It is a wonderful scene in that stable so long ago. The animals quietly munching on their hay. Mary and Joseph lovingly peering down at their newborn baby. The star shining in the night, marking this place of miracle. The shepherds curiously looking in from the edge, their hats removed in respect. The angels singing their hearts out, hovering just behind the holy family, the light from their haloes illuminating the scene. The three wise men opposite the shepherds opening their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And in the middle of all this busy scene, there is the baby Jesus cozied down in the soft sweet smelling straw in the manger. Hark, is that the little drummer boy I hear coming? It is all such a beautiful tableaux. It makes for some very pretty Christmas cards.
Too bad it wasn’t anything like that. If anyone has ever been in a barn, they know that it is not sweet smelling and cozy. The stable would have stunk of sweat and manure. It was probably dark, with perhaps only a small oil lamp to light the space. The animals may have wondered why a baby was in their feed trough. Mary and Joseph would have been exhausted from their travels and from childbirth. If the shepherds were there, (they’re not mentioned in the Matthew account), they too would have stunk and been rude. If the three wise men were there (they’re not mentioned in the Luke account), their great gifts would have been used for food and the escape to Egypt from King Herod. The straw would have been scratchy. Even Jesus probably cried in discomfort. And I really don’t think there was a little drummer boy.
That was the reality in which God chose to insert himself into human existence. He chose to come in the form of the lowliest of human beings, dirt poor, rejected from the very first with no room at the inn. He chose to be born among us in the muck and stink of a barn. This is the Christ who came to tell us we had it all wrong, that our God was a God of peace, not violence, a God of abundance, not scarcity, a God of forgiveness, not revenge, a God of love, not division and hate. Ironically, not everyone thought this was good news, especially those in power. This is the Lord and King who comes to be with us, to understand us, to comfort us, not from some distant throne, but here in the muck and mire of our daily, and sometimes stinking, lives. This is the Christ who will die for us in order to call us into a new relationship with him. This is the God who loves us so much, who wants to show us how significant we are his eyes, that he comes to seek us, and calls to us, “Come closer.” We can hardly believe it, not as William Sloane Coffin says, “because he is so hard to believe in, but because he is too good for us to believe in, we being strangers to such goodness.”
Perhaps because it is hard to believe we have made it a myth, a good story. We have done our best to clean up Christmas. We have done our best to sentimentalize it and to make it about family, good times, and gift giving, sometimes extravagant gift giving encouraged by our retail mindset. Don’t get me wrong, I love the lights on the houses, the Christmas trees in the windows, the parties to go to. Those things are fun and heart warming. But let’s not confuse the sentimental Christmas scene, or the gifts under the tree with real Christmas.
William Sloane Coffin has said, “Christians are properly troubled by a commercialized Christmas. My own greater concern is with a sentimentalized one. A commercial Christmas at least never pretends to be anything else. Sentimentality, however, does not arise from the truth; rather it’s what’s poured on top, blurring and distorting the truth.”
The danger of making Christmas into just another Hallmark moment, is of course, that it trivializes what God had done for us. It calls for nothing from us, no response, except perhaps to raise the Kleenex to daub the tears from our eyes. The temptation of sentimentality lets us avoid the humility it takes to acknowledge something greater than we are, to accept God’s dominion over us and our own dependence on him.
By making Christmas a sentimental experience we risk confusing our emotional response as real spirituality. That little tug at our heartstrings may soften our hearts for a few days so that we are nicer to the people around us, but it does not fundamentally alter our lives. You see, that little babe in the manger is dangerous. If we listen to him, really listen to him, he will call us beyond ourselves into a transformative relationship. That little baby will not be satisfied until we have changed, until we have put aside our own egos, our own need for control, and listen to where he is calling us. When Christmas becomes a life-changing experience, then we can talk about how spiritual it is for us.
There are a lot of people today who call themselves spiritual but not religious. Perhaps you are one of them. Religion loses its credibility when it is focused first on our sentimental traditions rather than the deeply authentic meaning that Jesus Christ has for our lives. Religion loses its credibility when it focuses on its own hierarchy and polity, rather than the potential for the gospel to change the world. Religion loses credibility when its liturgy does not reflect our real concerns. Religion loses credibility when it makes no discernable difference in people’s lives. It is not that traditions and liturgy and hierarchy and polity are not good things, they are. They give structure to our spirituality and give ways to express our desires and our regrets, and call us into a community of fellow human beings with similar concerns. If the church is to appeal to people’s spirituality, we must first be authentic to the message of Christ’s saving love for all of us.
A non-sentimental Christmas can still be beautiful. Beauty has the capacity to touch us deeply, to express truth in ways we may have not noticed before, and to change us. When Christ touches us at the center of our spirits, we want to respond in gratitude by honoring him with our best gifts, our best efforts. Our hope is that the beauty of those gifts offered up to Christ, might inspire others to look more deeply into their own spirit, to their own relationship with Christ and be transformed. The beauty of our church, our music, and our liturgy, so lovingly assembled, can help us to reflect on the deeper meaning of the incarnation of God’s love for us.
So the question is, how has Christmas changed us? Has it brought us to our knees in sincere adoration of the one who has brought God down to be among us, cleverly disguised as a little baby? Has it given us the humility to acknowledge that even this babe is greater than we are, and that we need his forgiveness? Has it inspired us to deepen our relationship with God, with others, and ourselves through prayer and worship? Has is it convinced us that we need to go out and work for justice and peace, one person at a time? How have we been transformed?
Unto us a child is born. But this is not just a sweet baby in a romanticized scene far from the reality of our own lives. This is Emmanuel, God with us. He has changed the world, and he can change us. And that is a beautiful thing. O Come let us adore him, Christ our Lord.
The Rev. David Drebert
Sample sermons from the Rev. David Drebert. Contact me for additional information.
Advent 4B
If you are like me, most of the time I really hate to be interrupted. When I am focusing on a project an interruption can knock me off my train of thought. If I am engrossed in a mystery novel or TV program and I am trying to follow the plot, that is not the time I want to start a conversation. Or if I am listening to sublime music at a concert, I get annoyed if someone’s beeper goes off. And I really get annoyed when something intrudes on my best laid plans for the weekend, or the year, or my life for that matter.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t some very good interruptions. I want to be interrupted if a parishioner has an immediate pastoral care need. I want to be interrupted if someone I have not seen in a while drops by to visit. I want to be interrupted by good news.
I wonder how Mary felt about being interrupted by the angel Gabriel. Her life had been going pretty much as planned. She would get married, have a family in due time, and live peaceably in her village where nothing too exciting ever happened. She did not plan to rock the boat. I picture her busily planning her wedding to Joseph, maybe making a wedding dress. I suspect her plans for her life did not include the stigma of a baby born out of wedlock. There is nothing like a baby to produce interruptions. There are the cries for feeding or changing diapers that cannot be scheduled. There is the sleep that is interrupted by the scared child with bad dreams. Later, there will be skinned knees that need to be kissed, the trouble that a spirited kid can get into. I’m sure Mary could not have foreseen the anguish and grief that interrupted her life, as her child was nailed to a cross and was killed. If Mary could see all the changes that would come from that first interruption, would she still say “yes” to God?
Being interrupted by God is not an easy thing. There is not telling what he will ask of us. It is tempting to run away from it. Jonah tried to run away to Tarshish rather than go to Ninevah as God ordered. Moses tried to convince God he had the wrong guy – he couldn’t even talk well. When God interrupts, he may intrude on our plans for the weekend, or the year, or our lives. But God know what he is doing, and he know who he is asking. He also equips us for what he asks, and despite the interruption, there is joy and satisfaction in being part of God’s plan.
David knew what it was like to have his life interrupted. He was the most unlikely of kings, the youngest son of his father Jesse. Being anointed king was not in his plans. He was supposed to be a shepherd. God’s interruption led him into conflict with Saul, with Goliath, even with his own sons. David knew that God was unpredictable in what he might ask. Perhaps that is one reason that David wanted to build a temple for the Lord. Perhaps there God would not create as much mischief. God would not interrupt so often. David’s desire to build a house for God rested in the belief that God was a local God, belonging to Israel, who could be carried about. Somehow God could be kept in a tabernacle, in a box. But it seems that God did not want to be confined in a house or a box, but to be free. The idea seems quaint compared to our belief that God is everywhere, all the time. We know He cannot be contained.
