Five blocks north of the University of Washington in Seattle, near the corner of 50th and University, there was a little storefront painted Mediterranean blue. The sign, blue letters on a white background, read “Sahara” and had little camels painted on it. Frankly, it was not very promising-looking, had little street-appeal. Inside, there were 15 small tables with white tablecloths and glass tops. The walls were decorated with paintings done on white ceramic tiles, portraying the heroes of the owners, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, though the place of honor and largest painting showed the “Mahmoud grandparents,” the parents of Gus, the owner. Gus and his family were from Lebanon, and they ran the restaurant themselves, with their one employee, a gracious waiter from Morocco. Gus and his wife did the cooking, including the handmade baklava. Their son and his wife helped with the cooking and serving, and the grandkids were often to be found playing or doing homework or helping out. The food was wonderful – I still dream of their lemon chicken and shish kebabs. But what made it a truly memorable restaurant, one that we went back to over and over, was that Gus made it his business to invite everyone who walked through the door into this family, if only for a few minutes. When you walked in the door, he greeted you at the door with a huge smile and wide arms, and showed you to a seat. If it was your second or seventieth time there he remembered you. As he showed you to your seat, he asked about your health, your family, your life, and pulled the chair out for you. Whenever you thanked him, whether for seating you or for bringing water, he responded in a huge booming voice, “You are welcome!” And you knew that you were indeed welcome, in every sense of the word. And it was Gus’ great pleasure to be the source of that welcome for the time that you spent in his restaurant.
It is God’s great pleasure to be the source of that welcome for you in the world. And, like Gus, God wants to offer that welcome directly to you. So much did God want to offer that welcome directly, “in person” so to speak, that God came into the world as a human being, as Jesus Christ. In today’s story, we see an example of the welcome that God came to share. Jesus, walking along the road, enters a village and is approached by ten lepers. These are the last people to expect any welcome from Jesus, since they receive no welcome from anyone else they meet. Yet they approach him and ask him for mercy. And Jesus gives it to them. He tells them to go to the priests, and on the way they were made clean. Jesus doesn’t require anything of them, he simply sends them to the priests. It seems that they don’t even have to go there, since they are made well on their way to the priests. We don’t really know what happened to nine of them from that point on. They may have done exactly what Jesus told them to – gone to the priests. They have obeyed Jesus’ command, and they are anxious to have the priests restore them to society now that they are clean. They can’t be blamed for that.
But one, a Samaritan, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. But Jesus looked around for the other nine, “where are they?” We often hear Jesus’ remark here as scolding. Like when someone gives my daughter Grace a gift, and I nag, “Say thank you!” Read one way, Jesus says, “But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God?” But read another way we might hear the longing in Jesus’ voice, the desire to know where they are, so that he can go and find them, and know them and be their friend. “But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God?” In that reading, we hear Jesus’ desire to say “You are welcome!” He has said it to the one who came back, but he still wants to share the welcome of God with those other nine. Jesus wants more than a healing, Jesus wants wholeness. Jesus wants more than a quick encounter in the street, Jesus wants a relationship. God wants a relationship.
It was for relationship that God came to us, that God continues to come to us. Over and over, God tells us, “You are welcome!” We first hear that message in the promises of baptism, when we are welcomed into the body of Christ, sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross. “You are welcome!” We hear it each week when we join in the Eucharist, a word that comes from the Greek for thanksgiving or grateful. While we give thanks for God’s willing sacrifice for our sake, God again offers God’s own self to us in bread and wine. “You are welcome!” And we hear it from one another, in so many ways, when we offer friendship, support, prayers, fellowship, and love. “You are welcome!” Our friend Gus chose to carry out his calling from God by opening a restaurant and sharing God’s welcome with all who entered. Each of us is called to offer God’s loving welcome to one another. Christ Church Lutheran practices hospitality and welcome with one another, and is intentionally working to turn that hospitality outward to our neighbors. It is a challenge, but it is also a joy. Gus has retired now, and the Sahara has closed. But I will always remember the hospitality that Gus offered me and so many others. It was genuine, it was a joy. It was an inspiration to learn how to share the same joy that Gus always took in saying to each person he hosted, “You are welcome!”
We are called to receive that welcome as well. God desires relationship with us so much that God came to earth in human form, as a tiny baby. God desires relationship with us so much that the Father gave His only Son to die for us. And for that, we give our thanks, not only today, but every day. God wants our thanks, not because God needs it, but because God wants the chance to say to us, “You are welcome!”
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Parable of the Talents
In the movie Babette’s Feast, Babette, a French woman living in a remote part of northern Denmark, spends every penny of her lottery winnings preparing an elaborate meal. She serves it to the two sisters she works for and their small congregation, in celebration of their father and founder’s 100th birthday. But this community worries more about the dangers of good food and wine, and fails to recognize the incredible gift that Babette has offered. As it turns out, she was once a renowned chef, and in preparing this meal, she is not only offering her money, but also her extraordinary abilities. Yet when a visiting general comments on the soup, the man next to him replies, “I think it will probably snow all day tomorrow!”
In my short time here at Christ Church Lutheran, I have met some incredibly gifted people. Not only are they gifted in their abilities, from music to leadership, from hospitality to fix-it-ness, and a huge variety of others, but, like Babette, they are gifted in their desire to share those abilities. I should say, you are gifted in the desire to share your abilities. And I see a desire not only to share your gifts with one another, but with the community. This congregation has made a decision to be a transforming congregation, to be a transformed congregation, not for your own sake, but for the sake of the community and for the glory of God.
I am blessed to be at Christ Church at a very special time in the life of this congregation. In Greek, it is called a kairos time. A time of receptivity, a time of openness to what God is up to, a time of pausing to listen and to see what is stirring. It is often translated as opportunity, or right time. Kairos is a word that is about the in-breaking of God’s kingdom. When Jesus begins his ministry in the book of Mark, he says “The time is fulfilled, the kairos is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near.” This is the context into which you offer your gifts, whether they are gifts of money or gifts of time or gifts of ability. The in-breaking Kingdom of God, here at Christ Church Lutheran, in the company of the Body of Christ, is where you bring and share your gifts.
But it’s scary to offer our gifts nonetheless. We see that fear in the words of the third slave in today’s gospel reading. “I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” Even if we do not believe that God is as the slave described the master, “harsh, reaping where you did not sow, gathering where you did not scatter seed,” we may experience community that way. Though we would hope that the church would be different, we are human, we are sinners as well as saints, and we fall short of the call that we have, to receive one another graciously. And so, it is often with fear that people meet us, the church community, and it is often with fear that we meet one another. We fear rejection, we fear humiliation, we fear being taken advantage of, and so we hide our talents in the ground. We fear that, like Babette, our gifts will go unrecognized, and while we pour ourselves out for them, people will talk about the weather.
But there is another word that is spoken in today’s text. Twice the master says, “enter into the joy of your master!” The Greek word for “joy” is chara. It is not actually related to kairos time, but the words echo one another. Chara means joy, and its relative chairo means rejoice. It is what the Magi did when the star stopped over the stable where the baby Jesus lay. They chairo-ed with great chara. They rejoiced with great joy. As we talked about in the adult forum Bible study a couple weeks ago, the magi were overwhelmed with joy. They were struck by an almost external wave of joy that washed over them and overwhelmed them. And then “they knelt down and paid him homage.” They worshipped.
In today’s text, that word comes again – enter into the chara, enter into the joy, of your master. It is a joy that is already there, and an invitation that is already there, no matter how, or even if, we choose to use our gifts. And it is a joy that is already there, no matter how, or even if, those gifts are received as we might hope. In spite of their selves, the dinner guests find themselves transformed by Babette’s feast. They find old jealousies and rivalries melting away, and they end the evening holding hands, dancing around the well in the center of the village, singing a song of worship and service. The Spirit moves through Babette’s gift, in spite of those who would ignore it.
And that is our calling: setting aside our fear, trusting that the Spirit will take care of how our gifts are used and received, we are called to enter the space where kairos time, God’s opportune moment, meets chara, the joy of our master, meets indeed the joy of our own hearts. We are called to hear what God is up to in this moment and to enter into that with our own passions and our own gifts. We are called to transform and to be transformed by the intersection of God’s kairos time and chara joy. In this way, our offering of time, of money, of ability, becomes something more than mere volunteerism. It becomes the mission of the Body of Christ in the world. It becomes the overwhelming joy that moves us to worship. It becomes worship.
