Matthew 21:33-46

When Pastor Susan and I are working out the preaching schedule, we don’t look at the lessons.  The schedule is determined by more practical things such as who is in town, what committees are meeting, when I have a class project due, when is James out to sea.  But never have we looked at the lessons when deciding who is going to preach on which day, because I assure you, if we had, I would have avoided today.

Martin Luther once said that sometimes you have to squeeze a biblical passage until it leaks the gospel.  I’m fairly certain he had this Gospel lesson in mind.  Yowzer. 

There is a vineyard owner and wicked tenants.  Really wicked.  They refuse to pay their rent.  They kill servant upon servant.  They even go so far as to kill the vineyard owner’s son…all in order to avoid writing that grapey check!  Seems a little extreme doesn’t it?  Everyone in this story is crazy!  The tenants are crazy.  Who goes about the business of murder…and over and over again…just to avoid paying the rent?  The landowner is crazy…he sends servants, then more servants, and then rather than involving the police or the mob or an army, he sends his son.  Alone.  What did the landowner expect?  And the son…who goes alone into the midst of these crazy people.  Surely, he’s a little crazy, too.  Walking right into his own death like that.  Just because his father asked him to.  (Can you imagine that dinner conversation?  “Son, when you’ve finished your daily chores, I have one more little job for you today…see, I have these renters…”)

We can look at this Gospel lesson as allegory, for in Matthew’s time, it would certainly have been so.  The vineyard owner is God, the servants are all the prophets (Micah, Amos, Isaiah, just to name a few), the son is Jesus.  We are the tenants.  Wait. 

In Matthew’s time, the people who listened to this parable would have understood that the tenants were actually the house of Israel.  And that the temple had been destroyed (this was written 70 years after the life of Jesus of Nazareth, remember?)  And while this is important to understanding our Christian tradition throughout the ages, as my Goddaddy reminded me this week, “Church is not primarily a history lesson.”

So maybe allegory is not the most helpful way to look at this passage.

Here’s where  Luther’s squeezing, squashing, and wringing of the passage comes into play, in this day and age, what the heck does this parable have to do with us? 

Let’s look carefully at verses 45 and 43.

Verse 45:  “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.”

Is Jesus talking about us?  The chief priests and the Pharisees were the pious and the religious leaders of their time…they dutifully read the scriptures and attended worship and made sacrifices in “the proper way”…and they were absolutely convinced that their way of living was the right one.  That they had the rulebook and that it was their job to condemn anyone who didn’t play by their rules.

Are we the Pharisees?              Heh.  She smokes.  He’s a drunk.  I heard that she tried to kill herself.  He’s such a wreck he can’t pay his bills…and he sure doesn’t tithe 10%.  She goes to church, but I know she swears like a sailor in the bar on Saturday night.  The altar cloth is on backwards…again.  Ugh, he’s so fat…glutton.  I think he’s gay.  She doesn’t look like, sound like, think like us.  What are they doing here?

Verse 43:  “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”  This parable isn’t about authority.  It isn’t about who’s in charge.  Is God in charge?  Or have we decided that we are the ones holding the reigns? No, it’s not about who holds the authority. This parable is about our willingness to act in a way that bears good fruit and our willingness to repent (to return to regret to apologize) when we’ve screwed it up.

And we do screw it up quite regularly don’t we?  If our job is to bear good fruit, if we are the people responsible for proclaiming that Jesus is the truth, if we are to stand at the corner of justice and mercy and our call is to be humble and loving while we stand there saying “Jesus is Lord, follow his life and his teachings and his example” and we are to do this selflessly with no judgment for our neighbors, with no condemnation in our hearts, with no regard for the “me first!” attitude of our nation, our religion, our economic marketplace or for the state of the altar cloths…if we are to be about the business of bearing good fruit, if that is our job, we are screwing it up.  All. the. time.

Do we hear the word and respond?  Or do we hear the word and try to figure out how it’s not speaking to us?  Or how we are already “doing okay by the Gospel.”  When did “okay” become the standard ?

Theologian Karoline Lewis asks, “Are we willing to say, first person and all, that God has entrusted the Kingdom of God to our tending while admitting that our perception of the importance of God’s realm lacks the magnitude and holiness that God demands and deserves?”  In other words, are we willing to admit that God has entrusted the nurture and care of God’s kingdom to us.  We who are chronically trying to underplay the importance of the job with which we have been tasked and who dismiss the greatness and goodness of our Creator?

We are the Pharisees.  We are the tenants in this parable.  We have been given this tremendous gift which is the kingdom of God, and we have been charged with its keeping.  Are we…are you…am I…bearing good fruit?

