RCL Year A, Proper 24

Things have started to get nasty between Jesus and his adversaries.  Today is the first of their attempts to confront Jesus and try to trip him up, but there will be more.  He’s in Jerusalem now, teaching in the temple.   He is in the last week of his life.  And the other sects within Judaism, others who have had power and influence over the people, are getting annoyed with him.  He’s been telling parables and giving teachings that make it clear his opinion, that those who have been entrusted with the care of God’s people have misused their responsibility, and that God is bringing the ragtag misfits and outcasts into the kingdom ahead of them.  Not a message that’s likely to win him friends in high places.

So today the attempt is around money.  And it’s a good attempt.  The Pharisees come together with the Herodians – a strange combination of groups, first of all, as the Herodians are supporters of the puppet Jewish government put in place by the Roman occupiers, and the Pharisees are purists who despise the Romans.  But together they have a good question for Jesus:  is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?  On the Pharisees’ side, you could say this is a real question – some Pharisees felt it was impure even to touch a Roman coin, emblazoned with the image of Caesar on it.  Others certainly had qualms about paying tribute to a foreign pagan power.  The Herodians, however, are in power because of those pagans.  So if Jesus answers, no, it’s not lawful, he delights the Pharisees and other zealots in the crowd who want to throw off the Roman occupation – but the Herodians will go report him for treason.  If he says yes, it is lawful, he’s supporting the pagan oppressors, and the crowds will hate him.  You can feel the elders salivating, waiting for the answer.

Jesus doesn’t seem to flinch.  Hypocrites, he says.  Bring me a coin.  And they do.  What are they doing carrying this coin?  They usually claim not to want to touch it.  Jesus, it seems, doesn’t carry those coins with him.  But they bring one out anyway.  Whose head is this, and whose title? Jesus asks.  Well, obviously.  It’s Caesar, the Roman emperor, the son of God, and the title says something like ‘Tiberius Caesar son of the divine Augustus, great high priest.’  So give what is due to Caesar, and give to God what is due to God, Jesus says.  There they are, in the temple, confronting the son of God with a coin that bears the image of the so-called son of God, and they don’t seem to realize what they’re doing.

This is a scripture passage about money.  It’s one of many, many times Jesus engages the topic of money.  As has often been noted, Jesus talks about and refers to money more often than any other topic, except for the Kingdom of God.  11 out of the 39 total parables Jesus tells in all of the gospels are about money.  Strange then that we so recoil from talking about money in church.  (And that many churches spend so much time talking about sexuality instead, something that Jesus said, hmm, nothing about.)

But this is also about more than money.  It is not, however, about the separation of church and state.  Jesus was not upholding the American constitution in first century Palestine.   We often want to read backward into the Bible, forgetting just how long ago and different that culture and time were.  The idea of private morality vs. public citizenship is not one that culture would have espoused.  But the larger point Jesus is making very much hits home with us, and with all people in all times and places.  It is about who and what we worship, and where we place our allegiance.  Do we worship God? Or do we worship other gods instead?

That gospel is paired today with the story from Exodus, the conversation Moses has with God.  God has told Moses that he will not continue on personally with the Israelites through the desert.  Remember the story from last week, the incident with the golden calf?  The people grew impatient with how[...]

RCL Year A, Proper 23

Just imagine what it would feel like, giving a big party and having no one show up.   Maybe it’s even happened to you once or twice – I hope not.  Sometimes church events are just about like that, of course!   But we can imagine what it would feel like:  humiliating; embarrassing; lonely; all those 7th grade fears made real.  We hear of a situation like this in today’s gospel reading.  But instead of identifying with the host of the party, it’s a little embarrassing to realize that we’re meant to identify with the callous folks who refuse to come.   And to realize that the parable we heard is the story of how we are guilty of humiliating God in this way just about every day.

The story is almost the same parable that is told in the gospel of Luke.  There is a village feast – a lot of people are invited, and everyone in the village knows the preparation is happening.  It’s like a save-the-date card is sent out.  Then when all is ready, the invitation comes again: come to the feast.  But those invited refuse to come, and give excuses for what they’re doing instead.  So the host of the party goes out and invites everyone else in the village, determined to have a party.  And all of those people come.  All are invited, the good and the bad alike; some refuse to come, but the party happens anyway.  It’s a wonderful vision of God’s inclusive kingdom.

