The Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost Exodus 12: 1 – 14
Sunday, September 4, 2011 Romans 13: 8 – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 18: 15 – 20
Jesus said, “If another member of the church sins against you,”
Matthew 18: 15 a
One Christmas several years ago, A.G. and I gave our four year old grandson Connor a small train set. Connor was delighted and immediately set about carefully fitting the pieces of the track together. Connor worked along for a goodly while until he had created a large oval. As Connor reached for a train car to place on his newly constructed track, Kaelyn, his three year old sister, came rushing into the room, running right over top of the track, leaving in her wake nothing but chaos, as the track broke apart.
As Connor started to rebuild his track and Kaelyn’s attention was redirected to something other than bothering her brother, I was reminded in that moment just how difficult life together can be, especially when you are three and four.
The difficulty of living with others is the focus of our gospel reading from Matthew this morning. “If another member of the church sins against you,” our reading begins. Since the Reformation, our reading this morning has been called “The Rule of Christ.” Faced with the reality of sin within the church, the rule prescribes first a private confrontation, and then a confrontation joined by one or two others, and finally a confrontation before the whole church. The rule begins in private – if we have a bone to pick with someone, we must first pick it with them, not discuss our grievances with others, looking for allies in our cause. The rule begins privileging the dignity of the offender, someone who deserves our care as we seek to make peace.
If the offender is not willing to hear your complaint, the rule continues, we are to ask one or two others to go with us and make our complaint again. Once again, respecting the dignity of the offender is privileged. The concern from the first is to keep the offender in the fold, to seek reconciliation, and not turn the offender into an object of public humiliation.
Finally, if not just you, but one or two others, believe another’s behavior is harming to the community, the whole community is asked to weigh in. Only after the whole community weighs in, is the offender asked to leave.
We may hear this rule as simply sound advice for resolving conflict which it is. Or we may hear this rule as giving the Church the authority to “excommunicate” certain folk, which it also does. What we may not hear, though, is what this rule teaches us about community and the way sin destroys community.
Sin, for us, is often an individual matter. I have my sins and you have yours, and our sins are personal matters between us and God. But sin is never simply personal; sin always has a communal impact. What sin does is to destroy community, to break up relationships, leaving us isolated from others. Sin forces us apart, whereas God wills us to be together. And this desire of God that we might be one is precisely what grounds the extreme care and concern we all must take as we seek to be reconciled one with another.
Sadly, you and I live in a culture in which we think of ourselves as individuals who have “rights.” When our “rights” are transgressed, we seek redress. Our concern is usually more about getting what is owed to us than about preserving relationships and building community. The church, though, is not a collection of individuals who have “rights,” but is rather a communion of persons, called out by God and knit together by the power of the Holy Spirit. No one of us deserves to be here and no one of us is any more or less dispensable to our common life than anyone else.
Which is precisely why this Rule of Christ takes great pains to keep the offender in the fold, not punish them. When, however, someone’s behavior becomes destructive to the preservation of the community, the community has the authority to “loose” that person from the bonds of fellowship.
The problem of sin, and the way sin destroys community became very real for the church during the third century. In 249 A.D., Decius became the Emperor of Rome. Increasingly, barbarians were threatening the well being of the Empire and Decius believed that their threat would be alleviated if the subjects of the Empire worshipped the gods. Accordingly, Decius decreed that everyone had to sacrifice to the Roman gods which, of course, Christians could not do. Under pressure, however, some Christians renounced their faith. When the persecution ended two years later, the church was faced with the question of what to do with the “lapsed” - those who had renounced their faith but now wanted to be restored to the fellowship of the church. The bonds of communion had been broken and the church was not sure what to do.
And not for the last time, as church historian Justo Gonzalez notes: “The question of what should be done about those baptized Christians who sinned divided the Western church repeatedly. It was out of that concern that the entire penitential system developed. Much later, the Protestant Reformation was in large measure a protest against that system.” Perhaps the reformers called our text this morning the “Rule of Christ” to remind us all that one who rules us is the good shepherd who leaves behind ninety-nine sheep to seek out one who has gone astray, a parable which just happens to come immediately before the text we hear this morning.
The church is no longer under persecution but sin in all of its many forms still seeks to bring chaos to communion. What we are together is precious beyond words, but vulnerable, as vulnerable as a child’s wooden train track to the stomping feet of a three year old. We all know of communities that have been ripped apart by conflicts – indeed, our own diocese is struggling with some major conflicts over sexuality and church property. The struggles will not cease, but the bonds of affection need not break.
I find it disheartening that the Episcopal Church over the past several years has been so often in the news and not for what we are doing well but rather because of our tensions and disagreements. Our disunion seems to be far more fascinating than our communion. For those outside the Church, I fear we often look more like a reality T.V. show than a communion of saints.
But then, how seriously do we take our common life? How careful are we with our words and actions? How do we respond when someone “sins against us”? How mindful are we of our need for one another? Try as we might, we simply cannot be Christians all by ourselves. The reality of living with others will task us in all kinds of ways, discipling us as we strive to forge a common life.
This morning, as summer comes to an end and we begin to look forward to our Sunday School Kick-Off next Sunday and the beginning of a new program year in our common life, let us pray for our unity, for the unity of the church of God, in words from The Book of Common Prayer:
O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is but one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify you; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Sunday, September 4, 2011 Romans 13: 8 – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 18: 15 – 20
Jesus said, “If another member of the church sins against you,”
Matthew 18: 15 a
One Christmas several years ago, A.G. and I gave our four year old grandson Connor a small train set. Connor was delighted and immediately set about carefully fitting the pieces of the track together. Connor worked along for a goodly while until he had created a large oval. As Connor reached for a train car to place on his newly constructed track, Kaelyn, his three year old sister, came rushing into the room, running right over top of the track, leaving in her wake nothing but chaos, as the track broke apart.
As Connor started to rebuild his track and Kaelyn’s attention was redirected to something other than bothering her brother, I was reminded in that moment just how difficult life together can be, especially when you are three and four.