How are we taking care of the vineyard into which God has invited us?  For if the vineyard is the Kingdom of God, that care is revealed in the ways in which we bear with one another.  It is manifested in the ways we value the gifts we have been given…do we value them enough to share them with the world?  It is expressed in the ways we deal with the stranger…the one who appears in our midst and begs welcome.

Are we doing the work?  Are we using God’s rulebook or our own?  Are we about the business of welcome or exclusion?  Are we proclaiming Good News or are we keeping it for ourselves and for those whom we deem worthy.   

Are we bearing good fruit?

Amen.

Rebeccah

we came as strangers and yet had always known

same eyes, same ears, same faith

love in an instant

we prayed and were granted

laughter which rang like church bells through corridors

tears which fell both in silence and in ragged gasps

meals that looked a lot like communion

drink that brought us back around to laughter

begin again

you held my heart in your hands

witnessed the ugliness and imperfections

watched the jealousy, envy, and utter lack of forgiveness

writhing in the dark night of the soul

yet you called it beautiful

carved out a space for yourself inside

and cherished me

home

you were home in big ways

acceptance     gratitude     unfailing love

and in ways which were small

soft voice    soft skin    soft place to land

 we are parted

no more laughter, tears, or meals

and I am shattered

you are gone

yet there is still communion

 I will mourn

your eyes

your ears

the softness that was you

 but I will cling to our faith

and the promise of the resurrection

and I will hold this heart-space for you

 until we meet again

Amen.

Holy Cross Sunday

Disclaimer:  I have written this quickly during a gut-wrenching week.  I did some study of course as I prepared this, but at present, I cannot recall which words are mine and which may (or may not be) someone else's.  So I must credit the good folks at Luther Seminary for an exceptional podcast this week.  And thanks to all the staff and faculty and students there for as I wrote, I heard the voices of dozens who have taught me by word, by action, and by faith.

John 3:13-17

A sermon for the people of Holy Cross Lutheran Church

  

Please pray with me as we begin:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

Happy Holy Cross Sunday!  This is our day here at Holy Cross Lutheran Church.  This is a day which is set aside by the church to celebrate our most visible symbol as a Christian community...especially here in this place where we have adopted this symbol as our name.  Holy Cross.  A symbol so central to our identity as Christians in the world that we have placed it all over our sanctuary, our books, some of us wear them as a statement of public proclamation…or maybe just as a personal reminder.

The cross itself has become a public symbol and because of its widespread reach and accessibility, it has actually lost its meaning.  In this society where pop stars writhe on stage wearing crosses with the image of Jesus on them, where you are supposed to use it to help select your window washer (right?  that’s how you pick?  the guy who has a cross emblazoned on the tailgate of his pickup truck?)  In today’s culture, the cross has NO meaning.  Except that which we assign it.

So I wonder…what does the cross mean to you?  Not what did they teach you in confirmation last year or sixty years ago…not what does it mean to Pastor Susan…not what does the church say, but what does it mean to YOU??

When you look at the cross how do you feel? sad?  repentant?  loved?  victorious?  right?

Take a minute or two.  Turn to your neighbor and talk about that…what does the cross mean to YOU?  Pretty sure there’s no right or wrong answer here.  There is certainly no test as you exit the sanctuary…what does the cross mean to you? 

The cross is a really weird symbol for a people who proclaim love, isn’t it?  Because the cross is an instrument of torture.  It involves death.  It involves the very worst humanity has come up with to destroy one another in body and in spirit.  In the time of Jesus of Nazareth, the cross was reserved for insurrectionists…traitors to Rome…and was set aside for the most despised criminals.  The cross was a means of public execution.  To modernize the imagery for you, if Jesus was executed within the last century, we might be wearing electric chairs or hypodermic needles on our gold chains or screen printed across the back of our tshirts.  A grim and grotesque symbol indeed. 

Our Savior was hung upon that cross.  And as we look at it, we as Christians, continue to hang upon that symbol all of the things we do all of the time to Christ…all of the ways we continue to hurt God…not by failing to believe in God’s presence enough but by how we deal with our relationships...by how we deal with one another…especially in the name of Jesus Christ.  By ignoring the needs of one another.  Or by the words we choose…or by the words we choose not to speak.   

The cross shows us what it is for God to be involved in the world.  This is a counter-cultural thing really.  In today’s world, we are told that if we believe hard enough, pray hard enough, study the Bible hard enough, we will be redeemed.  In the culture which holds up the theology of Glory, we hear that God is with those who help themselves, who think positively, who bear the heartaches quietly understanding that the bad stuff is just “a test”  that there will be great reward if we just keep going…believing hard enough…praying hard enough…working hard enough.  But this theology of Glory says that God is present with those who are “worthy”, and so if you are poor, oppressed, marginalized, grief-stricken…you haven’t believed enough for God to be with you. 

