The Lord raised up deliverers – a series on Judges
“Natural law”
Conclusion: Judges 17 to end
Matthew 22:34-40
OT 30A / Time after Pentecost
23 October 2011
If I was to pick a one-word description for today’s theme, it would be interim… both our texts today are about being in an interim time … meaning, that they describe people and events who, which are between what has been, and what will be.
You and I … many, most of us, know this term well. In the church we most often associate it with interim ministry … the time between one settled pastor’s leaving, and another settled pastor’s arriving … Nativity, in our history, has had several interim pastors, most recently, for a three year period, from ten to seven years ago … a time which allowed this congregation to sort through and discern the bad and the good of who and where you had been, who and where you were at that “now,” and into what kind of future God was calling you to be.
Our Judges text for today is an interim text. It’s set in the time between the final judge … Samson, who we met last week … and the time of the kings which begins in 1 Samuel. A time between the “was,” “is,” and “will be” for Israel.
What I’ve selected for today is long enough … it’s actually just a piece of the concluding five chapters of Judges … the complete story there being far too long for us to cover in a Sunday worship service … but even with this briefer selection, we get the feel for what it going on in this interim time for the Israelites.
In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.
Samson was dead. He had not been a successful judge – indeed, he was the worst of the judges, a selfish swaggering goon, in it primarily for himself … unsuccessful in throwing off the Philistine yoke of oppression.
That’s the backdrop for our text today. The Israelites might be whining and crying to God for relief from their oppression, but God is almost totally silent.
Who can blame God? God has lived through many repetitions of this cycle which set off every judge-saga:
• 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.
A quote from Martin Luther does well to sum up where God is through these remaining chapters of Judges:
The god you imagine is the God you get.
Meaning that … since the Israelites imagined a god who just stood idly by while they went after idols, the “gods” of their neighbors … the Canaanites, the Philistines … God would cheerfully oblige their desires, by going on vacation. You don’t want me around … fine … see ya later!
Of course, in the judge-sagas just prior to where we’ve been in the book, God hears the whining and crying of his people, and sends a judge – a human deliverer – to deliver them. Ehud and Deborah, Barak and Jehu, Gideon and Jephthah, and yes, Samson … these all arrive on the scene and bring some level of deliverance and peace to God’s people … well, all except Samson.
But here … how many times is God’s presence mentioned? Once. And then, just in passing.
The god you imagine is the God you get. The Israelites imagined a God who didn’t want to be intimately involved -- in close relationship – with the people of his choosing, the people whom he went so far to save … so, indeed, that’s what they got.
What happens as a result? Another awful story. This time, because they aren’t willing … or just plain can’t … do anything about the larger problems of the world before them … the Israelites turn on themselves … each other.
I left out the most salacious parts of the tale – though you can certainly go to Judges chapter 19 and read it for yourselves … a incident which is bad enough is made worse by the lies of the unnamed Levite … he who is willing to put the entirety of God’s people on the line to cover up his own poor choices.
The object of the ire and rage of the majority of the tribes of the Israelites is their brother-tribe, Benjamin … (you will remember that Ehud was a member of this tribe) … there is an incident – an awful incident – and a horrid response … a decision is made for civil war, and civil war is indeed what the Israelites get.
And then God shows up… the one mention of God acting in this history is that the Lord defeated Benjamin before Israel… but I don’t believe we should read anything more into this text than that it is the outcome of a battle which we would expect, when an army of four hundred thousand takes on an army of twenty-six thousand. It is a natural law, a sure and certain outcome, based on sheer numbers and logic.
One thousand men of the tribe of Benjamin are left.
The outcome of the battle – successful as it was – turns out not to be what the rest of the tribes really wanted – that they’d now be down a tribe, from 12 to 11.
So a cockeyed scheme is hatched by the rest of Israel for the repopulation of their brother-tribe, which allows them to get around their own rule that they shouldn’t give their daughters in marriage to the remaining men of the renegade tribe of the Benjamanites.
And it works … at least, as far as this book is concerned.
And the whole book ends on that hopeless note which began this section …
In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.
It’s a sad end for a book which gets off to a bad start … and maybe that’s why we don’t read from the book of Judges much in worship, in this or any other Christian church. In our lectionary-cycled way of things the liturgical churches ignore all the stories but the first part of the Deborah saga … but a quick survey of the Internet shows that our evangelical brothers and sisters, neither those of the more serious Mars Hill-like mindset, nor those of whom one of my colleagues calls the “happy-clappy” churches, they don’t read from or preach on this book any more than we.
Why is that?
After all, Judges is part of our heritage … our shared story of life with God, as God’s people, along the way.
Perhaps it’s because of the truths that this book makes so evident about ourselves.
Namely, that people … we … stink … as creators of our own destiny.
As Luther said, the god you imagine is the God you get. The people of Judges imagine a God they don’t really need, until things get so bad they see no way out. The downward spiral hits rock bottom (or so they think … because as the book points out, there is always a lower bottom to hit.)
It’s a depressing world view … and one in which salvation is seen as God’s answer to the people’s cry, “get me out of this, please!”
No wonder God is so absent through this book. God goes to all the trouble of bringing his people from slavery and bondage to freedom, gives them a good land and great potential ahead of them … and all they do is make a mess out of things … and end up whining for a ticket out. Save us, Lord. Get us out of this mess, Lord.
Two thousand years later … Jesus faces the same cries … desires … longings of his people, in our Gospel text today. Salvation … the Messiah … was the one who was going to come and “get them out of the mess they were in.”
The Pharisees, for their part, are still looking for someone to deliver them physically, like the judges of old, a king in the shape of a David, someone who would be Superman and “get them out of this mess” they had found themselves in … under Roman oppression, military occupation.
But Jesus isn’t going to buy into that old human pattern of salvation as escape from this present darkness. No … he points out that salvation is for the here and now of life.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
In other words, don’t love God as payment for a trip to a heavenly hereafter … don’t work for “God” or whatever image of God you cook up in your head, that you imagine, is going to be the one who “gets you out of here” … Beam me up Scotty, there’s no intelligent life here … Jane, stop this crazy thing.