And yet, we seem to put God in a box ourselves from time to time. When we consecrate the Eucharist at communion we believe that somehow, in some mysterious way, that the bread and wine actually holds within it the real presence of Christ. He is really with us in the sacrament. It is not that I say some magical incantation, and I call down Jesus as if I had some kind of superpower. But we believe that Christ cooperates with us, with his church, in joining us and being with us in the bread and wine. That is why we treat the consecrated elements with the utmost respect and reverence, because Jesus is with us in a very real way in the bread and wine. We ingest the bread and the wine, take into ourselves, and Christ becomes part of us, and we become part of Christ. It is a great mystery. And then what do we do? We put what’s left in a box, a fancy silver box to be sure, but still a box.
Of course, we should treat the sacrament with the greatest respect, but we should not fool ourselves in thinking that we can keep Jesus in a box. He is active and everywhere, all around us and within us. There he always seems ready to interrupt us, to butt into our lives. It is up to us to say yes.
We try, I think, to place God in a box in other ways. We may confine our thoughts about God to an hour on Sunday mornings. When we make a decision about our life or when we are tempted to something we shouldn’t or obtain something we don’t need, we might weigh all kinds of factors – will it be profitable, is it what I want to do, will it feel good? We try to follow the path that our parents, or our peers, or our culture has laid for us. Less often do we ask if this is something that God wants for us; we try to leave God in his box. God becomes a tool for us to use to get through life a little better, to take out when we need some comfort, and put back in the box when we don’t need him anymore.
But God will not be kept in a box or a temple, or a tabernacle, but he will make his dwelling place within us. For Mary, that was quite literal; Jesus took up residence in her womb. She was pregnant with God. She was Theotokos, the God bearer. Jesus wants to take up residence within each one of us as well. When we take communion, the real presence of Christ in the bread and the wine, we take Jesus within us, and if we let him, he will take up residence there. We too will be pregnant with God. And from that pregnancy there will come birth, new life. But make no mistake, that new life will interrupt our best laid plans.
God wants us to let him out of the boxes we have made for him. He wants our complete surrender. When we say yes to God, we are in for the greatest adventure of our lives.
It is tempting to keep God in the box, even to wrap the box in pretty paper, and cover it with beautiful tinsel. Maybe even put it under the Christmas tree, so we can open it for that special feeling we get on Christmas Eve that makes us warm and comfortable, helping us to be in fellowship with family and friends, giving us hope for world peace. It evokes that soft, protective, parental feeling we have for vulnerable little babies. That is fine as far as it goes. Remember that this baby will call us to a die to our old selves, will call us to a work that is of God’s purpose that will give us new life, maybe even change history. This baby will interrupt our best laid plans for the weekend, for the year, for our lives.
But with God’s grace we will get beyond the annoyance of the interruption and will be able to say with Mary “ Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
That isn’t to say that there aren’t some very good interruptions. I want to be interrupted if a parishioner has an immediate pastoral care need. I want to be interrupted if someone I have not seen in a while drops by to visit. I want to be interrupted by good news.
I wonder how Mary felt about being interrupted by the angel Gabriel. Her life had been going pretty much as planned. She would get married, have a family in due time, and live peaceably in her village where nothing too exciting ever happened. She did not plan to rock the boat. I picture her busily planning her wedding to Joseph, maybe making a wedding dress. I suspect her plans for her life did not include the stigma of a baby born out of wedlock. There is nothing like a baby to produce interruptions. There are the cries for feeding or changing diapers that cannot be scheduled. There is the sleep that is interrupted by the scared child with bad dreams. Later, there will be skinned knees that need to be kissed, the trouble that a spirited kid can get into. I’m sure Mary could not have foreseen the anguish and grief that interrupted her life, as her child was nailed to a cross and was killed. If Mary could see all the changes that would come from that first interruption, would she still say “yes” to God?
Being interrupted by God is not an easy thing. There is not telling what he will ask of us. It is tempting to run away from it. Jonah tried to run away to Tarshish rather than go to Ninevah as God ordered. Moses tried to convince God he had the wrong guy – he couldn’t even talk well. When God interrupts, he may intrude on our plans for the weekend, or the year, or our lives. But God know what he is doing, and he know who he is asking. He also equips us for what he asks, and despite the interruption, there is joy and satisfaction in being part of God’s plan.
David knew what it was like to have his life interrupted. He was the most unlikely of kings, the youngest son of his father Jesse. Being anointed king was not in his plans. He was supposed to be a shepherd. God’s interruption led him into conflict with Saul, with Goliath, even with his own sons. David knew that God was unpredictable in what he might ask. Perhaps that is one reason that David wanted to build a temple for the Lord. Perhaps there God would not create as much mischief. God would not interrupt so often. David’s desire to build a house for God rested in the belief that God was a local God, belonging to Israel, who could be carried about. Somehow God could be kept in a tabernacle, in a box. But it seems that God did not want to be confined in a house or a box, but to be free. The idea seems quaint compared to our belief that God is everywhere, all the time. We know He cannot be contained.
And yet, we seem to put God in a box ourselves from time to time. When we consecrate the Eucharist at communion we believe that somehow, in some mysterious way, that the bread and wine actually holds within it the real presence of Christ. He is really with us in the sacrament. It is not that I say some magical incantation, and I call down Jesus as if I had some kind of superpower. But we believe that Christ cooperates with us, with his church, in joining us and being with us in the bread and wine. That is why we treat the consecrated elements with the utmost respect and reverence, because Jesus is with us in a very real way in the bread and wine. We ingest the bread and the wine, take into ourselves, and Christ becomes part of us, and we become part of Christ. It is a great mystery. And then what do we do? We put what’s left in a box, a fancy silver box to be sure, but still a box.
Of course, we should treat the sacrament with the greatest respect, but we should not fool ourselves in thinking that we can keep Jesus in a box. He is active and everywhere, all around us and within us. There he always seems ready to interrupt us, to butt into our lives. It is up to us to say yes.
We try, I think, to place God in a box in other ways. We may confine our thoughts about God to an hour on Sunday mornings. When we make a decision about our life or when we are tempted to something we shouldn’t or obtain something we don’t need, we might weigh all kinds of factors – will it be profitable, is it what I want to do, will it feel good? We try to follow the path that our parents, or our peers, or our culture has laid for us. Less often do we ask if this is something that God wants for us; we try to leave God in his box. God becomes a tool for us to use to get through life a little better, to take out when we need some comfort, and put back in the box when we don’t need him anymore.
But God will not be kept in a box or a temple, or a tabernacle, but he will make his dwelling place within us. For Mary, that was quite literal; Jesus took up residence in her womb. She was pregnant with God. She was Theotokos, the God bearer. Jesus wants to take up residence within each one of us as well. When we take communion, the real presence of Christ in the bread and the wine, we take Jesus within us, and if we let him, he will take up residence there. We too will be pregnant with God. And from that pregnancy there will come birth, new life. But make no mistake, that new life will interrupt our best laid plans.
God wants us to let him out of the boxes we have made for him. He wants our complete surrender. When we say yes to God, we are in for the greatest adventure of our lives.
It is tempting to keep God in the box, even to wrap the box in pretty paper, and cover it with beautiful tinsel. Maybe even put it under the Christmas tree, so we can open it for that special feeling we get on Christmas Eve that makes us warm and comfortable, helping us to be in fellowship with family and friends, giving us hope for world peace. It evokes that soft, protective, parental feeling we have for vulnerable little babies. That is fine as far as it goes. Remember that this baby will call us to a die to our old selves, will call us to a work that is of God’s purpose that will give us new life, maybe even change history. This baby will interrupt our best laid plans for the weekend, for the year, for our lives.
But with God’s grace we will get beyond the annoyance of the interruption and will be able to say with Mary “ Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
Pentecost 4 2011
Suppose I gave everyone in Binghamton a $1000 bill. What if I just handed them out, with no strings attached. You could do with it whatever you wanted. It wouldn’t matter who you were – whether you were a long term resident or a newcomer from away, a homeowner, renter, or homeless. Everyone gets $1000. Now remember, this is just a thought experiment – I’m not actually going to hand out $1000 bills. It would be fascinating to see what people did with their free gift.
I imagine that many people would go out and quickly spend their money. Perhaps they would go to the off-track betting store, and most likely quickly lose their money. Or perhaps they would buy a toy or video game of some kind for themselves. It would please them for a time, they would find it fun and attractive, but before long they would begin to lose interest, and set their toy aside. Or perhaps they would invest it in a hot stock in a hedge fund, only to find their money has disappeared.