The difficulty of living with others is the focus of our gospel reading from Matthew this morning. “If another member of the church sins against you,” our reading begins. Since the Reformation, our reading this morning has been called “The Rule of Christ.” Faced with the reality of sin within the church, the rule prescribes first a private confrontation, and then a confrontation joined by one or two others, and finally a confrontation before the whole church. The rule begins in private – if we have a bone to pick with someone, we must first pick it with them, not discuss our grievances with others, looking for allies in our cause. The rule begins privileging the dignity of the offender, someone who deserves our care as we seek to make peace.
If the offender is not willing to hear your complaint, the rule continues, we are to ask one or two others to go with us and make our complaint again. Once again, respecting the dignity of the offender is privileged. The concern from the first is to keep the offender in the fold, to seek reconciliation, and not turn the offender into an object of public humiliation.
Finally, if not just you, but one or two others, believe another’s behavior is harming to the community, the whole community is asked to weigh in. Only after the whole community weighs in, is the offender asked to leave.
We may hear this rule as simply sound advice for resolving conflict which it is. Or we may hear this rule as giving the Church the authority to “excommunicate” certain folk, which it also does. What we may not hear, though, is what this rule teaches us about community and the way sin destroys community.
Sin, for us, is often an individual matter. I have my sins and you have yours, and our sins are personal matters between us and God. But sin is never simply personal; sin always has a communal impact. What sin does is to destroy community, to break up relationships, leaving us isolated from others. Sin forces us apart, whereas God wills us to be together. And this desire of God that we might be one is precisely what grounds the extreme care and concern we all must take as we seek to be reconciled one with another.
Sadly, you and I live in a culture in which we think of ourselves as individuals who have “rights.” When our “rights” are transgressed, we seek redress. Our concern is usually more about getting what is owed to us than about preserving relationships and building community. The church, though, is not a collection of individuals who have “rights,” but is rather a communion of persons, called out by God and knit together by the power of the Holy Spirit. No one of us deserves to be here and no one of us is any more or less dispensable to our common life than anyone else.
Which is precisely why this Rule of Christ takes great pains to keep the offender in the fold, not punish them. When, however, someone’s behavior becomes destructive to the preservation of the community, the community has the authority to “loose” that person from the bonds of fellowship.
The problem of sin, and the way sin destroys community became very real for the church during the third century. In 249 A.D., Decius became the Emperor of Rome. Increasingly, barbarians were threatening the well being of the Empire and Decius believed that their threat would be alleviated if the subjects of the Empire worshipped the gods. Accordingly, Decius decreed that everyone had to sacrifice to the Roman gods which, of course, Christians could not do. Under pressure, however, some Christians renounced their faith. When the persecution ended two years later, the church was faced with the question of what to do with the “lapsed” - those who had renounced their faith but now wanted to be restored to the fellowship of the church. The bonds of communion had been broken and the church was not sure what to do.
And not for the last time, as church historian Justo Gonzalez notes: “The question of what should be done about those baptized Christians who sinned divided the Western church repeatedly. It was out of that concern that the entire penitential system developed. Much later, the Protestant Reformation was in large measure a protest against that system.” Perhaps the reformers called our text this morning the “Rule of Christ” to remind us all that one who rules us is the good shepherd who leaves behind ninety-nine sheep to seek out one who has gone astray, a parable which just happens to come immediately before the text we hear this morning.
The church is no longer under persecution but sin in all of its many forms still seeks to bring chaos to communion. What we are together is precious beyond words, but vulnerable, as vulnerable as a child’s wooden train track to the stomping feet of a three year old. We all know of communities that have been ripped apart by conflicts – indeed, our own diocese is struggling with some major conflicts over sexuality and church property. The struggles will not cease, but the bonds of affection need not break.
I find it disheartening that the Episcopal Church over the past several years has been so often in the news and not for what we are doing well but rather because of our tensions and disagreements. Our disunion seems to be far more fascinating than our communion. For those outside the Church, I fear we often look more like a reality T.V. show than a communion of saints.
But then, how seriously do we take our common life? How careful are we with our words and actions? How do we respond when someone “sins against us”? How mindful are we of our need for one another? Try as we might, we simply cannot be Christians all by ourselves. The reality of living with others will task us in all kinds of ways, discipling us as we strive to forge a common life.
This morning, as summer comes to an end and we begin to look forward to our Sunday School Kick-Off next Sunday and the beginning of a new program year in our common life, let us pray for our unity, for the unity of the church of God, in words from The Book of Common Prayer:
O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is but one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify you; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
The Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost Exodus 14: 19 – 31
Sunday, September 11, 2011 Romans 14: 1 – 12
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 18: 21 - 35
“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.”
Matthew 18: 23
Kids have a keen sense of justice. Invite two five year olds to dinner and give one a larger dish of ice cream for dessert and you are in trouble. Or go outside to blow bubbles with a three and a four year old and hand one a “giant” jar of bubbles and hand the other a “regular” jar of bubbles and you will hear instantly from the one who got the smaller jar “That’s not fair!” No matter that both have enough bubble juice to last until the sun goes down; as far as they are concerned one got more and one got less and “that’s not fair.”
Justice – getting what we deserve – seems to be a part of our DNA. As we grow up we may refine our sense of justice and figure out that a smaller jar of bubbles may be easier for us to hold and not a deprivation. But when you are three, big is definitely better even if you can’t hold the jar and blow bubbles all at the same time.
We hear this morning the parable of the “unforgiving servant” in which a servant owes a huge amount of money to his king. The servant owes the king ten thousand talents. Ten thousand talents is somewhat akin to the national debt. Ten thousand talents is a vast amount of money. No servant could ever repay that kind of debt. We do not know how this servant accrued this vast debt; what we do know is that this servant had absolutely no way in his lifetime of repaying this money. The king “out of pity” releases the man from his debt.