That’s the way Luke tells it.  Matthew doesn’t leave it there, however.  He adds two details:  when the first guests refuse to come, the host of the party, a king in this version, sends his army and sacks their city.  And then Matthew tacks on that last little twist, the one about the wedding guest who’s there without the right clothes on.  It’s kind of a fly in the ointment to the grand inclusive vision, isn’t it?  Y’all come, but you darn well better come, and come ready and dressed, or else.  Yikes!

In Jesus’ time the meaning of the parable of the feast would have been clear.  God has come and invited Israel to the feast – the people of God, called throughout history to be a blessing, are now called to the banquet of his son the Messiah, Jesus.  But Israel refuses to come.  So God instead invites the nations, all the good and the bad of the Gentiles, pagans and Godfearers alike, and they come instead.  By the time Matthew’s gospel was being put together, Jerusalem had been destroyed in 70 AD – in Matthew’s eyes, this is God’s judgment on Israel’s failure to respond to Jesus.  But Matthew’s version doesn’t let everyone else off the hook either:  the Gentiles have a responsibility as well – they too must respond to God’s invitation and be ready to be God’s people, or else.

Well, today is meant to be a sermon on stewardship.  I see a wonderful opportunity here before us with this parable.  We are invited, urgently, to the feast.  It is a royal banquet, lavish and generous.  It’s spread out right in front of us.  One form of the feast will be offered here next Saturday with sausages and lederhosen.  Will we accept God’s invitation?  Here’s a pledge card.  You know what will happen if you don’t fill it out and return it.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s really look at this invitation.  It is a lavish feast spread out before us.  It’s God’s offering to us:  all of creation in its goodness, the gift of life, the gift of loving relationship with one another.  Stop for a moment and really think of it.  We all have a long list of blessings to be thankful for, starting with being alive today.  People to love and be loved by.  Work to do.  Sunshine and rain.  We take all of this for granted far too often.  Stop and think right now – I mean really do it – think of 5 things you are thankful for.

…Was it easy? Or was it hard?  Did you know that they’ve done brain scans on people who spent 30 minutes thinking of things they’re grateful for, and then another 30 minutes thinking of negative things, things that aren’t going right.  After the gratitude sessions, the[...]

This is the third in a series of three sermons on our vision for ECA

RCL Year A, Proper 22

This is the third of our three weeks of vineyard parables.  Each time the message has gotten sharper.  From the expansive mercy of the first parable – the story of the laborers in the vineyard – we moved to the idea that we need to make the choice whether to go work or not – the parable of the two sons.  Today, however, we’ve shifted to the imperative tense.  Do the work that is there to be done, or else.   Like I said last week, if we haven’t been feeling motivated up to now, today ought to do it.  If we don’t take care of the vineyard the way we’re supposed to, it will be taken away from us and given to someone else.  End of story.

I feel a little bit like my son Benjamin does on Friday morning.  Friday is garbage pickup day, and when you’re a 2-year old boy, that makes it a very exciting day indeed.  The usual scramble of getting all of us out of the house takes on overwhelming levels of stress, because every 20 minutes or so, another large truck comes lumbering down the street.  We have to drop everything we’re doing and race outside to look.  Quick!  Benji yells, lifting up his arms to be carried.  Quick!  And woe betide us if we don’t get him out there in time.  His urgency is excruciating for all of us.

Quick!  I’m feeling.  There’s work to be done!  Let’s get out of here and do it!  But first, let’s look at this parable.  There are a number of characters in it.  There’s the landowner, who does all the work at the beginning:  plants the vineyard, builds the fence, digs the wine press, and builds the watchtower.  There are the tenants, who are hired to come care for the vineyard.  There are the slaves of the landowner, who are sent as messengers to the tenants.  There is the son of the landowner, the final messenger.  And then there are the ‘other tenants,’ the ones to whom the landowner will lease the vineyard to when the first tenants don’t do their job.

In the middle of them all is the vineyard itself, with fruits ripe for the harvest.  But those fruits never seem to get harvested.  No one ever seems to enjoy them and make them into the wine they are intended for.  Instead, every character pursues his or her own agenda, whether it be in conflict with the others or not.  The landowner wants the produce of the harvest but needs others to do the work.  The first set of tenants either don’t want to do the work or want to keep the produce for themselves.  The slaves just do the bidding of the landowner, as does the son, and meet with terrible ends as a result.  The new set of tenants – well, we don’t know yet what their agenda will be, but it is hoped that they will give the produce to the landowner, as originally intended.  But in this mix of agendas, it’s not clear that the harvest ever does get collected – the purpose of the vineyard is lost.

