Pr. Doug's Sermon: October 2, 2011

Matthew 21:33-46

Can you picture Jesus preaching this parable? Can you imagine him speaking to a crowd of listeners in the temple court?

There on the edge of the crowd stand the high priests and the learned teachers: The religious leaders of Israel. And here sits Jesus – telling them a story: A story about themselves. Just a moment ago we heard how that story went:

We heard how a wealthy landowner sent agents to collect his share of the profits only to have them beaten up and sent away by the workers: Those entrusted with the vineyard’s care.

Finally the “naive” landowner sends his own son, and they kill him. “What will the lord of the vineyard do with his wicked workers?” Jesus asks. And with that the sermon is over….

You can imagine how that story went over with the religious establishment of Israel. No one likes to be labeled a “murderer”, especially religious leaders in a religious building.

The sermon was over and Jesus’ congregation began to organize a lynch mob…apparently the parable got to them.

Well, if we’re honest we’ll have to admit the parable gets to us too. We understand the story. We should, for though it is a story of Israel, it is nonetheless our story as well, and the story of the whole human race.

We have always rejected the prophets. Trace your way back through history from Oscar Romero and Martin Luther King Jr to Thomas More and Joan of Arc, back all the way to John the Baptist, Jeremiah, Amos and Elijah. We have a long record of rejecting the prophets of God.


Some we’ve killed…
Some we’ve stoned…
And some we have merely treated with silent reproach.

For generations we have tried to stop the prophets from speaking. Time and time again God has sent prophets to us and we have chased them away or we have simply walked away ourselves choosing not to be in the company of such radicals.

When you think about it, no one loves a prophet…

Prophets spot the gap between what we believe and how we behave and drive the Word of God right in between.

Prophets measure the distance between what we do and what God demands.


God wills peace on earth, then “why” says the prophet do you make or accept war in God’s vineyard?

God has given a commandment that “you shall not kill”, then “why” says the prophet do you stand idly by while your neighbor goes hungry in God’s abundant vineyard?

God says “Love your neighbor”, then “why” says the prophet have congregations of every age circled the wagons when times were tough instead of arising as the servant church God has called them to be?

God says, “Go and be a blessing to the nations”, then “why” says the prophet do you seek the blessing for yourself over and against being the blessing?



In short, we are the ones who reject God’s living Word…
We are the tenants in the vineyard who deserve eviction.

And yet I believe that this story is less about the wicked tenants and more about the absurdly patient landowner. Whereas Isaiah’s “beloved” planter uprooted his vineyard in anger when it produced “wild grapes”, the owner in Jesus’ parable does just the opposite.

He sends agent after agent who are beaten, humiliated and in some cases, even killed. Finally, as if watching a scary movie where we know something terrible awaits the protagonist just around the corner, we see the owner send his son, who himself is also murdered.


Normally an owner would move quickly with overwhelming force to claim what is rightfully his…
So what’s wrong with this owner?
How many beatings and deaths will he put up with?

The owner from Isaiah 5, the first reading this morning, knows what to do: Uproot and completely destroy: Leave no one standing.

Surely this story from Jesus’ lips to our ears is completely absurd. And yet if it is absurd, it is only absurd as a testimony to God’s astounding mercy. Like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, the owner here is patient with a love that will not let us go…

By our logic…
The story should have ended with a massacre. Even Martin Luther, in a rather bleak mood, once responded, “If I were as our Lord God and … people were as disobedient as they now be, I would knock the world in pieces”.

By our logic…
The workers should have been slaughtered and the vineyard turned over to new sharecroppers.

By our logic…
This parable should end violently: an Eye for an eye…a tooth for a tooth… death for death.

But Jesus will not be roped in to that kind of logic…

Knowing full well that he too will endure a grievous act of violence on a vineyard cross…thus putting an end once and for all to violence and death…

Jesus goes on to talk about a stone – a rejected stone - a rejected stone that will become the chief cornerstone. The stone upon which God’s Kingdom will be built...

God’s Kingdom…

Where a lion and lamb lie down together…

Where swords are beaten into ploughshares…

Where all share everything in common and no-one goes without…

Where the naked are clothed and the hungry are fed…

Where one’s is judged by one’s character rather than the color of one’s skin, the money in one’s bank account or the orientation of one’s life.