The man then goes out and meets a fellow servant who owes him a hundred dinarii. A hundred dinarii was not a small amount of money, but something comparable to a mortgage, an amount of money we reasonably expect to be repaid within twenty or thirty years. A debt of a hundred dinarii could reasonably be paid back. But the “unforgiving servant” refuses to be patient and throws his fellow servant into prison.
The “unforgiving servant” does not treat his fellow servant as he has been treated by the king, and as any three year old will tell you: “That’s not fair!”
We have no trouble this morning recognizing the injustice that has been done. The “unforgiving servant” is not playing fair. We may, though, have trouble figuring out what exactly this “unforgiving servant” should have done. Should he have simply released his fellow servant from the debt “out of pity” as the king did? Should he wait another ten years in the hope of getting paid? And if he gives his fellow servant more time to repay the debt, and still does not get paid, what then? Recognizing injustice is often easier for us to do than determining how to make things right.
Sin, in both the Old and New Testaments, is an offense against God and the language of debt is often used to describe what happens to our relationship with God when we sin. Sin creates a debt we cannot repay, like that of the “unforgiving servant.” Sin is an injustice against God which only God can forgive. And in the parable of the “unforgiving servant” our evangelist Matthew clearly wants to remind us of the infinite debt we each owe to God because of our sinfulness. We, like the “unforgiving servant,” can do nothing to erase this debt and can only cast ourselves upon the mercy of God.
Likewise, when others “sin against us,” we suffer injury, and the offense, however great or small, can be likened to a debt. We can, and often do, simply wave away this debt with nary a second thought. When my husband promises to be home by seven o’clock and does not show up until eight, I may become irritated but probably will not start divorce proceedings.
But if someone breaks into my home and steals what belongs to me, I would very likely call the police and file a report. And I would want to get back what had been taken from me. To simply wave away what had happened would be foolish and probably only encourage the thief to steal again.
“To forgive somebody,” in the words of Frederick Buechner, “is to say one way or another, ‘You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. Both my pride and principles demand no less. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you’ve done and though we both may carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want you for my friend.”
Ten years ago, the unspeakable did indeed happen. Suicide bombers crashed four planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and onto a field in rural Pennsylvania, killing nearly three thousand people and scarring others for life. Few of us, if any, were not injured in some way that day, even if the injury was limited to a loss of a sense of security and safety, and not the death of a loved one. Those acts of terror cannot and should not be forgotten.
In these past ten years, we all have watched as the nations of the world struggle with the reality of terrorism, the horrible truth that for some folk, the only way to right the world’s wrongs is by blowing themselves and whoever is near them, to pieces. The sheer “unspeakability” of those acts defies the imagination.
But Buechner’s words resound with profundity: “I still want you to be my friend.” Do we really want to be friends with folk who believe differently than we do and who dress differently than we do and who act differently than we do and may be even, want to hurt us? The rubber hits the road this morning and we are faced with the sobering truth that it is very hard for us to love our neighbor, neighbors who are not like us.
“To accept forgiveness,” Buechner continues, “means to admit that you have done something unspeakable that needs to be forgiven, and thus both parties must swallow the same thing: their pride.” Growing up, my family knew nothing about Islam and had no Muslim friends and while we had many Jewish neighbors, the circle of folk I grew up in did not seem to mind making jokes about Jews. My grandmother was horrified when we elected a Catholic, John Kennedy, to be President. My grandmother was sure the Pope would be directing the affairs of state. I suspect, if we are honest, we could all tell are own tales of prejudice. Pride, our inordinate love of self, often issues by condemning those who not like us.
Friendship is not cheap. Our friendship with God cost Jesus his life. Perhaps the lesson this day is wondering if we really want to be friends with those who are not like us or would we rather send them into the hands of the torturers? We are not called to forget, much less dismiss, the injury others have inflicted upon us; we are called to pray for our enemies and to yearn that the whole world might be one.
As a beginning might I suggest that the suicide bombers ten years ago were four men and did not represent all of Islam anymore than my grandmother represented the breadth of Christianity? Might I suggest that all ethnic jokes, regardless how funny, are hurtful and divisive? Might I suggest that we each bear a particular responsibility in this fragile world for healing and reconciliation in the name of Christ, not blind to injustice but mindful that we are ambassadors of peace. And might I suggest that none of us, no matter how wise, has the handle on all truth?
The framers of our revised common lectionary had no idea that on this day, the tenth anniversary of September 11th, we would be hearing the parable of the unforgiving servant. We are today challenged by this parable in ways we have not been before, given what we remember. We are, today, much more aware that forgiveness in the face of what happened on September 11, 2011, is neither easy nor cheap. At the very least, we are all this day much more mindful that forgiveness means a whole lot more than simply saying “I am sorry.” Some debts cannot be repaid. For all those who lost folk they loved in the attacks ten years ago, nothing – no memorial fund, no museum, no reflecting pool nor wall of names – will ever assuage what they have lost. Even the death of Osama Bin Laden will not make up for the loss. Some debts cannot be repaid.
We can, I suppose, keep trying to wrest blood from a rock, to make others “pay for what they have done.” At the end of the day, though, when the persons and things that we love have been taken from us, there is no going back. We can, if we choose, keep going in their absence, into a new world, a world not like the one we have known. We can trust that even though we have lost forever something or someone that made this world a kinder and gentler place for us, we have the power to make this world a kinder and gentler place for others even, or maybe because of, our grief. Might it be that God so ordained this world that only by losing ourselves do we find ourselves, that as our comforts and securities are wrenched away, we are given the means to be with others as their comforts and securities are being wrenched away? Might it be that God is using our sufferings to draw us together not further apart? Might it be.
Sunday, September 11, 2011 Romans 14: 1 – 12
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 18: 21 - 35
“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.”
Matthew 18: 23
Kids have a keen sense of justice. Invite two five year olds to dinner and give one a larger dish of ice cream for dessert and you are in trouble. Or go outside to blow bubbles with a three and a four year old and hand one a “giant” jar of bubbles and hand the other a “regular” jar of bubbles and you will hear instantly from the one who got the smaller jar “That’s not fair!” No matter that both have enough bubble juice to last until the sun goes down; as far as they are concerned one got more and one got less and “that’s not fair.”