What is the passion, the joy, the chara, of Christ Church Lutheran? What are the needs of our community, both inside this building and out, that our passion might serve? That is the question that this kairos time has set before us. As we listen, we will surely hear God’s answer, and God’s kairos time, God’s in-breaking kingdom, will collide with our God-given chara and passion. And the results will be spectacular!
In my short time here at Christ Church Lutheran, I have met some incredibly gifted people. Not only are they gifted in their abilities, from music to leadership, from hospitality to fix-it-ness, and a huge variety of others, but, like Babette, they are gifted in their desire to share those abilities. I should say, you are gifted in the desire to share your abilities. And I see a desire not only to share your gifts with one another, but with the community. This congregation has made a decision to be a transforming congregation, to be a transformed congregation, not for your own sake, but for the sake of the community and for the glory of God.
I am blessed to be at Christ Church at a very special time in the life of this congregation. In Greek, it is called a kairos time. A time of receptivity, a time of openness to what God is up to, a time of pausing to listen and to see what is stirring. It is often translated as opportunity, or right time. Kairos is a word that is about the in-breaking of God’s kingdom. When Jesus begins his ministry in the book of Mark, he says “The time is fulfilled, the kairos is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near.” This is the context into which you offer your gifts, whether they are gifts of money or gifts of time or gifts of ability. The in-breaking Kingdom of God, here at Christ Church Lutheran, in the company of the Body of Christ, is where you bring and share your gifts.
But it’s scary to offer our gifts nonetheless. We see that fear in the words of the third slave in today’s gospel reading. “I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” Even if we do not believe that God is as the slave described the master, “harsh, reaping where you did not sow, gathering where you did not scatter seed,” we may experience community that way. Though we would hope that the church would be different, we are human, we are sinners as well as saints, and we fall short of the call that we have, to receive one another graciously. And so, it is often with fear that people meet us, the church community, and it is often with fear that we meet one another. We fear rejection, we fear humiliation, we fear being taken advantage of, and so we hide our talents in the ground. We fear that, like Babette, our gifts will go unrecognized, and while we pour ourselves out for them, people will talk about the weather.
But there is another word that is spoken in today’s text. Twice the master says, “enter into the joy of your master!” The Greek word for “joy” is chara. It is not actually related to kairos time, but the words echo one another. Chara means joy, and its relative chairo means rejoice. It is what the Magi did when the star stopped over the stable where the baby Jesus lay. They chairo-ed with great chara. They rejoiced with great joy. As we talked about in the adult forum Bible study a couple weeks ago, the magi were overwhelmed with joy. They were struck by an almost external wave of joy that washed over them and overwhelmed them. And then “they knelt down and paid him homage.” They worshipped.
In today’s text, that word comes again – enter into the chara, enter into the joy, of your master. It is a joy that is already there, and an invitation that is already there, no matter how, or even if, we choose to use our gifts. And it is a joy that is already there, no matter how, or even if, those gifts are received as we might hope. In spite of their selves, the dinner guests find themselves transformed by Babette’s feast. They find old jealousies and rivalries melting away, and they end the evening holding hands, dancing around the well in the center of the village, singing a song of worship and service. The Spirit moves through Babette’s gift, in spite of those who would ignore it.
And that is our calling: setting aside our fear, trusting that the Spirit will take care of how our gifts are used and received, we are called to enter the space where kairos time, God’s opportune moment, meets chara, the joy of our master, meets indeed the joy of our own hearts. We are called to hear what God is up to in this moment and to enter into that with our own passions and our own gifts. We are called to transform and to be transformed by the intersection of God’s kairos time and chara joy. In this way, our offering of time, of money, of ability, becomes something more than mere volunteerism. It becomes the mission of the Body of Christ in the world. It becomes the overwhelming joy that moves us to worship. It becomes worship.
What is the passion, the joy, the chara, of Christ Church Lutheran? What are the needs of our community, both inside this building and out, that our passion might serve? That is the question that this kairos time has set before us. As we listen, we will surely hear God’s answer, and God’s kairos time, God’s in-breaking kingdom, will collide with our God-given chara and passion. And the results will be spectacular!
Sunday, November 2, 2008
All Saints Day
For All Saints Day today, we took all of the names of those who had died in the history of the congregation and hung them around the sanctuary. Our inspiration came from Hebrews 12, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us..." We also collected names of loved ones outside the congregation. At the end of the day, we had over a thousand names hung on individual slips of paper, in chronological order by date of death. You can see the installation, and a few of our family's saints by clicking here.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Matt 22:15-22 and Isaiah 45: a sermon
What is it like to live in exile? Or in an occupied country? Happily, for most of us here, that question is only speculation. Most of us live where we want to live, in a country where we are more or less free. Whether you agree with the current political administration, whether you think we should vote for McCain or Obama next month, most of us here have the right to vote, to help in the decision-making process, and to live where we want. We have some obligations that come along with those rights, but we are neither in exile, nor occupied.
The people that we read about in today’s gospel text are in a very different position from us. The principle actors in the gospel text, Pharisees and Herodians, the crowd watching, and Jesus himself, are all living under occupation. This nation has been occupied or in exile for nearly all of its history. They managed to hold their own for a short time after they conquered Canaan, but throughout their history, Israel have been fighting off one empire after another, they have been exiled to Babylon and brought home, and now they are under the rule of the Romans. How does this nation make any sense of the world around them? How can this nation understand what God is up to?
One way they have made sense of history is to realize that God is God of all, not just of Israel. In the first reading, Isaiah calls Cyrus the Lord’s anointed. In the original Hebrew is says that Cyrus is the Lord’s messiah. In Greek it says that Cyrus is the Lord’s Christ. Scandalous! How can this title be applied to Cyrus, the king of Persia, a gentile who does not even know the Lord? But it was this Cyrus who ended Israel’s exile, who returned them to their homeland and helped them to rebuild their temple. So Isaiah teaches that God can choose to work for Israel’s good through someone outside Israel, even through someone who rules over Israel.
This is where the Pharisees and Jesus and the crowds are living. On the one hand, they are occupied, and often brutalized by their occupiers. On the other hand, they know that God can work through this situation. In today’s story, they are each trying to make sense of how God is at work in this occupation. They are each trying to determine how they are called to act next. The coin at the center of the conversation is far more than a coin. This coin, imprinted with the emperor’s face, is a symbol of authority. The question at the center of the conversation is not, should we pay our taxes, even if we don’t like our government? If that were the question, Jesus has sidestepped it better than the best politician. We do not get an answer to that question at all. The question at the center of the conversation, rather, is “who has authority?”
Jesus’ opposition have laid a clever trap for him here. They come to him, flattering him with their insincere praise, and then ask him, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Since there is nothing in Scripture that forbids paying taxes to a ruling government, and as I said, the Hebrews have had plenty of time to test that under previous empires, you can bet that these guys already know the answer to their own question. Jesus knows, as we do, that this is a trap. If he answers “no, don’t pay taxes,” they can turn him over to the Romans for sedition. If he answers, “yes, pay taxes,” the crowds watching will lose their zeal for Jesus and turn against him. Those who are plotting against him have laid the perfect trap. Either Jesus is a rebel and a traitor, or he is a collaborator and a patsy.
Rather than answer their question, Jesus asks to see the coin with which the tax is paid. This census tax can only be paid with a Roman coin, imprinted with the face of Tiberius Caesar. When his questioners produce it, Jesus asks them, “whose image is on this coin, and whose inscription?” They answer him, “Caesar’s, the emperor’s.”
In that short interaction, Jesus shows the crowd who the real collaborators are. They all know that there should not be any coins with the image of Caesar on them anywhere in the Temple compound. The moneychangers that Jesus kicked out the day before were in the Temple precisely because these Roman coins were not allowed. Furthermore, since they bear the image of Caesar, and an inscription claiming Caesar’s godhood, no good Jew should carry one, certainly not a Jew so righteous as a Pharisee claims to be. By asking them to produce the coin, Jesus has shown the crowd that the Pharisees are in fact collaborating with the Romans. He has demonstrated that, for the Pharisees, authority lies with the Romans.
In truth, this is a sensible position. The Pharisees know their history. They trust in God’s promises, and believe that God will act for the good of Israel in order to fulfill those promises. “If we are oppressed, if we are occupied,” figure the Pharisees, “God must have a reason. Until that reason is revealed, therefore, we should respect the earthly authority of the Romans, through which God has chosen to act.” Though they are not exactly thrilled with Roman rule, the Pharisees are not going to out-and-out rebel, either. They’re in the go-along-to-get-along camp. A very sensible position for those who have been under one empire or another for centuries.
