“Outsiders on the inside”
Judges series – “The Lord raised up deliverers”
Deborah, Barak, Jael / Judges 4:1-10, 12-23; 5:1-2, 10-11 // Matthew 21:23-32
OT 26A / Season of Pentecost
25 September 2011
It’s now the third week into our fall exploration of the book of Judges – for many of us, one of the most unfamiliar books of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. So what have we seen – and heard – so far?
First – that the book of Judges is made up of a series of cycles, one following the next, which lay out the “why and wherefore” of each judge’s story …
• People forget about God;
• People start worshipping other gods, primarily the gods of their neighbors;
• People start to suffer at the hands of their enemies (plunderers who plundered them);
• People lift up their voices and weep at their misfortune;
• God sends a judge to deliver them from their enemies;
• Judge dies and people go back to their stubborn, disobedient ways;
• Repeat steps 2-6.
We’ve seen how the misfortune that the people suffer is not “because God is punishing you” but rather, “because of your sins.” The people behave as if they don’t want God around, and so God obliges … God leaves them to their own devices … for a while … and things soon enough go bad. But God always sends a judge, a human deliverer, to rescue them from the “fine mess they’ve gotten themselves into.”
In last week’s story … as you may recall … the cunning left-handed Ehud did a number on fat King Eglon of the mean captor Moabites, while Eglon was, ahem, sitting on the throne. It was a humorous story … highlighting that God is most often with those who we would not expect (Ehud, a left handed man in a right handed tribe (for that is what Benjamin means) in a right handed world, stands for all those who may not seem like the wisest choice for God’s work … by human standards … but God thinks otherwise. In other words … don’t trust in your birthright, your earthly position or place … to get you in good place with God. God’s standards of fairness and justice are different than ours … a point which our Gospel parable, of the workers being paid the same wage no matter what time of the day they were hired … a point that story reinforced.
Recall too that the story of Ehud was meant to give some cheer to the original readers of this compilation, stories most likely told for hundreds of years earlier by the Israelites but only written down by those we now call the Deuteronomist authors, Israelites who had a particular theological stance … a Word about God, a Word of explanation and also a word of comfort, to the Israelites as they suffered under their Babylonian captors in exile. These stories of the Judges … superheroes, if you will, of Israel’s primeval history … the authors wrote these stories down in such a way that the captive Israelites of that much later time and place would hear these words both as a conviction via the Law (you are here in exile because of your sins … it really is your own fault, for you rejected God) but also, as a word of Gospel hope (despite your rejecting God, God has not rejected you; God’s story for you has always been one of deliverance, back then and … we trust in God’s promise … now, and in the future as well).
Now … this week … we continue in this theme of God going “outside the box” in choosing judge-deliverers … but this time … God’s really going out there … in this story of Deborah, Barak, and Jael.
The story of Deborah and Barak … the next two judges in sequence … is the only one which appears regularly in our Sunday lectionary reading cycle … every three years in mid-November … but only if we’re using the alternate readings … and we only get the first seven verses of chapter 4.
That’s hardly enough to understand what’s going on here; thus our selection today spans a couple of chapters and a whole alphabet soup of difficult ancient Israelite place names.
This is a story of “outsiders on the inside,” to be sure … the theme we heard last week continues and is reinforced here … in that God is blatantly doing something against the grain of what we humans would say is “proper.”
Deborah is a woman … the only female judge … and although to someone with purely a late 20th / early 21st century world view, this probably doesn’t sound like a big deal … to any of us born before 1970 we know what a big deal this is. Just imagine what it was like for those in a highly patriarchal … male-dominated … religion and society … to hear, to read these words about a woman chosen to lead her people, not just women, BUT MEN TOO … lead them out of desperation, into deliverance. This was a radical word … an outsider, chosen to be the ultimate insider of the time … the one who would bring God’s good news of rescue to her people.
Barak is a man … yes … but he is put into – and puts himself into - what would have been considered a dishonorable place for a man of his time … let alone, a military leader of the Israelites. Barak must take orders from a woman. Deborah calls Barak … she summons him and tells him in no uncertain terms, what he is supposed to do. And Barak … he ups the ante by telling Deborah that he will not make a move without Deborah accompanying him.
This would have been seen as a sign of weakness by the people of this time … of the time of the writers of this text … and, I daresay, even today … at least, in this country. In most professions … including mine … a man who acknowledges women as equals, or, indeed, has one superior to him in any way … well, let’s just say that the societal voice about that … from both men and women … sounds a lot like that old Saturday Night Live routine, “look who’s the girly man.”
And yet … yet Barak doesn’t care. He knows, he sees, how God is at work here, through Deborah. He deliberately makes himself an “outsider” for the sake of God’s Word … and through that, he becomes an “insider” in this story, in the lives of the Israelites.
Those first two stories would have “pushed some buttons” for the original hearers and readers of these words. But the third one would have definitely sent them over the edge. And … perhaps … it does the same for you.
Jael is an outsider in two senses of the word. First, she’s a woman, and we have already heard about that. But second … and more important … she is not an Israelite. She is the wife of Heber the Kenite … the Kenites being one of the aboriginal tribes living in the land of Canaan, traditionally descended from Cain … yes, that’s right, Cain, the bad son of Adam and Eve.
Jael has much to overcome … a real outsider, outside the world-rule of men, outside the salvation of God promised to the Israelites. And yet … and yet … she is the one who strikes the fatal blow for salvation of the Israelite people, when she kills General Sisera of the oppressing Canaanites.
In effect, Jael conquers two men … Sisera, with the tent peg … and Barak … by taking away his due right of killing Sisera himself.
Outsiders on the inside. Once again … God’s Word, God’s plan, God’s justice and fairness, they are not as ours … indeed, in these cases, they are the exact opposite of what would be seen as the worldly-right decisions.
Outsiders on the inside. And once again this week, our assigned Gospel reading echoes, reinforces this point precisely … as Jesus tells another parable, pointing out how far the religious establishment of his time … and, I daresay, ours as well … how far off the mark the religious establishment can be, when it comes to the justice and fairness of God.
It’s a two part story, these verses from Matthew, but they interrelate and interconnect.
The first half has to do with authority … that old saw, when someone new comes into human systems … whether that’s a business or corporation, a school or political venue, a church or religious establishment … whenever someone new comes in, and starts to make changes, the question always arises, Who or what gives you the right to behave as you are?
Last week’s Gospel, the parable Jesus tells before this passage, before his entry into Jerusalem for that final week’s world-shattering events of his Passion … last week’s Gospel began this theme … in God’s kingdom, Jesus says, there is no place for human ‘place,’ length of time, service, membership … those have no place in the Kingdom of God … you might get a certificate or a pin here, but in God’s kingdom those who have lived and served faithfully for thirty or forty years get the same reward as those who showed up at five minutes to five … well done, good and faithful servant. To our cries of “It’s just not fair!” Jesus responds … hey, don’t make something bad out of something good. In God’s eyes, you’re all sinners … it’s my forgiveness and grace alone that makes you right with God, don’t you ever forget that … and don’t you ever forget to pass it along, just as generously as I have given it to you.
It’s kind of a backhanded Gospel word … but Gospel, just the same.
Here this week, Jesus’ authority is in question by the religious leadership because he’s not one of them … to them, he’s an outsider … not part of their club, their social gathering and business they call “religion.” But Jesus traps them in their own political web, and points out that the only “authority” these leaders have, comes from what people have ceded to them … in other words, it’s only human authority. So strangled by the politics of it all, the chief priests and elders fall silent … in the face of real authority, Jesus’ authority, which comes from God.
But it is the second half of the story, another parable of Jesus, which makes this point clear, and ties it together so well with our Judges text.
“Which of the two sons did the will of his father?” “The first,” the chief priests and elders answer, and thus seal their deal. For this is precisely the point of the Judges text … of the parable last week … and, truly, of the Gospel … those who do the “will of the Father” are the ones who go into the Kingdom of God first.
Here, Jesus points out, the tax collectors and prostitutes … two groups of people, on the outside of human society of their time (and most certainly, ours too) … these outsiders … in God’s Kingdom … as they turn, and hear the Gospel word for them, repent, and believe … in they go … into the Kingdom of God where justice and fairness come through God’s grace alone … in they go first, ahead of you religious establishment folks, who only give lip service to God.
Had Jesus been putting things into the context of our Judges reading, he might well have put it like this: Deborah, Barak, and Jael … in they go, into the Kingdom of God, ahead of you. Deborah … a woman! … Barak … one who treats women as equals… and Jael … a non-Israelite!!! ... in they go, ahead of you, religious leadership, establishment … in they go.
Now, note carefully what Jesus does … and doesn’t … say here.
He does say, in the Kingdom of God, those who hear the Word, who repent and believe, they get in … for the Word of God is the only criteria here … again, no place, rank, status … these count for nothing in the Kingdom of God.
But he does not say, and you religious leaders, you’re out.
He says, truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.
Ahead of you. You’ll still get in, insiders, but these outsiders get in first.
Or, to put it in Jesus’ words from our Gospel reading last week, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
So what do we do with such a word, for us here, today?
Well, first of all, we need to ask the question, who are our outsiders? Who do we “in” the church treat like those who are “out?” And why? Who are our “tax collectors and prostitutes?”
In some cases, it is truly the tax collectors and prostitutes.
But more.
It’s people who don’t look like, or talk like, or live like us.
People who are new … strangers … with a different background than us.
People who didn’t grow up Lutheran, or even Christian.
