May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Christmas
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 24 & 25, 1998
TEXT: Luke 2: 1-20 - And the angel said to them (the shepherds), "Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
ISSUE: In this beautiful and simple passage, Luke proclaims to his readers that the Savior of the world has come. It is Jesus the Christ. He comes in the flesh. He is not a spirit, a tablet of stone, an angel. He comes as one of us, to show us his love and reveal what we might become. He comes to the least, the shepherds thought to be little more than a band of thieves, and they in turn honor him. We are gathered here to do the same, to honor him, and rejoice in the hope that he brings.
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We are gathered here on this Christmas to honor the Lord Jesus Christ giving thanks for the fact that God has come among us in the flesh. Luke's poetic narrative expresses the fullness of God coming among his people in great simplicity. Having heard the story and reflecting on it for a few minutes, we then come to the altar rail to reach and to receive him into our lives. We come this evening in search of hope for the days and years ahead.
Luke's narrative is so profoundly beautiful. He speaks of hard times when the Roman Power manipulated and disrupted people's lives. He conveys this hardship by tell that Mary and Joseph must make a journey from their small hometown of Nazareth to Joseph's hometown of Bethlehem to participate in some census or tax payment arrangement. They are the victims of the powers of the world, and felt little control over their lives.
Nazareth was a small town of about a 100 inhabitants, and Bethlehem was not much bigger. When they arrive in Bethlehem Luke tells us there was no room in the "inn." Bethlehem did not have inns as we know them. A more literal translation would be guest room (or upper room as in the room used by Jesus for the Last Supper). Peasant homes were ususally one room dwellings. A few had an upper room or guest room. The more usual peasant dwelling had a living quarters at one end of the room, and a place at the other end to bed down the animals at night separated by a manger. Apparently the guest rooms were already taken by people who had more status or honor than Mary and Joseph. Thus Mary gives birth to the child Jesus in a room or place like all the other peasant women. The child will not have anything special, no unique crib or stately bed. He is born like all other peasant children, in a manger, probably with some of the local women attending Mary in her delivery. Jesus' birth is one says Luke that has no special honor attached to it. He is truly like all the rest of the peasants.
Now out in the fields around Bethlehem are a band of shepherds, Luke goes on to say. Shepherds and flocks were common to this area since the sheep were raised and made available for temple sacrifices in nearby Jerusalem. Shepherds had no honor in these days either. They did not stay at home at nights to care for their women and children. Their occupation was one without honor. What's more they trespassed with the sheep on other peoples' land and had a reputation for being thieves.
Out in the fields angels (God's messengers) appear to shepherds and tell this dishonorable band of thieves. They are fearful, terrorized. Yet the angels tell them they have nothing to fear, for today is born for them a savior who is Christ the Lord. It is something to and with whom they can relate. It is a babe born in the town of Bethlehem and wrapped up like all babies of this time in swaddling bands. Honored by the visitation of the angels, the shepherds go to Bethlehem to adore, worship, honor the child who has no honor as the world understood it.
So what is Luke saying? He is saying that the savior, God's salvation, God's love and forgiveness, is within our reach, within our understanding. God is in the simplicity of the teaching, healing, ministry of Jesus the Christ, who lives and dies for his people. God comes to the last, the least, the lost, to a motley bunch of shepherds and thieves. No one stands outside of the grace of God's free gift of love. Inspite of the Romans, the powers, the potentates, the systems of what the world deems as honorable, God in Jesus Christ comes to his save and redeem, to love and forgive his people. This savior is no high potentate, no stone tablets, no spirit, no angel. The savior is God with us in the flesh. Inspite of the world he comes in utter marvelous simplicity. He comes to a world with limited room and honor. He comes in utter simplicity and love. There is nothing to fear.
As we greet a new year, it is not looking at this point like a particularly good or easy one ahead of us. There are the problems in our government, which are likely to and may create considerable dissention and uncertainty. We face the realities and fears of terrorism. There will be something of a mad scramble to get the world's computers fixed before the millenium, the turn of the century. Each of us face various individual uncertainties and anxieties in our futures. Yet this is the night, the time of our being renewed in hope that whatever we face God in Christ Jesus is with us.
We gather here this evening to honor him with our hymns, with our songs, with our prayers, and with our reaching out at the altar to take his loving grace into our hearts. May we continue to be the bearers of the Goodnews of God in Christ as we live out our own humanity both embracing and and allowing ourselves to be embraced and touched by the Jesus Christ our Lord and his saving grace, who being like us and with us loves us and fully understands our humanity.
Friday, December 25, 1998
Sunday, December 20, 1998
Advent 4
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Advent 4
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 20, 1998
TEXT: Matthew 1:18-25 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us."
ISSUE: Matthew's account of the events and reactions of people surrounding the birth of Jesus is fascinating. Out of a scandalous situation, the savior is born. God is acting in history, bringing about a new creation. Joseph in Matthew's account accepting this seemingly sordid situation is instrumental in allowing God's redemption to take place. (In Luke, it is Mary that is the God-bearer.) Both Mary and Joseph's situation is redeemed. In our own world's scandals and violence, we need to allow the Christ to be central in our lives and his loving grace to flow through us.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Matthew's account of the birth of Jesus is so very different from Luke's story which includes angels and shepherds. Matthew does not have the pageantry of Luke and his emphasis is not so much centered on Mary as the bearer of the Son of God. In Matthew we see Joseph as the more heroic figure. Matthew's account deals significantly with the whole idea that the birth of Jesus is scandalous. God is acting in one scandalous way.
It is helpful to appreciate what the marriage arrangements were like in this period of history in the middle east. They were very different from our own. The New Revised Standard Version we read today says that Mary and Joseph were engaged. That is not really accurate; they were betrothed. The engagement or betrothal of that time was nothing like engagement of our time. Marriages were not individualistic as they are today. A marriage in Jesus' time was the marriage not so much of individuals as the joining of two families. They were made for political and economic reasons, for the betterment of the two families that were of like economic status. A father offered gifts to win a bride for his son that the wants. Women worked out the details of the arrangements and the fathers ratified the agreement. Sometimes the arrangements or betrothal took place long before the wedding. The bride-to-be stayed with her own family until the time of the wedding. However it did require a divorce to annul the arrangement. Marriage was the ritual that removed the bride from her home and sent her to live with the new family and husband. These arrangements were not based on romantic love.
Now a woman who was betrothed to a man, and who became pregnant by someone else brought terrible shame on her whole family. According to Deuteronomic law she could be stoned to death as an adulterous. (Dt.22:23-24) Whether or not this exteme punishment was done in Jesus' time is uncertain. But there would be no question of the terrible shame it brought upon the family. Apparently at about the time the marriage is to take place between Joseph and Mary, Mary is found to be already pregnant.
What Matthew seems intent upon proclaiming is how honorable Joseph is in this situation. Joseph decides at first to simply divorce Mary quietly and end the relationship. He does not want to put her and her family in the position of great dishonor and shame. By divorcing her quietly, he allows the real father of the child to claim the child, and to marry Mary. Matthew is revealing how honorable Joseph is in this very awkward situation.
But according Matthew's account Joseph then has a dream. In these days people believed that they could discern the will of God in their dreams. Joseph dreams that God tells him that the child is a boy; therefore, a prized gift. God tells Joseph in the dream that the child is conceived by the Holy Spirit. The child who will be named Jesus, meaning "Yahweh (God) Saves" shall enhance Joseph's own honor. Joseph who shall adopt this child shall be a bearer of the Son of God, a channel through which God's grace shall flow to the world.
Now as Matthew addresses this account of Jesus' unusual birth to a Jewish community, they would have had in mind the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. Remember that Joseph in the Old Testament got a really raw deal at the hand of his brothers. Out of jealousy they were to kill him, but sold him instead. Joseph went through really tough times being sold into slavery and then eventually put in jail. Remember too that Joseph in the O.T. was a dreamer. He interpreted dreams that ultimately became his salvation. He interpreted the dream of the Pharaoh of Egypt, and was freed and became the prime minister of all Egypt. But not only that, Joseph forgave his brothers. He redeemed a really bad situation that was ultimately the salvation of his whole family and the nation of Israel.
We know very little about Jesus' father Joseph. He's not mentioned much at all. He is not mentioned in Mark at all. He is mentioned only once in John's gospel as Jesus being son of Joseph. The early writings of Paul make no mention of Joseph. He is a very shadowy character. But what Matthew seems to want to convey is that Joseph was in the line of King David, and he wants to create a character that is very forgiving, and honorable. He wants to root Jesus deeply and profoundly in the Jewish tradition as the continuing action of God working through his people and coming into the world as "God with us" and as "God's Salvation." In the account, Joseph adopts the child that God's plan may be fulfilled. And in the end God in Christ adopts the world with his love and saving grace. What is a truly scandalous situation, the Christ comes to his people though people of faith.
The birth of Jesus was and is a scandalous story. Many of the parables of Jesus are themselves scandalous. The first being last and the first last. Prodigal sons being rewarded, and latecomers in the vineyards getting the same wage as those who bore the heat of the day, and outrageous crooked stewards get commended. God acts in the strangest and most scandalous ways. Yet people who embraced God in faith had their lives changed and became channels of his grace.
We are living today in the midst of a scandalous time. There is scandal in the presidency, ans signs of terrible dishonor. We are just about to celebrate Christmas, the season of peace on earth, and our nation is at war with one of the smallest nations on the face of the earth. One side tells us it is something that has to be done for the future of the world, and still another side tells me this use of force is tragically wrong. As in so many acts of violence in the world, it is the poor, the children, the innocent who become the victims of the world's forces and powers. It is still scandalous that petty and ancient racism and violence prevails on the city streets of a nation throught to be enlightened. It is a despairing and pessimistic scene. It is a world without much honor.
Yet, in the lives of the simple, those shadowy figures, the unsung heroes, and people of faith there is the confident hope and belief that God seeks to come to his world. In all the pain and suffering of the world, Christ Jesus seeks to touch human hearts and continues to be the enlightening hope for the world. We need Jesus Christ as our way, our truth, and in our lifel. We need to make ourselves available to his coming. We need to make ourselves discerning, dreaming dreams and having visions, and allowing the loveliness of God in Christ to come to the world through our faith and through our lives. I know we feel unworthy at times. We feel inadequate. We feel that we have so little control over anything, what's going to happen today much less that what's going to happen tomorrow. So very little is know of Mary and less even is known of Joseph, and yet in this wonderful way, God acted in history and sent to us a Savior and an assurance that God is with us. May we all be open to the saving grace and love of God, and allow the Lord Jesus Christ to endwell our lives and Spirits that we may be the expression of his redeeming and forgiving love in God's world.
SEASON: Advent 4
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 20, 1998
TEXT: Matthew 1:18-25 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us."
ISSUE: Matthew's account of the events and reactions of people surrounding the birth of Jesus is fascinating. Out of a scandalous situation, the savior is born. God is acting in history, bringing about a new creation. Joseph in Matthew's account accepting this seemingly sordid situation is instrumental in allowing God's redemption to take place. (In Luke, it is Mary that is the God-bearer.) Both Mary and Joseph's situation is redeemed. In our own world's scandals and violence, we need to allow the Christ to be central in our lives and his loving grace to flow through us.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Matthew's account of the birth of Jesus is so very different from Luke's story which includes angels and shepherds. Matthew does not have the pageantry of Luke and his emphasis is not so much centered on Mary as the bearer of the Son of God. In Matthew we see Joseph as the more heroic figure. Matthew's account deals significantly with the whole idea that the birth of Jesus is scandalous. God is acting in one scandalous way.
It is helpful to appreciate what the marriage arrangements were like in this period of history in the middle east. They were very different from our own. The New Revised Standard Version we read today says that Mary and Joseph were engaged. That is not really accurate; they were betrothed. The engagement or betrothal of that time was nothing like engagement of our time. Marriages were not individualistic as they are today. A marriage in Jesus' time was the marriage not so much of individuals as the joining of two families. They were made for political and economic reasons, for the betterment of the two families that were of like economic status. A father offered gifts to win a bride for his son that the wants. Women worked out the details of the arrangements and the fathers ratified the agreement. Sometimes the arrangements or betrothal took place long before the wedding. The bride-to-be stayed with her own family until the time of the wedding. However it did require a divorce to annul the arrangement. Marriage was the ritual that removed the bride from her home and sent her to live with the new family and husband. These arrangements were not based on romantic love.
Now a woman who was betrothed to a man, and who became pregnant by someone else brought terrible shame on her whole family. According to Deuteronomic law she could be stoned to death as an adulterous. (Dt.22:23-24) Whether or not this exteme punishment was done in Jesus' time is uncertain. But there would be no question of the terrible shame it brought upon the family. Apparently at about the time the marriage is to take place between Joseph and Mary, Mary is found to be already pregnant.
What Matthew seems intent upon proclaiming is how honorable Joseph is in this situation. Joseph decides at first to simply divorce Mary quietly and end the relationship. He does not want to put her and her family in the position of great dishonor and shame. By divorcing her quietly, he allows the real father of the child to claim the child, and to marry Mary. Matthew is revealing how honorable Joseph is in this very awkward situation.
But according Matthew's account Joseph then has a dream. In these days people believed that they could discern the will of God in their dreams. Joseph dreams that God tells him that the child is a boy; therefore, a prized gift. God tells Joseph in the dream that the child is conceived by the Holy Spirit. The child who will be named Jesus, meaning "Yahweh (God) Saves" shall enhance Joseph's own honor. Joseph who shall adopt this child shall be a bearer of the Son of God, a channel through which God's grace shall flow to the world.
Now as Matthew addresses this account of Jesus' unusual birth to a Jewish community, they would have had in mind the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. Remember that Joseph in the Old Testament got a really raw deal at the hand of his brothers. Out of jealousy they were to kill him, but sold him instead. Joseph went through really tough times being sold into slavery and then eventually put in jail. Remember too that Joseph in the O.T. was a dreamer. He interpreted dreams that ultimately became his salvation. He interpreted the dream of the Pharaoh of Egypt, and was freed and became the prime minister of all Egypt. But not only that, Joseph forgave his brothers. He redeemed a really bad situation that was ultimately the salvation of his whole family and the nation of Israel.
We know very little about Jesus' father Joseph. He's not mentioned much at all. He is not mentioned in Mark at all. He is mentioned only once in John's gospel as Jesus being son of Joseph. The early writings of Paul make no mention of Joseph. He is a very shadowy character. But what Matthew seems to want to convey is that Joseph was in the line of King David, and he wants to create a character that is very forgiving, and honorable. He wants to root Jesus deeply and profoundly in the Jewish tradition as the continuing action of God working through his people and coming into the world as "God with us" and as "God's Salvation." In the account, Joseph adopts the child that God's plan may be fulfilled. And in the end God in Christ adopts the world with his love and saving grace. What is a truly scandalous situation, the Christ comes to his people though people of faith.
The birth of Jesus was and is a scandalous story. Many of the parables of Jesus are themselves scandalous. The first being last and the first last. Prodigal sons being rewarded, and latecomers in the vineyards getting the same wage as those who bore the heat of the day, and outrageous crooked stewards get commended. God acts in the strangest and most scandalous ways. Yet people who embraced God in faith had their lives changed and became channels of his grace.
We are living today in the midst of a scandalous time. There is scandal in the presidency, ans signs of terrible dishonor. We are just about to celebrate Christmas, the season of peace on earth, and our nation is at war with one of the smallest nations on the face of the earth. One side tells us it is something that has to be done for the future of the world, and still another side tells me this use of force is tragically wrong. As in so many acts of violence in the world, it is the poor, the children, the innocent who become the victims of the world's forces and powers. It is still scandalous that petty and ancient racism and violence prevails on the city streets of a nation throught to be enlightened. It is a despairing and pessimistic scene. It is a world without much honor.
Yet, in the lives of the simple, those shadowy figures, the unsung heroes, and people of faith there is the confident hope and belief that God seeks to come to his world. In all the pain and suffering of the world, Christ Jesus seeks to touch human hearts and continues to be the enlightening hope for the world. We need Jesus Christ as our way, our truth, and in our lifel. We need to make ourselves available to his coming. We need to make ourselves discerning, dreaming dreams and having visions, and allowing the loveliness of God in Christ to come to the world through our faith and through our lives. I know we feel unworthy at times. We feel inadequate. We feel that we have so little control over anything, what's going to happen today much less that what's going to happen tomorrow. So very little is know of Mary and less even is known of Joseph, and yet in this wonderful way, God acted in history and sent to us a Savior and an assurance that God is with us. May we all be open to the saving grace and love of God, and allow the Lord Jesus Christ to endwell our lives and Spirits that we may be the expression of his redeeming and forgiving love in God's world.
Sunday, December 13, 1998
Advent 3
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Advent 3
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 13, 1998
TEXT: Matthew 11:2-11 - When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"
ISSUE: Matthew's passage is working at making clear definitions as to who John the Baptist and Jesus are. John is clearly Malachi's forerunner of the Messiah. Jesus is the Messiah described in much of Isaiah's passages in terms of the great healer. In a time of great anxiety and uncertainty in both Judaism and the early church, these distinctions were important. For our age it is a matter of taking the leap of faith that also defines the Messiahship for ourselves. Is it truly Jesus the Christ, and do we embrace him fully in thought, mind, spirit, and action, or do we wait for another?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Matthew is addressing the early church community in a time of high anxiety. The Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed. There was a lot of uncertainty within Judaism as to who or what was the shape or definition of a delivering messiah. Anyone who had taken on some kind of leadership role and who opposed the forces the Romans was seen as a kind of messiah. Matthew seems to be trying to bring some clarity in this time of high anxiety and uncertainty for his people.