Justice – getting what we deserve – seems to be a part of our DNA. As we grow up we may refine our sense of justice and figure out that a smaller jar of bubbles may be easier for us to hold and not a deprivation. But when you are three, big is definitely better even if you can’t hold the jar and blow bubbles all at the same time.
We hear this morning the parable of the “unforgiving servant” in which a servant owes a huge amount of money to his king. The servant owes the king ten thousand talents. Ten thousand talents is somewhat akin to the national debt. Ten thousand talents is a vast amount of money. No servant could ever repay that kind of debt. We do not know how this servant accrued this vast debt; what we do know is that this servant had absolutely no way in his lifetime of repaying this money. The king “out of pity” releases the man from his debt.
The man then goes out and meets a fellow servant who owes him a hundred dinarii. A hundred dinarii was not a small amount of money, but something comparable to a mortgage, an amount of money we reasonably expect to be repaid within twenty or thirty years. A debt of a hundred dinarii could reasonably be paid back. But the “unforgiving servant” refuses to be patient and throws his fellow servant into prison.
The “unforgiving servant” does not treat his fellow servant as he has been treated by the king, and as any three year old will tell you: “That’s not fair!”
We have no trouble this morning recognizing the injustice that has been done. The “unforgiving servant” is not playing fair. We may, though, have trouble figuring out what exactly this “unforgiving servant” should have done. Should he have simply released his fellow servant from the debt “out of pity” as the king did? Should he wait another ten years in the hope of getting paid? And if he gives his fellow servant more time to repay the debt, and still does not get paid, what then? Recognizing injustice is often easier for us to do than determining how to make things right.
Sin, in both the Old and New Testaments, is an offense against God and the language of debt is often used to describe what happens to our relationship with God when we sin. Sin creates a debt we cannot repay, like that of the “unforgiving servant.” Sin is an injustice against God which only God can forgive. And in the parable of the “unforgiving servant” our evangelist Matthew clearly wants to remind us of the infinite debt we each owe to God because of our sinfulness. We, like the “unforgiving servant,” can do nothing to erase this debt and can only cast ourselves upon the mercy of God.
Likewise, when others “sin against us,” we suffer injury, and the offense, however great or small, can be likened to a debt. We can, and often do, simply wave away this debt with nary a second thought. When my husband promises to be home by seven o’clock and does not show up until eight, I may become irritated but probably will not start divorce proceedings.
But if someone breaks into my home and steals what belongs to me, I would very likely call the police and file a report. And I would want to get back what had been taken from me. To simply wave away what had happened would be foolish and probably only encourage the thief to steal again.
“To forgive somebody,” in the words of Frederick Buechner, “is to say one way or another, ‘You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. Both my pride and principles demand no less. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you’ve done and though we both may carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want you for my friend.”
Ten years ago, the unspeakable did indeed happen. Suicide bombers crashed four planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and onto a field in rural Pennsylvania, killing nearly three thousand people and scarring others for life. Few of us, if any, were not injured in some way that day, even if the injury was limited to a loss of a sense of security and safety, and not the death of a loved one. Those acts of terror cannot and should not be forgotten.
In these past ten years, we all have watched as the nations of the world struggle with the reality of terrorism, the horrible truth that for some folk, the only way to right the world’s wrongs is by blowing themselves and whoever is near them, to pieces. The sheer “unspeakability” of those acts defies the imagination.
But Buechner’s words resound with profundity: “I still want you to be my friend.” Do we really want to be friends with folk who believe differently than we do and who dress differently than we do and who act differently than we do and may be even, want to hurt us? The rubber hits the road this morning and we are faced with the sobering truth that it is very hard for us to love our neighbor, neighbors who are not like us.
“To accept forgiveness,” Buechner continues, “means to admit that you have done something unspeakable that needs to be forgiven, and thus both parties must swallow the same thing: their pride.” Growing up, my family knew nothing about Islam and had no Muslim friends and while we had many Jewish neighbors, the circle of folk I grew up in did not seem to mind making jokes about Jews. My grandmother was horrified when we elected a Catholic, John Kennedy, to be President. My grandmother was sure the Pope would be directing the affairs of state. I suspect, if we are honest, we could all tell are own tales of prejudice. Pride, our inordinate love of self, often issues by condemning those who not like us.
Friendship is not cheap. Our friendship with God cost Jesus his life. Perhaps the lesson this day is wondering if we really want to be friends with those who are not like us or would we rather send them into the hands of the torturers? We are not called to forget, much less dismiss, the injury others have inflicted upon us; we are called to pray for our enemies and to yearn that the whole world might be one.
As a beginning might I suggest that the suicide bombers ten years ago were four men and did not represent all of Islam anymore than my grandmother represented the breadth of Christianity? Might I suggest that all ethnic jokes, regardless how funny, are hurtful and divisive? Might I suggest that we each bear a particular responsibility in this fragile world for healing and reconciliation in the name of Christ, not blind to injustice but mindful that we are ambassadors of peace. And might I suggest that none of us, no matter how wise, has the handle on all truth?
The framers of our revised common lectionary had no idea that on this day, the tenth anniversary of September 11th, we would be hearing the parable of the unforgiving servant. We are today challenged by this parable in ways we have not been before, given what we remember. We are, today, much more aware that forgiveness in the face of what happened on September 11, 2011, is neither easy nor cheap. At the very least, we are all this day much more mindful that forgiveness means a whole lot more than simply saying “I am sorry.” Some debts cannot be repaid. For all those who lost folk they loved in the attacks ten years ago, nothing – no memorial fund, no museum, no reflecting pool nor wall of names – will ever assuage what they have lost. Even the death of Osama Bin Laden will not make up for the loss. Some debts cannot be repaid.
