Bearing Fruit In Another's Vineyard

 October 4, 2020 – Proper 22A
Isaiah 5:1-7; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46

© 2020 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video of the entire service can be seen here. (The sermon begins around 23:00.)

When I lived in Montgomery, Alabama, I took night classes at Troy University in my spare time. Although the main campus of the university was located in a small town an hour or so away, Troy had established a satellite campus in downtown Montgomery by purchasing and renovating several out-of-use buildings, including the old Whitley Hotel. Although dormant for decades, the hotel was a majestic building with an elegant lobby and a grand staircase that wound up to the upper floors, and the university did the city a favor by bringing it back to life. 

In the middle of the repurposed lobby was a large and detailed mosaic, which featured the emblem of the university. Legend had it that, not long after Troy bought the old hotel, university officials had the original mosaic painstakingly replaced, tiny tile by tiny tile, to further cement its presence in the urban community. But, when the work was finished, something wasn’t right. Part of the emblem wasn’t exactly the way it was supposed to be, and the university’s president, an exacting sort of woman, insisted that it be done again.

As the artisan chipped up the mistaken portion of the mosaic in order to redo it, the president walked through the lobby and asked the worker how everything was going. Frustrated, the laborer responded with little more than a grunt, so the president asked him what was wrong. Not realizing who it was that was speaking to him, he replied, “Some witch is making me do this all over again,” only he didn’t use the word “witch.” She replied, “Oh really? Well, guess what: I am that witch. Pack up your things. You’re fired.”

When we fail to recognize the authority of those standing in front of us, we shouldn’t be surprised when judgment comes crashing down upon our heads. 

Today’s gospel lesson is all about authority. Will we recognize and respect Jesus’ authority, or will we substitute our own version of right and wrong in its place? As Suzanne noted last Sunday, this chapter of Matthew is filled with expressions of and challenges to Jesus’ authority. First, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey while the crowd shouted, “Hosanna!” as if he were prepared to claim the throne of his ancestor David. Then, he went straight to the Jerusalem temple, where he turned over the tables of the moneychangers and drove them out of the temple precincts, effectively halting the worship that was taking place there. All the while, the religious authorities watched Jesus perform these prophetic and symbolic gestures, which both questioned their legitimacy and asserted his own authority in their place. Something had to give. The crowds were cheering for the radical rabbi, but, behind the scenes, the people in power were plotting his demise. 

Exasperated and probably a bit nervous, the religious leaders came to Jesus and asked him to explain by what authority he was performing these radical, divisive, and lawless acts. How could a religious figure like him allow himself to be at the center of such unrest? In response, he told them two parables—the parable of the two sons, which we heard last week, and the parable of the wicked tenants, which is our focus today.

“Listen to another parable,” Jesus told them, a parable about a landowner who carefully and deliberately prepared a vineyard before leasing it to some tenants and going off to another country. It must have taken more than a few years of hard work by those tenants before the vines began to produce their fruit. Eventually, though, it was time for the landowner to collect his share of the harvest, so he sent some servants to get what was his due—the portion that had been agreed upon back when the vineyard had originally been leased to those tenants. 

But the tenants weren’t interested in giving up any of the fruit of their labor. They were the ones who had worked hard every day, season after season, bearing the heat of the summer sun, pulling up weeds, pruning back the vines, carefully nurturing the tender shoots until harvest time. They had done all the work, they told themselves, so every bit of the produce should be theirs. They didn’t care whose land it was, who had made all of the improvements to it, who had hired them to take care of it. So they attacked the landowner’s slaves, beating and killing and stoning them. And, when the landowner sent a second group of slaves, even more than the first, they treated them in the same way. Finally, the landowner recognized the need for serious action, so he sent his son, his agent, someone who could officially speak for the family and engage the local officials if needed, but the tenants refused even to respect the landowner’s son. Instead, they convinced themselves that, once the heir was out of the way, the vineyard would be theirs. So they killed him.

No one except for the tenants was surprised at what happened next. Even the religious leaders, to whom Jesus had addressed this hardly masked parable of condemnation, knew what the landowner would do to those wicked tenants. They knew that they would be rounded up and executed for their lawlessness. No matter how firmly they had convinced themselves that their ridiculous plan would work, the tenants were always going to be punished for their refusal to respect the one in whose vineyard they had labored. 

