A: Proper 23 (12 October 2008)

Matthew 22:1-14

Psalm 23

Isaiah 25:1-9

 

In the movie An American President—when was it? from the early ‘90s, I think? it had Michael Douglas and Annette Benning—in this movie, a female lobbyist in Washington gets a phone call at home one evening. The caller identifies himself by name as the President of the United States. Of course, she assumes it’s a friend pulling a prank, and she hangs up on him with a sarcastic comment. But the President, who, in the movie, happens to be a widower, is not easily daunted.  He persists, and calls back, and wants her to be his date for a state dinner at the White House in just a couple of days. Once she satisfies herself that the voice at the other end of the line is really that of the President, she, of course, accepts the invitation.

But what do you wear to a state dinner at the White House? How should you behave, especially when your date is the President? How will the security guards at the White House know that they’re supposed to let you in? You don’t really know what to expect, and have to just take things as they come and be quick-witted.

You’re in a position similar to those characters in Jesus’ parable about the king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. All the arrangements had been made, and the party was ready to happen, but the VIP guests all sent their regrets at the last minute. The king wasn’t about to not have a proper wedding celebration for his son, so he sent his staff out with instructions to switch to the ‘B’ list, or even the ‘C’ list, if necessary—just make sure the banquet hall is filled.

So there were a bunch of people in the kingdom who, with virtually no warning, all of a sudden had a very pressing social engagement that required their attendance. They asked themselves questions about proper attire and proper behavior and what to expect. After all, they had never been to the king’s house for a wedding banquet before.

The fundamental question of biblical interpretation, of course, is “What did this parable mean to the original readers?”  To the first readers of Matthew’s gospel, living roughly thirty to forty years after Jesus last walked on the earth, the symbolism in this parable would have been crystal clear. The king is God. The king’s son is Jesus. The names on the original guest list—those who sent in their last-minute regrets—represent the Jewish people, the nation of Israel—and the last-minute guests are all the other nations, the Gentiles, who now, through Christ, have access to Israel’s God.

If you are keenly observant, you will note that this is the third week in a row in which the theme of the gospel reading has been the reconfiguration of the covenant that God has with humankind. Instead of the nation of Israel—that is, the Jewish people, being the primary agent of God’s work in the world, that primary agent is now the Church, which potentially includes Israel, but which also potentially includes everyone else in the world as well. And because of that, we have always seen ourselves, in the Church, as heirs of the stories and promises and prophecies of the Old Testament. So these original early Christian readers of Matthew’s gospel would also have made a connection between the banquet in this parable and another banquet scene described in the twenty-fifth chapter of the book of Isaiah, a passage which, conveniently, is appointed to be read at today’s liturgy:

On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich foods filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.

Among those who study the scriptures, this is known as the “messianic banquet”, because it describes conditions at the end of history, when the work of the Messiah, the anointed one, the Christ, will have been brought to completion. In Chapter Nineteen of the book of Revelation, this scene is referred to as the “Marriage Supper of the Lamb”—the Lamb being Christ, who is the groom, and the bride being the Church.

Now, speaking personally, however it’s described, this is one banquet I don’t want to miss. And I give thanks that, as a member of the Church, I am among those who have received a late-in-the-day invitation to the festivities. Yet, I am at the same time in grief because I know that there are so many who have also received the same special invitation, but who are not aware of what a great honor it is, and what a great party it will be! There are those who approach the messianic banquet, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, as an object of curiosity. “Yes, God, since you’ve invited me, and I don’t yet have anything on my calendar for the first few thousand years of eternity, I’ll come. I’ll be there. I’ll show up. But I hope you won’t mind if I’m a little late, and I hope it’s a come-as-you-are party; I don’t want to have to wear anything special. And don’t bother actually setting a place for me; I’ll probably just graze at the hors d’oeuvre table.  And I don’t think I’ll actually dance at the reception; I’ll probably just hang our around the door. Actually, I’m mostly just interested in seeing what your house looks like. No offense.”

Every Sunday and holy day, we have available to us a foretaste of the messianic banquet, a sneak preview of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. It’s called the Holy Eucharist, the Mass, the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion. What an incredibly wonderful gift! Yet, how many there are who approach it out of bored curiosity. They don’t really let themselves get into it. They remain detached, observing on the margins, hanging out by the table and never sitting down to the meal or entering the dance floor. They don’t want to see themselves as particularly religious, so they sing half-heartedly, if at all, let others make the responses in the liturgy, and don’t bother with personal gestures like making the sign of the cross or bowing the head at the name of Jesus. It’s as if they have a spiritual eating disorder. They’re starving spiritually, but all they can think about is avoiding being “religious”, so they don’t take any nourishment. Spiritual food is all around them in abundance, but it goes uneaten. They enjoy watching others eat! They wouldn’t want the Church to go away. They’re glad that others sit down and have a full spiritual meal at the banquet, but the thought of doing so themselves is terrifying. The anorexic has a distorted image of her own body and its relationship to food. A spiritual anorexic has a distorted image of his or her own soul, and how religious practice relates to having peace with God.

Or maybe you find yourself at the banquet, not out of curiosity, but just because you’ve been swept along by the tide. You got the phone call saying “Come to the party”, and you don’t remember every really saying Yes, but you never said No either, and everyone around you was going, so here you are. Have you ever known anybody who gets into a line of work in his or her twenties—not as a result of a great deal of thought, but just because it was an opportunity that became available, because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time—and then twenty or thirty years later wonders, “What am I doing, I don’t even like this job, but I’m trapped because I don’t know how to do anything else.”?  It’s really a sad situation. Might that be a fair description of your relationship with Christ and his church? You don’t really know why you’re here, but you’re here, and it’s a habit, and you don’t know how to do anything else? My friends, that’s better than not being here at all, but my heart goes out to you, because even though you’re at the party, you’re not having any fun. You’re there, but it’s not really a party for you. You’re not eating, you’re not dancing, you’re not drinking, you’re not socializing, you’re just there. What a drag! If you’re at the messianic banquet out of bored curiosity, if you’re at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb out of sheer unconsidered habit, if you are holding yourself back from the full commitment of your heart and soul and mind and will and abilities and time and wealth to the Lord Jesus Christ, then there’s a word to describe you, and it’s “party pooper!”