This text convicts us, when we realize that part of being “insiders” in any organization, including this one, means that we bring our own stuff to the gathering and we do, we will most certainly impose that same stuff on others who show up new … or, more important, on those who are on the outside, who Jesus is calling us to go to and share the Good News of forgiveness, grace, peace, and new life … this text convicts us when we put our agenda on that calling … well, only if they seem like they’d fit in with us.
It’s natural. It’s human. And it’s full, through and through, of stinking rotten sinfulness.
And Jesus is calling, pleading with us, to repent of this … to set it aside, and welcome as he welcomes.
Because where Jesus is … is out there … out there, with those on the outside, who are doing his will, living his will, in spite of and despite what “the church” or “the faithful” or “the religious” have to say.
The tax collectors. The prostitutes. Deborah. Barak. And Jael.
He calls us to repent, and change.
Not because we’re going to lose our salvation if we don’t.
Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.
But why wouldn’t we want to be there from the beginning … from the start … to work with and rejoice alongside of all these brothers and sisters who the world has rejected … why wouldn’t we want to be there, right there, right now, with them … to strengthen them, to encourage them, so that we can be encouraged, with and for each other … to be there NOW, as the world starts to turn … turn to and for Christ, his way, his truth, his life … his cross, his forgiveness, his salvation.
Indeed. Why would we not?
And so we pray …
Come, Holy Spirit, come and fill us, fill us your church, to be your vision-filled people, your agents of change, change toward God in Jesus Christ, in this world. Remove us from our politics, our envy and jealously, our grasping and clawing after the sinfulness of place and status … forgive us, heal us, and make us whole, and one … one so that there would be no more “outside” and “inside” but only Your Side … which is with and for the world … in Christ Jesus. Amen
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
18 September 2011
“Fairness and justice … !”
Judges series – “The Lord raised up deliverers”
Ehud / Judges 3:12-30 // Matthew 20:1-16
OT 25A / Season of Pentecost
18 September 2011
Many of us spent our Saturday nights in the early 1970s watching TV’s “All In The Family.” Although my brother and I were too young to get much of the political satire, that didn’t mean we didn’t enjoy the show. Far from it. There was usually at least one moment in each show for us … when Archie would “go upstairs” – Edith would make some passing reference to him in absentia … and then, the next thing you’d hear was a.
Ah yes … the ever popular toilet humor … howlingly funny to every twelve year old boy out there … or those whose funny bones haven’t grown beyond that point.
Certainly that is a level at which we can engage with this story of Ehud and Eglon today … the second in our seasonal exploration of the book of Judges … and one, quite frankly, I’ll bet very few of you knew was in the Bible.
Pastor Lou Flessner – who was the admissions director at Luther Northwestern Seminary when we began there in the early 1990s – and who preached (in seminary chapel) the only sermon I’ve ever heard – before or since – on this text … he referred to it as “one golden opportunity to show confirmation youth that the Bible is cool.”
Certainly that’s one way to engage this text … as the Biblical equivalent of Archie Bunker’s toilet flushing. Big fat Eglon … his name literally means “heifer” … Eglon “goes upstairs” to “relieve himself” (har har har) and cunning Ehud (that is literally what his name means) tricks everyone into leaving him alone with the king … at the appropriate moment, Ehud stabs fatso in the gut and he makes a run for it … the servants get embarrassed at how long it’s taking Eglon … finally they go in and find their king dead, but Ehud’s long gone, getting his army ready for a big battle which they win.
Believe me, after the years of confirmation retreats I’ve been on … Scout campouts … youth trips … and the, er, humor I’ve endured and, yes, participated in … this is a story which can really connect with boys on their level! Boys of … all ages.
I think it’s a fine example of how we can see that the Bible was written to engage many different people in their own place and time. Some stories, like last week’s introduction to the book of Judges, are obviously deep theology. On the surface at least, this story isn’t … what we hear initially is a rough-and-tumble gym locker room kind of story which was intentionally written to poke fun at the Israelites’ close neighbors, the Moabites … and give them a little chuckle when they heard this, as you recall from last week … these stories in Judges were likely first compiled during the time of the Israelites’ exile in Babylon.
This is an earthy story for earthy people. And we all know that some people are just more, well, earthy than others … most of the time, it’s the boys, but you will find an occasional girl who can belch the alphabet along with the best of us … I happen to know several.
And there’s nothing particularly unholy about earthiness … witness Martin Luther … the dear sainted founder of this faith tradition … even Luther enjoyed a good line or three of “potty humor.” Here are some examples of that from Luther’s Works:
And yet they call themselves “nobles.” Nobles indeed! The excrement of the eagle can boast that it comes from the eagle’s body even though it stinks and is useless; and so these men can also be of the nobility.15 We Germans are and remain Germans, that is, swine and senseless beasts.
“I mark well where (my opponents) came from; the lazy, idle lords and princes emptied (them) from their bowels.”
Shall we frivolously despise this might, blessing, power, and fruit (of proclaiming God’s Word) — especially we who would be pastors and preachers? If so, we deserve not only to be refused food but also to be chased out by dogs and pelted with dung.
(The last quote – from the Large Catechism – my preaching professor at seminary, Sheldon Tostengard, said of it … “Well, at least he didn’t say that bad preachers should be chased out by dung and pelted with dogs.”)
But … but … I would argue … there is another level at which we can engage this text, beyond Archie Bunker, if you will.
And it has everything to do with another number 1 and number 2 – God’s top two, if you will – fairness, and justice.
We’re first tipped off to this by a brief textual note … that Ehud was a left-handed man. Maybe that word sailed right past you … but it would not have for the original hearers of this story … people who knew that “Benjamin” – the tribe of Israel from which Ehud was said to come – “Benjamin” literally means “son of the right hand.”
Right hand – left hand. How many lefties do we have in the room?
You of all people know the meaning behind the meaning of “right hand” and “left hand” … the “right hand of God” is the place of honor, favor, co-reigning even … we confess Jesus to sit “at the right hand of the Father.”
So what of the left hand of God? Hit the road, Jack.
The Latin word for “left hand” tells it all … “sinistra” … as in, sinister. Yeah, you lefties, you are sinister … something must be wrong with you … thus all the mothers throughout history who have confused their children, finding that they were developing left handed, who made them be right handed instead.
But discrimination against you continues far beyond the theological word. It’s always been a right handed world. You lefties know what I’m talking about. My friend Kent – the pastor at Grace Point Church in Tukwila – when we were in grade school together in Portland, Kent was one of the “lefties” and so whenever we had cutting out projects to work on, Kent needed to find “the left handed scissors” … of which, in our entire 700-student elementary school, there was seemingly only a few pairs … which all happened to be in crabby Miss Holiday’s room. Kent still shudders when he remembers having to go knock on Miss Holiday’s door, to ask her for a pair of left-handed scissors … a request she always seemed to resent.
Ehud was a left-handed man in a right handed tribe in a right handed world. Certainly not one you would guess God would have in mind to lead a revolution and overthrow of a government. And yet, Ehud was the one God chose to do his work and will.
Cunning Ehud came up with a cunning plan to get to King Eglon, the occupying Moabite king. He fashioned a short dagger and fastened it on his right side, and then went to see the king.
This allowed Ehud to sneak it by the Moabite Department of Homeland Security … those servants of Eglon knew Ehud to be a left-handed man so they only patted him down on the left side … why on earth would he carry anything on the right side?
Precisely.
So Ehud and his delegation of fellow Israelites presented their tribute to King Eglon and went back home … all except for Ehud … who turned back at the “sculptured stones” (which likely were idols – false gods – which the Moabites worshipped, and encouraged their vassals the Israelites to do the same) … Ehud turned back and said he had a private message … actually, literally, a “thing” for the king. Greedy Eglon probably thought it to be some kind of a bribe … and so Ehud got his private audience with the king – a king whose name meant “heifer” but perhaps “pig” would be a closer meaning … note that Eglon thought so little of Ehud and his people that he received him while he was literally “on the throne.”
Ah – but Eglon got his in the end – Ehud not only sacrificed the unholy heifer Eglon, but then he led the charge against those Moabite oppressors, and won – and, as the text says, “the land had rest for eighty years.”
God once again worked through one, who people would likely say “wasn’t up to the task” – here, the sinister, left-handed son of Benjamin was the one God chose to deliver his people. God’s fairness, God’s justice, coming to the world through one we would least expect.
And, curiously, that’s the same message we get from our appointed Gospel text for the day. God’s fairness, God’s justice works out differently than we would mete it out … in God’s reign, there is no “place” given to disciples … whether you’ve been on the discipleship walk for fifty years or fifteen minutes … whether you’ve worshipped and served every week of your life or just started today … a “Lifelong Lutheran,” “thirty year plus church member,” or you just came through the doors this morning … it doesn’t matter in God’s eyes.
God’s fairness, God’s justice, is different than ours … through God’s eyes, we are all alike, all the same;
… all sinners, all saved through his unconditional love and forgiveness, no preference given to age, length of service, degree or pedigree assigned.
Even no difference between right handers or lefties.
It’s a word, a way which brings offense. It offends our sensibilities of how things should be. I’ve been here longer … I have more status … yes, everyone has an equal voice but “some voices are more equal than others,” … that’s the way we think, and do, in this life.
Certainly in daily life that’s the case … at work, at school, on teams, clubs, community organizations … length of time spent in “active service” brings benefits.
And the church – as part of the world -- is no exception. We might laugh at the story about the first time worshipper who gets glared at for coming into church and “taking someone else’s pew” (thanks be to God we don’t have pews here!) but the larger truth behind that old joke is truly painful as we see it play out, again and again.
