at age 76. His fans called, ‘Parrot heads,’ flocked to his tropical rock music vibe and a lifestyle they called “island escapism.”  That song spawned an entire industry. The first Margaritaville restaurant opened in Key West, Florida in 1985.  Today the franchise includes restaurants, retail stores, hotels, and casinos with locations in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, six island throughout the Caribbean as well as in Sydney, Australia.  Margaritaville sells.  It sounds like a place we all want to be and a life we wish we could be living.

By contrast, Jesus points today to a lifestyle that is all-too real and not nearly so sexy.  He provides instruction for how to be the church. Living sanctuary and building community can be hard work.  Today’s lesson on conflict resolution and spiritual discernment is case in point.  The early church Matthew belonged to handed down guidance for living the Way of Christ Jesus, gleaned from their own mistakes as a Christian community.

Let’s face it.  Community and belonging are something we all say we want and yet, usually, have no idea how to come by.  Modern conveniences make it so much easier and more comfortable to cocoon ourselves in isolation.  Rather than live community, we watch it on tv or click on it in social media. But, of course, life is not a tv show. It’s just easier to head to Margaritaville where I don’t have to talk to anyone, where I can just try to have fun, wrapped in an alcoholic haze.

One of the things I like about Jimmy Buffet songs is that, ultimately, they are songs of lament. Margaritaville is about a good man feeling bad, or maybe, he’s just stuck in self-pity. He’s not having fun at all and wishing he could be anywhere else.  Who’s to blame? Ultimately, he says, it’s his own damn fault.

The problem and promise of authentic community is that it involves 100% real people!  And people—not you and me (of course) but many people—can be sort of difficult, challenging, selfish, boring, or unreliable (David Lose, Working Preacher). So, what can we do about it?

Jesus outlined a process. Before you block that number or unfriend that person, or drop into that recliner clutching the tv remote, here’s what you do; talk “irl,” in real life, 1-1 like a mature adult rather than behind each other’s back. Avoid embarrassing your siblings in public. Don’t make a scene. Try your best not to react defensively. Speak the truth (as you know it) in love (Ephesians 4:15).  Listen more than you speak.  Instead trying to win or persuade, let your aim be mutual understanding more than mutual agreement. Remember, Christ is with you (Matthew 18:20 & 28:20).

 Most of the time, this is all that’s necessary.  But if it doesn’t work, Matthew provides additional advice.  Invite trusted others to sit down with you and try again, not to gain allies, to triangulate, or to add pressure.  Do this because it helps you gain a wider perspective.  Do this because interpersonal conflict in community always affects more than just yourself and the other party.  It affects everyone else around you too.  If necessary, involve the whole community in your dispute.

Of course, this doesn’t always work. The last step in Jesus’ list is quite interesting.  Matthew says Jesus advised us to let those who will not hear you to become like “a Gentile and a tax collector”(Matthew 18:17).  It sounds to us like a justification for some sort of Christian cancel culture. No. We do not have authorization to tell our enemies to go to hell –as much as we might want to.  But rather, remember, Matthew himself was once a tax collector, and because Jesus regularly spoke to sinners and ate with them. In God’s kingdom no one is expendable. Pray for those with whom you have a chronic dispute for any opportunity to make things better between you.

This process works for the Church and in the real world.  I want to put a plug in here for mediation. Years ago, I worked for the Center for Conflict Resolution as field work for my graduate study. Right here in Cook County, people offered mediation find their own solution more than 60% of the time rather than have their case decided by a judge. What’s more, the result is proven to be more lasting and satisfying than court ordered resolutions. People aren’t forced to limit themselves to narrow legal definitions of the conflicts they carry into court. They’re in control.  They set the terms –both for what they receive, and for what they pledge to give.  Parties in mediation often say they feel like someone finally listened to them.  They’re more ready to move on and put the dispute behind them.

This should not surprise us, but somehow, it does.  Remember, Jesus said, ‘wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of you’ (Matthew 18:20).  In the Christian community, two becomes more than two, and three becomes more than three. The sum of our individual ideas, resources, and abilities is multiplied through the synergies that God’s presence provides (Rev. Ken Kesselus).

Sometimes, in the church, we strive to keep the peace rather than to be peacemakers.  But this is a short-term strategy that short-circuits the kind of community we all long for.  Have courage. Be of good cheer. Steer into conflict. Don’t be afraid to learn from your mistakes. Again, strive to listen more than you speak. In authentic community it is less important that all of us agree, but it is critical that all of us feel heard. Open, honest communication is not only how we build community. This is how we learn. This is how we innovate and create. This is how healthy families, neighborhoods, and good government’s function.