We can, I suppose, keep trying to wrest blood from a rock, to make others “pay for what they have done.” At the end of the day, though, when the persons and things that we love have been taken from us, there is no going back. We can, if we choose, keep going in their absence, into a new world, a world not like the one we have known. We can trust that even though we have lost forever something or someone that made this world a kinder and gentler place for us, we have the power to make this world a kinder and gentler place for others even, or maybe because of, our grief. Might it be that God so ordained this world that only by losing ourselves do we find ourselves, that as our comforts and securities are wrenched away, we are given the means to be with others as their comforts and securities are being wrenched away? Might it be that God is using our sufferings to draw us together not further apart? Might it be.
The Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost Exodus 16: 2 – 15
Sunday, September 18, 2011 Philippians 1: 21 – 30
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 20: 1 – 16
And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have born the burden of the day and the scorching heat.”
Matthew 20: 11 – 12
Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth was fond of speaking of “the strange new world of the Bible.” In this strange new world, the hungry Israelites are fed with bread that rains down from heaven in our Old Testament reading from Exodus, Saint Paul calls suffering for Christ “a privilege” in our reading from Philippians, and in our gospel reading, a landowner pays the same wage to all, whether they worked all day or for only an hour.
In our world, bread does not fall out of the sky, suffering would hardly be called a privilege, and justice requires that those who work eight hours are paid more than those who work only one. Our readings this morning invite us into a world that is not like the world in which you and I live, a world that turns upon certain fairly immutable truths – our food comes from the earth, not from heaven; suffering is to be avoided if possible; and we are to be rewarded for our work.
Our ancestors in the faith lived with same kind of natural truths. Upon hearing this parable in which a landowner pays the same wage to those who worked all day and to those who only worked a fraction of the day, they, like us, would have “expected” the landowner to give the laborers hired first more money than those who were hired later and who, thus, worked less. But the world of the parable does not turn as our world does and when the landowner pays all of the laborers, no matter how long they have worked, the same wage, we are left, if not grumbling, at least wondering what will happen the next day when, now the wiser, none of the laborers will want to put in a full day’s work given the outrageous generosity of the landowner.
The landowner does the unthinkable in our parable – the landowner erases the relationship between work and reward. The distinction between those who worked eight hours and those who worked one hour is gone. Those who worked eight hours grumble that the landowner has made them “equal” with those who did not work most of the day. Everybody got the same wage and the early risers, the responsible, hard working, get-up-at-sunrise folk are angry. These folk worked longer and should be paid more than those who worked less. And, in our world, they are right.
When I was in seminary I rented an apartment on Braddock Road in Alexandria. My apartment faced a large parking lot, shared by a Methodist Church. Around 5:30 a.m., every morning, I would awake to the sound of men speaking Spanish as they waited for a local contractor to pick them up for work. The men would park their cars and then wait until the contractor picked them up to be taken to the job site. In many places in this country, men go to similar parking lots hoping to be hired but never know if they will be. If the contractor needs brick layers and you do not know how to lay brick you are left to wait for someone who needs the skills you have. Like those hired last in our parable who are asked by the landowner: “Why are you standing idle here all day?” these day laborers can only answer: “Because no one has hired us.” If the marketplace does not need what you have to offer, you are left without a job and without a paycheck.
The economics of the market place privilege the able bodied, the industrious, and the educated, returning greater rewards for certain kinds of work. A doctor, in other words, earns more money than a janitor. And the disabled, the elderly, and the unskilled are often left with no reward at all.
The landowner in our parable obviously knows nothing about the economics of the market place when he rewards equally all the laborers no matter how much work they have done. The landowner must know that come the following day, only a fool would be waiting early in the morning to be hired, only to be paid the same wage if he showed up at five in the afternoon. The landowner is creating chaos in the market place, offering no incentive to go and work in his vineyard.
“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs me?” the landowner responds to the long suffering hard workers. “Or are you envious because I am generous?” A generous landlord is a landlord that deserves gratitude, not grumbling. But a landlord that refuses to “play by the rules” means there is no way we can earn a reward, no matter what we do or fail to do.
How do you live in a world where there is no reward for good behavior? How do you live in a world where the sun rises and the rain falls on the just and the unjust? How do you live in this world with an outrageously generous God? How do you live in a world that is not a market place but a gift?
The parable we hear this morning invites us into a strange new world, a world brought into being by a gracious God, who after creating the world creates human beings to care for God’s creation. We, alone of all of God’s creation, are called to be caretakers, stewards of a world that belongs not to us but to God. God is not an employer who rewards us for faithful service and punishes us when we fail to show up for work. God gives us a gift and asks that we care for this gift as we do with any gift we receive from someone who loves us.
As a gift, the world and all that lies therein, is not a commodity that we can buy and sell for our gain. The world, all of creation, is an end in itself, existing simply because God wills it to be so. And we, all of us, have been created to “till it and to keep it,” as we read in Genesis. We are not to exploit the world or one another for our gain, but rather treasure this world and each other as gifts.
The market place is a place of reward and punishment, a place in which the strong are rewarded and the weak are penalized. A well dressed articulate thirty year old with a degree from Harvard is still, even in today’s economy, far more likely to find a job and a job that pays well, than is a fifty year old paraplegic in a wheel chair he maneuvers by blowing into a straw. And if you are so unlucky as to be over fifty-five and suddenly get sick, beware of being asked to retire early. Oh, and be careful about those lapses in your resume – those times when you chose not to work for pay but rather chose to stay home in order to look after children or care for an ailing family member.
The kingdom of God is not a market place and none of us can earn a place in it. We are given our place by God and for God and no one of us is any more or less worthy than anybody else. God does not invite us to God’s table in the Eucharist as a “reward” for good behavior but simply because God is gracious and exceedingly generous.
In our collect this morning we prayed, “Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly.” These are anxious times. The market place for many is not generous - money is tight and jobs are scarce. Many of us worry about how we will care for ourselves and for those we love if we get sick or if our income decreases. Unlike previous generations, we are living longer thanks to medicine, but probably will not be able to care for ourselves for as long as we might live. We worry about becoming burdens on others as most of us have breathed deeply the air of the market place in which if we can no longer “do” anything, we no longer are worth anything and become excess baggage, burdens on others.