The text convicts us.
Especially this verse … “Are you envious because I am generous?” the landowner asks of the angry workers. Literally, what he says is “Is your eye evil because I am good?”
Robert Smith writes in his Commentary on Matthew’s Gospel,
“It is simply a fact that people regularly understand and appreciate God’s strange [calculation] of grace as applied to themselves but fear and resent seeing it applied to others.”
Oof. That word comes like a knife to the gut.
When we discount God’s goodness to all … through our sinful human way of excluding … excluding the poor, the powerless, minorities, newcomers, those with less knowledge about our customs and ways … when we treat these with scorn, these who are also God’s beloved children …
… when we build ourselves up while tearing others down … begrudging them, not wanting them to have life the way God intends it for all … full, rich, and abundant … enjoying God’s great generosity for all …
… when we do that, are we not making something bad out of what is truly good … the rich, bountiful love of God for everyone?
It’s a lesson which Eglon had to learn the hard way … certainly … the theological “point” of that story was to “poke some fun” while bringing good news in the midst of a bad place and time for the Israelites …
… and the Gospel’s word … less violent, but just as directed in its meaning, came to a church which even in the first century of this era was experiencing division between the Jewish Christians (who had been around longer) and the newer Gentile converts … the word here, no less pointed at “oppressors” (those who would begrudge others the goodness of God’s free, welcoming, gracious love) and those who were being “oppressed.”
And that word which both readings bring … that word is BEWARE … beware having an “evil eye” toward God’s goodness … beware seeing what is truly good, and pure, and right, as anything other than that …
Just as in last week’s Gospel text on forgiveness and mercy… we are called … called in Jesus’ name to be just as free in our giving to others that which God has so freely, generously, lovingly, given to us … the Word of forgiveness, life, and salvation which has rescued us … we are charged to pass it right along … without any taint or stain, prejudice or qualification of our own added …
… and in that freely received, freely given word … freely passed along, freely lived along to all without judgment or begrudgement …
… to the right handed and the left …
… to those who showed up at the crack of dawn to work and those who came at five minutes to five in the afternoon …
… in living that Word, we will show the judging, grading, segregating, separating world, another way … the way of Christ … the way of the Cross … the way of mercy, and grace, truth and love and light …
The way in which the world WILL turn … turn from the ugly separation, labeling, name calling we lay on it …
… and turn … and oh yes, IT WILL TURN …
… turn to Christ, his Cross, his life, his Way …
In Jesus’ name.
Amen.
Judges series – “The Lord raised up deliverers”
Ehud / Judges 3:12-30 // Matthew 20:1-16
OT 25A / Season of Pentecost
18 September 2011
Many of us spent our Saturday nights in the early 1970s watching TV’s “All In The Family.” Although my brother and I were too young to get much of the political satire, that didn’t mean we didn’t enjoy the show. Far from it. There was usually at least one moment in each show for us … when Archie would “go upstairs” – Edith would make some passing reference to him in absentia … and then, the next thing you’d hear was a
Ah yes … the ever popular toilet humor … howlingly funny to every twelve year old boy out there … or those whose funny bones haven’t grown beyond that point.
Certainly that is a level at which we can engage with this story of Ehud and Eglon today … the second in our seasonal exploration of the book of Judges … and one, quite frankly, I’ll bet very few of you knew was in the Bible.
Pastor Lou Flessner – who was the admissions director at Luther Northwestern Seminary when we began there in the early 1990s – and who preached (in seminary chapel) the only sermon I’ve ever heard – before or since – on this text … he referred to it as “one golden opportunity to show confirmation youth that the Bible is cool.”
Certainly that’s one way to engage this text … as the Biblical equivalent of Archie Bunker’s toilet flushing. Big fat Eglon … his name literally means “heifer” … Eglon “goes upstairs” to “relieve himself” (har har har) and cunning Ehud (that is literally what his name means) tricks everyone into leaving him alone with the king … at the appropriate moment, Ehud stabs fatso in the gut and he makes a run for it … the servants get embarrassed at how long it’s taking Eglon … finally they go in and find their king dead, but Ehud’s long gone, getting his army ready for a big battle which they win.
Believe me, after the years of confirmation retreats I’ve been on … Scout campouts … youth trips … and the, er, humor I’ve endured and, yes, participated in … this is a story which can really connect with boys on their level! Boys of … all ages.
I think it’s a fine example of how we can see that the Bible was written to engage many different people in their own place and time. Some stories, like last week’s introduction to the book of Judges, are obviously deep theology. On the surface at least, this story isn’t … what we hear initially is a rough-and-tumble gym locker room kind of story which was intentionally written to poke fun at the Israelites’ close neighbors, the Moabites … and give them a little chuckle when they heard this, as you recall from last week … these stories in Judges were likely first compiled during the time of the Israelites’ exile in Babylon.
This is an earthy story for earthy people. And we all know that some people are just more, well, earthy than others … most of the time, it’s the boys, but you will find an occasional girl who can belch the alphabet along with the best of us … I happen to know several.
And there’s nothing particularly unholy about earthiness … witness Martin Luther … the dear sainted founder of this faith tradition … even Luther enjoyed a good line or three of “potty humor.” Here are some examples of that from Luther’s Works:
And yet they call themselves “nobles.” Nobles indeed! The excrement of the eagle can boast that it comes from the eagle’s body even though it stinks and is useless; and so these men can also be of the nobility.15 We Germans are and remain Germans, that is, swine and senseless beasts.
“I mark well where (my opponents) came from; the lazy, idle lords and princes emptied (them) from their bowels.”
Shall we frivolously despise this might, blessing, power, and fruit (of proclaiming God’s Word) — especially we who would be pastors and preachers? If so, we deserve not only to be refused food but also to be chased out by dogs and pelted with dung.
(The last quote – from the Large Catechism – my preaching professor at seminary, Sheldon Tostengard, said of it … “Well, at least he didn’t say that bad preachers should be chased out by dung and pelted with dogs.”)
But … but … I would argue … there is another level at which we can engage this text, beyond Archie Bunker, if you will.
And it has everything to do with another number 1 and number 2 – God’s top two, if you will – fairness, and justice.
We’re first tipped off to this by a brief textual note … that Ehud was a left-handed man. Maybe that word sailed right past you … but it would not have for the original hearers of this story … people who knew that “Benjamin” – the tribe of Israel from which Ehud was said to come – “Benjamin” literally means “son of the right hand.”
Right hand – left hand. How many lefties do we have in the room?
You of all people know the meaning behind the meaning of “right hand” and “left hand” … the “right hand of God” is the place of honor, favor, co-reigning even … we confess Jesus to sit “at the right hand of the Father.”
So what of the left hand of God?
The Latin word for “left hand” tells it all … “sinistra” … as in, sinister. Yeah, you lefties, you are sinister … something must be wrong with you … thus all the mothers throughout history who have confused their children, finding that they were developing left handed, who made them be right handed instead.
But discrimination against you continues far beyond the theological word. It’s always been a right handed world. You lefties know what I’m talking about. My friend Kent – the pastor at Grace Point Church in Tukwila – when we were in grade school together in Portland, Kent was one of the “lefties” and so whenever we had cutting out projects to work on, Kent needed to find “the left handed scissors” … of which, in our entire 700-student elementary school, there was seemingly only a few pairs … which all happened to be in crabby Miss Holiday’s room. Kent still shudders when he remembers having to go knock on Miss Holiday’s door, to ask her for a pair of left-handed scissors … a request she always seemed to resent.
Ehud was a left-handed man in a right handed tribe in a right handed world. Certainly not one you would guess God would have in mind to lead a revolution and overthrow of a government. And yet, Ehud was the one God chose to do his work and will.
Cunning Ehud came up with a cunning plan to get to King Eglon, the occupying Moabite king. He fashioned a short dagger and fastened it on his right side, and then went to see the king.
This allowed Ehud to sneak it by the Moabite Department of Homeland Security … those servants of Eglon knew Ehud to be a left-handed man so they only patted him down on the left side … why on earth would he carry anything on the right side?
Precisely.
So Ehud and his delegation of fellow Israelites presented their tribute to King Eglon and went back home … all except for Ehud … who turned back at the “sculptured stones” (which likely were idols – false gods – which the Moabites worshipped, and encouraged their vassals the Israelites to do the same) … Ehud turned back and said he had a private message … actually, literally, a “thing” for the king. Greedy Eglon probably thought it to be some kind of a bribe … and so Ehud got his private audience with the king – a king whose name meant “heifer” but perhaps “pig” would be a closer meaning … note that Eglon thought so little of Ehud and his people that he received him while he was literally “on the throne.”
Ah – but Eglon got his in the end – Ehud not only sacrificed the unholy heifer Eglon, but then he led the charge against those Moabite oppressors, and won – and, as the text says, “the land had rest for eighty years.”
God once again worked through one, who people would likely say “wasn’t up to the task” – here, the sinister, left-handed son of Benjamin was the one God chose to deliver his people. God’s fairness, God’s justice, coming to the world through one we would least expect.
And, curiously, that’s the same message we get from our appointed Gospel text for the day. God’s fairness, God’s justice works out differently than we would mete it out … in God’s reign, there is no “place” given to disciples … whether you’ve been on the discipleship walk for fifty years or fifteen minutes … whether you’ve worshipped and served every week of your life or just started today … a “Lifelong Lutheran,” “thirty year plus church member,” or you just came through the doors this morning … it doesn’t matter in God’s eyes.
