Christmas 1999

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Christmas 1999
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 24 and 25, 1999

TEXT: Luke 2:1-20, (21-38) - The Christmas Story

But the Angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see - I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find the child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.

"Guided by the Spirit he (Simeon) came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the law required, he took him in his arms, praised God, and said: 'Now, Lord you are releasing your servant in peace, according to your promise. For I have seen with my own eyes the deliverance you have made ready in full view of all nations: a light that will bring revelation to the Gentiles and glory to your people Israel.'"

ISSUE: Luke conveys the wonderful poetic story of the birth of Jesus. It is rooted in Israel's past and gives new hope for the future. the story assures that God in Christ has come to his people, not in some ethereal or spooky way, but in the human form to experience and identify with the human experience. The concluding part of the birth narrative tells how Simeon, who would not die before seeing the Savior, picks the Christ child up and holds him in his arms. The story asks us to contemplate our response to the Christ.
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We are gathered here again this year, the last Christmas before the new millennium to once again ponder the beautiful poetic story of Christ's birth as told in St. Luke's Gospel. Tonite I would also like to speak a little about "the rest of the story" as it is recorded in Luke and with which we are not quite so familiar. That is, there is an important part of the drama or story that does not get quite as much attention as the earlier part of the story.
All of the parts of the story have their special significance. It is the story of a family in great distress and tells of a people in great distress. Our creche's and manger scenes often sentimentalize and sanitize the story. We probably even sometimes think of it as children's story, but the themes are really quite adult.
In the story the lives of Joseph and the pregnant Mary are disrupted by the oppressive government of Caesar Augustus and Quirinius the governor. While the Romans may have brought peace to this land, it was at the cost of great loss of civil and human rights to the people who were heavily taxed and controlled. The birth of Christ is set by Luke into its true historical context of a very hard and difficult time for the people.
Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where the child is born in a manger, because there is not room in the inn. The clear indication here is that Mary and Joseph had little standing. Those with greater honor and standing had taken whatever guest rooms were available in this little town of about a hundred residents. Bethlehem did not have any "inns" as such, they were merely a few rooms available in single home dwellings. Most of these dwellings did have mangers in them because animals were kept in the homes at one end of the house at night. Most peasant women did infact deliver their new born children in the manger. Jesus birth in a manger was not unusual. It was so common of a thing that one wonders why Luke even mentions it. Birth in the manger heightens the lowliness of the birth of Christ which indicates his coming to the poor, the least, the last, and the lost. But make no mistake about it. Mary and Joseph are displaced people, and are facing a time of great distress.
The manger setting is also based on a passage from Isaiah in which Isaiah 1:3. The manger is a feeding place. Donkeys and oxen know where to feed, but often people miss the feeding that God gives to them. Luke tells us that Jesus is the new food of God to sustain and bring hope, healing, and love to the people who will turn to him.
Luke tells us that the child was wrapped in swaddling bands of cloth. This swaddling was again a very common practice of the time. It was thought to make a child grow healthy and strong. It's restrictiveness to the legs and arms of the child were also considered to be disciplinary. It led even the youngest child to know that he needed to be obedient and controlled. But even though this was a very common practice, the swaddling cloths will be a sign to the shepherds that they have found the Christ. From the book of The Wisdom of Solomon 7:4-5, the richest and wisest of all of Israel's kings, King Solomon writes: I was nursed with care in swaddling clothes, for no king has had a different beginning in existence." Luke is telling us, yes the Christ was human and born like all others, yet he is royal, Son of the Most High. He is food for spiritually hungry people in very difficult times, and he is royal unlike the world understands royalty.
Jesus is born in Bethlehem, which was the city where King David, a simple a shepherd boy had been born. David had risen to great heights, and was a faithful shepherd to his people of Judah and Israel. For Luke, Jesus is nothing less in his simplicity than a Good Shepherd to the people of his time as he leads them in love and to a deeper faith and love of God.
Shepherds, though sometimes romanticized in scripture, were really considered to be a very low status and dishonorable occupation are the first learn of the Christ's birth. They praise him on earth while Angels praise him in the heavens. Both earth and sky come to worship and to adore him. God in Christ has been born; he has come to dwell with his people.
This story is one of God acting in the history of his people, in the days of Caesar Augustus, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. God comes once again to be with his people, even the most lowly, to show them the light of love and hope, and to give them the assurance that God is with them, and to provide forgiveness where it is needed. God in Christ is humble and lowly, entering the human condition in its fullest, born in a manger and dressed in swaddling clothes. At the same time his truly the royal prince of peace. The story emphasizes how the humble, simple, mundane things of life are touched by God, how royal and hopeful they can become. Jesus Christ is truly human and experienced in the hardness and difficulty of the human condition, as well as its moments of joy.
Now for the rest of the story, and the important part of my offering to you tonight. This part of the story is not so well known and discussed from Luke's Gospel birth narrative.
After just eight days, Mary and Joseph take the child to the temple as was the custom of the law. Mary is to be purified which was the religious custom after a birth had taken place. They make an offering of the poor, two turtle doves, as opposed to the lamb that would have otherwise been offered those of slightly more wealth. The male child Jesus will be named and dedicated to God. Now in the Temple is a man named Simeon, and an old widow, Anna of the tribe of Asher, who is 84 years old. For anyone to live in those days to the age of 84 was extraordinary. But the oldest people, like this widow were considered to be very wise, and in a time when most people were illiterate, the elders provided memory and history for the community along with wisdom. So Anna would be held in high regard.
Now Simeon is said to be a man of the Spirit of God. And Simeon was told by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen Israel's salvation. He would not die until he had seen the Christ. When Simeon sees the child Jesus in the Temple, he goes to the child, and picks him up in his arms and embraces the child, gives thanks to God and says:

"Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word;
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou has prepared for all people,
To be a light to enlighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel."

The old and wise Anna validated the song of Simeon.
I suggest that Luke is telling his readers and the community that he was addressing that this is a word to the wise. These were indeed very frightening and difficult times. We know that Jesus was born, that he is God's son, the light, the love, the hope of the world. But the wise will embrace the Christ, they will take him into their arms and hold him for dear life, and live according to his word.
These are difficult times for us too in our world and in our lives. It is a scary time. But do not be afraid, God is in our midst, knowing full well our pain and suffering, our fears. Pick him up, embrace him, hold him dear, and then we can live and die in peace.

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: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 19,1999

TEXT: Luke 1:26-38 - The Annunciation to Mary
"The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. . . . . . .For nothing will be impossible with God."

See also 2 Sam. 7:4, 8-16 - " I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me."