The crowd, too, were waiting for God’s promises to be fulfilled. They, too, believed that God would act for the good of Israel. And they, too, looked to a governmental authority to carry it out. But the crowd were looking for the Messiah, who would reestablish the Davidic kingship. The Messiah, as God’s anointed, would overthrow Roman rule, and authority would once again rest with the nation of Israel, through its earthly ruler. For both the Pharisees and the crowds, the kingdom of God would be ushered in by the authority of some earthly governmental body.
Jesus, however, rejects both of these scenarios. When Jesus says, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” he calls attention to the image of Caesar on the coin, the symbol of authority that the government circulates. That image is posted throughout the Roman Empire, on coins, statues, temples, everywhere that someone needs to be reminded of Caesar’s authority. But Jesus does not stop with Caesar. Caesar’s is not the final word. Jesus continues, “render unto God the things that are God’s,” and calls attention to the image of God that is everywhere around him. Each face that he sees, the faces of the Pharisees, the faces of the crowd, Jesus reminds them, bears the image of God, as Genesis 1 says. It is there, in the place of God’s image, that authority rests on earth. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” Give Caesar his place, he has his proper authority. But that is not the authority that brings in the kingdom.
“And unto God the things that are God’s.” We are each created in God’s image, and God’s is the authority that brings in the kingdom. John the Baptist proclaimed that the kingdom had drawn near, and Jesus preached the good news of the kingdom. In our baptism, we are each sealed with the cross of Christ, and given the authority that is ours in the freedom that Christ has won for us. Jesus took his own words seriously, rendering himself up to both Caesar and God, dying on the cross as a rebel and a criminal, bearing all of the sins of the world. In the conversation about the coin, Jesus reminded the Pharisees and the crowd that they had authority to act freely as children of God, no matter who their government was, oppressed or exiled or ruling their own kingdom. And baptized into his death and resurrection, we now bear Christ’s authority and freedom to usher in the kingdom. We don’t have to wait for the government to act, or to see who will win the election and what economic policies they will employ. As the Body of Christ, we have all authority in heaven and on earth, to draw the kingdom near today, for the sake of our neighbor. Amen
The people that we read about in today’s gospel text are in a very different position from us. The principle actors in the gospel text, Pharisees and Herodians, the crowd watching, and Jesus himself, are all living under occupation. This nation has been occupied or in exile for nearly all of its history. They managed to hold their own for a short time after they conquered Canaan, but throughout their history, Israel have been fighting off one empire after another, they have been exiled to Babylon and brought home, and now they are under the rule of the Romans. How does this nation make any sense of the world around them? How can this nation understand what God is up to?
One way they have made sense of history is to realize that God is God of all, not just of Israel. In the first reading, Isaiah calls Cyrus the Lord’s anointed. In the original Hebrew is says that Cyrus is the Lord’s messiah. In Greek it says that Cyrus is the Lord’s Christ. Scandalous! How can this title be applied to Cyrus, the king of Persia, a gentile who does not even know the Lord? But it was this Cyrus who ended Israel’s exile, who returned them to their homeland and helped them to rebuild their temple. So Isaiah teaches that God can choose to work for Israel’s good through someone outside Israel, even through someone who rules over Israel.
This is where the Pharisees and Jesus and the crowds are living. On the one hand, they are occupied, and often brutalized by their occupiers. On the other hand, they know that God can work through this situation. In today’s story, they are each trying to make sense of how God is at work in this occupation. They are each trying to determine how they are called to act next. The coin at the center of the conversation is far more than a coin. This coin, imprinted with the emperor’s face, is a symbol of authority. The question at the center of the conversation is not, should we pay our taxes, even if we don’t like our government? If that were the question, Jesus has sidestepped it better than the best politician. We do not get an answer to that question at all. The question at the center of the conversation, rather, is “who has authority?”
Jesus’ opposition have laid a clever trap for him here. They come to him, flattering him with their insincere praise, and then ask him, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Since there is nothing in Scripture that forbids paying taxes to a ruling government, and as I said, the Hebrews have had plenty of time to test that under previous empires, you can bet that these guys already know the answer to their own question. Jesus knows, as we do, that this is a trap. If he answers “no, don’t pay taxes,” they can turn him over to the Romans for sedition. If he answers, “yes, pay taxes,” the crowds watching will lose their zeal for Jesus and turn against him. Those who are plotting against him have laid the perfect trap. Either Jesus is a rebel and a traitor, or he is a collaborator and a patsy.
Rather than answer their question, Jesus asks to see the coin with which the tax is paid. This census tax can only be paid with a Roman coin, imprinted with the face of Tiberius Caesar. When his questioners produce it, Jesus asks them, “whose image is on this coin, and whose inscription?” They answer him, “Caesar’s, the emperor’s.”
In that short interaction, Jesus shows the crowd who the real collaborators are. They all know that there should not be any coins with the image of Caesar on them anywhere in the Temple compound. The moneychangers that Jesus kicked out the day before were in the Temple precisely because these Roman coins were not allowed. Furthermore, since they bear the image of Caesar, and an inscription claiming Caesar’s godhood, no good Jew should carry one, certainly not a Jew so righteous as a Pharisee claims to be. By asking them to produce the coin, Jesus has shown the crowd that the Pharisees are in fact collaborating with the Romans. He has demonstrated that, for the Pharisees, authority lies with the Romans.
In truth, this is a sensible position. The Pharisees know their history. They trust in God’s promises, and believe that God will act for the good of Israel in order to fulfill those promises. “If we are oppressed, if we are occupied,” figure the Pharisees, “God must have a reason. Until that reason is revealed, therefore, we should respect the earthly authority of the Romans, through which God has chosen to act.” Though they are not exactly thrilled with Roman rule, the Pharisees are not going to out-and-out rebel, either. They’re in the go-along-to-get-along camp. A very sensible position for those who have been under one empire or another for centuries.
The crowd, too, were waiting for God’s promises to be fulfilled. They, too, believed that God would act for the good of Israel. And they, too, looked to a governmental authority to carry it out. But the crowd were looking for the Messiah, who would reestablish the Davidic kingship. The Messiah, as God’s anointed, would overthrow Roman rule, and authority would once again rest with the nation of Israel, through its earthly ruler. For both the Pharisees and the crowds, the kingdom of God would be ushered in by the authority of some earthly governmental body.
Jesus, however, rejects both of these scenarios. When Jesus says, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” he calls attention to the image of Caesar on the coin, the symbol of authority that the government circulates. That image is posted throughout the Roman Empire, on coins, statues, temples, everywhere that someone needs to be reminded of Caesar’s authority. But Jesus does not stop with Caesar. Caesar’s is not the final word. Jesus continues, “render unto God the things that are God’s,” and calls attention to the image of God that is everywhere around him. Each face that he sees, the faces of the Pharisees, the faces of the crowd, Jesus reminds them, bears the image of God, as Genesis 1 says. It is there, in the place of God’s image, that authority rests on earth. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” Give Caesar his place, he has his proper authority. But that is not the authority that brings in the kingdom.
“And unto God the things that are God’s.” We are each created in God’s image, and God’s is the authority that brings in the kingdom. John the Baptist proclaimed that the kingdom had drawn near, and Jesus preached the good news of the kingdom. In our baptism, we are each sealed with the cross of Christ, and given the authority that is ours in the freedom that Christ has won for us. Jesus took his own words seriously, rendering himself up to both Caesar and God, dying on the cross as a rebel and a criminal, bearing all of the sins of the world. In the conversation about the coin, Jesus reminded the Pharisees and the crowd that they had authority to act freely as children of God, no matter who their government was, oppressed or exiled or ruling their own kingdom. And baptized into his death and resurrection, we now bear Christ’s authority and freedom to usher in the kingdom. We don’t have to wait for the government to act, or to see who will win the election and what economic policies they will employ. As the Body of Christ, we have all authority in heaven and on earth, to draw the kingdom near today, for the sake of our neighbor. Amen
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Sermon on Matt 20:1-16
I’ve been keeping a log of the things that happen in my house that aren’t fair. With a 6-year old daughter, I am kept constantly updated on them. “It’s not fair,” she says, at least four times a day. Here is a sampling of this week’s unfair things: You can't have dessert yet, you haven't finished your dinner. "But Holden is eating his dessert - it's not fair!" Time to come in and get ready for bed. "But we're not done playing - it's not fair!" Time for bed. "But I didn't get to watch a movie today. It's not fair." Holden is watching a movie. “I don’t want to watch this movie! It’s not fair!” A woman I met at Holden Village this summer gave me a great solution to this last one. When her daughter complained that her younger brother got to pick the movie, and they should take turns, this mother said, “Well, you got to pick for 4 years before he was born, so let’s have him pick for the next 4 years, and then you can start taking turns.” How’s that for fair?