It is a hard message for those of us who prefer our brand of Christianity to be the open, accepting, universal variety to hear Jesus say that the kingdom of heaven will be taken away from someone and given to someone else. But, in an age in which the words of Jesus and the authority of the church are used by some even to legitimize evil, it is a truth that we must confront. 

What does it mean for Jesus to proclaim that God’s kingdom will be taken away from the religious leaders and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom? You may have been taught in the past that this parable is about God’s favor being withdrawn from the children of Abraham and bestowed upon Gentile Christians, but that isn’t true. The church, at times infected with the sin of anti-Semitism, has made that claim, but this parable isn’t about chronology. It’s not about the vineyard being taking away from those who came first and given to those who come second. It’s about the responsibility to be faithful when the opportunity presents itself. 

As the prophecy of Isaiah 5 makes clear, God takes the vineyard away from those who forget whose vineyard it really is—those who forget that God is the one who requires justice and rejects bloodshed, who demands righteousness and will not abide the cry of the suffering. If you read the rest of that chapter of Isaiah, you will see that the people in power had used their authority to take possession of the land of the vulnerable, to throw lavish banquets for themselves while people in the streets were hungry, and to acquit the guilty in exchange for a bribe. Jesus picked up on this image and made it the center of his parable because the religious leaders of his own day had done the same thing. They had forgotten whose vineyard it really was. They had forgotten that the kingdom of God belongs to the poor and the weak and the vulnerable. They had ignored the plight of those who were eager to line the sides of the road and shout, “Hosanna!” as Jesus came into Jerusalem. They had turned their backs on the blind and the lame who Matthew tells us flocked to the temple to be healed by Jesus as soon as he had chased the moneychangers out.

Whose vineyard are we working in? In whose kingdom are we called to bear fruit? Do we recognize the authority of the one who comes to collect the landowner’s due? Or have we been working so long that we have forgotten that the fruit of our labor actually belongs to someone else?

The blind and the lame do not need any help recognizing Jesus as the one who comes to bring God’s kingdom to the earth. The poor and the weak don’t need him to tell them a parable in order to see whose authority he represents. It is always the powerful, the rich, and the well-connected who need to be reminded what sort of reign Jesus has come to establish. On the spectrum that extends from religious elites to social pariahs, I can tell on which end most of us belong. Maybe that’s why we need Jesus more than most people—because, left to our own devices, we might begin to think that this vineyard we inhabit is our own doing, that we are responsible for its produce, and that its bounty belongs to us. It doesn’t. And, as long as we remember that, God will help us bear fruit for the one to whom the kingdom belongs. 

The Privilege of Suffering

September 20, 2020 – The 16th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 20A

Jonah 3:10-4:11; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16

© 2020 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video of the service can be seen here. (The sermon begins around 23:00.)

“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.” Those words have come to symbolize Muhammad Ali’s opposition to the Vietnam War and, more specifically, his opposition to a government that would draft young black men and send them, in his words, “10,000 miles from home [to] drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam [while] so-called Negro people in [his home town of] Louisville [were] treated like dogs and denied simple human rights.”  Ali knew that his service in the military would not put his life at risk—that, instead, he would be trotted out as part of the Army’s public relations game in the same way that his predecessor in the ring, Joe Lewis, had been used to drum up support for World War II. But Ali wasn’t willing to play their game. He wasn’t willing to accept the privilege of suffering on their behalf.

On April 28, 1967, when he reported for his scheduled induction into the military, Ali refused three times to step forward when his name was called, and it cost him. It cost him his heavyweight championship belt, his license to fight in the ring, and the esteem of white America. Ali believed that the government was asking black men and boys to suffer for the sake of a country that would not even recognize their basic humanity, and he refused to take part. Though he is now celebrated as an accomplished athlete and a beloved hero, sports commentator Dan Le Batard has noted more than once that Ali only became popular when Parkinson’s Disease robbed him of his voice.