Now, lest you think that characterization to be a trifle harsh, let me go on to say that that’s the kinder and gentler way of putting it. The plain, unvarnished, non-sugar coated version is spoken by the king in our Lord’s parable. When he sees that one of the guests at the banquet is not properly clothed, he orders his servants to take that person and bind him hand and foot and cast him into outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Now, we don’t know what this poor fellow was wearing, or what he should have been wearing. The point is, the fact that he was wearing the wrong thing means that he wasn’t present at the banquet for the purpose of participating in it and celebrating what the banquet was celebrating. When we’re at the party, but we’re not there to “party”, then it’s like we’re at the wedding feast without the wedding garment. We are demonstrating our ignorance of the true meaning and significance of the occasion, and we are insulting our host! When we attend the eucharistic feast, but our intention is to hang out by the door nibbling on stuffed olives, we are demonstrating that we are clueless as to the meaning and significance of the Eucharist.

The reason we’re celebrating—I’ll give you a hint—the reason we’re celebrating has something to do with the redemption of the entire created universe, including your individual soul and mine, from the power of evil and death. It has something to do with the good guys in the white hats untying the widow from the railroad tracks just before the train arrives. It has something to do with finding meaning in suffering and coming to some resolution on the mystery of bad things happening to good people. This is, as I said, just a hint. But it is certainly reason enough to celebrate, ample justification for throwing a party. So, our invitation to the messianic banquet, our summons to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, assumes that our reason for accepting the call is that we are ready to celebrate. Please come, we are told, but realize what you’re coming to. Plan on singing, plan on dancing, plan on eating—a lot—and plan on having a bit to drink, not just nibbling and watching. There’s no need for wallflowers at this dance. And, most importantly, plan on not only seeing the king’s house, but on meeting the King. He’ll be at the party, and he wants you to get to know him. In the end, he is himself the reason for the celebration. Amen. 

A: Proper 21 (28 September 2008)

Matthew 21:28 32

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

It’s now been 22 years since I purchased my first computer. The one I use most of the time now, a laptop, is the seventh computer I’ve owned, and I’ve been involved in the purchase of three others in two different church offices.

My first computer—which was an original IBM PC; you know, the kind with no hard drive, and two 5.25” floppy disk drives—came with very little by way of software: One copy of WordPerfect 2.0, to be precise. Every one since then has come loaded with more and more goodies. And pretty much from the beginning, it’s been taken for granted that a new computer includes some version of the game of solitaire. You need to be able to play solitaire on your computer, or something just isn’t quite right.

One of the features of computer solitaire that makes it a lot more fun, in my opinion, than using actual playing cards, is the feature called “Replay.” As you’re playing out a particular hand, you’ve got to make certain choices along the way.

They may or may not be the right choices—even with a hand that is a potential winner, you can still lose. So when, sure enough, you play to a dead end, you can click “Replay,” and one second later, the original hand is laid out for you, just as it was before. So you can do it again, only this time make different choices, take a different fork in the road. On many occasions, I have played a hand unsuccessfully three or four times, and then finally coaxed a victory out of it.

The motivation behind all this is the knowledge—or at least the suspicion—that there is a winning path, there is a route to victory; we simply haven’t found it yet. And what a wonderful feeling it is to be able to start over, to keep trying until we get it right.

If only the rest of life were as kind and forgiving as computer solitaire. Alas, it is not. We make mistakes, we make wrong choices, we face a fork in the road and it often seems that the best we can do is toss a coin, and the odds are still that we’ll miss the path to a winning hand. We look back on education and career decisions that we’ve made, and wish we’d chosen otherwise. We look back on friendships and romantic relationships and marriages that just didn’t go the way we had hoped they would, and we wish we could have this word or that deed back to do over again. But there is no “Replay” button to click on. We look back on addiction and mental illness and the destructive behavior that flows from them, and we wish we knew then what we know now, but it’s too late. What’s done is done—water under the bridge, over the dam, and out to sea.

Many of us, particularly the sorts of people who would find themselves in a place like this on a day like this doing what we’re doing—many of us have a gnawing sense that a lot of the choices we have made have been displeasing to God, and we’re ashamed. But we don’t want to think too much about it, and we surely don’t want to talk about it, because . . . what’s done is done. We can’t take it back. We can’t do it over again. It’s too late. In something we have said or done, or not said or not done, we have said “No” to God, and it feels well past the time when we can change our mind and say “Yes.” It would seem dishonest, hypocritical, or, at best, presumptuous. If God knows what he’s doing—that is, if he behaves the way we would behave in the same circumstances, he has closed the window of opportunity for us to change our mind, allowing our most recent behavior to speak for itself, and be, in fact, our final answer, our last word. We’re like the batter who at first decides to swing at a pitch, but then wants not to, so he checks his swing. If the umpires decide he has not reached the point of flexing his wrists, they will give him the benefit of the doubt. But if he broke his wrists, he is considered to have swung, and it’s a strike, and there’s no appeal. It’s easy for us to envision God as the home plate umpire who has just called “Steee-rike!” . . . and that’s that. 

