Readings

“Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule…” If we pay the slightest attention to the evening news we recognize that this is a tall order: “may be freed…his most gracious rule.” How does one achieve a rule that preserves human freedom? So, of course, the Feast of Christ the King is something to celebrate. But our experience might suggest offering Jesus our heartfelt condolences. “You’re supposed to put this house in order.”

But rather than our sincere sympathy, I suspect that our Lord would rather have us attend to how Jesus is pursuing that most gracious rule that is the friend of human freedom. And part of that how: the royal gifts to us: time, space, and responsibility.

Time. We say “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” We are given the time between “Christ is risen” and “Christ will come again.” It is not open-ended; Christ will come again. But until then we have time.

Space. The same confession (“Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”) suggests the gift of space. Jesus withdraws to give us space. (On the one hand, we have his promise to be with us always. He sent the Spirit at Pentecost. We celebrate his presence in the Eucharist. We speak with him in our prayers. On the other hand, there’s real absence in that “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” One of the most ancient of the Christian prayers is “Maranatha” “Our Lord, come!” And this prayer is pretty much the refrain of all the hymns we sing during Advent.)

Responsibility. It would be easy to regard the time and space as empty; marking time until something important happened, something like the cartoons of the cavemen waiting around until someone figured out how to make fire. But together with the gifts of time and space we’re given responsibility.

Our last three week’s Gospel readings have been exploring how all that works:

The parable of the ten virgins. We recall this parable at baptisms as we say to the newly baptized “Receive the light of Christ, that when the bridegroom comes you may go forth with all the saints to meet him; and see that you keep the grace of your Baptism.” “And see that you keep the grace of your Baptism.” Our use today of the gifts we have received affects our possibilities in the future.

The parable of the talents. It’s not enough to simply fulfill the letter of the law (the Ten Commandments, for instance). The Lord desires that I use what I have received for his kingdom, proclaiming the good news of this kingdom by who I am, what I do, and, sometimes, by what I say, showing mercy whether or not it is “deserved.”

And, today, this vision of the sheep and the goats. “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” These actions of mercy and compassion are actions of shepherds. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, but that doesn’t make us simply sheep. Each one of us may be called to be shepherd to our neighbor. And notice that Jesus does not describe heroic actions. Not “I was sick and you healed me; I was in prison and you broke me out” but “I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”

Jesus is the Good Shepherd. And Jesus’ way of doing “Good Shepherd” is to call all of us into that work.

Our culture is often worried that belief in God will sap human initiatives. Here’s another case in which the opposite proves true. Acknowledge Jesus as the Good Shepherd—and that turns out to instruct us as to how to better play that role as needed with one another.

But there’s more in this speech of Jesus to the righteous: “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” From Jesus’ mouth: to respond to the needy (or not) is to respond to Jesus (or not).

In our tradition many have the custom of reverencing the altar, the place where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved. The King of kings and Lord of lords—right here! In light of this text, it might not be a bad idea to reverence—at least mentally—the needy with whom we come in contact. As one leading 19^th Century English priest put it: How is it that you adore Jesus in the Sacred Host and not in the beggar?

We receive the gifts of time, space, responsibility. Some of how this plays out is explored in these parables of the virgins, talents, and sheep/goats. And we continue to explore how it plays out in our shared life here at St Peter’s.

Our King, desiring to bring the peoples of the earth into freedom under his most gracious rule has given us time, space, and responsibility. “Be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet,” for our King is marching on.

Readings

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, / for his mercy endures for ever” (Ps 136:1 BCP). That’s the point of this feast, starting from God’s generosity and our gratitude. Let’s notice together, briefly, four themes from the readings.

First, gratitude is a habit that, like all habits, needs nurturing. Luke’s story of the ten lepers: Jesus heals all ten; only one returns to “give praise to God.” And gratitude can be problematic. I like Miss Cattermole’s line in Dorothy Sayers’ novel Gaudy Night: “She’s awfully kind. But I’m always having to be grateful to her. It’s very depressing. It makes me want to bite.” Generosity can be—or be perceived as—a way of injuring, a form of manipulation. When it comes to God’s generosity, that’s a perception the Tempter is happy to encourage. But if “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good” means anything, it means that we can trust God to have our best interests at heart.

Second, this divine generosity is risky. That’s the problem Moses is trying to address in our first reading. “When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God.” If the Lord were less generous that would be less of a problem. The Lord thinks it’s worth the risk, and that’s something about the Lord’s character worth noticing.

By the way, what of that line “You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you”? Can today’s nations, e.g., ours, appropriate those words? Given our checkered histories, only very carefully.

Third, all the psalm’s celebration of God’s action in our world: as heirs of the Enlightenment, do we believe that? Up through the 19^th Century that was a hard question: it looked like we should describe the world as a complex machine. No room for God. But then came quantum mechanics and chaos theory: the world is a stranger place than we imagined. Coming at it from another angle, if we still can’t give an adequate account of the connection between the mental decision to raise the hand and the corresponding muscle movement, why do we think we must rule out—in principle—the psalm’s picture of God’s ongoing generous involvement in our world? Maybe the psalmist is on to something.