That may be the God you imagine … it may even be the God you try to put over on the world … creating lies like that Levite, fabricating the truth to make yourself look good …
… ah, but in the end, the end of the ‘natural law’ which Jesus truly lays out here … in the end … that is NOT the god you or I or anyone else will get.
Indeed, it is the end of “God as we imagine God” and the beginning of “God for us.”
Because the salvation of our God is ALL about living in the here and now, the kingdom of God coming on earth as it is in heaven … justice and mercy, fairness and blessing for all … you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
In other words, don’t look for salvation in anyone or any thing other than God … the God who sends his very self to us in Jesus … the God who comes to us as one of us, to live our life in all its suffering and joy, to die our death, but to rise again … to give us back life … full, rich, and abundant … life in this world, here and now, lived loving God and loving others … indeed, loving God through loving others … this life is not to be escaped from or rescued out of, but redeemed for us to live into completely, fully, naturally … naturally, the way God created it for us.
What a word for us as we are called to follow Jesus today.
For we are most certainly in a time, among a people, brothers and sisters who claim the name of Jesus, but who have so twisted the word of faith that the word about Jesus the world hears through them … their voices, being the loudest, shout “we don’t care about our world, God’s creation, or our neighbors … their poverty, their suffering, the abuse of this planet … Jesus, just get us out of here!”
But that is not God’s Word for us.
It is a lie … about God, about Christ, and about ourselves.
My brothers and sisters in Christ, our call is to lovingly, but firmly, steadfastly, and without backing down … to drown out their lie with the truth of God’s word … “No, I’m staying right here, in the thick of it … no matter how bad it gets … because Christ is here in the midst of it with me, and he calls me to be here, too, not just for his sake, but for yours.”
Sixty years ago Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, sitting in the Nazi Tegel prison, penned these words in a letter to a friend … Bonhoeffer, a man in a time most certainly worse than our own …
It is only by living completely in the world that one learns to have faith. By this I mean living unreservedly in life duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely in the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world – watching with Christ in Gethsemane. How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?
Indeed. The call of God is to be natural … naturally living into the law he gives us, to love God in and through loving others, in the here and now, even as we are saved for the here and now, even as we gather in the here and now to worship, to hear, to eat and drink God’s word of salvation, forgiveness, and new life.
We do not ignore the present for some future paradise … for Jesus says, all you need, all I give you, is right here, right now … my very self, given and shed for you, to go and live fully, so others may fully live.
In his name, and with his Word … Amen.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
16 October 2011
The Lord raised up deliverers – a series on Judges
Samson – Judges 13 through 15
Also including 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
OT 29A / Time after Pentecost
16 October 2011
And so we have come to the last of the judges from the book of that same name … and oh, what a leader we have before us today! Such might and strength, such bravado and swagger, such a womanizer … no, it’s not a certain Austrian bodybuilder turned actor turned governor of California … but Samson. Samson is the final judge in this series of human deliverers God sends to his people Israel.
Samson’s story is also the longest of the judge-sagas … spanning four entire chapters of the book. That makes it far too long for reading in its entirety during Sunday worship … so I chose some selections which would fit within our time frame today.
We begin in chapter 13 with the same old refrain which has started each new judge saga … “The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord …” and this time, the enemies at whose hands they begin to suffer are the Philistines … a name which should be quite familiar to us today, as we pronounce it Palestinians … here is a rivalry for the land which goes back thousands and thousands of years.
And so the usual cycle of things, apparent in each judge-story, is also present here:
• 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.
What we have before us today, though, as our printed portion, doesn’t include all these steps. Since these “missing” are the more well-known parts of the Samson saga, I chose to leave them out. So what did we miss by not including them?
• Samson, like so many of the patriarchs before him and at least one prophet after him (Samuel), is born to a childless woman … and when she does become pregnant, Samson’s mother vows that he will be a Nazirite, citing the sixth chapter of the book of Numbers, which outlines the procedures for being one “consecrated to the Lord” (for that is what Nazirite means). The two main requirements are that the Nazirite will not drink wine or strong spirits, nor will a razor ever touch their hair.
• … and, for those who know the Samson story, that hair piece (ha ha) becomes vitally important for Samson later on in his story … the story at the end of his story, the most well-known part, Samson’s falling for Delilah … which leads to the breaking of his Nazirite vow, the loss of his superhuman strength, his blinding by the Philistines, and his violent death … in which he took out more Philistines than he did in his whole life.
But those parts of Samson’s story, well-known as they are … to which you may return on your own (they are in chapters 13 and 16 of Judges) … that’s NOT what’s before us today.
What we DO have here … are stories which point out why Biblical scholars call the Samson saga “the moral low point of the book.” Indeed, the Bible I use most often, the Oxford Annotated New Revised Standard Version, puts this summary-note on this story:
The final “deliverer” is the moral low point of the major judges. Samson broke his Nazirite vows, had intercourse with non-Israelite women (something forbidden by God), never associated with other Israelites in his conflicts with the Philistines, and did not deliver the Israelites from the Philistine oppression.
As we take a closer look at these selections from the 14th and 15th chapters of Judges, we see this unfold.
These three stories, joined together as they are today, do have a common thread. Samson is a Lone Ranger kind of judge, to be sure … whereas the other judges may have lit the fires of rebellion in a similar manner, they always went back and enlisted the aid of their fellow Israelites in continuing the battle to throw off their oppressors. Not Samson. His is an “hasta la vista, baby” go-it-alone swagger-style.
At first, God is mentioned as a reason why Samson does as he does … violating God’s law by taking a non-Israelite for his wife. His parents know God’s rules, and protest. But Samson prevails, “Get her for me, because she pleases me.” It is said that this was from the Lord, for he was seeking a pretext to act against the Philistines.
But that’s the last mention of God in any of these sections of Samson’s story. In the whole of the Samson saga, God is mentioned only three more times … passages not before us today … and in most of those, times when Samson called on God to rescue HIM, because his swagger-style had gotten him into trouble.