Or we’re like the bargain hunter who clearly sees the sign on the cash register, “All sales final,” and hands over her credit card, even as she has second thoughts about the wisdom of her purchase. Once the card has been swiped through the machine, however, the deed is done. She has made a purchase. Repentance is meaningless and regret is fruitless. She may as well just enjoy what she’s bought and try and move beyond the guilt.

Indeed, repentance does sometimes seem meaningless, and regret fruitless, and because we feel like it’s too late to rescind our negative RSVP to God, we look for ways to rationalize the stupid decision we’ve made, just to relieve ourselves of the crushing burden of guilt. It’s OK. It’s all right. Sure, we’ve displeased God, but he’ll just have to find a way to deal with it. What’s done is done.

So we persist in ways of living that are destructive to our souls—either slowly or quickly. We chase furtively but vainly after false gods like career success, social popularity, attainment of wealth, health, beauty, or sexual fulfillment, self-improvement, and even “spirituality” of a sort. But we ignore the true and living God, the lover of our souls, the one who alone fills the void at the core of our being, the one who alone is our health and our salvation.

Into the darkness of this pit of fatalistic despair shines the light of the Good News in the form of a simple and abundantly clear parable told by our Lord Jesus as recorded for us in the twenty-first chapter of St Matthew’s gospel. A man has two sons, and he needs their help. The first one says “Yes, father, I will certainly do what you ask. Consider it a done deal.” But the day goes by, and the first son’s words are never translated into action. Maybe he was lying to his father from the outset. Maybe he genuinely intended to keep his word, but just never got around to it. Who knows? The important thing is that he did not fulfill his commitment.

The second son, by contrast, immediately told his father, “No way, Dad. Not gonna do it. Better find somebody else.” Now we don’t know, of course, whether Son #2 was just being willfully ornery, or whether he had a genuine conflict of obligations that would have prevented him from honoring his father’s request. The relevant fact is that he changed his mind. He thought better of his initial decision and checked his swing, he pulled the credit card back from the sales clerk’s hand. By his deeds, he changed his words. He changed his “No” into a “Yes.”

And his action is an icon to all of us, for all time, of the fact that we always have “space” in which to repent. As far as God is concerned, there is a “Replay” button in the game of life. He will not accept “No” as our final answer. So, as many words as we may have spoken that mean “No,” as many deeds as we have done that add up to “No,” God is always ready and eager to hear our “Yes.” As the Lord says in the direct, un-sugar coated words of the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel,

“...when a wicked man turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is lawful and right, he shall save his life. Because he considered and turned away from all the transgressions which he had committed, he shall surely live...”.

God places a premium on personal responsibility and personal integrity. He is much less concerned about what we said yesterday than he is about what we do today. If we can let this simple fact sink in to our hearts, it can change our lives. Do you see the potential for liberation that is available to us here? God wants to set us free from the burden of regret. Sure, maybe we broke the wrist, but we can have the pitch back. Yes, the credit card has been swiped, but that “All sales final” sign suddenly disappears. We can have the hand of solitaire back at the beginning, and this time play our cards right.

It is never too late to say “Yes” to God, and the way we say that is by doing it. We know what God wants. We know what behavior will please him. And even if we originally said “No,” it’s still not too late. We can perform the work that he calls us to do. We can do “Yes.” God’s magnanimous grace is here to help us, if we will but receive it. Amen.

A: Proper 20 (21 September 2008)

      Matthew 20:1-16

 The reading from St Matthew’s gospel that we just heard is an example of a very familiar category of biblical literature—the parable.  When I was a teacher in a parochial school many years ago, I taught my young students that a parable is “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.” That may not be an academically precise definition, but, for general purposes, it’s not bad. Parables challenge and puzzle and stretch our imaginations. And this is certainly true of the parable we find in front of us today. It challenges our assumptions about God and the ways of God. It puzzles us, because it turns out so unlike anything that we would have expected. It stretches our minds to the point that we realize that the economy of the Kingdom of Heaven operates under a very different set of rules than those that apply to human economies—something for which I suppose we should be rather grateful, given the state of our human economy there days!

This is not an easy lesson to learn, because all of our conditioning programs us to assume the opposite.  We live in an environment of time cards, union contracts, minimum wages, salary ranges, workplace regulations, human resource departments, and employment discrimination laws. That’s our experience, and we are programmed to look at all workplace relationships in the light of that experience. We are conditioned to assume that God plays by the rules, that the Kingdom of God operates pretty much the same way as a well-run publicly-held corporation whose stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. There are certain rules, and we know them, and if we follow them we expect certain rewards, and if we don’t follow them, we expect certain consequences.

It’s that “consequences” part that can become a problem, because many people reach a point in their lives when they look at all they’ve done—harmful things, foolish things, or maybe even really wicked things—and all they have failed to do—saying prayers and going to church usually top the list, but taking good care of loved ones, maintaining relationships, taking care of mental and physical health also show up—people reach a point when they survey this mountain of evidence, and assume that it’s too late to make amends with God.  Much like a terminal lung cancer patient who loves to smoke and does it all the time now that the diagnosis is confirmed, or the chronically overweight person who’s failed at several diets and decides to eat whatever the heck she wants and just enjoy it, there are people who say to themselves, “What’s the use? I’ve already blown it where God is concerned. I’ve known what I was supposed to do and I haven’t done it, so now it’s too late. I’m not even going to try anymore. I’ve got nothing to gain from whatever I might have to deny myself, so I may as well enjoy ‘this life’ to the fullest, and take my lumps from the Almighty when they come. Besides, why would I want to go the Heaven anyway? All my friends will be in Hell!” This is usually followed by a nervous chuckle.