Here’s the Good News:  God is with you.  In your worry about paying the bills, in your worry over the injustices in the work place…in your worry over having a work place, in the ways society says you aren’t welcome because your grammar is less than perfect, because you don’t have a PhD, because your car is falling apart;  God is with you in your heartbreaking realization that your parents are broken people and can’t love you in the ways you need to be loved, in the miserable space where you are so shattered over the death of a beloved that you can’t speak without breaking down…silenced by grief. 

And rest assured, for all of the ways and times that you feel less than…there are dozens of other people who feel the same way…who are told by society and by Joel Osteen that if you pull yourself up, sprinkle yourself with fairy dust (“I believe Peter Pan!  I believe I can fly!”), and just think the right way (Happy thoughts, right?)…God will bless you and things will be great.

Heh.  God blesses you anyway.  In the times you are unworthy, too poor, too sick, too tired, too heartbroken.  God blesses all those other people anyway.  God is with you, and God is with them, too.  God wants to rescue those people…the marginalized, the homeless, the poor, the oppressed, the unloved and unlovable…and guess who does the doing…who does the rescuing?  We do.  By the grace and power of God, we rescue one another. 

“Your heart, my hands, O God.  Your words, my lips, O God.”

We are the hands and feet of Christ in this world, and the call to honor the cross is a call to participate in God’s mission in this world. 

God is with those people.  And God is with you.

God is in the dark and the scary and the suffering.  And the promise of the cross is not the promise of glory.  It is the promise of despair.  That to wear the cross is to bear it…to resume the work of the kingdom of God right here, right now.   

The promise of the cross is that this world and all of its misery is simply unavoidable.  But also, the promise of the cross is that we do not dwell in it alone.  That death does not have the final word.  The cross points beyond itself to life with God both in this hard, hard world and in the world to come. 

The promise of the cross is that we do not walk alone.  We have God.  And God gives us one another.  That we do not shoulder the burdens of this world in solitude.  The promise of the cross is that Jesus was and is and will be here on this earth.  Indwelling with us in our suffering, in our joy, in our life, and in our death.  In things past, in things present, and in things to come. 

Amen.

He is risen indeed. Now what?

1Peter 1:17-23

A sermon for the people of Holy Cross Lutheran Church

May 4, 2014

Pray with me as we begin.  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

Two weeks ago, we sat in this very room and proclaimed, “Christ is Risen!”  Then, last week we heard about poor Thomas who had such a hard time believing the unbelievable until he saw it for himself…then he, too, proclaimed the risen Christ as “my Lord and my God!”  Amen.  Today we are here again…the sanctuary is still dressed in its Easter finery, and we still shout gladly “Christ is risen!”  But, maybe by now the new has begun to wear off, the chocolate rabbits are gone, the lilies are wilting, and some of us are beginning to think, “He is risen indeed…Now what?”

Our epistle lesson (epistle means letter, by the way…we’ll demystify that a little bit)…our epistle lesson for today comes from 1 Peter the 1^st chapter, and it largely answers the question “now what?” 

Peter reminds us it is precisely because God raised Jesus from the dead that we are truly able to trust God.  We know that God promises us a future, and we put our faith and our trust in God’s promises. Peter tells us since we have “purified our souls” or “cleaned up our lives” by following and being obedient to the truth (which is Jesus who is the Christ), we are to love one another from the heart, as though our very lives depend upon it. 

But what does that mean?  What does it mean to love someone? 

It’s important to recognize that love is a verb…an action verb to be precise.  In the immortal words of Fred Rogers, everyone’s favorite neighbor, “Love doesn't mean a state of perfect caring….To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is right here and now and to go on caring through joyful times and through times that may bring us pain.”  It can be a process, and it’s work.

We lived in Hanford, California, a smallish Navy town an hour south of Fresno, about eight years ago.  While we were there, we attended the Presbyterian church in town…this congregation was very kid friendly with lots of things for kids to do: a large VBS, multiple Sunday School classrooms, two different nurseries…you get the idea.  Well because it was so kid friendly, many of the aviators with whom James worked at the Naval Air Station also attended worship there.  One of the pilots was Carter’s Sunday School teacher LCDR Frank Wittwer.  Frank was a truly truly wonderful man.  He was smart, funny, incredibly patient, and positive.  He was the kind of man that could make you feel important to the whole world just by smiling at you, and Carter thrived under Frank’s attention especially when James left for a 12 month unaccompanied overseas tour.  Frank and his equally incredible wife Mendi had three children more or less the same ages as my oldest three.  With God, country, and kids in common, I spent a whole lot of time in the same room with the Wittwers (even if the kids never let us really talk to one another). 