Matthew reports an incident when John the Baptist is in prison. Remember last week how John had dared to call the Sadducees and the Pharisees a brood of vipers. He had challenged them and all people who came to him to be repentant, not just sorry, but changing in their behaviors. He challenged the corruption of the priestly cast, the smoothness of the Pharisees, and the oppressive forces of the time. Now this week we find where that led John. He is in prison. Thereby, he appears to be a failure. He sends word to Jesus by his disciples asking if Jesus is the expected Messiah in these anxious and troubled times. Is Jesus the one who will bring about the Kingdom of God? Now Jesus asks the crowd what do you think of John? What did you go out into the wilderness to see?
Was John a mere reed easily broken or bending in the wind? Indeed not. If anyone was easily manipulated and uncertain of themselves, it was Herod.
Did they go out to see someone dressed in soft robes? Of course not, John the Baptist wore coarse clothing and ate the food of prophets, locusts and wild honey. Only the greedy rich like Herod dressed in effeminate clothing and behaved like a "pansie."
What did people go out in the wilderness to see? They went out to see a profoundly honest and straight forward prophet who was calling a confused, anxious, sinful world, a world of greed and injustice and oppression to repentance, to change. John, for Matthew, as Matthew tells this story, was the fulfillment of Old Testament Scripture. The words: "See, I am sinding my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you." comes from the prophet Malachi 3:1 and continues "Then the Lord you are looking for will suddly come to his Temple. The messenger you long to see will come and proclaim my covenant." Also in Malachi 4:5 it is written: "But before the great and terrible day the Lord comes I will send you the prophet Elijah." Matthew is holding up John the Baptist as the anticipated forerunner of the Messiah who will deliver Israel from its great affliction. For an uncertain community, they can be assured that God is continuing to work in their history and fulfilling the hopes of the prophets. John is seen as that stark contrast to the worlds powers and leadership. He calls for a cleansing, a renewing, and a complete change. He comes with no pretense or facade of royal robes and palaces. He is the rough stone that God has turned into one of his true prophets that honestly proclaims things as they are and demands change before the judgment of the Lord.
In this passage, John is perceived as uncertain as to who Jesus is. Is he the anticipated one? Is he the Messiah? And again Matthew wants to clarify the uncertainties of the time for his newly forming Christian congregation. In the passage, Jesus tells John's disciples to go and tell John what that they themselves are experiencing of Jesus' ministry: "The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised, and the poor (or the wretched) have good news brought to them." This sentence is nothing more than a direct quotation from Isaiah. It incorporates several passages. One from Isaiah 35:5-6, which we just read earlier today as the first lesson, the blind, the deaf, the lame and even the mute or speechless are speaking and being healed. The idea that the dead are being raised comes from Isaiah 26:19, "Those of our people who have died will live again! Their bodies will come back to life. All those sleeping in their graves will wake up and sing for joy. As the sparkling dew refreshes the earth, so the Lord will revive those who have long been dead." The idea that the poor or the wretched are having good news proclaimed to them comes also from Isaiah 61:1, "The Sovereign Lord has filled me with his spirit. He has chosen me and sent me to bring goodnews to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to announce release to captives and freedom to those in prison."
Repeatedly, Matthew in this account is revealing Jesus as the messianic folk healer that is coming into the world to those who have suffered at the hand of injustice and oppression. It is a passage again of great reversals: Blind - see; Lame - walk; Deaf - hear; Dead - live again; Poor outcasts, speechless ones like widow - get a voice. What's more . . . Great as John the Baptist is. . . even the least are greater than he. The last, the least, the lost are reclaimed by the Messiahship of Christ that comes among the people.
John had called for repentance. John had called for people to turn around, "turn over a new leaf" is the modern expression. For those who are ready to turn to Jesus as the Messiah as the Christ that shall find themselves reversed; from silence to joyful voices; from darkness into the light; from deadly lives to lives of renewed hopes; the dirty untouchables are being made touchable and restored to fullness of life again. The age of injustice and the slandering of the poor and the oppressed is coming to an end (Isaiah 29:18-21), "My people, you will not be disgraced any longer, and your faces will no longer be pale with shame." The new age of reversal and hope has come. Matthew is proclaiming this to a people who live in an age of fear, anxiety, oppression, and injustice. He is clarifying that the forerunner Elijah in the person of John has come and Jesus is the messianic folk healer who dares to come among his people, to touch and reside with them, to bring the healing and hope they need. Physicians (doctors) in this time rarely came near their patients. They talked of healing but avoided contact with people for fear of retribution by families if they injured a patient. But folk healers were different; they mingled with the sick, the dying. Jesus was the folk healer who came to his people in their great distress and becomes the great messianic healing hope. Matthew clearly defines who John the Baptist and Jesus are for a bewildered community, that they might take hold of the hope in their time of great distress, that they might see themselves as beginning to step into the Kingdom of God.
This is not merely about healing. It should not be taken too literally in our time. It is clearly a defining message of hope. The world and the church today has its severe problems. The problems of the affliction of the poor: homelessness, hunger in the face of great affluence in certain quarters of the world. It suffers enormously from violence in the streets and internation terrorism around the world. Our family life in so many instances has severe problems. Honesty is not always a top priority value whether it is in government or on the sales floor of your local car dealership. The world needs changing, our lives need changing. Sometimes in the face of great need we standseemingly helpless, apathetic and unconcerned. The message of John the Baptist is quite relevant. We need changing, and we stand under the judgment of God.
Yet at the same time coming into the world is the messianic healing hope. It is the Christ in this story who helps the blind to see new things in new ways, deaf are opened to hear new ways and the message of love. The dirty and unclean can find forgiveness in the mercy and compassion of God realized in Christ Jesus. People who are stifled, unable to move with their lives can find themselves challenged by Christ. Things that have grown old can be raised up and made new, and the least, the last, the lost can be made great in the eyes of God.
Honest people may well know that we stand under the judgment of God. It's a troubled world. We belong to a troubled church, and God knows we all have various troubles in our lives. We know we need changing and redemption. How can we be changed and in what direction do we turn? We need like John to ask, "Is in fact Jesus the one who is to come, or do we look for another?" There is that time when we must make the leap of faith. For all we know John the Baptist may well have expected a much more militant messianic figure as opposed to the healing messianic hope revealed in Jesus. People today look to various philosophies and fads as their hope and salvation. Even today people look to strong military leaders. Economic wizards as their hope. Strong political leaders and those who like to play everything safe, and keep things all the same. We look to strong characters who see rigid rules and regulations and laws as the hope of the world. But before us too is Jesus, the one who expressed a deep profound mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and love. Where we turn to whom we seek for salvation and hope is ours to choose and that decision effects the depths of our souls.
SEASON: Advent 3
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 13, 1998
TEXT: Matthew 11:2-11 - When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"
ISSUE: Matthew's passage is working at making clear definitions as to who John the Baptist and Jesus are. John is clearly Malachi's forerunner of the Messiah. Jesus is the Messiah described in much of Isaiah's passages in terms of the great healer. In a time of great anxiety and uncertainty in both Judaism and the early church, these distinctions were important. For our age it is a matter of taking the leap of faith that also defines the Messiahship for ourselves. Is it truly Jesus the Christ, and do we embrace him fully in thought, mind, spirit, and action, or do we wait for another?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Matthew is addressing the early church community in a time of high anxiety. The Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed. There was a lot of uncertainty within Judaism as to who or what was the shape or definition of a delivering messiah. Anyone who had taken on some kind of leadership role and who opposed the forces the Romans was seen as a kind of messiah. Matthew seems to be trying to bring some clarity in this time of high anxiety and uncertainty for his people.
Matthew reports an incident when John the Baptist is in prison. Remember last week how John had dared to call the Sadducees and the Pharisees a brood of vipers. He had challenged them and all people who came to him to be repentant, not just sorry, but changing in their behaviors. He challenged the corruption of the priestly cast, the smoothness of the Pharisees, and the oppressive forces of the time. Now this week we find where that led John. He is in prison. Thereby, he appears to be a failure. He sends word to Jesus by his disciples asking if Jesus is the expected Messiah in these anxious and troubled times. Is Jesus the one who will bring about the Kingdom of God? Now Jesus asks the crowd what do you think of John? What did you go out into the wilderness to see?
Was John a mere reed easily broken or bending in the wind? Indeed not. If anyone was easily manipulated and uncertain of themselves, it was Herod.
Did they go out to see someone dressed in soft robes? Of course not, John the Baptist wore coarse clothing and ate the food of prophets, locusts and wild honey. Only the greedy rich like Herod dressed in effeminate clothing and behaved like a "pansie."
What did people go out in the wilderness to see? They went out to see a profoundly honest and straight forward prophet who was calling a confused, anxious, sinful world, a world of greed and injustice and oppression to repentance, to change. John, for Matthew, as Matthew tells this story, was the fulfillment of Old Testament Scripture. The words: "See, I am sinding my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you." comes from the prophet Malachi 3:1 and continues "Then the Lord you are looking for will suddly come to his Temple. The messenger you long to see will come and proclaim my covenant." Also in Malachi 4:5 it is written: "But before the great and terrible day the Lord comes I will send you the prophet Elijah." Matthew is holding up John the Baptist as the anticipated forerunner of the Messiah who will deliver Israel from its great affliction. For an uncertain community, they can be assured that God is continuing to work in their history and fulfilling the hopes of the prophets. John is seen as that stark contrast to the worlds powers and leadership. He calls for a cleansing, a renewing, and a complete change. He comes with no pretense or facade of royal robes and palaces. He is the rough stone that God has turned into one of his true prophets that honestly proclaims things as they are and demands change before the judgment of the Lord.
In this passage, John is perceived as uncertain as to who Jesus is. Is he the anticipated one? Is he the Messiah? And again Matthew wants to clarify the uncertainties of the time for his newly forming Christian congregation. In the passage, Jesus tells John's disciples to go and tell John what that they themselves are experiencing of Jesus' ministry: "The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised, and the poor (or the wretched) have good news brought to them." This sentence is nothing more than a direct quotation from Isaiah. It incorporates several passages. One from Isaiah 35:5-6, which we just read earlier today as the first lesson, the blind, the deaf, the lame and even the mute or speechless are speaking and being healed. The idea that the dead are being raised comes from Isaiah 26:19, "Those of our people who have died will live again! Their bodies will come back to life. All those sleeping in their graves will wake up and sing for joy. As the sparkling dew refreshes the earth, so the Lord will revive those who have long been dead." The idea that the poor or the wretched are having good news proclaimed to them comes also from Isaiah 61:1, "The Sovereign Lord has filled me with his spirit. He has chosen me and sent me to bring goodnews to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to announce release to captives and freedom to those in prison."
Repeatedly, Matthew in this account is revealing Jesus as the messianic folk healer that is coming into the world to those who have suffered at the hand of injustice and oppression. It is a passage again of great reversals: Blind - see; Lame - walk; Deaf - hear; Dead - live again; Poor outcasts, speechless ones like widow - get a voice. What's more . . . Great as John the Baptist is. . . even the least are greater than he. The last, the least, the lost are reclaimed by the Messiahship of Christ that comes among the people.
John had called for repentance. John had called for people to turn around, "turn over a new leaf" is the modern expression. For those who are ready to turn to Jesus as the Messiah as the Christ that shall find themselves reversed; from silence to joyful voices; from darkness into the light; from deadly lives to lives of renewed hopes; the dirty untouchables are being made touchable and restored to fullness of life again. The age of injustice and the slandering of the poor and the oppressed is coming to an end (Isaiah 29:18-21), "My people, you will not be disgraced any longer, and your faces will no longer be pale with shame." The new age of reversal and hope has come. Matthew is proclaiming this to a people who live in an age of fear, anxiety, oppression, and injustice. He is clarifying that the forerunner Elijah in the person of John has come and Jesus is the messianic folk healer who dares to come among his people, to touch and reside with them, to bring the healing and hope they need. Physicians (doctors) in this time rarely came near their patients. They talked of healing but avoided contact with people for fear of retribution by families if they injured a patient. But folk healers were different; they mingled with the sick, the dying. Jesus was the folk healer who came to his people in their great distress and becomes the great messianic healing hope. Matthew clearly defines who John the Baptist and Jesus are for a bewildered community, that they might take hold of the hope in their time of great distress, that they might see themselves as beginning to step into the Kingdom of God.
This is not merely about healing. It should not be taken too literally in our time. It is clearly a defining message of hope. The world and the church today has its severe problems. The problems of the affliction of the poor: homelessness, hunger in the face of great affluence in certain quarters of the world. It suffers enormously from violence in the streets and internation terrorism around the world. Our family life in so many instances has severe problems. Honesty is not always a top priority value whether it is in government or on the sales floor of your local car dealership. The world needs changing, our lives need changing. Sometimes in the face of great need we standseemingly helpless, apathetic and unconcerned. The message of John the Baptist is quite relevant. We need changing, and we stand under the judgment of God.
Yet at the same time coming into the world is the messianic healing hope. It is the Christ in this story who helps the blind to see new things in new ways, deaf are opened to hear new ways and the message of love. The dirty and unclean can find forgiveness in the mercy and compassion of God realized in Christ Jesus. People who are stifled, unable to move with their lives can find themselves challenged by Christ. Things that have grown old can be raised up and made new, and the least, the last, the lost can be made great in the eyes of God.
Honest people may well know that we stand under the judgment of God. It's a troubled world. We belong to a troubled church, and God knows we all have various troubles in our lives. We know we need changing and redemption. How can we be changed and in what direction do we turn? We need like John to ask, "Is in fact Jesus the one who is to come, or do we look for another?" There is that time when we must make the leap of faith. For all we know John the Baptist may well have expected a much more militant messianic figure as opposed to the healing messianic hope revealed in Jesus. People today look to various philosophies and fads as their hope and salvation. Even today people look to strong military leaders. Economic wizards as their hope. Strong political leaders and those who like to play everything safe, and keep things all the same. We look to strong characters who see rigid rules and regulations and laws as the hope of the world. But before us too is Jesus, the one who expressed a deep profound mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and love. Where we turn to whom we seek for salvation and hope is ours to choose and that decision effects the depths of our souls.
Sunday, December 6, 1998
Advent 2
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Advent 2
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 6,1998
TEXT: Matthew 3:1-12 - "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. . . . . Bear fruit worthy of repentance . . . . . I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful that I is coming after me: I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire."
ISSUE: John is presented in this passage as the long anticipated return of Elijah. He comes as a coarse prophet of the land to call people to repentance that they might step into the Kingdom of God. The repentance that John speaks of is not to be confused with sorrow, penitence, regret. It is changed lifes that bear fruit. Let us not minimize the preparation of Christmas as mere infatuation with baby Jesus, but more in terms of lives changed to resonate with and in receiving Christ as the way, the truth, and the life for our lives.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Matthew's gospel passage this morning is eager to convey that God is still acting in the history of God's people. God seeks to save his people and grant them entrance into his Kingdom. It was believed by many of the Jewish people of this time that Elijah, one of the truly great prophets of Israel would return to the world, preaching the message of repentance. For Matthew and the early church that return of the prophet is unquestionably realized in the dynamic prophetic preaching of John the Baptist.
John the Baptist is truly a prophetic character familiar to the people of this time. He was himself a son of a local village priest Zechariah. He had taken to the wilderness, and wore the coarse clothes of a prophet, camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, described in 2 Kings 1:8. He was the fulfillment of Malachi's prophecy (4:5) that God would send Elijah before the terrible Day of the Lord. He was a loner, and like so many of the prophets before him he would be murdered by Herod.
John preached in the wilderness, and attracted groups of people. They made pilgrimages to see and hear him. His message and baptism must have been every bit as challenging and demanding as it sounds. People did not travel much in these times, especially in the wildernesses. Among those who came to hear John the Baptist were the Saducees and the Pharisees. These groups were the leaders and held places of significant honor in their society. It was a time when many of the people of the land suffered at the hand of their leaders, the Jeursalem elite and the Romans. There were exhorbitant taxes, confiscation of property, and shortages of food and life's supplies. John being in a priestly family knew well of the abuses, and of what he spoke. He called for change in a world of unrest, injustice, and oppression. This oppression shaped John's dynamic preaching. When the Pharisees and Sadducees come to him he dared to call these honorable men "a brood of snakes."
To these men and to all who came to John he called for repentance, and immersion in change, and a prepared readiness for God's salvation, for God's Kingdom, for the coming and receiving of their messianic hope. He dares them to be ready for immersion in fiery cleansing, empowering, and the true renewing wind of the Holy Spirit of God.
For John Baptist, he made it quite clear that geneology did not count. Honor in these times was something that a person inherited from family. Honor was in this culture inordinately important. But John clearly claimed that personal repentance was the issue, not what you inherited from family. In fact, there needed to be a clear break at times with the ways of the past to face the coming Kingdom of the present-future.
What is most important for us to understand what repentance meant then and means now. Many people have learned that repentance means being sorry for your sins. Repentance for many people is sorrow, or regret, or remorse. If we do bad things, or we neglect to do things we should, it is appropriate to be sorry, to regret, to feel saddnes for our failings. But that is not what repentance is inspite of all the holy talk dished out by pious preachers. Repentance for John the Baptist and the church meant CHANGE. The hearts and minds and ways of the leadership needed not mere sorrow, but change. The hearts and minds of the people who came to him meant that they did not come to him on a pilgrimage to get their sorrows washed away. They came to be immersed in change. They were now to lead lives that would bear good fruit and not continue in the ways of scandalous oppression and separation from the ways of God. They were to give up affection for honor that came from mere geneology and face up to being honorable as people of God. You surely would be sorry for you sins and bad actions, but "sorry gets you no where." What parent has not said those words to their kids, and had their own parents say it to them when they were children. It was a matter of doing something about it.