Fourth, God’s generosity and our gratitude: it starts there; it doesn’t stop there. That’s what’s driving Paul’s appeal in the letter to the Corinthians re the collection for the poor in Jerusalem. In the center of the part we heard there’s that bit from another of the psalms:

“He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever.”

That’s not, as we might assume, a description of the Lord, but of the righteous person. It’s from that pair of psalms we looked at earlier in the year: Ps 111 a celebration of the Lord’s character, Ps 112 a celebration of the corresponding character of the righteous person. So now in Corinth—or now in North Lake—as recipients of the Lord’s generosity, let us be likewise generous.

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, / for his mercy endures for ever” (Ps 136:1 BCP).

Happy Thanksgiving.

Readings (Track 1)

Two Sundays out from the beginning of a new church year, our readings are all over the map, threatening to turn any sermon into an exercise in herding cats.

Let’s start with the Psalm. The petitionary psalms often start with a description of the problem; this one leaves that for the last one and a half verses. This psalm focuses on that time period—whether short or long—between the petition and the Lord’s response. The Lord is merciful (Amen!); the Lord has not yet shown us his mercy.

That’s not a comfortable place to be, but not unfamiliar territory for the Lord’s people. Our first reading from Judges: in the repeated cycle of disobedience, oppression, and deliverance the Lord’s people spend a fair amount of time in that uncomfortable place. That’s one of the reasons we need to be gentle with the folk we encounter: that’s where some of them—like us—are. That’s why Scripture repeatedly talks about hope being important, like Paul in our second reading: “the hope of salvation” as our helmet.

But why begin the sermon focusing on this psalm? Our Gospel will get us thinking about mission (outreach). It’s easy to think about mission as something we do from strength; the psalm reminds us that we periodically do it from a position of weakness.

On to the Gospel reading. Our lectionary has made liberal use of the fast forward button, so a bit of context. Two weeks ago we heard the beginning of Jesus’ critique of the scribes and Pharisees: do as they say, not as they do. Leaving the temple, the disciples encourage Jesus to admire the architectural beauty, which prompts Jesus to talk about the future, both immediate (no two stones left in place) and ultimate (the coming of the Son of Man). One of the first things Jesus says about that future: “you will be hated by all nations because of my name” (24:9). That takes us back to today’s psalm (“the scorn of the indolent rich, / and of the derision of the proud.”). Hope, along with Faith and Love: the challenge is to nurture these also on the bad days.

Anyhow, Jesus ends the discourse with a warning: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” The coming of the Son of Man: it’ll be as unexpected as Noah’s flood.

So how do we live with this uncertainty? Jesus tells three parables. In the first while the faithful slave keeps doing his work, the wicked slave takes advantage of the master’s absence. When the master returns, it doesn’t end well for that slave. So don’t assume “unknown date” means “never.”

We heard the second parable, the wise and foolish bridesmaids, last week. Wisdom and folly matter as we wait for the bridegroom to return. Picking up on the vocabulary common to the parable and the ending of the Sermon on the Mount, I suggested that the wisdom and folly in question have to do with recognizing the difference between saying “Lord, Lord” and doing what the Lord says. And undoubtedly there are other profitable ways of reading that parable.

We heard the third parable, the talents, today. The master has given his slaves the resources to do some work in his absence, and comes down hard on the slave who has simply buried the talent. If one of the disciples asked Jesus why he was telling the parable, I wish Matthew had included the answer! So making sense of the parable is largely guesswork. The third slave recognizes that doing anything with the talent involves risk, and decides that the important thing is not to lose the talent. That, in the master’s eyes, misses the point. And trading five talents to get ten, two talents to get four: that sounds like there’s some serious risk involved. So maybe if our decision making is governed by minimizing risk, we might want to reread the parable.

The master—I said a moment ago—has given his slaves the resources to do some work in his absence. What can we say about that work? If we pull back the camera to include all of Matthew’s Gospel we might notice two things. First, Jesus repeatedly sends his disciples out to proclaim the Kingdom / make disciples. This proclamation includes healings, exorcisms, as well as the lifestyle of the disciples. The Gospel culminates with what we call “The Great Commission.” “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” So there are disciples even in…Wisconsin. Second, there’s that “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” (5:7). That’s at the heart of Jesus’ argument with some of the Pharisees: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (9:13). And in the judgment scene we’ll hear next week it’s the practice of mercy that separates the sheep and goats.

Making disciples, showing mercy. Nurturing the love of the Lord God and neighbor. That’s one way of thinking about the work in today’s parable; perhaps it will nudge you to come up with more adequate ways. In any case, it’s the obvious segue into Stewardship Sunday. In the language of today’s parable, we’ve all been entrusted with some talents, some combination of time, abilities, and financial resources. The parable encourages us to make wise—maybe including risky—use of all that, not simply the part directed toward St Peter’s. There are plenty of folk out there who need Jesus. There are plenty of folk out there who need more mercy than’s currently on offer. And, recalling today’s psalm, at any given moment some of us are right there with the psalmist: “our eyes look to the Lord our God, / until he show us his mercy.” On behalf of the Vestry, I encourage you with your giving estimate to position St Peter’s to respond to the opportunities our Lord has set before us.