God’s fairness, God’s justice, is different than ours … through God’s eyes, we are all alike, all the same;
… all sinners, all saved through his unconditional love and forgiveness, no preference given to age, length of service, degree or pedigree assigned.
Even no difference between right handers or lefties.
It’s a word, a way which brings offense. It offends our sensibilities of how things should be. I’ve been here longer … I have more status … yes, everyone has an equal voice but “some voices are more equal than others,” … that’s the way we think, and do, in this life.
Certainly in daily life that’s the case … at work, at school, on teams, clubs, community organizations … length of time spent in “active service” brings benefits.
And the church – as part of the world -- is no exception. We might laugh at the story about the first time worshipper who gets glared at for coming into church and “taking someone else’s pew” (thanks be to God we don’t have pews here!) but the larger truth behind that old joke is truly painful as we see it play out, again and again.
The text convicts us.
Especially this verse … “Are you envious because I am generous?” the landowner asks of the angry workers. Literally, what he says is “Is your eye evil because I am good?”
Robert Smith writes in his Commentary on Matthew’s Gospel,
“It is simply a fact that people regularly understand and appreciate God’s strange [calculation] of grace as applied to themselves but fear and resent seeing it applied to others.”
Oof. That word comes like a knife to the gut.
When we discount God’s goodness to all … through our sinful human way of excluding … excluding the poor, the powerless, minorities, newcomers, those with less knowledge about our customs and ways … when we treat these with scorn, these who are also God’s beloved children …
… when we build ourselves up while tearing others down … begrudging them, not wanting them to have life the way God intends it for all … full, rich, and abundant … enjoying God’s great generosity for all …
… when we do that, are we not making something bad out of what is truly good … the rich, bountiful love of God for everyone?
It’s a lesson which Eglon had to learn the hard way … certainly … the theological “point” of that story was to “poke some fun” while bringing good news in the midst of a bad place and time for the Israelites …
… and the Gospel’s word … less violent, but just as directed in its meaning, came to a church which even in the first century of this era was experiencing division between the Jewish Christians (who had been around longer) and the newer Gentile converts … the word here, no less pointed at “oppressors” (those who would begrudge others the goodness of God’s free, welcoming, gracious love) and those who were being “oppressed.”
And that word which both readings bring … that word is BEWARE … beware having an “evil eye” toward God’s goodness … beware seeing what is truly good, and pure, and right, as anything other than that …
Just as in last week’s Gospel text on forgiveness and mercy… we are called … called in Jesus’ name to be just as free in our giving to others that which God has so freely, generously, lovingly, given to us … the Word of forgiveness, life, and salvation which has rescued us … we are charged to pass it right along … without any taint or stain, prejudice or qualification of our own added …
… and in that freely received, freely given word … freely passed along, freely lived along to all without judgment or begrudgement …
… to the right handed and the left …
… to those who showed up at the crack of dawn to work and those who came at five minutes to five in the afternoon …
… in living that Word, we will show the judging, grading, segregating, separating world, another way … the way of Christ … the way of the Cross … the way of mercy, and grace, truth and love and light …
The way in which the world WILL turn … turn from the ugly separation, labeling, name calling we lay on it …
… and turn … and oh yes, IT WILL TURN …
… turn to Christ, his Cross, his life, his Way …
In Jesus’ name.
Amen.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
11 September 2011
“Because of your sins”
Judges series – “The Lord raised up deliverers”
Selections of Judges 1 and 2
Matthew 18:21-35
OT 24A / Season of Pentecost
11 September 2011
So why a sermon series on Judges?
Honestly, it has everything to do with football. Last spring, when it looked like there wouldn’t be an NFL season this year (because of the lock out) I happened to see a news story … an old grizzled guy, reacting to that news, said, “Well, if there’s no football, maybe I’d better head back to church.”
I wanted to make this choice worth his – and your while – so I chose perhaps the roughest, most violent book in the Bible for our soon to be Seahawk-less Sundays – I was going to call the series “Missing blood and guts? – A look at Judges.”
Then the lock out ended … but plans has already been made. And why shouldn’t we look at Judges? After all, we don’t hear much from the this OT book in our regular Sunday lectionary – only one brief reading, from chapter 4, is included. The most familiar story from Judges – that of Samson and Delilah – doesn’t even make it into our regular weekly rotation of Scripture texts.
So most of us probably don’t know a lot about this book – the 7th in numerical order in the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament.
So here’s a little background.
Judges is part of the history sections of the Old Testament which also includes Joshua, 1st and 2nd Samuel, and 1st and 2nd Kings. It’s called the “Deuteronomistic history” because these authors center their theology on the Torah of God which is laid out in the book of Deuteronomy. Most scholars believe these books of the Old Testament were written around the 6th century BC, after the Israelites had been taken away into exile in Babylon … and they were written as theological treatises, trying to explain to the Israelites why this terrible misfortune had happened to them.
Indeed, one could put a universal heading on these books: “You are here because of your sins.”
The authors of Judges put this theme out there, for everyone to see, right from the start.
We see it in our reading today, taken from the first two chapters of Judges.
Things start up where the previous book, Joshua, leaves off … the Israelites under Joshua’s leadership (Moses now being dead) were ready to take their new homes in the land God had promised to them, “the land flowing with milk and honey” which had been their dream and goal for a generation … while they were in slavery in Egypt, while they wandered around in the Wilderness, while they received final instructions from Moses before he died.
Now, they were finally there … so they went off, found places to live, settled down … and forgot about their God.
Another generation grew up after them, who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.
And thus began the people Israel’s problems, once again.
The authors, looking back across the centuries from the misery of their current bad situation … their exile and slavery in Babylon … they were looking for a theological explanation for their misfortune. And so they found it, in these stories of Israel in an earlier time and place … “Because of your sins” (“your” being a catchall term referring to the people Israel of all time)… “Because of your sins we are here, suffering, in slavery, in exile, in Babylon.”
There is a cycle to the collective life of Israel which begins here, in Judges:
*People forget about God;
*People start worshipping other gods, primarily the gods of their neighbors;
*People start to suffer at the hands of their enemies (plunderers who plundered them);
*People lift up their voices and weep at their misfortune;
*God sends a judge to deliver them from their enemies;
*Judge dies and people go back to their stubborn, disobedient ways;
*Repeat steps 2-6.
Because of your sins … it’s the overarching theme of these books of history, and serves as a good summary for most of the actions which happen within them.
Because of your sins… God had to send judge-deliverers to his people. The Torah, what we Christians slap-dash label “law” but really, it’s so much more than that, “Torah” being God’s wholistic way of life for his people Israel …
… Torah – if people followed it, lived it, the way God set it out, there would be no need for judges because God would be with and lead his people, and they would live as his people, and that would be that. But because of your sins, Israel … God had to send human deliverers, judges to rescue them from their enemies.
And later, because of your sins, Israel … God relents and sends kings to rule over Israel. Of course, because of your sins, Israel … the kings don’t work out either … and they end up conquered, hauled off to Babylon, into exile.
Because of your sins.
The authors of these books – beginning here in Judges – they are very clear about who is … and who isn’t … to blame that the whole enterprise of God and his people Israel has gone wrong.
It’s not God’s fault.
No – the authors insist - it’s our own. You and I, we did this to ourselves, and we have no one else to blame for it but ourselves.
What, then, of God?
Well, note from our portion of Judges today what exactly God does – and doesn’t – do.
God doesn’t go in and start smiting people right and left, sending floods and earthquakes and hurricanes upon them because of their disobedience.
No, it’s all because of your sins that bad stuff happens.
God, for God’s part, keeps his promises, despite the people’s disobedience.
What does God say in all of this?
I will never break my covenant with you.
That’s what God says.
So what does God do?
God just gets out of the way … and lets what would happen (without his preventing it), happen.
You could say, that the Israelites create their own sad reality, don’t they? They don’t recognize God as God, therefore, there apparently is no God there for them anymore. The levee against the flood, the wall against the invaders, that is God, is gone, because of your sins, and now, it’s all up to you, Israel. You want it? You got it!
EPIC FAIL.
That’s what that phrase “I am a jealous God” really means. What, who God is here, is all about relationship. And when God’s people don’t want God around anymore, for them … well, that’s precisely what happens.
Because of your sins.
This is also the message of our Gospel reading this morning.
Peter comes to Jesus asking a question which follows Jesus’ words to us last week, Jesus’ instructions on how he wishes us to repair and rehabilitate broken relationships between us.
It’s the immature question … Peter wants to know what the bare minimum is, which he must do, in order to be “in good” with God. How many times must I forgive … once again, not a ‘member of the church,’ but instead ‘a brother,’ meaning, anyone with whom we are in relationship. Peter shows how immature in the faith he really is.
So Jesus’ answer, seventy seven times, isn’t to be understood literally … hey, this is time number 78, so long, sucker! … but again, taken in the context of his words from last week, it represents a large number … a number which isn’t supposed to be counted … there is no end to forgiveness, Peter, because forgiveness starts with God and comes to us, God’s forgiveness for you has no end so neither shall yours have an end for your neighbor.
And the story – the parable, really, which Jesus tells next – lays this out so clearly.
The debt the slave owes his king is insurmountable … representing millions of dollars … a figure so high that the slave could never pay it back.
Thus the forgiveness which the king gives to the slave is just as immense.
In comparison, the amount the other slave owes him is petty. Three or four month’s wages would pay it back.
Yet the one slave refuses to “pay it forward,” pass along the forgiveness given him, if you will; he gives him the punishment he himself deserved for the enormous debt he owed the king … the debt he was now forgiven.