This is how we finally leave Margaritaville. God has called the Christian community into being out of nothingness, to become a community of healers and reconcilers (Brueggemann). St. Paul writes that ‘we have become ambassadors for Christ’ (2 Cor. 5:20). As we mark the 22nd anniversary of 9/11 it’s time to be reconciled with the natural world, to make peace with each other, and let Jesus build us into a living sanctuary of hope and grace. We must show even our enemies God’s shalom. The German pastor Martin Niemoeller who was imprisoned by Hitler for eight years (1937–1945), reminded us that when you imagine that God hates all the people you hate, that’s when you can be sure you’ve created God in your own image.  No, he said “It took me a long time to learn that God is not the enemy of my enemies; he’s not even the enemy of his own enemies.” Thanks be to God.

So, we ask God to bless our hands as we work together in Jesus’ name, building a future, repairing the world, raising up homes, planting new gardens, feeding the hungry and sheltering the cold, sharing the good news of the gospel’ (ACS #1000).

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The House of Living Stones

Proper 16A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

‘On this rock I will build my church.’ (Matthew 16:18). The church in Rome and the doctrine of the primacy of Peter is built upon a single sentence Jesus uttered in a place called Caesarea Philippi. As Lutherans, we can trace a straight line from the Roman Papacy to the financial and spiritual corruption that built the magnificent St. Peter’s cathedral to the Protestant Reformation and the formation of a half dozen Protestant denominations that exist today. Peter got it right –Jesus is the Messiah—AND he got it wrong –forbidding Jesus to die on a cross.  (We’ll explore that part of the story next week.)

Down through the centuries, Christians who get the gospel partly right will sadly repeat Peter’s error again and again, not so much by denying the cross (although they will do that too), but by claiming Jesus’ words award them special power to exclude anyone who does not affiliate with their unique brand of the faith – or that only clergy people can control the keys of love and forgiveness.

Our gospel includes one of the relatively rare uses of the word ‘ekklesia,’ from which we derive our word ‘church.’  If you’re like me, Jesus’ promise to build his church on Peter, ‘the rock’ connotes mental images of great big beautiful solemn and solid church buildings. Yet, the actual word paints a picture, not of a building, but of a people—literally, ‘the called-out.’  The question is what are we called out from?  What are we called out for?

I think we find a clue in Jesus’ question, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (16:13).  Studying the gospel this week, I did a double take. To my way of thinking, ‘The Son of Man’ is a synonym for the Messiah. It would be like if Jesus’ question included the answer. ‘Who do people say that I, the messiah, is?  Instead, Jesus’ self-proclaimed a title comes from the Book of Daniel which was a popular book in the 1st Century.  Daniel chapter seven outlines a hopeful political vision of a hero called ‘the Son of Man’ who brings an end to the reign of oppressive empires.

We find another clue from the setting of this story. Jesus and the disciples are in Caesarea Philippi, about twenty-five miles north of their home base in Galilee, a favorite vacation spot for Roman officials, it probably felt like another planet.  An ancient temple to Baal had been there and another complex there was devoted to the worship of a half-goat, half man deity named “Pan.”  Just a few decades before our story the Roman emperor, Augustus, had placed governance of the city in the hands of Herod the Great. To express his gratitude Herod built a large temple made of white marble dedicated to his benefactor, Caesar Augustus. After Herod’s death, his son, Philipp renamed the city, Caesarea Philippi.  It was a place that represented the power of the empire and reiterated the values of imperial theology: Caesar is lord, and Rome always wins at any cost.

Part of what we get wrong about this gospel, I think, is not noticing that Peter’s confession ‘Jesus is the Messiah,’ was not some abstract doctrinal statement but a declaration of who’s side he was on, Jesus’ or Caesar’s? “In a place where the power and methods of the empire were evident, and where Caesar was clearly lord, Jesus is asking his disciples if they align with the empire’s means and ends, or with his Kingdom of God message.” (Pastor Josh Scott of GracePointe Church in Nashville, Sunday Musings, 8/27/23). “You are the Messiah,’ Peter said, “the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Given the choice between Lord Caesar and Lord Jesus, and Peter is choosing Jesus. You are King Jesus, who will liberate us from the bestial power of King Caesar, now and for all time.

Jesus came to give us a way of being human that does away with empires that operate with violence and force. What Peter could not foresee, and what he got wrong (which we will hear more about next week,) is that God’s kingdom comes with a completely different kind of politics. Instead of a politics based on law backed with the force of sanctioned violence, the politics of God’s kingdom are re-centered the law on love by way of the cross. “Violence cannot defeat violence. Hate cannot defeat hate. Fear cannot defeat fear. Domination cannot defeat domination. God’s way is different” (Brian D. MClaren, We Make the Road by Walking, pp. 118-19).  “For Jesus’s earliest followers this declaration was a way of affirming that Jesus’s message of nonviolence, abundance, generosity, compassion, and inclusivity align with the very character of God” (Scott).

Moreover, Jesus gave over the keys to this new kingdom, not to a person, not to an institution, but to a people who are called-out to love and serve God and to advance the kingdom of justice wherever they find themselves living and operating in the world. God builds on the rock that human builders would reject. Peter, who himself at times is a stumbling block to Jesus, rocky soil that withers faith at times of persecution. None of us would choose this kind of Rock on which to build the church. But Jesus does.