But there might be a few folks who invest their free money more wisely in other ways. Perhaps they would use it to pay tuition for a course they wanted to take, one that paid off in a promotion at work. Perhaps they tithed some of that money to their church so the church could help change the lives of others. Perhaps they paid off debt or put it in savings. Perhaps that gift would pay off for them thirty, or sixty, or a hundredfold.
What do you think people would do with the $1000? What would you do with yours?
Of course, you would think that I had gone crazy, giving away all that money with no expectation of getting anything in return. It’s all very unlikely, and goes against common sense. And yet, I’ll bet it makes you think.
That’s what Jesus’ parables are all about. They are unlikely, often go against common sense, and yet they make us think. They are a kind of thought experiment. I hope you caught that my little parable paralleled Jesus’ parable of the sower. The money that was gambled was like the seed that fell on the path and the birds came and ate them up. The money spent on toys and games was like the seed that fell among thorns, sprang up for a short time, and was choked. Money spent on a hot stock looked great until the heat scorched it and disappeared, like the seed that fell on the rocks.
Jesus’ parable would have been shocking to his listeners. Seed was a precious commodity, and farmers would have been very careful to plant them in the best conditions where they could grow. To just broadcast them willy-nilly would have been an unthinkable waste. You would never spread them on a path, or on hot rocks, or among thorns. $1000 bills are a precious commodity, too, and I am not likely to be giving them away willy-nilly either.
The first thing we need to do when we encounter a parable is to figure out who the players are, and what things stand for. The Sower is God. The seed is the Word, or Jesus himself. The different kinds of soil are all of us, in all of our human frailty, diversity, and conditions. The plants are the fruits that we bear in the interaction of seed and soil, the interaction of Jesus and us. Through the parable, Jesus is trying to tell us something very important about our relationship with God, with him, and about the nature of the kingdom of God.
So why doesn’t Jesus just tell us straight out? Why go around the barn, so to speak, to make his point? In fact, in the part in between the sections of gospel we read, that is exactly what the disciples ask Jesus. “Why do you speak to them in parables?” He answered, “ To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven…seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.” In other words, if we try to use our normal vision and hearing and ways of thinking, we will never understand. We have to first accept that the kingdom he tells us about does not operate in the ways we assume our world works. There are secrets and there are mysteries. Only by accepting the mystery will we begin to understand. Only by accepting that God works in radically different ways than our culture assumes, will we know what he is talking about. It is a matter of faith.
The people expected a messiah who would come with sword and force and violence to free the nation from bondage. But Jesus says the word comes as a small seed, a seed that disappears when covered by the earth. He ministered to the least, the lost, and the lonely, hardly where one would expect a great leader to emerge. And yet his fruit is abundant, affecting the whole world, even two thousand years later. How could that be? It is a mystery.
The seed, small as it is, when it is planted even among thorns or on rocky ground, springs up and begins to grow. The seed does what it is supposed to do. Even the seed stolen by the birds, is likely to be dropped on more fertile ground. The Word, small as it is, also does what it is supposed to do. It is sown in the heart, it gives joy to the one who hears, it is heard even by those who cannot nurture it. Whether the seed or the word bears fruit, depends on the conditions in which it is sown. Unfortunately, much of the human condition is hostile to the word, because we are easily distracted by the cares of the world, the lure of wealth, or because of evil, trouble, and persecution. Jesus faced that hostility directly in crucifixion and death.
Jesus’ parables usually use common, everyday experiences, though perhaps turned upside down. Sowing seed and planting were activities most people could relate to. I think this was Jesus’ way of saying that the kingdom is not some distant event. The kingdom has begun here and now, in the real world. If we would only see the world through the mystery of the word, we would know that we are in the midst of it. It is not just something for after our death, or at the apocalypse.
While it may be hard to understand the parables, it does call from us some kind of response. The purpose of the Word is to produce people in whom the power of God bears fruit. We can walk away, shaking our heads, and go on the way we always have. Or we can begin to live as if the mystery of the word of God was growing in us. Our soil can be transformed into fertile ground. Rocks are broken down over time by wind and water, thorns can be weeded out, birds can be shooed away. We become fertile ground by practicing mercy, compassion, and love. The Word of God grows in us through prayer and study and worship. Then perhaps, seeing, we will perceive; hearing we will listen and understand.
We won’t be giving out $1000 bills today, but you do receive something even more valuable, the Word of God. May your soil be fertile so that it grows and bears amazing fruit.
I imagine that many people would go out and quickly spend their money. Perhaps they would go to the off-track betting store, and most likely quickly lose their money. Or perhaps they would buy a toy or video game of some kind for themselves. It would please them for a time, they would find it fun and attractive, but before long they would begin to lose interest, and set their toy aside. Or perhaps they would invest it in a hot stock in a hedge fund, only to find their money has disappeared.
But there might be a few folks who invest their free money more wisely in other ways. Perhaps they would use it to pay tuition for a course they wanted to take, one that paid off in a promotion at work. Perhaps they tithed some of that money to their church so the church could help change the lives of others. Perhaps they paid off debt or put it in savings. Perhaps that gift would pay off for them thirty, or sixty, or a hundredfold.
What do you think people would do with the $1000? What would you do with yours?
Of course, you would think that I had gone crazy, giving away all that money with no expectation of getting anything in return. It’s all very unlikely, and goes against common sense. And yet, I’ll bet it makes you think.
That’s what Jesus’ parables are all about. They are unlikely, often go against common sense, and yet they make us think. They are a kind of thought experiment. I hope you caught that my little parable paralleled Jesus’ parable of the sower. The money that was gambled was like the seed that fell on the path and the birds came and ate them up. The money spent on toys and games was like the seed that fell among thorns, sprang up for a short time, and was choked. Money spent on a hot stock looked great until the heat scorched it and disappeared, like the seed that fell on the rocks.
Jesus’ parable would have been shocking to his listeners. Seed was a precious commodity, and farmers would have been very careful to plant them in the best conditions where they could grow. To just broadcast them willy-nilly would have been an unthinkable waste. You would never spread them on a path, or on hot rocks, or among thorns. $1000 bills are a precious commodity, too, and I am not likely to be giving them away willy-nilly either.
The first thing we need to do when we encounter a parable is to figure out who the players are, and what things stand for. The Sower is God. The seed is the Word, or Jesus himself. The different kinds of soil are all of us, in all of our human frailty, diversity, and conditions. The plants are the fruits that we bear in the interaction of seed and soil, the interaction of Jesus and us. Through the parable, Jesus is trying to tell us something very important about our relationship with God, with him, and about the nature of the kingdom of God.
So why doesn’t Jesus just tell us straight out? Why go around the barn, so to speak, to make his point? In fact, in the part in between the sections of gospel we read, that is exactly what the disciples ask Jesus. “Why do you speak to them in parables?” He answered, “ To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven…seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.” In other words, if we try to use our normal vision and hearing and ways of thinking, we will never understand. We have to first accept that the kingdom he tells us about does not operate in the ways we assume our world works. There are secrets and there are mysteries. Only by accepting the mystery will we begin to understand. Only by accepting that God works in radically different ways than our culture assumes, will we know what he is talking about. It is a matter of faith.
The people expected a messiah who would come with sword and force and violence to free the nation from bondage. But Jesus says the word comes as a small seed, a seed that disappears when covered by the earth. He ministered to the least, the lost, and the lonely, hardly where one would expect a great leader to emerge. And yet his fruit is abundant, affecting the whole world, even two thousand years later. How could that be? It is a mystery.
The seed, small as it is, when it is planted even among thorns or on rocky ground, springs up and begins to grow. The seed does what it is supposed to do. Even the seed stolen by the birds, is likely to be dropped on more fertile ground. The Word, small as it is, also does what it is supposed to do. It is sown in the heart, it gives joy to the one who hears, it is heard even by those who cannot nurture it. Whether the seed or the word bears fruit, depends on the conditions in which it is sown. Unfortunately, much of the human condition is hostile to the word, because we are easily distracted by the cares of the world, the lure of wealth, or because of evil, trouble, and persecution. Jesus faced that hostility directly in crucifixion and death.
Jesus’ parables usually use common, everyday experiences, though perhaps turned upside down. Sowing seed and planting were activities most people could relate to. I think this was Jesus’ way of saying that the kingdom is not some distant event. The kingdom has begun here and now, in the real world. If we would only see the world through the mystery of the word, we would know that we are in the midst of it. It is not just something for after our death, or at the apocalypse.