Of course, what Grace means by fair does not match the dictionary definition. That’s always the problem with “fair.” Each of us has an idea of what fair is and they rarely match. In the Gospel reading today, we hear another “No fair!” story. Jesus tells a parable about the landowner who goes again and again to the marketplace looking for workers. Some come and work a full day, from sun-up to sundown. The man agrees to pay them the usual daily wage. Some only work a couple hours. When he hires these, he just says, “I will pay you whatever is right.” At the end of the day, when it comes time to pay them, he pays all of them the same amount, no matter how long they worked. Those who worked all day grumble about it, and cry “no fair!” And I have to agree with them. What would the world come to if everyone behaved like that landowner? How many people lined up to work for him the next day at dawn? How many at 5pm? This is no way to run a business! Is that what we are supposed to do with this parable? Figure out what is right in our economic dealings? It can certainly be applied that way.
Maria worked for a church, 6 hours a week, at $12 an hour, cleaning the building. She cobbled together her living through several similar arrangements. Her English wasn’t good, and she often communicated through notes written by her son. Once, when she was in a car accident, she spent 24 hours in the hospital, and then came straight to work, since it was her regular day. She brought her son with to help. She didn’t want to go over the agreed-upon 6 hours, but she was moving a bit slow from her injuries. She had an aging father who lived abroad, and when he got sick, she wanted to go be with him. She asked the pastor, through her son’s translation, whether she could have two weeks of paid time off. The pastor, not knowing quite how to answer, turned to the stewardship team. “What should we do? Do we have a policy on this?” At first, they came back with the expected answers. They seemed to be in agreement: “We would love to give her the paid time off, but that’s just not done! People who work 6 hours a week don’t get that. If that was the norm, of course we would do it, but we just don’t do that here in America.” Then one of them, the treasurer, took the question to prayer. And he remembered this parable. What was it that the grumblers said, the ones who started first and were paid last? What was their complaint? Not that those who came late got paid the same. It was “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us…” In his prayers, he asked, what is God calling us to do as a Church? How can we allow the kingdom to break in here? How can this parable give us some sense of that kingdom; how can we make Maria, who works only 6 hours, equal to those who work full time? It seemed like offering her paid time off would be one simple way to “make her equal.” So he sent an email. The response was overwhelmingly different this time. Of course! We are in charge here. We can decide to do things differently. They gave Maria her time off, paid in full.
Well, that is certainly a practical application of this parable. And a good one. But is this a parable about economics? Are we to apply it to the stock market? Are we to reduce Jesus to a professor at a business school? No. There is a lot more going on in this story. What we learn from this story is that God is not interested in economics. At least not in the way we are. God is interested in people. God is interested in economics only insomuch as economics affect people. When Maria received her paid time off, it was not about the money – it was what, $150? It was about seeing Maria as equal in dignity and deservedness to someone who works 40 hours a week. In fact, Maria probably works far more than 40 hours a week, just not all for one employer. Regardless, by setting aside the conventions, the relationship between Maria and the church changed. The stewardship team’s focus shifted, from seeing Maria as an employee, a means of getting the building cleaned, to seeing her as an individual, someone living her own story, a valued child of God. God calls us to relationship, both with God and with one another. And relationship, true relationship, is not an economic arrangement. True relationship is not about what is fair.
This is the point that Jonah missed. After all of his running away from God’s call to go to Nineveh, being thrown overboard, swallowed by a “great fish,” and spit up on the shore, Jonah finally gets to Nineveh and tells them God’s message, in the most cursory fashion possible. “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” he told them. Unlike most of the prophetic speeches in the Old Testament, there is no call to repentance, no listing of crimes. Jonah doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want Nineveh to be spared, and so does not give them anything more than the bare minimum. “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” But God works through this unwilling prophet anyway! God moves the people of Nineveh to repent – and not just the people, but the animals too. All of Nineveh repents, and “God renounced the punishment He had planned to bring upon them, and did not carry it out.” And how does Jonah’s react? “No fair! See God, this is what I said in the first place! I just knew you were going to be merciful, once you and Nineveh got to know each other! And I didn’t want mercy for Nineveh! That’s why I didn’t want to come here! That’s why I didn’t want to introduce you!” Jonah is so indignant; he would rather die than see God’s mercy for a place like Nineveh. But God is not interested in what’s fair. God is interested in relationship. The people, and even the animals, of Nineveh have turned “back from evil ways and injustice,” and they are “crying mightily to God,” (as chapter 3 says). These are people who want a relationship with God. Should God strike them down just at the hour of their desire to know God? If Jonah has his way, yes. If fairness has its way, yes. But God is not interested in fairness. God is interested in relationship.
Jonah and the workers in the vineyard see the world in terms of reward and punishment, in terms of equal exchange in economic arrangements. And so do we, most of the time. But of course, at the beginning of the day, all of the workers were unemployed, standing idle in the marketplace. It is not until the landowner comes to them that they have any hope of receiving anything at all that day. And that is the real moment of grace. It is not at the end of the day, when all are made equal by being given equal pay. The real reward is in the landowner who repeatedly comes to the marketplace and invites the workers into the vineyard. Isn’t it funny how our first instinct is to identify with those workers who were there the longest, and “deserved” more than the ones who started late? But really, if I’m honest with myself, I know that I’m more like the one who started at the end of the day. I’m desperate, and I’m willing to take whatever I get. And when I get it, and it’s better than I deserve, I rejoice. I keep my mouth shut and hope that no one notices the mistake! I forget that I’ve already received the real moment of God’s grace. In my baptism, and even before my baptism, God came to me and invited me into relationship. 2000 years ago, Christ came and invited the world into relationship. 21 years ago, at my baptism, Christ came and invited me into relationship. Today, in their baptism, Christ invites Cordell Richard and Elizabeth into relationship. The work that we do in the vineyard is in response to that generous gift. The work that we do in our lives is in response to that invitation. The work that we offer to God is our response to our relationship with God. At the end of the day, the true reward is not in some equal exchange to preserve the rules of fairness, “I give you this, you give me that.” The true reward is in the gift of God’s love, that moved God to come to us, to die for us, and to give us everlasting life. Christ comes to again and again, offering us relationship again and again. We see that in the meal that we share together today, Christ coming to us in the bread and the wine, renewing and strengthening that relationship. And we respond, and are gladly sent forth into service, not for the reward we will receive, but because of the reward we have already received. Amen.
Of course, what Grace means by fair does not match the dictionary definition. That’s always the problem with “fair.” Each of us has an idea of what fair is and they rarely match. In the Gospel reading today, we hear another “No fair!” story. Jesus tells a parable about the landowner who goes again and again to the marketplace looking for workers. Some come and work a full day, from sun-up to sundown. The man agrees to pay them the usual daily wage. Some only work a couple hours. When he hires these, he just says, “I will pay you whatever is right.” At the end of the day, when it comes time to pay them, he pays all of them the same amount, no matter how long they worked. Those who worked all day grumble about it, and cry “no fair!” And I have to agree with them. What would the world come to if everyone behaved like that landowner? How many people lined up to work for him the next day at dawn? How many at 5pm? This is no way to run a business! Is that what we are supposed to do with this parable? Figure out what is right in our economic dealings? It can certainly be applied that way.
Maria worked for a church, 6 hours a week, at $12 an hour, cleaning the building. She cobbled together her living through several similar arrangements. Her English wasn’t good, and she often communicated through notes written by her son. Once, when she was in a car accident, she spent 24 hours in the hospital, and then came straight to work, since it was her regular day. She brought her son with to help. She didn’t want to go over the agreed-upon 6 hours, but she was moving a bit slow from her injuries. She had an aging father who lived abroad, and when he got sick, she wanted to go be with him. She asked the pastor, through her son’s translation, whether she could have two weeks of paid time off. The pastor, not knowing quite how to answer, turned to the stewardship team. “What should we do? Do we have a policy on this?” At first, they came back with the expected answers. They seemed to be in agreement: “We would love to give her the paid time off, but that’s just not done! People who work 6 hours a week don’t get that. If that was the norm, of course we would do it, but we just don’t do that here in America.” Then one of them, the treasurer, took the question to prayer. And he remembered this parable. What was it that the grumblers said, the ones who started first and were paid last? What was their complaint? Not that those who came late got paid the same. It was “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us…” In his prayers, he asked, what is God calling us to do as a Church? How can we allow the kingdom to break in here? How can this parable give us some sense of that kingdom; how can we make Maria, who works only 6 hours, equal to those who work full time? It seemed like offering her paid time off would be one simple way to “make her equal.” So he sent an email. The response was overwhelmingly different this time. Of course! We are in charge here. We can decide to do things differently. They gave Maria her time off, paid in full.