From the beginning, when God created Adam and Eve, God brought them all the animals to be named. God put them in charge of stewarding creation. Despite our failure to understand, like Peter, our limitations and propensity to use our power for selfish ends, God has given you a lot of keys. God’s dumb idea is our great privilege.  God’s work is in our hands. What an awesome task and responsibility!  It is the defining mission of our lives. It is the great adventure begun in us at baptism.

The mainline church finds itself today at a Caesarea Philippi­–like moment. Christian Nationalism is presenting a Caesar-like Jesus, who is willing to dominate anyone to achieve his ends—through a church controlled by white, cis, straight men. “Though Jesus didn’t bow to the tempter to gain the kingdoms of the world, some of his followers are enthusiastically doing so today. In the face of this rising allegiance to a counterfeit Christ, the Jesus of history has a question for us: “Who do you say that I am?” (Scott).

You and I are holding the key from this gospel to renew the called-out people and to undo the power of empire.  Do you remember where you put them?  Do wonder how they all work? What happened when you tried them?  What shall we lock up and what shall we set free?  Even now, Christ is building a house of living stones. “We are his own habitation; he fills our hearts [from] his humble throne, granting life and salvation. Where two or three will seek his face, he in their midst will show his grace, blessings upon them bestowing.” (ELW #652)

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Canaanite Lives Matter

Proper 15A-23
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Jesus ignored her and insulted her, calling her a ‘little dog’. The disciples asked Jesus to send her away. Her constant shouting annoyed them. Matthew goes out of his way to tell us she was a Canaanite. The label is strange, because, in Jesus’ time, there were no “Canaanites.” Canaanites were ancient history even then. The region of the Canaanites no longer existed on any map. It would be as if Matthew were calling New York City by its old name New Amsterdam!

Matthew calls her a “Canaanite” on purpose: it meant that she is not only the “other,” not only the wrong gender, but that she is part of an enemy people. (Barbara Lundbland). A thousand years before Jesus the armies of King David celebrated the slaughter of Canaanites as if they were nothing more than the Orcs we see today in Lord of the Rings movies. There are no people like the Canaanites today—are there?

Love your enemies, Jesus said in Matthew 5:44. But here, in Matthew 15 it’s not so easy, not even for Jesus. This story is difficult for many Christians to hear and seems out of character for Jesus. Maybe we grew up with the idea of a “Perfect Jesus” who is technically human, but his incarnation falls several steps short of actual human-ness. He never messes up, never doubts, never backtracked, and always knows what he is doing. The problem with “Perfect Jesus,” of course, is that he doesn’t exist. The Jesus who appears in the Gospels is not half-incarnate. He is as fully human as he is fully God. Which is to say, he struggles, he snaps, he discovers, he grows, he falters, he learns, he fears, and he overcomes.” (Debi Thomas, “Is It Good News Yet?”, Journey with Jesus, 8/09/20)

In John 4: 1-42, Jesus will meet a foreign woman beside a well in Samaria. Then, he will be graceful. He will be focused. He will break down the walls of hatred, fear and prejudice and invite her to be a servant of the gospel. He will give her ‘living water’ meant for all the children of God, of every race and nation. But here, in Matthew 15, Jesus’ encounters a woman of similar background and rather than receive her, Jesus insults her.

Perhaps Matthew means for us to connect this “Canaanite woman” with the other Canaanite women, Tamar and Rahab listed in Jesus’ genealogy. They were both outsiders who proved to be women of great faith. Like them, this Canaanite woman absorbs Jesus’ insults and turns the other cheek in a creative, nonviolent response to injustice (just as Jesus advised us to do in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:39).

Let’s look at where Jesus and the disciples are. They have journeyed 70 miles north and west of where we saw them last week on the Sea of Galilee. They are approximately 50 miles north of the border of Israel, near the cities of Tyre and Sidon in what is now, modern Lebanon. Is Jesus so focused on finding privacy to prepare the disciples for the cross that he is rude to the woman because, very simply, she was not on the agenda? I know I have fallen prey to this time-trap many times.

Yet, far from Israel, news of his ministry had spread. The woman, a Canaanite, and a mother, followed Jesus, shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon,” (Matthew 15:22). Sometimes, this story is referred to as an ‘acted out parable.’ Jesus may not have brought his ‘A’ game, but the end of the story is pure gospel. It challenges us to look beyond artificial boundaries and borders of ethnicity, nation, and creed that divide people into insiders and outsiders –divisions that make us feel safe with some people, and afraid of others. This story invites us to confront our own unspoken and subconscious biases as Jesus does and be ready to be changed by God’s grace.