While it may be hard to understand the parables, it does call from us some kind of response. The purpose of the Word is to produce people in whom the power of God bears fruit. We can walk away, shaking our heads, and go on the way we always have. Or we can begin to live as if the mystery of the word of God was growing in us. Our soil can be transformed into fertile ground. Rocks are broken down over time by wind and water, thorns can be weeded out, birds can be shooed away. We become fertile ground by practicing mercy, compassion, and love. The Word of God grows in us through prayer and study and worship. Then perhaps, seeing, we will perceive; hearing we will listen and understand.
We won’t be giving out $1000 bills today, but you do receive something even more valuable, the Word of God. May your soil be fertile so that it grows and bears amazing fruit.
Pentecost 5 July 17, 2011
When I was a kid my father had a small garden in the backyard, which was his pride and joy. Now my Dad worked long stretches of shift work for the weather bureau, and there were times when he could not get to caring for his garden. His patch was beginning to look a little messy and chaotic. So one day when I was about 8 or 9, I decided I was going to help my father by pulling the weeds out of the garden. My problem was that I did not know what was a weed and what was a good plant, so I had to make some guesses. I think I pulled out a whole row of beans. I’m sure it must have been a vegetable that I didn’t much care for, anyway. Of course, my Dad was not real pleased with that, but lucky for me he saw my good intentions, and not the actual results of my “good” deed, and he taught me the difference between weeds and good plants. He also taught me that sometimes we have to let the plants grow long enough to be able to identify whether they were good plants or weeds.
It is a good thing to keep our gardens weeded. Otherwise the weeds will take over the garden, stunt the growth of the plants we want to grow by competing for food, sunlight, and nutrients. We all admire the garden that has lush growth of tomatoes, corn, and beans, all in straight rows, with no weeds in sight. We know that the gardener there will have a great crop. The slaves in the gospel parable knew that, too. They probably wanted to be seen as good workers, who produced a good crop. They wanted to pluck out the weeds so the harvest would be plentiful. But the householder knew that the roots of the weeds grew in a way that the roots were intertwined with the wheat. Weeding would destroy most of the harvest.
Weeding is fine when it comes to our gardens. The problem comes of course when the crop is people. Our human impulse is to cull out the people who do evil things, weed out those who aren’t productive, or at least marginalize them so they don’t get in the way of us productive people. Perhaps we can help God along a little bit, by getting rid of the weeds, and by exterminating evil. Perhaps we think we can help God bring the Kingdom a little sooner. But our roots are intertwined, and exterminating evil only damages us as well.
The movie Hotel Rwanda is about the genocide of Tutsi’s by Hutu tribes-people. The Hutu believed that the Tutsi’s were inherently evil, by nature of their birth. They called them cockroaches, and because they believed that by exterminating them they would make Rwanda a better place, they felt justified in all kinds of horrendous torture, mutilation, and killing. They diminished themselves, doing evil things trying to fight evil. It happens in many places, in Nazi Germany, in Darfur, in Serbia. These are not distant, ancient events. They have happened within our recent memories, and by people not so very different from us, even by Christians.
Great evil can begin with wonderful intentions. Hitler began with the notion of restoring national pride and honor to Germany. Osama bin Laden began with the intention of standing up for the poor and downtrodden of his people in Saudi Arabia. The folks who flew airplaines into the World Trade Center believed that they were instruments of God’s vengeance, and that they would receive God’s blessings for what they saw as their heroic sacrifice. They could not see the evil they were doing had transformed them into weeds themselves.
But Jesus tells us there is another way. And that way is to be patient, to wait, and let him sort it all out. Jesus does not say that we are all good, that evil does not exist, or that if we wait long enough all evil will be turned to good. But he does say that it is not up to us to judge that evil. When we do we may find that there is evil that exists in our own hearts, and we will be judging ourselves.
Yes evil resides among us. And we as a society must do what we can to protect us from its effects. But we cannot think that we can weed it out, and leave only the wheat. We may find that if we let it grow, that what we thought was weed, is wheat that just looks a little different.
If we look closely enough, we may even find that we even have a few weedy characteristics ourselves, though we may try to hide it. For the most part the world is not divided into good people and evil people, but each of us contains both good and evil intentions. If we let him, Jesus can transform evil into good, weeds into wheat, and if it cannot transformed, it is up to God to deal with the consequences. That is the hope Christ gives us – the hope of transformation and redemption.
Harvest day will come soon enough. We cannot escape God’s judgment. How will God deal with the weeds then? Of course, that it not for us to know. We tend to think in terms of absolutes, that people will either be all good and acceptable and gathered into the barn, or they will be evil and be burned. But if we are all a mixture of good and evil, good intentions and selfish bad intentions, how will God deal with us then? If God is just, how will he separate the good from the bad in each person?
When I was in college I worked as an orderly in a hospital. I recall one young man who had been badly burned. I had to help get him up from bed and support him as he walked up and down the corridor. Every day his burns had to be washed and cleaned. They tended to scab over, and so some areas had to be scrubbed. You can imagine how excruciating the pain must have been. I’m sure there have been advances in how burns are treated today. But in order for that young man to be healed and whole, he had to be washed, however painful it was.
I would suggest that could be a metaphor for one way for us to think about God’s judgment. Although, it is not language we tend to use in our church, we have all heard about being “washed in the blood of the lamb,” and coming out reconciled, forgiven, clean, and whole. It sounds like a rather benign kind of process. But I wonder if it isn’t more like an acid bath, when our scabs and dirt are scrubbed away. We will be shown how our sins have hurt those we love, how our actions and intentions have hurt God, how we have hurt ourselves. Our remorse will be painful. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The deeper our sins, the deeper the cleaning must go. In order for us to be healed and whole, we must be washed, however painful it may be.
We already know the painfulness of sincere confession and repentance as we catalogue the ways we have hurt God, or others, or ourselves. We recognize the scabs that have formed over our wounds. Through self-examination we see that what we thought was wheat, might really be weeds. Perhaps the more we can scrub away now, the more we can live as fruitful wheat now, the less scrubbing we will need later. Even the good wheat must be threshed and separated from the chaff.
We sometimes wonder how God can be both just and merciful. By God’s justice, we are not off the hook. We are responsible for our weeds, the unhealthy things we allow to grow up beside our good character. But by God’s mercy, God is unwilling to sacrifice whatever is good in order to keep his garden pure. Even if that means that life will be chaotic and messy. Even if that means that evil will have its day. But the good news is that all of us will be gathered in the harvest, even if we must take a bath, and we will be washed clean and be healthy and whole. At the harvest, justice and mercy will meet each other, and we will be gathered in.
It is a good thing to keep our gardens weeded. Otherwise the weeds will take over the garden, stunt the growth of the plants we want to grow by competing for food, sunlight, and nutrients. We all admire the garden that has lush growth of tomatoes, corn, and beans, all in straight rows, with no weeds in sight. We know that the gardener there will have a great crop. The slaves in the gospel parable knew that, too. They probably wanted to be seen as good workers, who produced a good crop. They wanted to pluck out the weeds so the harvest would be plentiful. But the householder knew that the roots of the weeds grew in a way that the roots were intertwined with the wheat. Weeding would destroy most of the harvest.
Weeding is fine when it comes to our gardens. The problem comes of course when the crop is people. Our human impulse is to cull out the people who do evil things, weed out those who aren’t productive, or at least marginalize them so they don’t get in the way of us productive people. Perhaps we can help God along a little bit, by getting rid of the weeds, and by exterminating evil. Perhaps we think we can help God bring the Kingdom a little sooner. But our roots are intertwined, and exterminating evil only damages us as well.
The movie Hotel Rwanda is about the genocide of Tutsi’s by Hutu tribes-people. The Hutu believed that the Tutsi’s were inherently evil, by nature of their birth. They called them cockroaches, and because they believed that by exterminating them they would make Rwanda a better place, they felt justified in all kinds of horrendous torture, mutilation, and killing. They diminished themselves, doing evil things trying to fight evil. It happens in many places, in Nazi Germany, in Darfur, in Serbia. These are not distant, ancient events. They have happened within our recent memories, and by people not so very different from us, even by Christians.
Great evil can begin with wonderful intentions. Hitler began with the notion of restoring national pride and honor to Germany. Osama bin Laden began with the intention of standing up for the poor and downtrodden of his people in Saudi Arabia. The folks who flew airplaines into the World Trade Center believed that they were instruments of God’s vengeance, and that they would receive God’s blessings for what they saw as their heroic sacrifice. They could not see the evil they were doing had transformed them into weeds themselves.