Today, we hear what the apostle Paul has to say to those who suffer: “God has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well.” Those are Paul’s words to the Christians in Philippi, who faced persecution because of their faith, but what would he say to Muhammad Ali? What would the white, Christian preachers of the twentieth century, who so often used Paul to reinforce their worldview, say to the man whom they insisted on calling Cassius Clay? What would a present-day preacher like me—a privileged white man, who stands in a pulpit insulated from the rallies and riots and racial strife of our day and so far untouched by the ravages of a pandemic—what would I dare to say about Paul’s exhortation to suffer and to count that suffering as a God-given privilege?

Sometimes words only make sense to the people to whom they were originally entrusted. Maybe Paul has nothing to say to those who are asked to fight and die for a country that treats them as second-class citizens, to those who are asked to submit obediently to the police who murder them with impunity, to those who are sent into poultry plants and slaughterhouses in the midst of a pandemic because a chicken in every pot is still the American way. But Philippians is still in our holy book, and, no matter what Paul intended, his words are still proclaimed in our congregations as if they belong to the Lord. So it is our obligation—our duty as people of faith and as citizens of a predominantly Christian society—to wrestle with these ancient words and to see if they have anything to say to us and to our world today.

What could make these words good news not only for a privileged few but for everyone? What must be true about Paul and his circumstance and about the Philippians and their circumstance and about their love for each another in order for the apostle’s teaching to be received not as a violation but as a hopeful encouragement? In part, Paul’s words rang true because they were written not from a place of individual security but of mutual struggle. Although his chains were the consequences of his own free choices, the shackles that Paul wore were not merely for show or rhetorical effect. His life, as we heard in the opening of this passage, hung in the balance. A man who had enjoyed the freedom and privilege of Roman citizenship now faced the real possibility of death at the hands of the Empire. 

While one’s own experience of suffering does not, in and of itself, give someone the authority to command others to endure their own suffering, Paul’s credibility on this point comes from something else. He wrote to the Philippians not only as one who had endured hardship but as one who recognized that his own suffering had become the source of his friends’ struggle—that their grief was the result of his grief. Paul wanted to relieve them of that burden. He wanted them to see that, if he was able to count his own suffering for Christ’s sake as a privilege, they, too, could endure whatever hardship they faced by seeing it as a gift from God.

That may have been some comfort for Paul’s friends in Philippi, where the apostle had spent time laboring beside them, but where in those words do we find comfort and encouragement for the church today? The critical struggle we face is not figuring out how to count as holy the sympathetic suffering we endure on behalf of friends who look like us and talk like us and live on the same side of town as us. We’re all too good at that. And we certainly don’t need any help telling those who endure hardships that they should count their suffering as the privilege that God has ordained for them. That’s been our besetting sin for millennia. If we are to find real encouragement in Paul’s words, we will only hear it when we, with God’s help, begin to unwrap and upturn our understanding of privilege. When we stop thinking of privilege as a gift that is supposed to shield us from suffering and start thinking of it as an obligation that propels us into suffering for the sake of others, we will know why Paul’s words are words of hope.

Paul may not have understood privilege in the same way that we do—as an accident of birth that we might devote to the work of the gospel—but he did understand the ways in which living in Christ reoriented the believer’s engagement with the world. For those whose faith-trained sight remains focused on “the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus,” whatever suffering we experience in this life is not seen as an obstacle to our union with God but as a means by which we share in the resurrection of the one who suffered on our behalf. For, if God is for us, who could be against us? If Christ is on our side, who could ever condemn us? 

It is with that confidence of faith that Paul is able to proclaim later on in this same letter, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.” That resurrection power is available to us as well. It is given to those who have faith enough even to suffer and die. If those of us, whose religion has been a shield from our own suffering and the suffering of others, cannot empty ourselves of that privilege and embrace the privilege of suffering, then we have not known the power of Christ’s resurrection. And, without knowing that power, we cannot live lives worthy of the gospel of Christ.

Paul has so much to say to us, but we cannot hear what he has to say if we pretend his words were written today. Instead, we must ask the Holy Spirit to help us hear afresh what was written so long ago. Paul does not and cannot ask people who suffer for the sake of unholy systems of oppression to dress that suffering up as if it were a gift from God. But he can and does invite those of us who live with the comfort of earthly privilege to consider the ways in which our faith in the God of Jesus Christ requires us to set aside our invulnerability and pursue suffering for the gospel’s sake. While those of us who have been insulated from the suffering of others cannot rightly claim kinship with those whose suffering we now seek to undo, we can, with God’s help, begin to recognize how we are called not to withdraw from that suffering but to embrace it—how we, like Paul, might even call our own suffering a gift from God—a privilege we bear for the sake of others.