In this story, it is the woman who provides the grace and Jesus who provides the hostility. Indeed, this unnamed Canaanite woman is the only person in all four gospels to enter a verbal sparring match with Jesus and prevail. Some may disagree, but I am grateful that Matthew didn’t clean up this story. Matthew dares to give us a very human pre-resurrection Jesus and he paints a compelling picture of this woman. Her persistence, perceptiveness, and humility garner the admiration and blessing of Jesus.

“…The Jesus we encounter in this moment is fully human — a product of his time and place, shaped as we all are by the conscious and unconscious biases, prejudices, and entitlements of his culture. Moreover, he is God incarnate, a holy Son still working out the scope and meaning of the divine vocation his Father has given him. He knows he’s meant to share the Good News. But he has not yet learned to ask if the Good News is really and truly Good News for everyone…Even Jesus has to learn how radically good the Good News is. (Thomas)

So, the Canaanite woman schools him. Turning his slur right back at the man who insults her, she replies, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.’ Her brilliant response cuts to the very heart of Jesus’s boundary-breaking, taboo-busting, division-destroying ministry of table fellowship. After all, he’s the Messiah who eats with tax collectors and prostitutes. He’s the rabbi who breaks bread with sinners. His disciples are the ones who earn the Pharisees’ contempt for eating with unwashed hands. The table is precisely where Jesus shows the world who God is.” (Thomas)

Jesus finally said to her, “Woman, great is your faith.” There are only two people in the entire bible singled out by Jesus for public praise of their faith. One is this Canaanite woman. The other is also a non-believer and outsider: the Roman Centurion at Capernaum (Matthew 8:10). Her “great faith”, coming so closely after Jesus’ pronouncement about Peter’s “little faith,” couldn’t be in greater contrast.

Jesus was converted that day to a larger vision of the commonwealth of God. Jesus saw and heard a fuller revelation of God in the voice and in the face of the Canaanite woman. She becomes visible rather than invisible. Jesus looks and listens, and she becomes fully human, a mother, a child of God, because—yes—Jesus realizes, Canaanite lives matter.

This is precisely what the gospel does for us at the Lord’s Table.“…The table is precisely where the outsider, the Gentile, the outcast, the “Other,” calls Jesus out. As if to say, “Lord, where’s my Good News? Where’s my place at the table? When will your goodness be good enough for me and for my daughter?” (Thomas). Is there any way the table we offer here at Immanuel excludes others? Then it’s not the Lord’s Table. If grace isn’t for everyone it’s not grace.

Love your enemies, Jesus says. You might even learn a thing or two from them. This is the way life in Christ works. Through faith each of us becomes a living part of one another. Violence, like slavery and racism, was normative in our past, and it is still all too common in the present. How will we tell the stories of our past in ways that make our future less violent? (Brian McClaren, We Make the Road by Walking, p. 49). Each of us has something precious to give, but even more to receive. We are part of a great family in God that spans the gap between people of every nation—that spans the chasm between friends and enemies. It’s hard to keep an open mind toward strangers about whom we’re afraid. But Jesus has shown us the way. If Jesus could be changed, can we?

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Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me

Proper 14A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

August 13, 2023

Our story picks up where we left off last Sunday.  5,000 men plus women and children have just finished eating their fill of a meal produced from just two fish and five loaves of bread. They have portioned out the leftovers into twelve full baskets. Jesus has dismissed them all and made the disciples get into the boat.  He says goodbye to the crowds and sent the disciples sailing to the other side of the sea of Galilee. Then Jesus resumes his search for solitude.

Remember, the news has only just reached him about the tragically stupid death of his cousin and forerunner in ministry, John the Baptist.  So, he sent them all away and walked off by himself. Scripture says, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. (Matthew 14:23). This is a recurring theme in all four gospels.  Jesus felt the need to withdraw to a quiet place for prayer on a regular basis.

So, maybe you have the same question that I do. Why would Jesus, the Son of God, the second person the Trinity, need to go anywhere to pray?  Why retreat into the wilderness or go up a mountain by himself?  What?  He needs a better cell connection?

The answer to this question points at two things: 1) first, Jesus’ human nature; and 2) the purpose of prayer. As his reputation continued to grow and large crowds gathered to hear him and to have their sickness cured, it is instructive that Jesus felt the need to withdraw to a quiet place for prayer on a regular basis. There seems to be a rhythm in his life between the times of active ministry and the times of prayer-filled solitude.  Of course, prayer is possible in any place and at any time. There is no place we can travel that is outside the bounds of God’s abiding presence. And yet, like us, Jesus is human. He must be intentional about prayer to re-center himself in God. He needs to step away from his routines and the everyday demands on his attention to renew his mind and spirit by resting in the cleansing bath of the living presence of God. He needs to find his solid center again by becoming other-centered in God’s grace.

The purpose of prayer is not to manipulate God and to procure something for ourselves or to produce some psychic peace in our depths. “Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a life stance. It’s a way of living in the Presence, living in awareness of the Presence [of God], and even of enjoying the Presence” and giving thanks (Richard Rohr, “A Prayerful Stance, Daily Meditations, 2/13/22).