But Jesus tells us there is another way. And that way is to be patient, to wait, and let him sort it all out. Jesus does not say that we are all good, that evil does not exist, or that if we wait long enough all evil will be turned to good. But he does say that it is not up to us to judge that evil. When we do we may find that there is evil that exists in our own hearts, and we will be judging ourselves.
Yes evil resides among us. And we as a society must do what we can to protect us from its effects. But we cannot think that we can weed it out, and leave only the wheat. We may find that if we let it grow, that what we thought was weed, is wheat that just looks a little different.
If we look closely enough, we may even find that we even have a few weedy characteristics ourselves, though we may try to hide it. For the most part the world is not divided into good people and evil people, but each of us contains both good and evil intentions. If we let him, Jesus can transform evil into good, weeds into wheat, and if it cannot transformed, it is up to God to deal with the consequences. That is the hope Christ gives us – the hope of transformation and redemption.
Harvest day will come soon enough. We cannot escape God’s judgment. How will God deal with the weeds then? Of course, that it not for us to know. We tend to think in terms of absolutes, that people will either be all good and acceptable and gathered into the barn, or they will be evil and be burned. But if we are all a mixture of good and evil, good intentions and selfish bad intentions, how will God deal with us then? If God is just, how will he separate the good from the bad in each person?
When I was in college I worked as an orderly in a hospital. I recall one young man who had been badly burned. I had to help get him up from bed and support him as he walked up and down the corridor. Every day his burns had to be washed and cleaned. They tended to scab over, and so some areas had to be scrubbed. You can imagine how excruciating the pain must have been. I’m sure there have been advances in how burns are treated today. But in order for that young man to be healed and whole, he had to be washed, however painful it was.
I would suggest that could be a metaphor for one way for us to think about God’s judgment. Although, it is not language we tend to use in our church, we have all heard about being “washed in the blood of the lamb,” and coming out reconciled, forgiven, clean, and whole. It sounds like a rather benign kind of process. But I wonder if it isn’t more like an acid bath, when our scabs and dirt are scrubbed away. We will be shown how our sins have hurt those we love, how our actions and intentions have hurt God, how we have hurt ourselves. Our remorse will be painful. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The deeper our sins, the deeper the cleaning must go. In order for us to be healed and whole, we must be washed, however painful it may be.
We already know the painfulness of sincere confession and repentance as we catalogue the ways we have hurt God, or others, or ourselves. We recognize the scabs that have formed over our wounds. Through self-examination we see that what we thought was wheat, might really be weeds. Perhaps the more we can scrub away now, the more we can live as fruitful wheat now, the less scrubbing we will need later. Even the good wheat must be threshed and separated from the chaff.
We sometimes wonder how God can be both just and merciful. By God’s justice, we are not off the hook. We are responsible for our weeds, the unhealthy things we allow to grow up beside our good character. But by God’s mercy, God is unwilling to sacrifice whatever is good in order to keep his garden pure. Even if that means that life will be chaotic and messy. Even if that means that evil will have its day. But the good news is that all of us will be gathered in the harvest, even if we must take a bath, and we will be washed clean and be healthy and whole. At the harvest, justice and mercy will meet each other, and we will be gathered in.
Epiphany 8, 2011
“Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”
That part of today’s gospel begs the question about God’s providence. Jesus tells us not to worry, saying “What will we eat? Or What shall we drink? Or What shall we wear?” Yet most of us do worry about such things. We worry about our security, about our retirement, about food and clothing. I believe that we all have a responsibility to work to our capacity, to plan for the future, and to provide for ourselves so that we do not become an unnecessary burden on others.
Some of you know my first career was as a biologist. I know that not all the birds of the air get fed. Often only a small fraction of a species survives to adulthood. Often it is only the strongest that survive. It is the way of nature, and it is a good thing because otherwise the world would be grossly overpopulated. We live in a world where children starve to death at an unconscionable rate, not because there is not enough food but because of political division. Of course we should worry.
I am talking with a congregation that knows some people do not get enough to eat or drink, who do not have enough clothing to stay warm on a cold day, who do not have a place of shelter to sleep comfortably. I am talking to people who know that some people die without enough to keep them alive, not even enough to be buried properly.
I cannot in good conscience preach prosperity theology, which says that if we only believe the right things, live a righteous life by following the rules, that we will be blessed with material affluence. But the corollary of prosperity theology is that if you are poor, that you have been cursed by God. I don’t believe that, and I don’t think that Jesus believed it either.
So how are we to interpret today’s gospel?
First, let me say that God has provided us a great deal, and he has provided in abundance, but we may not view abundance in quite the same way. Each one of us has been given the great gift of life itself. We have been given a share in God’s creation to enjoy it, sometimes to use it as co-creators with him. We have all been given the gift of time in equal measure every day, to use as we see best. We have been given the dignity of being made in God’s image. Homeless or not, hungry or not, we are all precious in God’s sight. We have been given the opportunity to have a spiritual relationship with God, and he has promised to be with us in suffering, to be available when we seek him. He has promised to love us through thick and thin. Each of us has been given gifts of the Spirit that helps to build up our community. These are not to be sneezed at.
The trouble is we have been conditioned to be concerned about what we do not have, rather than to be grateful for what we do have. The whole purpose of advertising and marketing is to inform us that we need something that we do not already have, or that we need something better than what we have. We are cajoled into comparing ourselves to some airbrushed standard of beauty, and find ourselves lacking. That lack can only be fixed if we buy such and such shampoo. Or our 19 inch television is so out of date – we need, NEED, the 36 inch high-def model. We have been conditioned to believe that we are never good enough, never worthy enough, never have enough. We are conditioned to measure our worthiness by what we possess, and so we are anxious to accumulate more and more. Like the bumper sticker says, “He who dies with the most toys, wins.”
Second, God’s abundance seems to come to us when we share. I know that most of you have had the experience of helping people, through the Red Door, or the Gathering, or mentoring kids, or other ministry. I know, and many of you know, that we almost always feel that we receive back from that ministry more than we gave. Perhaps not in material goods, but in that most precious feeling that we have done some good for someone else. When we share and give of ourselves we become God’s providence to other people.
That highlights the other abundance that cannot be measured in dollars. True riches are found in relationships, I believe. We are made by God to be social animals. We could not survive alone. We need the intimacy of friends and family to be healthy and whole. A recent study has shown that loneliness can actually make us sick and shorten our lives as much as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Giving of ourselves, sharing what we have, is the basis of righteousness and the foundation of community. And when we find ourselves in situations where we lack what we need, the communities we belong to will often help fill our own need. That too is God’s providence for those who live righteously.
Third, I don’t think that Jesus is trying to say that our own material necessities are not a proper matter of concern for us. But he does say that we should not worry about it, we should not be anxious about it. There is a difference between proper concern and obsession. Indeed, we do not have to look far to see folks who have been obsessed by their possessions. They become possessed by what they own, not the other way round. For them, their identity, their worthiness is defined by what they have and can control. In a twisted sort of way, their success tells them that they have earned God’s favor. But we know that our dignity and worth is given by God as a free gift. Our identity is defined not by what we own, but by being children of God.
All of this is quite as counter cultural today as it was in Jesus’ time. We live in a time and a place where individual choice is one of our highest values. But we choose to find our freedom in serving God and others. That is counter cultural. We live in an economy which seems to depend on ever growing consumer demand. But we choose to live simply, sharing what we have in gratitude for what we have been given. That is counter cultural. We live in a culture where independence is a right. But we choose to live in obedience to a higher power, interdependently with our community. That is counter cultural.
We are not perfect at following those choices, of course. We too are tempted by the glitzy offerings of the market, and to the extent that they offer real progress, they are not bad things. We too want to assert our independence, especially when the community decides on something with which we disagree. We too want to make our own choices. But we do not measure our success in the perfection of our living. We measure our success in the seeking to be good people living good lives.
Jesus said “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” When we seek to be in relationship with God and Jesus, we will know the peace and love which affirms our worthiness. When we seek to lead a good life, a righteous life, we will grow in character, becoming fully human as God means us to be.
Seek first the kingdom of God, seek first righteousness. I can’t promise you a Mercedes Benz, but I believe you will find a providence and abundance of spirit which surpasses our earthly expectations.
That part of today’s gospel begs the question about God’s providence. Jesus tells us not to worry, saying “What will we eat? Or What shall we drink? Or What shall we wear?” Yet most of us do worry about such things. We worry about our security, about our retirement, about food and clothing. I believe that we all have a responsibility to work to our capacity, to plan for the future, and to provide for ourselves so that we do not become an unnecessary burden on others.