So what happens?
Once again, it’s an outcome because of your sins. Because of the sins of the one slave … his inability to forgive his fellow slave, especially and even after he himself was the recipient of the lavish and extreme forgiveness of the king … because of his sins he is now “in bondage and cannot free himself.”
The Word of God sticks a pin in his … our “blame” balloon … and pops it.
When we … we, who have been forgiven everything … EVERYTHING … by our God … when we who have been forgiven everything, withhold that forgiveness from others … because of our sins … we place ourselves into bondage, the bondage that leads to death, the bondage from which we cannot free ourselves.
It is curious … at the very least … that both these texts come to us on the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001. Yes, I chose the Judges text, it’s true … but the Gospel text is the one regularly assigned to this date in Ordinary Time on the church calendar. And so … as a people who believe that the Word of God isn’t just a dead letter on a page, but a word which speaks to us, here and now, today … we must consider what this Word has to say to us here, on this particular day.
Although it’s hard to picture it now, once upon a time, right as the events of that awful day unfolded, and in the first few days which followed … we Americans were a far more introspective people, more as one in our grief, not racing to point fingers in blame but rather, wondering and considering and praying about what all this meant for us, and for the world.
Though it didn’t take us long to embark on the long, slippery slide we’ve been on ever since then.
At first we had righteous anger, certainly, at the ones who planned and carried out the initial acts of our national tragedy. But then came … Freedom Fries … discrimination against Arab Americans … death threats to the Dixie Chicks! … a deeply divided Red America, Blue America in which everything bad which has happened and is happening to us is the fault of someone else.
I’m not to blame… it’s their, it’s your fault … for… the deficit. The bank failures and corporate bailouts. The wars. The economic crisis and job losses. One side blames the other, the poor and powerless bear the greatest burden of it all … and some, in their utter hubris, make God out to be their own personal heavenly avenger, sending everything from the DC earthquake to Hurricane Katrina upon us because they don’t agree with the President or the wars or some court decision or another.
I was the preacher on Sunday, September 16, 2001 at Glenwood Lutheran in Minnesota. My colleague, Art Montgomery, had flown to New York to be at the first 9/11 memorial service, as his cousin Lee Ludwig was one of the 3,000 killed in the collapse of the Twin Towers. This past week, I went back to that sermon … and found these words … consistent with today’s text and theme … I close with them now.
If there’s anything the events of the past week have taught us, it’s that evil is a reality. Evil has always been a reality in the world. Some among us already knew that … some of us have tasted it personally … in the sights and the smells of a liberated Nazi concentration camp … in the streets of Little Rock in the late 50’s and Birmingham in the 60’s … or, perhaps, in the faces and actions of people we thought we knew so well, but really, didn’t at all.
And some of us continue to see it, in exclusion or discrimination against people whose are a different color, or speak a different language, or live their lives differently than “the majority”; in a nation divided, politically, economically, socially.
Somebody asked me on Tuesday, “How could this have happened? How could people do this to other people?” Many of you know I just returned from a trip to Germany, where I visited not just the Luther sites, but also Buchenwald Concentration Camp … where I was left with this similar question: how could more than six million of our Jewish brothers and sisters be gassed and shot and burned to death by the Nazis? For what I’ve found is that those German people weren’t any different from you or me. They lived their lives and worshipped as Lutheran Christians, and loved their country, and flew their flag too. Yet … what they did stands as the acme of evil for the past century.
Hate and evil starts in one heart, and spreads, to consume; its goal, destruction of everything. And anyone who denies that, who wants to avoid it or shelter themselves or their children from that reality, is doing themselves more than a disservice … they are lying to themselves, and to God …denying the cross of Jesus Christ.
God knows us. God made our hearts so that we could choose to love him freely, and not be puppets on strings – God wants our love for him to be from the heart, that we would eagerly choose to be with him. For what kind of a love is so tightly controlled that there is no freedom? It is no love.
Yet God also knows that, given the choice, we will choose our own way, to better ourselves, to line our own pockets, to believe we are the ones in control, in charge … every time.
God knows this about us. God’s Word for us, for the people of his creation then as well as now, is that this behavior, this sin, this evil, will lead us and all creation back to the chaos from which we came.
Except.
Except that the God who claims us as his own … not our money, not our stuff, not ourselves … not church nor flag nor nation … God is the only God who keeps all promises. None of those other ones can rightfully claim that.
And God’s Word of promise is this: “I will never break my covenant with you.”
Though we do. Our actions would lead us to total and utter destruction of everything we know. But God’s promise, is that this shall not happen.
God’s Word for us is the Word of the Cross … the Word that does not deny pain, or suffering, or death, but looks them straight on, and says, yes, there are these things in the world … and I, your Lord, your Savior, have been there myself, I have also walked through the valley of the shadow of death.
I was there.
I was there at Auschwitz, and Dachau; in Little Rock and Birmingham; in Oklahoma City and Columbine.
And I was there on Tuesday in Manhattan, and in Washington, and in Pennsylvania.
I was there.
I was there on the cross, the ultimate victim of a human thirst for sin and evil. I died there. Yet I did not stay dead. I am alive. I beat sin and evil and death; once, then; and one day, forever.
Look at my cross. See me there. See my cross in the sin which is part of what it is to be human. See my cross and lay down before it. Your sin, your evil, they would lead to your destruction. “Yet I will never break my covenant with you.”
Hate, and sin, and evil, start in one heart.
And so we pray, O Lord, we ask, O Lord, we beg, O Lord, that it may not be in ours.
And so we are called to repent … a repentance we must make every day of our lives, dying to the sin that lies in each one of us … and rising, renewed in Jesus’ baptismal promise of our forgiveness … a forgiveness we are called to share just as freely as it has been given to us.
And now, having been set free by Christ to live new lives in him … now … and only now … can we go forth in Jesus’ name to fight that evil outside ourselves … using the weapons and the might God alone can give us … praying and working and living God’s Word … the Word that inexorably calls us to lay down everything we have and are for the sake of our neighbor … our poor, tired, suffering neighbor … all the while knowing that we will never see the end of sin and evil and the suffering they cause in the world, until that glorious day when falling buildings and failing hearts and all the loose ends of life are tied together in his mighty end of all endings … the end of sin, and evil, and death itself; and eternal life with the Father and the Son forever.
God promises it … I will never break my covenant with you …
… and God alone will deliver us. Amen.
Judges series – “The Lord raised up deliverers”
Selections of Judges 1 and 2
Matthew 18:21-35
OT 24A / Season of Pentecost
11 September 2011
So why a sermon series on Judges?
Honestly, it has everything to do with football. Last spring, when it looked like there wouldn’t be an NFL season this year (because of the lock out) I happened to see a news story … an old grizzled guy, reacting to that news, said, “Well, if there’s no football, maybe I’d better head back to church.”
I wanted to make this choice worth his – and your while – so I chose perhaps the roughest, most violent book in the Bible for our soon to be Seahawk-less Sundays – I was going to call the series “Missing blood and guts? – A look at Judges.”
Then the lock out ended … but plans has already been made. And why shouldn’t we look at Judges? After all, we don’t hear much from the this OT book in our regular Sunday lectionary – only one brief reading, from chapter 4, is included. The most familiar story from Judges – that of Samson and Delilah – doesn’t even make it into our regular weekly rotation of Scripture texts.
So most of us probably don’t know a lot about this book – the 7th in numerical order in the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament.
So here’s a little background.
Judges is part of the history sections of the Old Testament which also includes Joshua, 1st and 2nd Samuel, and 1st and 2nd Kings. It’s called the “Deuteronomistic history” because these authors center their theology on the Torah of God which is laid out in the book of Deuteronomy. Most scholars believe these books of the Old Testament were written around the 6th century BC, after the Israelites had been taken away into exile in Babylon … and they were written as theological treatises, trying to explain to the Israelites why this terrible misfortune had happened to them.
Indeed, one could put a universal heading on these books: “You are here because of your sins.”
The authors of Judges put this theme out there, for everyone to see, right from the start.
We see it in our reading today, taken from the first two chapters of Judges.
Things start up where the previous book, Joshua, leaves off … the Israelites under Joshua’s leadership (Moses now being dead) were ready to take their new homes in the land God had promised to them, “the land flowing with milk and honey” which had been their dream and goal for a generation … while they were in slavery in Egypt, while they wandered around in the Wilderness, while they received final instructions from Moses before he died.
Now, they were finally there … so they went off, found places to live, settled down … and forgot about their God.
Another generation grew up after them, who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.
And thus began the people Israel’s problems, once again.
The authors, looking back across the centuries from the misery of their current bad situation … their exile and slavery in Babylon … they were looking for a theological explanation for their misfortune. And so they found it, in these stories of Israel in an earlier time and place … “Because of your sins” (“your” being a catchall term referring to the people Israel of all time)… “Because of your sins we are here, suffering, in slavery, in exile, in Babylon.”
There is a cycle to the collective life of Israel which begins here, in Judges:
*People forget about God;
*People start worshipping other gods, primarily the gods of their neighbors;
*People start to suffer at the hands of their enemies (plunderers who plundered them);
*People lift up their voices and weep at their misfortune;
*God sends a judge to deliver them from their enemies;
*Judge dies and people go back to their stubborn, disobedient ways;
*Repeat steps 2-6.
Because of your sins … it’s the overarching theme of these books of history, and serves as a good summary for most of the actions which happen within them.