So what shall we make of Samson, then? Obviously his is a tale far worse than the Sunday-school-image we’ve passed along over the years … far more PG-13 or even R-rated than G … this womanizing, petulant, faith-fraud, short-fused flier off the handle … unwanting, unwilling of the help of any of his countrymen … a go it alone “my way or the highway” kind of guy …
… and yet, and yet, THIS is the one God chose for the task at hand. Yes, he failed at it … he didn’t shake off the Philistines … and his judgeship was one of endless war with them … but still, God chose him for the task.
Why?
Well, again, we need to go back to that six-step process which tells the tale of each judge-saga in this book of Judges … the Israelites always sin, and that sin ALWAYS has to do with their dissing God … their real deliverer, the one who not long before had rescued them from their Egyptian oppressors … they Israelites diss God, and so God says … OK, you don’t want me around, I’ll oblige … you’ll see what life will be like without me.
Now, God always hears the Israelites’ cries, and God always sends them a human deliverer … a judge … to rescue them from themselves and their ways which led them once again into servitude and subjugation at the hands of other nations … but we must note this about those judge-deliverers … each one of them had shortcomings … failings … some kind of behavior which would make us question their fitness to be worthy of that name … deliverer.
Ehud was plain gross. Deborah, Barak and Jehu upset the social norms of their … and our … time. Gideon questioned God’s choosing him. Jephthah made that horrible vow which cost his daughter her life. And Samson was a great big jerk.
And that’s precisely the point God’s making here. Do not totally trust in human deliverers … human rulers … for they will fail you totally. We see this here in these judge-sagas … we continue to see it in the stories of the kings of Israel and Judah which follow, in the books of Chronicles and Kings … we’ve seen it throughout history … the history of kings and queens, princes of the church and reformers of the church, politicians and presidents … yes, even and especially today.
DO NOT PUT YOUR FAITH IN LEADERS OF FLESH AND BLOOD, FOR THEY WILL FAIL YOU.
God knows this about us. God saw it even then … during and through the times of the Judges, the kings … the exile and the return … the takeover of Israel by Rome.
So God decided to make a change. God decided to send One of himself … his own Son … for a personal delivery of humanity from all that we bring upon ourselves.
That’s the message Paul brings as he begins his first letter to the Thessalonians … a message coming in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction… we need no human deliverers because in Jesus, God has sent himself to deliver all of humanity, all of creation. Jesus – fully God so that where human deliverers have failed, he will not … but also fully human so that he gets what is going on with us … living our life, suffering as we suffer, rejoicing as we rejoice … dying our death … yet, raised to new life, to give us the same promise and hope.
We need no human deliverers, no human rescuers … because in Jesus, God has sent his very self to rescue us. Wrath … bad stuff … has happened and is happening and will continue to happen … to be sure … and it will always be tempting to turn to human rescuers … smooth talkers offering easy solutions to the difficult, complex problems of living in the 21st century. Swagger and bravado can be quite appealing to us.
And yet … as Paul writes … our God says, don’t choose rescuers with hearts of stone and feet of clay … for these can become false gods, idols … instead, turn to God, and THE rescuer he sends us, the fully God-fully man named Jesus Christ … who will guide us in our living in these difficult days … guide us to work while we wait … to live out our calling to go and tell, to do his work … his work, which we discern as we read his Word, worship in his Word, eat and drink his Word … a Word which exhorts and implores us to be his feet and his hands in going to those who the world rejects … the poor and the powerless, the downtrodden and despised, the meek and suffering, the ones the world considers of little account … to these we are called to go and serve, to live with and love in the name of the Son of God, who comes to us and claims us as his own … without swagger, without bravado … just quietly, patiently, working his will in the world.
Will we stumble? Will we fail? Of course. But that’s no excuse to not get up and get going. Remember that God called Ehud and Barak, Jephthah and Gideon and yes, even Samson, to his task … since God called those to his Word, and was with them … God will most certainly be with us, too, as we share in this most blessed of callings … to serve a living and true God, THE living and true God, while we wait for his Son from heaven, who he raised from the dead … Jesus … our rescuer, in whose name we worship and work and live.
Amen.
Samson – Judges 13 through 15
Also including 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
OT 29A / Time after Pentecost
16 October 2011
And so we have come to the last of the judges from the book of that same name … and oh, what a leader we have before us today! Such might and strength, such bravado and swagger, such a womanizer … no, it’s not a certain Austrian bodybuilder turned actor turned governor of California … but Samson. Samson is the final judge in this series of human deliverers God sends to his people Israel.
Samson’s story is also the longest of the judge-sagas … spanning four entire chapters of the book. That makes it far too long for reading in its entirety during Sunday worship … so I chose some selections which would fit within our time frame today.
We begin in chapter 13 with the same old refrain which has started each new judge saga … “The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord …” and this time, the enemies at whose hands they begin to suffer are the Philistines … a name which should be quite familiar to us today, as we pronounce it Palestinians … here is a rivalry for the land which goes back thousands and thousands of years.
And so the usual cycle of things, apparent in each judge-story, is also present here:
• 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.
What we have before us today, though, as our printed portion, doesn’t include all these steps. Since these “missing” are the more well-known parts of the Samson saga, I chose to leave them out. So what did we miss by not including them?
• Samson, like so many of the patriarchs before him and at least one prophet after him (Samuel), is born to a childless woman … and when she does become pregnant, Samson’s mother vows that he will be a Nazirite, citing the sixth chapter of the book of Numbers, which outlines the procedures for being one “consecrated to the Lord” (for that is what Nazirite means). The two main requirements are that the Nazirite will not drink wine or strong spirits, nor will a razor ever touch their hair.
• … and, for those who know the Samson story, that hair piece (ha ha) becomes vitally important for Samson later on in his story … the story at the end of his story, the most well-known part, Samson’s falling for Delilah … which leads to the breaking of his Nazirite vow, the loss of his superhuman strength, his blinding by the Philistines, and his violent death … in which he took out more Philistines than he did in his whole life.
But those parts of Samson’s story, well-known as they are … to which you may return on your own (they are in chapters 13 and 16 of Judges) … that’s NOT what’s before us today.