That’s where today’s parable comes to the rescue. Can you hear it—like the U.S. Cavalry charging over the hill to save the day? There’s a landowner, a farmer,  who needs temp workers—casual day laborers—to work in his field, most likely to harvest the crop. At the crack of dawn, he hires several, and puts them to work with a verbal promise and a handshake: they will receive the going rate for one day’s work. It’s all above board; nobody’s taking advantage of anybody, no one’s cheating or getting exploited. At various points throughout the day, the landowner keeps hiring workers, promising only to pay them fairly—everyone assumed, no doubt, that they would get a percentage of a full day’s pay in proportion to their actual hours worked. Even when the sun had nearly gone down, at the proverbial “eleventh hour,” more laborers are added to the crew, with the same promise. When the workday is finally over, all the workers line up to get paid, starting with the ones who were hired most recently. To their undoubted delight, they are handed, in cash, a sum equal to a full day’s pay, even though they had worked only an hour or so. When the people who had been working since dawn saw this, they quickly did the mental math, got out their cell phones and called their travel agents to book a condo at the beach for the weekend! But when they made it to the paymaster, they were given exactly the same amount every other worker had received, which, coincidentally, was the precise amount they had agreed on at the beginning of the day. When they cried “Foul!” they were reminded of this simple fact, and there was nothing else they could say.

At the end of the parable, then, Jesus adds the tag line: “So the last will be first, and the first last.” God’s economy is not like a human economy. Different rules apply, and we would do well to jettison our assumptions. The good news for most of us in this parable—well, all of us, actually, if we’ve ever done something we ought not to have done, or left undone something we ought to have done—the good news is that it’s never too late to make a change. In fact, latecomers get preferential treatment! They get a full share of the blessings of the Kingdom of God, even though they may have signed on at the “eleventh hour.”  And just what is the main benefit of “getting right” with God, whether it’s at the beginning of the day, or the end of the day? In a word—peace. Inner peace, to be specific. Inner peace that flows from the knowledge that God stands ready and eager to forgive us for whatever garbage may be in our past: stupid things we’ve done, nasty things we’ve done, good and noble and virtuous and honorable things we had an opportunity to do, but didn’t. God’s forgiveness gives us a clear conscience, which I might define as the ability to look yourself in the eye in a mirror without shame or regret. What a gift that is!

Forgiveness for the past, and comfort in the present—this, too, is part of the “compensation package” we receive from the hand of God, no matter what time of day we begin working for Him. God’s own Holy Spirit comes to take up residence in our hearts when we are baptized. Sometimes we completely ignore this house guest, but it’s never too late to provide a proper welcome. When we do, we find all sorts of unexpected resources available to us. We find strength. We find purpose. We find a sense of direction. We find the power to change, to become the people we’ve always wanted to be, but never thought we could become. And this all happens in the context of a supportive community of faith and shared prayer—the Church.

Forgiveness for the past, comfort in the present—and, finally, hope for the future. Coming to faith in Jesus Christ in the community of his Church endows us with a future—a future marked by hope, and by the prospect of unclouded joy. Most of us have experienced periods of happiness in our lives, periods of joy, sometimes even euphoria. But there's always a cloud on the horizon of some sort, always an undercurrent of fear of anxiety even in our happiest moments. Today I'm pretty ecstatic about the Cubs clinching the division title! But, trust me, there's a big cloud in the sky called the playoffs, so my joy is conditional. But the promise that accompanies faith in Christ is the prospect of unconditional joy, unreserved joy—joy in the very presence of God.  This hope, in turn, gives stability and shape to our lives here and now.

So the good news is, Come and get it! What’s holding you back? Even if it’s the “eleventh hour” for you, come to work, and collect a full “day’s” pay. We serve a generous and loving God who wants to shower His blessings on us, if we will only open our hearts to receive them. Amen.

A: Proper 18 (2008)

Matthew 18:15-20 

Ezekiel 33:1-11 

Well ... Have you committed any sins lately? 

I know I have, and I would bet you have too! 

Have you been approached lately by a member of this congregation who claimed to have been wronged by you, and asked to make amends? Perhaps ... but that would be a relatively unusual occurrence, would it not? 

Have you been ganged up on lately by two or three fellow parishioners of St Anne’s who have attempted to convince you of some wrongdoing on your part, and that you should change your ways? Again, not outside the realm of possibility, but I myself would be shocked to hear of such an incident. One more question. 

Have you recently considered committing a particular sin, and been stopped in your tracks by the thought of receiving a phone call from me or from the Senior Warden asking you to appear before the next meeting of the Vestry and explain your behavior? Here, I believe, we truly cross the line between conceivable reality and the Twilight Zone!  

I know I said only one more question, but ... I lied. Have you ever heard of anyone having his or her name removed from the parish list, and being physically prevented from entering the church on Sunday morning? 

As far out as these possibilities sound, they are precisely what Jesus the Christ, as recorded in St Matthew's gospel, envisions as routine disciplinary procedures for his church! And at the root of these procedures is the hard reality that Christians, despite being Christians, continue to be sinners. We are, by grace through faith, in the process of being recreated into the image of Christ, but the emphasis here is on "in the process." For most of us, it's a process that is still a long way from completion.  

The fact of our sinfulness is of no small consequence. Sinful behavior, no matter how minor the particular act, is destructive behavior. Any sin is potentially a deadly sin for the individual who commits it, because it inhibits the free flow of God's love and grace in that person's life. Sin is the disease and Christ is the cure, but he does not force himself on anyone. Left unchecked, sin is spiritually fatal. It leads to the permanent separation of a soul from its creator, which is the very definition of Hell itself. But any sin is also potentially a deadly sin for the larger Christian community, the family of the Church, because it inhibits the church's mission and witness in the world. For better or for worse, the world out there judges the Church in here much more for what we do than for what we say. In the eyes of those to whom our mission and witness is directed, the Church's credibility is no stronger than the personal integrity of her individual members. They look for us to walk what we talk, practice what we preach. Men and women for whom Christ died have rejected his gospel because they have perceived his followers to be hypocrites.