The Word and Sacrament we find here in worship finds its healing purpose by opening again us once again to what Saints have called this the “sacrament of the present moment.” Following the example of our Lord Jesus, we come here, to this place which is our mountaintop at Immanuel to pray and be re-centered, renewed, and to be accountable.

Sometimes, like the prophet Elijah, when we go to God in prayer what we learn is that we are full of it. I love our story from first Kings. Elijah’s triumphant victory over the prophets of Baal has won him a death threat from Queen Jezebel. Scared for his life and feeling that no one cares, Elijah has run one day’s journey into the wilderness to sit and brood and sleep under a broom tree (just like another complaining prophet Jonah), Despite his grumbling, Elijah is awakened twice by angels who provide him food and drink. On the strength of that nourishment Elijah then journeys another forty days and forty nights to mount Horeb where God had given Moses the ten Commandments. After all that, what was the message Elijah heard?  God asked him, ’What are you doing here Elijah?’  God says to him, ‘you’re fired’ and gave him the task of going to anoint his successor, Elisha. (But don’t feel too bad for Elijah, later God will still send chariots to carry him straight into heaven.) The power of prayer is an antidote to navel gazing and narcissism. Prayer brings accountability and repentance as much as healing and wisdom. When our mind and hearts are re-centered in prayer something surprising happens. It occurs to us that maybe we can add to our happiness and joy, not by holding on to life’s treasures, but by giving them away. Together, we thrive.

I’d like to draw your attention to verse 32. “When they got into the boat, the wind ceased.” After praying, Jesus caught up to the disciples at daybreak. They are still struggling to cross the sea. Matthew’s gospel says literally the boat was “being tortured or tormented” (basanizo) by the wind (v. 24). Adding to their fear, as Jesus approached, the disciples think they are seeing a ghost. The disciples seem afraid of their own shadow.

We miss the boat in reading this famous gospel as a story about defying the law of gravity –Jesus and Peter walk on water.  People of faith in Jesus’ time understood it better. They told and retold this story and shared its astonishing promise: Christ has power to still life’s storm—to cancel out the threat of chaos through the power of his cross.  This story rekindled their courage when it seemed chaos and disarray everywhere threatened to swamp them.

The episode involving Jesus and Peter is less important than what happened after they returned to the boat. The wind ceased!  The antidote to the anxiety, self-doubt, and fear that plagues us today could be to stop trying to go it alone. Clinical psychology seems to agree, mature people “…weave their stable selves out of their commitments to and attachments with others. Their identities are forged as they fulfill their responsibilities as friends, family members, employees, neighbors and citizens” (David Brooks, “Hey, America, Grow Up!” NYT, 8/10/23).  We might add participating in a church community to this list.

They go on, ‘Maturity is achieved by getting out of your own selfish point of view and developing the ability to absorb, understand and inhabit the views of others.’ “Mature people are calm amid the storm because their perception lets them see the present challenges from a long-term vantage. They know that feeling crappy about yourself sometimes is a normal part of life. They are considerate to and gracious toward others because they can see situations from multiple perspectives. They can withstand the setbacks because they have pointed their life toward some concrete moral goal” (Brooks).

Jesus, Savior, pilot me to traverse the boundary between strangers, to forge authentic bonds of peace and stability, to uncover our common connections, and our God-given gifts to calm the storm. Do not be afraid dear church. The area where you are seated is called the Nave.  It takes its name from the same Latin word navis, which means, “ship.”  The church is built to travel.  It’s built to traverse, tempest-tossed, upon the turbulent seas that separate God’s people from one another.  Jesus invites us with the disciples, to cross over to the other side.

“Many of us were taught that it is more blessed to give than receive, but the truth is that we must first receive in order to give” (Diana Butler Bass, Gratitude, Prologue p. XXV).  Here in prayer and worship we hear again Jesus’ invitation to find our solid center in the other-centered love of God to be a living sanctuary of love and hope.

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Come, Eat, be Filled, and Live

Proper 13A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Jesus said, “You give them something to eat” (Matthew 14:16). The disciples were willing to disrupt their families and uproot their lives for a front row seat on the moving adventure that was the Jesus-event on its way to becoming the Christ-event—but you can almost see their jaws drop when Jesus said it was their turn to make supper.

John the Baptist was dead.  Jesus retreated into the wilderness alone to pray. The disciples hurried in pursuit along with their new best friends (5,000 men plus women and children). They hadn’t stopped to think about how they would feed themselves once they found him. They had with them only a peasant’s lunch consisting of a few loaves of bread and some dried fish. Confronted with the question of dinner their first idea sounds a lot like my kids.  Can’t we just order out?

This story of Jesus’ feeding the crowds was a favorite among early Christians.  Like the parables of the Kingdom, we read the last two Sundays, this story is about entering the Kingdom of God that is already, always, present but also hidden in our midst.