Because of your sins… God had to send judge-deliverers to his people. The Torah, what we Christians slap-dash label “law” but really, it’s so much more than that, “Torah” being God’s wholistic way of life for his people Israel …
… Torah – if people followed it, lived it, the way God set it out, there would be no need for judges because God would be with and lead his people, and they would live as his people, and that would be that. But because of your sins, Israel … God had to send human deliverers, judges to rescue them from their enemies.
And later, because of your sins, Israel … God relents and sends kings to rule over Israel. Of course, because of your sins, Israel … the kings don’t work out either … and they end up conquered, hauled off to Babylon, into exile.
Because of your sins.
The authors of these books – beginning here in Judges – they are very clear about who is … and who isn’t … to blame that the whole enterprise of God and his people Israel has gone wrong.
It’s not God’s fault.
No – the authors insist - it’s our own. You and I, we did this to ourselves, and we have no one else to blame for it but ourselves.
What, then, of God?
Well, note from our portion of Judges today what exactly God does – and doesn’t – do.
God doesn’t go in and start smiting people right and left, sending floods and earthquakes and hurricanes upon them because of their disobedience.
No, it’s all because of your sins that bad stuff happens.
God, for God’s part, keeps his promises, despite the people’s disobedience.
What does God say in all of this?
I will never break my covenant with you.
That’s what God says.
So what does God do?
God just gets out of the way … and lets what would happen (without his preventing it), happen.
You could say, that the Israelites create their own sad reality, don’t they? They don’t recognize God as God, therefore, there apparently is no God there for them anymore. The levee against the flood, the wall against the invaders, that is God, is gone, because of your sins, and now, it’s all up to you, Israel. You want it? You got it!
EPIC FAIL.
That’s what that phrase “I am a jealous God” really means. What, who God is here, is all about relationship. And when God’s people don’t want God around anymore, for them … well, that’s precisely what happens.
Because of your sins.
This is also the message of our Gospel reading this morning.
Peter comes to Jesus asking a question which follows Jesus’ words to us last week, Jesus’ instructions on how he wishes us to repair and rehabilitate broken relationships between us.
It’s the immature question … Peter wants to know what the bare minimum is, which he must do, in order to be “in good” with God. How many times must I forgive … once again, not a ‘member of the church,’ but instead ‘a brother,’ meaning, anyone with whom we are in relationship. Peter shows how immature in the faith he really is.
So Jesus’ answer, seventy seven times, isn’t to be understood literally … hey, this is time number 78, so long, sucker! … but again, taken in the context of his words from last week, it represents a large number … a number which isn’t supposed to be counted … there is no end to forgiveness, Peter, because forgiveness starts with God and comes to us, God’s forgiveness for you has no end so neither shall yours have an end for your neighbor.
And the story – the parable, really, which Jesus tells next – lays this out so clearly.
The debt the slave owes his king is insurmountable … representing millions of dollars … a figure so high that the slave could never pay it back.
Thus the forgiveness which the king gives to the slave is just as immense.
In comparison, the amount the other slave owes him is petty. Three or four month’s wages would pay it back.
Yet the one slave refuses to “pay it forward,” pass along the forgiveness given him, if you will; he gives him the punishment he himself deserved for the enormous debt he owed the king … the debt he was now forgiven.
So what happens?
Once again, it’s an outcome because of your sins. Because of the sins of the one slave … his inability to forgive his fellow slave, especially and even after he himself was the recipient of the lavish and extreme forgiveness of the king … because of his sins he is now “in bondage and cannot free himself.”
The Word of God sticks a pin in his … our “blame” balloon … and pops it.
When we … we, who have been forgiven everything … EVERYTHING … by our God … when we who have been forgiven everything, withhold that forgiveness from others … because of our sins … we place ourselves into bondage, the bondage that leads to death, the bondage from which we cannot free ourselves.
It is curious … at the very least … that both these texts come to us on the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001. Yes, I chose the Judges text, it’s true … but the Gospel text is the one regularly assigned to this date in Ordinary Time on the church calendar. And so … as a people who believe that the Word of God isn’t just a dead letter on a page, but a word which speaks to us, here and now, today … we must consider what this Word has to say to us here, on this particular day.
Although it’s hard to picture it now, once upon a time, right as the events of that awful day unfolded, and in the first few days which followed … we Americans were a far more introspective people, more as one in our grief, not racing to point fingers in blame but rather, wondering and considering and praying about what all this meant for us, and for the world.
Though it didn’t take us long to embark on the long, slippery slide we’ve been on ever since then.
At first we had righteous anger, certainly, at the ones who planned and carried out the initial acts of our national tragedy. But then came … Freedom Fries … discrimination against Arab Americans … death threats to the Dixie Chicks! … a deeply divided Red America, Blue America in which everything bad which has happened and is happening to us is the fault of someone else.
I’m not to blame… it’s their, it’s your fault … for… the deficit. The bank failures and corporate bailouts. The wars. The economic crisis and job losses. One side blames the other, the poor and powerless bear the greatest burden of it all … and some, in their utter hubris, make God out to be their own personal heavenly avenger, sending everything from the DC earthquake to Hurricane Katrina upon us because they don’t agree with the President or the wars or some court decision or another.
I was the preacher on Sunday, September 16, 2001 at Glenwood Lutheran in Minnesota. My colleague, Art Montgomery, had flown to New York to be at the first 9/11 memorial service, as his cousin Lee Ludwig was one of the 3,000 killed in the collapse of the Twin Towers. This past week, I went back to that sermon … and found these words … consistent with today’s text and theme … I close with them now.
If there’s anything the events of the past week have taught us, it’s that evil is a reality. Evil has always been a reality in the world. Some among us already knew that … some of us have tasted it personally … in the sights and the smells of a liberated Nazi concentration camp … in the streets of Little Rock in the late 50’s and Birmingham in the 60’s … or, perhaps, in the faces and actions of people we thought we knew so well, but really, didn’t at all.
And some of us continue to see it, in exclusion or discrimination against people whose are a different color, or speak a different language, or live their lives differently than “the majority”; in a nation divided, politically, economically, socially.
Somebody asked me on Tuesday, “How could this have happened? How could people do this to other people?” Many of you know I just returned from a trip to Germany, where I visited not just the Luther sites, but also Buchenwald Concentration Camp … where I was left with this similar question: how could more than six million of our Jewish brothers and sisters be gassed and shot and burned to death by the Nazis? For what I’ve found is that those German people weren’t any different from you or me. They lived their lives and worshipped as Lutheran Christians, and loved their country, and flew their flag too. Yet … what they did stands as the acme of evil for the past century.
Hate and evil starts in one heart, and spreads, to consume; its goal, destruction of everything. And anyone who denies that, who wants to avoid it or shelter themselves or their children from that reality, is doing themselves more than a disservice … they are lying to themselves, and to God …denying the cross of Jesus Christ.
God knows us. God made our hearts so that we could choose to love him freely, and not be puppets on strings – God wants our love for him to be from the heart, that we would eagerly choose to be with him. For what kind of a love is so tightly controlled that there is no freedom? It is no love.
Yet God also knows that, given the choice, we will choose our own way, to better ourselves, to line our own pockets, to believe we are the ones in control, in charge … every time.
God knows this about us. God’s Word for us, for the people of his creation then as well as now, is that this behavior, this sin, this evil, will lead us and all creation back to the chaos from which we came.
Except.
Except that the God who claims us as his own … not our money, not our stuff, not ourselves … not church nor flag nor nation … God is the only God who keeps all promises. None of those other ones can rightfully claim that.
And God’s Word of promise is this: “I will never break my covenant with you.”
Though we do. Our actions would lead us to total and utter destruction of everything we know. But God’s promise, is that this shall not happen.
God’s Word for us is the Word of the Cross … the Word that does not deny pain, or suffering, or death, but looks them straight on, and says, yes, there are these things in the world … and I, your Lord, your Savior, have been there myself, I have also walked through the valley of the shadow of death.
I was there.
I was there at Auschwitz, and Dachau; in Little Rock and Birmingham; in Oklahoma City and Columbine.
And I was there on Tuesday in Manhattan, and in Washington, and in Pennsylvania.
I was there.
I was there on the cross, the ultimate victim of a human thirst for sin and evil. I died there. Yet I did not stay dead. I am alive. I beat sin and evil and death; once, then; and one day, forever.
Look at my cross. See me there. See my cross in the sin which is part of what it is to be human. See my cross and lay down before it. Your sin, your evil, they would lead to your destruction. “Yet I will never break my covenant with you.”
Hate, and sin, and evil, start in one heart.
And so we pray, O Lord, we ask, O Lord, we beg, O Lord, that it may not be in ours.
And so we are called to repent … a repentance we must make every day of our lives, dying to the sin that lies in each one of us … and rising, renewed in Jesus’ baptismal promise of our forgiveness … a forgiveness we are called to share just as freely as it has been given to us.
And now, having been set free by Christ to live new lives in him … now … and only now … can we go forth in Jesus’ name to fight that evil outside ourselves … using the weapons and the might God alone can give us … praying and working and living God’s Word … the Word that inexorably calls us to lay down everything we have and are for the sake of our neighbor … our poor, tired, suffering neighbor … all the while knowing that we will never see the end of sin and evil and the suffering they cause in the world, until that glorious day when falling buildings and failing hearts and all the loose ends of life are tied together in his mighty end of all endings … the end of sin, and evil, and death itself; and eternal life with the Father and the Son forever.
God promises it … I will never break my covenant with you …
… and God alone will deliver us. Amen.