ISSUE: The passage tells of the Angel Gabriel announcement to Mary that she shall bear a son and name him Jesus. For the early church it is the fulfillment of hope that God has not abandoned his people and the promise made to King David is being fulfilled. He will be Son of the Most High. Thus, God shall be his father. The event while implying a miraculous birth still makes it quite clear that it is a human birth through Mary. Jesus comes to and in the midst of the simple and humble. With God it is clearly possible that he can come to the least, the last, and the lost to reclaim them all as his sons and daughters of the Most High.
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Today we begin looking at that beautiful story that Luke tells of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus. I want to preface my remarks by reminding you that the Gospels are not actual biographies of Jesus' life. They are rather proclamations of new news or Good News that God is doing something in the world in order to establish God's reign. In Luke's account of the birth of Christ it is important that we not take in a mere historial sense or in a literal sense. The story is meant to tell us something theological, to express some profound meaning of God's being involved in some wonderful, miraculous, and mysterious way in human life. The story touches and appeals to children as well as adults.
Looking at the background against which Jesus' birth takes place it is important to remember what was going on. God's people, the Jewish people, were a conquered people. The Temple authorities, that is, the religious authorities, Saducees were in collusion with the Romans. The large portion of the population, maybe 98% were poor. Life was very fixed culturally. Not much changed. You lived in the moment without much expecatation. They had little control over their lives. Life was hard. Life spans were short. Infant mortality rate was very high. Diet was meagre. Pain and suffering was prevalent. Oppression was a fact of life. There was probably a longing, and a deep yearning, for deliverance, for some messianic deliverance as the people looked back to a grander time like that of David. But it is likely that there was not really much of a sense of real genuine hopefulness. You lived having to tolerate what was dealt out to you.
Into this kind of situation, Jesus comes to the scene. He begins a ministry of offering hope in terms of some healing and restoration. He challenges various things in the culture. He begins speaking of The Reign and the Empire of God coming as a new power in the midst of worldly powers. He invites a discipleship of men and women to join forces with him. Now as Luke at a later date begins telling the story and putting together the message of Christ, he seems to weave what Jesus did into the story of his birth. The birth story is something of an overture to the life of Christ.
There was a hope and an expectation that a Son of David would come to the world to carry on that dynasty which the Lesson from Samuel is about today which would be likened to a Son of God. At the time that Jesus was born there were already many stories of miraculous birth stories which centered around great historical figures like Caesar and Alexander the great. What Luke seems to be saying is that if you think they were miraculous births, let me tell you something even more grand. I can tell you about something utterly miraculous about how God comes to his people. We must remember that it is only Luke and a small portion of Matthew that tells anything about a birth of Jesus. St. Paul never mentions it. Mark has no birth narrative at all, and John's Gospel account only offers a kind of Hymn about how Jesus is the light coming into the world, that was reluctant to receive him.
There are some who would say that Luke, and also Matthew, weaves this miracle story of angels and virgin birth to kind of spare the early Christians some embarrassment about their extraordinary humble beginnings, being led by this possibly illegitimate itinerant preacher of no honorable status whatsoever. However you interpret it or manage the story, there is the wonder of it all that captures the human imagination, whether young or old.
Thus, Luke tells of the Anunciation, which is the reading for today. There is this young girl, whose name is Mary. So far as we know she had little honorable standing, and becomes betrothed (not engaged) to a carpenter, an artisan, also with little or no standing. Mary has nothing going for her. She lackes all the credentials that most people would think important. She's too young; too inexperienced; she's a woman, she has no marital status; and she is powerless. This situation is the epitomy of the mundane, if not absurd. Little could be expected from the union of these two people. What's more it will appear that Mary is the bearer of an illegitimate child which would put her in a position of dreadful shame, and might even call for her being stoned to death by the community. But God acts. The Angel Gabriel, messenger of God who had come with messages for Daniel, comes to announce to Mary that she will be overshadowed, that is protected by God as a husband protects his pregnant wife. She will bear a son, and though the child may appear to be illegitimate, he will be truly from God: he will be God's Son, and he will come as hope for his people.
What Luke is weaving in his birth story is the understanding that the world looks to the powers of the world for miracles and wonders. They are often a dreadfully disappointing and inflict real devastation. But God, in Luke's story, does his miracles and powers among the least, the lost, the last. God's powers are often worked among those you would least expect. It is Joseph, and a very young girl who is suspect of being quite shameful, that God acts. Through the acceptance of their role real love is revealed. Bad situations become redeemed. What seems dishonorable becomes honorable. What seems to be impossible happens. God comes to reclaim and restore his lost people. He enters into the human condition in a way that will reach and toudh human hearts, making them responsive. Jesus is born of a woman with all that that implies: morning sickness and painful birth. Yet to that human condition is comes hope and redemption. God comes to his people in all of their imperfection, uncertainty, and anxiety. He comes in a real genuine way that is initmate. God has not and will not abandon his faithful people.
It has been pointed out that the one event in all of our Christmas preparations that so beautifully portrays the real genuine theological content of the Christmas story is the proverbial Christmas Pageant. In some cases they are elaborately prepared and rehearsed. Yet still the angel wings get bent and their halos become crooked. Shepherds stumble and the sheep get loose. At least one child will cry and at the last moment some completely withdraw from the drama. Yet inspite of that imperfection, the message still comes through clearly. Jesus Christ gets born again. God comes in the midst of the fray, and no one misses that point. God comes and acts inspite of us. And that is because some folk and children in and with all their imperfections have the courage to offer themselves and simply to say, "Lord, use me."
The point is also made in the story by Dr. Seuss of "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." Inspite of the loss of all the stuff, the decorations and presents, it is still Christmas. Hearts are still touched, and even the evil contentious Grinch becomes himself is converted, if not redeemed. God is still acting and entering into the human condition.
At Christmas many of us try to enter into a kind of fairyland. Even people who live in Southern Florida dream of a white Christmas. We deluge and indulge ourselves with presents, and decorations. Underneath it all we know it doesn't always snow on Christmas. Not everyone gets home for Christmas, and sometimes there are depressions, great losses and sadnesses that are re-enforced and realized as a result of the season. While the ovens in Germany were be stoked during World War II, military officers sang "Silent Night" -"Stille Nacht Heilege Nacht." Human suffering can and does still abound.
The world and each of us in it so desperately need Christ at various times in our lives. We need to feel loved. We need a sense of hope. We need forgiveness and reconciliation. We need to be found and redeemed. In our brokeness we need healing and hope. Christ has come, and must come again, and will come. Luke leads us to believe that Christ's coming to us is inevitable. God simply acts. We need to be responsive to him with open hearts, minds, and souls. May each of us be willing to be the mansions prepared for him, and to allow Christ to be reborn is each of us again, inspite of our imperfections. Let God in Christ reshape and remold us remembering that God is the potter, and we are the clay that can be reshaped, reformed, renewed. Mary accepts through faith the inevitable. God will work in and through her. Nothing is impossible. The barren get new life. The powerless become the daughters and sons of the Most High. "Then Mary said, 'Here I am Lord; let it be with me according to your word,'" Luke weaves a powerful story that is the overture to the whole ministry of Jesus Christ that he is truly God's Son, and light for the darkness of the world. He is the shepherd of the lost sheep. He is our hope.

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: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 12, 1999

TEXT: John 1:6-8, 19-28 - "There was a man sent from God, whose name is John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light."

ISSUE: John's ministry captured the attention of the early church, as well as the people who came to know him. He was a striking contrast to the luxurious temple priests. He was attractive to the so many people who were fed up with the shame of their lives. John offers the beginning hope and purification for the age to come, with confident hope that the Christ will come for the salvation of his people. John played an important role then as the church and its people are called upon today. It is our role to bear witness to the light of Christ. This week we move from our need for repentance to our prayer to be "stirred up" by the power of God to be witnesses in the world.
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In the Advent Season, John the Baptist is really an important figure, as the forerunner of Jesus Christ. His message to prepare for the coming of the Lord, for one that John himself is not unworthy to tie the thongs of his sandal. Last week, I addressed the "repentance" aspect of John the Baptist. John called people who came out to see him in the wilderness to repentance, or change. Keep in mind that the people who came out to see John were the poor, the dispossessed, the disenfranchised. These were people who were fed up with being the people of shame. John calls these people to change their lives, and to be baptized to enter into a rite of purification and readiness for a Lord who would lead them out of their shame and if ready to greet him, they would enter into the Kingdom of God.
I also attempted last week to make us all aware of our need for change, and for a renewed readiness to accept the savior. We live in a period of history and in a country where the wealth and affluence is beyond anything or any country has ever before experienced in the history of the world. Inspite of how we think in this country that our wealth is the be all and end all of existence, we find that there are still great spiritual needs that need to be attended to. We still are the people of violence and cruelty. There is still a lurking evil in humanity, and in the human spirit that forces us to recognize that the human spirit, the human soul is in need of God's presence in our midst. We must attend to the fact that it must be genuine and sought daily in and through prayer: God be with us and help us to change that we may live in union with you, and truly be your people bearing witness to your love.
In the Gospel account today, from the Gospel of John, we have still another account of the work of John the Baptist that takes us a step farther in our need for repentance and redemption. Remember that John's Gospel account was the last of the Gospel accounts to be written. It has a very spiritual dimension to it, as it speaks to a people who have moved beyond the eyewitnesses to the John the Baptist, Jesus, and even the disciples. It is a call to be faithful and to stand firm in the teachings of Jesus Christ and loyalty to him, especially in a world where they may come to know significant persecution.
In this Johannine account, John the Baptist is bearing witness to the light. He is not the light, says the Gospel writer, but he comes to bear witness to the light. He has a very specific role beyond even just calling for repentance, but for witnessing to the light, to hope, to the coming of the Savior. Now the Temple authorities, who are anticipating some kind of a messiah, need to know John's identity. Who is he, and why is it that so many of the people are going out to him. Let me insert here that since so many people were going out to see John, he was developing a following of disciples. This discipleship may have sometimes caused confusion in the early stages of the development of Christianity. It has to be clarified that John is not the messiah, not the Christ, but only a forerunner of something greater yet to come. Thus, John Baptist in the story confesses that he is not Elijah, even though he as that prophetic image. He is not the prophet expected. Remember that Moses had said that "He (God) will send you a prphet like me from among your own people, and you are to obey him." (Deut 18:15f) John makesw no claim to be that prophet. All that John in his great humility claims is that he is "a voice crying in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord.'"
Another thing important about John the Baptist was that he was a priest, and he was the son of a priest, Zechariah. He was a rural priest of protest, and was not acting like the traditional priesthood. He protested the luxury and the decadence of the Temple priests in Jerusalem. They had become know for their luxurious living, their greed, even for beating peasants. They were by and large not a nice group of people. John's poverty and humility was a striking contrast to that along with his call for repentance and change, for the need for a new spirituality. John was not dressed in fine linens and living in luxury. He lived in the wilderness. the place of evil spirits, and he ate locusts, wild honey, and dressed in animal skins.
John is baptizing, which was very popular act in these days among various cults. John's baptism is for purification, readiness for something grand, renewing, and just to come to people enveloped in injustice and shamefulness. John was unique, and his identity uncertain. Since John was looking for someone else to be the Messiah, the Christ, the one expected, then he himself was not seen as much of a threat to the Jerusalem authorities. But make no mistake about it, John was a significant prophetic priestly character for the early church, as he was the one who ultimately pointed to the one who was the Christ, Jesus. He is the voice and humble personality crying in the wilderness of evil for people to change and to accept Jesus Christ as their savior and their Lord. John calls for an inner holiness. He calls for repentance and change, but John also alerts and points to the search for the world's true light.
The importance of John the Baptist for us today is that John is the forerunner of what the church is meant to be in the world today. John is the epitomy of the church's role in the world today. Mind you, John made no claim for being a "hot-shot" or "big shot." He was not the Christ, not Elijah, not Moses. He was but a simple humble voice in the wilderness of evil and injustice calling for change among his own. He reduced their shame and called them to be honorable. He led them to the light, the light that was coming into the world, Jesus the Christ.
How do we carry on our priesthood in the world we live in. At our Baptismal Service we say to the newly baptized: "We receive you into the household of God. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in his eternal priesthood." We all share, like John, in the priesthood. We dwell in the household of God, but we still live in a wilderness that can be quite deceiving and hostile. We live in a world that sometimes looks good and feels good, but there are subtle evil spirits that attack and destroy human souls and life. There is a long way to go for the human spirit to know its redemption. John knew well that people had to change. We know well even today that we can be very destructive and have very destructive behavior. As the church we have to make changes. So often we are ingrown. We are not open really to those in need, nor are we truly sensitive to human need and involved. We think basically of ourselves and our own needs. We enjoy thinking like the Jerusalem Temple authorities, who looked down upon the dispossessed, the sinful, the afflicted and the poor. We have to move away from the world at times and reclaim our spiritual side. We need to reclaim humility. We are not Elijah, Moses, or Christ. We are only those who look to the light and for the light.
The key to being a vital prophetic priesthood in the world is know Jesus Christ as truly our Lord. It is to know the story. It is to say the prayers, and become a prayerful people. It is to recognize our need to change, to confess, to be a people who confess that we are too enamored with the world's affluence. It is a call to loyalty, faith, commitment, and sacrifice. The church, and we are the church, in the world today, if it is really to be the church has to reclaim its sense of being missional, of being well trained people who pray to be 'stirred up" with the power of God. Note that the collect for today calls for God to "stir up His power and come among us." Some of us might say God forbid that God should stir us up to revive us. We like our comfortable sleepy ways.
Aren't you a little bored of all the uproar over whether or not it is constitutional to say prayers in school, when it is difficult to get people to say a prayer at a church meeting. We are offended that our children are not able to pray at school, when I suspect that we really don't do much about it in our own homes, and maybe even in our own lives. We are frequently thinking in terms of how things look on the outside, and not aware of what needs to be done in our own hearts and souls that we can become really people of God in the world who are spontaneous in our ability to communicate the loveliness of God in our lives.
It is, I think, somewhat discouraging that Christian churches often resort to begging and imploring their members to give sacrificially, and to take active roles in leadership. Isn't it somehow a little demeaning to think that we have to beg for leadership, and have bingo, fifty-fifities, fund-raisers, gambling of various kinds to keep the church of Jesus Christ as we know it alive in the world. We don't see ourselves as the church differentiated from the world. We see ourselves merely as another charity, as opposed to the the witness to the Light.
There are times when we may well forget and discount just how important we are as baptized members of the church. We are called to witness through prayer, giving, through study and knowledge of the Scripture. We need to seek a deeper spirituality and closeness to God in our own hearts so we can impart a true witness of love, care, concern for God' s world. It is important for us to recognize how God has worked in and through our lives and how to express that to others.
Many years ago now, when I was a young man in Seminary, some friends of mine and I would go caving in the Tennesse hills. And we'd crawl around in some very narrow passages which were often muddy. They were cold and dank. What's more they were so dark when the lights had been turned out. Darker than a million cypress swamps. For fun we'd experience the utter darkness by putting out our carbide lamps. Let me tell you it always felt good to relight them. After several hours in the cave, it felt even better to come to the entrance and see the sunlight once again. In a cruel and dark world, John the Baptist attempted to lead some people to the light of Christ. Since John that has been the work and mission of all those who are in the eternal priest of Christ, to lead the world toward the light, the light that is coming into the world. It is truly a special calling. May God stir up his power and come among us that we may be worthy to continue in this vocation.