All four gospels tell this story, but only Matthew places it immediately following the death of John the Baptist.  Matthew draws a sobering contrast between the meal hosted by Jesus in the wilderness, and the sumptuous party King Herod threw for himself on his birthday and the 1 percenters of ancient Palestine in his fancy castle.  The compassion of the one meal stands in sharp contrast to the vindictiveness of the other (Walter Bruggeman)

The first Christians plainly thought of this story as a message about the Eucharist.  They perceived the great irony in the contrast between the sumptuous feast provided by King Herod (that occurs in Matthew’s gospel immediately before our reading today), and the simple, abundant banquet provided by Jesus in the wilderness. Whereas Herod is afraid of the crowd (v. 5) and of what his guests might think of him if he goes back on his word (v.9), Jesus has compassion and cares for the crowd (v. 14), even though they interrupted his desire to be alone to grieve the death of John the Baptist (13a).  Herod is tricked into putting John to death (v. 10).  Whereas Jesus provides life by curing the sick (v. 14) and feeding the hungry (v. 19). Wealthy King Herod destroyed a life, whereas Jesus restores lives.

The feeding of the five thousand is a message about the kind of community God intends for us.  Diverse people from all walks of life become part of a single family and are fed at the same table. Here is a foretaste of the feast to come when people of every nation are united in faith and love toward God.  Here is the bread of life, in Christ Jesus, like manna from heaven. Here is the forever promise of God to bring abundance out of scarcity. Here is the blessing and the challenge to offer to others what we have been given –our compassion, our energy, our vision—as well as our food and material resources.

Jesus’ presence brings into stark relief the clash between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdoms of the earth.   God’s ways and our ways are not the same.  One of the findings of French economist, Thomas Pickety, is that left to its own devices, market-based economies always gravitate towards greater and greater inequality and create more and more poor people. The market, by itself is not an answer to the problems of poverty and hunger. It takes more than money to make a feast of love and community like that freely offered to us in Christ Jesus.

And yet, to defeat poverty and hunger, we must closely examine our relationship to money. We must evaluate the ways we participate in a culture of private opulence and public squalor that helps the rich and hurts the poor. Scarcity is a lie we are too eager to believe. Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond says if the top 1% of Americans just paid the taxes they owed, it would raise $175 billion each year. “That,” he says, “is just about enough to pull everyone out of poverty.” We will not solve the problem of poverty with Christian charity alone. It must be addressed through effective public policies we create together.

Jesus shifted the disciple from a mind-set of scarcity to one of abundance.  Challenged to make dinner, the disciples looked and saw an open wilderness, lined with people. They counted their rations – “five loaves and two fish.”  They accounted for the time of day – “the hour is now late.”  But they failed to account for Jesus. They failed to account for what happens when love is at the center rather than our narrow self-interest. The decisive difference between the opulent meal and culture of violence served up by King Herod, and the simple abundant, and inclusive community the disciples ultimately prepared was Jesus at the center.

The prophet Isaiah asks, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” (Isaiah 55:2-3). Jesus paints a picture of the life God intends for us. It operates with different software. It’s built on a value system that is altogether different. Food such as the world offers must be bought and consumed again and again, but the food that God offers is of a different sort whose nourishment never fails.

That everlasting nourishment is love and love must never merely about the poor or about our society but is always about the people standing right in front of us. The American poet Christian Wiman has said, “If nature abhors a vacuum, Christ abhors a vagueness. If God is love, Christ is love for this one person, this one place, this one time-bound and time ravaged self.”  Reluctant, disbelieving and under protest, the disciples offered the crowd the not-enough that was theirs, and it was enough, in fact, it was more than enough.

Jesus’ messianic powers include and involve our poor efforts.  God’s work is done through our hands. “You give them something to eat.” It is the disciple’s own food that Jesus uses to do this miracle. Out of scarcity God produces an abundance. Out of fear, life in Christ makes for peace.  As the Prophet Isaiah foretold, on that day we shall dwell together in the shelter of the Lord, we “…shall go out in joy and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Isaiah 55:12). See! Jesus has prepared a great banquet for you today.  Come, eat, be filled, and live.

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Lead Me, Guide Me

Proper 9A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

There’s an old preacher’s story about a church youth group working on an elderly woman’s house helping to make necessary repairs.  There was a child on the worksite. The great-grandson of the woman who lived in the house desperately wanted to help.  The very first task was to carry some heavy furniture out of a room to make some extra space to work in.  One of the teenagers grabbed one end of a heavy dresser and the child, maybe six years old, grabbed the other end.  He was straining and struggling, but his end of the dresser didn’t budge.  That’s when one of the adults said, “Why don’t I help you with that? Let’s lift it together.”  He reached down and picked up the end of the dresser with the child.  They were right beside one another, their hands underneath the dresser. Even as much the child was straining and struggling, if he had let go, the adult wouldn’t have felt the difference. But, if he had let go, the boy would have been crushed.