I’ve been talking these last two weeks about what I see as my vision for ECA.  We come from a tradition from the Church of England where the church’s role is in part to serve the needs of its parish, the geographical area around the church.  My vision is that ECA live into that model, and truly seek out what are the needs of the neighborhood around us.  I’ve talked about who lives around us now, what I imagine their needs might be, and what I think some of our strengths are.  I think it’s quite possible that the two intersect pretty well.

But as I said last week, we don’t really know what the needs are around us until we ask.  And we might need to explore further to really see what our strengths are – and what of those strengths we truly want and feel called to use.  A well-known Christian writer named Frederick Buechner gives a wonderful definition of vocation.  He writes that our vocation, that is, what God is calling us to do, is ‘where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.’  ‘The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b)[...]

Last week I talked in my sermon about my vision for ECA, that we can become a parish church.  By that I mean that we would see ourselves as responsible for and connected to the welfare of the community around us, those who do not come to our church and those who do.  I talked about our neighborhood and who the 2010 census figures tell us live around us, and raised a question for us all to consider.  What can we do to serve those near us?  How can we spread God’s mercy in our community?  I hope you’ve been thinking about this this week.

 

Today is the second part of my three sermons on what I think our vision could be here.  I originally planned to start this series a week earlier, but the 10th anniversary of September 11 felt too important not to mention.  Besides, the gospel for that day was about forgiveness, which paired so well with that anniversary.  What I didn’t fully realize was that by shifting this series a week later, I would be preaching on the three weeks our gospel focuses on parables about working in the vineyard.  It’s thrilling!  I can’t think of a better metaphor for God to hand us than this one.  (Although maybe an orchard would have been even cooler.)

 

 

 

This is the second of three sermons on my vision for our community.

RCL Year A, Proper 21

Last week we heard the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, the call God has to all to go and work and the greatness of God’s mercy for all who participate in it.  Today we have another vineyard parable, this time about two sons and their choices around going to work.  Next week we’ll hear a third parable about what God does to the people who are supposed to be caring for the vineyard but who aren’t doing their job.  That one will give us the impetus to move, if we haven’t felt it already!  But more on that next week.  Today we still have a choice presented to us.  Will you go and work in the vineyard?  Yes, or no?  Whether we go or not, this parable says, will be the sign of whether we have fully entered God’s kingdom or not.  Jesus was pretty clear in what he said:  the good intentions and pure living of the Pharisees and chief priests wasn’t enough to get them in if they refused to follow Jesus and his call to mission.  Our good intentions and past records won’t help us either.  People who live their lives in the kingdom of God live the ways of Jesus.  It’s not so much about rewards in the afterlife.  It’s about what our lives look like here and now.

I talked last week about how good ECA is at the fundamentals, of loving, of welcoming, of growing in Christ.  Those are the basics, and we know, you know, they’re the essential components of being a church of people who do Jesus’ work.  I think I can list some other strengths this community has as well – strengths we all have together, even if not every one of us can claim every one of them.

We have history.  This church has a few folks who remember the founding of ECA in 1967, and many more who came along in the next 20 years or so.  That kind of rootedness is a gift.  The culture around us is increasingly transient.  But collectively as a church culture, we know the history of the land here, what was here before all the houses, what will grow in the gardens.  We know how to be in friendships that last decades and carry us through life changes and tragedies.   We know how to maintain marriages that last 45 or 50 years or longer.  We know how to raise children and love the children they have.

We have educated people.  By and large, everyone else in our neighborhood is well educated too.  But the children around us aren’t yet.  We have a lot of learning under our belts, in schooling, in work experience, and in life experience.  Some of the guys at the men’s breakfast call themselves the repository of obsolete knowledge – yes, maybe with the constant change in technology we’re not up on every last thing, but most of you know and understand way more about math and science than I do, for one,[...]

This is the first of three sermons on my vision for our community.  