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: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 5, 1999

TEXT: Mark 1:1-8 - THE BEGINNING OF THE GOOD NEWS OF JESUS CHRIST.
"John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins."


ISSUE: Unlike a biography, Mark's Gospel is a "proclamation" of the Good News. It is presented like an announcment that The Son of God has come, and the sins (debts) of the world shall be forgiven. There is the forerunner, John the Baptist, who goes before The Son of God to call all people Jew and Gentile alike to repentance, change and readiness for the new Kingdom. The problem today is that not too many people are aware of the need for change. Change what when everything seems so good, i.e. affluent. Yet much festers under the surface that needs our attention as we embrace the renewed coming of Christ.
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The Gospel reading for today is difficult for us to really appreciate, but struggle with it along with me.
We begin today at the beginning, at the very opening verses of Mark's account of the Gospel. Throughout the year we will be giving special attention to Mark's Gospel account. It is the shortest of the accounts and is thought to be the oldest account that we have of the story of Christ's mission and ministry. The Gospel of Mark is rather straightforward, and is written in the style of a "proclamation." It is not a biography of Jesus. Mark takes no time to tell us about Mary and Joseph and the details of Jesus' birth. Mark does not need Mary and Joseph, and their ancestry to give Jesus the honor status. Mark sees Jesus as the one who was to come, Son of God, and that is honor enough.He goes straight to the core of it all: This is the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God."
In these times whenever something special happened, the government would issue a proclamation. A proclamation was sent to the people and they announced various things. They reported military victories. They sometimes reported the birth of a new royal child. The reported the amnesty or the ascendancy of a new monarch. Mark is proclaiming Good News of the coming of The Son of God. Obviously, he uses a royal form of proclamation to give credence and honor to the fact that Jesus as Son of God is indeed royal. And in these times the coming of a monarch was reason for the people to get ready, and to prepare, and shape things up in their area of that aniticipated coming. Thus, a messenger is sent ahead to herald that coming, and quoting from Isaiah and Malachi: "See I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."
Around Jerusalem was the prophet John, who was referred to as John the Baptist. John plays something of the role of the hearld of the goodtidings. He is the one preparing the way, and who is a figure very much like Israels favored and most honored prophet Elijah. He fulfills Malachi's statement (4:5) Before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes, I will send you the prophet Elijah . . ." John wears animal skin, a coat of camel hair and a leather belt, as proclaimed of Elijah 2Kings1:8) "He was wearing a cloak made of animal skins, tiked with a leather belt." John is preaching and teaching in the wilderness, that is, he is standing outside the controlled stuctured society. He is calling people out of the routine into a place to give special attention to the message of hope, that will also stand outside the normal routine ways of the world.
The non-elite people begin venturing out into the desert to hear John, and his heralding message. He himself makes no claims to honor, only to declare that one far more honorable than himself will come, who sandal thongs he is unworthy to stoop down and tie. Again notice the great honor and royal status being proclaimed here. John says that he will baptize, cleanse, immerse the people with water, but the great one will baptize them with a holy wind or spirit. The baptism of John is for all both Jew and Gentile alike. Now, at the time there was a liturgy of baptism for Gentile people who converted to and accepted the Jewish God, Yahweh. They had to be purified from the past idolatry and uncleaness. Jews themselves, however, because of their ancestry were not required to be baptized. What John is (and Mark too) declaring is that all people need cleansing and preparation to receive the Christ. You cannot depend upon you birthrite and ancestry. Each and every person has to make their ready preparation to receive the Christ.
Now John calls for a baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins. The need for forgiveness in these times was quite significant. Who were these people who came out to hear John. They were the non-elites. They were the expendable people. They were the people without land and status. They were the beggars, the prostitues, the people who were the dispossessed. Taxes were quite high. Many people lost everything that they had. Sin was debt. They were all in debt. To be forgiven from sin was analgous to being released from indebtedness. Remember in the Lord's Prayer it reads in many translations, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive the debts of others." The very idea that one was coming who would forgive them their debts meant that they were about to come upon an age where they would be restored to dignity and worth again. This was what the coming of the Empire of God was all about. You had to be ready, and be made clean, and prepared to step into the Kingdom of God. And there you will receive and be baptized into The Holy Spirit of God. John comes bringing hope to a forlorn, disenfranchised people, preparing them and readying them to follow the coming King, and step into his Kingdom. John is the realization for these people of Ezekiel's vision of new hope and life for Israel (36:25), "I will sprinkle clean water on you and make you clean from all your idols and everything else that has defiled you. I will give you a new heart and a new mind. I will take away your stubborn heart of stone and give you an obedient heart. I will put my spirit in you and will see to it that you follow my law and keep all the commands I have given you. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors. You will be my people, and I will be your God. . . . " And so here was the beginning and anticipation of something new and wonderful. It was a great message of hope for an alienated and destitute people.
In the beginning, I said that this Gospel passage was a difficult one for us today to grasp. It's difficult because so many of us think, if not all of us at one time or another, are not at all sure that we want to or need to change anything. Politically we seem strong. The economy in this country is reported to be the richest of any economy of any economy or era in the history of the world. So John (and Mark) calling the world to repentance and readiness, calling for cleansing and renewal, for preparedness for the coming of the Christ seems hollow. It seems unimportant, irrelevant. It seems that Jesus already came and everything just seems to be fine, with a few glitches here and there, but what does it have to do with me.
There is something that haunts me. There is this man that seemed to have everything, well almost. He had a nice family, and there are pictures of him dancing with family and friends. He had a really good job, and money in the bank. He had a nice home. He was comfortable it seemed to say the very least. Every external thing anybody seemed to know about him appeared to be normal and fine, and he appeared to be without problems. Then why di he take the yoke of the Egyptair plane and apparently turn it nose down and plunge it into the sea along with more than two hundred other people. I know the investigation of that terrible incident is still in porcess, although reports seem so clear that there was some deliberate action taken to cause the destruction.
Why is it that often people who seem to have so much, and who are by the world's definition so blessed will take some destructive path of action? Why will a man or woman suddenly take flight from their families and abandon them? Why do people and children take perfectly wonderful bodies and minds and destroy them with drugs and alcohol? How is it that people who are relatively well off and affluent can see pictures of other lands and people starving or oppressed and not feel some compassion that calls for action of some kind? How is it that we can run up and down the stairs, and yet never notice that for some people stairs are a barrier for handicapped people? Good as we may seem to be, and as good as things around us may be there is still underneath of it all a greed, an inability to sacrifice for one another significantly. There is a rigidness in our complacency and self-satisfaction.
I am reminded of pre-school age children who will fight over a toy. They see sharing as loss, not as opportunity for growing friendship and enriched relationships. It is frightening to the small child to give something up and share. That mind set seems to carried over into adult life sometimes, if not quite often.
There are those of us who cannot let go of their racial and class prejudices. We cling to a sense of superiority that says if I accept others, then somehow I will be diminished. Inspite of the fact that the varieties of cultural thinking, and different wasy of seeing things and doing things can and do enrich us all.
Isn't it curious to you, it is to me, that we have some of the best schools in the world, the most beautiful and attractive homes, the beautiful cities. Still, there are those many pockets of hatred and violence so severe that it is warlike.
There is an inclination to think in terms that tell us that they things that are wrong in the world are always someone else's fault. Never our own.
Is it not just possible that we need to take a look deeper into the human heart? Don't we sometimes have to recognize that there is still a desperate need for the human to think human more deeply about what we are doing and how the human heart may need to be changed? The human spirit may very well need to look at Christ again, to recognize a need to be opened to change and new ways of seeing and feeling about life. The non-elites of Jesus time recognized their poverty and so longed for restoration to dignity and place. I am believe that we all need this restoration in every age, and especially in this age where we have learned to cover-up and avoid, and have become in many ways so insensitive to a deeper human need to be closer to God.
Don't you sometimes feel like we need to say and pray: God help us. God come again and be with us. God our stark crass individualism and our affluence has blindedness us. We are in the dark when comes to know what we should do. Lord Jesus Christ come again, renew us, open our eyes to see you in the world around us, and help us to receive a new heart, mind, soul that gives us our true human dignity, and that embraces your Holy Spirit. Help us to get our act together, because there are times when we are so destructive without realizing it.
The Gospel is about Good News. The Son, one who has the qualities of God has and will come among us. We need to be ready to make the appropriate changes, the repentance, that renews a right spirit within us so that we become resonant with him.