Jesus says, “Come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” My yoke is easy, Jesus said. Elsewhere, the word is translated as ‘good,’ and ‘kind.’ My yoke is good and kind Jesus said. Where we would be crushed going it alone, Jesus shares our burden.  Thanks be to God.

Being a Christian is difficult.  It demands sacrifice, everything that we have. The cross is heavy.  When we join ourselves to Jesus, we put our head and shoulder to the yoke.  A yoke is meant for heavy, hard work that begins just after sunrise and ends just after dusk.  But we do not do this work alone.  Jesus our Lord is also Jesus our partner.

Jesus is also our guide. In ancient times a “yoke” was a common way of referring to the Law of Moses. It was a metaphor used by Jewish Rabbis when accepting new pupils. Jesus was often called “Rabbi,” by characters in the Gospels, and indeed he often acts like one. When a student studied with a particular Rabbi, they were said to take that rabbi’s “yoke” upon them. (The metaphor is one of training an ox to plow by yoking him to another, experienced ox. The yoke forces the new ox to imitate the experienced ox, and so it learns how to behave in the way the farmer desires.)

We learn the path that leads to wisdom, love, and abundance while being yoked to Jesus—by following him, by trusting him enough to imitate his example and put his words into practice. “Jesus didn’t merely describe this way or path, nor did he merely point to it, nor did he reduce it to a list of rules; he actually embodied it: I am the path, he said. Love as I have loved. I have given you an example that you should follow” (Brian McClaren, Finding Our Way Again, p. 35).

This can be a tough sell in today’s America, the land of the free. Whatever the benefits a good partner and guide may offer, many of us prefer to go it alone. But the “Truth is, we always bind ourselves, however subtly, to something: people, places, habits, possessions, beliefs, ways of being in the world.  What or to whom are you yoked right now?” (Jan Richardson, The Painted Prayerbook).

Jesus is the true giver of Sabbath rest. Jesus’ yoke guides us in the way of love. The yoke of Jesus is an invitation to let our lives be joined to God’s wisdom. Only with God’s transforming power to lift and carry the heavy burdens of life and to steer us in the right way to go can the culture of God be established on earth as in heaven, here, now in our midst. “Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere?  What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!” (ELW 742)

Jesus said, ‘To what will I compare this generation? [They are] like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ “Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” (Matthew 11:18 & 19)

It is remarkable to me, and maybe a little depressing, how fitting Jesus’ words are now in our own time, nearly 20 centuries later. “Jesus describes children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to each other with songs that no one understands.  When they sing happy songs, no one dances.  When they play dirges, no one mourns.  When John the Baptist comes along and preaches an austere message of repentance, his listeners say he’s demon possessed.  When Jesus comes along, eating, drinking around a common table, his listeners call him a glutton and a drunkard.” (Debi Thomas, “A Lighter Burden,” Journey with Jesus, 6/28/20.)

“In other words, we routinely miss what really matters.  We don’t know when to dance, when to mourn, when to repent, when to celebrate.  We claim to be wise and discerning, but we don’t recognize the divine when we encounter it.  God is always too much or too little for us; too severe or too generous, too demanding, or too provocative.  On our own, we have little capacity to discern what is good and right and holy and true” (Thomas).

As St. Paul famously wrote in his letter to the Christians in Rome, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do…evil lies close at hand” (Romans 7:15, 19 & 21). Living by our own light, we are like a young ox constantly turning circles in the field around ourselves. Drawing ever tighter into the vortex of madness and destruction that we simply call Sin.

It was Martin Luther who reminded us in the Small Catechism: “I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.” The wise and intelligent are people who rely upon their own abilities rather than God’s grace. They are people who rely upon yokes of their own making to shoulder life’s burdens.  They have only their own power to drive them.

From the prophet Jeremiah we read, “Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it and find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16).

The way ahead is narrow.  The way of Christ involves us in conflict with beloved friends, family, and neighbors. The Cross is heavy, but Christ, our partner is strong.  Come to me, Jesus says, I know that you’re carrying heavy burdens. I will give you rest.  Let us yoke ourselves to Jesus.  His yoke is kind and good. Let Jesus take us into a future we could not have imagined and beyond what we could have hoped for.  Let Jesus show you the joy and satisfaction of Sabbath rest, in which balance and justice is restored “IRL,” in real life and community.  Let us all be joined to the wise, kindly yoke of Jesus, and thanks be to God.

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Discipleship Rewards

Proper 8A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Did somebody say reward?  Did Jesus promise compensation for the disciples? Jesus said, ‘prophets, the righteous—even those who do something as simple as give a cold cup of water to little ones who are thirsty should expect to receive the fruits of their labor’

I enjoy rewards. The Immanuel credit card awards hotel benefits. Over the years, Immanuel has become a Diamond Elite Member recognized at any Holiday Inn around the world. Three Sundays ago, you all hosted friends from Care for Real (by all accounts, you did a wonderful job). Kari and I flew to Germany. It was a little weird, but also very nice, when after traveling for 20 hours, we were awarded treatment. The hotel clerk was expecting us. He welcomed us by name, upgraded our room, gave us free wi-fi, and offered a complimentary breakfast. Clearly, Diamond Elite members matter more than other people. I wonder, can we accumulate reward points for Jesus?