What we DO have here … are stories which point out why Biblical scholars call the Samson saga “the moral low point of the book.” Indeed, the Bible I use most often, the Oxford Annotated New Revised Standard Version, puts this summary-note on this story:
The final “deliverer” is the moral low point of the major judges. Samson broke his Nazirite vows, had intercourse with non-Israelite women (something forbidden by God), never associated with other Israelites in his conflicts with the Philistines, and did not deliver the Israelites from the Philistine oppression.
As we take a closer look at these selections from the 14th and 15th chapters of Judges, we see this unfold.
These three stories, joined together as they are today, do have a common thread. Samson is a Lone Ranger kind of judge, to be sure … whereas the other judges may have lit the fires of rebellion in a similar manner, they always went back and enlisted the aid of their fellow Israelites in continuing the battle to throw off their oppressors. Not Samson. His is an “hasta la vista, baby” go-it-alone swagger-style.
At first, God is mentioned as a reason why Samson does as he does … violating God’s law by taking a non-Israelite for his wife. His parents know God’s rules, and protest. But Samson prevails, “Get her for me, because she pleases me.” It is said that this was from the Lord, for he was seeking a pretext to act against the Philistines.
But that’s the last mention of God in any of these sections of Samson’s story. In the whole of the Samson saga, God is mentioned only three more times … passages not before us today … and in most of those, times when Samson called on God to rescue HIM, because his swagger-style had gotten him into trouble.
So what shall we make of Samson, then? Obviously his is a tale far worse than the Sunday-school-image we’ve passed along over the years … far more PG-13 or even R-rated than G … this womanizing, petulant, faith-fraud, short-fused flier off the handle … unwanting, unwilling of the help of any of his countrymen … a go it alone “my way or the highway” kind of guy …
… and yet, and yet, THIS is the one God chose for the task at hand. Yes, he failed at it … he didn’t shake off the Philistines … and his judgeship was one of endless war with them … but still, God chose him for the task.
Why?
Well, again, we need to go back to that six-step process which tells the tale of each judge-saga in this book of Judges … the Israelites always sin, and that sin ALWAYS has to do with their dissing God … their real deliverer, the one who not long before had rescued them from their Egyptian oppressors … they Israelites diss God, and so God says … OK, you don’t want me around, I’ll oblige … you’ll see what life will be like without me.
Now, God always hears the Israelites’ cries, and God always sends them a human deliverer … a judge … to rescue them from themselves and their ways which led them once again into servitude and subjugation at the hands of other nations … but we must note this about those judge-deliverers … each one of them had shortcomings … failings … some kind of behavior which would make us question their fitness to be worthy of that name … deliverer.
Ehud was plain gross. Deborah, Barak and Jehu upset the social norms of their … and our … time. Gideon questioned God’s choosing him. Jephthah made that horrible vow which cost his daughter her life. And Samson was a great big jerk.
And that’s precisely the point God’s making here. Do not totally trust in human deliverers … human rulers … for they will fail you totally. We see this here in these judge-sagas … we continue to see it in the stories of the kings of Israel and Judah which follow, in the books of Chronicles and Kings … we’ve seen it throughout history … the history of kings and queens, princes of the church and reformers of the church, politicians and presidents … yes, even and especially today.
DO NOT PUT YOUR FAITH IN LEADERS OF FLESH AND BLOOD, FOR THEY WILL FAIL YOU.
God knows this about us. God saw it even then … during and through the times of the Judges, the kings … the exile and the return … the takeover of Israel by Rome.
So God decided to make a change. God decided to send One of himself … his own Son … for a personal delivery of humanity from all that we bring upon ourselves.
That’s the message Paul brings as he begins his first letter to the Thessalonians … a message coming in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction… we need no human deliverers because in Jesus, God has sent himself to deliver all of humanity, all of creation. Jesus – fully God so that where human deliverers have failed, he will not … but also fully human so that he gets what is going on with us … living our life, suffering as we suffer, rejoicing as we rejoice … dying our death … yet, raised to new life, to give us the same promise and hope.
We need no human deliverers, no human rescuers … because in Jesus, God has sent his very self to rescue us. Wrath … bad stuff … has happened and is happening and will continue to happen … to be sure … and it will always be tempting to turn to human rescuers … smooth talkers offering easy solutions to the difficult, complex problems of living in the 21st century. Swagger and bravado can be quite appealing to us.
And yet … as Paul writes … our God says, don’t choose rescuers with hearts of stone and feet of clay … for these can become false gods, idols … instead, turn to God, and THE rescuer he sends us, the fully God-fully man named Jesus Christ … who will guide us in our living in these difficult days … guide us to work while we wait … to live out our calling to go and tell, to do his work … his work, which we discern as we read his Word, worship in his Word, eat and drink his Word … a Word which exhorts and implores us to be his feet and his hands in going to those who the world rejects … the poor and the powerless, the downtrodden and despised, the meek and suffering, the ones the world considers of little account … to these we are called to go and serve, to live with and love in the name of the Son of God, who comes to us and claims us as his own … without swagger, without bravado … just quietly, patiently, working his will in the world.
Will we stumble? Will we fail? Of course. But that’s no excuse to not get up and get going. Remember that God called Ehud and Barak, Jephthah and Gideon and yes, even Samson, to his task … since God called those to his Word, and was with them … God will most certainly be with us, too, as we share in this most blessed of callings … to serve a living and true God, THE living and true God, while we wait for his Son from heaven, who he raised from the dead … Jesus … our rescuer, in whose name we worship and work and live.
Amen.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
9 October 2011
“What do you say???”
Judges series – “The Lord raised up deliverers”
Jephthah / Judges 11:1-11, 29-40 // Matthew 22:1-14
OT 28A / Season of Pentecost
9 October 2011
Perhaps, by this point in our sojourning with the book of Judges … as the reading began, you heard what was read and you said, Hey, wait a minute … this story sounds different than what we’ve heard so far.
And yes, just going by what we have before us today, a condensed version of the story of the next judge in the series, Jephthah … you would be right.
For where, o where, is the usual cycle of things …
• 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.