Well, that is certainly a practical application of this parable. And a good one. But is this a parable about economics? Are we to apply it to the stock market? Are we to reduce Jesus to a professor at a business school? No. There is a lot more going on in this story. What we learn from this story is that God is not interested in economics. At least not in the way we are. God is interested in people. God is interested in economics only insomuch as economics affect people. When Maria received her paid time off, it was not about the money – it was what, $150? It was about seeing Maria as equal in dignity and deservedness to someone who works 40 hours a week. In fact, Maria probably works far more than 40 hours a week, just not all for one employer. Regardless, by setting aside the conventions, the relationship between Maria and the church changed. The stewardship team’s focus shifted, from seeing Maria as an employee, a means of getting the building cleaned, to seeing her as an individual, someone living her own story, a valued child of God. God calls us to relationship, both with God and with one another. And relationship, true relationship, is not an economic arrangement. True relationship is not about what is fair.
This is the point that Jonah missed. After all of his running away from God’s call to go to Nineveh, being thrown overboard, swallowed by a “great fish,” and spit up on the shore, Jonah finally gets to Nineveh and tells them God’s message, in the most cursory fashion possible. “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” he told them. Unlike most of the prophetic speeches in the Old Testament, there is no call to repentance, no listing of crimes. Jonah doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want Nineveh to be spared, and so does not give them anything more than the bare minimum. “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” But God works through this unwilling prophet anyway! God moves the people of Nineveh to repent – and not just the people, but the animals too. All of Nineveh repents, and “God renounced the punishment He had planned to bring upon them, and did not carry it out.” And how does Jonah’s react? “No fair! See God, this is what I said in the first place! I just knew you were going to be merciful, once you and Nineveh got to know each other! And I didn’t want mercy for Nineveh! That’s why I didn’t want to come here! That’s why I didn’t want to introduce you!” Jonah is so indignant; he would rather die than see God’s mercy for a place like Nineveh. But God is not interested in what’s fair. God is interested in relationship. The people, and even the animals, of Nineveh have turned “back from evil ways and injustice,” and they are “crying mightily to God,” (as chapter 3 says). These are people who want a relationship with God. Should God strike them down just at the hour of their desire to know God? If Jonah has his way, yes. If fairness has its way, yes. But God is not interested in fairness. God is interested in relationship.
Jonah and the workers in the vineyard see the world in terms of reward and punishment, in terms of equal exchange in economic arrangements. And so do we, most of the time. But of course, at the beginning of the day, all of the workers were unemployed, standing idle in the marketplace. It is not until the landowner comes to them that they have any hope of receiving anything at all that day. And that is the real moment of grace. It is not at the end of the day, when all are made equal by being given equal pay. The real reward is in the landowner who repeatedly comes to the marketplace and invites the workers into the vineyard. Isn’t it funny how our first instinct is to identify with those workers who were there the longest, and “deserved” more than the ones who started late? But really, if I’m honest with myself, I know that I’m more like the one who started at the end of the day. I’m desperate, and I’m willing to take whatever I get. And when I get it, and it’s better than I deserve, I rejoice. I keep my mouth shut and hope that no one notices the mistake! I forget that I’ve already received the real moment of God’s grace. In my baptism, and even before my baptism, God came to me and invited me into relationship. 2000 years ago, Christ came and invited the world into relationship. 21 years ago, at my baptism, Christ came and invited me into relationship. Today, in their baptism, Christ invites Cordell Richard and Elizabeth into relationship. The work that we do in the vineyard is in response to that generous gift. The work that we do in our lives is in response to that invitation. The work that we offer to God is our response to our relationship with God. At the end of the day, the true reward is not in some equal exchange to preserve the rules of fairness, “I give you this, you give me that.” The true reward is in the gift of God’s love, that moved God to come to us, to die for us, and to give us everlasting life. Christ comes to again and again, offering us relationship again and again. We see that in the meal that we share together today, Christ coming to us in the bread and the wine, renewing and strengthening that relationship. And we respond, and are gladly sent forth into service, not for the reward we will receive, but because of the reward we have already received. Amen.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
A Sermon on Matt 16:13-20
“Who do you say that I am?” Could we find a more fitting question for our society? We spend so much of our lives asking this very question. We ask it of ourselves, and we ask it of one another. “Who do you say that I am?” It starts early, and we take the answer seriously. When I was 5, I had a short little haircut like Dorothy Hamill, the Olympic figure skater. Unfortunately, the haircut was where the resemblance ended. I was a little stick straight girl, with a deep voice. Some kids in my class teased me after I got my hair cut and told me I looked like a boy. I was devastated. I wore pink for a year after that, just to prove to everyone I was a girl. When my dad asked me what color I wanted to have my new room painted, I said pink. And when he painted the ceiling white, I got upset. “No! You said I could have the whole room pink!” I was determined to prove my femininity through the use of the color pink. That is how much I was affected by who people said I was.
As I got older, I got more sophisticated about constructing an identity that allowed me to decide who people would say that I am. In fact, as a society we have gotten more sophisticated about this. Once upon a time, you were what you did, more or less. You were a farmer, or a butcher, or a merchant; you were what your parents were. You knew who others were because everyone from the same class wore the same clothes, and most towns were small enough that you had a pretty good idea who was who. As society got more complicated, people from all these different backgrounds came together and it was harder to tell one class from another. We began to have more control over who people say we are. Today, we decide by what we wear, what music we listen to, what tattoos we have, what car we drive, where we live. We can spend hours setting our Facebook page up just right, with just the right picture on it, trying to control the answer to “who do people say that I am?”
But we don’t control the answer. Just as we are not books for someone else to read, others are not computers for us to control input and output. Relationships are messy, people are messy, and we never entirely get one another, no matter how hard we try. And no matter how much we might like to think that it doesn’t matter to us, it still hurts when someone answers wrong. One commentary I read suggested that we “moderns” are more concerned with the question “who am I?” than with “who do others say I am?” I don’t think that’s quite true. We care what others say about us. We care a lot. There’s a lot at stake when it comes to who others say we are.
Veronica was a woman in her mid-60s who had recently had surgery for lung cancer. The nurses on the unit where I was serving as chaplain told me that she was depressed, but that she refused to take her medications. She was, as they say, “noncompliant.” They asked me to speak to her – maybe a visit from a chaplain could convince her to be “compliant.” I don’t know if they expected me to put the fear of God into her or what, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt for her to visit with someone different, in any case. What I found was a friendly, rather mischievous woman. She sat in a chair near the door, watching everything that happened, a sly grin on her face as she sized up each person who passed by. “That guy keeps stealing my popcicles,” she said. “That woman has it worse than me.” She shared with me that this had been her 41st surgery – she had been through everything from open heart surgery to a mastectomy. She was sick of being in the hospital, and just wanted to get back to her regular care facility. At least there, she said, she could stand the food.
I visited with her for about an hour. During that time, she was talkative and open with me, but that changed, depending on who was in the room. With the lab technician who checked her blood sugar, she was friendly and inquisitive. “Hey,” she said, “did you have open heart surgery, too?” Her sharp eyes didn’t miss much, and she had noticed the scar just at the opening of the young woman’s V-neck scrubs. “Yes, when I was 5,” replied the tech. “Well, then, we match!” said Veronica, with an air of satisfaction. With the young Hispanic woman who changed the linens, she was positively beaming and bubbly. They shared a hug before the woman left. But all of this changed when the doctor came into the room. Suddenly, Veronica’s face became flat, drawn, completely unreadable. She kept her eyes down and to the side, almost never looking him in the face. As he tried to convince her to take anti-depressants, she tried to convince him that she was not depressed. If I had not seen her just a few moments before, I might have sided with him. But now, I was not so sure. Who was I going to say that she was?