We've Been Given 10,000 Talents--Now What?

September 13, 2020 – The 15th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 19A

Genesis 50:15-21; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35

© 2020 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the entire service can be seen here. (The sermon begins around 24:00.)

Last Sunday we heard Jesus tell the disciples that they must go to great lengths in order to maintain the spirit of forgiveness that exists between them. If someone sins against you, go to that person in private and point out the wrong and see if you can win that person back. If that fails, take two or three with you. If that won’t work, get the whole church involved. And, if the offender won’t listen even to the whole church, let that person be to you as a tax collector and a Gentile. If someone will not seek forgiveness, that person cannot remain a part of a community that is defined by forgiving love. 

Naturally, Peter wanted to know if the same thing applied in reverse: “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” If a person is given three chances to repent before they are cut off from the community of faith, how many chances are we supposed to give an apologetic repeat offender before we kick them out as well? Should we forgive them as many as seven times? But Jesus replied, “Not seven but seventy-seven times.” If the need for repentance and reconciliation is unequivocal, the demand for forgiveness must be limitless, too.

To get his point across, Jesus told a story that dabbled in the absurd. When a king began to reckon accounts with his servants, he found that one of them owed 10,000 talents. That’s roughly 164,000 years’ worth of wages or more than $5 billion in today’s money. More than a mere slave, this servant must have overseen a major operation within the kingdom. Somehow, over time, his negligence accumulated until he owed a staggering amount—more than any servant could have ever repaid. When confronted with his gross mismanagement, the servant fell down on his knees at the king’s feet and begged for more time: “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” Perhaps realizing that the man could never have come up with that much money, the king did the almost unthinkable: he forgave the entire amount. 

Later on, that same servant came across a man who owed him 100 denarii or about three months’ worth of wages—around $12,000 in today’s money. That was no small amount, but, in comparison with $5 billion, it was almost nothing. This time, as before, the second debtor fell down on his knees at the first servant’s feet and made an identical plea: “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” But the first servant refused to show mercy. He had his fellow servant thrown into prison until the debt was paid off. And you remember how the story ends.

I don’t know what’s harder to believe: that a servant could ever amass a debt that big or that a servant who had a debt like that be forgiven could ever be so blind and hypocritical. It’s hard to imagine anyone being so obtuse. What kind of person would ever receive a gift of that magnitude yet fail to show even a fraction of the same generosity to another person? No one would ever act like that. No one would ever be that self-absorbed. No one would ever be that blind to their own dependence upon the goodness of others. Would we?

On whose generosity is your life built? On whose forgiveness and understanding are the relationships you value established? On what privileges is your success manufactured? How much of what you have and who you are and where you live and what doors have been open to you is an accident of birth? And how much of it is what you have earned all by yourself? 

My parents helped me open a savings account when I was in the second grade. When I was in middle school, my father gave me $500 to invest in a guardian account, which he opened on my behalf. Although I recognized that going to college could cost my family a lot of money, it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to go to wherever I chose because we couldn’t afford it. It certainly never crossed my mind that I might not go to college at all. I have had my share of hardship, by which I mean that I have applied for jobs I didn’t get and that I have had to forego things I wanted because I didn’t have the money to buy them. But I have never wondered what would happen if I went to the doctor or the hospital or the pharmacy and could not pay. I have never needed to know where to get clothes or food or Christmas presents for my kids because I couldn’t afford them. I have never worried that, if I were the victim of a crime and called the police, I might be the one who was taken to jail or, worse, shot before I had a chance to explain myself.

You can call it generosity or mercy or forgiveness or privilege, but, whatever you call it, my life has been built on a lavish gift that I do not deserve, and I trust that, in at least one or two ways, yours has, too. We are judged—we are held accountable—not because we have received such a gift but because we have failed to recognized it as such. And, because we have not recognized the gift that we have been given, we are judged for not using that gift for good. We are the merciless slave. As hard as it is to believe that anyone could be so blind, we are the ones who blind ourselves to the magnitude of the gift that we have been given. We hide our eyes from it because to see and recognize how much we have been given is to see and recognize how little we can take credit for all on our own. We live in a world that assigns value to human beings on the basis of how much they have achieved and attained and accomplished. Any head start or leg up or free pass undermines our worth in worldly terms. But that isn’t true in the kingdom of God. 