Some time ago I discovered an on-line bulletin board for atheists and agnostics. I did some snooping around and was dismayed to find that a majority of self-professed atheists and agnostics who posted messages on this particular bulletin board were at one time or another deeply wounded by the Church or by an individual Christian. They have rejected the gospel—rejected God himself—because of that wound. Indeed, our sins are of no small consequence. 

Yet, as destructive as our sinful behavior is, both personally and corporately, we tend to bend over backwards not to confront one another about it. One reason we don't confront one another about our destructive sinful behavior is our regard for a slightly modified version of the golden rule: “Don't do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.” We're afraid of being made to face our own sin, so we have “gentleman's agreement” to simply not bring up the subject, except in very general terms and from very safe places—like pulpits! If we venture to violate the agreement of “mind your own business”, we do so at some degree of personal risk. It will undoubtedly rock the boat, and make it very awkward to polish candlesticks or hand out bulletins with that person next weekend.

 
Then there's the understandable fear of becoming, or being victimized by, a genuine busybody—one who takes a compulsive and inappropriate interest in others' affairs. There's also the fear of making a mistake, of completely misjudging a situation, and being made a fool of. What it amounts to is that we generally don't trust one another enough to risk confronting one another with our wrongdoing, even when we're the victim of it, and much less when the wrongdoing could be construed as someone else's private business. 

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone,” Jesus says. There is something about the nature of our life together—in this parish, and in most of the other parishes of Christendom—that makes it exceedingly difficult to successfully put into practice this simple directive from our Lord.  

Jesus continues, “If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you ... and if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church ... And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a gentile and a tax collector"—which is to say, kick him out and bolt the door.

What can I say? This is so far removed from our normal experience of church life that it's almost impossible to even connect with it. If I, or the Vestry, or some committee, even talked about systematically implementing the sequence of disciplinary events outlined in today's gospel—well, I can hear the laughter already. It would be, quite literally, incredible, unbelievable. Our habits of thought and feeling, our instincts, our assumptions—everything about our social fabric—is not set up to gracefully and effectively receive such a proposal. (And please don't think I'm singling out St Anne's here—this applies equally to most any parish in any church.)

Somehow we've adopted the notion that the be-all and end all of our relationships within the church is that we're nice to each other. Now I'm not trying to demean good manners, but “being nice” is not the ultimate Christian value. Those of us who have the professional responsibility of providing pastoral care are among the worst offenders here: In tending the flock of Christ, we're so afraid that a sheep might jump to another fold that we avoid ever using the business end of our shepherd's crook.  

The bottom line is this: For whatever reason, the internal discipline of the church is lax, if not non-existent. And the consequences of this lack of discipline are that people who are precious to God are allowed to slowly commit spiritual suicide, and the witness of the church in and to the world loses its power and credibility. But hear the words of the prophet Ezekiel, which are addressed to us today as surely as they were to the Jewish exiles in Babylon 2,500 years ago:

“If I say to the wicked, o wicked man, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.”

These are sobering words. God indeed does not hold us responsible for the actions and decisions of others. But he does hold us responsible for speaking a word of warning to a brother or sister in Christ who is about to fall off a spiritual cliff, or is doing something that undermines the mission of the Church to which we are all committed. Together, we have an obligation to somehow find a way of taking seriously the fact that we are all spiritually interdependent on one another. We've got to deal with our destructive sinful behavior in a way that is credible and effective, in a way that enables us to either give it or receive it, in faith, in hope, and in charity, by the grace of God.  

Believe me, no one is more aware than I am as I stand before you at this moment, that I'm talking about something that is much more easily said than done. In fact—I’ll make a confession: I don't even have a clear vision of what it would look like if what I'm talking about actually came to pass! I have a suspicion that the evolution of small groups—cell groups—is leading us in the right direction, but it's still a cloudy picture.  

I do believe, however, that change in perception is usually a pre-requisite to change in behavior. And in this case, I believe we need to change our perception in one fundamentally important area. We need to change our perception of one word that, in all four gospels, occurs only in Matthew, and within Matthew's gospel, is found only in this passage and the one we read two weeks ago. “If he refuses to listen ... tell it to the Church.”

Tell it to the church.  

We tend to think of the Church as an institution, and institution is a rich image. It contains everything from hierarchies and chains-of command, to constitutions and by-laws, to standard operating procedures, to membership requirements and initiations, to warm fuzzy feelings of comradeship and togetherness. The Church, indeed, includes institutional aspects, and these institutional aspects of the church are necessary and important, even good.
But I would suggest to you that the institution is perhaps the least helpful single image of the church one could choose, because it also carries with it the idea of being a voluntary association. We join the Rotary club, or the Country Club, or whatever, if we perceive that membership would be advantageous or desirable. And when we no longer find it advantageous or desirable, we can resign or renounce or revoke, or do whatever we need to do to end our association with the institution. The institution can even end its relationship with itself if it sees fit, by disbanding. But one thing an institution cannot do is interfere in our personal lives. The country club may require white shoes on the tennis court, but it can't tell its members what to wear at the grocery store. So if we perceive of the Church as an institution, it's no wonder that we hesitate to either give or receive discipline through her. But the Church is not, in its essence, an institution. The Church is not merely an aggregation of individuals who perceive that they share similar opinions or experiences about God and want to get together for worship or fellowship or service or whatever. The Church is a tribe, a clan, family. The prototype for the church was the ancient Hebrew nation, the twelve tribes of Israel. They were related by blood. We are related by water, the water of baptism. And in this case, water is thicker than blood! One does not choose to become a member of a tribe—one is born into it. One does not apply for admission to a family—one is born or adopted into it. We are adopted into the family of the Church, the Christian tribe, at our baptism. And, most importantly, we can't resign from our family. We can abandon or betray it, but we can't ever stop being a member of it. At the font, we were marked as Christ's own forever, and nothing can erase that mark.  