Who do people say that I am? “Elijah, John the Baptist, Jeremiah.” The disciples answers make good sense. Jesus works miracles, he proclaims the word of God and the coming of the kingdom. He scolds those in power and calls attention to the marginalized. Jesus’ ministry reminded the disciples, and us, that God has sent messengers before. These answers give a quick history lesson – God has tried time and again to get people to pay attention; God has sided with the poor and the outcast before; God has spent a lot of time trying to get the powerful to listen to what God calls them to be – God cares what people say about one another. But Jeremiah was brutally persecuted, to the point where he begged God to leave him alone; and John the Baptist just died at the hands of Herod. Not only do these answers remind us what God has been up to in the past, but we’re given a foreshadowing of what is to come for Jesus.
After their answer, Jesus doesn’t say whether they are right or wrong, but he changes the question. “Who do you say that I am?” He is now asking the disciples what they think. The “you” in this sentence is plural – he is asking all of them, but only one of them responds. Peter says, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” With this answer, Peter gets it right. But even then, does he really know who Jesus is? Does he really understand? The very next passage, which we’ll read next week, shows Peter misunderstanding the meaning of this declaration so badly that Jesus calls him Satan! Poor Peter, even when he gets it right, he gets it wrong. And Jesus cares about what Peter thinks of him. He cares enough to correct it, not only with words, but with actions.
Jesus knows that Peter speaks truly when he says “you are the Son of the living God,” and he knows that Peter doesn’t entirely know what he’s saying – “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father in heaven.” And then Jesus turns the whole scene around. No longer is he asking who others say he is, suddenly he is telling them who they are. Simon, you are now Peter, the rock. Jesus names him Peter, gives him a new identity borne out of this faith, bound up in his confession, in his naming Jesus as God. But that confession is not Peter’s doing – it is God who has worked this faith in him. God cares what people say – God cares enough to send the Son into the world, to live with us and to die with us. God cares enough to send the Spirit into the world, to guide us to faith.
After the doctor left, I asked Veronica what had happened there? Why had her demeanor changed so much with him? “He doesn’t listen to me. I tell him I’m not depressed, but he just doesn’t listen. Maybe he’s right, maybe I am depressed. But I don’t think so.” She looked at me, “What do you think?” “Well,” I said, “I’m not an expert. But I’ll tell you one thing I hear from you that I can name is frustration.” She seized on the word like a life preserver. “That’s it! That’s the word! I’m frustrated! I’ve been here for weeks and I’m not getting better. I’m frustrated!” She seemed so relieved to have a different word, one that didn’t require medication to treat. Once she had a name for it, she began to get power over it. Once she had a name for it, she could assert it, use it, make the doctor see it as the right name.
This is the point in the sermon where I’m supposed to tell you not to worry about what others label you. I’m supposed to say that it’s not about who you are, but about whose you are. And of course, that is true. You are a child of God, first and foremost. Like Peter, God works faith in you. And just like Peter, your identity comes from God. In your baptism, you are named and claimed by Christ. When you come to the table and share communion, Christ is saying to you, “Child of God, I name you. On you I am building my church.”
But it’s also not that simple, is it? It matters what others think of us. It matters that the doctor was calling Veronica depressed. It matters a great deal – once that’s on your medical records, it affects how every single doctor you see from now on treats you. Of course, if someone is depressed, then it’s best to get the medical help for it. But whether it’s the right name or not, it matters! It matters a lot! The next time the doctor came in, he said, “Veronica, I think you’re depressed.” And she said, “I’m not depressed, I’m frustrated! And here’s why! Now, if you have a medication for frustration, let’s talk about it. Otherwise, we’re done with this conversation!” Veronica had something to hold onto in that conversation, and she found that it gave her power, even some freedom, that she hadn’t known she had before.
God cares about this question. “Who do people say that I am?” God wants us to know who God is. God wants us to know so much that God came into the world, became human, lived a human life, and died a human death. God did all of this because God loves us so much, enough to care who we say God is. God did this because he loves you so much, enough to care who you say God is. And in doing so, God gives you a name to cling to. Like Veronica, asserting herself as “frustrated” not “depressed,” you have a life preserver. Like Peter, Jesus has called you by name – a new name, borne out of your relationship with God. Even if you turn around the next moment and screw it up, that name is still yours, and you can cling to it, and you can use it to counter whatever other names are thrown your way.
We have to live in the world, and we are going to care what others say about us. In Christ, we have been given a new name, a new word for ourselves that we can use. We can care what others say, but we can also know that they do not know the whole story. Only God knows the whole story about me, about you. Only God knows what it means that I have been called be a new name. Whatever else they say, I have a name that I cling to. Jesus has spoken to me in my baptism, “blessed are you, Aimee Appell! You are indeed a child of God!”
As I got older, I got more sophisticated about constructing an identity that allowed me to decide who people would say that I am. In fact, as a society we have gotten more sophisticated about this. Once upon a time, you were what you did, more or less. You were a farmer, or a butcher, or a merchant; you were what your parents were. You knew who others were because everyone from the same class wore the same clothes, and most towns were small enough that you had a pretty good idea who was who. As society got more complicated, people from all these different backgrounds came together and it was harder to tell one class from another. We began to have more control over who people say we are. Today, we decide by what we wear, what music we listen to, what tattoos we have, what car we drive, where we live. We can spend hours setting our Facebook page up just right, with just the right picture on it, trying to control the answer to “who do people say that I am?”
But we don’t control the answer. Just as we are not books for someone else to read, others are not computers for us to control input and output. Relationships are messy, people are messy, and we never entirely get one another, no matter how hard we try. And no matter how much we might like to think that it doesn’t matter to us, it still hurts when someone answers wrong. One commentary I read suggested that we “moderns” are more concerned with the question “who am I?” than with “who do others say I am?” I don’t think that’s quite true. We care what others say about us. We care a lot. There’s a lot at stake when it comes to who others say we are.
Veronica was a woman in her mid-60s who had recently had surgery for lung cancer. The nurses on the unit where I was serving as chaplain told me that she was depressed, but that she refused to take her medications. She was, as they say, “noncompliant.” They asked me to speak to her – maybe a visit from a chaplain could convince her to be “compliant.” I don’t know if they expected me to put the fear of God into her or what, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt for her to visit with someone different, in any case. What I found was a friendly, rather mischievous woman. She sat in a chair near the door, watching everything that happened, a sly grin on her face as she sized up each person who passed by. “That guy keeps stealing my popcicles,” she said. “That woman has it worse than me.” She shared with me that this had been her 41st surgery – she had been through everything from open heart surgery to a mastectomy. She was sick of being in the hospital, and just wanted to get back to her regular care facility. At least there, she said, she could stand the food.
I visited with her for about an hour. During that time, she was talkative and open with me, but that changed, depending on who was in the room. With the lab technician who checked her blood sugar, she was friendly and inquisitive. “Hey,” she said, “did you have open heart surgery, too?” Her sharp eyes didn’t miss much, and she had noticed the scar just at the opening of the young woman’s V-neck scrubs. “Yes, when I was 5,” replied the tech. “Well, then, we match!” said Veronica, with an air of satisfaction. With the young Hispanic woman who changed the linens, she was positively beaming and bubbly. They shared a hug before the woman left. But all of this changed when the doctor came into the room. Suddenly, Veronica’s face became flat, drawn, completely unreadable. She kept her eyes down and to the side, almost never looking him in the face. As he tried to convince her to take anti-depressants, she tried to convince him that she was not depressed. If I had not seen her just a few moments before, I might have sided with him. But now, I was not so sure. Who was I going to say that she was?
Who do people say that I am? “Elijah, John the Baptist, Jeremiah.” The disciples answers make good sense. Jesus works miracles, he proclaims the word of God and the coming of the kingdom. He scolds those in power and calls attention to the marginalized. Jesus’ ministry reminded the disciples, and us, that God has sent messengers before. These answers give a quick history lesson – God has tried time and again to get people to pay attention; God has sided with the poor and the outcast before; God has spent a lot of time trying to get the powerful to listen to what God calls them to be – God cares what people say about one another. But Jeremiah was brutally persecuted, to the point where he begged God to leave him alone; and John the Baptist just died at the hands of Herod. Not only do these answers remind us what God has been up to in the past, but we’re given a foreshadowing of what is to come for Jesus.