RCL Year A, Proper 20

Here’s the history of this parish as I understand it.  In the late ‘60s new housing developments were being built in this area, what used to be orchards.  Companies were beginning to locate here and people needed housing.  So young families moved into the area, with dads who worked for GE or Lockheed or IBM and kids who went to the new good schools in the area.  The Episcopal Diocese of California said, we need a church out there.  So the Rev. John Buenz and others planted this church, as a new ecumenical venture with a UCC congregation, and so it began.  And for many years, ECA was a church of families, of people who worked in the tech industry and who wanted good schools and the comforts of suburban living.

In other words, ECA reflected its neighborhood.  It was built for the people who were here at the time, and it served the needs of those people well.  Which is part of what a neighborhood parish church is all about.

In our country, especially in the West, not that many people go to church.  But for those who do, it’s the norm to shop around before picking which church to go to.  Sometimes folks were raised in a particular denomination and they go looking for a church of that denomination when they move to a new area.  Others may feel less denominational affiliation, and they look at a wide range of churches.  But either way, people look for a church that suits them in some way, even if they drive past several other churches on their way there on Sunday morning.  So churches are in the marketplace in a way, competing with other churches to attract folks to come to them.  You can’t just sit there and expect people to come.   This has led churches into all kinds of attempts to get people to come, from better signage to jazzier worship music to cooler Sunday Schools.  Some of it has worked and some of it hasn’t.  Underlying it all is the anxiety of the marketplace, the anxiety of scarcity.  Somebody else is winning.  Somebody else is getting the people.  Why aren’t they coming here?  What are we doing wrong?

When I studied in England I saw a different model of church.  There the Church of England is still the established church, and as such it is the default for people who want to go to church.  Many do not go to church at all; some choose to go to another denomination, or to a Catholic church; increasingly, many are of another faith and worship elsewhere.  But for most folks, church means the neighborhood Anglican church.  And the churches see themselves as the church of the neighborhood.  A parish is not a congregation of people who worship on Sunday; it’s the geographical boundaries of an area.  St Michael’s in Summertown, Oxford, where I did my field placement, is a geographical location.  People who live within the boundaries of the parish may or may not come to church there on a Sunday – most do not.  But the church understands its role there to be the cure of all souls in its parish – old language that means it has responsibility for the welfare and well-being of people around it, whether they come to worship or not.  And in times of crisis, people in the parish know they have the church to turn to – even if they rarely think of it on a Sunday morning, they go there when their mother has died, or when they are in financial desperation, or when they have nowhere else to turn.  Churches still fret over Sunday attendance, and the overall health of the Church of England, but at some basic level, parishes do not exist to get people to church on Sunday.  Their mission is more than that.

It’s been nine months since I began with you at ECA. Since then I’ve gotten to know and love all of you and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the past, the present and the future of this congregation. One thing I have noticed is that there tends to be a lot of anxiety about the future, why the church doesn’t seem to be growing and why things [...]

RCL Year A, Proper 19

It’s a challenging day for preaching.  It’s our fall kickoff day, the day we’re back to our usual service schedule, when Sunday School and youth group get started, when we commission teachers and think ahead for the new year.  A happy see-your-friends-and-family kind of day.  A day for a barbecue and party.

And it’s also the 10th anniversary of September 11.  The attacks already seem so long ago – and yet for some of us the feelings of horror and sadness and anger are still fresh.  It’s a day when we remember again those terrible events.  A stop-and-reflect day.

I don’t know whether any of you were personally affected by the attacks on September 11.  I have close friends who were, but I wasn’t there at the time.  By the time we moved to New York in 2005 it was distant enough memory that the parish I was at decided to stop holding yearly commemorations of it.  Ground Zero was more of a construction squabble than a place of tragedy.  Even events as traumatic as 9/11 fade eventually, and it’s ok to let them go.  But 10 years is a marker, enough so that many churches and civic organizations even here in the South Bay, far away from where the attacks happened, are offering services and commemorations.  And there have been a lot of references in the media as this day has approached.  So it’s up in our minds today no matter what.

It is by pure happenstance, I suppose, that the gospel reading for this day is all about forgiveness – uncanny, said one commentator.  Peter asks Jesus about forgiveness, and in answer, Jesus tells a parable.  It’s one of the few parables that is crystal-clear in its meaning.  A slave who owes his king an absurdly huge amount of money is forgiven his debt when the king takes pity on him.  That same slave turns around and refuses to forgive the much smaller debt a fellow slave owes him.   He’s thrown into prison and tortured for his hardheartedness.  The message:  We’re supposed to forgive.