Readings (Track 1)

As a setup for today’s readings it’s hard to beat Bob Dylan’s song from 1979:

You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

It’s the issue Joshua poses to the people at the end of his career: “choose this day whom you will serve.” With one voice they respond “we will serve the Lord.” But as Joshua suspects and subsequent history confirms, that response, like the oil in the foolish bridesmaids’ lamps, doesn’t last. This project of serving the Lord: a long-term project, and whatever else Jesus’ parable might want us to understand, it’s that.

In our second reading Paul reassures the Thessalonians: those Christians who have died will not be left behind at the Lord’s coming. “…the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.”

“To meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.” That merits a somewhat long digression. It’s often understood as being with the Lord in some place other than earth. Christians who talk about a “rapture” in which all the Christians suddenly disappear take the verse this way—and their views were popularized in The Scofield Bible, The Late Great Planet Earth, and the Left Behind series.

Many rousing Gospel songs play off this: “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through.” “I want to go to heaven when I die.” But… God created this world, saying over and over “this is good,” “this is good,” “this is good,” and, at the end, the whole thing “very good.” Do we really think that the God of Abraham and Sarah, Mary and Joseph is going to abandon this world? The Bible pictures something far more interesting than these songs imagine.

Let’s go back to Paul’s image of meeting the Lord in the air. In Paul’s time, when a new king was coming to a city, the citizens would leave the city to go out to meet the king and escort him back into the city with all the pageantry they could muster. Paul assumes that image: the Lord is coming to earth, and where else could we meet him but in the air? Not so we’d stay in the air, but so that together we could return in celebration to earth to inaugurate his reign.

But those Christians who have died will miss out on the party? No, says Paul, they will be raised, and they’ll be at the front of the parade, a parade headed toward this earth.

The king coming to the city is one image; another is the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation. Notice what John sees: the New Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven.” It ends up on earth: “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations” (21:24-26).

One of the reasons this leave-earth-behind model is attractive is that we’re often ambivalent toward matter in general and our bodies in particular. Our bodies at best a sort of first stage on a rocket that will be discarded when their work is done? That’s a venerable philosophy, but it’s not Christian. God raised Jesus from the dead, and Jesus appeared to his disciples still bearing his wounds in his body. Paul tells us “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” because we need much more substantial bodies to experience the joy and glory of God’s presence.

With Paul, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor 5:8). That’s the part we get right. What we can forget is that the New Testament regards “absent from the body” as a temporary measure, and looks in expectant hope to being re-clothed in transformed bodies that will last. Verse 4 of “Light’s abode, celestial Salem” (Hymnal 621) gets it right:

O how glorious and resplendent, fragile body, shalt thou be,
when endued with heavenly beauty, full of health, and strong, and free,
full of vigor, full of pleasure that shall last eternally!

Paraphrasing N.T. Wright’s Surprised by hope, what God did for Jesus at Easter God is going to do for the whole cosmos.

Jesus’ parable assumes the same scenario Paul assumed: joyfully meeting the Lord/the Bridegroom. But while Paul’s words suggest something immediate, Jesus’ words assume some delay. Paul’s words console; Jesus’ words warn: the wise/foolish contrast remains important.

“When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.” As you can imagine, there’s a long and inconclusive conversation among commentators regarding what that “oil” signifies. It’s more helpful, I think, to notice the echoes of the ending of the Sermon on the Mount. The wise building on the rock, the foolish building on the sand: the difference is whether one has acted on Jesus’ words. And that “Truly I tell you, I do not know you” recall the words just before that rock/sand parable:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers’” (Matt. 7:21-23).

So we’re back to Joshua’s “choose this day whom you will serve,” now with the wisdom that it’s about more than waving the right banner. Whether I’m acting on Jesus’ words, doing the will of our heavenly Father, that shows whom I’m serving. The wise understand this; the foolish have lost sight of it. And the more time passes, the easier it is to lose sight of it.

Where does that leave each of us, in which both wisdom and folly are in play? Well, praying with today’s collect: “Grant that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves as he is pure; that, when he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him.” Purity—single mindedness, consistency in whom we’re serving—is an ongoing project. “When he comes again…we may be made like him”—so we don’t expect that project to be completed in this life. But we keep working on it, for God’s burning desire is that we enter with joy into the wedding banquet.

Readings (Track 1)

Today’s readings: on the one hand, each part of a semi-continuous reading (the leadership transition from Moses to Joshua, Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, Jesus’ final days of public ministry), on the other hand, each speaking in its own way to the question of appropriate leadership. Let’s start with the simpler texts.

Leadership transitions are often tricky. Moses has died; how will Joshua be received? That question sets the agenda. As we heard the Lord say to Joshua, “This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that I will be with you as I was with Moses.” So there’s a sort of reenactment of the crossing of the Red Sea under Moses in the crossing of the Jordan under Joshua, all Israel again walking through on dry ground. So no question that leadership is important, and needs to be respected.