Murderous vineyard workers and building blocks – perhaps the strangest mixed metaphor in all of Scripture… and yet here it is placed before us.

A mixed metaphor that confronts and challenges everything we take for granted about our world and about our God…

A mixed metaphor that convicts and comforts…

A mixed metaphor that acknowledges humanity’s immense capacity for evil and God’s immense capacity to create a servant church from the dust of humanity’s sin…

A servant church led by such people as

St. Dietrich Bonhoeffer of Breslau, Germany

St. Martin Luther King Jr. of Birmingham, Alabama

St. Oscar Romero of San Salvador

St. –fill in your name-- Go ahead fill in your name. God already has…

Pr. Doug's Sermon: October 9, 2011

Matthew 22:1-14


Here we go again….


For yet another week, we get to hear Jesus tell us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like… in rather harsh terms…

Recall last week, he described it as a vineyard…

A vineyard?
Now that’s an image I like.
I can relate very well to grapes and soil and sun and rain and of course the product of all that stuff. Honestly, I have never met a grape I don’t like.


In fact, when I think of grapes and vineyards, I picture crisp autumn days around any one of our beautiful Finger Lakes, filled with vineyard and winery tours with family and friends.



So the Kingdom of God is like a vineyard? That’s great, until Jesus says a little more…

The Kingdom is like a vineyard….with evil workers on the verge of expulsion.
Well that is certainly a comforting image…

A vineyard with evil workers……


How about them apples?



“The Kingdom of God” says Jesus, “is like a royal wedding banquet”.

A royal wedding? Now that’s something that sounds appealing….

I can relate to that…..in as much as I have seen a couple of them on television over the past few years.

I mean who can forget the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton? The hats alone were enough to warrant worldwide television coverage.
From Princess Beatrice’s giant sculpted bow, to Victoria Beckham’s spiky alien antenna, royal fashion was quite the topic of conversation.


So just when you thought it was safe to venture into the waters of royal wedding fashion, along comes Jesus with his own fashion statement…

As he tells a parable about a king who invited guests to a royal wedding only to find one of the guests disrespectfully attired; not wearing a wedding robe.

After offering a harsh fashion critique, the king has this guest bound and thrown out into the darkness where there is endless weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Followed by the harshest of words that conclude our gospel reading for the day: “For many are called, but few are chosen”.

The gospel of the Lord…Praise to you O Christ.

Praise to you O Christ? Really? We really concluded the Gospel reading with these words? “Many are called, but few are chosen?”


How does he do that? How is it that Jesus can take a perfectly normal, everyday and quite enjoyable image and ruin it with a parable?

Of course, I guess that’s what parables do don’t they? They take something that we know a lot about and they ruin it for us by casting it in a different light.

A light that displaces all of our assumptions…

A light that re-arranges our spiritual furniture…

A light that tells one story on the surface, but on a deeper level points to something else and challenges us to discover THAT something else.


And Jesus is no stranger to the parable….

In the 4 gospels alone, Jesus uses parables to get his point across 26 times. Add the non-canonical gospel of Thomas and you’ve got 29.

I mean if you think about it, the use of parable is brilliant.

For like a Trojan Horse of old, through the use of familiar images, the parable gets past our defenses and once there, unleashes its gospel truth: it’s Kingdom of God perspective: messing up everything for us: especially messing up the concept of “life on our terms”.


So little wonder that when we hear Jesus talking about “many” being called, but only a “few” being chosen, we begin to squirm in our Lutheran “justification by grace through faith” shoes.

I don’t know about you. But I like the concept of “justification by faith”.

I like knowing that in the Cross of Christ, God has done it all for me…

And as a result, I like thinking that nothing is required of me….

I like thinking that God loves me so much that not only did He send his son to die for me, but also that he accepts and affirms everything about me.

He affirms me when I come to church…

He affirms me when I decide to skip church this week


He affirms me when I tithe my life…

And he affirms me when I keep it all to myself.


I call this living life on my terms:

The Lutheran pastor and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, called this “cheap grace”.