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: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 28, 1999

TEXT: Mark 13:24-37 - The Little Apocalypse
"Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake - "

ISSUE: The passage from Mark is referred to as "The Little Apocalypse." It addresses a time of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty about the future in a time of great oppression. But the message is to stay alert, be watchful, for Christ Jesus comes again, at a time we do not know. We all know times when it seems as if the world, our world, is ending. The message is to carry on faithfully as servants of God making the ready for his renewed coming into our lives. The fig tree begins to sprout when the spring is coming, when new hope is just around the corner.
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Today marks the new millennium so far as the church is concerned. This is the First Sunday of Advent, and the beginning of the church's new year. Admittedly it comes with not quite all the excitement of anticipated new millennial beginning of January 1st. In fact Advent as we celebrate it in the church is a bit somber and sober. Already the malls and shopping centers are playing the carols and encourage spending and jubilation in anticipation of the coming Holidays or Winter Festival. But the church approaches the Christmas season in a more deliberate and spiritually preparatory way. We look forward to and anticipate a deepening of the renewed and renewing presence of God in our lives.
The reading today is from the Gospel account of St. Mark, which will be the Gospel that is emphasized and studied in our Lectionary over the next year. The particular section read today is from what is called in Mark, "The Little Apocalypse." Similar to the Book of Revelation, and some of the writings in the Hebrew Scriptures, like Daniel, it refers to a period of great tribulation. The early disciples are urged to be prepared, alert, and awake, ready for the renewed coming of God in some unique way.
The world's approach to the Apocalyptic writings in the Scriptures seem to go from one extreme to another. Some people, churches, and denominations take them very seriously and very literally. There has been over the years many attempts to predict when the end of time will come. Every earthquake, fire, flood, and plane crash is seen as signs of the end of time. The time of great tribulation is looked forward with some pleasure when all evil and evil people, that is, people we don't like or get along with will all be swept away. The rest of us, the good guys will just get caught-up in the rapture. With this year being the millennium, there has been an outbreak for some folk of a kind of millennial madness, and anticipation that this is it! I might point out here that according to the Scripture, "But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heave, nor the Son, but only the Father."
On the otherside, there are those who just say that the Apocalypse is just irrelevant. It has little or no meaning for the modern world. Enough prophets of doom who have predicted the end have all proved to be quite wrong. We're still here, and are expected to be here for a long time to come.
What is important is that we try to appreciate these scriptural passages within the context that they were written. Apocalyptic literature, like the Book of Daniel, some of Ezekiel, Isaiah, Revelations, and parts of the Gospel writings like the one we heard today are written in and address times of great tribulation. Incidentally, a significant part of what Mark has written in this reading today is copied from Isaiah and Daniel. These were written at a time when God's people, the Judeans, were conquered by the Babylonians and taken into exile. Their lands, the temple, their culture was nearly completely devastated. Often they interpreted the cause to be the fact that they had abandoned God. They had become unfaithful. Notice in the writing from the Isaiah lesson, the impassioned plea and call of the prophet to God, "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, . . . to make your name known to your adversaries., so that the nations might tremble at your presence." It is a cry for help and redemption at a time of great desolation. It is an appeal that God is the Father, and "we are the clay, andyou are our potter" to reshape, remake, and renew us.
Mark's Gospel was written either just before or just after there had been a Jewish revolt against the Romans. It was either anticipated by Jesus and the early church, or they were just coming through and were witnessing once again the destruction of the Temple and the whole city of Jerusalem. Many of the people were starved to death. It was a time so dreadful that it was "as if" the sun was darkend, the moon gave no light, and the very stars had fallen from heaven, and the powers of heaven itself had been shaken. It was clear that many people did and would see this terrible ordeal. These were the signs of an extraordinarily difficult time. But the Gospel message is that all should hold on. Be alert, stay awake. God will come to the help and aid of his faithful people.
Jesus uses the parable of the fig tree. When the branches begin to turn tender, you know the spring is coming. Though there are very difficult times, there is hope beyond the hard and difficult winter of our lives.
Jesus uses still another parable. It is like the Master going away for a time and he leaves his slaves in charge of things. They are to carry on, and keep the home fires burning, and be ready for the Master's return. Slaves in Jesus' time were like family members. The Jewish people saw themselves as God's slaves. The early Christians saw themselves as the slaves of Christ. They were to be faithful, committed, serving and honoring their Master. They were to be alert, awake, and ready. The message of passage was that beyond the difficult times, God will not abandon his people inspite of themselves, he will come and be among them. He will be their renewal and their hope. Because this had always been their experience. They lived beyond the difficult times.
What does the apcalytic writings mean for us in our age? At very times in our lives both as individuals and as a country we have endured times of tribulation. Some will look back at WWII and remember the terrible disruption to human life. Families were broken up, many men died. In the Jewish community it was a terrible holocaust. It was a time of great tribulation, a time of darkness when meany families who lost loved ones thought and felt they would never see the light of day again. The same is true of some of the other terrible conflicts, especially during the Vietnam War era. It was a very difficult period for this country in so many ways. Peoples lives were lost, and there was great dissention over the morality of the conflict. Yet by the grace of God, in time, healing and hope came again.
In our personal lives there are often very difficult times when we lose someone we love, when go through the pain of a divorce, when we face difficult problems that so disrupt our lives that there seems to be little hope. Today many people battle cancer and deal with all the feelings that come with being a victim of the disease, or a friend or lover to the afflicted. We recognize that we need help, hope, and strength, a savior. No one ever escapes the feeling of having the foundations of their lives shaken and rattled as if they were in the middle of an horrendous spiritual earthquake. What do you grasp for, what do you hold on to? We need God. We need that spiritual presence that gives sustenance and hope to lives that otherwise feel drained and empty.
Presently for many in our country it seems like good times. It is. Fact of the matter is that there has never been in the history of the world a time of such affluence and overall well-being, especially in this country. We must be careful that we are not lulled into complacency and an empty satisfaction. Times and circumstances change, sometimes abruptly. The Gospel calls us to readiness, preparedness, alertness, faithful awareness of our need to be open to the presence of God.
What we prepare for this season is being aware of our need for the savior. We look for Christ's renewed coming into our lives as the savior, the helper, the hope that sees us through the difficult moments of our lives. It can be a very busy season. We can be so distracted by all the excitement of the season. Thomas Merton, a monk and theologian expressed it so well when he wrote that we are often busy climbing the ladders of our lives, but they are sometimes against the wrong wall. We can become so caught up in the materialism of the season that we forget the spiritual meaning of the season. We live in a world that needs God, redemption, and that needs a savior. We live in a world that needs to know the real meaning of sacrificial love, of forgiveness, of being and becoming servants with Christ. Keep awake; alert, aware of what we are about, and to what God is calling us. Be open to receiving the grace of God revealed and given in Jesus Christ. Be alert to his renewed coming.

Last Pentecost - Christ the King

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Last Pentecost - Christ the King
PROPER: 29A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 21, 1999

TEXT: Matthew 25:31-46 - Vision of the Last Judgement
'Come you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' . . . . 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'

ISSUE: This passage is Matthew's apocalyptic vision opf the final judgment. From one point of view it appears to be a judgment on those who persecute early Christians, "the least of these who are members of my family." In this sense it is good news for the discipleship of Jesus. But from another perspective the passage is a call to compassion for all of God's people, and the whole world is under God's judgment to serve one another as if Christ were in all. It is not in being religious and of privilege that counts, but in how much we love one another in Christ.
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Today is the last Sunday of the Church Year, the Last Sunday after Pentecost, or Christ the King Sunday. On two of the last Sundays, the Scripture reading deals with Jesus's ordeal at his crucifixion. Pilate questions Jesus as to whether or not he is a King in the Johannine account, and in a Lukan account Jesus is dared to save himself if he is truly the King of the Jews. In these accounts it becomes quite obvious that the Kingship of Jesus is different from what the world sees as royalty. He is truly the suffering servant whose demise makes the world look hard at what is right and wrong, what is truth, and what is the meaning of life.
On this Sunday in Cycle A, we have the a vision of the Last Judgment from Matthew's perspective. All of the miracles, parable, and sayings of Jesus are now set aside so to speak, and Matthew is setting the scene which raises the issue as to what does the meaning of Christ's ministry and teaching come down to.
There are essentially two interpretations of this vision wherein Jesus is seen as the Son of Man seated in Judgment at the final age. Some see the passage as God's judgement upon those who do not accept the proclamations of the first early disciples and Christians. Anyone who has received, fed, clothed and visited the "least of these my brethren and members of my family, have supported Christ himself. Those who do not respond compassionately to the "community of the little ones" which was a name for Christians in Matthew's community, will enter into harsh eternal punishment. For the early disciples in difficult times this was a passage of hope.
But what also is very much a part of this passage today is the understanding that the Judgement of God is a univeral thing. All the nations are gathered and everyone comes under the inescapable judgement of God. Please keep in mind that this portrayal here is not to be taken literally, but is a vision, a perception of the fact that our faith is to be taken seriously, and we are all accountable for our lives and how we live them.
In this vision Jesus is the Son of Man for Matthew, and he is the King who stands in judgment over his subjects in the world. He, the King, separates them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. God in Jesus separates the truly honorable folk from the shameful. Goats you see were dishonorable or shameful animals. Women cared for them. Also, the male goats were known for allowing other male goats to have access to their females, which was considered at the time to be quite shameful. Sheep on the other hand were honorable in that they were a symbol of virility and strength. Sheep suffered silently. Honorable men suffered in silence. Remember that Jesus is portrayed in the gospels as "the lamb of God." Quoting from Isaiah's suffering servant passage (53:7f), "He was treated harshly, but endured it humbly; he never said a work. Like a lamb about to be slaughtered, like a sheep about to be sheered, he never said a word. He was arrested and sentenced and led off to die, and no one cared about his fate." At the final judgment the truly honorable ones will sit at the King's right hand.