In our own culture today we have to deal with how a passage like this speaks to us. When preachers and prophets talk today about repentance they are often seen as weird, killjoys for this for many people is merely the season to be jolly. We Americans like being just plain fat and happy. We make jokes in the proverbial cartoons about the prophet bearing a placard calling for repentance. We like to think that what we do with our own private lives is no body else's business. Leave us alone. But the Gospel does not do that. It does not leave us alone. It calls us to repentance and renewal that we might embrace the way of God's Kingdom that is revealed in Jesus Christ.
One of the issues being dealt with in our culture now is the recent antics going on in the White House. Many American and foreign people simply say this is what everybody does, and every body lies about it. What a person does in private doesn't matter. But it does matter. It matters in every health clinic around the world that is desperately trying to put an end to AIDS and other life threatening venereal diseases. It matters that we can trust one another, our leaders, and learn to be faithful to one another. It matters as to how our children are raised and the climate they grow up and mature in. Sorry isn't enough. It's profound change that matters. Do we have our secret sins? Of course we all do. They matter to our spiritual health and well being. We need in many instances to change the secrets of our hearts. Whether the president is impeached or not is not the issue, but how any of us conduct ourselves as the people of God in public or private has consequences. There are things we need to change, to repent of.
I listened to someone once who had had a stroke tell me how the person had their cholesterol check-up postponed because they had just gotten back from vacation eating many steaks out in the mid west. There are times when we need to change our behavior, repent, or we risk death, we risk diminishing the very thing we all claim to value.
I just buried a good friends's 20 year old daughter last week because someone on the road chose to drink and drive. That's what fat and happy sassy Americans do. Yet the consequences can be devasting to the victims as well as to the lives of the perpetrators. Repentance is required or damnation results. It's just really a matter of sense.
If we are over weight, we know we have to change or repent of our eating habits. If you are smoking, you have to change your life style, or the awful results are damaged skin in old age, emphazema, lung cancer, and a nasty smell. In order to break away from these behaviors we need to change behavior, and as AA people will tell you, you need a higher power in your life than the demons that possess you. Are the fathers of the land taking on the spiritual development of their childrens' lives or leaving them to the fads and fancies of a troubled and sometimes perverse world.
Whether it is our private lives, or our American culture, or even our place in the church, we need to be re-examining who we are and what we do, and what needs to be changed that we step into the Kingdom of God. How do we proclaim true democracy as Americans when we often use our power to threaten or manipulate or use the smaller third world nations of the world? How do we as Christians proclaim the Goodnews of God's love when we are bound up in tradition, ancestry, small impoverished love of ourselves and our closed exclusive communities. Can we take on some of the issues facing the world, and work for healing?
Christmas is coming. It is the season of light and joy, good times to be had by all. We love our carols, our Advent wreathes, the children's service, and dear sweet little baby Jesus. But all that is so trivial, so empty without that human hearts are prepared for the change required in us in a suffering servant savior.
The Advent season is the season of singing and saying "Lord have mercy." It is the season of confession. It is the season of seeking humble access. It is the season of changed hearts and minds that look forward to the coming of God to be our saving higher power to sustain us and lead us into a new order, a new way of sacrificial love, of being forgiving people, of being people with a profound and deep faith in the way of Jesus Christ as the higher power that brings us home to God.
John led those who came to them into the warm water of the Jordon River, immersing them in its cleansing power to help them change their lives and to be ready; ready for the Baptism of the Lord of renewed energy and Spiritedness.
SEASON: Advent 2
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 6,1998
TEXT: Matthew 3:1-12 - "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. . . . . Bear fruit worthy of repentance . . . . . I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful that I is coming after me: I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire."
ISSUE: John is presented in this passage as the long anticipated return of Elijah. He comes as a coarse prophet of the land to call people to repentance that they might step into the Kingdom of God. The repentance that John speaks of is not to be confused with sorrow, penitence, regret. It is changed lifes that bear fruit. Let us not minimize the preparation of Christmas as mere infatuation with baby Jesus, but more in terms of lives changed to resonate with and in receiving Christ as the way, the truth, and the life for our lives.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Matthew's gospel passage this morning is eager to convey that God is still acting in the history of God's people. God seeks to save his people and grant them entrance into his Kingdom. It was believed by many of the Jewish people of this time that Elijah, one of the truly great prophets of Israel would return to the world, preaching the message of repentance. For Matthew and the early church that return of the prophet is unquestionably realized in the dynamic prophetic preaching of John the Baptist.
John the Baptist is truly a prophetic character familiar to the people of this time. He was himself a son of a local village priest Zechariah. He had taken to the wilderness, and wore the coarse clothes of a prophet, camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, described in 2 Kings 1:8. He was the fulfillment of Malachi's prophecy (4:5) that God would send Elijah before the terrible Day of the Lord. He was a loner, and like so many of the prophets before him he would be murdered by Herod.
John preached in the wilderness, and attracted groups of people. They made pilgrimages to see and hear him. His message and baptism must have been every bit as challenging and demanding as it sounds. People did not travel much in these times, especially in the wildernesses. Among those who came to hear John the Baptist were the Saducees and the Pharisees. These groups were the leaders and held places of significant honor in their society. It was a time when many of the people of the land suffered at the hand of their leaders, the Jeursalem elite and the Romans. There were exhorbitant taxes, confiscation of property, and shortages of food and life's supplies. John being in a priestly family knew well of the abuses, and of what he spoke. He called for change in a world of unrest, injustice, and oppression. This oppression shaped John's dynamic preaching. When the Pharisees and Sadducees come to him he dared to call these honorable men "a brood of snakes."
To these men and to all who came to John he called for repentance, and immersion in change, and a prepared readiness for God's salvation, for God's Kingdom, for the coming and receiving of their messianic hope. He dares them to be ready for immersion in fiery cleansing, empowering, and the true renewing wind of the Holy Spirit of God.
For John Baptist, he made it quite clear that geneology did not count. Honor in these times was something that a person inherited from family. Honor was in this culture inordinately important. But John clearly claimed that personal repentance was the issue, not what you inherited from family. In fact, there needed to be a clear break at times with the ways of the past to face the coming Kingdom of the present-future.
What is most important for us to understand what repentance meant then and means now. Many people have learned that repentance means being sorry for your sins. Repentance for many people is sorrow, or regret, or remorse. If we do bad things, or we neglect to do things we should, it is appropriate to be sorry, to regret, to feel saddnes for our failings. But that is not what repentance is inspite of all the holy talk dished out by pious preachers. Repentance for John the Baptist and the church meant CHANGE. The hearts and minds and ways of the leadership needed not mere sorrow, but change. The hearts and minds of the people who came to him meant that they did not come to him on a pilgrimage to get their sorrows washed away. They came to be immersed in change. They were now to lead lives that would bear good fruit and not continue in the ways of scandalous oppression and separation from the ways of God. They were to give up affection for honor that came from mere geneology and face up to being honorable as people of God. You surely would be sorry for you sins and bad actions, but "sorry gets you no where." What parent has not said those words to their kids, and had their own parents say it to them when they were children. It was a matter of doing something about it.
In our own culture today we have to deal with how a passage like this speaks to us. When preachers and prophets talk today about repentance they are often seen as weird, killjoys for this for many people is merely the season to be jolly. We Americans like being just plain fat and happy. We make jokes in the proverbial cartoons about the prophet bearing a placard calling for repentance. We like to think that what we do with our own private lives is no body else's business. Leave us alone. But the Gospel does not do that. It does not leave us alone. It calls us to repentance and renewal that we might embrace the way of God's Kingdom that is revealed in Jesus Christ.
One of the issues being dealt with in our culture now is the recent antics going on in the White House. Many American and foreign people simply say this is what everybody does, and every body lies about it. What a person does in private doesn't matter. But it does matter. It matters in every health clinic around the world that is desperately trying to put an end to AIDS and other life threatening venereal diseases. It matters that we can trust one another, our leaders, and learn to be faithful to one another. It matters as to how our children are raised and the climate they grow up and mature in. Sorry isn't enough. It's profound change that matters. Do we have our secret sins? Of course we all do. They matter to our spiritual health and well being. We need in many instances to change the secrets of our hearts. Whether the president is impeached or not is not the issue, but how any of us conduct ourselves as the people of God in public or private has consequences. There are things we need to change, to repent of.
I listened to someone once who had had a stroke tell me how the person had their cholesterol check-up postponed because they had just gotten back from vacation eating many steaks out in the mid west. There are times when we need to change our behavior, repent, or we risk death, we risk diminishing the very thing we all claim to value.
I just buried a good friends's 20 year old daughter last week because someone on the road chose to drink and drive. That's what fat and happy sassy Americans do. Yet the consequences can be devasting to the victims as well as to the lives of the perpetrators. Repentance is required or damnation results. It's just really a matter of sense.
If we are over weight, we know we have to change or repent of our eating habits. If you are smoking, you have to change your life style, or the awful results are damaged skin in old age, emphazema, lung cancer, and a nasty smell. In order to break away from these behaviors we need to change behavior, and as AA people will tell you, you need a higher power in your life than the demons that possess you. Are the fathers of the land taking on the spiritual development of their childrens' lives or leaving them to the fads and fancies of a troubled and sometimes perverse world.
Whether it is our private lives, or our American culture, or even our place in the church, we need to be re-examining who we are and what we do, and what needs to be changed that we step into the Kingdom of God. How do we proclaim true democracy as Americans when we often use our power to threaten or manipulate or use the smaller third world nations of the world? How do we as Christians proclaim the Goodnews of God's love when we are bound up in tradition, ancestry, small impoverished love of ourselves and our closed exclusive communities. Can we take on some of the issues facing the world, and work for healing?
Christmas is coming. It is the season of light and joy, good times to be had by all. We love our carols, our Advent wreathes, the children's service, and dear sweet little baby Jesus. But all that is so trivial, so empty without that human hearts are prepared for the change required in us in a suffering servant savior.
The Advent season is the season of singing and saying "Lord have mercy." It is the season of confession. It is the season of seeking humble access. It is the season of changed hearts and minds that look forward to the coming of God to be our saving higher power to sustain us and lead us into a new order, a new way of sacrificial love, of being forgiving people, of being people with a profound and deep faith in the way of Jesus Christ as the higher power that brings us home to God.
John led those who came to them into the warm water of the Jordon River, immersing them in its cleansing power to help them change their lives and to be ready; ready for the Baptism of the Lord of renewed energy and Spiritedness.
Sunday, November 29, 1998
Advent 1
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Advent 1
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 29, 1998
TEXT: Matthew 24:37-44 - Therefore, you must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
ISSUE: Matthew is preparing the early church for the fact that the Lord's second coming is delayed. People of that time had little sense of future. In sharp contrast, the people of today have little sense of the present and a greater sense of future, i.e. saving and planning. The gospel message is relevant to both situations. When the Second Coming occurs is not so much the issue, as our preparedness. We as disciples of Jesus Christ need to be constant in our faithfulness and forbearing in our ministries. The coming of Christ at Christmas is something of a metaphor for us and calls into awareness our need to be prepared to receive him. It is our time to examine our commitments.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This Sunday marks the beginning of the Advent Season and the beginning of the new church year. The four Sundays of Advent (Advent meaning "coming" from the Latin.) are a time in our tradition for looking forward to the coming of Jesus Christ at Christmas. The purples and blues of Advent mark the season, in the church at least, a time for spiritual preparating through prayer, self-examination ushering in repentance and readiness for receiving the spirit of Christ into our lives. It is time of readiness and renewing of our own spirits. Needless to say, it is extremely difficult to think of Advent in our time as a season that is spiritual and penetential in a world that comes alive with hussle and bustle in shopping and partying. but then a goodly number of you are here today, so obviously we are continuing to plan and prepare for our spirits for the special holy time. I'm glad we are all here.
As we begin this new year, the church's lectionary readings shift to the "A Cycle" of readings. This year the emphasis on the majority of Sundays will be on the Gospel of Matthew. We left Luke's account of the Gospel behind last week. We'll still read some of Luke's writings this year, but it will not be the emphasis. Matthew's gospel was written, it is believed, sometime between 80- 85 AD. His emphasis was to address largely the early Jewish Christians, that is, those Judeans who were accepting Jesus as Messiah. You will find that much of Matthews writing deals with Matthew relating how Jesus was like or had an affinity to Jewish prophets out of the past, and how he was in many ways a continuing revelation of God out of Jewish writings in the Old Covenant.
We begin this morning with the Apocalyptic writing or section of Matthew. He calls upon these very early Jewish Christian followers to be prepared for the Second Coming of Christ, which was thought to occur after the end of time the age. The issue for Matthew is not merely that they look forward to the end of the page, but that they remain ready and prepared for it. In Matthew's time, people did not have much of a sense of future. Life didn't change much for them. There were limited goods and supplies. Day to day was pretty much the same. There was little planning for the future. You lived more day to day. Thus, the concept of the return, or Second Coming of the Messiah was not for these people something that was off in the future. For them everything was imminent. By the time Matthew is writing in 80 A.D., the Temple in Jerusalem had already been destroyed in 70 A.D. The destruction of the Temple for these Jewish folk was the end of the age. It was an end of an era. It was an enormous disaster. It was also about fifty years since the death of Jesus upon the cross. Thus, they expected that the end should have come. These early Judean-Christians are being taunted by non-Christians as to why their Messiah has not yet come. It may well be that the early Judean Christians are themselves becoming disenchanted with the idea that their deliverance has not come in all these fifty years and certainly not since the recent fall of the Jerusalem temple.
Matthew, then has Jesus saying that the church must not be concerned about when the end of the age will come, but that they must remain faithful and prepared for the coming of the Lord. It was like the time of Noah (and notice how Matthew uses an Old Testament Scripture example) people who were not prepared for the awesome day of the Lord when the flood came were washed away. Only Noah in his preparedness and faithfulness was ready when the time came. Women grinding in the field need to be ready for that awesome day, as the unprepared will be left behind, and the faithful taken into the hands of the Lord. If you know a burglar is coming, you stay awake and make yourself ready. So the work of the church for Matthew in his Gospel is that the church in times of uncertainty and despair must remain ready for the Lord and the Light, the new dawning whenever it may come.
In our time, we are quite different from the 1st century. We are very future oriented. We are great planners for the future. We buy big insurance policies. We plan for our retirement. We plan our future vacations. We begin putting away money for our childrens' education when some of them are still in diapers. (Some do.) We are rather future oriented. Time flies for us. Our digital watches quickly move us into the future. The end of the age is something that we are more inclined to put off into the distant future. The great majority of people live well into older ages. We are truly devastated by the death of young people or adults. We feel like we are owed longevity. Thus, we have to approach this Gospel reading from different perspective. We travel and move quickly as we are thrust ahead by plush automobiles and supersonic jets. So thrust into the future are we, that we miss dealing with the present. Sometimes things of the present get set aside, neglected. We can't take time so smell the proverbial roses and discover or re-discover the content and condition of our spirituality, of our faith and our spiritual attitudes. While we are future oriented, the fact remains that there are signs, signals of the end of the age, and abrupt endings.
A few years back many of were trained as children to hide under our desks at school in anticipation of a catastrophic cataclysmic nuclear end. We had to prepare. While the Soviet threat has passed, we now live with the threats of terrorist attacks with loosely guarded and unaccounted for nuclear weapons. We live with the threat of terrorist biological warfare. We live with the threats of serious illness; automobile accidents. Even as we live into what we hope will be a glorious future, we still live with the reality of our end. How is it that we wish to stand before our Lord? How do we see the deep spirituality and attitudes of our lives? These are the issues and the question of Matthew's Gospel. It is an issue of being aware of who we are in the here and now that is the issue. Is our life an expression of shame or fear of meeting the Lord or do we feel a sense of resonance with the Lord? Do we feel at peace and with a sense of comfort with the possibility of dying and being acceptable and worth of union with God?
The Season of Advent and this last of November and early December becomes one of the most frenzied times of the year. We looking ahead planning for the big day, December 25th. All the excitement is not all bad as we get ready for this wonderful feast. But we ought not let anything in our lives keep us from the evaluation and appreciation of the kind of lives God would have us to live. Christmas like other obsessions and drives of our lives can be demonic without reflection and study, and the desire to embrace the ways and teachings of our Lord. We must live now in the present that we might never be ashamed or afraid to die.
We might well ask ourselves how do we wish to be remembered, and how effective have we been in terms our witness to our Christian faith? What are the issues that have to be resolved? To be in love and charity with our neighbors is certainly one criteria. Do we really know our children and our spouses keeping faithful, and showing our children the values of uncompromising love and forgiveness? Are our lives an expression of sharing and generosity? It is not likely that we are perfect. We all know only too well the darkness of our lives. We know also that God came into the darkness and the despair of the world to enligten the darkness, and to raise up the fallen. This is the season when we seek to reclaim the grace that comes from Jesus Christ, and to become resonant with the Lord. Resonance is that physical principal whereby there is a transfer of energy. If I sing a note into the piano, the energy of the sound waves of my voice are transferred to the string inside the piano and it begins to vibrate at the same frequency. This season is the one where again, knowing full well that life is short, we seek to hear and receive the presence of Christ into our lives so that having become aware of his love and his forgiveness of us, aware of the transfer of the loving spirit of God we may be resonate with his divine energy, and live accordingly in our lives. Just as a light can be passed from one candle to another, may we receive the enlightenment of God in Christ and share it with others.
I will close with prayer this morning. These are two prayers from the (old) 1928 Book of Common Prayer Book, page 588 from Forms of Prayer to be used in Families.
Let us pray.
Dedication of Soul and Body to God's Service, with a Resolution to be grwoing daily in Goddness.
And since it is of thy mercy, O gracious Father, that another day is added to our lives; We here dedicate both our souls and our bodies to thee and thy service, in a sober, righteous, and godly life: in which resolution, do thou, O merciful God, confirm and strengthen us; that as we grow in age, we may grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Prayer for Grace to enable us to perform that Resolution.