Not only living life on my terms…

But living like the rest of the world…modeling my life on the world’s standards and not aspiring to live a different life under the cross of grace.

Not aspiring to live a different life under the cross of grace.

Living life under one’s own terms…

Maybe in Jesus’ royal wedding parable this morning, that was the problem with the guest who showed up without a wedding garment.

Maybe instead of coming to a wedding to become intimately connected to the king: To God, this wedding guest came looking simply for his own dietary nourishment…just came to fill his belly.

Looking only to his own needs and desires while wearing blinders to the realities around him.


But whatever the motivations of this guest, it is clear that something is expected of him…

That there is a garment he is expected to wear which differs from the one he normally wears…

A garment that is different from the ones worn by the rest of the world.


You see, I do not believe that Jesus tells this parable in order to figure out who is “in” and who is “out” of God’s Kingdom… some may translate it that way: but they would be wrong.

I believe this parable is all about how life is lived as a resident of the Kingdom of Heaven.

And how, as residents of that Kingdom, we are called to a different way of life.

A different way of life where in following Christ, we bear His Image.









Just imagine for a moment, what bearing the image of Christ could look like:



Healing…

Teaching…

Feeding…



Each of these: An image of Christ.


Being poured out….

Breaking down barriers…

Loving the unlovable…


Each of these: An image of Christ.


So here we are: Gathered before this banquet table today, not with fancy hats and classic couture worthy of a Buckingham Palace wedding, but clothed simply (through the waters of our Baptism) with a different wedding garment:
the joy and wonder of Christ…

about to share in a glorious feast...

a feast in which our King, Christ our Lord not only invites us, but dwells richly with us.

a feast in which we are fed with nothing short of God’s very own life…

a feast from which we rise, transformed, bearing the image of the crucified and risen Christ…

a feast in which we are fed and from which we feed.



But you know, after all is said and done, I still squirm and become uneasy when I hear Jesus talking in parables about God’s Kingdom:

Especially when he puts “wedding garments” and “weeping and gnashing of teeth” in the same sentence.


There is still a part of me that wants to say, “Jesus is just using harsh terms to get my attention”.

There is still a part of me that wants to lay down a Jesus disclaimer that somehow Jesus doesn’t really require every fiber of my being.

More times than not, I still want life on my terms: Not God’s.

More times than not, I want to be fed more than I want to feed.

More times than not, if I am really honest with myself, I want the image of Doug a whole lot more than the image of God.


For in God’s image, are certain expectations…

In God’s image, I have no choice but to feed, clothe and break down barriers…

In God’s image, I have no choice but to oppose systems that oppress and neglect the most vulnerable.

In God’s image, I have no choice but to be Christ to my neighbor…
Yes, every neighbor, even the ones who I would rather call “enemy”.

In God’s image, there is but one wedding garment to wear…

And that is the garment emerging from the waters of my baptism…

The garment that transforms and compels me to love God with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my strength, and to love my neighbor as myself.

Loving God….Loving neighbor.

These are the threads which when woven together comprise the wedding garment we wear this day to this feast.

No crazy hats…no glistening tiaras. No horse drawn carriages. Just love.

Whose fault is it?

The following meditation is written by Anna Carter Florence.


Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?
Why does it always come back to this question?—"Whose fault is it?"

You’re doing dishes in the kitchen when a baseball flies through the window with a crash. Picking your way through the broken glass, you peer through the hole in the window and see two boys, frozen in horror. One holds a baseball bat; the other wears a glove. They are both speechless for exactly five seconds, and then each begins to shout, pointing at the other:
"I told you not to hit it toward the house!"
"What?! You’re the one who made me stand in this spot!"
"But I didn’t hit the ball, stupid!"
"You pitched it! And it was your idea to play in the first place!"
As their voices rise in decibels and the shouting match turns ugly, you realize they are waiting for you to decide: Whose fault is it, that the baseball went through the window?