But is leadership about serving or being served? That question sets the agenda for the remaining readings. We can use today’s psalm to set the benchmark: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, * and his mercy endures for ever.” Or, from Isaiah: “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, even when you turn gray I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save” (46:3-4). Of all the lies told about God, hard to think of a more damaging one than that God’s about being served, not serving. For that—of course—underwrites our assumptions about how to do leadership.

Paul gets it right (our second reading): “You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was toward you believers.”

And then there’s today’s Gospel. Within Matthew’s story line it sets us up for the Passion. If this is what current Jewish leadership is like, if they get their hands on Jesus, it won’t end well. In the context in which Matthew’s writing the Gospel, it looks like part of the struggle of the early Church and rabbinic Judaism to self-define vis à vis each other.

But before going further, let’s notice that truly remarkable beginning: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it.” This is unique to Matthew, as is, early in the Sermon on the Mount, “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” As you recall, in the New Testament there are vigorous arguments over which parts of Moses remain binding, and for whom. Matthew’s Jesus is clear: all of Moses is binding on Jewish Cristians, and the scribes and Pharisees are reliable interpreters of it, even as their conduct leaves much to be desired.

So back to that conduct: leadership about serving or being served. The arguments between the early Church and rabbinic Judaism made it too easy for later readers to assume that the scribes’ and Pharisees’ problem was that they were Jewish, to ignore Jesus’ exhortations to his followers.

Well, what of those exhortations? Call no one “rabbi…father…instructor.” So as long as we don’t use those three words we can use “bishop, your holiness,” etc? That doesn’t sound right. I think it’s more like this: never underestimate the cultural/societal pull to treat leadership as about being served. As the Lord said to Cain “sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen. 4:7). And too often—e.g., the stories that continue to break re sexual abuse of minors—we’ve done about as well as Cain did.

I’ve been talking about leadership. So those of us who don’t think of themselves as leaders are off the hook? Sorry. No matter where we are on the totem poll or in the pecking order there’s some sphere that we see as ours, that sphere is which we either—yup—serve or get served.

Today I’ve noticed two strong headwinds, the pressure to believe that God’s about being served, the pressure to believe that leadership is about being served. They’re connected. So—here’s the good news—any progress we can make with the one will help us with the other. As my poor image of God is increasingly the God who serves, it will be easier—more natural—for me to use whatever power I have to serve. As I use whatever power I have to serve it will be easier—more natural—to believe that that’s what God’s about.

Again, from Isaiah: “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, even when you turn gray I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.”

Or, more succinctly from today’s psalm: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, * / and his mercy endures for ever.” That’s a mantra to take into the coming week.

Readings

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek…” Where is Jesus getting this? If we pay attention to the words, it really looks like a riff off that Isaiah text Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free” (Lk. 4:18).

That Isaiah text is worth noticing for a couple reasons. First, that the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, etc. are blessed depends on the presence of this anointed one. That uncountable multitude robed in white in John’s vision: blessed because “the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life.”

Second, while in the part Jesus read the poor are the recipients of the good news, as the text progresses, they’re empowered to enact the good news: “They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations” (Isa 61:4). Their character as described in the Beatitudes makes that possible: hungering and thirsting for righteousness, merciful, peacemakers. And that “virtuous and godly living” (as the collect puts it) is what we’re celebrating tonight: Jesus’ coming bears fruit, that uncountable multitude that John describes. Christmas, Epiphany, Holy Week, Ascension, Pentecost: these actually produce something. There is a harvest. All Saints is our harvest festival. The Church: the field for growing saints. As Paul writes “I planted, Apollo watered, but God gave the growth” (! Cor 3:6).

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” Jesus read. There’s a snapshot of the Holy Trinity: “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” And against all odds—recall the multiple times God’s people snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, or Paul in Galatians (“I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted“ [4:11])—the Holy Trinity triumphs. So we celebrate, and could easily tie off the sermon here.

Or not. For even as we celebrate, it’s hard to ignore the deep—shall we say—ambiguities in that saint-growing field. Particularly in these days, whether the conflicting ways we do politics or the conflicting faces we present to the surrounding culture. Now, as it happens our Jewish sisters and brothers read Kohelet (our Ecclesiastes) at their harvest festival (the Feast of Booths/Tabernacles); what if we listen to Kohelet at ours? Kohelet, that teacher in post Alexander the Great Jerusalem as economic globalization and Greek culture were unsettling pretty much everything. “Blessed are the poor in spirit”—and who is poorer in spirit than Kohelet (“Vanity of vanity, all is vanity.”)? In the midst of our celebration Kohelet can help us manage our expectations, and that in at least five ways.

First, this side of John’s vision, there’s no escaping Kohelet’s “vanity.” So Paul in Romans: “for the creation was subjected to futility…and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8:20-23). Or, as Kohelet puts it “Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment give off a foul odor; so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor” (Eccl. 10:1). When in the Creed we say “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven,” this is the world Jesus enters. Barnabas walks; Jesus is crucified.