Sunday, September 04, 2011
4 September 2011
“For mature hearers only”
Matthew 18:15-20
23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time / Season of Pentecost
4 September 2011
A classic Peanuts comic strip from the first day of winter many years ago, has Charlie Brown and Linus walking along on a dark afternoon – and Linus says to Charlie Brown, “You know, the days start getting longer from here on.”
Suddenly a bunch of the other “Peanuts” kids walk by, doing their usual teasing and insult-hurling at Charlie Brown. After they leave, Charlie Brown turns to Linus and says, “I’m not sure they’re getting longer, but they sure seem to be getting a whole lot wider.”
Immaturity … the immaturity of people … this does make our days “a whole lot wider.” And there seems to be more and more immature behavior going on … from petty partisan political bickering … to the ever increasing immature reactions of how people choose to live in our complex time.
Today’s scripture readings may be a turn off to many because they are unashamedly mature, in their speaking, their outlook, their world view. Maybe, like the old motion picture rating system, they should be rated M, for “mature hearers only.” Because they deal with a mature question, namely, “how do Christians treat others … and each other when there are problems in relationships?”
Of course, to get to that question, one actually has to admit that Christians can be and are just as sinful and misbehaving as everyone else. Which, of course, is true. The church is not perfect. Christians are not perfect. Luther called the church “a hospital for sinners.”
And the ‘medicine,’ if you will, which is put forth in these words … it doesn’t go down easy … in fact, it’s about hard work that make most of us so uncomfortable that we ignore it. We conveniently forget this part of Scripture, and so when we do have trouble, we stay clear of it like it was a toxic spill on I-5, choosing instead to do the avoidance thing … either ignore or remove the offending party or parties from our communities and our lives.
Now why is that?
Jesus’ words here in Matthew 18 are not difficult to understand.
Up to this point in his life, he had lived in family, small groups and communities of friends and relatives his whole life, in a much closer, interconnected lifestyle than we independent, self-assured 21st century Pacific NW Americans know.
He had to get along with others.
And so, he could advise his disciples about the same.
“If a brother sins,” Jesus begins in his own, original language of this passage … and almost immediately, there’s controversy. For the translation we have before us – If another member of the church sins against you – those words, “against you,” could well be a later addition to what Jesus actually said … meaning that, you only go and approach a person if they offended you personally, not if they acted up against or hurt or defamed someone else.
There’s a big difference between the two translations. Should we as Christians only be concerned about ourselves? No … we are called to look out for the well-being of everyone who is our neighbor; so much so that when we see someone else getting out of line in a situation which Conventional Wisdom would say “doesn’t concern us,” we are called to be concerned, because it affects another child of God.
So point one: be concerned … another’s misbehavior does affect you; we are called to care. Cross that “against you” part right out of your Bibles. Because in Christ, we are responsible, one for another.
But there’s more than just thinking responsibly here. Read on.
Go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.
But, if you are not listened to, take one or two others along.
If the brother refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.
Here we enter into the part of the Scripture which most of us would rather avoid. Direct confrontation of misbehavior. Conflict. Discipline.
This is where most conflicts between us … in the church, in families, in jobs and workplace, among friends … this is where they usually end up running aground.
We usually take one of two approaches.
Either ignore the problem and hope it goes away.
Or triangulate. Don’t go to the other person directly with the problem, but instead complain, manipulate, go behind their backs to two, three, or many more others.
Those of us who have gone through “Healthy Congregations” workshops or training know how destructive triangulating can be. But it is the most common way we go about dealing with conflict – with friends, at work, in families, or in a congregation.
Here’s an example. See if you can spot someone you know … or even yourself … in it.
Karen is a supervisor at a certain large airplane manufacturing company. Ray is one of the key employees in her work group. He’s expecting a promotion, because he’s been working there longer than anyone else in the group. But Karen doesn’t like Ray’s condescending attitude toward her or the other workers, so she promotes Janice instead – without ever explaining to Ray why.
What happens next? Ray undercuts Karen’s authority by spreading false rumors about how she’s stealing from the company … “She’s taking home titanium coffee mugs for free for her own use.” Karen tells Janice to “shut Ray up” and take care of the problem, without ever talking to Ray directly. Morale in her work group suffers, and some employees start looking for jobs elsewhere.
Triangulating. It’s like a virus to systems of relationship … whether they are work, school, between friends or in a congregation.
No, Jesus’ solution is the opposite of triangulation. He is in favor of dealing directly with things.
Go alone to the offender. If they’ve listened … really heard, enough so that they change their ways, great! But if not, take two witnesses.
Take two witnesses … this is the requirement of Jewish law; according to Deuteronomy, no one could be convicted of a crime without the testimony of two witnesses … take two witnesses and see if that helps.
Having two witnesses along also ensures humility, and prevents hubris … pro-humility, and anti-hubris on our part … having others along to “hear the whole story” keeps us honest … reinforcing us if we’re in the right, correcting us if we are actually the ones in the wrong … and then, encouraging us to admit our own fault, to repent, to forgive, so that relationship may be restored.
Take along two witnesses. Other ears, other minds can help clear things up.
But if, even after all that, things are still not resolved, then take it to the whole church … the whole assembly … the legal judicatory which is there to settle such matters.
Yes, it may sound painful and messy, something we’d rather avoid, but what is going on here is that Jesus wants relationship to be saved at all costs. Reconciliation is of the utmost importance to him, and he wants to make sure that nothing is left undone in pursuit of mending relationship.
To Jesus, the community is the seat of the Holy Spirit – God’s Spirit creates the community of believers, God’s Spirit maintains the community of believers. God’s Spirit is manifest in the community of believers. To give up without trying everything possible to save that community – even if it’s just the community that exists between two people – this is quite like turning one’s back on the Spirit of God. It’s something that shouldn’t be done, ever.
In Matthew’s time, the infant Church consisted mainly of family groups of twenty or thirty believers … we can understand how important maintaining community would have been then. But in Jesus’ words here, we find no less importance for us today in the task of maintaining community wherever and whenever it is found.
And so, when we come to the third point of Jesus’ words to us today, we need to get beyond the knee-jerk reaction we may have, when we hear let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector … read beyond to hear the sobering truth that, when all looks lost in mending relationships, we must work that much harder to make them right.
Gentiles and tax collectors were the lowest of the low to the original hearers of these words of Jesus. They were outside the community of faith, unclean, and collaborators with the awful Roman invaders.
Yet, to whom did always Jesus go during his ministry? The Gentiles and the tax collectors. He sought them out when others wanted to cast them off as common trash.
And so Jesus’ words here hold special meaning for us. In a day and time when we might well throw away people and relationships rather than do the hard work of reconciliation and peace-making … Jesus says here, “No, you stick with these people and try to mend relationship with them no matter what.”
But … do not divorce this phrase from what follows.
Because pursuing reconciliation and relationship with others, no matter what, does NOT mean letting them off the hook for what they’ve done wrong.
Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
The fourth point … and perhaps the most importance … is that even as we pursue forgiveness and reconciliation, we still hold others accountable for their harmful actions. Our Christian love for our misbehaving brothers and sisters doesn’t give them a blanket “that’s OK.”
That’s when we are called to “bind ones’ sins to them” … to hold people responsible for their actions … we hold up a mirror and saying to them, “You are the woman … you are the man.” We call a spade a spade, a sinner a sinner, stand up in the face of wrongdoing and evil and saying “We’re not going to take it any more!”
Church consultant Bill Easum once wrote an essay titled, “On not being nice ‘for the sake of the Gospel.” In it he says,
Maturing Christians love so deeply that they will do anything, even not be nice, “for the sake of the Gospel.” Jesus was so compassionate toward others that he could not remain quiet when he saw people holding others in bondage. And for a bit of trivia, the origin of the word “nice” comes from the Latin “to be ignorant.” Perhaps when bullies hold people in bondage … in congregations, in communities, in any gathering of people … “niceness” is really pretending not to know the problems they are causing.
God does not call us to stay in dangerous, abusive relationships … whether that’s personal, occupational, in friendships or family, in congregations or even larger systems and organizations. We are called to hold others accountable for what they say, and do, that has harmed and continues to harm others, whether it affects us personally or not … because, as Jesus says, we are all part of each other, and what’s done to a brother or sister anywhere affects each and all of us.
Their stubborn denial, their refusal to hear the call to repentance and renewal of life is really bondage, you know … as in “we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” So even though we might have to physically separate ourselves from them for a time … we continue in relationship with them through prayer, until that day when we can safely, and joyfully, be reunited with them.
It is all part of the radical hospitality of Jesus, his “doing the opposite” of what common sense and conventional wisdom would tell us or have us do, because he is ultimately concerned with relationship … the relationship between people, and the relationship between us and God. His “doing the opposite” for the sake of love … love which, as Paul states in our reading from Romans, does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
Love … so much so that Jesus’ radical hospitality means going all the way for us, taking on the condemnation we all deserve for being “in bondage to sin and unable to free ourselves” … going down to death itself …. so that we might have life, and salvation, and health in all our relationships, with God, and with others.
Yes, working on relationships is hard … between friends, in families, at work, in congregations and communities, within and between nations.
But the One who calls us to live in these relationships, whose Spirit creates and fills these relationships and brings us together in community around him, expects no less. And he gives us the Word, and the Will, and the Way, to do it.