The couple sits down in the doctor’s office, waiting for her report. They have been trying for two years to get pregnant, with no success; now, they want to know why. Last week they came in for the battery of tests that will begin to give them some answers, but as the doctor sees the tension in their faces, how they are unable to look at one another or hold hands, she knows how the couple is framing their questions:
Is she the one—is it her inability to conceive?
Is he the one—is his sperm count too low?
Is it her organs that are malfunctioning?
Is it his stress that is interfering?
The doctor opens the folder in front of her and takes a deep breath. The question hangs heavy in the air: Whose fault is it, that we cannot have a baby?

It’s your twenty-fifth high school reunion, and you can’t wait to catch up with your old friends. It’s been years since you were all together. Everyone is there—everyone except Joe and Beth. "Aren’t they coming?" you ask, and your friends shake their heads, sadly. "I guess you haven’t heard," says one; "Joe and Beth are getting a divorce." You sit in stunned silence. "No!" you say, numbly; "not Joe and Beth!"
Was it an affair?
Was it a midlife crisis?
Did he hit her?
Did she drink?
"What happened?" you whisper, not even sure you want to know the truth. And there is that question again: Whose fault is it, that this marriage didn’t last?

Maybe it’s human instinct, to find fault. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism, to keep the great void at bay. If we know whose fault it is, at least we have a way to understand what has happened. At least we have a way to explain our part in it. Even better, we may find a way to excuse our part in it—which is to say, to put the responsibility squarely on another’s shoulders. If our only job is to find out whose fault it is, we can be assured of some retributive satisfaction: someone will pay for what goes wrong.
Do you see this, where you are? When the basement floods, when the church budget comes up short, when the sermon falls flat, why are we so quick to ask, "How could this have happened?" And when we determine whose fault it was, why does the fault-finding so quickly turn to blame?

I’m not sure the disciples are looking to lay blame in this scene, by the way. They aren’t out for blood and retribution; they’re just curious. They really want to know: Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? It’s a fair question for disciples to ask of their teacher, given the theological equations of the day (blindness = sickness = sin = human fault). It’s a fair question for Jesus’ disciples to ask, given the fact that Jesus keeps turning the theological tables. I think the disciples really are open to the possibility that there might be a new and different answer, here. They really want Jesus to teach them. So who sinned, Jesus?—this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
Jesus’ answer stumps everyone, and it stumps me. No one sinned. He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.

No blame. No fault. Just an opportunity for God to be seen and known.
I’m going to skip the predestination question, here; it’s a fair one, but unanswerable, in my view, since this story then continues with a miraculous healing, and none of us are really in a position to step into Jesus’ shoes, in that department. What amazes me is how Jesus changes the subject. Who sinned, this man or his parents? No one sinned. No one is the cause of this. No one is the subject, here—except God, and what God might do in this situation.
For me, this changes everything. Whose fault is it, that the baseball went through the window? No one’s fault. No one is the subject, here—except God, and what God might do in this situation. So look around, boys. What do you think God is doing, here? How can we help?Whose fault is it, that this couple cannot conceive a child? No one’s fault. No one is the subject, here—except God, and what God might do now. So look around. What do you think God is doing, here? How can we be a part of it? Whose fault is it, that this marriage ended? No one’s fault. No one is the subject here—except God, and what God might do here. So look around. What do you think God is doing, here? How can we enter in?
It’s a good instinct, changing the subject.

Let God be God.
Let we who are blind be healed.

Anna Carter Florence

Reflection on Lent

The following is a reflection on Lent by The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor. This reflection challenges each of us to ask the question: "Who am I in the story of Jesus' passion?"


Jesus was not brought down by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God’s will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff’s office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar.

This is a story that can happen anywhere at anytime, and we are as likely to be the perpetrators as the victims. I doubt that many of us will end up playing Annas, Caiaphas or Pilate, however. They may have been the ones who gave Jesus the death sentence, but a large part of him had already died before they ever got to him--the part Judas killed off, then Peter, then all those who fled. Those are the roles with our names on them--not the enemies but the friends.

Whenever someone famous gets in trouble, that is one of the first things the press focuses on. What do his friends do? Do they support him or do they tell reporters that, unfortunately, they had seen trouble coming for some time? One of the worst things a friend can say is what Peter said. We weren’t friends, exactly. Acquaintances might be a better word. Actually, we just worked together. For the same company, I mean. Not together, just near each other. My desk was near his. I really don’t know him at all.