Just to make it extra crystal clear, it helps to know the amounts in question.  The first slave owes his king 10,000 talents.  A “talent” is a measure of weight, close to about 130 lbs., which could be used for gold and silver. In monetary terms the talent had to do with a weight of (most likely) silver, and was roughly equal to about 15 years worth of wages for the typical worker.  10,000 talents, then, is about 150,000 years worth of income.  How on earth a slave could come to owe this much is not explained.  Meanwhile, a denarius is a small silver coin that was roughly the daily wage for the typical worker. 100 denarii, then, is 100 days’ wages – still a significant debt, but one that’s more reasonable. 
One talent is equal to 5,475 denarii.  So the comparison is, a debt of 100 denarii is not forgiven; a debt of 54,750,000 denarii is.  The first slave would rather throw his fellow slave in jail than forgive him 100 coins; the king – or in the meaning of the parable, God – holds the slave’s life as more precious than 54,750,000 coins.   The point is:  We are forgiven so much – we must ourselves forgive also.

Forgiveness was not in the air after the events of 9/11.  There was a brief period of confusion and loss, and then very quickly the desire for revenge took over, with a lot of nationalistic patriotism and eagerness for military action.  Suggestions of forgiveness and self-analysis were labeled unpatriotic, and the national argument got pretty bitter for a while.  But again, that seemed to fade over time.  When bin Laden was finally killed earlier this year, the response was subdued.  Did we forgive?  Or did we just kind of move on and lose interest?

One of the most amazing stories of forgiveness happened after the period of apartheid in South Africa came to an end.  The government formed a Truth & Reconciliation Commission as a way of healing the nation – providing a forum in which perpetrators could tell the truth of what they had done, with the promise of forgiveness rathe[...]

RCL Year A, Proper 18

I spent most of last week backpacking with Jim in the Sierras, up near Sonora Pass.  We got up at 4am Monday and drove up the road, stopping only to pick up our permit at the ranger station.  We were on the trail by 10:30, and spent that day walking, finally stopping, exhausted, around 4:30 or 5:00 at a campsite some 10 miles up.  The next day we were walking again by 8:30, and after 6 miles of trail, we headed cross country 5 miles up over a 10,000 foot saddle and then back down the loose scree on the other side to a lake, arriving exhausted at a campsite.  The next morning we started off again at 9:00 and headed down a scrappy little trail going steeply downhill, planning to head out to our car some 14 miles away to escape the swarming mosquitoes that were driving us crazy.  Sometime shortly after lunch, I lost it.  Did I mention I had huge blisters on my feet from boot problems?  Jim suggested we stop and camp and finish the next day like we’d originally planned.  I resisted.  We’re tough.  I’m tough.  I can do long days.  This is nothing.  Go, go, go.  IF we stop now, at only 2pm, what will we do with the afternoon?

But then I wondered:  what would it be like to take it easy in the outdoors?  Other people do it.  They call it ‘layover days.’  I’ve never taken a layover day.  What do you do out there?  Do you pack in a book?  Just sit and stare at the view?  Slap mosquitoes?

There was a time a few years ago when I was reading something about running, and how people who run are often Type A.  I said to Jim, ‘That’s funny, I run, and I’m not really Type A.  Well, maybe a little bit.  What do you think?’  Jim just started laughing.  ‘Of course you’re Type A!’ he said.  I was shocked.

I come by it honestly.  My mom is one who was always controlled by things to be done.  If I sat and read a book, she would be sure to walk by and say something about ‘shouldn’t you be getting your homework done/cleaning your room/doing your chores first?’  as she carried another load of laundry downstairs.  For her, leisure and rest were things you had after everything on your list was crossed off.  And everyone else had to wait too – if we were all ready to leave for a family day out and she hadn’t yet unloaded the dishwasher, then everyone had to wait till she unloaded the dishwasher.  Because who else was going to do it? she would say.

So there I was, Type A Takes on the Wilderness.  This is not the way I want to be.  I used to be more contemplative.  I used to love sitting and doing nothing and staring at the view in silence.  Somewhere along the way I’ve lost this.  Not to blame everything on my kids, but I think parenting has been a part of it.  Every day is a long list of chores and tasks, from the moment we get up till the moment we fall into bed at the end of the day.  It takes a lot of work to push small children through the day and do our own work as well.  And then we go backpacking and it’s the same – get the stuff packed into the pack, hoist it on, walk walk walk, pick a campsite, set up the tent, filter the water, cook the dinner, fall into bed exhausted.