But, O God, who knowest the weakness and corruption of our nature, and the manifuld temptations which we daily meet with; We humbly beseech thee to have compassion on our infirmities, and to give us the constant assistance of thy Holy Spirit; that we may be effectually restrained from sin, and incited to our duty. Imprint upon our hearts such a dread of thy judgments, and such a grateful sense of thy goodness to us, as may make us both afraid and ashamed to offend thee. And, above all, keep in our minds a lively remembrance of that great day, in which we must give a strict account of our thoughts, words, and actions to him whom thou hast appointed the Judge of quick and dead, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
May this season be truly an occasion of preparation for the coming of Christ into renewed, prepared, and ordered lives.
SEASON: Advent 1
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 29, 1998
TEXT: Matthew 24:37-44 - Therefore, you must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
ISSUE: Matthew is preparing the early church for the fact that the Lord's second coming is delayed. People of that time had little sense of future. In sharp contrast, the people of today have little sense of the present and a greater sense of future, i.e. saving and planning. The gospel message is relevant to both situations. When the Second Coming occurs is not so much the issue, as our preparedness. We as disciples of Jesus Christ need to be constant in our faithfulness and forbearing in our ministries. The coming of Christ at Christmas is something of a metaphor for us and calls into awareness our need to be prepared to receive him. It is our time to examine our commitments.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This Sunday marks the beginning of the Advent Season and the beginning of the new church year. The four Sundays of Advent (Advent meaning "coming" from the Latin.) are a time in our tradition for looking forward to the coming of Jesus Christ at Christmas. The purples and blues of Advent mark the season, in the church at least, a time for spiritual preparating through prayer, self-examination ushering in repentance and readiness for receiving the spirit of Christ into our lives. It is time of readiness and renewing of our own spirits. Needless to say, it is extremely difficult to think of Advent in our time as a season that is spiritual and penetential in a world that comes alive with hussle and bustle in shopping and partying. but then a goodly number of you are here today, so obviously we are continuing to plan and prepare for our spirits for the special holy time. I'm glad we are all here.
As we begin this new year, the church's lectionary readings shift to the "A Cycle" of readings. This year the emphasis on the majority of Sundays will be on the Gospel of Matthew. We left Luke's account of the Gospel behind last week. We'll still read some of Luke's writings this year, but it will not be the emphasis. Matthew's gospel was written, it is believed, sometime between 80- 85 AD. His emphasis was to address largely the early Jewish Christians, that is, those Judeans who were accepting Jesus as Messiah. You will find that much of Matthews writing deals with Matthew relating how Jesus was like or had an affinity to Jewish prophets out of the past, and how he was in many ways a continuing revelation of God out of Jewish writings in the Old Covenant.
We begin this morning with the Apocalyptic writing or section of Matthew. He calls upon these very early Jewish Christian followers to be prepared for the Second Coming of Christ, which was thought to occur after the end of time the age. The issue for Matthew is not merely that they look forward to the end of the page, but that they remain ready and prepared for it. In Matthew's time, people did not have much of a sense of future. Life didn't change much for them. There were limited goods and supplies. Day to day was pretty much the same. There was little planning for the future. You lived more day to day. Thus, the concept of the return, or Second Coming of the Messiah was not for these people something that was off in the future. For them everything was imminent. By the time Matthew is writing in 80 A.D., the Temple in Jerusalem had already been destroyed in 70 A.D. The destruction of the Temple for these Jewish folk was the end of the age. It was an end of an era. It was an enormous disaster. It was also about fifty years since the death of Jesus upon the cross. Thus, they expected that the end should have come. These early Judean-Christians are being taunted by non-Christians as to why their Messiah has not yet come. It may well be that the early Judean Christians are themselves becoming disenchanted with the idea that their deliverance has not come in all these fifty years and certainly not since the recent fall of the Jerusalem temple.
Matthew, then has Jesus saying that the church must not be concerned about when the end of the age will come, but that they must remain faithful and prepared for the coming of the Lord. It was like the time of Noah (and notice how Matthew uses an Old Testament Scripture example) people who were not prepared for the awesome day of the Lord when the flood came were washed away. Only Noah in his preparedness and faithfulness was ready when the time came. Women grinding in the field need to be ready for that awesome day, as the unprepared will be left behind, and the faithful taken into the hands of the Lord. If you know a burglar is coming, you stay awake and make yourself ready. So the work of the church for Matthew in his Gospel is that the church in times of uncertainty and despair must remain ready for the Lord and the Light, the new dawning whenever it may come.
In our time, we are quite different from the 1st century. We are very future oriented. We are great planners for the future. We buy big insurance policies. We plan for our retirement. We plan our future vacations. We begin putting away money for our childrens' education when some of them are still in diapers. (Some do.) We are rather future oriented. Time flies for us. Our digital watches quickly move us into the future. The end of the age is something that we are more inclined to put off into the distant future. The great majority of people live well into older ages. We are truly devastated by the death of young people or adults. We feel like we are owed longevity. Thus, we have to approach this Gospel reading from different perspective. We travel and move quickly as we are thrust ahead by plush automobiles and supersonic jets. So thrust into the future are we, that we miss dealing with the present. Sometimes things of the present get set aside, neglected. We can't take time so smell the proverbial roses and discover or re-discover the content and condition of our spirituality, of our faith and our spiritual attitudes. While we are future oriented, the fact remains that there are signs, signals of the end of the age, and abrupt endings.
A few years back many of were trained as children to hide under our desks at school in anticipation of a catastrophic cataclysmic nuclear end. We had to prepare. While the Soviet threat has passed, we now live with the threats of terrorist attacks with loosely guarded and unaccounted for nuclear weapons. We live with the threat of terrorist biological warfare. We live with the threats of serious illness; automobile accidents. Even as we live into what we hope will be a glorious future, we still live with the reality of our end. How is it that we wish to stand before our Lord? How do we see the deep spirituality and attitudes of our lives? These are the issues and the question of Matthew's Gospel. It is an issue of being aware of who we are in the here and now that is the issue. Is our life an expression of shame or fear of meeting the Lord or do we feel a sense of resonance with the Lord? Do we feel at peace and with a sense of comfort with the possibility of dying and being acceptable and worth of union with God?
The Season of Advent and this last of November and early December becomes one of the most frenzied times of the year. We looking ahead planning for the big day, December 25th. All the excitement is not all bad as we get ready for this wonderful feast. But we ought not let anything in our lives keep us from the evaluation and appreciation of the kind of lives God would have us to live. Christmas like other obsessions and drives of our lives can be demonic without reflection and study, and the desire to embrace the ways and teachings of our Lord. We must live now in the present that we might never be ashamed or afraid to die.
We might well ask ourselves how do we wish to be remembered, and how effective have we been in terms our witness to our Christian faith? What are the issues that have to be resolved? To be in love and charity with our neighbors is certainly one criteria. Do we really know our children and our spouses keeping faithful, and showing our children the values of uncompromising love and forgiveness? Are our lives an expression of sharing and generosity? It is not likely that we are perfect. We all know only too well the darkness of our lives. We know also that God came into the darkness and the despair of the world to enligten the darkness, and to raise up the fallen. This is the season when we seek to reclaim the grace that comes from Jesus Christ, and to become resonant with the Lord. Resonance is that physical principal whereby there is a transfer of energy. If I sing a note into the piano, the energy of the sound waves of my voice are transferred to the string inside the piano and it begins to vibrate at the same frequency. This season is the one where again, knowing full well that life is short, we seek to hear and receive the presence of Christ into our lives so that having become aware of his love and his forgiveness of us, aware of the transfer of the loving spirit of God we may be resonate with his divine energy, and live accordingly in our lives. Just as a light can be passed from one candle to another, may we receive the enlightenment of God in Christ and share it with others.
I will close with prayer this morning. These are two prayers from the (old) 1928 Book of Common Prayer Book, page 588 from Forms of Prayer to be used in Families.
Let us pray.
Dedication of Soul and Body to God's Service, with a Resolution to be grwoing daily in Goddness.
And since it is of thy mercy, O gracious Father, that another day is added to our lives; We here dedicate both our souls and our bodies to thee and thy service, in a sober, righteous, and godly life: in which resolution, do thou, O merciful God, confirm and strengthen us; that as we grow in age, we may grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Prayer for Grace to enable us to perform that Resolution.
But, O God, who knowest the weakness and corruption of our nature, and the manifuld temptations which we daily meet with; We humbly beseech thee to have compassion on our infirmities, and to give us the constant assistance of thy Holy Spirit; that we may be effectually restrained from sin, and incited to our duty. Imprint upon our hearts such a dread of thy judgments, and such a grateful sense of thy goodness to us, as may make us both afraid and ashamed to offend thee. And, above all, keep in our minds a lively remembrance of that great day, in which we must give a strict account of our thoughts, words, and actions to him whom thou hast appointed the Judge of quick and dead, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
May this season be truly an occasion of preparation for the coming of Christ into renewed, prepared, and ordered lives.
Sunday, November 22, 1998
Last Pentecost
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Last Pentecost
PROPER: 29 C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 22, 1998
TEXT: Luke 23:35-43 - Then he said, "Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
ISSUE: The passage reveals another great reversal. Jesus is King, indeed, but totally unlike the human concept of King. His kingship is revealed in this suffering servanthood, as a faithful obedient servant. The passage reveals Jesus as once again being tempted: save your self, save us, come down off the cross and start a war. Instead of plucking that apple, he remains faithful, and the new garden, the Garden of Paradise is restored to all who embrace Jesus as Lord. For each of us in our lives and living as we accept Jesus as Lord we find our paradise, our meaning, our relationship with the will and purposes of God.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This Sunday marks the end of the church's year. It is called the Last Sunday of Pentecost, and more recently the Sunday which celebrates that Jesus is Christ the King. In the passage it is written "This is the King of the Jews." Of course, that sign over the cross was a mockery of Jesus, put there by the Romans to severely aggrevate and humiliate the Judean population. Only in time did the church come to proclaim that in fact Jesus is Christ the King.
We must, however, keep in mind that Gospel of Jesus Christ is full of great reversals. We have in recent months been reminded of how Jesus attempted to reverse much of the thinking of his time: the first shall be last, and the last first. The old widow lady gets her justice before the judge. Those who come last to work in the vineyard get the full days wage. The outrageous prodigal son is forgiven, and his righteous brother chastised. It is the good Samaritan that lifts up and rescues the vicitimized traveler. It is the Samaritan leper that returns to give thanks. The least, the last, the lost, the sinners are the ones who are lifted up in Jesus teachings and parables to the great and surprising shock of the people of his time, and even to our own.
Today there is another great reversal when it comes to the understanding of what a King is. Kings are thought of a lofty, above their subjects. They are the holders of power, and the bearers of authority. They are perceived as the wealthy. People bow and curtsy and give honorable titles to the world's potentates. We have a symbol we refer to as Christ the King, or The Christus Rex. The Christus Rex, which means Christ the King, often portrays Jesus dressed in royal robes and wearing a crown on the cross. There are some who are quite critical of this symbol as they see it as imposing our concept of kingship upon Jesus. When in fact, what we see as Christ the King in the Scripture is not like the world's image of royalty. It is the complete reverse: Jesus on the cross is not a ministry of power, manipulation, military might, or wealth. His crown is thorns, and this scepter is a cross of suffering. So unlike the king who is above his people, here is Christ the king who is in the midst of his people whose only power is in love and forgiveness to those around him. His kingship is marked not by crowns and power, but by a suffering servanthood in an effort to reveal to people the underserved love and forgiving grace of God.
As we come now to the end of the church's year, to the time of winding-up, taking stock, and revewing the past year, we see the shear humility of the Lord Jesus who comes into the very midst of his people. He does not lord himself over us, no cojoling, no manipulation, no force imposed, he comes only to simply teach in parables, search out the lost, heal the deaf, the dumb, the lame and the blind. He simply offers to reclaim all those alienated from the love of God.
Biblical scholars believe that his passage told by Luke of Jesus on the cross has a profound and significant meaning. It is another temptation story. Remember that when Jesus was baptize and began his ministry he was tempted by Satan. He was challenged to turn stones into bread, to bow down in worship Satan in exchange for the world, to throw himself down from the cross. Jesus passed the test, and did not succumb to Satan's temptations. According to the story, Satan reprted left him for awhile. (Luke 4:1f) In this account of Jesus on the cross there are another three temptations. The Judean leaders dare Jesus to come down from the cross, "He saved others let him save himself." The Romans mock and tempt him, offering sour wine and putting the sign over his cross, "If you are the King of the Judeans, why not save yourself? And finally, the thief, probably a freedom fighter, a zealous rebel dares him, "Are you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" If only he will take on authority and power as the world knows it, he then can be the legitimate savior, because this is the stuff that people think will save them: might, power, wealth, success, prestige, trickery.
The scene is very much like, similar to, the early Garden of Eden story of Adam from Genesis. This story was the one where it all began. Adam is in the garden. God says to Adam, do not eat from the one tree, just be faithfully obedient and the Garden is yours. But Satan tempts him to be like God in the sense of taking on power and might in your life. So he takes the forbidden fruit from the tree and has to live outside the garden. His children, Cain and Abel, fight and Cain is killed, and the human mess begins. Humans are not and cannot be God. They have to be human servants of a loving God.
What Luke is conveying to the people of this time is that here is another Garden. Here is a new Adam who has passed the temptation test by faithful sacrificial obedience. Here is another tree that God has given. This tree is the cross. On this tree hangs another fruit of life. One poor lost thieving soul says, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." To which Jesus replies: "Truly, today you will be with me in paradise." The new Adam, the saving fruit is Jesus Christ is and to see him as King, as suffering servant, to be next to him is Paradise, the new Garden of Eden, the new Garden of God.
I know a lot of people like to think that someday when they die, and go to Heaven, they will be with God in the Garden. Wonderful! But Jesus says to the thief in misery, ' I tell you that today you will be, you are with me now, through your faith in Paradise. People like to think that they have to earn their way into heaven by being good, and if you become good enough you get a prize, called heaven. Jesus dares to say to the lost thief that it is by his faith in him, by faith in God, by loyalty, and trust that we are in Paradise already. To be next to Jesus Christ is Paradise. To be next to Jesus Christ, the New Adam, is to be in the Garden of God.
What Luke is conveying to the people of his time was that even though there was suffering, revolution, hardships, persecutions, the faithful were already in the Garden of God. To be next to Christ is Paradise come what may. It means that God is with us whatever the situations of our lives. He is in the midst of us, as he was in the midst of the suffering of the thieves. There may be a lot wrong with our world, and things may not go as we wish, but God in Christ is still with us. The saving loving forgiving grace of God is with us always, even at the worst of times.
Most all of us, I suppose have fantasies of life being without problems, pain, or suffering. We'd like to think that life could alsways be on some kind of an even keel without any kind of stress or distress. We might like to think of God as the greater fixer of all broken things, and Jesus as his kind of Superman on earth. If this kind of live were possible, would we not be more like robots or puppets than humans, and life so very dull. A heaven of bliss where all you do is push the clouds around could be so very dull. Is not life as it is something wonderful, miraculous, in its own rite? Is it not in the stuggles, the wrestling, the pain, the hardships, the anxieties and uncertainties of life that we find challenge and struggle for meaning? Have there not been times when things seemed at their worst that families and people pulled together, and the best that humanity has to offer came out of those situations?
What's important to me is not so much that life be perfect and always wonderful, or even that heaven be that way, but that knowing God is with us. This God revealed in the ways and teachings of Jesus reveals a God in the midst of human struggle and giving to it forgiveness, compassion, understanding, and love. God gives to us a freedom to live our lives as we wish, and at the same time of loving presence to be there for us whatever comes. As we embrace life and the loveliness of the suffering Christ, we embrace also a way of joining God in being people of love and forgiveness. The very ideal that we can be in partnership with God through the ways and teachings of Jesus Christ is another one of the great reversals. But a world and a life with all of its problems, agonies, and holocausts is still God's world; it is still his paradise, his garden when we accept the love and forgiveness, the hope revealed in Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life. God in Christ Jesus is with us.
SEASON: Last Pentecost
PROPER: 29 C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 22, 1998
TEXT: Luke 23:35-43 - Then he said, "Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
ISSUE: The passage reveals another great reversal. Jesus is King, indeed, but totally unlike the human concept of King. His kingship is revealed in this suffering servanthood, as a faithful obedient servant. The passage reveals Jesus as once again being tempted: save your self, save us, come down off the cross and start a war. Instead of plucking that apple, he remains faithful, and the new garden, the Garden of Paradise is restored to all who embrace Jesus as Lord. For each of us in our lives and living as we accept Jesus as Lord we find our paradise, our meaning, our relationship with the will and purposes of God.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This Sunday marks the end of the church's year. It is called the Last Sunday of Pentecost, and more recently the Sunday which celebrates that Jesus is Christ the King. In the passage it is written "This is the King of the Jews." Of course, that sign over the cross was a mockery of Jesus, put there by the Romans to severely aggrevate and humiliate the Judean population. Only in time did the church come to proclaim that in fact Jesus is Christ the King.
We must, however, keep in mind that Gospel of Jesus Christ is full of great reversals. We have in recent months been reminded of how Jesus attempted to reverse much of the thinking of his time: the first shall be last, and the last first. The old widow lady gets her justice before the judge. Those who come last to work in the vineyard get the full days wage. The outrageous prodigal son is forgiven, and his righteous brother chastised. It is the good Samaritan that lifts up and rescues the vicitimized traveler. It is the Samaritan leper that returns to give thanks. The least, the last, the lost, the sinners are the ones who are lifted up in Jesus teachings and parables to the great and surprising shock of the people of his time, and even to our own.