Faithful God of love, we gather the needs of ourselves and others, and offer them to you in faith and love. Shape and transform us by your grace so we may grow in wisdom, confidence, and maturity, until we have done all which you desire to bring your reign of peace, healing and wholeness to fulfillment, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
Matthew 18:15-20
23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time / Season of Pentecost
4 September 2011
A classic Peanuts comic strip from the first day of winter many years ago, has Charlie Brown and Linus walking along on a dark afternoon – and Linus says to Charlie Brown, “You know, the days start getting longer from here on.”
Suddenly a bunch of the other “Peanuts” kids walk by, doing their usual teasing and insult-hurling at Charlie Brown. After they leave, Charlie Brown turns to Linus and says, “I’m not sure they’re getting longer, but they sure seem to be getting a whole lot wider.”
Immaturity … the immaturity of people … this does make our days “a whole lot wider.” And there seems to be more and more immature behavior going on … from petty partisan political bickering … to the ever increasing immature reactions of how people choose to live in our complex time.
Today’s scripture readings may be a turn off to many because they are unashamedly mature, in their speaking, their outlook, their world view. Maybe, like the old motion picture rating system, they should be rated M, for “mature hearers only.” Because they deal with a mature question, namely, “how do Christians treat others … and each other when there are problems in relationships?”
Of course, to get to that question, one actually has to admit that Christians can be and are just as sinful and misbehaving as everyone else. Which, of course, is true. The church is not perfect. Christians are not perfect. Luther called the church “a hospital for sinners.”
And the ‘medicine,’ if you will, which is put forth in these words … it doesn’t go down easy … in fact, it’s about hard work that make most of us so uncomfortable that we ignore it. We conveniently forget this part of Scripture, and so when we do have trouble, we stay clear of it like it was a toxic spill on I-5, choosing instead to do the avoidance thing … either ignore or remove the offending party or parties from our communities and our lives.
Now why is that?
Jesus’ words here in Matthew 18 are not difficult to understand.
Up to this point in his life, he had lived in family, small groups and communities of friends and relatives his whole life, in a much closer, interconnected lifestyle than we independent, self-assured 21st century Pacific NW Americans know.
He had to get along with others.
And so, he could advise his disciples about the same.
“If a brother sins,” Jesus begins in his own, original language of this passage … and almost immediately, there’s controversy. For the translation we have before us – If another member of the church sins against you – those words, “against you,” could well be a later addition to what Jesus actually said … meaning that, you only go and approach a person if they offended you personally, not if they acted up against or hurt or defamed someone else.
There’s a big difference between the two translations. Should we as Christians only be concerned about ourselves? No … we are called to look out for the well-being of everyone who is our neighbor; so much so that when we see someone else getting out of line in a situation which Conventional Wisdom would say “doesn’t concern us,” we are called to be concerned, because it affects another child of God.
So point one: be concerned … another’s misbehavior does affect you; we are called to care. Cross that “against you” part right out of your Bibles. Because in Christ, we are responsible, one for another.
But there’s more than just thinking responsibly here. Read on.
Go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.
But, if you are not listened to, take one or two others along.
If the brother refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.
Here we enter into the part of the Scripture which most of us would rather avoid. Direct confrontation of misbehavior. Conflict. Discipline.
This is where most conflicts between us … in the church, in families, in jobs and workplace, among friends … this is where they usually end up running aground.
We usually take one of two approaches.
Either ignore the problem and hope it goes away.
Or triangulate. Don’t go to the other person directly with the problem, but instead complain, manipulate, go behind their backs to two, three, or many more others.
Those of us who have gone through “Healthy Congregations” workshops or training know how destructive triangulating can be. But it is the most common way we go about dealing with conflict – with friends, at work, in families, or in a congregation.
Here’s an example. See if you can spot someone you know … or even yourself … in it.
Karen is a supervisor at a certain large airplane manufacturing company. Ray is one of the key employees in her work group. He’s expecting a promotion, because he’s been working there longer than anyone else in the group. But Karen doesn’t like Ray’s condescending attitude toward her or the other workers, so she promotes Janice instead – without ever explaining to Ray why.
What happens next? Ray undercuts Karen’s authority by spreading false rumors about how she’s stealing from the company … “She’s taking home titanium coffee mugs for free for her own use.” Karen tells Janice to “shut Ray up” and take care of the problem, without ever talking to Ray directly. Morale in her work group suffers, and some employees start looking for jobs elsewhere.
Triangulating. It’s like a virus to systems of relationship … whether they are work, school, between friends or in a congregation.
No, Jesus’ solution is the opposite of triangulation. He is in favor of dealing directly with things.
Go alone to the offender. If they’ve listened … really heard, enough so that they change their ways, great! But if not, take two witnesses.
Take two witnesses … this is the requirement of Jewish law; according to Deuteronomy, no one could be convicted of a crime without the testimony of two witnesses … take two witnesses and see if that helps.
Having two witnesses along also ensures humility, and prevents hubris … pro-humility, and anti-hubris on our part … having others along to “hear the whole story” keeps us honest … reinforcing us if we’re in the right, correcting us if we are actually the ones in the wrong … and then, encouraging us to admit our own fault, to repent, to forgive, so that relationship may be restored.
Take along two witnesses. Other ears, other minds can help clear things up.
But if, even after all that, things are still not resolved, then take it to the whole church … the whole assembly … the legal judicatory which is there to settle such matters.
Yes, it may sound painful and messy, something we’d rather avoid, but what is going on here is that Jesus wants relationship to be saved at all costs. Reconciliation is of the utmost importance to him, and he wants to make sure that nothing is left undone in pursuit of mending relationship.
To Jesus, the community is the seat of the Holy Spirit – God’s Spirit creates the community of believers, God’s Spirit maintains the community of believers. God’s Spirit is manifest in the community of believers. To give up without trying everything possible to save that community – even if it’s just the community that exists between two people – this is quite like turning one’s back on the Spirit of God. It’s something that shouldn’t be done, ever.
In Matthew’s time, the infant Church consisted mainly of family groups of twenty or thirty believers … we can understand how important maintaining community would have been then. But in Jesus’ words here, we find no less importance for us today in the task of maintaining community wherever and whenever it is found.
And so, when we come to the third point of Jesus’ words to us today, we need to get beyond the knee-jerk reaction we may have, when we hear let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector … read beyond to hear the sobering truth that, when all looks lost in mending relationships, we must work that much harder to make them right.
Gentiles and tax collectors were the lowest of the low to the original hearers of these words of Jesus. They were outside the community of faith, unclean, and collaborators with the awful Roman invaders.
Yet, to whom did always Jesus go during his ministry? The Gentiles and the tax collectors. He sought them out when others wanted to cast them off as common trash.
And so Jesus’ words here hold special meaning for us. In a day and time when we might well throw away people and relationships rather than do the hard work of reconciliation and peace-making … Jesus says here, “No, you stick with these people and try to mend relationship with them no matter what.”
But … do not divorce this phrase from what follows.
Because pursuing reconciliation and relationship with others, no matter what, does NOT mean letting them off the hook for what they’ve done wrong.
Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
The fourth point … and perhaps the most importance … is that even as we pursue forgiveness and reconciliation, we still hold others accountable for their harmful actions. Our Christian love for our misbehaving brothers and sisters doesn’t give them a blanket “that’s OK.”
That’s when we are called to “bind ones’ sins to them” … to hold people responsible for their actions … we hold up a mirror and saying to them, “You are the woman … you are the man.” We call a spade a spade, a sinner a sinner, stand up in the face of wrongdoing and evil and saying “We’re not going to take it any more!”
Church consultant Bill Easum once wrote an essay titled, “On not being nice ‘for the sake of the Gospel.” In it he says,
Maturing Christians love so deeply that they will do anything, even not be nice, “for the sake of the Gospel.” Jesus was so compassionate toward others that he could not remain quiet when he saw people holding others in bondage. And for a bit of trivia, the origin of the word “nice” comes from the Latin “to be ignorant.” Perhaps when bullies hold people in bondage … in congregations, in communities, in any gathering of people … “niceness” is really pretending not to know the problems they are causing.
God does not call us to stay in dangerous, abusive relationships … whether that’s personal, occupational, in friendships or family, in congregations or even larger systems and organizations. We are called to hold others accountable for what they say, and do, that has harmed and continues to harm others, whether it affects us personally or not … because, as Jesus says, we are all part of each other, and what’s done to a brother or sister anywhere affects each and all of us.
Their stubborn denial, their refusal to hear the call to repentance and renewal of life is really bondage, you know … as in “we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” So even though we might have to physically separate ourselves from them for a time … we continue in relationship with them through prayer, until that day when we can safely, and joyfully, be reunited with them.
It is all part of the radical hospitality of Jesus, his “doing the opposite” of what common sense and conventional wisdom would tell us or have us do, because he is ultimately concerned with relationship … the relationship between people, and the relationship between us and God. His “doing the opposite” for the sake of love … love which, as Paul states in our reading from Romans, does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
Love … so much so that Jesus’ radical hospitality means going all the way for us, taking on the condemnation we all deserve for being “in bondage to sin and unable to free ourselves” … going down to death itself …. so that we might have life, and salvation, and health in all our relationships, with God, and with others.
Yes, working on relationships is hard … between friends, in families, at work, in congregations and communities, within and between nations.
But the One who calls us to live in these relationships, whose Spirit creates and fills these relationships and brings us together in community around him, expects no less. And he gives us the Word, and the Will, and the Way, to do it.
Faithful God of love, we gather the needs of ourselves and others, and offer them to you in faith and love. Shape and transform us by your grace so we may grow in wisdom, confidence, and maturity, until we have done all which you desire to bring your reign of peace, healing and wholeness to fulfillment, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
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