In the kingdom of God, a person’s worth isn’t measured in dollars earned or decisions made or work performed. When God’s authority and God’s economy are operative, a person has value because that person has been made by God and loved by God. Are we willing to live in that reality? That’s the first step—admitting that each one of us is equally precious to God. If we can believe that, then we can let go of the notion that our output—our résumé—is the ultimate measure of our status. And, if we can stop evaluating ourselves on the basis of what we have accomplished, then we can begin to recognize and admit how much we have been given. And, if we can start to see how much of our lives has been built upon that gift, then we can break the cycle. We can receive mercy and show mercy. We can forgive as we have been forgiven. We can love as we have been loved.

The only thing more absurd than the parable that Jesus told is our collective failure to show mercy to others despite all of the mercy that we have been given. Why do you think the economic and political systems of our day are resisting those who would ascribe equal value to people whose lives have always mattered less? If you think that 10,000 talents is a great sum of money, try calculating the economic impact that four hundred years of slavery, segregation, discrimination, redlining, mass incarceration, and police brutality have had on America. Far more than $5 billion, it has produced a debt that none of us could ever repay. For many of us, whether we are the direct descendants of people who owned other human beings as property or are those who have benefitted from our race in other ways, our prosperity has been built, in part, on the backs of others. We are judged by God not because we were born into that advantage—not because we have been given that privilege—but because we have been unwilling to acknowledge it and to use it to show generosity to others.

Jesus came to welcome us into the kingdom of God—the reality in which love abounds, in which forgiveness is limitless, in which mercy is overflowing. The magnitude of that gift is unfathomable, but the consequences of that gift are very real and very measurable. No one who has received a gift like that has ever failed to reflect its power in their daily lives. No one has ever been loved like that without showing that kind of love to others. To do so would be unthinkable. To do so would be absurd.

Unity Matters

 

September 6, 2020 – The 14th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 18A
Ezekiel 33:7-11; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

© 2020 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video of the service can be seen here. (The sermon begins around 18:20.)

Years ago, not long after I was ordained, I received a phone call from a distraught mother. Her son had received a diagnosis of an uncurable disease—not fatal but life-changing and life-limiting and utterly unalterable—and she wanted me to do her a favor. She wanted me to pray. She wanted me to pray that, despite everything the doctors had told her, God would heal her son. Without hesitation, I agreed. I believe in miracles. As unlikely as it may be, I believe that sometimes God reaches down and intervenes in our lives in ways that doctors cannot explain. “I would be happy to pray,” I told her. But that wasn’t all she wanted.

“I need you to call another priest—another member of the clergy—and I need you two to pray about this together.” I hesitated. “Why?” I asked. “Because,” she explained, “I was reading the Bible today, and I read the passage where Jesus tells his disciples that, when two or three of them agree about anything they ask for, it will be done by their Father in heaven. I believe with all my heart that, if you and another priest pray about this, God will hear you and grant your request.” I let silence fill the space between us. This wasn’t faith. This was magic. This was Christianized witchcraft. But I wasn’t strong enough to say so. I wasn’t strong enough to tell this distraught mother that God doesn’t work like that. Instead, I started to explain that the prayers of laypeople are just as strong as those of clergy and to tell her that I didn’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind when he said that to his disciples, but she was convinced, and I wasn’t willing to speak clearly enough to disabuse her of that notion. So I promised her that I would do as she asked. 

I didn’t tell my boss and ask him to pray with me. He would have recognized right away what kind of foolish trouble I had gotten myself into. And I couldn’t call any of my colleagues close by. They, too, would have seen my request for what it really was—the half-hearted prayer of a spiritual coward who didn’t have the guts to tell a grieving mother that he couldn’t conjure up a miracle on demand no matter how many other clergy he prayed with. So I called one of my friends and colleagues back in England—the one whose brand of Anglican Christianity most prominently features the gifts of the Spirit, like speaking in tongues and the laying on hands for healing. But even he saw straight through my request. “You know, God doesn’t work like that,” he explained. I told him that I knew that already but that I had promised the mother that I would do what she asked and I needed him to pray with me about this thing. And so we prayed, even though I knew that God wasn’t going to use our prayer to give that mother what she wanted.