Today there is another great reversal when it comes to the understanding of what a King is. Kings are thought of a lofty, above their subjects. They are the holders of power, and the bearers of authority. They are perceived as the wealthy. People bow and curtsy and give honorable titles to the world's potentates. We have a symbol we refer to as Christ the King, or The Christus Rex. The Christus Rex, which means Christ the King, often portrays Jesus dressed in royal robes and wearing a crown on the cross. There are some who are quite critical of this symbol as they see it as imposing our concept of kingship upon Jesus. When in fact, what we see as Christ the King in the Scripture is not like the world's image of royalty. It is the complete reverse: Jesus on the cross is not a ministry of power, manipulation, military might, or wealth. His crown is thorns, and this scepter is a cross of suffering. So unlike the king who is above his people, here is Christ the king who is in the midst of his people whose only power is in love and forgiveness to those around him. His kingship is marked not by crowns and power, but by a suffering servanthood in an effort to reveal to people the underserved love and forgiving grace of God.
As we come now to the end of the church's year, to the time of winding-up, taking stock, and revewing the past year, we see the shear humility of the Lord Jesus who comes into the very midst of his people. He does not lord himself over us, no cojoling, no manipulation, no force imposed, he comes only to simply teach in parables, search out the lost, heal the deaf, the dumb, the lame and the blind. He simply offers to reclaim all those alienated from the love of God.
Biblical scholars believe that his passage told by Luke of Jesus on the cross has a profound and significant meaning. It is another temptation story. Remember that when Jesus was baptize and began his ministry he was tempted by Satan. He was challenged to turn stones into bread, to bow down in worship Satan in exchange for the world, to throw himself down from the cross. Jesus passed the test, and did not succumb to Satan's temptations. According to the story, Satan reprted left him for awhile. (Luke 4:1f) In this account of Jesus on the cross there are another three temptations. The Judean leaders dare Jesus to come down from the cross, "He saved others let him save himself." The Romans mock and tempt him, offering sour wine and putting the sign over his cross, "If you are the King of the Judeans, why not save yourself? And finally, the thief, probably a freedom fighter, a zealous rebel dares him, "Are you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" If only he will take on authority and power as the world knows it, he then can be the legitimate savior, because this is the stuff that people think will save them: might, power, wealth, success, prestige, trickery.
The scene is very much like, similar to, the early Garden of Eden story of Adam from Genesis. This story was the one where it all began. Adam is in the garden. God says to Adam, do not eat from the one tree, just be faithfully obedient and the Garden is yours. But Satan tempts him to be like God in the sense of taking on power and might in your life. So he takes the forbidden fruit from the tree and has to live outside the garden. His children, Cain and Abel, fight and Cain is killed, and the human mess begins. Humans are not and cannot be God. They have to be human servants of a loving God.
What Luke is conveying to the people of this time is that here is another Garden. Here is a new Adam who has passed the temptation test by faithful sacrificial obedience. Here is another tree that God has given. This tree is the cross. On this tree hangs another fruit of life. One poor lost thieving soul says, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." To which Jesus replies: "Truly, today you will be with me in paradise." The new Adam, the saving fruit is Jesus Christ is and to see him as King, as suffering servant, to be next to him is Paradise, the new Garden of Eden, the new Garden of God.
I know a lot of people like to think that someday when they die, and go to Heaven, they will be with God in the Garden. Wonderful! But Jesus says to the thief in misery, ' I tell you that today you will be, you are with me now, through your faith in Paradise. People like to think that they have to earn their way into heaven by being good, and if you become good enough you get a prize, called heaven. Jesus dares to say to the lost thief that it is by his faith in him, by faith in God, by loyalty, and trust that we are in Paradise already. To be next to Jesus Christ is Paradise. To be next to Jesus Christ, the New Adam, is to be in the Garden of God.
What Luke is conveying to the people of his time was that even though there was suffering, revolution, hardships, persecutions, the faithful were already in the Garden of God. To be next to Christ is Paradise come what may. It means that God is with us whatever the situations of our lives. He is in the midst of us, as he was in the midst of the suffering of the thieves. There may be a lot wrong with our world, and things may not go as we wish, but God in Christ is still with us. The saving loving forgiving grace of God is with us always, even at the worst of times.
Most all of us, I suppose have fantasies of life being without problems, pain, or suffering. We'd like to think that life could alsways be on some kind of an even keel without any kind of stress or distress. We might like to think of God as the greater fixer of all broken things, and Jesus as his kind of Superman on earth. If this kind of live were possible, would we not be more like robots or puppets than humans, and life so very dull. A heaven of bliss where all you do is push the clouds around could be so very dull. Is not life as it is something wonderful, miraculous, in its own rite? Is it not in the stuggles, the wrestling, the pain, the hardships, the anxieties and uncertainties of life that we find challenge and struggle for meaning? Have there not been times when things seemed at their worst that families and people pulled together, and the best that humanity has to offer came out of those situations?
What's important to me is not so much that life be perfect and always wonderful, or even that heaven be that way, but that knowing God is with us. This God revealed in the ways and teachings of Jesus reveals a God in the midst of human struggle and giving to it forgiveness, compassion, understanding, and love. God gives to us a freedom to live our lives as we wish, and at the same time of loving presence to be there for us whatever comes. As we embrace life and the loveliness of the suffering Christ, we embrace also a way of joining God in being people of love and forgiveness. The very ideal that we can be in partnership with God through the ways and teachings of Jesus Christ is another one of the great reversals. But a world and a life with all of its problems, agonies, and holocausts is still God's world; it is still his paradise, his garden when we accept the love and forgiveness, the hope revealed in Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life. God in Christ Jesus is with us.
Sunday, November 15, 1998
Pentecost 24
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Pentecost 24
PROPER: 28 C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 15, 1998
TEXT: Luke 21:5-19 - "You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls."
ISSUE: Jesus deals with issues concerning the end, an appropriate reading for the near end of the church year. Luke has Jesus predicting the events of the Temple's destruction, and the emprisonment of various disciples as told in The Acts of the Apostles. But hope resides in the endurance of the faithful. They will gain their souls through endurance and by the Spirit will be given the words to speak. There is the implied promise that through faithfulness, even in the face of clamity, God will save his faithful people. In each of our own lives we face anxieties, calamaties, and uncertainties. Yet repeatedly in scripture that which fall is raised by God and made new. This message is at the heart of a resurrection faith.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
We are now fast approaching the end of the Church Year. Next Sunday will be the Last Sunday of Pentecost, Christ the King Sunday. Today's reading from Luke is a discussion of a time of great calamity which was for some an indication of the end of time. It is Luke's Apocalyptic writing. It is appropriately assigned as we do, in fact approach, the end of the Church's Year, and as we wind-up this year's emphasis on the Gospel account of Luke.
The passage is set in the context of a group of people commenting upon the beauty of the Jerusalem Temple. It was indeed an extraordinarly beautiful structure in its time. The Temple Gates were gold, and were reported to be so bright when the morning sun shone upon them that they were as blinding as looking directly into the sun itself. It's forty foot gleaming white columns could be seen for miles from the hills surrounding Jerusalem. Yet Jesus begins to prophesy that the day will come when all of the marble stones and the golden gates of the Temple will be torn down, and a time of insurrections and and wars. The time will come when those disciples that follow his way will be arrested, persecuted, and even put to death. Some will be brought before kings and governors to defend themselves. It will be a time when family members themselves, parents, brothers, relatives and friends, will betray them. Yet, the faithful are to endure the great tribulation, and they will gain their souls.
In order to be able to put this prophecy into proper perspective is to understand that Luke wrote this Gospel some years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, probably around 80-85 A.D. Whether or not Jesus literally and actually predicted the fall of Jerusalem it is hard to say. It is likely he had, as many perceptive people of his time may as well, a pretty good idea that Israel was a great risk. In 70 A.D. the Temple was completely destroyed, and every stone was torn and down, and it was and has never been rebuilt. The Roman seige of the city of Jerusalem and of Israel was horrendous. Many of the people were reported to have been reduced to cannibalism to surrive. The Romans did not deal lightly with insurrection.
What's more, according to Luke in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, the apostles were on many occasions arrested and persecuted. Saul before his conversion to becoming Paul sought out and participated in the death of members of the early church. St. Paul himself, according to Luke, after his conversion was brought before governors and kings to defend himself. Early church members had been persecuted and disowned, betrayed, by their own families, as they accepted new membership in the new family of Christians. Luke heightens the prophetic image of Jesus in his indicating that Jesus predicted that these things would come to pass, and they in fact did. Just as Jesus himself died on the cross, and suffered significantly, the early church and this world could expect the same. Yet Luke's close deep and profound appreciation of Jesus was a very positive one. Whatever happens, endure and be faithful, and through that faithful endurance though everything else seems lost and ended, you will have gained your souls.
The apocalyptic writing of Luke was not new. The Old Testament Book of Daniel is apocalyptic written at a time when Israel dealt with severe persecution at the hand of a foreign pagan king. John's Revelation in the New Testament is a vivid expression of the great horrors of the Roman regimes and their persecutions. Many ages had their difficult times, and religious leaders often called their people to repentance and faith to stand firm through difficult times and ordeals. Even in the reading today from Malachi (3:13-4:2a,5-6), God's people complain that the arrogant evil doers seem to be the prosperous. Malachi calls them to remain faithful, and God will send to renew the world. Repeatedly Scripture calls the people of God to a persistent and enduring faithfulness with the assurance that God's redemption will prevail even in times of great difficulty.
Today there are, I understand, some great concerns over our coming to the millienium, 2000 A.D. For some people this is a time of great trepidation. There are those who are concerned as to what is going to happen as a possible result of computers. Major power failures and possible economic collapse are the more frightening predictions. You may have even heard of people who after a serious earthquake, or volcanic eruption will begin to predict the end of time. Recent motion pictures prediciting the falling of asteroids have doomsday implications, and foresee the possible end of time. People are often inclined to take Biblical passages from the past and try to apply them in a literal way to the future.
What is really at the heart of Scripture is the fact that it reveals that every age does have its difficult times, as well as every person's life. Ancient people suffered under horrendously evil rulers. The Israelites and the early church suffered significantly at the hands of the Romans. Even today the world know significant suffering. Consider the enormous hardship of the people in South America, in Honduras and Nicaraugua. With a death toll of nearly 10,000 or more there is great mourning and grief. These are people whose countries are devastated by the Hurricane Mitch. Suddenly with a deluge of wind and rain their world is washed away.
Last week I was reading the Sunday Sun, the great difficulty that some of our American farmers in the mid-west are facing as world economies change and prices fall drastically. Many farmers are losing their livelihood for which they were trained and their traditional way of life. For these people it is as if the end of the world has come.
Many of us gathered here today who have lost people we love, or whose marriages have failed, or who have lost good jobs must have felt like the world was ending.
Persecution has been significant in our generations. We witnessed the terrible horrible suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazi's. In Saudi Arabia it is against the law to openly practice Christianity. Christians have suffered significant persecution in China and the former Soviet Union. At the same time Christians have not had a lily white record either when it comes to the treatment of Moslems, black peoples, and native Americans. All of us human beings are under the judgment of God, and all of us have experienced and are at the mercy of difficult times. The beautiful stones of every generation have a way of being torn down and tarnished. I often hear of people's great devotion to our church and its beauty, and its great meaning in our lives. But even it's great beauty and significance is at great risk. One match, a significant change in the economy, a natural disaster: any of these things can greatly change and effect our lives.
How do we live into a world that is constantly changing and where there is a prevailing climate of disaster, uncertainty, anxiety? How do we live into the end of time, when the bottom seems to fall our of our lives? For the church it has always been a matter of trust and loyalty. We trust that inspite of what happens God is with us, that amidst the valley of dry bones the Spirit of God shall prevail to raise them up. In the parables and the teachings of Jesus, there is a great reversal of thinking: the lost, the last, the least, the sinners, the lonely, the sick, the dying are the very ones who are being raised up. In the life giving sacrifice of Jesus, there comes the risen Christ and the new age. The ministry of Jesus is the constant claim that all who stand in the fallen world are being invited to step into the Kingdom of God. For us the way to God is found in the way of Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life. In him we find enormous love, unfathonable forgiveness and great compassion. Thus, in the midst of shaking and uncertain foundations, when the rug seems to be pulled from underneath us. When the old is passing away, we trust in God's renewing presence to raise up and renew. We live into the way of God expressed in Jesus Christ. We continue to be a people who love peace and justice as opposed to shrines, museums, and temples. As we endure the varioius traumas of the world and of our lives we live like the people of Christ in such a way that whatever happens we still have our souls that cannot be washed away or taken away.
SEASON: Pentecost 24
PROPER: 28 C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 15, 1998
TEXT: Luke 21:5-19 - "You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls."
ISSUE: Jesus deals with issues concerning the end, an appropriate reading for the near end of the church year. Luke has Jesus predicting the events of the Temple's destruction, and the emprisonment of various disciples as told in The Acts of the Apostles. But hope resides in the endurance of the faithful. They will gain their souls through endurance and by the Spirit will be given the words to speak. There is the implied promise that through faithfulness, even in the face of clamity, God will save his faithful people. In each of our own lives we face anxieties, calamaties, and uncertainties. Yet repeatedly in scripture that which fall is raised by God and made new. This message is at the heart of a resurrection faith.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
We are now fast approaching the end of the Church Year. Next Sunday will be the Last Sunday of Pentecost, Christ the King Sunday. Today's reading from Luke is a discussion of a time of great calamity which was for some an indication of the end of time. It is Luke's Apocalyptic writing. It is appropriately assigned as we do, in fact approach, the end of the Church's Year, and as we wind-up this year's emphasis on the Gospel account of Luke.
The passage is set in the context of a group of people commenting upon the beauty of the Jerusalem Temple. It was indeed an extraordinarly beautiful structure in its time. The Temple Gates were gold, and were reported to be so bright when the morning sun shone upon them that they were as blinding as looking directly into the sun itself. It's forty foot gleaming white columns could be seen for miles from the hills surrounding Jerusalem. Yet Jesus begins to prophesy that the day will come when all of the marble stones and the golden gates of the Temple will be torn down, and a time of insurrections and and wars. The time will come when those disciples that follow his way will be arrested, persecuted, and even put to death. Some will be brought before kings and governors to defend themselves. It will be a time when family members themselves, parents, brothers, relatives and friends, will betray them. Yet, the faithful are to endure the great tribulation, and they will gain their souls.
In order to be able to put this prophecy into proper perspective is to understand that Luke wrote this Gospel some years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, probably around 80-85 A.D. Whether or not Jesus literally and actually predicted the fall of Jerusalem it is hard to say. It is likely he had, as many perceptive people of his time may as well, a pretty good idea that Israel was a great risk. In 70 A.D. the Temple was completely destroyed, and every stone was torn and down, and it was and has never been rebuilt. The Roman seige of the city of Jerusalem and of Israel was horrendous. Many of the people were reported to have been reduced to cannibalism to surrive. The Romans did not deal lightly with insurrection.
What's more, according to Luke in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, the apostles were on many occasions arrested and persecuted. Saul before his conversion to becoming Paul sought out and participated in the death of members of the early church. St. Paul himself, according to Luke, after his conversion was brought before governors and kings to defend himself. Early church members had been persecuted and disowned, betrayed, by their own families, as they accepted new membership in the new family of Christians. Luke heightens the prophetic image of Jesus in his indicating that Jesus predicted that these things would come to pass, and they in fact did. Just as Jesus himself died on the cross, and suffered significantly, the early church and this world could expect the same. Yet Luke's close deep and profound appreciation of Jesus was a very positive one. Whatever happens, endure and be faithful, and through that faithful endurance though everything else seems lost and ended, you will have gained your souls.
The apocalyptic writing of Luke was not new. The Old Testament Book of Daniel is apocalyptic written at a time when Israel dealt with severe persecution at the hand of a foreign pagan king. John's Revelation in the New Testament is a vivid expression of the great horrors of the Roman regimes and their persecutions. Many ages had their difficult times, and religious leaders often called their people to repentance and faith to stand firm through difficult times and ordeals. Even in the reading today from Malachi (3:13-4:2a,5-6), God's people complain that the arrogant evil doers seem to be the prosperous. Malachi calls them to remain faithful, and God will send to renew the world. Repeatedly Scripture calls the people of God to a persistent and enduring faithfulness with the assurance that God's redemption will prevail even in times of great difficulty.
Today there are, I understand, some great concerns over our coming to the millienium, 2000 A.D. For some people this is a time of great trepidation. There are those who are concerned as to what is going to happen as a possible result of computers. Major power failures and possible economic collapse are the more frightening predictions. You may have even heard of people who after a serious earthquake, or volcanic eruption will begin to predict the end of time. Recent motion pictures prediciting the falling of asteroids have doomsday implications, and foresee the possible end of time. People are often inclined to take Biblical passages from the past and try to apply them in a literal way to the future.
What is really at the heart of Scripture is the fact that it reveals that every age does have its difficult times, as well as every person's life. Ancient people suffered under horrendously evil rulers. The Israelites and the early church suffered significantly at the hands of the Romans. Even today the world know significant suffering. Consider the enormous hardship of the people in South America, in Honduras and Nicaraugua. With a death toll of nearly 10,000 or more there is great mourning and grief. These are people whose countries are devastated by the Hurricane Mitch. Suddenly with a deluge of wind and rain their world is washed away.
Last week I was reading the Sunday Sun, the great difficulty that some of our American farmers in the mid-west are facing as world economies change and prices fall drastically. Many farmers are losing their livelihood for which they were trained and their traditional way of life. For these people it is as if the end of the world has come.
Many of us gathered here today who have lost people we love, or whose marriages have failed, or who have lost good jobs must have felt like the world was ending.