Of course, if some people matter more, it follows that others matter less, or even, not at all.  I was surprised when I put my shoes on this morning. I could still see a trace of the white, chalky, gravel dust from Dachau.  Dachau, of course, is among the most famous concentration camps created by the Nazi’s in WWII. The Nazi’s created and ran more than 44,000 such camps throughout occupied Europe. Each one is hellish example of what happens when you apply the logic to its fullest extent that some people are important while others are expendable.

Rewards lift me above other people. Rewards undergird systems of privilege and hierarchy. Soon, I begin to believe the lie that I am better than other people. This seems so obvious to us while standing in Dachau or even the front desk of my hotel. Whatever rewards Jesus is talking about cannot be the same. They cannot raise us above any of God’s other creatures. This is antithetical to the good news Jesus taught. Yet tragically, isn’t this what many of us were taught? If you are good, you will be warmly received the moment you check in at the Pearly Gates, and if you are not good, you will be cast into an oblivion much worse than Dachau. Thanks be to God in Christ Jesus opens an off-ramp from this rat-race. You are beloved –exactly no more and no less than everyone else.  Grace is for everyone or it’s not grace.

The Lord of the Sabbath does not tally our human value according to how good deeds we do or how many bricks we can make like the Pharaohs of this world. Whatever rewards Jesus has in mind cannot be for some and not all.  So, how am I reward for being Jesus’ disciple? As we slowly sift the wheat of the gospel from the chaff of cultural gunk and bad theology, what emerges that offers us guidance?

For a long time, when I was younger, I confess I felt more comfortable believing in God than in Jesus. I think, in part, this is because Jesus has been so buried behind harsh words, exclusion, and meanness. Our gospels teach us that the life and love of God is revealed in Christ Jesus.  Slowly, as I learned, studied, and prayed upon the gospel of Jesus, the harshness, exclusion, and meanness were washed away. Jesus stands for radical inclusion. Jesus did not exclude anyone. Moreover, this Christ Jesus is the logos, the divine inclusive, abundant operating in, with, and under everything.

The planets orbit the sun because they have no choice but to orbit the sun. We, on the other hand, have some degree of freedom to choose the center of gravity around which our heart, mind, and life revolves.  Even though the “planet” I call “me” will sooner or later spin out of control or disintegrate or turn into a flaming ball if I choose to leave the orbit I was created to follow—with Jesus at the center of my life—I have, nevertheless, chosen to do just that during my seasons of my life. (Rick Lawrence)

When Jesus is at the center of my life, I am gently called to befriend my brokenness.  Rather than launch me into a competitive race in which I must win out above all others, the gravitational pull of grace orbiting the Son of God begins to turn my vulnerabilities into strengths, my failures into wisdom, my limitations into connection with others. These are the kinds of rewards I have found in Jesus.

Putting Jesus at the center begets abiding relationships, forgiveness, and sometimes even the possibility of reconciliation with my enemy. The process of healing and resurrection is often painful. It requires patience and persistence. But God is both. Putting Jesus at the center opens my heart to loving others, the stranger, the alien, the suffering, the lost. Putting Jesus at the center also opens me to receive care and hospitality from others. I can do this, not because I am any better but because I know others are not any less. We are, each of us, living members of the body of Christ.  These are some of the rewards we have in Christ Jesus.

So now, while we may celebrate the good things of our history on this Independence Day weekend, we are no longer citizens of any nation. We are pilgrims in our own land just as our ancestors in faith were. In Christ Jesus, we are aligned with the care and wellbeing of all people and of all things that are living. We need not be afraid of any man. We do not fear even the power of death.  This too is our reward.

Mostly, they professed ignorance and didn’t want to get involved. But sometimes, by the grace of God, the people who lived in the little town of artists that was Dachau ‘risked severe reprisal and perhaps even imprisonment to slip food, drinks, or cigarettes to prisoners who were part of work details.’ “One group of women was so appalled at the conditions of the prisoners who were working near their street that they used their own ration cards to acquire bread for them.  The woman retrieved apples from their own cellars, spread jam on the bread and attempted to give the food to the prisoners but the guards pushed the woman away, cursed them and angrily confiscated the food.” (John C. McManus, Hell Before Their Very Eyes)

The Divine Logos works tirelessly within each of us, Christian or non-Christian, to do the will of the Father. The last few verses of Matthew 10 we read today conclude a series of Jesus’ instructions to the disciples as part of their commissioning. Jesus sent the disciples, not merely as his representatives, but each one as extension of his very self. Now Jesus awards this gift again to each of you, should you accept it, to be disciples of Christ bound together in the One Life of God, the Holy Trinity, at alive and work in the world forever.

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