Some of you know my first career was as a biologist. I know that not all the birds of the air get fed. Often only a small fraction of a species survives to adulthood. Often it is only the strongest that survive. It is the way of nature, and it is a good thing because otherwise the world would be grossly overpopulated. We live in a world where children starve to death at an unconscionable rate, not because there is not enough food but because of political division. Of course we should worry.
I am talking with a congregation that knows some people do not get enough to eat or drink, who do not have enough clothing to stay warm on a cold day, who do not have a place of shelter to sleep comfortably. I am talking to people who know that some people die without enough to keep them alive, not even enough to be buried properly.
I cannot in good conscience preach prosperity theology, which says that if we only believe the right things, live a righteous life by following the rules, that we will be blessed with material affluence. But the corollary of prosperity theology is that if you are poor, that you have been cursed by God. I don’t believe that, and I don’t think that Jesus believed it either.
So how are we to interpret today’s gospel?
First, let me say that God has provided us a great deal, and he has provided in abundance, but we may not view abundance in quite the same way. Each one of us has been given the great gift of life itself. We have been given a share in God’s creation to enjoy it, sometimes to use it as co-creators with him. We have all been given the gift of time in equal measure every day, to use as we see best. We have been given the dignity of being made in God’s image. Homeless or not, hungry or not, we are all precious in God’s sight. We have been given the opportunity to have a spiritual relationship with God, and he has promised to be with us in suffering, to be available when we seek him. He has promised to love us through thick and thin. Each of us has been given gifts of the Spirit that helps to build up our community. These are not to be sneezed at.
The trouble is we have been conditioned to be concerned about what we do not have, rather than to be grateful for what we do have. The whole purpose of advertising and marketing is to inform us that we need something that we do not already have, or that we need something better than what we have. We are cajoled into comparing ourselves to some airbrushed standard of beauty, and find ourselves lacking. That lack can only be fixed if we buy such and such shampoo. Or our 19 inch television is so out of date – we need, NEED, the 36 inch high-def model. We have been conditioned to believe that we are never good enough, never worthy enough, never have enough. We are conditioned to measure our worthiness by what we possess, and so we are anxious to accumulate more and more. Like the bumper sticker says, “He who dies with the most toys, wins.”
Second, God’s abundance seems to come to us when we share. I know that most of you have had the experience of helping people, through the Red Door, or the Gathering, or mentoring kids, or other ministry. I know, and many of you know, that we almost always feel that we receive back from that ministry more than we gave. Perhaps not in material goods, but in that most precious feeling that we have done some good for someone else. When we share and give of ourselves we become God’s providence to other people.
That highlights the other abundance that cannot be measured in dollars. True riches are found in relationships, I believe. We are made by God to be social animals. We could not survive alone. We need the intimacy of friends and family to be healthy and whole. A recent study has shown that loneliness can actually make us sick and shorten our lives as much as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Giving of ourselves, sharing what we have, is the basis of righteousness and the foundation of community. And when we find ourselves in situations where we lack what we need, the communities we belong to will often help fill our own need. That too is God’s providence for those who live righteously.
Third, I don’t think that Jesus is trying to say that our own material necessities are not a proper matter of concern for us. But he does say that we should not worry about it, we should not be anxious about it. There is a difference between proper concern and obsession. Indeed, we do not have to look far to see folks who have been obsessed by their possessions. They become possessed by what they own, not the other way round. For them, their identity, their worthiness is defined by what they have and can control. In a twisted sort of way, their success tells them that they have earned God’s favor. But we know that our dignity and worth is given by God as a free gift. Our identity is defined not by what we own, but by being children of God.
All of this is quite as counter cultural today as it was in Jesus’ time. We live in a time and a place where individual choice is one of our highest values. But we choose to find our freedom in serving God and others. That is counter cultural. We live in an economy which seems to depend on ever growing consumer demand. But we choose to live simply, sharing what we have in gratitude for what we have been given. That is counter cultural. We live in a culture where independence is a right. But we choose to live in obedience to a higher power, interdependently with our community. That is counter cultural.
We are not perfect at following those choices, of course. We too are tempted by the glitzy offerings of the market, and to the extent that they offer real progress, they are not bad things. We too want to assert our independence, especially when the community decides on something with which we disagree. We too want to make our own choices. But we do not measure our success in the perfection of our living. We measure our success in the seeking to be good people living good lives.
Jesus said “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” When we seek to be in relationship with God and Jesus, we will know the peace and love which affirms our worthiness. When we seek to lead a good life, a righteous life, we will grow in character, becoming fully human as God means us to be.
Seek first the kingdom of God, seek first righteousness. I can’t promise you a Mercedes Benz, but I believe you will find a providence and abundance of spirit which surpasses our earthly expectations.
Epiphany 7, 2011
Most of us would like to be judged on our good intentions, not necessarily on things we actually do. We want to do the right thing, but so often temptations or distractions get in our way. I may intend to eat properly in order to stay on a healthy diet, but if I am distracted and eat too many treats, my body is not going to judge me by my intention. I will gain weight. Some good intentions which go astray are less benign. I’m sure that when a newly elected senator or congressman first is elected, they have all sorts of ideas of the good that they are going to do in Washington. But soon, their intentions are corrupted by the need to raise money for reelection; they become captive to the interests that support them, and they become part of the system. I understand that even Osama bin Laden did not start off with the idea that he would start a terrorist organization; his intention was to help the poor people of Saudi Arabia. What starts off as well intentioned can soon become corrupted by our human desires for power, or recognition, or security. The best of intentions can turn evil.
Our institutions start with great purpose to serve humanity, but they can be corrupted too. We all get caught up in them, we become enmeshed in them. There is a scene in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath in which a bank manager comes out to a farm to tell the owner that his farm has been foreclosed. The manager is his neighbor and friend, and he would do anything to help, but he is an agent of the bank and has to do his duty. It’s just business, and they are both caught up in the system. The leaders of Egypt probably wanted a good life for the people, but threats to their power resulted in a brutal repression instead. They too were caught up in their corrupted system. Our own banking system exists to help people with financial concerns, but it became corrupted by greed, lost its bearings, and almost brought down the whole financial system. Our healthcare system is in place to help people who are sick and injured, but it has become so big, and people, hospitals and insurance companies are making so much money from it, it is draining our economy without improving our overall health. Even churches whose purpose is to form people with the Good News of Jesus, providing hope for the world, are susceptible to power plays, sexual misconduct, and doctrinaire and exclusionary behavior. It is so with all of our human institutions, and we are caught up in the corruptions of the systems, sometimes as victims, sometimes even as perpetrators.
The thing is, we need these systems. They exist for good reasons, they begin with good intentions. They provide governance and justice, help the sick, give people jobs, help with finances. We need government, we need churches, we need banks, and we need healthcare. How do we deal with them when they become corrupted, when they do not live up to their good intentions? If they cannot be destroyed, they must be redeemed.
Our temptation is to destroy evil and to kill our enemies. Walter Wink calls this the myth of redemptive violence. It is a myth that is ingrained in our culture. It is in many of our movies and stories. Clint Eastwood comes to town and blows away the bad guys, and everything is supposedly returned to its state of goodness and light. But something happens to the Clint Eastwood character along the way. Violence has hardened him, he has taken on the evil that he came to destroy. The townspeople, feeling relieved but guilty and cowardly, ask him to leave.
But in today’s gospel Jesus says we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, so that we may be children of our Father. We cannot love our enemies by killing them. The sun rises on the evil and the good, the scripture says. God loves even our enemies. Even our enemies are children of God, made in his image. We cannot destroy what God loves. If they cannot be destroyed, they must be redeemed.
That does not mean that we should not resist evil institutions or become victims of our enemies. Jesus resisted the power of the Roman empire and the Jewish establishment. He refused to follow the purity codes that kept people in their place, he treated women as equals, he defied the laws that maintained the hierarchy, he held up the dignity and equality of every human being, not just the rich and powerful.
And in today’s gospel he shows how to resist our enemies without killing or destruction. “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek.” This is not a manifesto for victimhood. It is actually a call to nonviolent resistance and insistence on one’s own dignity. Walter Wink explains that when you strike someone on the right cheek, you can only do it with your right hand by a backhand blow. That was only done to slaves, women, and others who were ‘lesser’. To turn the other cheek required that the person had to be hit like an equal.