I’m telling this on myself, but I bet some of you know what I’m talking about.  This is our way now.  Go, go, go.  For those of you who are retired, you may have happily escaped this – but I’ve heard from more than one retired person that they feel busier than they did when they were working.  For those of you working, or with kids still at home, you’re stuck in it.  There’s a long list of stuff to be done, and you’re the one who has to do it.  There’s no time to stop.  Keep going, because you’ve got to get all the way to the end.

This weekend is Labor Day weekend – traditionally the last bit of leisure before kicking back into high gear for the fall.  There’s a pro-union bumper sticker that says:  Support Labor – the folks who brought you the weekend.  Working people didn’t used to get time off – it wasn’t part of the culture.  There was the leisure clas[...]

RCL Year A, Proper 21

Matthew 16:21-28

Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

So you might recall that in last week’s gospel reading, Peter got it right.  Jesus asked his disciples what people were saying about him, and then he asked them, who do you say that I am?  Peter answered right off the bat, You’re the Messiah, the Son of the living God!  And Jesus said, Yes! You get it!  Blessed are you, Peter – the whole community of God’s people will be built on the faith you profess.

But this week, everything changes.  It’s only one paragraph later in Matthew’s gospel, but this week, Peter gets it wrong.  Jesus says, I will suffer and be killed, and then be raised.  And Peter immediately says, God forbid it!  The Messiah can’t be killed!  And Jesus answers, No – you don’t get it.  You’re a stumbling block to others, Peter, someone who guides people wrong in their faith.  Get out of the way.  You need to go the way I’m going – not your own way.

That’s the thing about Jesus.  We might think we understand who he is, and who God is.  But it’s hard for us to get what being God’s people really means.  It’s not just about giving the right answer and knowing the correct things to say about God and Jesus.  It’s not just about doing the right thing and following the rules most of the time.  It’s about giving ourselves up completely to following Jesus.  Which implies a certain – let’s say total – lack of control.

In today’s gospel, Jesus outlines what it’s like to be his followers.  You follow me by denying yourself and by taking up your cross.  You follow me by losing your life.  Which is not the same as saying, go find something to crucify yourself on:  after all, Jesus didn’t set out to die on a cross – he lived in a way that the cross is what happened to him.  He lived for others, and in so doing, he died, and was raised.  As one commentary put it, crosses will always be provided for the one who follows Jesus.  You don’t have to go looking for it.  Live for others and not for yourself, and you will lose something along the way.  Parts of your self – the parts that are not your true God-given self, the parts that you and the world around you made up and said were important – those parts will die.  And in the process, you will find new life, as your true self, grounded in God.

It can all get a little abstract, since to really make it concrete it has to be lived out in each one of our lives.  And in each one of our lives it looks a little different to deny ourselves and let go.   But the Romans reading we had today describes what it looks like when a community lives this way.  The verbs Paul uses are all in the plural form, meaning that he’s telling the whole church community how to be: Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor…be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in praye[...]

Many months ago in Lent, I challenged everyone in our congregation to each think of one way we could welcome new people to ECA.  I said that in Easter season, we would bring our ideas together.  And then Easter season came and went, and I never followed up on it.  I couldn’t figure out the right form for gathering the ideas in, and other things took up my time instead.   It’s a measure of how little it captured your attention that no one asked me about it, either!  But welcoming new people is a large part of our task as a community – and a large focus for many of you as you have talked to me about your hopes and dreams for this church.

As the fall begins, I’ll be talking more about ideas for how we can put our welcome into practice.  But today we have this golden opportunity of a gospel reading before us, a story that has a lot to say about welcome.  So I want to take some time today to delve a little bit into what welcoming is really about.