Second, while Scripture from Genesis to Revelation gives us a true overview of our history, an overview we variously celebrate in our major feasts, recall this: “He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a eternity into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Eccl. 3:11 NRS*). The Holy Trinity will triumph. There will be a glorious harvest. Amen. How will the Holy Trinity triumph? We strain to even imagine an answer. Recall the wildly divergent ways we’ve read Revelation through the centuries! And the more attention we pay to our world, the more difficult even imagining an answer becomes. That patch of earth on the eastern Mediterranean: “the holy land”?

Third, there’s no magic program out there, just waiting to be discovered. Kohelet: “Send out your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will get it back. Divide your means seven ways, or even eight, for you do not know what disaster may happen on earth” (11:1-2). Improvisation: I think Kohelet would have liked that word. Recall Paul’s encouragement: “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord” (Eph. 5:10). As we’re inspired by the saints, let’s be inspired by their commitment to improv.

Fourth, while I am constantly grateful for and nurtured by the saints in Lesser Feasts and Fasts—such an astonishing variety of ways of being faithful—such collections tempt us to assume that faithfulness is always or usually effective. But Kohelet: “Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all” (9:11). Our best efforts may turn out to be completely forgettable—except by God. Faithfulness: that’s in our hands. Whether that faithfulness is effective is not. That’s a burden we don’t need to carry.

Fifth, Kohelet’s ending: “Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is every person” (Ellen Davis’ translation), roughly “this is what constitutes our humanity.” Despite the vanity, despite how often it’s pitch black, we’re not stuck with discouragement and despair, not stuck with being stuck. Fear God; keep the commandments (Love this God, love our neighbor.) And the ending—far beyond what Kohelet allows himself to hope—the light and joy of John’s vision. There is a harvest; this harvest festival is well worth celebrating.

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom 
and thanksgiving and honor 
and power and might 
be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

Readings (Track 1)

Like an editor who knows a good story when she sees it, Matthew has followed Mark’s account of Jesus’ confrontation with the religious leaders with little change. It started with Jesus entering Jerusalem in triumph, with the crowds shouting messianic slogans and Jesus promptly cleansing the temple. The religious leaders challenged him: “By what authority are you doing these things…” (21:23) and Jesus’ response, pointing to John the Baptist and their failure to respond to John’s call to repentance in turn challenges their authority. Jesus tells parables: two sons sent to work in the vineyard, the vineyard owner whose tenants don’t even respect his son, the king who hosts a wedding banquet only to find that the guests refuse to come. The Pharisees and Herodians try to trap him with a question about taxes. The Sadducees try to trap him with a hypothetical about the resurrection. And then there’s today’s text.

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” (22:36) Matthew—in contrast to Mark—hears this question as another test. Jesus responds by putting together two commandments from the law: “You shall love the Lord your God…”, the commandment that’s the immediate continuation of the Shema (Dt 6:5), and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” which occurs at a pivotal point in Leviticus’ description of what it means for Israel to be holy as the Lord Himself is holy (Lev 19:18).

“Love the Lord your God…love your neighbor as yourself.” In a longer sermon we could look at the ways Moses in the first reading and Paul in the second reading show us what this looks like. Instead, I’d invite you to take the insert home and make the connections yourselves during the week. And this, in turn, sets us up for our celebration of All Saints this Wednesday (November 1), in which we remember the saints who have shown us this double love in a breathtaking variety of ways.

We’ll return to Jesus’ summary of the law, but let’s first attend to the rest of the Gospel reading. After all the leaders’ questions, Jesus has a question for them: “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?”

The Pharisees, predictably, respond that the Messiah is the son of David. Jesus responds with this: “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet”’? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” (vv.43-45). In the psalm the language is typical of a royal psalm: “The Lord (God) said to my Lord (the king).” And—everyone there assumes—David is the speaker, and speaking under the inspiration of the Spirit. So David, speaking “by the Spirit” is calling one of his own descendants “my Lord,” which is not the expected language of a father to a son. Take that psalm seriously, Jesus says, and you discover that the Messiah is qualitatively more than a son of David. As St Paul puts it at the start of the letter to the Romans (written considerably earlier than Matthew’s Gospel): “the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead” (1:3-4a). These texts are from the first, not the fourth century, but they point the Church in the direction of the 4^th century Nicene Creed: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God.”

Now, whatever else the Messiah is, the Messiah is the paradigmatic Israelite, the Israelite who models how to love the Lord God and one’s neighbor. So what has Jesus the Messiah shown us about loving the Lord God and loving the neighbor?