If we can alter our perception from church-as-institution to church-as-tribe, if we change the way we think about the Church from being a voluntary association to being a family, an extended family which can never disown us, we are moving in the direction of experiencing the bonds of trust, of mutual confidence. And although a functioning family is never perfect, it does create the environment in which discipline, even if not always or ever successful, is at least credible. It creates the environment in which it is natural for members to express concern about one another, in which it is expected that a warning about impending danger is not considered an unwarranted intrusion into personal affairs, but as evidence of love, the love of one family member for another.  

As long as we choose to relate to the Church as an institution, we will always recoil at the thought of Church discipline. But if we see the church as an extended family into which we have been born, we have a chance, at least, of developing the trust necessary to submit to her discipline. And if we are able to do that, we will ensure that our sins never become deadly sins, either for ourselves, or for those who may depend on us as mediators of the word of the Lord and the gospel of his Christ. 

Amen.

A: Proper 17 (31 August 2008)

Matthew 16:21-28

While I was on my recent vacation, one of the children of our parish underwent an emergency appendectomy and one of our senior members suffered a health crisis that put him in Intensive Care for several days. Just after my return, another parishioner underwent surgery for a life-threatening condition. Over the past three months, at least three of our members who are “breadwinners” for their families have either lost a job or come very close to doing so. Each of these experiences has involved pain—either physical pain or emotional pain, or both. And the pain has been borne not only by those who were directly involved, but by those who are directly involved with them, spreading out like ripples on a pond.

Of course, there’s nothing unusual or extraordinary about any of this. Suffering and pain are all around us, part of the daily fabric of our lives. We suffer personally, for ourselves, and we suffer vicariously, along with others, both those whom we know and love and those whom we only read about or hear about. We suffer in trivial and minimal ways—a knick from a shaving razor or a traffic signal that turns red just before we get to the intersection, and when we’re late for an appointment. We also suffer in profound and tragic ways—losing a loved one to death, particularly if that death is, as we say euphemistically, “premature.” And we certainly suffer in countless ways that are neither trivial nor tragic, but just ordinary. Relationships go sour for any number of reasons, we don’t make the team, or get into our first choice of college, or get the job we knew was perfect for us. As the years pile up, our minds and bodies slowly work less and less efficiently and effectively. Suffering in all these ways is just part of life.

At times, Christians have believed that suffering is invariably sent by God as a punishment for sin. During my vacation, I read a novel about life in an English cathedral city in the fourteenth century. When the Plague arrived and people started dying in droves, the first conclusion most people jumped to was that the victims—or the town collectively—had displeased God in some really major way, and sickness was a just punishment for their sins. But this has never been a very satisfying explanation. In the first instance, epidemics seem to be no respecter of moral status; both the just and the unjust fall victim. Saints get sick and die in epidemics with the same frequency as sinners.

And when we simply take suffering on its own terms, the outlook seems even gloomier. When we accept suffering as something that just is, as morally neutral, then it is difficult to see in it any meaning or significance. The best we can say to the families of those who were killed when a plane crashed in Spain a couple of weeks ago is, “Well, accidents happen. Get over it.” The most we can say to those who lost loved one when the earth quaked in China earlier this year is, “Tectonic plates shift; move on.” By this account, when cancer cells metastasize or someone gets behind the wheel drunk, or a quarrel with his wife the previous night causes an airplane inspector to miss noticing evidence of metal fatigue, we are nothing more than helpless victims. Our suffering has no meaning, no purpose, no significance. It’s just a fact. And this is a singularly depressing thought. It leads eventually and inevitably to terminal despair, and despair—loss of hope— is a spiritually fatal condition. It separates us from God as surely as the very gates of Hell.

This is how it must have seemed to Peter and the other apostles when Jesus announced to them his impending suffering and death. He had recruited them on a mission that they presumed was going to culminate in Jesus somehow seizing political power, kicking out the Roman occupiers, and re-establishing God’s righteous rule over Israel through a royal descendent of King David—namely, Jesus. So when he starts talking to them about going up to Jerusalem and suffering at the hands of the Jewish religious establishment, and finally getting killed, they thought he must have eaten the wrong sort of wild mushrooms for breakfast. He was departing from the script that they thought came directly from him. Peter in particularly could not abide the thought of everything Jesus had said and done (and everything he had led Peter is saying and doing) simply ending with Jesus’ suffering and death—nothing accomplished, nothing brought to completion, no grand triumph, just senseless suffering and meaningless victimhood. The thought filled him with despair.

But if we pay close attention to what Jesus says, we see the seeds of something different: Jesus will go to Jerusalem, not be taken there. It is something proactive and voluntary on his part. He is no mere helpless victim. And then Jesus counsels his followers to take up the cross: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” He’s not talking about accepting the cross, or having it laid on them. I’ve always been struck how, when we walk the Stations of the Cross during Lent, the traditional name of the Second Station is “Jesus takes up his cross.” There’s nothing passive about it. It’s by an affirmative act that he ends up on the cross.