The sheep the honorable ones will hear and receive the great invitation: Come, you that are blessed (honored) by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." They are invited to step into the Kingdom of God. Now what makes these sheep-like people honorable is their compassion. In this period in history your honor was thought to be something that you inherited by birth. Your great attention to the law and religious observance, piety, your maintained status. You avoided associations with outcasts and people of lesser status. Jesus is, however, pointing out here that there is another honor that is more truly honorable in the sight of God:

"I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,
I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you gave me clothing,
I was sick and you took care of me,
I was in prison and you visited me."

This is the honor of compassion, of hospitality, and of great concern for others. What is of special interest here is that the honorable ones, the rightesous say to him, "When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty . . . or a stranger . . . or naked . . . or sick . . . or in prison . . . etc?" They are unaware as to when then they did these things. And the king replies that "Truly, I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." True honor in the Kingdom of God is not something you seek, it is a matter of attitude. It is a matter of who you are. It is an engrained attribute that comes from a proximity with Christ so close that you aren't even aware of it. The truly honorable folk are those who are hospitable to the whole family of God. They are the ones who are the servants of and with Jesus the Christ, and are at one with God, and in loving relationship with the way of God, espressed in Christ.
The accursed, the damned are those who had no sensitivity to the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the imprisoned, the stranger, the sick. They are caught in their own concerns and complacency. They neglect the great need of and for hospitality in a harsh cruel world. They are simply not servants of and with Christ. The Christ-like way is not in their lives. They are lacking in hospitality, sensitivity, compassion, love, forgiveness. Not to possess these attributes is not to be human so far as Jesus was concerned. They are not needed; they have no place in the Kingdom of God. They are those cast out into eternal punishment of having no quality of life.
As we try to interpret a piece of Scripture like this one we have to understand that we do live in a different age. We have to be careful how we interpret it to others and to ourselves. There is the inclination for ourselves to become judgemental. The parson looks over his congregation and thinks to himself, "Well now there's Mr. Jones, and he's a goat, because he's not very regular in his church attendance and doesn't make a very big pledge. And then, there's Mrs. Brown, and she's a sheep, as she worships and teaches in Sunday School." We can be very judgmental, and since we see these persons for such a small fraction of their entire lives, our judgments can be very very wrong. Way off base. This Scripture today is not about setting ourselves up as judges of one another as to who is or is not going to hell.
We can also use such a passage to say well, the Jews or the Moslems, or the pagans for that matter are the goats. They don't serve Christ in the way we Christians do, so they must be among the cursed and the damned. Again that is not by any stretch of the imagination ours to judge. The righteous in this passage didn't even know they were serving Christ when they were, inspite of themselve. "When did we see you hungry?" . . . "When you folk - Jews, Gentiles, Moslems, . . . you nations of the world . . . .when you did it to the least of these my brothers and members of my family you did it to me." Let's be very careful not to make ourselves the judges. The King is the judge, not the sheep or the goats.
Another thing to be careful about is that we may chide ourselves for not being hospitable enough. We may think badly of ourselves, because we don't shell out some change to a pan-handler. Or we feel guilty about not picking up a hitch-hiker along the side of the road. We have to be so careful about taking passages such as this one too literally. One dear soul I know told me how terribly upset her family was over her picking up a hitch-hiker. She felt real anxiety over wanting to help the poor and being sensitive to human need. Common sense makes sense. I doubt God opposes it. We are not expected to put ourselves at risk. Picking up hitch-hikers can be very dangerous in our world. Giving hand-outs to panhandlers can only perpetuate and enable a person with bad habits to persist in them. Panhandling is proved more often than not to be the work of scam artists. Responding to these scams is not helpful to most communities. Being overly patient and subservient with people who are troublesome may be more destructive than helpful.
More sensible constructive and safe response to human need is through institutions and organizations. Giving and responding to charitable causes is the way to be more helpful and often gets you more for your buck anyway. Realizing that sometimes our church and our government needs to set up programs for single women with children is imperitive. We may resent the taxes and the demands for donations, but there is human need that can better be supported through professional persons and organizations. There is a need for welfare, for care homes for both children, the retarded, the physically and mentally challenged. And sometimes they have to be and maybe even should be encouraged and welcomed in our own neighborhood. It is in this sense that we can welcome and express hospitality to the sick, the hungry, the poor, the least, the last, and the lost.
The passage from Matthew today is important in that it helps us to understand that we are all under judgement. Having spent a year studying together the scriptures each Sunday, and worshiping together, how do we fare? Have we grown in our journey to a deeper and profounder understanding of what it means to love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Has the grace of Christ sunk in, and are our attitudes and outlooks changed to serve him better? Have we found new ways to have a 'specific' ministry of giving, sharing, and being hospitable with others? Has there been some growth in our lives. Has there been growth in what we do as a Christian community here at St. John's? I mean are we still struggling to simply maintain the status-quo, and living fearfully that we'll not make ends meet, or do we move ahead in mission and prayerfull ask God to help us to discern our mission in his world in this day. Chances are we have had moments of change and renewal. It may be that we still as both a church and as individuals have a ways to go. That, of course, is what Advent is about as we begin again to let Christ come and renew us. But today, we are under the judgment. And the judgment is not bad news to condemn us. The judgment is the call to examine our lives and to see where it is we stand, and with whom we stand. We can live without care and concern for others, failing in our mission as Christians and persisting in a world that is cruel, insensitive, or we can cry out for mercy and with the responsive longing to be truly honorable and serve Christ with new vitality and initiative. There is a time of reckoning; we are accountable. Whether the hungry are fed, the thirsty assuaged, the sick visited really matters, doesn't it? The time is now.

Sunday after All Saints'

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Sunday after All Saints'
PROPER: All Saints' - Holy Baptism
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 7, 1999

TEXT: Matthew 5:1-12
The Beatitudes from The Sermon on the Mount

"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 . . . . . ."