Not surprisingly, an important part of loving the Lord God is obeying the Lord God. So Jesus in the wilderness in conversation with Satan does not “wing it” but by means of Holy Scripture discerns the obedient response to each of the temptations. And obedience turns out to be the entrance to a whole world: “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?” (6:26) That sort of invitation isn’t spur-of-the-moment; it’s the product of sustained attention, letting God’s reality shape experience. Often Jesus’ most challenging words flow from this transformed imagination: “Love your enemies…” Why? “so that you may be children of your father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good…”

And so we’ve slid into what Jesus the Messiah might show us about loving the neighbor. We might start with the healings and exorcisms, remembering Matthew’s comment “This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah, ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases’” (8:17). These healings and exorcisms come, Matthew suggests, at some personal cost to Jesus. Or we might think of the feeding of the five thousand, which again, with its Eucharistic overtones, suggests something of what it costs the Messiah to love the neighbor. In these and other cases Jesus’ love is easiest to recognize when it encounters those who recognize their need (that phrase being one way of translating the first beatitude’s “poor in spirit”).Jesus’ love is less obviously recognizable when it encounters those who are self-sufficient, those who have it together. Jesus loves them too much to leave them undisturbed, which disturbances finally lead to Jesus’ cross.

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” God can give that command with integrity because that’s what God does, “[making] his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and [sending] rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (5:45). In a daring metaphor, an old spiritual uses the bosom of Abraham for that divine love:

So high, can’t get over it.
So low, can’t get under it.
So wide, can’t get round it.
O, rock my soul.

“Love the Lord your God; love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s an invitation into a new world. More precisely, it’s an invitation to join the Lord in birthing that new world. Now, if we can just remember that come Monday morning…

Readings (Track 1)

Dogs and cats: the dog thinks you’re god; the cat knows he’s god. After all, who cleans whose litter box? Likewise, when we say “so-and-so thinks he’s god,” we usually mean that he thinks everyone should serve him.

So what’s being God, being like God about? That’s where today’s readings get interesting.

At the center of our second reading there’s a striking hymn. Scholars tend to think it was already circulating among the churches when Paul wrote this letter. Paul uses it to ground his plea that his readers change their behavior: “be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Why? “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…”

By the way, I’m focusing on this second reading not because I think you’re particularly in need of hearing this plea, but because it gives us an opportunity to step back to contemplate our mental pictures of God.

In the NRSV the hymn begins “who, though he was in the form of God.” That word “though” is supplied by the translators; the KJV reads simply “Who, being in the form of God.” It probably gets us off on the wrong foot, suggesting that Jesus did something unexpected of divinity. Rather, Jesus acts divinely precisely in treating divinity as something not to be exploited, and takes the form of a slave. Creation—recalling Paul’s words in Romans 8—“subjected to futility,” in “bondage to decay,” “groaning in labor pains until now” (vv.20-22), so, in the spirit of that sign on Truman’s desk (“The buck stops here”) the Holy Trinity through Jesus does what is needed to set things right.

And that, the hymn joyfully reminds us, is what being God is about. No wonder Paul writes “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” because of the devil’s many lies, that living like the gods means doing whatever we want and letting others pick up the tab has perhaps sunk in the deepest. So working out our salvation is not first about additional hours at prayer, additional mortifications of the flesh, even increasing our giving, but about the work of actually hearing and responding to our neighbors, maybe particularly the ones we’d rather ignore.

And what this can do for our imaginations! Our first reading tells of God providing water in the desert. Toward the end of the text the Lord tells Moses to strike the rock, not a rock. The rabbis, who thought nothing in Scripture was accidental, wondered about that. They concluded that the text was talking about the rock that the Lord had provided, the rock that followed the people and continued to provide water during their trek. Paul, recalling that story in his first letter to the Corinthians, has an “ah hah” moment: “and the rock was Christ” (10:4). That’s the sort of thing God does.

Nothing more human than to desire to live like the gods. The Living God has no problem with that, as long as we’re clear on how God lives. In the New Testament today’s Philippians focuses on that. In the Old Testament the psalms celebrating God’s creating are a rich source for the healing of our imaginations. Those lines from Ps 104 for example:
“All of them look to you
to give them their food in due season.
You give it to them; they gather it in;
you open your hand, and they are filled with good things. (vv.18-19)

Each table grace is an opportunity to refocus.

Then there’s that pair of Psalms, 111 and 112. Both are acrostic, arranged by the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Psalm 111 celebrates God’s character, Psalm 112 the character of the righteous, common vocabulary highlighting the imitation. Let’s read them together (BCP 754):

Ps 111

1 Hallelujah!
I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, *
in the assembly of the upright, in the congregation.
2 Great are the deeds of the Lord! *
they are studied by all who delight in them.
3 His work is full of majesty and splendor, *
and his righteousness endures for ever.
4 He makes his marvelous works to be remembered; *
the Lord is gracious and full of compassion.
5 He gives food to those who fear him; *
he is ever mindful of his covenant.
6 He has shown his people the power of his works *
in giving them the lands of the nations.
7 The works of his hands are faithfulness and justice; *
all his commandments are sure.
8 They stand fast for ever and ever, *
because they are done in truth and equity.
9 He sent redemption to his people;
he commanded his covenant for ever; *
holy and awesome is his Name.
10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; *
those who act accordingly have a good understanding;
his praise endures for ever.