After their answer, Jesus doesn’t say whether they are right or wrong, but he changes the question. “Who do you say that I am?” He is now asking the disciples what they think. The “you” in this sentence is plural – he is asking all of them, but only one of them responds. Peter says, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” With this answer, Peter gets it right. But even then, does he really know who Jesus is? Does he really understand? The very next passage, which we’ll read next week, shows Peter misunderstanding the meaning of this declaration so badly that Jesus calls him Satan! Poor Peter, even when he gets it right, he gets it wrong. And Jesus cares about what Peter thinks of him. He cares enough to correct it, not only with words, but with actions.
Jesus knows that Peter speaks truly when he says “you are the Son of the living God,” and he knows that Peter doesn’t entirely know what he’s saying – “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father in heaven.” And then Jesus turns the whole scene around. No longer is he asking who others say he is, suddenly he is telling them who they are. Simon, you are now Peter, the rock. Jesus names him Peter, gives him a new identity borne out of this faith, bound up in his confession, in his naming Jesus as God. But that confession is not Peter’s doing – it is God who has worked this faith in him. God cares what people say – God cares enough to send the Son into the world, to live with us and to die with us. God cares enough to send the Spirit into the world, to guide us to faith.
After the doctor left, I asked Veronica what had happened there? Why had her demeanor changed so much with him? “He doesn’t listen to me. I tell him I’m not depressed, but he just doesn’t listen. Maybe he’s right, maybe I am depressed. But I don’t think so.” She looked at me, “What do you think?” “Well,” I said, “I’m not an expert. But I’ll tell you one thing I hear from you that I can name is frustration.” She seized on the word like a life preserver. “That’s it! That’s the word! I’m frustrated! I’ve been here for weeks and I’m not getting better. I’m frustrated!” She seemed so relieved to have a different word, one that didn’t require medication to treat. Once she had a name for it, she began to get power over it. Once she had a name for it, she could assert it, use it, make the doctor see it as the right name.
This is the point in the sermon where I’m supposed to tell you not to worry about what others label you. I’m supposed to say that it’s not about who you are, but about whose you are. And of course, that is true. You are a child of God, first and foremost. Like Peter, God works faith in you. And just like Peter, your identity comes from God. In your baptism, you are named and claimed by Christ. When you come to the table and share communion, Christ is saying to you, “Child of God, I name you. On you I am building my church.”
But it’s also not that simple, is it? It matters what others think of us. It matters that the doctor was calling Veronica depressed. It matters a great deal – once that’s on your medical records, it affects how every single doctor you see from now on treats you. Of course, if someone is depressed, then it’s best to get the medical help for it. But whether it’s the right name or not, it matters! It matters a lot! The next time the doctor came in, he said, “Veronica, I think you’re depressed.” And she said, “I’m not depressed, I’m frustrated! And here’s why! Now, if you have a medication for frustration, let’s talk about it. Otherwise, we’re done with this conversation!” Veronica had something to hold onto in that conversation, and she found that it gave her power, even some freedom, that she hadn’t known she had before.
God cares about this question. “Who do people say that I am?” God wants us to know who God is. God wants us to know so much that God came into the world, became human, lived a human life, and died a human death. God did all of this because God loves us so much, enough to care who we say God is. God did this because he loves you so much, enough to care who you say God is. And in doing so, God gives you a name to cling to. Like Veronica, asserting herself as “frustrated” not “depressed,” you have a life preserver. Like Peter, Jesus has called you by name – a new name, borne out of your relationship with God. Even if you turn around the next moment and screw it up, that name is still yours, and you can cling to it, and you can use it to counter whatever other names are thrown your way.
We have to live in the world, and we are going to care what others say about us. In Christ, we have been given a new name, a new word for ourselves that we can use. We can care what others say, but we can also know that they do not know the whole story. Only God knows the whole story about me, about you. Only God knows what it means that I have been called be a new name. Whatever else they say, I have a name that I cling to. Jesus has spoken to me in my baptism, “blessed are you, Aimee Appell! You are indeed a child of God!”
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Hagar and Ishmael - A Sermon from the Hospital
Tell me a story. My daughter asks me all the time for stories, and she wants them to be interesting. What makes a good story? They need to have plot twists and they need to keep her attention. Whether it’s Winnie-the-Pooh, or other, lesser literature, it is the unexpected part of the story that keeps us interested. It is the unexpected twists and turns that keep our attention, make us laugh or cry, that make us care what happens to the characters. What’s your favorite story? I love the classics – Jane Austin and Charles Dickens are two of my favorites. I also love TV – I’ve been following Lost since it first came on – and movies like Indiana Jones. I love to follow their characters as they make mistakes and get surprised by life. It is deliciously frustrating to see pitfalls coming and to watch them fall into them in spite of their best intentions. And it is gratifying, after all of that frustration and trouble, to finally see them reach their happy ending – the kind ones receive kindness, the mean ones receive just rewards, and those who deserve to, live happily ever after. Tell me a story.
But of course, in real life, it is never so much fun to receive plot twists. It is never so delicious to follow frustrations and pitfalls. No, in real life these surprises are often painful and all too costly. Even when they are of our own making, they often lead us to unexpected and unwelcome journeys. It is difficult to see how anyone gets what they truly deserve in life. It is difficult to see how anyone ever expects to live happily ever after. But that is just when God says, “Tell me a story,” just as in the reading today he said to Hagar, “What troubles you?” God is not asking an idle question here. God is not toying with Hagar. He truly wants to know her story – what brought her here, what frightens her, what she expects of the future. And then God pulls that story to God’s self, and makes her story his own.
In the story that we read today from Genesis, Hagar and Sarah and Abraham are three people who got caught up in the twists and turns of their story. Sometimes these twists are of their own making. Sarah and Abraham had received a promise from God, the promise that they would be the parents of a great nation, and their offspring would be as numerous as the stars. But they misunderstood the promise. Believing that the promise was only for Abraham, Sarah insisted that he have a child with Hagar, her maid. Of course, anyone who knows anything about stories knows that this will only lead to trouble. Abraham is a good man, and he treats his first-born son as a good man should. Perhaps he also treats his son’s mother well; perhaps he even loves her. Whatever the case, Sarah is going to be jealous. We know it before it even happens, because this is what happens in stories. Already, Sarah has brought trouble on herself. She now has to adjust to a future in which she is no longer the only woman in Abraham’s life. Worse, she has to adjust to Abraham’s first-born son, by tradition his heir and possibly his favorite, being the son of another woman. Whether or not she bears the promised son, we know that there will be trouble. Luckily for Sarah, she already knows the promises God has made for Isaac’s future. She just doesn’t want to share them. Now Sarah must adjust to a new and different future, one of her own making.
Abraham must adjust to a new and different future as well. He had gotten used to being childless, and God informs him that this will change. He has gotten used to having Sarah for his wife, and Sarah informs him that he must take another woman into his bed. When at last he has not one but two sons to inherit the promises, he is informed that he must part with one of them. He must send his first-born son, Ishmael, and the boy’s mother out into the wilderness. We know that he loves Isaac, the child of Sarah. And we also know that he cares for Hagar and her son, that he was distressed on account of them. He had likely been looking forward to an old age watching the boys grow up together, enjoying their company, and being the patriarch of a large household. Now he must adjust to a new and different future, one in which the jealousies of the women and the rivalries of his sons are the deciding factors. Luckily for Abraham, he already knows that both boys will receive God’s favor, that God will take care of Ishmael as well as Isaac. Now, though he is assured of their future, he must adjust to his own.
Hagar has to adjust to a new and different future as well, one which, as far as she knows, holds nothing for her and her son but fear, probably even death. She is completely at the mercy of others. As a slave, a handmaid, she has no choice but to leave when she is cast out. No one defends her claim, and she must leave. Friendless, defenseless, forced first to lay with a man not her husband, then to bear his child, now she is being forced to leave his camp, going to certain death in the wilderness. She must adjust, not so much to a new and different future, as to a lack of a future, both for herself and for her son. She has been forced into it by others’ meanness and jealousies, by others’ lack of trust. She has not heard any word of promise or assurance from God, as Sarah and Abraham have. What kind of story can she look forward to? What troubles you, Hagar?
What troubles you? What kind of story do you look forward to? Hagar has a story in her mind that is primarily about death for herself and her son. That is the story that many of us here at Abbot Northwestern are familiar with. And there are many other stories going on here today – stories of loss, pain, anxiety, even some stories of celebration. Despair is just one of the thousands of stories held in these walls. What troubles you? God is asking. God really wants to know. When we have given up on happy endings or just desserts, God is asking, “what troubles you?” It is easy to miss God’s question. When we are hurting, or when we are watching loved ones hurting, our focus closes in, and all we can see is this moment, this time, this story. All we hear is this moment, this time, this story. It is easy to block out God’s question, to miss God’s gently urging to share, “what troubles you?”