ISSUE: Jesus calls together his 'in-group' disciples to train them in what true honor is in the sight of God. He teaches them about the Empire of God as opposed to the power hungry empire of the world. It is not the power hungry and the elite who find honor, but those who are the poor, the beggars, the prostitutes, sinners, tax collectors, the poorly treated. These are the ones whom God honors and holds in high esteem. It is a shocking sermon. In our world of pious religion, greed, and fondness of wealth, we must continue to keep in mind who it is that God really honors. The mission of Christ makes us mindful of our need to be reliant on God, and to claim a life of servanthood with him.
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Around the season of All Saints' there is the real temptation to re-inforce the teachings of Jesus with an element of piety. We recall the works of the great saints. and how devoted and pious they were, and indeed many were. But oin doing so our religious faith takes on something to which we may come to feel that we cannot attain, and that it often comes across both to ourselves and the world as a kind of pious, boring, righteousness, lacking in power and vitality. Turning the faith of Jesus into a pious religion reveals how little we really understand it. The more I study Christian scripture the more I become aware of how startling and shoking, and non-pious that Jesus himself must have been. He called for great reversals in thinking and understanding that surely shocked the people of his time.
Consider the reading from Matthew today, which we refer to as The Beatitudes or the passages of blessedness. We can approach it from a very pious point of view as a description of saintliness as being humble and righteous, and kind of wallowing in what seems to be an enjoyment in being victimized or persecuted. We can miss the passion and the vitality, if we are not careful. Let's look at the passage closely.
Jesus is surrounded by a large crowd of people. Jesus had to be doing something extraordinary, beyond piety because there were many rabbis to fill that role. He removes himself from the crowd, and gathers around him his own 'in-group' twelve disciples. He himself sits down, the customary postion of a teacher in those days. He begins to address them with a list of beatitudes relagted to what the Kingdom of God, or better still The Empire of God.
In the world the Empire was the very powerful Roman Empire. To be blessed was to have and to share in the power. Among Jesus own Jewish people to be blessed was to have honor, status. standing in the community that was recognized by the community. That status or honor came from birth, according to whose family you happened to be born into. You might gain some honor through special piety, and through being somehow astute with some wisdom. People both lied alot to maintain their position, and the feuded among one another to keep status as well.
You could lose status by losing your property or inheritance to greedy people. Being poor was not a matter of how much money you had. It had to do with your position in life. If you were a widow without a man, you were poor and powerless, regardless of how much land you owned. Many people were deeply in debt. If you were maimed, blind, deaf, diseased, a leper (and that is merely skin diseased) you lost standing and had no place in the community. If you were orphaned - and the death rate being what it was there were many - you had lost status and community standing. Hopefully to survive someone would take you in as a household servant. Tax collectors and prostitutes resorted to these professions for survival. All these people were the so called poor. They were not needed, considered to be cursed, and alienated. They had no esteem, worth, or value to the society. They were the cursed, the outcasts and the disenfranchised. Such was the world's Roman Empire.
(1) So, Jesus gathers a few disciples to follow him up the mountain side. He seems to be telling them that if they're going to follow him in this new ministry and way, they had best get it straight from the very begiinning as to what the Empire of God is like. (The Empire of God is also what we usually refer to as the Kingdom of God.) Let me tell you says Jesus what the Empire of God is like. Let me tell you, he seems to be saying, who are the highly esteemed and worthy in The Empire of God. The blessed, that is, the honorable and the highly esteemed in the Empire of God are the poor! God honors and holds in highest esteem, the very people that the world eschews, hates, disregards. It the prostitutes, the sick, the tax collectors, and all those that the world curses, they are the ones God honors in the Empire of God. "Don't you know that the tax collectors and the prostitues are going in the Kingdom of God ahead of you." (Matt.21:31b) Isn't this rather shocking for the time?
(2) Blessed, Jesus goes on to say, honorable, in high esteem are those who mourn, who cry out in great pain and suffering. The world thinks the happy folk, those that have it all made are the good, great, and powerful ones. Those whom God hold in high esteem and who will be comforted are those who mourn and fast and weep. These are the ones God loves and seeks to heal and redeem. The world sees those folk as the cursed, but God's Empire they will be the ones who laugh and sing.
(3) Blessed and honorable are the meek. The meek were those who had lost their land in unscruplous deals and cheating. They will inherit a place in the Kingdom or the Empire of God.
(4) Held in high esteem, says Jesus are those who are hungry and thirsty for justice, because they've been cheated. They will inherit what God has to give them.The honorable says Jesus are those who know they need and rely upon the compassion of God.
(5) Held in high esteem are the merciful, those who see that all who have lost or given receive a fair return. In an economy of limited supplies, caring, sharing, and restoring is an essential ingredient of living a good life.
(6) Held in high esteem were the pure in heart. In Jesus' time is was extremely difficult to keep all the purity rules and be considered a rightously pure upstanding person. the marginalized people had no time for all that, and little incentive. But Jesus taught that it was not what went into a person's mouth that was important, it was rather what came out. (Matt.15:11) God values and honors honesty and straight forwardness.
(7) Honorable in high esteem are those who are peacemakers and stop the vengeance, the eye for and eye, and tooth for a tooth, and the challenging of one another's honor all the time. In the Kingdom of God, in the Empire of God, peacemakers are the sons and daughters of a healing God.
(8) Honorable are those who have been ostracized, and disenfranchised, and marginalized by the world in God's Empire. God is love and God will accept warmly all those who have been hated and offended, persectued, cheated, and victimize by others.
So Jesus is say as well to his 'in-group' of discipes that they too, if they step with him into the Empire of God, if they join him as faithful disciples, they are going to be laughed at persecuted, victimized themselves by the world, the world's power structure. Rejoice and be glad because they will be in good company, because everyone who has every served God in the world has had to deal with not being taken seriously, and will be challenged by the world's values. But what really counts? Who we are in the sight of the world, or who we are as the people of God in the Kingdom of God?
The Way of Blessedness, or the Way of True Honor for Jesus as he teaches his disciples was a matter of being different from the world, and recognizing our honor is found in being reliant upon God. The poor, the lost, the least, the last need God as the world betrays them. The honorable way of God is to be a servant of others to be honest makers of peace respecting the diginity of others, and by being forgiving, compassionate, understanding, and enduringly faithful in the face of persecution and difficulty.
All of us gathered here today, especially for the adults to be baptized, and to the parents and Godparents of the children, we are called upon to be close to Christ Jesus, and part of the inner circle. We are called to pay attention to this shocking teaching of Jesus. To be Jesus' disciples is not about being sentimentally pious. It is about understanding what it means to be in the Kingdom of God. All of us are sinners to some degree, and yet we are honored and loved: Honorable are those poor sinners. They and we are cherished by God. We need God, and we too are called upon to be his servants with Christ in the world.
What is honored by many in our world is being healthy, wealthy, and wise. We like to accumulate possessions, big houses and cars, big bank accounts, and security (which sometimes results in miserliness). We value achievement, health, good looks, being self-reliant, self sustaining, self-made, independent, and highly individualistic. We respect education, and that it's purpose is for getting a good job to sustain an extravagant life style. The world is enamored and honors those who rise to positions of power. We honor doing our own thing, and avoiding pain and suffering at all costs. We enjoy and succumb to fads. Some flirt with alcohol and drugs as means to avoid reality, or to be hep and sophisticated. The world even honors pious religion, volunteerism, and good works.
In the Empire of God, the contrast is sharp. God honors, loves,and forgives the poor, the lost, the least, the lonely, the last, the humbled. God loves those who passionately love one another, who serve one another, who die for one another, or care about and for one another, who hunger and thirst, who seek purity and become peacemakers. In the Empire of God, the contrast to the Empire of the world is sharp.

Pentecost 22

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Pentecost 22
PROPER: 25A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 24, 1999

TEXT: Matthew 22:34-46 - "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"
(See also Exodus 22:21-27)

ISSUE: The passage is an example of how Jesus and the Pharisees (and the Sadducees) spar with Jesus challenging one another's position and honor. In this case, Pharisees challenge Jesus in terms of what is the greatest law, and Jesus challenges them with the question about who do they think the Messiah is. What is also particularly important is that Jesus teaches that God commands that they love God and their neighbor. He challenges them on the point that Messiahship is not one who is the military successor of King David. Who is he, but one who follows the command to love God with profound devotion and the last, the lost, the least, the poor around him.
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The sparring and challenging of Jesus with the Pharisees, and the Sadducees continues. Recall that in last Sunday's gospel reading Jesus was severely challenged by the Pharisees and the Herodians who asked him whether is was lawful according to the Jewish Torah to pay taxes to Caesar or not. It was a vicious challenge to entrap him. Jesus did escape the entrapment by telling them to pay Caesar what belonged to Caesar, but that they should pay to God what they owed God. Paying God the allegiance that was owed to God was often the great failing of the Herodians, the Pharisees, and even ourselves today. Jesus won the challenge, and maintained his honorable position as a prophet in their midst.
That kind of challenging continues in the passage from Matthew this morning. First, the Pharisees challenge Jesus on what is the most important law is the greatest. Again, this is a "testing" question. Jesus provides a very satisfactory answer. Actually a very conservative answer that is quite acceptable. But then notice that Jesus comes back at them, the Pharisees and challenges them with the question: "What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?" They return the popular response of what they believed the Messiah to be, "Son of David," that is, someone in the lineage, ancestry of King David, and someone of a militant type. Then Jesus, trapping them, quotes Psalm 110:1. (It was believed at that time that David had written all of the Psalms, which is not the case.) The Psalm reads: "The Lord said to my lord, the king, 'Sit here at my right side until I put your enemies under your feet.'" If the Messiah is addressing David, how can the Messiah be a Son of David? This challenge stumps the Pharisees, so they go away no longer asking him any questions. Matthew is stressing here the wit and the victory, the honorableness, of Jesus over the leadership of his time.
It seems that the point of the passage is that what is basic to human existence is loving God, - i.e. paying to God what belongs to God - and loving your neighbor. The essence of the Messiah, the leader and deliverer of God's people is not one who is militant, but one who conveys and lives into the law of love.
Let's take a closer look at Jesus response to the question: "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" Which was the greatest law, or the most important one in the law was an ongoing question for the people of Jesus' time. In the torah, or first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures there were considered to be 613 laws. How your remembered all of these was an issue. Some were of more imporantance than others. Obviously the Ten Commandments were of great importance. The command (Dt. 22:6-7) that if you found a nest, you could take eggs or young, but not the mother bird, was a less importance. Rabbi's and prophets tried to summarize the law for their people. King David in Psalm 15 declared 11 important rules. The prophet Micah (6:8) declared only three: Do justice, show constant love, and live in humble fellowship with God. The prophet Amos (5:4) had only one: "The Lord says to the people of Israel, 'Come to me and you will live.'"
Jesus summarization of the God's law is the Hebrew 'Shema' from Deut. 6:5; it is not anything particularly original, and so Jesus could not be condemned for it. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and will all your soul, and with all you mind." This is how you paid God back what you owed, with your love. Jesus added also a quotation from the Hebrew Scripture, Lev. 19:18: "Do not take revenge on anyone or continue to hate him, but love your neighbor as you love yourself." Popular belief at the time was that neighbors were often thought of as merely your kinsmen. Although the reading from Exodus 22:21-27, for today, calls for a respect and compassion for resident aliens, remembering that the nation Israel was herself once a resident alien in Egypt. Jesus parable of the Good Samaritan also expanded the notion of who a neighbor was. Even the hated Samaritans could be good neighbors. So Jesus summarizes the 613 commandments of the Hebrew Scriptures into two memorable laws: Love God and love your neighbor in the widest sense of that word as you love yourself.
What is important for us to understand is what love meant when Jesus gave this commandment. We think of love today as a good feeling. We think of love as a romantic inclination. Love is thought of in terms of giving our old left over clothes to the poor. Love of God is giving to the church what's left over after everything else has been paid. Love in modern American Culture is making oneself feel good, or being nice, or polite. Love is a bumper sticker with a heart on it: I (RED HEART) SAILING. Whatever. . . . We have a very psychological and emotional concept of love. We might even say that you can't command people to love. You have to feel love.
The emotional concept of love creates problems for us in a religious sense, because people don't understand what it means to love God whom they cannot see. It's hard to love even Jesus. He was a great persons, no doubt, but how do I love him? He's remote a figure in Scripture, who love 2,000 years ago. People in Jesus' time did not see love as an emotion. Love was an attachment, a belonging. People of this time were very group oriented. The most important thing in your life was your family group. You may not have had a lot of real fuzzy feelings about some people in that group, but you live and died for your family. It was you own security and well being, you survival. Love was attachment and belonging and you did what was expected and commanded by the family.
To love God was not a matter of having a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings about God, but it was a matter of attachment to God with enduring faithfulness. Israel as a nation was expected and commanded to stay attached to God and God's way. They were bound to God in a Covenant relationship. God was your protection and survival. You honored God with obedience and faithfulness. Israel was to be a light to the nations of the world in her faithful attachment to Yahweh God.
When Jesus says love your neighbor, it is again not a matter of warm fuzzy feelings, but to be attached to them as if they were your own family. You were to respect them, honor them, and enable them to participate fully in the community with honor and justice. We are often startled by Jesus command to hate you mother and father; "Whoever loves his father or mother more than me is not fit to be my disciple; whoever loves his son or daughter more than me is not fit to be my disciple." (Matt.10:37; Lk 14:26) This does not mean an emotional abandonment of you family. It means that you need to be attached to Jesus Christ, you need to be in his group and live in accordance with his way and command. In the community of Christ, you belong to one who died for humanity. Therefore the members of the group are willing to die for one another as that's what it means to love or to be attached. You may not be "crazy about" one another, but you respect the dignity of every human being, because that is what Jesus Christ did, and that's what it means to be in his family.
Remember what it was like when you got married, those of you that are. It was all very romantic, and emotional. Lots of good feelings. But to stay married requires so much more than just warm fuzzy feelings. It is an all out devotion in sickness and health, when we grow older. When we enter the demand, tiring and wearing struggle with raising children. When we have to take care of one another's aging and dying parents. When hit high points and low points. Yet still keeping the attachment. Is this not what it means to love God, to be attached and caring on with patience and compassion and caring. The Gospel of John (15:13) expresses it best of all when Jesus says: "My commandment is this: love one another just as I love you. the greates love a person can have for his friends is to give his life for them. And you are my friends if you do what I command you."
It was once so hard for me to imagine that people who came to church Sunday after Sunday, year after year, walked out on one another when we changed the Prayer Book. In American culture attachments are often so weak as people serve only themselves and what feels good for themselves. How can fathers walk out on their children so that they can, so called find "find themselves"? How can wives and husband walk out on one another so incredibly easy? This issue is one we must face as Christians in the community of Christ.
We will say that we cannot be commanded to love. You can't make me have good fuzzy feelings for another person when they just aren't there. Yet unmistakeably, God commands us to love one another. Christ Jesus picked up on that very point to reinforce it. You are commanded to stay attached to God. You are commanded to be attached to one another as you are attached to yourself. We belong to God, and God revealed in Jesus Christ how he was willing to die for us. We are called upon to be attached to and belong to one another. The two commands so far as Jesus was concerned were inseparably linked. If you want a world that is at peace, if you want a world that expresses the Kingdom of God, then you must be attached to the way of God, and you must be attached to one another as the family of God.
When then is the Messiah, the deliverer, the savior? What do you say about him? Is he the militant leader, the Son of David. Is the Messianic hope to be found in devotions to our American rugged individualism? Is the Messiah a devotion to good feelings, niceties and politeness? Is the Messiah a devotion to "finding myself"? Is the Messianic hope is warm and fuzzy feelings? The Messianic hope is in Christ I do believe who calls us to accept the command to love, to be attached firmly to the Creator, and to be attached to a caring compassionate way of life in which we serve one another, and live for one another, in which we will die for one another, as Christ Jesus has done for us.`