Psalm 112

1 Hallelujah!
Happy are they who fear the Lord *
and have great delight in his commandments!
2 Their descendants will be mighty in the land; *
the generation of the upright will be blessed.
3 Wealth and riches will be in their house, *
and their righteousness will last for ever.
4 Light shines in the darkness for the upright; *
the righteous are merciful and full of compassion.
5 It is good for them to be generous in lending *
and to manage their affairs with justice.
6 For they will never be shaken; *
the righteous will be kept in everlasting remembrance.
7 They will not be afraid of any evil rumors; *
their heart is right; they put their trust in the Lord.
8 Their heart is established and will not shrink, *
until they see their desire upon their enemies.
9 They have given freely to the poor, *
and their righteousness stands fast for ever;
they will hold up their head with honor.
10 The wicked will see it and be angry;
they will gnash their teeth and pine away; *
the desires of the wicked will perish.

When Paul came to Thessalonica, there was soon a crowd crying out “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also” (Acts 17:6). Continuing Jesus’ pattern of service, we get to contribute to that process. Amen.

Readings (Track 1)

“Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Churches” we say. Well, what might the Spirit be saying to us through today’s readings? Let’s take the Gospel first, then the other readings.

Over the last two Sundays we’ve been hearing Jesus describe the practices necessary for this “church” project to not go sideways: humility, attentiveness, responsiveness, and forgiveness—as often as necessary. We could hear today’s parable as a continuation of that description, now focusing on the recurrent temptation to say “we’ve done the heavy lifting; that should be recognized.” Maybe originally it was what the Jewish Christians were saying regarding the Gentile Christians: OK, they can come on board, but keep them in economy class. But it can play out in multiple ways—we’re good at recognizing what might give us an edge—and Jesus is warning us that God’s kingdom doesn’t work like that. (So there’s considerable overlap with what we heard Paul saying a few weeks back: “Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty…” [Rom. 12:16]).

The other readings. Toward the end of our second reading just after mentioning “your salvation” we hear “For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well.” What do we make of that? Whether on radio stations, TV channels, or the internet it’s easy to hear that salvation—if we really have enough faith—means being in a bubble in which Nothing Bad Happens. Scripture can be dragged in, like the text the devil used with Jesus (“For he will command his angels concerning you… so that you will not dash your foot against a stone” [Ps. 91:11-12]), conveniently omitting “When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them” (Ps. 91:15). Even in this psalm full of over-the-top promises of protection there’s plenty of space for trouble and the need for rescue.

Paul has put salvation and suffering together. How does that work? In our first reading the Israelites are suffering, facing starvation, and the meager rations in Egypt are looking pretty good. God provides—miraculously—food in the wilderness. Praise is possible also in the wilderness.

Let’s extrapolate, thinking about that stretch before the quails and manna arrive. The suffering that touches us and those we care about is often physical. The healings in the Gospels, the healings that we witness today attest to the endgame: God desires our health, our flourishing. And God desires our healing solidarity with our neighbors, that God’s love be visible in the midst of this creation’s suffering. Recall Paul: the creation “subjected to futility,” now in “its bondage to decay,” “groaning in labor pains until now” (Rom. 8:20-22). Except in extreme cases I have choices in suffering: my suffering is all that matters—or not; I’m patient with my care-givers—or not; I nurture hope—or not; etc. Elsewhere Paul gives us another way of thinking about this: “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure” (2 Cor. 4:16-17). As we pray for those on our prayer list, we pray for their healing and we pray that in the midst of their suffering they may be a blessing to those around them. As Jesus put it “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” (Matt. 13:33). Empowered by the Spirit, the choices I make in my suffering are part of that yeast. Or, as the SEALs put it, “I am never out of the fight.”

Let’s come at this from a different angle. The suffering Paul’s talking about in our second reading is from the government: some mix of Empire and local elites. We’re in a different, but no less challenging, situation. One of the confessions we often use speaks of “the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.” As the Wall Street Journal reports, Exxon’s scientists were warning back in 1977 that fossil fuels were contributing to global warming while the company continued to downplay that contribution.[1] And on our southern border, razor wire on floating barricades. We can be thankful the Holy Family fleeing Herod did not have to cross there.

Whether at the top or bottom of the totem pole the options look pretty limited. This is captured powerfully in Brecht’s Three Penny Opera. The translation is stilted, but therefore appropriate for a Sunday morning.“Of course I am unfortunately right, / The world is poor and man is bad. / We would be good—instead of coarse / But circumstances just aren’t so.” Salvation: not being trapped in this dog-eat-dog script. Salvation, again, not being cocooned from this world, but having new options. “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Lk. 23:34). To rewind three weeks, it’s about Paul’s “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21), about Gerhard Lohfink’s argument that “the consequences of sin have to be worked off,” or as Martin Luther King Jr encouraged those attempting to desegregate municipal buses, “Be loving enough to absorb evil and understanding enough to turn an enemy into a friend.” Suffering and salvation.

Back to Paul: “For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well.” “Graciously”? “Privilege”? This is not the world we would have designed, but it’s the world in which we find ourselves, a world constantly threatening to rob us of any meaningful agency. But God in Christ has restored that agency, so that with Christ we may continue the project of—as the Jews put it—healing the world. Praise is possible also in the wilderness, and even before the quails and manna show up.