“If anyone takes your coat, give your cloak as well.” In other words take off all your clothes and stand there naked. While that may have been shameful, it would be even more shameful for the one who forced you into nakedness. You would be exposing not only your body, but the injustice of the situation. It is also a way of asserting your personal free will in a situation of force.
“If anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” It was Roman law that a soldier could press anyone into service by requiring them to carry their pack for one mile. This was the law that allowed them to require Simon of Cyrene to carry Jesus’ cross. But there was a limit, only one mile. To go also the second mile again asserted one’s autonomy in an otherwise dehumanizing experience. It could also get the soldier in trouble if their superior officer found that the gear was carried farther than was allowed.
Rather than giving in to the oppression of the powers that ruled over them, the scenarios that Jesus describes are acts of defiance. By taking the injustice and expanding them to their ridiculous conclusion, these acts highlighted the injustice. By doing so there might even be a chance, just a chance, that the enemy will realize their inhumanity and act differently. In any case, the victim has asserted their humanity and made a statement against the injustice without violence or breaking the law.
By such acts of resistance and by loving our enemies we have a chance to redeem at least a part of the systems we are caught up in. It can actually work. Witness the remarkable events in Egypt last week when nonviolent protest brought down a corrupt regime. The protesters insisted on their own humanity and dignity. They called out and named the corruption that oppressed the people. They brought the government back to its best intention and its original purpose to provide justice and opportunity for all.
Loving our enemies is not for namby-pambies. It takes a lot of courage to turn the other cheek, or strip naked, or go the extra mile. It took courage to protest in Tahrir Square in Cairo. But that is what God calls us to do. We are to love our enemies, correct them when they are wrong, pray for them to see the light. We are to love our enemies back to their best intentions, back to goodness, back to their sacred purpose. Because that is exactly what God does for us. When we wander off our path, God loves us back to our best intentions and highest purpose. God loves us into redemption.
Our institutions start with great purpose to serve humanity, but they can be corrupted too. We all get caught up in them, we become enmeshed in them. There is a scene in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath in which a bank manager comes out to a farm to tell the owner that his farm has been foreclosed. The manager is his neighbor and friend, and he would do anything to help, but he is an agent of the bank and has to do his duty. It’s just business, and they are both caught up in the system. The leaders of Egypt probably wanted a good life for the people, but threats to their power resulted in a brutal repression instead. They too were caught up in their corrupted system. Our own banking system exists to help people with financial concerns, but it became corrupted by greed, lost its bearings, and almost brought down the whole financial system. Our healthcare system is in place to help people who are sick and injured, but it has become so big, and people, hospitals and insurance companies are making so much money from it, it is draining our economy without improving our overall health. Even churches whose purpose is to form people with the Good News of Jesus, providing hope for the world, are susceptible to power plays, sexual misconduct, and doctrinaire and exclusionary behavior. It is so with all of our human institutions, and we are caught up in the corruptions of the systems, sometimes as victims, sometimes even as perpetrators.
The thing is, we need these systems. They exist for good reasons, they begin with good intentions. They provide governance and justice, help the sick, give people jobs, help with finances. We need government, we need churches, we need banks, and we need healthcare. How do we deal with them when they become corrupted, when they do not live up to their good intentions? If they cannot be destroyed, they must be redeemed.
Our temptation is to destroy evil and to kill our enemies. Walter Wink calls this the myth of redemptive violence. It is a myth that is ingrained in our culture. It is in many of our movies and stories. Clint Eastwood comes to town and blows away the bad guys, and everything is supposedly returned to its state of goodness and light. But something happens to the Clint Eastwood character along the way. Violence has hardened him, he has taken on the evil that he came to destroy. The townspeople, feeling relieved but guilty and cowardly, ask him to leave.
But in today’s gospel Jesus says we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, so that we may be children of our Father. We cannot love our enemies by killing them. The sun rises on the evil and the good, the scripture says. God loves even our enemies. Even our enemies are children of God, made in his image. We cannot destroy what God loves. If they cannot be destroyed, they must be redeemed.
That does not mean that we should not resist evil institutions or become victims of our enemies. Jesus resisted the power of the Roman empire and the Jewish establishment. He refused to follow the purity codes that kept people in their place, he treated women as equals, he defied the laws that maintained the hierarchy, he held up the dignity and equality of every human being, not just the rich and powerful.
And in today’s gospel he shows how to resist our enemies without killing or destruction. “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek.” This is not a manifesto for victimhood. It is actually a call to nonviolent resistance and insistence on one’s own dignity. Walter Wink explains that when you strike someone on the right cheek, you can only do it with your right hand by a backhand blow. That was only done to slaves, women, and others who were ‘lesser’. To turn the other cheek required that the person had to be hit like an equal.
“If anyone takes your coat, give your cloak as well.” In other words take off all your clothes and stand there naked. While that may have been shameful, it would be even more shameful for the one who forced you into nakedness. You would be exposing not only your body, but the injustice of the situation. It is also a way of asserting your personal free will in a situation of force.
“If anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” It was Roman law that a soldier could press anyone into service by requiring them to carry their pack for one mile. This was the law that allowed them to require Simon of Cyrene to carry Jesus’ cross. But there was a limit, only one mile. To go also the second mile again asserted one’s autonomy in an otherwise dehumanizing experience. It could also get the soldier in trouble if their superior officer found that the gear was carried farther than was allowed.
Rather than giving in to the oppression of the powers that ruled over them, the scenarios that Jesus describes are acts of defiance. By taking the injustice and expanding them to their ridiculous conclusion, these acts highlighted the injustice. By doing so there might even be a chance, just a chance, that the enemy will realize their inhumanity and act differently. In any case, the victim has asserted their humanity and made a statement against the injustice without violence or breaking the law.
By such acts of resistance and by loving our enemies we have a chance to redeem at least a part of the systems we are caught up in. It can actually work. Witness the remarkable events in Egypt last week when nonviolent protest brought down a corrupt regime. The protesters insisted on their own humanity and dignity. They called out and named the corruption that oppressed the people. They brought the government back to its best intention and its original purpose to provide justice and opportunity for all.
Loving our enemies is not for namby-pambies. It takes a lot of courage to turn the other cheek, or strip naked, or go the extra mile. It took courage to protest in Tahrir Square in Cairo. But that is what God calls us to do. We are to love our enemies, correct them when they are wrong, pray for them to see the light. We are to love our enemies back to their best intentions, back to goodness, back to their sacred purpose. Because that is exactly what God does for us. When we wander off our path, God loves us back to our best intentions and highest purpose. God loves us into redemption.
Epiphany 6, 2011
You have heard the responses that come out when there is a public scandal. They are predictable. First there is the denial. “I didn’t have an affair, I didn’t mismanage the funds, I didn’t lie.” Then when it is apparent they did what they did, there is the denial of the denial: “I misspoke myself.” Then finally there is the apology for hurting anyone involved, but they didn’t break any laws, “Everything I did was legal.” Sometimes that part might even be true, but it doesn’t mean that people have acted ethically and morally. Some folks confuse acting ethically with following the law. There are laws of ethics that go beyond written statutes.
Laws are good things. As long as human beings act selfishly, we need laws to regulate our relationships with each other. Unless we want to go back to a system of vigilantes and retribution, we need laws to provide justice for our society. Remember, the concept of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was a huge advancement in justice, when people killed each other for revenge. A system of laws is necessary for a civilization to advance.
In Deuteronomy, the Lord says if you obey the commandments he has given us, then God will bless us. The law is the difference between blessings and curses, between life and prosperity or death and adversity. Choose life, he says. Choose to follow the law. Indeed, being a nation of laws has brought us in this country to a level of prosperity and blessing that the ancient Israelites could not have imagined. But even they were not able to follow the commandments, decrees, and ordinances consistently. It was said that if everyone were able to follow the law completely even for one day, it would usher in the kingdom of God.
Following the law is not enough. What kind of eulogy would it be if all we could say about someone at the end of their life is that they never broke the law? The commandments, and much of our law, are set up as a series of negatives – don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t murder, don’t steal. We expect good people to do something positive.
And then there is the matter of how laws can be manipulated. Many of our laws in this country have been formulated with the help of lobbyists who influence the laws to favor a particular client. Sometimes it seems certain laws legalize a sort of corporate theft. If you have enough money, it seems you can buy the laws that you want.