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: 24A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 17, 1999

TEXT: Matthew 22:15-22 -The Great Effort at Entrapment
Then the Phariusees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said . . . . "Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?" . . . . Then he said to them, "Give therefor to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are god's."

ISSUE: The signficicant issue of this passage is that the Pharisees and the Herodians are attempting to entrap, dishonor, and essential eliminate the influence of Jesus. In response Jesus challenges their genuine allegiance to doing the will of God, and making every genuine effort to please God. The passage often mistakenly used as a text for keeping church and state separate was never an issue at Jesus' time. Yet whether or not we truly, genuinely, live our lives in an effort to please God is still the concern of the scripture for us today. Adoration and praise of God along with giving and thanksgiving are part of our calling. Living godly lives of caring with sensitivity to human need is an important ingredient of human life. But the world does tend to "squeeze out" our attentativeness to God with many worldly and selfish distractions.
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The gospel passage from Matthew's account regarding the paying of taxes to Caesar was a very sensitive and hot issue at the time Matthew records this story. It was also a very important story of the early church as it is recorded all of the synoptic gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. To fully appreciate the passage requires us to keep in mind what was essentially going on in the story account. We can get very caught up in whether it was appropriate to pay taxes to Caesar, and people equate this with the modern issue of separation of church and state. That's an interesting debate, but not what this passage itself was concerned about. The main issue of this story is that there was a very definite movement to entrap Jesus and to discredit him among the people. To publicly raise the issue of the appropriateness of paying taxes to Caesar and putting Jesus on the spot as this question does put him in a very dangerous position in this attempt to answer it.
Lets consider some of the background, and the issues in Jesus time that are a part of this event. The pharisees and some Herodians come to Jesus to put the question to him. The first thing that they do is to set him up with all kinds of flattery. They address his sincerity. He is indeed an honest man, in what was a very dishonest world. He shows deference to no one, and he cares nothing about what people think. (That was not really true. Jesus raised the issue "Who do the people say that I am?") The pharisees and the Herodians place him high on a pedestal, and then pose a question to him that they are sure will bring him down with a great fall: "Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?" The question implies is it in accord with the Torah (the Law) of God's people to pay tax to a foreign pagan government.
Keep in mind that taxes in this period were exhorbitant, and the head tax in question in this passage was a full day's wage for poor peasants. The day they pay the tax, their families don't eat that day, not to mention many other taxes and tolls that were levied. It is also significant that the pharisees, religious leaders team up with the Herodians when they ask this question. The Herodians were the opposing part of the pharisees. Pharisees resented and hated foreign rule and domination. The Herodians were people supported King Herod who was a puppet king of the Romans. Thus, two opposing parties team up to entrap Jesus and to challenge his honor among the people. If Jesus says "Yes" to paying the tax, he will alienate himself from the masses of peasants. The pharisees will challenge him, because the Torah and the commandments called for a total allegiance to God alone. If Jesus says "No, it is not appropriate to pay taxes to Caesar," then the Herodians would report him, and he would be arrested and condemned for sedition, rebellion, insurrection. This question was really loaded. It might be seen as one of the most vicious attacks by the authorities up to this point. It was a really challenge to Jesus and a significant threat to his honor in that community.
(Let me also insert here that when Matthew is writing this passage, it was after the Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed, and there was great hate of the Romans, so this whole issue of submission and allegiance to Rome was still a very hot issue for the early Christian church community. How were they to deal with the hated enemy? St. Paul too struggled with this issue, and wrote in romans 13 that world authorities had to be respected. But in Col 2:10, Paul writes that Christ is superior over all authority.)
Jesus was an artist at meeting the challenges of the pharisees and ususally ended up humiliating and insulting them. The only except to that, remember, was when the Caananite woman asked him to heal her daughter, and Jesus had said that he came only for the house of Israel, and it was not appropriate to give the childrens' bread to the dogs. She replied stumping Jesus with the challenge: Don't the dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table. Other than that one incidence, Jesus has always come out ahead in his riposte against the pharisees. So in this case what does he do?
Jesus calls for the pharisees who've asked the question about paying the head tax, to produce the coin used for paying the tax. They do. It is a big mistake on their part, and it is their first humiliation. For them to possess the coin is their first humiliation. The coin had the image of Tiberius Caesar on it with the inscription: Tiberius Caesar, Augustus, son of the divine Augustus, high priest. What were the pharisees doing with a coin that bore the image of a Caesar who was considered to be a god? They may have gotten it from the Herodians, but why were the pharisees associating with the unclean Herodians and their Roman coinage? Obviously they are hypocrites. Jesus sort of rubs their noses in that point. Some of them are not so pure as they try to pretend to be. He has humiliated them in fron of the the crowd.
Jesus second point of humiliation is when he says: "Render or pay back to Caesar (the emperor) the things that are Caesars, and pay back to God the thing that are God's." The clear and insulting implication is that the Herodians and the pharisees are not giving to God, the honor they should be giving God. They are all, all of those people gathered there, utterly amazed at his triumph in this very tricky situation. It was a very serious charge that Jesus lays on the Herodians and the pharisees, those religious leaders, that they are not pleasing God. The issue is to be pleasing to God, and they are according to Jesus not doing that very thing. Here is where they are lacking.
What is it that Matthew is trying to tell us in this story when he relates it to the early church? The world is trying to entrap Jesus and to squeeze him out. What was it that Jesus was trying to tell the world? Jesus was certainly trying to reveal the wonder of God, the grace, the love, the healing, the forgiveness of God. Incorporating the loveliness of God into themselves was to be their way of life. Jesus was raising the issue of whether or not people were honoring God in their lives. Do they really love the Lord God with all their heart and with all their mind, and with all their strength . . . . or are they allowing themselves to become distracted by all of the other distractions and things of the world. Give to the world what you owe the world, but the bigger and greater issue is to Give to God what you owe God. How do you respond to the grace of God.
Last weeks parable of the Wedding Feast was concerned with the fact that the King is throwing a grand party and feast, but many in those invited did not appropriately respond. they are busy with other worldly things. One man who gets invited doesn't dress up in an appropriate response to the great invitation. They don't put on the new garment that says God is first and foremost in my life. What does anyone owe God? More, of course, than we could ever repay. But the passage asks us to consider how do we respond to God, and how important is the way of God in our lives.
God gives to us the gift of life. We live and breathe and are consciously aware of all that is around us. We have skills, the ability to reason, talents in varying degrees. We are given challenges which adds dimension and vitality to life. We have a freedom of response to what is given to us. We are assured through our faith of the love, the forgiveness, the mercy and compassion of God. That's all spelled out in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. How then do we respond in such away that we expresses thanksgiving to God that has some vitality to it? Life and saving grace are given. How do we respond to the gift in away that extends, that continues to convey, that exhuberates the joy or the gifts of God? I can't quite find a word that express how you accept God's love, and then live a life that responds appropriately or that is resonant with, or that is a song of God's praise and adoration.
One response is to just give up and to live in the world. Just paying homage to Caesar, to the world. Another response to God's gifts to us is bound up in just trying to be righteous in a way that becomes pharisaical. It's like raising the question: Is it lawful to be a homosexual, or to ordain a homosexual? The church gets itself all involved in this one issue focused on one group in society. Yet, righteous heterosexuals fail to acknowledge their own terrible problems with marriage, the outrageous promiscuity that permeates in real life and on TV, and adultery that abounds around us. We focus on other people without seeing our own faults. Mercy, understanding, compassion get squeezed out, in the way that pharisees and Herodians tried to squeeze out Jesus, and how the priority of a compassionate and merciful God gets squeezed out. Jesus was so desperately saying, I think, that we have to live in the world and we do pay Caesar, but we are also God's, and we have to learn how to live into the fullness of God as well.
We live in a world where there are expectations being place on us all the time. We do have to pay our taxes. We are expected, at least we have been in the past, to serve in the military. We have the demands of family, work, children, social responsibilities. But how do we set God into all that. Do we pray enough, study, enough, worship enough" Do we keep focused on God and the Christ so that our judgments and our moral stance, coupled with God' mercy and compassion keep appropriately in balance. The life of Christ was a life closely associated with God, the Abba, the intimate Father. His life was a giving sacrificing, compassionate life. It touched and touches the world in a profound and significant way. May God help us to keep our priorities appropriately arranged so that we are both enveloped in and extentions of God's redeeming grace.