Well, don’t be disappointed … all of these elements are once again present in this judge’s story as well … I just chose not to include them in today’s reading portion. Judges chapter 10, beginning with verse 6 …
The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord … they abandoned the Lord and did not worship him … the Ammonites crushed and oppressed the Israelites for 18 years …
so on, and so on …
So where we begin our encounter with Jephthah’s story is, indeed, where everyone meets him …
Jephthah the Gileadite, the son of a prostitute, was a mighty warrior.
Now, if we’ve been paying attention previously, just hearing that little bit of the story should get us far along in understanding what is happening.
Once again, God is going to choose one to lead his people, who we … his people of then, and now … would consider ill-prepared for the task. Jephthah’s mother was a prostitute … and because of his mother, Jephthah is judged by his brothers to be morally unworthy … unworthy of the family name (and inheritance) … and he’s rejected and driven out … Jephthah becomes a frontier bandit, living among outlaws on the eastern border of Israel.
Ah, but soon enough circumstances cause the elders of his people to recruit this outlaw for a different purpose;
Come and be our commander, so that we may fight with the Ammonites.
Not so fast, Jephthah responds:
Are you not the very ones who rejected me and drove me out of my father’s house? So why do you come to me now when you are in trouble?
If this sounds like déjà vu all over again … it should. Jephthah’s response sounds like how God might well respond to the Israelites, each time they come weeping to God asking for a deliverer. The irony most certainly is not lost on Jephthah … nor would it have been for the original hearers and readers of these words … nor should it be lost on us.
So despite being thrown out of his father’s house, Jephthah takes on the mantle of deliverer of his people. Though … note the order in which Jephthah becomes a judge.
Who selects Jephthah? The people do.
God simply ratifies the people’s choice.
It’s a strange reversal to what has been happening in the judge-stories before this … it’s been the Lord who raises up the judge … that’s what was said of Ehud … what was implied of Deborah … God even made a personal appearance and plea with Gideon.
But here, it’s the people’s choice for judge to which, God gives the OK … and maybe, maybe we shouldn’t make too much of this, because the Lord’s name is invoked all the way through this story of Jephthah … and at first, Jephthah seems to be no worse a choice than the others who have judged Israel before him.
Indeed, the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he goes to war with the Ammonites. The people’s popular choice … unusual though it was (the son of a prostitute; the head of a band of thieves and outlaws) … the people’s choice is God’s choice as well. God can and God will work through those whom we might least suspect worthy of the calling.
EXCEPT.
And Jephthah’s EXCEPT is huge. Shocking. And awful.
It should have been enough confirmation for Jephthah that the Lord was going to be with him in battle, when the spirit of the Lord came upon him. But no … he has to make that awful vow.
If you, Lord, will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the LORD’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering.
The Spirit of the Lord was with him. Jephthah would have won the battle with the Ammonites regardless. And yet … and yet … he makes this oath.
Why? Jephthah had to know that whoever would come out of his house to meet him upon his return would be someone he loved very much … a family member, possibly his wife or his child.
Why did he do it? What do you say to such a terrible word as this? It’s so blatant, so amoral, that it defies explanation.
I think Jephthah’s vow shows the declining state of things in Israel. In many ways, Gideon’s story is the peak of the Judges cycle. From Gideon, it all goes downhill. After Gideon dies, his son Abimelech kills all his brothers so he can take over as judge … actually, the people crown him “king” … but it’s a brief, bad reign … and puts Israel in the place they are in as Jephthah’s story begins.
With Jephthah, we have a judge with swagger and bravado … feeling so full of himself that he makes this awful vow to God.
Of course Jephthah is victorious over the Ammonites. Not because of that vow, but because the spirit of the Lord came upon (him).
Because of that vow, though … Jephthah is put into a place which never entered his mind, when he shot off his mouth.
His daughter … his only child … is the first one he meets when he returns home. Jephthah’s daughter … she will bear the terrible burden of her father’s vow.
Of all the stories in Judges, this one truly earns the title author Phyllis Tribble gave it, a “text of terror.”
Why? Why did Jephthah need to carry out this vow?
The words he utters… “I have opened my mouth to the Lord,” and the response of his daughter accepting it … perhaps that’s a place where we might huddle for some justificating comfort, Well, he did promise God.
Yes, Jephthah did.
But would God hold him to his words?
We’ll never know, because Jephthah never even asks God about it.
His daughter, hoping against hope, gets her two month reprieve.
But at the end of those two months, Jephthah still does the awful deed.
What’s happening here?
It’s all about honor and shame; and Jephthah living in an honor and shame society.
It’s tough for us to understand, as 21st century Americans, what living in such a society is like. We got a little taste of that this week; perhaps some of you read the article in Rolling Stone on the Amanda Knox trial, an article printed just prior to her acquittal. Italy … especially the Italian “justice” system … is a modern example of an honor/ shame based society … the author of the article speculated that probably the best outcome Amanda Knox could have hoped for would have been a slight commutation of her sentence, because the judge in the appeal would not want to do anything to make the prosecutor in Perugia look bad … because looking bad, in the Italian justice system (as in most honor / shame based systems) is a far worse sin than being wrong.
Thus, that the judge and jury threw out Knox’s original sentence was quite astounding … though, if you’ve read any of the prosecutor’s words following the decision, he simply won’t accept the verdict, won’t reopen the investigation, will appeal based only on the evidence he’s submitted already … because, to do otherwise, would make him look bad.
When your life is centered around honor and shame, looking bad is a worse sin than being wrong.
Honor and shame is why Jephthah’s brothers do as they do to him … kick the “son of a prostitute” out of the family, left to wander as a thief and an outlaw. Honor and shame is why Jephthah does what he does, in not going back on his oath … he wants to save face before all those who heard him utter those words. Honor and shame is why Jephthah’s daughter does what she does … a woman in that honor / shame society would suffer no greater disgrace than to die childless … though, here, as in so many other places in the Bible … not God’s plan for us, but because of human sinfulness … here, Jephthah’s honor and shame trumps his daughters … he’s a man, she’s a woman, end of story.
So where is God in all of this?
Silent.
God doesn’t say anything.