No one knows what Judas said. In John’s Gospel he does not say a word, but where he stands says it all. After he has led some 200 Roman soldiers and the temple police to the secret garden where Jesus is praying, Judas stands with the militia. Even when Jesus comes forward to identify himself, Judas does not budge. He is on the side with the weapons and the handcuffs, and he intends to stay there.

Or maybe it was not his own safety that motivated him. Maybe he just fell out of love with Jesus. That happens sometimes. One day you think someone is wonderful and the next day he says or does something that makes you think twice. He reminds you of the difference between the two of you and you start hating him for that--for the difference--enough to begin thinking of some way to hurt him back.

I remember being at a retreat once where the leader asked us to think of someone who represented Christ in our lives. When it came tie to share our answers, one woman stood up and said, “I had to think hard about that one. I kept thinking, Who is it that told me the truth about myself so clearly that I wanted to kill him for it?” According to John, Jesus died because he told the truth to everyone he met. He was the truth, a perfect mirror in which people saw themselves in God’s own light.

What happened then goes on happening now. In the presence of his integrity, our own pretense is exposed. In the presence of his constancy, our cowardice is brought to light.

Barbara Brown Taylor, “Truth to Tell,” from “The Perfect Mirror,” copyright 1998 Christian Century Foundation., 89-92.

This I Believe

The following reflection is from The Rev. William H. Willimon, former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University.

"In the early church, just before the holy meal that we know as the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper, people brought forth food, mainly bread and wine, for a meal. They brought the everyday labors of their hands, what they had at home, and they put it up on the Lord's table in the great offertory procession. You can see these ordinary people, coming forward at the invitation of their pastor, putting what they had on the table. In offering their food, in giving the stuff of their daily life back to God, for the use by God's people, they were participating in oblation. This giving , this oblation, is one of the great movements of our faith. We are not created simply to be receivers, takers, but are also created to be givers.

"You and I live with the deep ambiguity in regard to material stuff of life. Some of us are paying too high a price for our accumulation of things. Some of us are neglecting our health, neglecting our families and friends, because we are working ourselves to death. We are spending too much time at the office, giving too much to our labor, thinking that we are going to get a worthwhile return. What are we to do about this over-striving, and over-work, and over-accumulation?

"The church says that we can put it all on the altar. We can take this deeply ambiguous money - the root of so much evil, and the source of much good - and put it on the altar. In so doing, our daily work is redeemed. What we are doing, in offering, is transformed from the mere making of a living, to the living of a life. Whatever we do for a living, we now do to the glory of God and for the giving to others. We can put it on the altar.

"Watch us, during the offering, and you will see us at our best. We take the stuff of our daily lives, and we give it back to God, for God's work. This is us at our very best."

LGBT Message

My name is Mark Hanson, and I am presiding bishop of the largest Lutheran church in
North America -- the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

I am a father of six and a grandfather of four.

I’ve listened with pain and shock to reports of young people taking their lives because
they’ve been bullied and tormented for being different, for being gay or perceived to be
gay, for being the people God created them to be.

I can only imagine what it’s like to be bullied for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or
transgender.

But I do know how bullying can destroy someone.

One day, I came home and found our daughter curled up in the fetal position on the floor
weeping uncontrollably. She was struggling to know who she was as a bi-racial young
woman.

She felt bruised by words people had spoken about her, words that ate away at her sense
of identity and self-worth. I sat down by her on the floor holding her in my arms.

Words have the power to harm and the power to heal.

Sometimes the words of my Christian brothers and sisters have hurt you. And I also know
that our silence causes you pain.

Today, I want to speak honestly with you and offer you the hope I have in Christ:
You are a beloved child of God. Your life carries the dignity and the beauty of God’s
creation. God has called you by name and claimed you forever. There’s a place for you in
this world and in this church.

As a Christian I trust that God is working in this world for justice and peace through you
and through me.

It gets better.

“For I’m convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present,
nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

May it be so. Amen.

"The Long View" by Archbishop Oscar Romero

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about:
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.