We know, of course, from hindsight, what the fruit, the long-term effect, of Jesus’ Passion turns out to be: the salvation of our souls and the redemption of the world; the conquest of evil and victory of truth and love. Included in all this, of course, is the cessation of suffering—both minor suffering and major suffering. Part of our incorporation into Christ is to bend our experience to the pattern of his life and death. This doesn’t mean that we seek out suffering unnecessarily. As most of us have learned, suffering will find us soon enough; we don’t have to go looking for it. But conforming ourselves to the redemptive pattern of our Lord’s suffering does mean that we embrace the suffering that comes our way intentionally. We don’t let it tackle us from behind; we turn and face it and embrace it. We turn and face it and say, “Hey! You lookin’ for me? Well I’m right here. Come and get me.” We “take it up,” even as Jesus took up his cross.

Such suffering—suffering that is molded to the pattern of Christ’s suffering—has the capacity to be not only “un-meaningless,” but actually redemptive. Suffering that we take up, and offered up, intentionally in union with the redemptive suffering of Christ—this, by the way, is exactly what we’re doing when we celebrate the Eucharist, particularly when we lay out gifts of bread and wine on the altar; they represent, among other things, our suffering, and we are offering them in union with Christ’s suffering)—when we do this, our suffering becomes a thread in the great tapestry that God is weaving as he brings light out of the darkest places in human experience, wholeness out of the most broken pieces of our lives, truth from the very midst of falsehood and confusion, life from the jaws of death, and hope from the deepest pit of despair. This is a redemption that is signed and sealed with Jesus’ death and resurrection, but it is delivered one day at a time, one life at a time, one hurt at the time. When we take up the cross, we participate in that delivery of redemption. We will probably not, in this life, see how that happens. We will not know the impact that every little decision we make to embrace suffering rather than let ourselves be passive victims has on the lives of others and the fabric of redemption. But it does. In that assurance we can place our faith.

Suffering, as we have seen, “happens.” We can try to evade it, and perhaps succeed at times for a while. But it will catch up with us all eventually. We can accept it passively or fatalistically, along the lines “Que será sera.” But that leaves us as victims and our suffering as meaningless. Nothing is more tragic than meaningless suffering! But as disciples of Jesus, we have the invitation to “read ourselves” into the story of Christ’s redemption of the world through his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. Praised be Jesus Christ. Amen.

A: Proper 15 (8/17/08)

(I'm a week late posting this. Sorry about that. There's nothing from me for today, as I now have an Assistant, and he will be preaching about every third week.)

None of the artifacts of my childhood and youth are more obviously out of date than the maps with which I studied and learned world geography. Large sections of Europe and Africa and Asia have undergone political transformations. Old boundaries are erased in some places and in other places new boundaries are created. And when there’s a shift in power or a change in boundary, one or more countries gets a new name at the same time.

For instance, when I was young, there was a country called the Soviet Union—most of us called it Russia for short. It had borders, a flag, a capital, a national anthem, a seat at the U.N., and a well-known dictator for a leader. It was communist, of course, and that fact alone seemed to make everything else about the Soviet Union irrelevant. Most of us knew little or nothing about the ethnic and linguistic and religious diversity of the Soviet Union; all we could see were those nasty “Russians.” Then, with the collapse of European communism in the early ‘90s, we started to hear about Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan and Belarus and Moldova and a bunch of other countries that has previously been subsumed into the Soviet Union, countries including—and this is a confusing one to American ears—Georgia. They all have different languages and different cultures and each one has a distinct sense of national pride. “Who’dve thunk it,” back when we were building backyard bomb shelters and practicing hiding under our desks at school in case the “Russians” attacked us.

But now, in the past couple of weeks, we’ve been hearing about a region even the Advanced Placement geography students were probably not aware of—a region within Georgia called South Ossetia. Apparently the majority of the people in South Ossetia are ethnic Russians, so their sympathies lie with Russia, while the President of Georgia is openly pro-western and pro-American. So they want to separate from Georgia and join Russia, and this is what has sparked the armed conflict that is making everyone who pays attention to is just a little be nervous because some think that Russia is out to re-create the old Soviet empire.

Now, I bring up Russia and Georgia and South Ossetia, not to offer my own commentary on world politics, which would be less than meaningless, but because I believe the situation in those places stands as a particularly apt metaphor, a model, a microcosm, an illustration, of the fundamental human condition of alienation and division. In the time and place in which our Lord Jesus walked this earth, it was the divide between Jew and Gentile that dominated the social landscape. It was this element that came into play when Jesus and his disciples made an excursion out of their native region of Galilee, which was predominantly Jewish, northward into what would now be southwestern Lebanon, an area that was predominantly Gentile.

A resident of that territory, a woman, approached Jesus and begged him to have mercy on her and deliver her daughter from the demon which possessed the girl. And when she made that request, Matthew’s gospel tells us, Jesus simply ignored her. He made no answer. Jesus and his disciples and this woman were experiencing the disconnection and brokenness that defined the relationship between Jews and non-Jews. But it was certainly nothing unique. We are estranged and cut off from one another in countless ways: person from person, family from family, region from region, race from race, generation from generation, women from men, nation from nation, and, sad to say, even church from church.

But, to her everlasting credit, this Canaanite woman seemed unwilling to simply accept the status quo of alienation. She persisted in her plea. She made a pest of herself—so much so that Jesus’ disciples seemed to get irritated at him for not acting more forcefully to send her away. But she persisted all the more. Even when Jesus himself made his discouraging remark that his mission was to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” and not to Gentiles like her, she refused to take No for an answer. In her steadfast resolve to be in relationship with Jesus, the Canaanite woman stands as an archetype, a shining example, of the kind of faith that moves mountains and changes lives, the kind of faith that sees participation in the life of Christ as the highest good of human existence. Her faith is an emblem to us of the only source of profound and lasting unity among human beings, the only antidote to the generational and ethnic and political and social divisions that characterize and define our lives, and that is common participation in Christ.