Jesus and the disciples are on a trip to Tyre and Sidon, regions along the coastline of Palestine that were largely Gentile, not Jewish.  While they are there, a Canaanite woman accosts Jesus, asking for healing for her daughter.  She’s a Gentile, not one of the people of Israel, a Palestinian Arab in today’s terms.   But she comes to Jesus and asks him for help, calling out to him, Lord, have mercy – Son of David, have mercy.  A non-Jew in a non-Jewish land, and yet she calls out to Jesus by his Jewish title, and seems to have faith that he can help her.  The disciples, however, have other ideas.  They want to send her away.  She’s not one of them and she has nothing to do with them, and they don’t want her hanging around and shouting after them.  And Jesus, at first, seems to agree with them.  Without turning to her, he says, I’m here for the lost sheep of Israel.  I’m not here for you.  She kneels before him and pleads with him.  Still he seems to resist, saying, It’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.  The children are the people of Israel – you Canaanites are dogs.  The woman won’t back down.  Even the dogs get the crumbs, she says.  And then suddenly Jesus relents, praising her for her great faith and healing her daughter instantly.

Well.  There’s a problem here, in case you didn’t notice.  We’re used to the idea of the disciples not understanding what Jesus is about, of them shoving people aside and rudely barring their way to the Savior.  They do this with children and families, they do this with the hungry thousands, they do this with people who are trying to act in Jesus’ name and anoint Jesus’ feet without joining their group.  But in every one of those cases Jesus rebukes the disciples and welcomes the ones trying to come to him.  In this story, he doesn’t.  He refuses to engage with the woman.  He calls her a dog.  Until finally she persuades him, and then he embraces her completely.  Does Jesus not realize himself who he’s come for?  Has he himself misunderstood his vocation up to this point?  Or does he do this all as show, a way of teaching the disciples around him that his mission extends beyond the people of Israel?

I think that how you interpret this has to do with what you believe about Jesus.  If you see more of his human side, it makes sense that he too would have to learn what he’s here for, that he might have his mind changed by this woman.  Born into the culture of a 1st century Palestinian Jew, he might not have realized that Gentiles could be part of God’s dream as well.  On the other hand, if you believe Jesus is completely in touch with his divinity from the very start, that explanation is problematic – he must already be intending to welcome this woman, and this exchange with her is simply a teaching tool for his listeners.  We don’t really know.  There’s a long narrative in scripture about who is and who is not part of God’s people – through the prophets and the later writings you can see the idea emerging that all people are [...]

Matthew 14:22-33

Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Well, this is certainly an exciting story:  a storm at sea – Jesus walks on the water – Peter tries to and fails.  In thinking about this text, I read a great commentary this week about this gospel story.  It pointed out that many times when we hear this reading the message we take from it is that we should have more faith.  Peter steps out on the water at Jesus’ invitation, but then he gets scared, loses his faith, and starts to drown.  Jesus says, how come you have such little faith?  And so the moral is, have more faith.  And if you don’t, or if you have problems mustering that feeling of confidence, then…try harder, and have more faith.  And so off we go, feeling like a failure again.  The good news of the gospel.

But, the commentary pointed out, that’s not the only way to interpret this story.  Jesus doesn’t stand there on the waves watching Peter drown, saying, you should have had more faith.  He reaches out and catches Peter.  Jesus does for Peter what Peter can’t do for himself.  It’s a very different way of reading the message.  Instead of being about us, just maybe this gospel is about God.

The Christian faith believes that Jesus is the full revelation of God to humanity.  What is true about Jesus is also true about God.  And so stories about Jesus are stories about God.  And there’s actually something pretty wonderful being said about God’s nature with us in this story.  Jesus has just fed the crowds with the five loaves and two fish – the story we heard last week, and a story that itself seems pretty key to who Jesus is and what he is revealing about God.  The message there is, God feeds us, and there is always more than enough.  That crowd, you might recall, came and found Jesus at a time when he was trying to be alone.  He had just heard the news of John the Baptist’s death, and had gone away to a deserted place – to grieve, maybe, to deal with his own fears for what fate he might meet, maybe – but everyone had followed him and crowded around him anyway.  Instead of sending them away, Jesus had taught them and fed them.  And now he’s gone off by himself again, sending the disciples off in a boat and going to pray alone.  The disciples have met with some trouble, however, with a storm rising and waves battering the boat, so Jesus comes to them – to be with them in their trouble, perhaps, to save them from the storm, perhaps.  The disciples are scared when they see him on the water, so Jesus immediately tells them, don’t be afraid, it’s me.  His first response is to calm them and comfort them, even while doing something completely freaky right in front of them.  And Peter’s question to Jesus shows that Peter knows something about him already:  If it is you, command me to walk on the water to[...]