[1] See https://www.npr.org/2023/09/14/1199570023/exxon-climate-change-fossil-fuels-global-warming-oil-gas, accessed 9/18/2023.

Readings (Track 1)

Last week’s reading dropped us into the middle of Jesus’ description of the sort of people we need to be for this ‘church’ to function properly: humble, attentive, responsive, and ready to engage in some fairly risky behavior when a member of the church sinned against us. (“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.”) The obvious question: how often do we need to repeat that procedure?

There’s some evidence that similar questions had been addressed by other rabbis. Sometimes they went back to the prophet Amos. We repeatedly encounter this in the first two chapters: “Thus says the LORD: For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment” (Amos 1:3). So forgive three times (somewhat more generous than the three strikes rule)? Peter, doubling that number and adding one for good measure, may have thought he was at the upper end of the possible options. “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus’ response “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven,” would have been a surprise. Other translations give “seventy-seven times;” in either case the point is that it’s effectively an unlimited number of times.

So Jesus explains with a parable. The kingdom of heaven is like a king who sets out to settle accounts with his servants, and immediately encounters one who owes an astronomical sum. The king orders him and his family sold to begin settling the debt; the servant begs for mercy; the king has pity, releases him, forgives the debt. (That would—we might think—have been a really good place to end the parable.)  The servant goes out and encounters a fellow servant who owes him a modest sum. The scene (calling in of the debt, the pleading for mercy) is repeated, but the servant/creditor refuses to show mercy and delivers the fellow-servant to prison. Other servants see all this, report it to the king, and the first servant is soon before the king again: “’You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you besought me; and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord delivered him to the jailers, till he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

The parable hinges two things: (1) the staggering contrast between the amount the servant owed to the king and the amount his fellow-servant owed him, (2) the conviction that receiving mercy established an obligation to show mercy. Jesus’ last words (“So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”) leave no doubt regarding the parable’s interpretation.

“One was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents…” That’s Jesus’ description of the predicament each one of us is in before God. It summarizes the communal confessions scattered throughout the Old Testament which are in turn reflected in our confessions (“we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against thy holy laws…”). Were God to even begin to “get tough on crime” each of us would be in an impossible situation. The Good News of the Gospel is that we don’t get what we deserve.

In context, as I suggested, these verses are a continuation of Jesus’ description of the sort of people we need to be for the church to function. What they add to the preceding verses is not only the teaching that we should be prepared to forgive fellow believers an unlimited number of times, but the reminder that this willingness properly flows from an awareness of how much we’ve been forgiven. Let’s stay with this a bit longer…

In contrast to some regrettable forms of popular piety, God is not interested in emphasizing the depth of the hole we’ve dug for ourselves outside the double call to gratitude and generosity (as in this text). Today’s text is the only time in this Gospel that the crushing debt that God has forgiven is stressed, and it’s precisely in the context of the implicit obligation of gratitude and the explicit obligation of generosity. (Parenthetically, it would be hard to overestimate the role of gratitude in making forgiveness possible—but that would be another sermon.

Besides stressing the importance of forgiveness, the parable is a sort of “you are here” map. Like the unforgiving servant we’re in the space between the receipt of God’s forgiveness (our Baptism), and an accounting regarding our forgiveness of others (the Last Judgment). We don’t earn our salvation, but, as this parable warns, we’re capable of trashing it.

In other words, while our salvation is free in the sense that we don’t buy it, it is not free in the no-strings-attached sense. Jesus makes this explicit in presenting and explaining what we call “the Lord’s Prayer.” “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” That is, in fact, the only clause in the Lord’s Prayer that our Lord footnotes: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” And this obligation to forgive is, in turn, also an expression of the Sermon on the Mount’s call to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44). Implicit in all this is the logic of the parable: we’re to love our enemies because God loved us when we were His enemies (Rom 5).

“Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” The simplicity of the petition can be misleading, for forgiveness is some of the hardest work we do as Christians. Some things we can forgive easily; some things we may spend a lifetime trying to get to the point of being able to desire to be able to forgive. In Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer C.S. Lewis writes “Last week, while at prayer, I suddenly discovered—or felt as if I did—that I had really forgiven someone I had been trying to forgive for over 30 years. Trying, and praying that I might” (p.106).

To step back a little from the parable, to forgive, obviously, is not to say that the debt or offense doesn’t matter. The claims of justice are recognized—and suspended. As in the parable, the debt is wiped from the books. With regard to that now-cancelled debt, the person I forgive does not owe me anything. This gives the relationship a future—but it doesn’t determine what that future will be. To say “I forgive you” is not to say “I’m going to pretend that it never happened, and things will continue just as they have been.” So, for example, a Christian in an abusive relationship has the obligation to work to be able to forgive the abuser, but that obligation, that forgiveness, does not mean staying vulnerable to that abuse. As in the first lesson, the first priority is often to get Israel out of Egypt.

But back to the parable, where the first servant says “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” And contrary to all reasonable expectation: “And out of pity for him, the lord…released him and forgave him that debt.” May we let that moment in the parable sink in deep and transform our very being.