Like the rest of us, Hagar’s focus has closed in to the story in front of her, and she is not hearing or seeing what God has put before her. What Hagar forgets in her moment of despair, what she perhaps never knew, is that hers is not the only story at work. Her story is part of a larger story, the story of God’s work in the world. Even as she despairs over the end of the story, God is at work making this story God’s own. Sarah had heard God’s promises for Isaac, and Abraham had heard God’s promises for both of his sons, but it is not until here, in the desert, when things are at their very worst that Hagar is assured of God’s promises for her own son. Finally, when she is most uncertain of her story’s end, God assures her that her story is also God’s story. And suddenly, her focus opens up! Her eyes are opened and she sees the well of water. Her focus expands, and she finds refreshment and a future. “She went and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.”
“What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard.” It seems odd that all throughout this story, Hagar’s son has been called “the boy” or “her son.” Nowhere in the story is he called by his name, Ishmael. But when read in Hebrew, something wonderful appears. The name Ishmael means “God heard,” and so verse 17, “And God heard the voice of the boy,” when read in Hebrew, (Vayishma Elohim) says “Ishmael.” In hearing the boy’s cries, God names the boy. In naming him, God claims him, drawing Ishmael’s story, and therefore Hagar’s story, into God’s story, making them God’s own.
We also are named and claimed by God. Though I am not named Ishmael, Ishmael is a promise to me that God hears, even and especially when I feel lost and in the wilderness. As Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans, in baptism we are united with Christ. Our story is joined to the story of our crucified and resurrected Lord, who names and claims us in our baptism. For Christians, Jesus is God come into the world, and we know that God has claimed us. God went to death on a cross in order to join each of us where we are, in our suffering, in our despair. God went to death on a cross in order to join each of our stories to God’s. When we say, tell me a story, this is the story that we are told. This is the story: that my life, and your life, each one, is joined to the life of Christ, to the death of Christ, and to the resurrection of Christ. This is the story: that my story, your story, each one, is joined to God’s story. Knowing that, we know that God hears, and that God responds. Just like Hagar, we will receive refreshment, and comfort in knowing that God holds us, and hears us, even when we feel alone. That is our new and different future. That is our happy ending.
But of course, in real life, it is never so much fun to receive plot twists. It is never so delicious to follow frustrations and pitfalls. No, in real life these surprises are often painful and all too costly. Even when they are of our own making, they often lead us to unexpected and unwelcome journeys. It is difficult to see how anyone gets what they truly deserve in life. It is difficult to see how anyone ever expects to live happily ever after. But that is just when God says, “Tell me a story,” just as in the reading today he said to Hagar, “What troubles you?” God is not asking an idle question here. God is not toying with Hagar. He truly wants to know her story – what brought her here, what frightens her, what she expects of the future. And then God pulls that story to God’s self, and makes her story his own.
In the story that we read today from Genesis, Hagar and Sarah and Abraham are three people who got caught up in the twists and turns of their story. Sometimes these twists are of their own making. Sarah and Abraham had received a promise from God, the promise that they would be the parents of a great nation, and their offspring would be as numerous as the stars. But they misunderstood the promise. Believing that the promise was only for Abraham, Sarah insisted that he have a child with Hagar, her maid. Of course, anyone who knows anything about stories knows that this will only lead to trouble. Abraham is a good man, and he treats his first-born son as a good man should. Perhaps he also treats his son’s mother well; perhaps he even loves her. Whatever the case, Sarah is going to be jealous. We know it before it even happens, because this is what happens in stories. Already, Sarah has brought trouble on herself. She now has to adjust to a future in which she is no longer the only woman in Abraham’s life. Worse, she has to adjust to Abraham’s first-born son, by tradition his heir and possibly his favorite, being the son of another woman. Whether or not she bears the promised son, we know that there will be trouble. Luckily for Sarah, she already knows the promises God has made for Isaac’s future. She just doesn’t want to share them. Now Sarah must adjust to a new and different future, one of her own making.
Abraham must adjust to a new and different future as well. He had gotten used to being childless, and God informs him that this will change. He has gotten used to having Sarah for his wife, and Sarah informs him that he must take another woman into his bed. When at last he has not one but two sons to inherit the promises, he is informed that he must part with one of them. He must send his first-born son, Ishmael, and the boy’s mother out into the wilderness. We know that he loves Isaac, the child of Sarah. And we also know that he cares for Hagar and her son, that he was distressed on account of them. He had likely been looking forward to an old age watching the boys grow up together, enjoying their company, and being the patriarch of a large household. Now he must adjust to a new and different future, one in which the jealousies of the women and the rivalries of his sons are the deciding factors. Luckily for Abraham, he already knows that both boys will receive God’s favor, that God will take care of Ishmael as well as Isaac. Now, though he is assured of their future, he must adjust to his own.
Hagar has to adjust to a new and different future as well, one which, as far as she knows, holds nothing for her and her son but fear, probably even death. She is completely at the mercy of others. As a slave, a handmaid, she has no choice but to leave when she is cast out. No one defends her claim, and she must leave. Friendless, defenseless, forced first to lay with a man not her husband, then to bear his child, now she is being forced to leave his camp, going to certain death in the wilderness. She must adjust, not so much to a new and different future, as to a lack of a future, both for herself and for her son. She has been forced into it by others’ meanness and jealousies, by others’ lack of trust. She has not heard any word of promise or assurance from God, as Sarah and Abraham have. What kind of story can she look forward to? What troubles you, Hagar?
What troubles you? What kind of story do you look forward to? Hagar has a story in her mind that is primarily about death for herself and her son. That is the story that many of us here at Abbot Northwestern are familiar with. And there are many other stories going on here today – stories of loss, pain, anxiety, even some stories of celebration. Despair is just one of the thousands of stories held in these walls. What troubles you? God is asking. God really wants to know. When we have given up on happy endings or just desserts, God is asking, “what troubles you?” It is easy to miss God’s question. When we are hurting, or when we are watching loved ones hurting, our focus closes in, and all we can see is this moment, this time, this story. All we hear is this moment, this time, this story. It is easy to block out God’s question, to miss God’s gently urging to share, “what troubles you?”
Like the rest of us, Hagar’s focus has closed in to the story in front of her, and she is not hearing or seeing what God has put before her. What Hagar forgets in her moment of despair, what she perhaps never knew, is that hers is not the only story at work. Her story is part of a larger story, the story of God’s work in the world. Even as she despairs over the end of the story, God is at work making this story God’s own. Sarah had heard God’s promises for Isaac, and Abraham had heard God’s promises for both of his sons, but it is not until here, in the desert, when things are at their very worst that Hagar is assured of God’s promises for her own son. Finally, when she is most uncertain of her story’s end, God assures her that her story is also God’s story. And suddenly, her focus opens up! Her eyes are opened and she sees the well of water. Her focus expands, and she finds refreshment and a future. “She went and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.”
“What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard.” It seems odd that all throughout this story, Hagar’s son has been called “the boy” or “her son.” Nowhere in the story is he called by his name, Ishmael. But when read in Hebrew, something wonderful appears. The name Ishmael means “God heard,” and so verse 17, “And God heard the voice of the boy,” when read in Hebrew, (Vayishma Elohim) says “Ishmael.” In hearing the boy’s cries, God names the boy. In naming him, God claims him, drawing Ishmael’s story, and therefore Hagar’s story, into God’s story, making them God’s own.
We also are named and claimed by God. Though I am not named Ishmael, Ishmael is a promise to me that God hears, even and especially when I feel lost and in the wilderness. As Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans, in baptism we are united with Christ. Our story is joined to the story of our crucified and resurrected Lord, who names and claims us in our baptism. For Christians, Jesus is God come into the world, and we know that God has claimed us. God went to death on a cross in order to join each of us where we are, in our suffering, in our despair. God went to death on a cross in order to join each of our stories to God’s. When we say, tell me a story, this is the story that we are told. This is the story: that my life, and your life, each one, is joined to the life of Christ, to the death of Christ, and to the resurrection of Christ. This is the story: that my story, your story, each one, is joined to God’s story. Knowing that, we know that God hears, and that God responds. Just like Hagar, we will receive refreshment, and comfort in knowing that God holds us, and hears us, even when we feel alone. That is our new and different future. That is our happy ending.
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