The kingdom of God is not a market place, the world and all of us are not commodities to be used for profit, and none of us can buy our way into God’s kingdom. Few of us if any will not be a burden upon others from time to time. All of us are the beneficiaries of the graciousness of God. None of us deserves to be here. God does not reward us for what we do but loves us because of who we are – a creation of God. Some of us may need to remember that God loves us not because we are good but because we are God’s children; others of us may need to remember that God has many children and we are not God’s only child. All of us need to remember that everything we are and all that we have is not ours but God’s, to be used not for our sakes but for the sake of this world which God so dearly loves.
Sunday, September 18, 2011 Philippians 1: 21 – 30
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 20: 1 – 16
And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have born the burden of the day and the scorching heat.”
Matthew 20: 11 – 12
Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth was fond of speaking of “the strange new world of the Bible.” In this strange new world, the hungry Israelites are fed with bread that rains down from heaven in our Old Testament reading from Exodus, Saint Paul calls suffering for Christ “a privilege” in our reading from Philippians, and in our gospel reading, a landowner pays the same wage to all, whether they worked all day or for only an hour.
In our world, bread does not fall out of the sky, suffering would hardly be called a privilege, and justice requires that those who work eight hours are paid more than those who work only one. Our readings this morning invite us into a world that is not like the world in which you and I live, a world that turns upon certain fairly immutable truths – our food comes from the earth, not from heaven; suffering is to be avoided if possible; and we are to be rewarded for our work.
Our ancestors in the faith lived with same kind of natural truths. Upon hearing this parable in which a landowner pays the same wage to those who worked all day and to those who only worked a fraction of the day, they, like us, would have “expected” the landowner to give the laborers hired first more money than those who were hired later and who, thus, worked less. But the world of the parable does not turn as our world does and when the landowner pays all of the laborers, no matter how long they have worked, the same wage, we are left, if not grumbling, at least wondering what will happen the next day when, now the wiser, none of the laborers will want to put in a full day’s work given the outrageous generosity of the landowner.
The landowner does the unthinkable in our parable – the landowner erases the relationship between work and reward. The distinction between those who worked eight hours and those who worked one hour is gone. Those who worked eight hours grumble that the landowner has made them “equal” with those who did not work most of the day. Everybody got the same wage and the early risers, the responsible, hard working, get-up-at-sunrise folk are angry. These folk worked longer and should be paid more than those who worked less. And, in our world, they are right.
When I was in seminary I rented an apartment on Braddock Road in Alexandria. My apartment faced a large parking lot, shared by a Methodist Church. Around 5:30 a.m., every morning, I would awake to the sound of men speaking Spanish as they waited for a local contractor to pick them up for work. The men would park their cars and then wait until the contractor picked them up to be taken to the job site. In many places in this country, men go to similar parking lots hoping to be hired but never know if they will be. If the contractor needs brick layers and you do not know how to lay brick you are left to wait for someone who needs the skills you have. Like those hired last in our parable who are asked by the landowner: “Why are you standing idle here all day?” these day laborers can only answer: “Because no one has hired us.” If the marketplace does not need what you have to offer, you are left without a job and without a paycheck.
The economics of the market place privilege the able bodied, the industrious, and the educated, returning greater rewards for certain kinds of work. A doctor, in other words, earns more money than a janitor. And the disabled, the elderly, and the unskilled are often left with no reward at all.
The landowner in our parable obviously knows nothing about the economics of the market place when he rewards equally all the laborers no matter how much work they have done. The landowner must know that come the following day, only a fool would be waiting early in the morning to be hired, only to be paid the same wage if he showed up at five in the afternoon. The landowner is creating chaos in the market place, offering no incentive to go and work in his vineyard.
“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs me?” the landowner responds to the long suffering hard workers. “Or are you envious because I am generous?” A generous landlord is a landlord that deserves gratitude, not grumbling. But a landlord that refuses to “play by the rules” means there is no way we can earn a reward, no matter what we do or fail to do.
How do you live in a world where there is no reward for good behavior? How do you live in a world where the sun rises and the rain falls on the just and the unjust? How do you live in this world with an outrageously generous God? How do you live in a world that is not a market place but a gift?
The parable we hear this morning invites us into a strange new world, a world brought into being by a gracious God, who after creating the world creates human beings to care for God’s creation. We, alone of all of God’s creation, are called to be caretakers, stewards of a world that belongs not to us but to God. God is not an employer who rewards us for faithful service and punishes us when we fail to show up for work. God gives us a gift and asks that we care for this gift as we do with any gift we receive from someone who loves us.
As a gift, the world and all that lies therein, is not a commodity that we can buy and sell for our gain. The world, all of creation, is an end in itself, existing simply because God wills it to be so. And we, all of us, have been created to “till it and to keep it,” as we read in Genesis. We are not to exploit the world or one another for our gain, but rather treasure this world and each other as gifts.
The market place is a place of reward and punishment, a place in which the strong are rewarded and the weak are penalized. A well dressed articulate thirty year old with a degree from Harvard is still, even in today’s economy, far more likely to find a job and a job that pays well, than is a fifty year old paraplegic in a wheel chair he maneuvers by blowing into a straw. And if you are so unlucky as to be over fifty-five and suddenly get sick, beware of being asked to retire early. Oh, and be careful about those lapses in your resume – those times when you chose not to work for pay but rather chose to stay home in order to look after children or care for an ailing family member.
The kingdom of God is not a market place and none of us can earn a place in it. We are given our place by God and for God and no one of us is any more or less worthy than anybody else. God does not invite us to God’s table in the Eucharist as a “reward” for good behavior but simply because God is gracious and exceedingly generous.