Pentecost 18A

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Pentecost 18A
PROPER: 21A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: September 26, 1999

TEXT: Matthew 21:28-32 - Parable of the Two Sons
"What do you think? . . . . . he changed his mind. . . . . Which of the two did the will of the father?"

ISSUE: This parable, as obvious as it may seem in terms of who does the will of the Father, is about change. The one son who says "No" to his father does in fact change and do what he is asked. The parable is also a challenge to the Pharisees who are questioning Jesus' authority and his honor status. He answers them with the fact that there is new standard. It is not honor that counts so much as those who actually do the will of God. He is doing it, and the tax collectors and harlots are also changing and stepping into the Domain of God before them. The parable challenges the religious establishment of our own age. Do we merely honor God, or do God's will working in the world vineyard?
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This parable of of the Two Sons seems to us to have a very obvious answer. A father has two sons. He commands them to go and work in the vineyard. The first son says "No" that he will not go, but later changes his mind. The second son says that he will go, "Yes." But he does not. Which one does the will of the father is the question that Jesus asks. The people respond, "The first," that is, the son who said "No" but then changed his mind. The response seems so obvious that it is hardly worth Matthew recording the story. We might say that anybody in his right mind would know the answer to that question. However, understanding the story in the context of Matthew's gospel account, and in terms of what the story meant in Jesus' time puts a new light on to the story.
The parable of the Two Sons follows very shortly after Matthew's account of the Cleansing of the Temple. Recall that Jesus had made a triumphal entry into Jerusalem, where the people cried out, "Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord." He proceeds to the Temple and begins the cleansing process. The tables of the money changers are overturned, and the stools of those who sold pigeons and sacrifices. He begins then to heal, or restore,the blind and crippled in the Temple. The temple authorities, the chief priests then challenge Jesus' authority. Who does he think he is doing these things? They challenge him: Who licensed him, gave him permission to do these things? He has not been licensed or given any authority to do these things by the Temple leadership. They are challenging hsi honor, which is something that could be given to him by other honorable persons. Jesus had no honor by virtue of his birth. He's merely a rebellious son of a carpenter from Nazareth. They challenge the fact that he has no status or authority.
Then Jesus responds with this insulting parable and saying. What do you think? He challenges their sense of logic. A man had two sons. Which did the will of the father, when the father sends them to the vineyard. The one who says "No" but chabnges his mind and later goes, or the one who says "Yes" but doesn't go. They have to answer to their dismay, the one who said "No" but later did go. If Jesus had said which is the more honorable son. They would have had to say, the second. The more honorable son is the one, who even though he doesn't do what his father asks, does not say "No" to his father in public. In public he honors his father with the positive verbal response. "Yes, father I will work in the vineyard." The dishonorable son is the son who says "No" to this father in public, even though he later goes. He dishonors his father and himself by this rebellious behavior in public. Remember the commandment, which these people knew very well: Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother."
What Jesus is saying is that he is no longer buying into their system of empty honorableness. They are challenging him when they themselves pay great tribute to God the Father, but do not really do his will. And doing the will of God is what really counts. Jesus is saying that there has to be change in the system in terms of what is really important. It's not all this phoney honor that counts, but doing the will of the God the Father, that's what counts.
In the story of the Two Sons. The one son says "yes" that he'll go into the vineyard to work, but he really has no intention whatsoever, even though he has giving the honorable response. The son who says "I will not" is changed, and as the text says: "but later he changed his mind and went." He changed. That's the issue. The chief priests and elders, the Temple authorities are challenging Jesus as to his honor and status, but Jesus is saying to them that's not what counts. What counts is being changed enough to do the will of God the father. He rubs salt into their wounds and literally insults his adversaries when he says to them: "Truly I tell you, the tac collectors and prostitiutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you." In a sense he saying that those whom they consider last are going in first. He's saying to them, "Not everyone who calls me 'Lord, Lord," enters the Kingdom of God, but only those who do what my Father in heaven wants them to do." Jesus raises the question which one did the will of the Father, and the answer is easy enough, but in his own time is was a significant challenge to the ways, and thinking of the time. Jesus is doing away with what looks right and honorable, and he's saying essentially it is the actions that speak louder than words and the ability of people to shape-up and change. That's exactly what the tax collectors and the harlots were doing. Yet, the religious leaders were challenging Jesus' honor, his status, his authority. He was stepping out of line, but he was doing, as were so many following him, not what was honorable, but what was the will of the Father.
The story for us today is a call to an awakening. It calls for repentance, change even in our world today, and it challenges us as well, I think, to make the attempt to rediscover what does it mean to work in the vineyard of God, and what is our status. Are we honorable but ineffective, or are we maybe not so honorable but willing to change and enter into the Domain of God and to what is God's will?
When we are children, there comes great independence when we come to appreciate what "No" means and that it has a kind of power to it. Children go through that stage of saying "No" and challenging the parental authority in their lives. Yet as we grow older and sometimes wiser we realize that saying "No" to all authority has consequences. to be co-operative and to support the family and community of which we are apart has real benefits to it.
When we are sensitive to the world around us we know only too well that there is much to be done in the vineyard of God. There is significant suffering and pain around the world. People suffer from earthquakes and hurricane flooding. There are people that are lonely and without family and support in nursing homes. Violence in our society is rampant and increasing numbers of people are suffering from its consequences. Fortunately there are many organizations and churches that find for themselves significnat ministries to answer human need. There are many individuals who lead very active lives in the servanthood ministry. Inspite of the fact that people's resources are sometimes limited, or their time is limited. We have to say "No" to many things. Yet the needs persist, and lives have to be examinined, and we have to wonder what God is calling us to do beyond our own personal needs.
One of the great examples in our society is the tremendous work that is done by A.A. members. They recognize that it is by the grace of God that they find healing from the awful disease of alcoholism. Sometimes a significant part of their lives is saying "No" to God or to their higher power. Once aware of that they must change their lives or die, and recognize there is a saving grace that can come from God, they move eventually into the steps of making amends and of assisting others. They go through a real process of change, coming to their senses, and then moving into a more joyful meaningful life of serving others. sometimes they are stepping into the realm of God long before those religious types who give lip service to God, who say Yes and do honorable things, but are not really into doing the will of the Father.
All of us as Christians, as members of the church have to be awakened occasionally and have to examine our lives. Do we go merely through religious motions, or are we finding the ministries to which God calls us? Sometimes I think we can become settled into a very comfortable group of people, who are good people, and comfortable with one another. We become and are, indeed, very respectable and reputable people. However, we can become very turned in on ourselves as opposed to serving God's world with specific ministries and without much in the way of sacrificial giving and support of Christ's church so that it can effectively do it work amd will in the world. We see ourselves as the privileged, and think that everybody else must change when maybe it is us that needs the changing.
Jesus says to that crowd around him, "What do you think?" then he proposes the story of the two sons. He calls his followers and those who challenge him to thinking and reflection on their lives. While it is obvious who is the one doing the will of the Father, we sometimes miss it's relationship to ourselves and to our lives. All that honor stuff, respectability and privilege, is not what life is about. It is about doing the will of the Father. It is about change, repentace, and taking stock. of our lives as Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ in the world. Sometimes the least among us, those you might not expect, are the very ones who are stepping into the realm of God ahead of us. Some of us are identified in this world as hypocrites, play acters at religion. It could well be that sometimes that is a very fair consideration. Sometimes it is not. But, what do you think? What do you think about your life as a son or daughter of the Father, and as a member of Christ's church in the world?