And although an argument from silence is no argument … we can’t decide strictly from this text whether God approved of Jephthah’s oath, or not … elsewhere the Scripture … and God speaking through it … is not silent.
Leviticus 18.21 …
You shall not give any of your offspring to sacrifice them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.
Molech was one of the gods of the Ammonites … the god to whom the Ammonites (the enemy of Israel, whom Jephthah had just defeated) … the god to whom the Ammonites offered their children in sacrifice.
So God doesn’t need to say anything here. Jephthah … his words, his actions, his inability to move beyond his honor / shame culture … and the idol of human pride which was, is behind it all … that false god of self-justification … Jephthah says it all … the Judges system of leadership for Israel, it’s not working anymore … the irony behind Jephthah’s words, Jephthah’s choice … they speak that word of truth loud and clear. Because of their sinfulness, because of our sinfulness, God’s going to have to do something else to save his people … to save us.
This is a text of terror, to be sure. There’s not much … some would say, there’s not any … good news in it for us. Other than God delivering his people once again … which ends up being a temporary deal, as with all the other previous judges … other than that, the horizon is dismal and bleak.
Scant pickings for a preacher who would want to give a perky, positive pontification of pious platitudes.
Ah … but you’ve got me this morning, and more, these texts.
You could surely call our Gospel reading a “text of terror” too. The perky preacher of positive pontifications and pious platitudes would never, ever say that “God’s grace has limits.”
But I will.
That’s because Jesus does, too, in these verses of Matthew.
It’s another awful story that begins innocently enough. The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.
Unfortunately for the king, he rules over a kingdom of ungrateful wretches, people who are unbelievably callous … and stupid. What way indeed is this to treat your king … making fun of him, paying no attention to his generosity, even murdering his slaves.
Certainly the king has every right to do what he does next … The king … sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.
And … I think … that’s where we need to leave those words … as merely a reminder that “God certainly has the right” to deal with those who disobey him, on his own terms. Some speculate that this could be the original community of Matthew’s gospel … those Jewish Christians who were being booted out of their synagogues for confessing Jesus … some speculate this could be their commentary on the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD … certainly we shouldn’t miss the political overtones here.
But this is not meant as the central focus of the story. It was important for Matthew’s original audience to hear … as with Judges, there needed to be a theological word given as to “why is all this bad stuff happening to us now” … but this is not the most important word for us.
It’s not the word the king in the story … the one we would say is God the Father in the story … it’s not the word the king chooses to emphasize.
That’s reserved for what he says next.
Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.
That’s the point of this story, right there. The slaves’ call … our call, we who follow Jesus … our call is to invite everyone we find … both good and bad, as the story goes … our call is not to judge, but to invite, period. The Good News in this story … granted, it’s scant, but there is Good News … the Good News here is that God wants everyone to be at the party. At the party. Worship, studying the faith, prayer, baptism, communion, service to neighbor … everyone is called to be there … to be here.
Simply put, it’s not our call to discern who we invite and who we don’t … our criteria for who should be here, who will fit in with us, that’s unimportant. Everyone is called … and we are to call everyone we find to the banquet … the party … the discipleship walk with our Lord.
Still … however … the invitation does not come without responsibility. The parable ends with another word of terror … about the guy without the wedding robe.
Note that, once again, in a situation of shame, there is silence. This guy knows he’s messed up. He’s most likely one of the “bad” who got invited in … but that doesn’t really matter … what matters is that, like the people at the beginning of the story who rejected the king’s invitation, he has made the king look bad.
Here is a rightful place to feel shame. The king is rightfully due honor. This guy, in his own moment of bravado and swagger, doesn’t even take the time to show the minimum amount of respect due the king … wearing the proper clothes to the wedding feast of his son.
Granted … this guy doesn’t out and out reject the king’s invitation as the others did in the beginning … this guy at least recognizes the goodness of the king (by showing up for a free meal).
But … there’s more at stake here than a free steak dinner. This guy recognizes the king’s goodness and generosity … but he openly disregards the king’s authority… by showing up at the party in his work clothes instead of a wedding garment … indeed, he’s no better than the ones who rejected the king’s original invitation because he’s openly disdains the feast while still attending it.
In other words, it’s not enough to simply acknowledge the goodness of the king … the goodness of God. One also must acknowledge the authority of God.
This guy does not. He openly dishonors the king … and the king is swift to reciprocate … bind him hand and food, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
As one commentator says about this text:
To come… in response to the gracious, altogether unmerited invitation of Christ and then not conform one’s life to that mercy is to demonstrate spiritual narcissism so profound that one cannot tell the difference between the wedding feast of the Lamb of God and happy hour in a bus station bar.
God’s grace … abundant, extravagant, amazing … still, God’s grace has limits. It’s the final word of this tale … not the main word for us, to be sure … because that’s most certainly GO … GO and invite everyone … because all are welcome, the king wants, desires everyone to be part of the joy and delight of the marriage feast of his son … but this word stands as a reminder, a reminder to individuals, to congregations and church bodies, to societies who readily claim the goodness and generosity of God … but, who forget about the authority of God.
The authority of God … who reminds his followers of his Good News that all are invited, all are welcomed to the wedding feast of the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
The authority of God, who reminds us that he is a God of justice … a God whose reign, whose kingdom is one of unfettered good news to the least of the world … an end to punishing greed, the suffering of the poor, and the powerful lording it over the powerless.
The authority of God, who sends his son as his Good News for us in flesh and blood … his son, who comes, not as the angry judge of retribution and punishment … but as the Prince of Peace.
May we, who have been called to this feast, called and gathered to this feast, called and gathered and sent to bring others to this feast … may our lives be ones of unashamed submission and obedience to the goodness AND the authority of our God … our God, whose will for us is not woe, but blessing … not shortage, but plenty … not death, but life.
Amen.
Judges series – “The Lord raised up deliverers”
Jephthah / Judges 11:1-11, 29-40 // Matthew 22:1-14
OT 28A / Season of Pentecost
9 October 2011
Perhaps, by this point in our sojourning with the book of Judges … as the reading began, you heard what was read and you said, Hey, wait a minute … this story sounds different than what we’ve heard so far.