Persecution has been significant in our generations. We witnessed the terrible horrible suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazi's. In Saudi Arabia it is against the law to openly practice Christianity. Christians have suffered significant persecution in China and the former Soviet Union. At the same time Christians have not had a lily white record either when it comes to the treatment of Moslems, black peoples, and native Americans. All of us human beings are under the judgment of God, and all of us have experienced and are at the mercy of difficult times. The beautiful stones of every generation have a way of being torn down and tarnished. I often hear of people's great devotion to our church and its beauty, and its great meaning in our lives. But even it's great beauty and significance is at great risk. One match, a significant change in the economy, a natural disaster: any of these things can greatly change and effect our lives.
How do we live into a world that is constantly changing and where there is a prevailing climate of disaster, uncertainty, anxiety? How do we live into the end of time, when the bottom seems to fall our of our lives? For the church it has always been a matter of trust and loyalty. We trust that inspite of what happens God is with us, that amidst the valley of dry bones the Spirit of God shall prevail to raise them up. In the parables and the teachings of Jesus, there is a great reversal of thinking: the lost, the last, the least, the sinners, the lonely, the sick, the dying are the very ones who are being raised up. In the life giving sacrifice of Jesus, there comes the risen Christ and the new age. The ministry of Jesus is the constant claim that all who stand in the fallen world are being invited to step into the Kingdom of God. For us the way to God is found in the way of Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life. In him we find enormous love, unfathonable forgiveness and great compassion. Thus, in the midst of shaking and uncertain foundations, when the rug seems to be pulled from underneath us. When the old is passing away, we trust in God's renewing presence to raise up and renew. We live into the way of God expressed in Jesus Christ. We continue to be a people who love peace and justice as opposed to shrines, museums, and temples. As we endure the varioius traumas of the world and of our lives we live like the people of Christ in such a way that whatever happens we still have our souls that cannot be washed away or taken away.
Sunday, November 1, 1998
All Saints' Day
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: ALL SAINTS' DAY
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 1, 1998
TEXT: Matthew 5:1-12 - THE BEATITUDES OF JESUS
"When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them saying 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'"
ISSUE: Jesus collects his disciples around him to teach and instruct them as his disciples. He lays out for them what genuine and true honor really is in the eyes of God the Father. God honors the poor and those who mourn; they are the blessed in contrast to whole the world and the culture so often honors. The Beatitudes are not another list of commandments, but give a deeper insight into what Jesus' spiritual ministry was about, what it means to be a disciple of Christ, and a saint in his kingdom. Into this spirituality may we all and especially the children we baptize today be immersed, like so many of the saints of God.
See also Epiphany 4A, Jan. 28,1996
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The beautiful passage of Scripture for All Saints' Day taken from Matthew's account of the Gospel is truly the scriptures poetry. We refer to the passage as The Beatitudes of Jesus, or the Blessedness of Jesus. They seem to reveal the mysticism of Jesus:
Blessed are the poor in spirit . . .
Blessed are they that mourn . . .
Blessed are the meek . . .
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness ...
What is peculiar to this passage is that Jesus gathers his dixciples around him on a mountain. The Beatitudes are a part of what we call The Sermon on the Mount. Being on the mountain top is indicative of something special happening. Many of profound spiritual events occur on mountain tops. Moses receives the Ten Commandments on a mountain. Elijah the prophet calls down fire upon his drenched sacrifice on Mt. Carmel. Jesus is transfigure before Peter, James, and John on a mountain. The crucifixion takes place on Mt. Calvary. Here in the story today, Jesus goes to a mountain, and gathers his new select disciples around him, and begins to train them, if you will, in what true Blessedness is. He sits which was the common teaching position of the time.
In this instance when Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor, . . . those who mourn, . . . the merciful, . . . the pure in heart, and so on" the word blessed some times translated as "Happy" or "congratulations" more accurately means "honored." In his training session with his disciples, Jesus is teaching what true honor means in the sight of God. In his time a man's honor was more important than anything else. Men sought honorable positions in the community. Sometimes honor came simply through the family you were born into. If you were challenged or offended in anyway, you had to avenge any insults. It was expected. You might kill to preserve your honor. You achieved honor through gift giving, and you needed always to return favors. You defended your family honor at all costs. The religious, powerful, and the some of the Pharisees and religious types were considered those with the most honor.
On the other had there were many who had little or no honor, by virtue of birth, or occupation. Prostitutes had no honor. Innkeepers, shepherds, actors, tanners, were all shameful. To lose status, property, inheritance through bad luck, or injustice was to be shamed. To be among the outcasts, the sick, the deaf and blind, was to be without honor. To be a widow without an adult son was to be without honor or status.
What Jesus is teaching his disciples is a whole new reversal of thinking. Jesus teaches that in the eyes of God: Blessed and honorable are the poor. Blessed and honorable are those who mourn, who are the sick, the dying, the lost, the lame, the blind, the lepers. Blessed and honorable are the outcasts and the widows who mourn the loss of everything precious. These are the very ones that God honors and blesses. Jesus is giving a new honor code awhole new way of approaching life through the eyes of God. It is not the hot-shots, those who are politically and socially correct, it is not those who are good at taking revenge, it is not those of pure race, and those of pure stock, and those who inherit honor and power as the world sees it that are the honorable. It is the the poor, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Look at the overall ministry of Jesus as he lives out what he teaches. He is the healer of the sick and the oppressed. He is the one who honors and holds up the widows in his parables. He is the one who receives the lepers. He is the one who calls the children to come to him. He is the one who gathers the multitude of 5,000 hungry people and gives them an incredible feast again on a grassy hillside.
In his warnings agains the Teachers of the Law, and the Pharasees, the honorable types of Jesus' time, he condmened them: "You lock the door to the Kingdom of heaven in people's faces, but you yourselves don't go in, nor do you allow in those who are trying to enter!" (Matt.23:13)
"You give to God one tenth even of the seasong herbs, such as mint, dill, and cumin, but you neglect to obey the eally important teachings of the Law, such as justice and mercy and honesty. These you should practice without neglecting the others." (Matt. 23:23)
Instead of being pure in heart, "On the outside you appear good to everybody, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and sins." (Matt. 23:27)
Jesus' encounter with his disciples in this training program on the mountain is his challenge to the ways of the world. Honorableness was often hypocritical, stagnant, and empty. The honorableness of God is to love the poor, to mourn with those who mourn, to hunger and thirst for justice, to be merciful instead of vengeful, to not merely love peace but to enter into the process of peacemaking. These are the things of God. In Jesus' time for so many people it was unthinkable that God honored the poor, the mournful, and the outcasts. But Jesus is conveying a startling and renewing spirituality. He is training his selected disciples in a profound reclamation of what it means to be truly honorable in the sight of God. Indeed they could well expect to face persecution, reviling, insults. Certainly Jesus did during his life time and culminating on the cross. Yet god would be with them and they would know God's honor not man's.
In our own world today, the code of honor is unlike that of the first century mediterranean world. Shame and honor are no longer the issues they may have been, or are in other cultures different from our own. In fact, ours is a culture that has no shame. In our world there are, what Marcus Borg a professor of religion and culture refers to in his book, "Jesus A New Vision" 1996, the major American values that have little or nothing to do with Christianity. They are affluence, achievement, appearances, individualism, competition, power, and consumption. I would have to add another primary value to be aggressiveness. Our present world, and our nation particularly, is infatuated with being the most powerful and keeping it that way. We value those who are great achievers, and who can gather the most stuff, or toys. These are the ones seen as the winners. The more we can consume, the more fulfilled we seem to be. We will fight for what we haven't got, please note the violence in our streets and in our world. We value our individualism and what we cherish as our own personal way of thinking and doing to the exclusion of the needs of the community.
To this kind of a world Jesus words are a challenge: Honorable are the poor, those that mourn, those that are hungry seeking what is right and just for all. Blessed are those who seek God, and who act out of mercy and compassion as opposed to consumption and greed. The Beatitudes of Jesus are not another list of commandments. They are a basic spirituality. Essentially there is nothing wrong with being achieving in our fields, or even affluent for that matter. Occasional competion is invigorating, I would suppose. Nothing wrong with asserting our God given indidualism, our talents and abilities. But to have no basic spirituality, nor inner sense of Godliness is to act our values in a destructive and dangerous way, which is the cause of so much alienation, hostility, hatred, suspicion, and violence in our world.
Jesus takes the disciples aside from the world and what it declares to be honorable and valuable, and he injects what God sees as honorable, the spirituality of compassion, mercy, hungering for right for all, and seeking to be in union with Godliness, and recognizing full well that Godliness is not without its enemies in the world, and those who are indifferent to true Godliness.
Today we are celebrating two closely related things. We celebrate around the world and throughout Christendom the Feast of All the Saints. We remember that the saints were not merely outstandingly religious figures who end up in stained glass. The saints were people with weakness as well as strengths. Like all of us with our sins and virtures we celebrate being the people of God who are called to be the channels of his grace in the world. At the same time we are celebrating the fact that we are making three new saints in the children that we baptize today. Symbolically we are drowning them, encouraging them to die to the ways of the world and raising them up as new born Christians, people of God in the likeness of Christ. They are being immersed into the Christ's spirituality that they may appreciate what genuine honor and blessedness is. They are to understand that all who are poor, all who are in mourning and suffering, all who struggle and hunger for righteousness and justice. All who want to be compassionate. These are the one's that God honors. In their own poverty, uncertaintly, and anxiety, God will love them. God will love them in their desire to be compassionate people. Parents, and this congregation must continually immerse our children in this faith so that they may not be overcome by and only know the cruel aggressiveness, the rank individualism, the discompassionate competitive, consumptive affluence of the world. Help them to know Jesus, to know and love God. In showing them the way we all shall be renewed in true sainthood and blessedness.
SEASON: ALL SAINTS' DAY
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 1, 1998
TEXT: Matthew 5:1-12 - THE BEATITUDES OF JESUS
"When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them saying 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'"
ISSUE: Jesus collects his disciples around him to teach and instruct them as his disciples. He lays out for them what genuine and true honor really is in the eyes of God the Father. God honors the poor and those who mourn; they are the blessed in contrast to whole the world and the culture so often honors. The Beatitudes are not another list of commandments, but give a deeper insight into what Jesus' spiritual ministry was about, what it means to be a disciple of Christ, and a saint in his kingdom. Into this spirituality may we all and especially the children we baptize today be immersed, like so many of the saints of God.
See also Epiphany 4A, Jan. 28,1996
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The beautiful passage of Scripture for All Saints' Day taken from Matthew's account of the Gospel is truly the scriptures poetry. We refer to the passage as The Beatitudes of Jesus, or the Blessedness of Jesus. They seem to reveal the mysticism of Jesus:
Blessed are the poor in spirit . . .
Blessed are they that mourn . . .
Blessed are the meek . . .
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness ...
What is peculiar to this passage is that Jesus gathers his dixciples around him on a mountain. The Beatitudes are a part of what we call The Sermon on the Mount. Being on the mountain top is indicative of something special happening. Many of profound spiritual events occur on mountain tops. Moses receives the Ten Commandments on a mountain. Elijah the prophet calls down fire upon his drenched sacrifice on Mt. Carmel. Jesus is transfigure before Peter, James, and John on a mountain. The crucifixion takes place on Mt. Calvary. Here in the story today, Jesus goes to a mountain, and gathers his new select disciples around him, and begins to train them, if you will, in what true Blessedness is. He sits which was the common teaching position of the time.
In this instance when Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor, . . . those who mourn, . . . the merciful, . . . the pure in heart, and so on" the word blessed some times translated as "Happy" or "congratulations" more accurately means "honored." In his training session with his disciples, Jesus is teaching what true honor means in the sight of God. In his time a man's honor was more important than anything else. Men sought honorable positions in the community. Sometimes honor came simply through the family you were born into. If you were challenged or offended in anyway, you had to avenge any insults. It was expected. You might kill to preserve your honor. You achieved honor through gift giving, and you needed always to return favors. You defended your family honor at all costs. The religious, powerful, and the some of the Pharisees and religious types were considered those with the most honor.
On the other had there were many who had little or no honor, by virtue of birth, or occupation. Prostitutes had no honor. Innkeepers, shepherds, actors, tanners, were all shameful. To lose status, property, inheritance through bad luck, or injustice was to be shamed. To be among the outcasts, the sick, the deaf and blind, was to be without honor. To be a widow without an adult son was to be without honor or status.
What Jesus is teaching his disciples is a whole new reversal of thinking. Jesus teaches that in the eyes of God: Blessed and honorable are the poor. Blessed and honorable are those who mourn, who are the sick, the dying, the lost, the lame, the blind, the lepers. Blessed and honorable are the outcasts and the widows who mourn the loss of everything precious. These are the very ones that God honors and blesses. Jesus is giving a new honor code awhole new way of approaching life through the eyes of God. It is not the hot-shots, those who are politically and socially correct, it is not those who are good at taking revenge, it is not those of pure race, and those of pure stock, and those who inherit honor and power as the world sees it that are the honorable. It is the the poor, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Look at the overall ministry of Jesus as he lives out what he teaches. He is the healer of the sick and the oppressed. He is the one who honors and holds up the widows in his parables. He is the one who receives the lepers. He is the one who calls the children to come to him. He is the one who gathers the multitude of 5,000 hungry people and gives them an incredible feast again on a grassy hillside.
In his warnings agains the Teachers of the Law, and the Pharasees, the honorable types of Jesus' time, he condmened them: "You lock the door to the Kingdom of heaven in people's faces, but you yourselves don't go in, nor do you allow in those who are trying to enter!" (Matt.23:13)
"You give to God one tenth even of the seasong herbs, such as mint, dill, and cumin, but you neglect to obey the eally important teachings of the Law, such as justice and mercy and honesty. These you should practice without neglecting the others." (Matt. 23:23)
Instead of being pure in heart, "On the outside you appear good to everybody, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and sins." (Matt. 23:27)
Jesus' encounter with his disciples in this training program on the mountain is his challenge to the ways of the world. Honorableness was often hypocritical, stagnant, and empty. The honorableness of God is to love the poor, to mourn with those who mourn, to hunger and thirst for justice, to be merciful instead of vengeful, to not merely love peace but to enter into the process of peacemaking. These are the things of God. In Jesus' time for so many people it was unthinkable that God honored the poor, the mournful, and the outcasts. But Jesus is conveying a startling and renewing spirituality. He is training his selected disciples in a profound reclamation of what it means to be truly honorable in the sight of God. Indeed they could well expect to face persecution, reviling, insults. Certainly Jesus did during his life time and culminating on the cross. Yet god would be with them and they would know God's honor not man's.
In our own world today, the code of honor is unlike that of the first century mediterranean world. Shame and honor are no longer the issues they may have been, or are in other cultures different from our own. In fact, ours is a culture that has no shame. In our world there are, what Marcus Borg a professor of religion and culture refers to in his book, "Jesus A New Vision" 1996, the major American values that have little or nothing to do with Christianity. They are affluence, achievement, appearances, individualism, competition, power, and consumption. I would have to add another primary value to be aggressiveness. Our present world, and our nation particularly, is infatuated with being the most powerful and keeping it that way. We value those who are great achievers, and who can gather the most stuff, or toys. These are the ones seen as the winners. The more we can consume, the more fulfilled we seem to be. We will fight for what we haven't got, please note the violence in our streets and in our world. We value our individualism and what we cherish as our own personal way of thinking and doing to the exclusion of the needs of the community.
To this kind of a world Jesus words are a challenge: Honorable are the poor, those that mourn, those that are hungry seeking what is right and just for all. Blessed are those who seek God, and who act out of mercy and compassion as opposed to consumption and greed. The Beatitudes of Jesus are not another list of commandments. They are a basic spirituality. Essentially there is nothing wrong with being achieving in our fields, or even affluent for that matter. Occasional competion is invigorating, I would suppose. Nothing wrong with asserting our God given indidualism, our talents and abilities. But to have no basic spirituality, nor inner sense of Godliness is to act our values in a destructive and dangerous way, which is the cause of so much alienation, hostility, hatred, suspicion, and violence in our world.
Jesus takes the disciples aside from the world and what it declares to be honorable and valuable, and he injects what God sees as honorable, the spirituality of compassion, mercy, hungering for right for all, and seeking to be in union with Godliness, and recognizing full well that Godliness is not without its enemies in the world, and those who are indifferent to true Godliness.
Today we are celebrating two closely related things. We celebrate around the world and throughout Christendom the Feast of All the Saints. We remember that the saints were not merely outstandingly religious figures who end up in stained glass. The saints were people with weakness as well as strengths. Like all of us with our sins and virtures we celebrate being the people of God who are called to be the channels of his grace in the world. At the same time we are celebrating the fact that we are making three new saints in the children that we baptize today. Symbolically we are drowning them, encouraging them to die to the ways of the world and raising them up as new born Christians, people of God in the likeness of Christ. They are being immersed into the Christ's spirituality that they may appreciate what genuine honor and blessedness is. They are to understand that all who are poor, all who are in mourning and suffering, all who struggle and hunger for righteousness and justice. All who want to be compassionate. These are the one's that God honors. In their own poverty, uncertaintly, and anxiety, God will love them. God will love them in their desire to be compassionate people. Parents, and this congregation must continually immerse our children in this faith so that they may not be overcome by and only know the cruel aggressiveness, the rank individualism, the discompassionate competitive, consumptive affluence of the world. Help them to know Jesus, to know and love God. In showing them the way we all shall be renewed in true sainthood and blessedness.
Sunday, October 25, 1998
Pentecost 21
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Pentecost 21
PROPER: 25C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 25,1998
TEXT: Luke 18:9-14 - The Pharisee & The Tax Collector
"But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast saying, 'God be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you this man went down to his home justified rather than the other . . . ."