In Matthew’s gospel today, Jesus tells us that following the letter of the law is not enough. He offers a law behind the law. He looks to the root of our outward behaviors to our inner orientation. It is there in our innermost being that we become alienated from God, even if we are doing all the right things on the outside. If sin is the seeking of our own will distorting our relationship with God, that sin begins in our inner need for control, in our self-centeredness, in our humanity. If we find it difficult to follow the commandments in our outward behavior, we will find it impossible to follow Jesus’ new law behind the law. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t much to gain in trying.
Jesus says, “You have heard it said ‘You shall not murder… but I say to you if you are angry with your brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.” How many of us have never been angry with someone else? I know I have been. Happily, there are laws against murdering someone, but there is no law, no commandment, that says we cannot be angry. I’m not even sure I can stop myself from getting angry, even if I know I’m doing it. But I think there is a big difference between that sudden thought of anger, that sudden surge of emotional adrenalin, and dwelling on it. When we nurture that grudge, ruminate on how we might get even, then our anger destroys our relationship, and it eats away at our spirit.
I believe that we can cultivate the positive virtue that counteracts our anger, which is reconciliation. That is the antidote to anger and alienation. I think we can also cultivate an attitude or understanding, respect and love for the other person which will reduce the impulse to anger. When we see in each other the image of God, however faint, then we will not be able to harbor hatred and malice to them.
Jesus said, “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’…but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in her heart.” Obviously lust is not limited to one gender. Now, in most states, there is not even a law against adultery anymore. There is still plenty of social opprobrium, but no law. There isn’t even a law against most pornography. But Jesus says that to even look at another person with lust is wrong. Again, I’m not sure that we can control our thoughts so rigidly that we might not have a passing appreciation for another. It’s been said somewhere that adolescent males have about 30 sexual thoughts a minute. No wonder they have trouble with homework. But the sin is not in the passing thought, but in the treasuring of those thoughts. Lust is not about healthy sexual relationships, but is about devaluing the other person to merely the object of our desire.
Cultivating an attitude of respect and love for the other person as a whole person, tames our lust and disciplines our sexual desires for the one we love.
Jesus goes on to condemn divorce. In his context, I think that he was also condemning the corruption of the law which made it easy for a man to divorce his wife. It wasn’t so easy the other way round, for a woman to divorce her husband. Here was a law that was patently unfair. Of course we still have laws which make divorce legal, and we have worked hard to make the law more fair. But Jesus suggests we look beyond the law to the commitments we make with each other. Now I know that divorce is sometimes the only solution to a troubled marriage, but it is always a sad and tragic event. All of us who pledged our support at the marriage ceremony have some responsibility in it.
Finally, Jesus tells us that we should not swear at all, by heaven or earth. Let your yes be yes, and your no be no. There are folks in some churches who take this literally and refuse to take an oath at a legal proceeding. But that is just the outward behavior of legalistic thinking. If we have to swear to something it suggests that our answer without such a safeguard might be untrustworthy. Wouldn’t it be better if we were known to be such truth tellers that no one would question our veracity? This too is a capacity that can be cultivated.
The law has been a great gift to humanity. It has ordered our dealings with each other, made them less chaotic. Laws have allowed civilization to exist. But Jesus says that ordering our outward behaviors do not go far enough. We must learn to order our inner lives as well, by cultivating virtues of love and truth. We must learn to discipline our desires so that our every whim need not be satisfied. We practice the disciplines of prayer, of forgiveness and reconciliation, of generosity and compassion, of fasting and examination of conscience in order to cultivate our virtues, not for some external standard, but for the desire to be good people and to respond to the love God has for us.
As the external law has prepared us for civilization, cultivating the internal law will transform us, make us to be good people, and prepare us to be citizens of the kingdom of God.
Laws are good things. As long as human beings act selfishly, we need laws to regulate our relationships with each other. Unless we want to go back to a system of vigilantes and retribution, we need laws to provide justice for our society. Remember, the concept of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was a huge advancement in justice, when people killed each other for revenge. A system of laws is necessary for a civilization to advance.
In Deuteronomy, the Lord says if you obey the commandments he has given us, then God will bless us. The law is the difference between blessings and curses, between life and prosperity or death and adversity. Choose life, he says. Choose to follow the law. Indeed, being a nation of laws has brought us in this country to a level of prosperity and blessing that the ancient Israelites could not have imagined. But even they were not able to follow the commandments, decrees, and ordinances consistently. It was said that if everyone were able to follow the law completely even for one day, it would usher in the kingdom of God.
Following the law is not enough. What kind of eulogy would it be if all we could say about someone at the end of their life is that they never broke the law? The commandments, and much of our law, are set up as a series of negatives – don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t murder, don’t steal. We expect good people to do something positive.
And then there is the matter of how laws can be manipulated. Many of our laws in this country have been formulated with the help of lobbyists who influence the laws to favor a particular client. Sometimes it seems certain laws legalize a sort of corporate theft. If you have enough money, it seems you can buy the laws that you want.
In Matthew’s gospel today, Jesus tells us that following the letter of the law is not enough. He offers a law behind the law. He looks to the root of our outward behaviors to our inner orientation. It is there in our innermost being that we become alienated from God, even if we are doing all the right things on the outside. If sin is the seeking of our own will distorting our relationship with God, that sin begins in our inner need for control, in our self-centeredness, in our humanity. If we find it difficult to follow the commandments in our outward behavior, we will find it impossible to follow Jesus’ new law behind the law. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t much to gain in trying.
Jesus says, “You have heard it said ‘You shall not murder… but I say to you if you are angry with your brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.” How many of us have never been angry with someone else? I know I have been. Happily, there are laws against murdering someone, but there is no law, no commandment, that says we cannot be angry. I’m not even sure I can stop myself from getting angry, even if I know I’m doing it. But I think there is a big difference between that sudden thought of anger, that sudden surge of emotional adrenalin, and dwelling on it. When we nurture that grudge, ruminate on how we might get even, then our anger destroys our relationship, and it eats away at our spirit.
I believe that we can cultivate the positive virtue that counteracts our anger, which is reconciliation. That is the antidote to anger and alienation. I think we can also cultivate an attitude or understanding, respect and love for the other person which will reduce the impulse to anger. When we see in each other the image of God, however faint, then we will not be able to harbor hatred and malice to them.
Jesus said, “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’…but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in her heart.” Obviously lust is not limited to one gender. Now, in most states, there is not even a law against adultery anymore. There is still plenty of social opprobrium, but no law. There isn’t even a law against most pornography. But Jesus says that to even look at another person with lust is wrong. Again, I’m not sure that we can control our thoughts so rigidly that we might not have a passing appreciation for another. It’s been said somewhere that adolescent males have about 30 sexual thoughts a minute. No wonder they have trouble with homework. But the sin is not in the passing thought, but in the treasuring of those thoughts. Lust is not about healthy sexual relationships, but is about devaluing the other person to merely the object of our desire.
Cultivating an attitude of respect and love for the other person as a whole person, tames our lust and disciplines our sexual desires for the one we love.
Jesus goes on to condemn divorce. In his context, I think that he was also condemning the corruption of the law which made it easy for a man to divorce his wife. It wasn’t so easy the other way round, for a woman to divorce her husband. Here was a law that was patently unfair. Of course we still have laws which make divorce legal, and we have worked hard to make the law more fair. But Jesus suggests we look beyond the law to the commitments we make with each other. Now I know that divorce is sometimes the only solution to a troubled marriage, but it is always a sad and tragic event. All of us who pledged our support at the marriage ceremony have some responsibility in it.
Finally, Jesus tells us that we should not swear at all, by heaven or earth. Let your yes be yes, and your no be no. There are folks in some churches who take this literally and refuse to take an oath at a legal proceeding. But that is just the outward behavior of legalistic thinking. If we have to swear to something it suggests that our answer without such a safeguard might be untrustworthy. Wouldn’t it be better if we were known to be such truth tellers that no one would question our veracity? This too is a capacity that can be cultivated.
The law has been a great gift to humanity. It has ordered our dealings with each other, made them less chaotic. Laws have allowed civilization to exist. But Jesus says that ordering our outward behaviors do not go far enough. We must learn to order our inner lives as well, by cultivating virtues of love and truth. We must learn to discipline our desires so that our every whim need not be satisfied. We practice the disciplines of prayer, of forgiveness and reconciliation, of generosity and compassion, of fasting and examination of conscience in order to cultivate our virtues, not for some external standard, but for the desire to be good people and to respond to the love God has for us.
As the external law has prepared us for civilization, cultivating the internal law will transform us, make us to be good people, and prepare us to be citizens of the kingdom of God.
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