And yes, just going by what we have before us today, a condensed version of the story of the next judge in the series, Jephthah … you would be right.
For where, o where, is the usual cycle of things …
• 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.
Well, don’t be disappointed … all of these elements are once again present in this judge’s story as well … I just chose not to include them in today’s reading portion. Judges chapter 10, beginning with verse 6 …
The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord … they abandoned the Lord and did not worship him … the Ammonites crushed and oppressed the Israelites for 18 years …
so on, and so on …
So where we begin our encounter with Jephthah’s story is, indeed, where everyone meets him …
Jephthah the Gileadite, the son of a prostitute, was a mighty warrior.
Now, if we’ve been paying attention previously, just hearing that little bit of the story should get us far along in understanding what is happening.
Once again, God is going to choose one to lead his people, who we … his people of then, and now … would consider ill-prepared for the task. Jephthah’s mother was a prostitute … and because of his mother, Jephthah is judged by his brothers to be morally unworthy … unworthy of the family name (and inheritance) … and he’s rejected and driven out … Jephthah becomes a frontier bandit, living among outlaws on the eastern border of Israel.
Ah, but soon enough circumstances cause the elders of his people to recruit this outlaw for a different purpose;
Come and be our commander, so that we may fight with the Ammonites.
Not so fast, Jephthah responds:
Are you not the very ones who rejected me and drove me out of my father’s house? So why do you come to me now when you are in trouble?
If this sounds like déjà vu all over again … it should. Jephthah’s response sounds like how God might well respond to the Israelites, each time they come weeping to God asking for a deliverer. The irony most certainly is not lost on Jephthah … nor would it have been for the original hearers and readers of these words … nor should it be lost on us.
So despite being thrown out of his father’s house, Jephthah takes on the mantle of deliverer of his people. Though … note the order in which Jephthah becomes a judge.
Who selects Jephthah? The people do.
God simply ratifies the people’s choice.
It’s a strange reversal to what has been happening in the judge-stories before this … it’s been the Lord who raises up the judge … that’s what was said of Ehud … what was implied of Deborah … God even made a personal appearance and plea with Gideon.
But here, it’s the people’s choice for judge to which, God gives the OK … and maybe, maybe we shouldn’t make too much of this, because the Lord’s name is invoked all the way through this story of Jephthah … and at first, Jephthah seems to be no worse a choice than the others who have judged Israel before him.
Indeed, the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he goes to war with the Ammonites. The people’s popular choice … unusual though it was (the son of a prostitute; the head of a band of thieves and outlaws) … the people’s choice is God’s choice as well. God can and God will work through those whom we might least suspect worthy of the calling.
EXCEPT.
And Jephthah’s EXCEPT is huge. Shocking. And awful.
It should have been enough confirmation for Jephthah that the Lord was going to be with him in battle, when the spirit of the Lord came upon him. But no … he has to make that awful vow.
If you, Lord, will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the LORD’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering.
The Spirit of the Lord was with him. Jephthah would have won the battle with the Ammonites regardless. And yet … and yet … he makes this oath.
Why? Jephthah had to know that whoever would come out of his house to meet him upon his return would be someone he loved very much … a family member, possibly his wife or his child.
Why did he do it? What do you say to such a terrible word as this? It’s so blatant, so amoral, that it defies explanation.
I think Jephthah’s vow shows the declining state of things in Israel. In many ways, Gideon’s story is the peak of the Judges cycle. From Gideon, it all goes downhill. After Gideon dies, his son Abimelech kills all his brothers so he can take over as judge … actually, the people crown him “king” … but it’s a brief, bad reign … and puts Israel in the place they are in as Jephthah’s story begins.
With Jephthah, we have a judge with swagger and bravado … feeling so full of himself that he makes this awful vow to God.
Of course Jephthah is victorious over the Ammonites. Not because of that vow, but because the spirit of the Lord came upon (him).
Because of that vow, though … Jephthah is put into a place which never entered his mind, when he shot off his mouth.
His daughter … his only child … is the first one he meets when he returns home. Jephthah’s daughter … she will bear the terrible burden of her father’s vow.
Of all the stories in Judges, this one truly earns the title author Phyllis Tribble gave it, a “text of terror.”
Why? Why did Jephthah need to carry out this vow?
The words he utters… “I have opened my mouth to the Lord,” and the response of his daughter accepting it … perhaps that’s a place where we might huddle for some justificating comfort, Well, he did promise God.
Yes, Jephthah did.
But would God hold him to his words?
We’ll never know, because Jephthah never even asks God about it.
His daughter, hoping against hope, gets her two month reprieve.
But at the end of those two months, Jephthah still does the awful deed.
What’s happening here?
It’s all about honor and shame; and Jephthah living in an honor and shame society.
It’s tough for us to understand, as 21st century Americans, what living in such a society is like. We got a little taste of that this week; perhaps some of you read the article in Rolling Stone on the Amanda Knox trial, an article printed just prior to her acquittal. Italy … especially the Italian “justice” system … is a modern example of an honor/ shame based society … the author of the article speculated that probably the best outcome Amanda Knox could have hoped for would have been a slight commutation of her sentence, because the judge in the appeal would not want to do anything to make the prosecutor in Perugia look bad … because looking bad, in the Italian justice system (as in most honor / shame based systems) is a far worse sin than being wrong.
Thus, that the judge and jury threw out Knox’s original sentence was quite astounding … though, if you’ve read any of the prosecutor’s words following the decision, he simply won’t accept the verdict, won’t reopen the investigation, will appeal based only on the evidence he’s submitted already … because, to do otherwise, would make him look bad.
When your life is centered around honor and shame, looking bad is a worse sin than being wrong.
Honor and shame is why Jephthah’s brothers do as they do to him … kick the “son of a prostitute” out of the family, left to wander as a thief and an outlaw. Honor and shame is why Jephthah does what he does, in not going back on his oath … he wants to save face before all those who heard him utter those words. Honor and shame is why Jephthah’s daughter does what she does … a woman in that honor / shame society would suffer no greater disgrace than to die childless … though, here, as in so many other places in the Bible … not God’s plan for us, but because of human sinfulness … here, Jephthah’s honor and shame trumps his daughters … he’s a man, she’s a woman, end of story.