ISSUE: The issue of this parable is that we are justified by our faith, our complete trust in God, and not by any of our works of righteousness. It has little to do with humility. There is no health in us. The story of the Tax Collector & Pharisee is very similar to the Prodigal Son & the Righteous Brother. It is God who justifies and save us and seeks to save them from their ways, not themselves. We can only turn to God in trust. Here is another one of the great reversals in Luke and in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Today's gospel reading from Luke is another one of those Great Reversals. Jesus tells the story of two men who go to the Temple to say their prayers. It must have really created a sense of rage among many of the people who first heard this story that challenged the very heart of their very basic religious concepts. Jesus says that there were tow men who went to pray, the one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector.
Now first a little background on Pharisees. Usually in the New Testament, the Pharisees get a bad rap. Pharisaism began as a group of religious men who in the face of evil persecutors who stood up for their faith. When conquerors tried desperately to destroy the faith of Israel, the Pharisees stood firm in the face of great danger and put their lives on the line declaring to be faithful and stringently committed to keeping God's law in the face of evil and danger. Apparently some of Jesus' friends were Pharisees. Nicodemus was reportedly close to Jesus, and Joseph of Arimathea. Jesus himself was thought to have possibly been a Pharisee himself. He was invited into the homes of Pharisees for dinner, and that in itself is indicative that he was considered a Pharisee. While Pharasaism began with the best of intentions as the movement aged, there were those who were more external in terms of their adherence to the law, than they were internally religious. Jesus attempted to reform that aspect and challenged some of them, and for that reason came to be seen as an enemy of the pharisees which is not completely true. Jesus was a reformer in this sense, and people don't usually like reformers, especially if you are the one to be reformed.
In any event, Jesus tells of a good Pharisee who goes to the Temple to pray. He stands in the Temple which was the prayerful stance and custom of the time. He thanks God that he is not like some others. He is not a thief and has not participated in embezzlement. He is not a rogue: not mischievous, a scoundrel, a wandering vagabond like the shepherds were, and other disenfranchised lost characters., and didn't cheat like the poorer tax collecting agents did. He is not like the tax collector standing over there in the corner. He fasted twice a week, which was more than was required. Once a week was sufficient. And, he did in fact give a tenth or tithe of his income, which was quite generous and a requirement of the law.
Over in the other corner stands the tax collector. Tax collectors were the guys who pretty much sold out to the Romans. They could not find work so they resorted to being tax collectors. Most of these agents did not make much money. They were in constant argument with the merchants over the cost of the tax. They were inclined, but not always, to try to collect more than the actual cost of the tax to survive. They were also considered ritually, ceremonially, unclean. They touched unclean things as they examined cargo, and were thereby unwelcomed guests in Jewish homes, and were thought to be highly resented by earlier wealthy Christians in Luke's time. The tax collector in question comes into the Temple to pray. The difference is that he does not look up to heaven, and makes no claim of righteousness or thanksgiving. He beats his breast, which was sign when men beat their breast of great desperation. He says only and with great pathos, "God, be merciful to me a Sinner!" He is likely the rogue, the cheat, the thief, and maybe even an adulterer.
Now my good friends, which one of these persons do you want to serve on the Vestry of your church? Be honest. Of course we want the righteous good man and/or woman to serve on the Vestry, most especially if they are tithers. Which one of these persons do you think would clear the examining board, and the Vestry for that matter to be the priest of your congregation? Which one would get selected for ordination, and who would be most likely eliminated. Which one of these guys would you want your daughter to marry? Which one would most of us desire to associate with? Which one in our sight would be the more acceptable in our society?
Well of course, since this is another one of Jesus' parables of Great Reversal, Jesus says that it is the tax collector the sinner that goes home more justified than rather than the upright abiding by the rules Pharisee. This conclusion on Jesus' part made his listeners likely to have been mad as hell. It makes many of us mad too. We want and expect a reward for being good and righteous. Jesus says, "No way . . . . . for all who exalt themselves will be humbled but all who humble themselves will be exalted."
This parable of the Pharisee and the Publican is very similar to the Parable of the Prodigal Son and the Loving Father. It's wonderful that the prodigal son who abandons his father, squanders his life, ending up in the pig sty, and comes to his father for forgiveness. He gets it before he asks: ring, shoes, and fatted calf. We are however very sympathetic with the older son who stayed at home and behaved himself. We like the forgiveness idea, but we can't quite get over having to earn rewards by being good and following all the rules. The Pharisees hated what Jesus said, and many of us do too. The good guys should win.
What is Jesus up to when he told these parable, especially this one of the good pharisee and the tax collector? Both of them had a relationship with God, both went to the Temple to pray. To help answer this question we have to keep in mind what the very heart of the Gospel is about. Essentially it is about death and resurrection, isn't it? The larger part of the Gospels, the part that takes up most of the room is the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. We believe and trust and are to be loyal that the God of Love will raise up that which is fallen. In the story the two men have a relationship with God. The tax collector sees himself as totally fallen in need of being raised up, made righteous, which he cannot do by himself. He's dead. the Pharisee is dead too, but he refuses to accept it. He spends his time telling God how great he is and thanks God he is not a sinner, and the more he runs at the mouth the more we see that in all of his moralism and good deeds, he is a discompassionate unloving contemptuous bastard. As good as he is, he cannot see that he too is in need of redemption and being raised up.
People like to glory in their achievements. We are pleased that we worked real hard and got our educations and come to land in Kingsville. We glory in being the self-made people and with that goes our sense of blessing and righteousness. On thanksgiving we thank God for all the good stuff we have. But is it all a result of our being good and great achievers? Some of it is luck. We were luck to be born where we were and have the background into which we were born. Many of us are the products and have the status of life we are in by having had an inheritance, not by our own achievements. Some of us who are weathy achieved it through scandalouls family backgrounds that robbed the poor and had slaves. Many of us who claim to be righteous and such do gooders are sometimes miserably unhappy people who hate their lives. There is such enormous pressure in having to be winners, good guy, achievers, and hot shots. We feel we have to please and be pleasing to retain the reward. We cling to the accumulated junk of our lives like it was our hope, security, and salvation.
What of the children who grow up in the projects who all they have ever known is lousy diets, poor health, violence, unstable family life, that has been an ongoing cycle in their families and in their communities from generation to generation. We are often inclined to look down on that and say, "They just don't work hard enough. If they just worked harder then they wouldn't be like that. We thank you God that we are not like that."
Another one of the things we sometimes are inclined to latch on to is moralism. We like to think, and pray, I suppose, and to offer to God, and to others our satisfaction with our great moral principals. One dear soul I once knew was so adamant about declaring that all you have to do is keep the Ten Commandments. No lust, no dishonesty, no bearing false witness. He was hard on those fags. Moral as he was he died a miserable dreadful alcoholic who had ruined his health and his family creating a generation or two of hate and guilt. When we become moralistic without recognizing that all any of us can really say is, "God be merciful to me a sinner." We a no more really than bags of wind. It's alot like being a man who works and works and works and works. He's intent upon building his home, having a big bank account, and wants his children to have music lessons, and horseback riding, learn gymnasitics and go to college. Only to find he wears himself out and dies the victim of a wife who hates him, and father of children who never know who he really is, and he never gets to know them. He's a lost winner, and is too dumb to see it.
All any of us can really say is, inspite of all the good stuff we think we've acheived, is "God be merciful to me a sinner. . . . God raise up in me that which is fallen." And that is all pretty much what we can ever say. I know we would like to think that the Tax collector in the story should be improved. This week he is in the Temple and confesses to being a sinner: "God have mercy." By next week we think he should return to the Temple having given up tax collecting or at least be a little more honest. Then he would be a good achiever and start being a winner, like us. Oh that that were possible, but again that is not even what God wants. He does not want our goodness and our morality. He wants our loyalty, trust, and faith, complete devotion that without God we cannot survive. We are losers in need of redemption; we can only die, lose our lives to be lifted up, resurrected by God's grace.
Now I know we all ask then, is being good unimportant? Do we just give up on morality? Of course not. Jesus did not come to throw out the law. But he did say that it is not our salvation. We break the law and we are sinners. We need God's grace to be raised up, to be resurrected. In the case of the older good son of the Loving Father, the Father says please come in and join the party. It is not your works that are all that important, it is your love of me and my love of you. Please come to the party.
Next week we are going to celebrate All Saints' Day, and there will be three baptisms. What's going to happen. Well if we understand the theology and the ritual, we are going to bear witness to three drownings and by the grace of God three resurrections. Three children who have absolutely no merit of their own will die to separation from God and be lifeted up as God's children in brotherhood and sisterhood with Jesus Christ. Likewise all of us who were baptized were not baptized because we were good, because we knew all the Bible stories, but because God's love embraces us inspite of ourselves. That's the Good News that is sometimes it seems too good to be true. Sometimes it even makes us mad.
SEASON: Pentecost 21
PROPER: 25C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 25,1998
TEXT: Luke 18:9-14 - The Pharisee & The Tax Collector
"But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast saying, 'God be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you this man went down to his home justified rather than the other . . . ."
ISSUE: The issue of this parable is that we are justified by our faith, our complete trust in God, and not by any of our works of righteousness. It has little to do with humility. There is no health in us. The story of the Tax Collector & Pharisee is very similar to the Prodigal Son & the Righteous Brother. It is God who justifies and save us and seeks to save them from their ways, not themselves. We can only turn to God in trust. Here is another one of the great reversals in Luke and in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Today's gospel reading from Luke is another one of those Great Reversals. Jesus tells the story of two men who go to the Temple to say their prayers. It must have really created a sense of rage among many of the people who first heard this story that challenged the very heart of their very basic religious concepts. Jesus says that there were tow men who went to pray, the one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector.
Now first a little background on Pharisees. Usually in the New Testament, the Pharisees get a bad rap. Pharisaism began as a group of religious men who in the face of evil persecutors who stood up for their faith. When conquerors tried desperately to destroy the faith of Israel, the Pharisees stood firm in the face of great danger and put their lives on the line declaring to be faithful and stringently committed to keeping God's law in the face of evil and danger. Apparently some of Jesus' friends were Pharisees. Nicodemus was reportedly close to Jesus, and Joseph of Arimathea. Jesus himself was thought to have possibly been a Pharisee himself. He was invited into the homes of Pharisees for dinner, and that in itself is indicative that he was considered a Pharisee. While Pharasaism began with the best of intentions as the movement aged, there were those who were more external in terms of their adherence to the law, than they were internally religious. Jesus attempted to reform that aspect and challenged some of them, and for that reason came to be seen as an enemy of the pharisees which is not completely true. Jesus was a reformer in this sense, and people don't usually like reformers, especially if you are the one to be reformed.
In any event, Jesus tells of a good Pharisee who goes to the Temple to pray. He stands in the Temple which was the prayerful stance and custom of the time. He thanks God that he is not like some others. He is not a thief and has not participated in embezzlement. He is not a rogue: not mischievous, a scoundrel, a wandering vagabond like the shepherds were, and other disenfranchised lost characters., and didn't cheat like the poorer tax collecting agents did. He is not like the tax collector standing over there in the corner. He fasted twice a week, which was more than was required. Once a week was sufficient. And, he did in fact give a tenth or tithe of his income, which was quite generous and a requirement of the law.
Over in the other corner stands the tax collector. Tax collectors were the guys who pretty much sold out to the Romans. They could not find work so they resorted to being tax collectors. Most of these agents did not make much money. They were in constant argument with the merchants over the cost of the tax. They were inclined, but not always, to try to collect more than the actual cost of the tax to survive. They were also considered ritually, ceremonially, unclean. They touched unclean things as they examined cargo, and were thereby unwelcomed guests in Jewish homes, and were thought to be highly resented by earlier wealthy Christians in Luke's time. The tax collector in question comes into the Temple to pray. The difference is that he does not look up to heaven, and makes no claim of righteousness or thanksgiving. He beats his breast, which was sign when men beat their breast of great desperation. He says only and with great pathos, "God, be merciful to me a Sinner!" He is likely the rogue, the cheat, the thief, and maybe even an adulterer.
Now my good friends, which one of these persons do you want to serve on the Vestry of your church? Be honest. Of course we want the righteous good man and/or woman to serve on the Vestry, most especially if they are tithers. Which one of these persons do you think would clear the examining board, and the Vestry for that matter to be the priest of your congregation? Which one would get selected for ordination, and who would be most likely eliminated. Which one of these guys would you want your daughter to marry? Which one would most of us desire to associate with? Which one in our sight would be the more acceptable in our society?
Well of course, since this is another one of Jesus' parables of Great Reversal, Jesus says that it is the tax collector the sinner that goes home more justified than rather than the upright abiding by the rules Pharisee. This conclusion on Jesus' part made his listeners likely to have been mad as hell. It makes many of us mad too. We want and expect a reward for being good and righteous. Jesus says, "No way . . . . . for all who exalt themselves will be humbled but all who humble themselves will be exalted."
This parable of the Pharisee and the Publican is very similar to the Parable of the Prodigal Son and the Loving Father. It's wonderful that the prodigal son who abandons his father, squanders his life, ending up in the pig sty, and comes to his father for forgiveness. He gets it before he asks: ring, shoes, and fatted calf. We are however very sympathetic with the older son who stayed at home and behaved himself. We like the forgiveness idea, but we can't quite get over having to earn rewards by being good and following all the rules. The Pharisees hated what Jesus said, and many of us do too. The good guys should win.
What is Jesus up to when he told these parable, especially this one of the good pharisee and the tax collector? Both of them had a relationship with God, both went to the Temple to pray. To help answer this question we have to keep in mind what the very heart of the Gospel is about. Essentially it is about death and resurrection, isn't it? The larger part of the Gospels, the part that takes up most of the room is the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. We believe and trust and are to be loyal that the God of Love will raise up that which is fallen. In the story the two men have a relationship with God. The tax collector sees himself as totally fallen in need of being raised up, made righteous, which he cannot do by himself. He's dead. the Pharisee is dead too, but he refuses to accept it. He spends his time telling God how great he is and thanks God he is not a sinner, and the more he runs at the mouth the more we see that in all of his moralism and good deeds, he is a discompassionate unloving contemptuous bastard. As good as he is, he cannot see that he too is in need of redemption and being raised up.
People like to glory in their achievements. We are pleased that we worked real hard and got our educations and come to land in Kingsville. We glory in being the self-made people and with that goes our sense of blessing and righteousness. On thanksgiving we thank God for all the good stuff we have. But is it all a result of our being good and great achievers? Some of it is luck. We were luck to be born where we were and have the background into which we were born. Many of us are the products and have the status of life we are in by having had an inheritance, not by our own achievements. Some of us who are weathy achieved it through scandalouls family backgrounds that robbed the poor and had slaves. Many of us who claim to be righteous and such do gooders are sometimes miserably unhappy people who hate their lives. There is such enormous pressure in having to be winners, good guy, achievers, and hot shots. We feel we have to please and be pleasing to retain the reward. We cling to the accumulated junk of our lives like it was our hope, security, and salvation.
What of the children who grow up in the projects who all they have ever known is lousy diets, poor health, violence, unstable family life, that has been an ongoing cycle in their families and in their communities from generation to generation. We are often inclined to look down on that and say, "They just don't work hard enough. If they just worked harder then they wouldn't be like that. We thank you God that we are not like that."
Another one of the things we sometimes are inclined to latch on to is moralism. We like to think, and pray, I suppose, and to offer to God, and to others our satisfaction with our great moral principals. One dear soul I once knew was so adamant about declaring that all you have to do is keep the Ten Commandments. No lust, no dishonesty, no bearing false witness. He was hard on those fags. Moral as he was he died a miserable dreadful alcoholic who had ruined his health and his family creating a generation or two of hate and guilt. When we become moralistic without recognizing that all any of us can really say is, "God be merciful to me a sinner." We a no more really than bags of wind. It's alot like being a man who works and works and works and works. He's intent upon building his home, having a big bank account, and wants his children to have music lessons, and horseback riding, learn gymnasitics and go to college. Only to find he wears himself out and dies the victim of a wife who hates him, and father of children who never know who he really is, and he never gets to know them. He's a lost winner, and is too dumb to see it.
All any of us can really say is, inspite of all the good stuff we think we've acheived, is "God be merciful to me a sinner. . . . God raise up in me that which is fallen." And that is all pretty much what we can ever say. I know we would like to think that the Tax collector in the story should be improved. This week he is in the Temple and confesses to being a sinner: "God have mercy." By next week we think he should return to the Temple having given up tax collecting or at least be a little more honest. Then he would be a good achiever and start being a winner, like us. Oh that that were possible, but again that is not even what God wants. He does not want our goodness and our morality. He wants our loyalty, trust, and faith, complete devotion that without God we cannot survive. We are losers in need of redemption; we can only die, lose our lives to be lifted up, resurrected by God's grace.
Now I know we all ask then, is being good unimportant? Do we just give up on morality? Of course not. Jesus did not come to throw out the law. But he did say that it is not our salvation. We break the law and we are sinners. We need God's grace to be raised up, to be resurrected. In the case of the older good son of the Loving Father, the Father says please come in and join the party. It is not your works that are all that important, it is your love of me and my love of you. Please come to the party.
Next week we are going to celebrate All Saints' Day, and there will be three baptisms. What's going to happen. Well if we understand the theology and the ritual, we are going to bear witness to three drownings and by the grace of God three resurrections. Three children who have absolutely no merit of their own will die to separation from God and be lifeted up as God's children in brotherhood and sisterhood with Jesus Christ. Likewise all of us who were baptized were not baptized because we were good, because we knew all the Bible stories, but because God's love embraces us inspite of ourselves. That's the Good News that is sometimes it seems too good to be true. Sometimes it even makes us mad.