In our collect this morning we prayed, “Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly.” These are anxious times. The market place for many is not generous - money is tight and jobs are scarce. Many of us worry about how we will care for ourselves and for those we love if we get sick or if our income decreases. Unlike previous generations, we are living longer thanks to medicine, but probably will not be able to care for ourselves for as long as we might live. We worry about becoming burdens on others as most of us have breathed deeply the air of the market place in which if we can no longer “do” anything, we no longer are worth anything and become excess baggage, burdens on others.
The kingdom of God is not a market place, the world and all of us are not commodities to be used for profit, and none of us can buy our way into God’s kingdom. Few of us if any will not be a burden upon others from time to time. All of us are the beneficiaries of the graciousness of God. None of us deserves to be here. God does not reward us for what we do but loves us because of who we are – a creation of God. Some of us may need to remember that God loves us not because we are good but because we are God’s children; others of us may need to remember that God has many children and we are not God’s only child. All of us need to remember that everything we are and all that we have is not ours but God’s, to be used not for our sakes but for the sake of this world which God so dearly loves.
The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost Exodus 17: 1 – 7
Sunday, September 25, 2011 Philippians 2: 1 – 3
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 21: 23 – 32
When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, ‘By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?’
Matthew 21: 23
We meet Jesus this morning sparring with the chief priests in the Temple. At issue is a question of authority. Just before our reading, Jesus has overturned the tables of the money changers in the Temple and the chief priests are now asking: “Who gave you the authority to wreck havoc in the Temple and now presume to teach us?”
In response, Jesus asks the chief priests where the authority of John the Baptist came from. John the Baptist called all of Israel to repent and baptized those who believed his call in the Jordan River. Was John acting on orders from God or simply “acting out”? The chief priests are caught on the horns of a dilemma – if John’s call to repent was from God and they chose not to follow, they would be guilty of unrighteousness; if, on the other hand, they said John’s call to repentance was not from God, those who believed John was a prophet might become troublesome.
Neither possibility was desirable and the chief priests are caught between the proverbial “rock and a hard place.” And in response to Jesus’ question, the chief priests answer, uncomfortably, I suspect: “We do not know.”
Jesus follows up on this artful debate with a parable of a man who had two sons. One initially refuses to go and work in his father’s vineyard, but later changes his mind and goes. The other son, agrees to go, but never does and the chief priests acknowledge that the son who changed his mind did the will of his father.
“To change one’s mind” is a word closely associated with the idea of repentance, of turning from one way of life to another, a turning away from self-interest toward God and the interests of others. And, as Jesus points out, those who recognized the righteousness of John - the tax collectors and the prostitutes – were the very folk the “righteous” wanted nothing to do with. Jesus is challenging the chief priests to “change their minds” in light of what is happening beginning with the ministry of John and culminating in the ministry of Jesus.
Ultimately, the confrontation between Jesus and the chief priests will get Jesus crucified. The chief priests were charged to maintain the identity of the people Israel, to preserve the ritual practices of Temple worship, to maintain the ways God had ordained to keep Israel a nation “set apart,” a nation set a part to worship God. Israel was not to be like the other nations and the chief priests were responsible for maintaining the practices that set Israel apart.
And now a man from Nazareth shows up, saying the kingdom of God is at hand. What Israel had long hoped for – a day when God would come and set the world to rights – Jesus proclaims has now happened. The hope of Israel has been fulfilled in the person of Jesus. What God had promised Israel long ago – that Israel would be a light to the nations has come to pass in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
We can, and the church often has, read texts such as we hear this morning, as texts that condemn Israel, the chief priests, and the ritual sacrificial practices of the Temple. We can, and the church often has, read texts like the one we hear this morning, as saying Israel was wrong and Jesus was right. Jesus, as Bishop Tom Wright, reminds us, was not condemning Israel but rather calling Israel to fulfill her mission to be a light to all nations, not dismissing her special vocation but rather fulfilling it, opening the kingdom of God to all races and nations.
And Jesus was preaching this message as the empire of Rome was doing all that Rome could do to “assimilate” the Jews. The Jews were an odd lot and Rome needed an empire of folk who all appreciated the glory of Rome, not God. Dissidents were crucified, short and sweet. The Jews had been in this place before – exiled first by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians, and the Jews struggled mightily to preserve their identity as a holy people. Now, under Roman rule, many Jews advocated revolution. The outcome was harsh as Rome and her legions destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D.
In the midst of this heated political landscape, Jesus advocates non resistance, urging the Jews to pray for their enemies, turn the other cheek and walk a second mile. Jesus called those who wished to follow him to give up their lives in order to save their lives. And over and over again Jesus admonished his followers not to be afraid.
Fear is an incredible weapon and Rome knew how to use fear to subjugate people. Lining the roads with crosses was a crude but very effective way to keep the peace. Fear drives us to protect ourselves, to create barriers between ourselves and others who we perceive as threats. Fear drives us apart, away from one another and away from God.
The opposite of fear is faith, the trust that God will not abandon us to the power of death. The witness of the resurrection is our assurance that death does not have the last word. Evil and the fear evil creates is what crucified Christ and what God overpowered in the Resurrection.
Jesus came to deliver us from the power of evil, a power we deny at our peril, a power only God has the power to overcome. The gospels all bear witness to a great cosmic battle between “the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God,” as we say in our baptismal liturgy and the love of God that leads to life. Jesus wages a battle Israel could not, allowing evil to overwhelm him on the cross, trusting in the mercy of God who raised him up on the third day. The resurrection reveals once and for all, that the power of God is greater than the power of evil and we need not be afraid.
The temptation we all face is presuming we have the power to overcome evil, that we can somehow “save” ourselves if only we try harder or do better. The temptation for Israel was believing they could throw off the power of Rome by a violent revolution, to overcome evil with evil. Jesus refused to take up the sword, and “laid down his life,” “humbling himself,” in the words of Saint Paul in our reading from Philippians.
Evil tempts us to believe that we can somehow “author” our own salvation, that we can somehow create a world with no threats to our existence. We cannot. We, each of us, are at the mercy of God. And what we know from scripture is that Israel’s existence was threatened over and over again, and each time Israel struggled to trust in the mercy of God for God’s people. Over and over again, Israel was called to “repent and return to the Lord,” to resist the temptation to put their trust in their own power rather than the power of God.