So where is God in all of this?
Silent.
God doesn’t say anything.
And although an argument from silence is no argument … we can’t decide strictly from this text whether God approved of Jephthah’s oath, or not … elsewhere the Scripture … and God speaking through it … is not silent.
Leviticus 18.21 …
You shall not give any of your offspring to sacrifice them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.
Molech was one of the gods of the Ammonites … the god to whom the Ammonites (the enemy of Israel, whom Jephthah had just defeated) … the god to whom the Ammonites offered their children in sacrifice.
So God doesn’t need to say anything here. Jephthah … his words, his actions, his inability to move beyond his honor / shame culture … and the idol of human pride which was, is behind it all … that false god of self-justification … Jephthah says it all … the Judges system of leadership for Israel, it’s not working anymore … the irony behind Jephthah’s words, Jephthah’s choice … they speak that word of truth loud and clear. Because of their sinfulness, because of our sinfulness, God’s going to have to do something else to save his people … to save us.
This is a text of terror, to be sure. There’s not much … some would say, there’s not any … good news in it for us. Other than God delivering his people once again … which ends up being a temporary deal, as with all the other previous judges … other than that, the horizon is dismal and bleak.
Scant pickings for a preacher who would want to give a perky, positive pontification of pious platitudes.
Ah … but you’ve got me this morning, and more, these texts.
You could surely call our Gospel reading a “text of terror” too. The perky preacher of positive pontifications and pious platitudes would never, ever say that “God’s grace has limits.”
But I will.
That’s because Jesus does, too, in these verses of Matthew.
It’s another awful story that begins innocently enough. The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.
Unfortunately for the king, he rules over a kingdom of ungrateful wretches, people who are unbelievably callous … and stupid. What way indeed is this to treat your king … making fun of him, paying no attention to his generosity, even murdering his slaves.
Certainly the king has every right to do what he does next … The king … sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.
And … I think … that’s where we need to leave those words … as merely a reminder that “God certainly has the right” to deal with those who disobey him, on his own terms. Some speculate that this could be the original community of Matthew’s gospel … those Jewish Christians who were being booted out of their synagogues for confessing Jesus … some speculate this could be their commentary on the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD … certainly we shouldn’t miss the political overtones here.
But this is not meant as the central focus of the story. It was important for Matthew’s original audience to hear … as with Judges, there needed to be a theological word given as to “why is all this bad stuff happening to us now” … but this is not the most important word for us.
It’s not the word the king in the story … the one we would say is God the Father in the story … it’s not the word the king chooses to emphasize.
That’s reserved for what he says next.
Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.
That’s the point of this story, right there. The slaves’ call … our call, we who follow Jesus … our call is to invite everyone we find … both good and bad, as the story goes … our call is not to judge, but to invite, period. The Good News in this story … granted, it’s scant, but there is Good News … the Good News here is that God wants everyone to be at the party. At the party. Worship, studying the faith, prayer, baptism, communion, service to neighbor … everyone is called to be there … to be here.
Simply put, it’s not our call to discern who we invite and who we don’t … our criteria for who should be here, who will fit in with us, that’s unimportant. Everyone is called … and we are to call everyone we find to the banquet … the party … the discipleship walk with our Lord.
Still … however … the invitation does not come without responsibility. The parable ends with another word of terror … about the guy without the wedding robe.
Note that, once again, in a situation of shame, there is silence. This guy knows he’s messed up. He’s most likely one of the “bad” who got invited in … but that doesn’t really matter … what matters is that, like the people at the beginning of the story who rejected the king’s invitation, he has made the king look bad.
Here is a rightful place to feel shame. The king is rightfully due honor. This guy, in his own moment of bravado and swagger, doesn’t even take the time to show the minimum amount of respect due the king … wearing the proper clothes to the wedding feast of his son.
Granted … this guy doesn’t out and out reject the king’s invitation as the others did in the beginning … this guy at least recognizes the goodness of the king (by showing up for a free meal).
But … there’s more at stake here than a free steak dinner. This guy recognizes the king’s goodness and generosity … but he openly disregards the king’s authority… by showing up at the party in his work clothes instead of a wedding garment … indeed, he’s no better than the ones who rejected the king’s original invitation because he’s openly disdains the feast while still attending it.
In other words, it’s not enough to simply acknowledge the goodness of the king … the goodness of God. One also must acknowledge the authority of God.
This guy does not. He openly dishonors the king … and the king is swift to reciprocate … bind him hand and food, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
As one commentator says about this text:
To come… in response to the gracious, altogether unmerited invitation of Christ and then not conform one’s life to that mercy is to demonstrate spiritual narcissism so profound that one cannot tell the difference between the wedding feast of the Lamb of God and happy hour in a bus station bar.
God’s grace … abundant, extravagant, amazing … still, God’s grace has limits. It’s the final word of this tale … not the main word for us, to be sure … because that’s most certainly GO … GO and invite everyone … because all are welcome, the king wants, desires everyone to be part of the joy and delight of the marriage feast of his son … but this word stands as a reminder, a reminder to individuals, to congregations and church bodies, to societies who readily claim the goodness and generosity of God … but, who forget about the authority of God.
The authority of God … who reminds his followers of his Good News that all are invited, all are welcomed to the wedding feast of the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
The authority of God, who reminds us that he is a God of justice … a God whose reign, whose kingdom is one of unfettered good news to the least of the world … an end to punishing greed, the suffering of the poor, and the powerful lording it over the powerless.
The authority of God, who sends his son as his Good News for us in flesh and blood … his son, who comes, not as the angry judge of retribution and punishment … but as the Prince of Peace.
May we, who have been called to this feast, called and gathered to this feast, called and gathered and sent to bring others to this feast … may our lives be ones of unashamed submission and obedience to the goodness AND the authority of our God … our God, whose will for us is not woe, but blessing … not shortage, but plenty … not death, but life.
Amen.
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