Jesus finally grants the woman’s request. For her and for her daughter, his merciful action was an occasion of deliverance and joy. But for the rest of humanity, it has a much larger implication. It strikes the first hammer blow against the dividing wall of hostility that separates us. The early church took this incident as implied permission—indeed, a mandate—to carry the gospel of Christ not only to Jews, but to the whole Gentile world as well. Perhaps they recognized that the seeds of Jesus’ radical action of responding to the cry of a mere Gentile are found several centuries earlier in the writing of the prophet Isaiah:

The foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,

to love the name of the Lord and to be his servants . . .

those I will bring to my holy mountain,

and make them joyful in my house of prayer.

It was certainly a concept that St Paul was familiar with, as he writes to the Gentile Christians in Rome about the eventual reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles in Christ:

If you [meaning his Gentile readers] have been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted [that is, through faith and baptism] , contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree [that is, the heritage of God’s own chosen people, Israel], how much more will these natural branches [meaning, the Jews] be grafted back into their own olive tree.

Common participation in Christ, expressed in faith like that of the Canaanite woman, is the only source of profound and lasting unity among human beings. The one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church of our Creed— a tree on which have been grafted branches from every people, language, tribe, and nation: Russia, Georgia, South Ossetia, Mexico, Nigeria, Sri Lanka … every tribe and nation—the Church is the wrecking ball that assaults the wall of hostility that divides one person from another.

I read an article in a church publication back in the time when the former Yugoslavia—another exaple of what we’re seeing now in the former Soviet Union---when Yugoslavia was torn and bleeding, an article that first warmed my heart, and then disturbed me. It talked about an Episcopal parish on the east coast with a wonderful ministry of hospitality toward refugees from the former constituent parts of Yugoslavia. They supplied housing, food, clothing, and companionship for individuals and families whose lives have been uprooted by armed conflict in their homelands. This is wonderful, and is of the very essence of the Church’s mission.But one of the parishioners was quoted in the article to the effect that their goal is “not to make Christians” out of the refugees. I think I understand the motive behind that comment, and it’s a good one. It expresses a desire to respect the freedom and dignity of the refugees, to honor the faith tradition which may already have formed them, to not be coercive in any way or to attach strings to the help they were providing. But it made me sad, nonetheless, because it reflects an attitude that robbed that parish’s refugee ministry of its potential to be a sacramental sign of the ultimate reconciliation that the gospel brings us. It’s like trying to breathe with one lung, or walk around town with only one shoe. It’s better than nothing, but it’s less than the full deal. A dry roof and a full stomach and a helping hand is a good start—probably even an essential start—in the process of overcoming the radical estrangement that divides us. But it falls way short of accomplishing the mission. Without a common relationship with God in Christ, there is only a superficial basis for unity. It is temporary, and will not stand up under pressure.

Under the communist government of the Soviet dictators, the Soviet Union convinced the world—maybe even convinced themselves—that they were one people, one nation. But when that system and that dictatorship fell, the unity of the Soviet Union proved to be a mirage. It vanished like smoke on a windy day. We hear a lot today about “diversity.” It is commended to us as something to “celebrate.” To the extent that this means there will be an array of different ethnic cuisines available for my palate to appreciate, I’m all about celebrating diversity! But celebrating diversity will not cure what ails us as a human race. It simply attempts to make a virtue out of necessity. It throws in the towel on unity and just accepts division. In the end, it only prolongs our agony.

The great faith of the Canaanite woman is a beacon to us today, a beacon drawing us to “holy communion” with Christ, and thereby with one another, calling us to be grafted on to the one tree that is the Tree of Life. In the words of our Psalm:

“Let your ways be knows upon earth,

your saving health among all nations.

Let the peoples praise you, O God;

let all . . . the peoples praise you.”

Amen.

Showing My Work, Part III

Waiting for me on return from my vacation was the task of taking the simple declarative sentence articulating my message for Year A: Proper 17 (August 31 this year) and flesh it out into a narrative structure that bears the elements of literary plot: Situation, Complication, Crisis, and Resolution. Here's what's cooking presently:

Random examples of the ubiquity of suffering, both minor and major

At times, Christians have believed the suffering is invariably sent by God as a punishment for sin … but we can think of too many examples of this patently not being the case for this explanation to be very satisfying

At best, taken on its own terms, suffering just is … it’s devoid of meaning … we are just helpless victims. This is a singularly depressing thought leading potentially to fatal despair.

This is how it seemed to Peter when Jesus announced his impending Passion (briefly recount gospel narrative). He could not abide the thought of everything Jesus had said and done (and everything he had led Peter is saying and doing) simply ending with Jesus’ suffering and death—nothing accomplished, nothing brought to completion, no grand triumph, just meaningless victimhood.

But if we pay close attention to what Jesus says, we see the seeds of something different: Jesus will go to Jerusalem (not be taken there), and then he counsels his followers to take up the cross (not accept it, or have it laid on them). [N.B. the second of the Stations: “Jesus takes up his cross.”]

We know, of course, from hindsight, the fruit of Jesus’ Passion: the redemption of the world, the salvation of our souls. Part of our incorporation into Christ is to bend our experience to that pattern: Suffering that is intentionally (not proactively, but intentionally) “taken up” has the capacity to be not only “un-meaningless,” but actually redemptive, in union with the redemptive suffering of Christ.

Suffering, as we have seen, “happens.” We can try to evade it, and perhaps succeed at times for a while. But it will catch up with us all eventually. We can accept it passively or fatalistically (“Que será sera”), but that leaves us as victims and our suffering as meaningless. Nothing is more tragic than meaningless suffering! But as disciples of Jesus, we have the invitation to “read ourselves” into the story of Christ’s redemption of the world through his Passion, Death, and Resurrection.