The authority Jesus claims for himself this morning is the authority of a live lived in perfect obedience, even to death on a cross, that you and I might live boldly in a world made new, a world in which nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God. May the God of all mercy free us from our faithless fears and “send us into the world in peace, granting us strength and courage to love and serve others with “gladness and singleness of heart.”
Sunday, September 25, 2011 Philippians 2: 1 – 3
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 21: 23 – 32
When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, ‘By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?’
Matthew 21: 23
We meet Jesus this morning sparring with the chief priests in the Temple. At issue is a question of authority. Just before our reading, Jesus has overturned the tables of the money changers in the Temple and the chief priests are now asking: “Who gave you the authority to wreck havoc in the Temple and now presume to teach us?”
In response, Jesus asks the chief priests where the authority of John the Baptist came from. John the Baptist called all of Israel to repent and baptized those who believed his call in the Jordan River. Was John acting on orders from God or simply “acting out”? The chief priests are caught on the horns of a dilemma – if John’s call to repent was from God and they chose not to follow, they would be guilty of unrighteousness; if, on the other hand, they said John’s call to repentance was not from God, those who believed John was a prophet might become troublesome.
Neither possibility was desirable and the chief priests are caught between the proverbial “rock and a hard place.” And in response to Jesus’ question, the chief priests answer, uncomfortably, I suspect: “We do not know.”
Jesus follows up on this artful debate with a parable of a man who had two sons. One initially refuses to go and work in his father’s vineyard, but later changes his mind and goes. The other son, agrees to go, but never does and the chief priests acknowledge that the son who changed his mind did the will of his father.
“To change one’s mind” is a word closely associated with the idea of repentance, of turning from one way of life to another, a turning away from self-interest toward God and the interests of others. And, as Jesus points out, those who recognized the righteousness of John - the tax collectors and the prostitutes – were the very folk the “righteous” wanted nothing to do with. Jesus is challenging the chief priests to “change their minds” in light of what is happening beginning with the ministry of John and culminating in the ministry of Jesus.
Ultimately, the confrontation between Jesus and the chief priests will get Jesus crucified. The chief priests were charged to maintain the identity of the people Israel, to preserve the ritual practices of Temple worship, to maintain the ways God had ordained to keep Israel a nation “set apart,” a nation set a part to worship God. Israel was not to be like the other nations and the chief priests were responsible for maintaining the practices that set Israel apart.
And now a man from Nazareth shows up, saying the kingdom of God is at hand. What Israel had long hoped for – a day when God would come and set the world to rights – Jesus proclaims has now happened. The hope of Israel has been fulfilled in the person of Jesus. What God had promised Israel long ago – that Israel would be a light to the nations has come to pass in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
We can, and the church often has, read texts such as we hear this morning, as texts that condemn Israel, the chief priests, and the ritual sacrificial practices of the Temple. We can, and the church often has, read texts like the one we hear this morning, as saying Israel was wrong and Jesus was right. Jesus, as Bishop Tom Wright, reminds us, was not condemning Israel but rather calling Israel to fulfill her mission to be a light to all nations, not dismissing her special vocation but rather fulfilling it, opening the kingdom of God to all races and nations.
And Jesus was preaching this message as the empire of Rome was doing all that Rome could do to “assimilate” the Jews. The Jews were an odd lot and Rome needed an empire of folk who all appreciated the glory of Rome, not God. Dissidents were crucified, short and sweet. The Jews had been in this place before – exiled first by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians, and the Jews struggled mightily to preserve their identity as a holy people. Now, under Roman rule, many Jews advocated revolution. The outcome was harsh as Rome and her legions destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D.
In the midst of this heated political landscape, Jesus advocates non resistance, urging the Jews to pray for their enemies, turn the other cheek and walk a second mile. Jesus called those who wished to follow him to give up their lives in order to save their lives. And over and over again Jesus admonished his followers not to be afraid.
Fear is an incredible weapon and Rome knew how to use fear to subjugate people. Lining the roads with crosses was a crude but very effective way to keep the peace. Fear drives us to protect ourselves, to create barriers between ourselves and others who we perceive as threats. Fear drives us apart, away from one another and away from God.
The opposite of fear is faith, the trust that God will not abandon us to the power of death. The witness of the resurrection is our assurance that death does not have the last word. Evil and the fear evil creates is what crucified Christ and what God overpowered in the Resurrection.
Jesus came to deliver us from the power of evil, a power we deny at our peril, a power only God has the power to overcome. The gospels all bear witness to a great cosmic battle between “the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God,” as we say in our baptismal liturgy and the love of God that leads to life. Jesus wages a battle Israel could not, allowing evil to overwhelm him on the cross, trusting in the mercy of God who raised him up on the third day. The resurrection reveals once and for all, that the power of God is greater than the power of evil and we need not be afraid.
The temptation we all face is presuming we have the power to overcome evil, that we can somehow “save” ourselves if only we try harder or do better. The temptation for Israel was believing they could throw off the power of Rome by a violent revolution, to overcome evil with evil. Jesus refused to take up the sword, and “laid down his life,” “humbling himself,” in the words of Saint Paul in our reading from Philippians.
Evil tempts us to believe that we can somehow “author” our own salvation, that we can somehow create a world with no threats to our existence. We cannot. We, each of us, are at the mercy of God. And what we know from scripture is that Israel’s existence was threatened over and over again, and each time Israel struggled to trust in the mercy of God for God’s people. Over and over again, Israel was called to “repent and return to the Lord,” to resist the temptation to put their trust in their own power rather than the power of God.
The authority Jesus claims for himself this morning is the authority of a live lived in perfect obedience, even to death on a cross, that you and I might live boldly in a world made new, a world in which nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God. May the God of all mercy free us from our faithless fears and “send us into the world in peace, granting us strength and courage to love and serve others with “gladness and singleness of heart.”