They say the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, and that was certainly the case with Frank and Mendi’s daughters.  Erin and Abby (who were about 7 and 5 at the time) were sunny, loving little things prone to fits of giggles, and they played with and accepted my boys as one of the gaggle of kids who gathered regularly for crafts or tag or a dip in the pool.  I relished those days because it meant I got to relax just a bit and rely on the goodness and love of my friends to tend to my spirit and to keep those boys (especially Carter) out of trouble. 

Now, my Jackson back then was really shy and very, very quiet.  He spent a lot of time with his thumb in his mouth, wishing that I would pick him up and just hold him.  But little Abby Wittwer would inevitably come along and grab him by the hand and drag him into whatever she happened to be doing…loving him in and through the joy of childhood and of being together.  This sort of unconditional acceptance is God-given, and little children who are loved offer it well.  These carefree days of playdates and Christmas parties were such a blessing to my boys and to me.

But then, in January of 2006, Frank’s plane went down during a routine training mission.  And all of that changed.  The community and the church were devastated.  As Mendi and her children adjusted to their “new normal” (if you can even say something like that) they were noticeably absent from gatherings.  And the rest of us were heartbroken, too. 

A month later for Valentine’s Day, a friend of ours decided to host a party for all the kids that Erin and Abby knew from church.  Their mom dropped them off as she was just not quite ready yet for a public appearance.

The house was swarming with happy kids, and chatty moms, and every surface was draped with red and white and pink and purple banners and hearts and the word “Love”.  The Wittwer girls entered our friend’s home with downcast eyes.  Their anxiety was palpable.  Then, an older boy waltzed up to them and said, in that nasty, sing-songy way that bullies seem to perfect, “Nice of you to show up since your dad died.”   Erin burst into tears.  There was stunned silence, then a flurry of activity as mothers rushed to discipline the one and comfort the other.

In a heartbeat, I found myself alone with grief-stricken, abandoned little 5-year-old Abby and silent, wide-eyed Jackson.  I wanted to walk over and console that beautiful little lonely girl, but I was afraid that she wouldn’t recognize me.  She was so little and had been through so very, very much.  I remember feeling as though the world had frozen around me, and I couldn’t move to help her.

And then, and then…I watched as my child, my sweet little boy walked over to her, put his arm around her shoulders and whispered, “I miss my dad, too.”  They stood there in the kitchen holding onto each other with thumbs in their mouths, heads together, loving one another through the pain of separation and the sting of death.

The love written about in Peter’s epistle is the same as the love shown to me by Frank and Mendi when they taught my children and invited me alongside their family; it’s the same as the love shown to Jackson by little Abby when she included him in her fun;  it’s the same as the love shown by our friend who would open her home to welcome grieving girls and offer them a taste of “normal”; it’s the same as the love offered to that bully of a boy when those moms stepped in to tell him his behavior  and his words were not okay;  it’s the same as the love shown to Abby by little Jackson as he affirmed her pain and held her through it.   This is the love found in a life of obedience to the truth of Christ and it is amazing …it’s welcoming…it’s teaching…it’s giving…it’s accepting…it’s dwelling in the hard times; this love is life-giving, and it is a way of life. It’s a verb of profound and prolific action!  It is work!  Sometimes it’s a whole lot of work…roll-up-your-sleeves-and-prepare-to-sweat kind of work.  Love one another from the heart, as though your lives depend on it! 

What does it mean to really, really love one another?  It means to care for the other person with the same concern and care you give to yourself.  It means you put the other’s needs and desires at the top of your list.  It means being patient.  It means that you allow the other person to be exactly who he or she is in that moment.  It means that you bear one another’s burdens.  It means sometimes dwelling in sorrow or longing or loss with the other.  It means that you take care of the other person, but it also means that you allow them to take care of you. It means recognizing that the other person is as valuable, and meaningful, and worthwhile to God as you are.  And it can be painful.  And it can be messy.  But it is a beautiful mess, and it is what we are called to do!

Loving and being loved in this way is life-giving, and it is life-changing!  So roll up your sleeves.  Get sweaty.  Get messy.  Get hurt.  Love your neighbor as yourself. 

Christ is risen!  So, love one another from the heart.  As though your lives depend on it.

Amen.