Sunday, October 18, 1998
Pentecost 20
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Pentecost 20
PROPER: 24 C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 18, 1998
TEXT: Luke18:1-8a - The Parable of the Unjust Judge
"And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them."
ISSUE: The parable argues from the lesser to the greater. If a scandalous shameless judge can ultimately be persuaded to give just, how much more will a sensitive, caring, and compassionate God respond to his people's cries for help? Luke leads us to believe that we must be persistent in prayer, i.e. relationship with God. It may well mean to be continuously loyal in our belief. Still another point to be made is that God will reclaim the lost and dying, which the old widow lady represents, in the same way the lost prodigal son, the lost sheep and coin are all reclaimed.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Gospel of Luke tells us that that Jesus told a parable about an old widow lady and a very unjust or shameless judge. Luke says that the parable is about the need to pray, and not to lose heart. As Luke was addressing a very new and probably pretty shabby early church in a time when this feeble movement did not have much strength or respect in the powerful Roman world, the call for persistent prayer and faithfulness was quite relevant and needed. It would have been easy for early followers of the way, new Christians, to give up, and return to old ways and lesser pagan religions. Hold on in the face of seeming injustice, Luke is saying, be persistent in prayer and the people of faith will survive. It was no doubt a needed sermon for that time, and in the face of the encroaching secular world upon our time, it has its relevance for the church and its people today.
The parable itself uses some interesting images, that are best understood in the context of the period. In the parable, Jesus says that an old widow woman who comes before a judge demanding justice. The Hebrew word for "widow" actually means "the silent ones" or "one unable to speak." A widow in this period, having no husband, or son, would be quite vulnerable to injustice, exploitation, and being oppressed. In Judaism there were many laws and teachings in the prophets that were meant to protect helpless (i.e. silenced) widows and orphans. But human nature being what it is, the widows were still often quite susceptible to being taken advantage of. In the early church, the Epistle of James makes reference to the fact that "true religion of God is to care for widows and orphans. In this story the widow comes before a judge with considerable desperation, having no one to speak for her.
She comes before a very difficult magistrate. He is said to be a judge who has no shame, and cares for neither God or other people. He was shameless. He does not give her the justice that she thinks she deserves. She cannot win the case. Insistent for justice and the need to win, the woman keeps returning for a proper judgment. Eventually the judge gives in and awards her a winning judgment. He says that she is wearing him out. The literal translation of "wearing him out" comes from a Greek boxing term, which means she will blacken his face, or give him a black eye. While he may have no shame, and no respect of God and man, trials were public. The very idea that an old widow lady (a woman!) would blacken the eye of the judge would be met with such shame and humiliation before the whole community that the judge gives in to the widow. He could not live that down in a million years.
The parable then argues from the lesser to the greater. If a shameless and corrupt judge can be ultimately convinced to give justice, then how much more will a God who cares respond to the needs of his people in a world where they often meet with injustice. So the parable calls for persistence and loyal trust that God will provide the jultimate justice for human need. Be persistent in prayer. This prayerfulness is a matter keeping up and in a close relationship with God. Inspite of the powerlessness that the early Christians may have felt in their world, there was the belief and trust that God would prevail. Persistent prayer is that steady conversational relationship with God that his will and justice will prevail. Considering the history of the time, we might say that the persistence of the saints through persecutions, and the faith of men like St. Paul, the church of God continued to prevail and comes to us even today.
In our own time we see ourselves living in what appears to be a shameless world. Monica and Bill seem to have no shame and seem to be vivid symbols of a culture that really doesn't seem to care. The conduct of so many these days indicate a loss of shamefulness. Yet we struggle as a church and as Christians to prevail in such prayerful way that appropriate morality and justice may continue to prevail. One profound example is that of Rosa Parks, who some years ago, simply refused to give up her seat on a bus in a southern state. She like a "silent one" persisted in justice, and was the cause of a revolution that rocked and changed the most powerful nation in the world. In subsequent protests a whole community took to walking to work instead of riding on busses. Rosa Parks and a community of poor powerless people shamed a shameless nation into respecting the dignity of every human being. Through that prayerful and persistent action, the powerless released the justice of God. Our persistent prayer in our on going relationship with God must be that we can remain persistent in the face of our enemies, our opponents.
Today a community of Christians must stand firm in their opposition to hate crimes. We must stand persistently in our resistance to terrorisms and acts of revenge, to crime in our streets, and be persistently involved in our fights against cancer, AIDs, poverty, homelessness. It's appropriate that we worship with a regularity that conveys our persistence in prayer to the world and the community that we in relationship with God desire to be the channels and servants of grace through which the justice of God may flow.
It is not easy to be persistent in faith in a culture that often challenges the premises of our faith. Shamefulness in our time is not a significant problem. The judge in the parable in our time is pretty much what we expect of a judge that he be totally impartial and have no respect of God or of religion. He's a self-made man with power and success. The old lady who persists with her case in our culture is seen as merely a trouble maker and an aggressive old bitch challenging the status-quo. Challenging the culture and the powers of our time in community, it's government and even in a heirarchical church is not easy. We can be impatient, becaust that is also one of the aspects of our culture. We like things to happen right now, and we like "instant" lotteries. The message in the parable is continuing loyalty, faithfulness, persistence in being the people of God.
Now that we think we know what is at the heart of this parable and think that we are responsible for helping out poor old God, lets approach it from another point of view. Presumably we see this parable as one about being prayerful. And that is, in fact, what Luke says the parable is about. Being prayerful and diligent in prayer is one of the Luke's themes. Remember as well that Luke tells us that Jesus tells the parable of the man who awakens his neighbor in the middle of the night to provide bread for a visitor. "Ask, seek, knock," the parable concludes: the door will be opened. You don't give your son a scorpion when he asks for an egg, or a snake when he asks for a fish. "How much more, then, will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" God inevitably responds to those who seek the Spirit in prayers.
Yet if we remove the moralizing from the parable and the idea that it is about prayer, which may have been more the emphasis of the early church than of Jesus and deal with the parable all by itself and alone you may come up with another understanding that reveals a profound Good News.
There is a scandalous shameless judge and an old widow. The old widow is is powerless, and without a husband and adult son she is all but dead. The future for a widow in this period was pretty grim. She is as bad off as the lost prodigal son in the pig pen, and the lost sheep in the wilderness surrounded by a pack of wolves, and as hidden in the darkness as a lost coin. She's dead. As a result of and in her dying she confronts a scandalous judge and demands to be saved, reconciled, put right. She implores him for her life. Ultimately the scandalous judge gives in to her demands. One might well wonder if the the old widow lady is something of a symbol or representation of a dying humanity that by itself is totally week and alone. It stands as an image of the weak, the lost, the least, and the dead appealing desperately. They are appealing desperately to a scandalous Judge, a scandalous judge. And for Jesus God was in fact scandalous, and Jesus' presentation of God in his time was very scandalous. For the righteous and for the hard hearted, for the pharisees in Jesus' time it was scandalous to think that God would bend to the longings of the outcast, the poor, and the dying. But he does! It was scandalous to think that the Father of the prodigal son would put a robe on his back, a ring on his finger, sandals on his feet even before the son asks for forgiveness. The father acts shamelessly in his time. The shepherd, a man of little honor, goes looking for one stray sheep in a flock of 100 has lost his mind. But he does. The woman goes searching for her lost coin and searches until she finds it. It is scandalous to think of God in Jesus' time as a woman! If however, a crazy old man will forgive an ungrateful selfish brat son, . . . . if a shepherd with a exhorbitantly large flock will search for one lost sheep, . . . . . if a an old lady will search diligently for a lost coin, if a lost dying old lady goes searching for new hope, . . . . . then How much more will a God scandalously extravagant in this love, scandalously extravagant in his forgiveness, scandalously loving the lost, the last, the least, the dying, reach out to all who pursue him in faith! For Jesus God is scandalous and his teaching about God was scandalous in his time, but then Jesus was intending to reclaim the real and genuine honor of God as the God who ultimately lifts up the fallen, the dying, the least, the outcast, the powerless who turn to him in faith. God will rule in favor of his sinful and fallen and shameless people and have mercy on them, and raise them up. Scandalously God pronounces acquital upon an entire race of unrepentant people, people who are terrible nuisances, pitiful jerks and nerds.
Are we supposed to be diligent in our prayerfulness? Of course we are. Are we supposed to be loyal to God? But of course. Are we supposed to be channels of grace and servants of the Lord? Most certainly. Are we supposed to be diligent in our worship, our generous and abundant giving. Yes, of course. Are we supposed to seek perfection? Indeed. Are we? Are we any of these things on any regular basis? Of course we are not. Yet a scandalous God comes to wrestle with us as the divine figure wrestles with the deceiving Jacob in the Old Testament lesson today. Jesus gives a scandalous God a whole new kind of honor. He loves the unloveable, the least, the last, the lost, and the dying, and that is the good news.
Note: The concluding parts of this sermon are taken from and inspired by Robert Capon's book, The Parables of Grace, 1995 reprinted, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan.
SEASON: Pentecost 20
PROPER: 24 C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 18, 1998
TEXT: Luke18:1-8a - The Parable of the Unjust Judge
"And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them."
ISSUE: The parable argues from the lesser to the greater. If a scandalous shameless judge can ultimately be persuaded to give just, how much more will a sensitive, caring, and compassionate God respond to his people's cries for help? Luke leads us to believe that we must be persistent in prayer, i.e. relationship with God. It may well mean to be continuously loyal in our belief. Still another point to be made is that God will reclaim the lost and dying, which the old widow lady represents, in the same way the lost prodigal son, the lost sheep and coin are all reclaimed.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Gospel of Luke tells us that that Jesus told a parable about an old widow lady and a very unjust or shameless judge. Luke says that the parable is about the need to pray, and not to lose heart. As Luke was addressing a very new and probably pretty shabby early church in a time when this feeble movement did not have much strength or respect in the powerful Roman world, the call for persistent prayer and faithfulness was quite relevant and needed. It would have been easy for early followers of the way, new Christians, to give up, and return to old ways and lesser pagan religions. Hold on in the face of seeming injustice, Luke is saying, be persistent in prayer and the people of faith will survive. It was no doubt a needed sermon for that time, and in the face of the encroaching secular world upon our time, it has its relevance for the church and its people today.
The parable itself uses some interesting images, that are best understood in the context of the period. In the parable, Jesus says that an old widow woman who comes before a judge demanding justice. The Hebrew word for "widow" actually means "the silent ones" or "one unable to speak." A widow in this period, having no husband, or son, would be quite vulnerable to injustice, exploitation, and being oppressed. In Judaism there were many laws and teachings in the prophets that were meant to protect helpless (i.e. silenced) widows and orphans. But human nature being what it is, the widows were still often quite susceptible to being taken advantage of. In the early church, the Epistle of James makes reference to the fact that "true religion of God is to care for widows and orphans. In this story the widow comes before a judge with considerable desperation, having no one to speak for her.
She comes before a very difficult magistrate. He is said to be a judge who has no shame, and cares for neither God or other people. He was shameless. He does not give her the justice that she thinks she deserves. She cannot win the case. Insistent for justice and the need to win, the woman keeps returning for a proper judgment. Eventually the judge gives in and awards her a winning judgment. He says that she is wearing him out. The literal translation of "wearing him out" comes from a Greek boxing term, which means she will blacken his face, or give him a black eye. While he may have no shame, and no respect of God and man, trials were public. The very idea that an old widow lady (a woman!) would blacken the eye of the judge would be met with such shame and humiliation before the whole community that the judge gives in to the widow. He could not live that down in a million years.
The parable then argues from the lesser to the greater. If a shameless and corrupt judge can be ultimately convinced to give justice, then how much more will a God who cares respond to the needs of his people in a world where they often meet with injustice. So the parable calls for persistence and loyal trust that God will provide the jultimate justice for human need. Be persistent in prayer. This prayerfulness is a matter keeping up and in a close relationship with God. Inspite of the powerlessness that the early Christians may have felt in their world, there was the belief and trust that God would prevail. Persistent prayer is that steady conversational relationship with God that his will and justice will prevail. Considering the history of the time, we might say that the persistence of the saints through persecutions, and the faith of men like St. Paul, the church of God continued to prevail and comes to us even today.
In our own time we see ourselves living in what appears to be a shameless world. Monica and Bill seem to have no shame and seem to be vivid symbols of a culture that really doesn't seem to care. The conduct of so many these days indicate a loss of shamefulness. Yet we struggle as a church and as Christians to prevail in such prayerful way that appropriate morality and justice may continue to prevail. One profound example is that of Rosa Parks, who some years ago, simply refused to give up her seat on a bus in a southern state. She like a "silent one" persisted in justice, and was the cause of a revolution that rocked and changed the most powerful nation in the world. In subsequent protests a whole community took to walking to work instead of riding on busses. Rosa Parks and a community of poor powerless people shamed a shameless nation into respecting the dignity of every human being. Through that prayerful and persistent action, the powerless released the justice of God. Our persistent prayer in our on going relationship with God must be that we can remain persistent in the face of our enemies, our opponents.
Today a community of Christians must stand firm in their opposition to hate crimes. We must stand persistently in our resistance to terrorisms and acts of revenge, to crime in our streets, and be persistently involved in our fights against cancer, AIDs, poverty, homelessness. It's appropriate that we worship with a regularity that conveys our persistence in prayer to the world and the community that we in relationship with God desire to be the channels and servants of grace through which the justice of God may flow.
It is not easy to be persistent in faith in a culture that often challenges the premises of our faith. Shamefulness in our time is not a significant problem. The judge in the parable in our time is pretty much what we expect of a judge that he be totally impartial and have no respect of God or of religion. He's a self-made man with power and success. The old lady who persists with her case in our culture is seen as merely a trouble maker and an aggressive old bitch challenging the status-quo. Challenging the culture and the powers of our time in community, it's government and even in a heirarchical church is not easy. We can be impatient, becaust that is also one of the aspects of our culture. We like things to happen right now, and we like "instant" lotteries. The message in the parable is continuing loyalty, faithfulness, persistence in being the people of God.
Now that we think we know what is at the heart of this parable and think that we are responsible for helping out poor old God, lets approach it from another point of view. Presumably we see this parable as one about being prayerful. And that is, in fact, what Luke says the parable is about. Being prayerful and diligent in prayer is one of the Luke's themes. Remember as well that Luke tells us that Jesus tells the parable of the man who awakens his neighbor in the middle of the night to provide bread for a visitor. "Ask, seek, knock," the parable concludes: the door will be opened. You don't give your son a scorpion when he asks for an egg, or a snake when he asks for a fish. "How much more, then, will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" God inevitably responds to those who seek the Spirit in prayers.
Yet if we remove the moralizing from the parable and the idea that it is about prayer, which may have been more the emphasis of the early church than of Jesus and deal with the parable all by itself and alone you may come up with another understanding that reveals a profound Good News.
There is a scandalous shameless judge and an old widow. The old widow is is powerless, and without a husband and adult son she is all but dead. The future for a widow in this period was pretty grim. She is as bad off as the lost prodigal son in the pig pen, and the lost sheep in the wilderness surrounded by a pack of wolves, and as hidden in the darkness as a lost coin. She's dead. As a result of and in her dying she confronts a scandalous judge and demands to be saved, reconciled, put right. She implores him for her life. Ultimately the scandalous judge gives in to her demands. One might well wonder if the the old widow lady is something of a symbol or representation of a dying humanity that by itself is totally week and alone. It stands as an image of the weak, the lost, the least, and the dead appealing desperately. They are appealing desperately to a scandalous Judge, a scandalous judge. And for Jesus God was in fact scandalous, and Jesus' presentation of God in his time was very scandalous. For the righteous and for the hard hearted, for the pharisees in Jesus' time it was scandalous to think that God would bend to the longings of the outcast, the poor, and the dying. But he does! It was scandalous to think that the Father of the prodigal son would put a robe on his back, a ring on his finger, sandals on his feet even before the son asks for forgiveness. The father acts shamelessly in his time. The shepherd, a man of little honor, goes looking for one stray sheep in a flock of 100 has lost his mind. But he does. The woman goes searching for her lost coin and searches until she finds it. It is scandalous to think of God in Jesus' time as a woman! If however, a crazy old man will forgive an ungrateful selfish brat son, . . . . if a shepherd with a exhorbitantly large flock will search for one lost sheep, . . . . . if a an old lady will search diligently for a lost coin, if a lost dying old lady goes searching for new hope, . . . . . then How much more will a God scandalously extravagant in this love, scandalously extravagant in his forgiveness, scandalously loving the lost, the last, the least, the dying, reach out to all who pursue him in faith! For Jesus God is scandalous and his teaching about God was scandalous in his time, but then Jesus was intending to reclaim the real and genuine honor of God as the God who ultimately lifts up the fallen, the dying, the least, the outcast, the powerless who turn to him in faith. God will rule in favor of his sinful and fallen and shameless people and have mercy on them, and raise them up. Scandalously God pronounces acquital upon an entire race of unrepentant people, people who are terrible nuisances, pitiful jerks and nerds.
Are we supposed to be diligent in our prayerfulness? Of course we are. Are we supposed to be loyal to God? But of course. Are we supposed to be channels of grace and servants of the Lord? Most certainly. Are we supposed to be diligent in our worship, our generous and abundant giving. Yes, of course. Are we supposed to seek perfection? Indeed. Are we? Are we any of these things on any regular basis? Of course we are not. Yet a scandalous God comes to wrestle with us as the divine figure wrestles with the deceiving Jacob in the Old Testament lesson today. Jesus gives a scandalous God a whole new kind of honor. He loves the unloveable, the least, the last, the lost, and the dying, and that is the good news.
Note: The concluding parts of this sermon are taken from and inspired by Robert Capon's book, The Parables of Grace, 1995 reprinted, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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