God doesn’t work like that. God doesn’t look down and say, “Oh look! Two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name, and they’re agreeing with one another about their prayer request, so I suppose that I had better fulfill their request.” No, despite what today’s gospel lesson says, God has not given us the power of communal wish-fulfillment. But God has given us a power, and I believe that the power we have been given is even greater. As followers of Jesus, who believe that, in Christ, the kingdom of God has come to the earth, we have been given the power to act on God’s behalf in order that God’s kingdom might be manifest in us. 

You may remember hearing some words from today’s gospel lesson a few weeks ago when we heard Jesus tell Peter that he is being given the keys to the kingdom of heaven and that whatever he binds on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever he looses on earth will be loosed in heaven. Today, we hear those words spoken a second time, but this time Jesus is speaking not only to Peter but to all of us. We are the ones to whom Jesus has given that authority—not as individuals but as the church, as the ecclesia, the collective body, literally, of the “called-out” ones. Jesus has called us together in order that, as his followers, he might invest in us the authority to decide what to bind and what to loose, what is required and what can be left aside, what is of God and what is not. Because that power resides in us, we no longer need a voice to thunder from the clouds in order to hear what God is speaking to us. When we hear the voice of the church speaking as one—literally as a symphony, as a harmony of voices that speaks one truth—then we have heard the voice of God declaring where God’s kingdom shall be found.

But how is that possible? How is it possible for selfish, greedy, sinful human beings like us to get it right every time? Have you seen what scandals have rocked the church in this and every generation? Have you read what horrific deeds have been done in the name of Christianity by the church’s leaders? I do not pretend that simply because Jesus has handed over the authority to declare what is God’s will that the church will always be on the right side of history. Far from it! But I do believe that we have been given the power to make clear to the world what is God’s will whenever we are united in Christ’s name.

Truly I tell you, whatever you bind and loose on the earth will be bound and loosed in heaven. Truly I tell you, if two or three of you agree about anything, it will be done by my Father in heaven. How is that possible? Why is that true? Because, as Jesus says to us, “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Throughout history, Christians have spent immeasurable time and energy wondering about the day when Christ will return as he promised. That day is absolutely worth waiting for, but how much time and energy do we spend recognizing that Christ is already here whenever two or three of us are gathered in his name? That is what he promises us. If the kingdom of God has come to the earth in Jesus Christ, then that kingdom—that reign, that authority, that rightness—is here on the earth whenever and wherever we gather together in Christ’s name.

And the key to all of that, Jesus tells us, is unity. It only works—the kingdom of God is only manifest in us—when the unity of that kingdom is manifest through us. That’s why Jesus explains in such detail the lengths to which we must go in order to preserve the unity between us. “If a member of the church sins against you,” Jesus says, “go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” And, if that doesn’t work, then two or three others are to be recruited to try, and, if that doesn’t work, the whole community should get involved. Finally, if even that doesn’t work, Jesus tells us to treat the one who breaks our unity as a Gentile and a tax collector. What remarkably harsh and final words coming from the one who consistently welcomed misfits and outcasts to his table! But those are not idle words or an empty threat. Jesus knows that only when the power of forgiveness and reconciliation are manifest throughout the community of his followers can he truly be there among them. Once that power vanishes, he does, too.

I’ve spent so much time and energy over the last few months trying to figure out how and when we can come back together in person that I haven’t paid enough attention to the real threat to our spiritual community. As hard as it is for us to stay apart from one another because of the pandemic, the real danger we face isn’t the coronavirus, which may have the power to push us apart physically and even to kill us if we are not careful but alone cannot dismember the body of Christ. No, the real threat to us is the threat of disunity, which, as the thing that has the power to undermine Christ’s presence among us, is truly the work of evil. And, in this time of physical separation and political uncertainty and cultural division, we can see all around us how the forces of evil are at work, trying their best to pull us apart in ways that seek to rob God’s kingdom of its power on earth.

But we have hope. Our hope is not that we would overcome our differences in order that Christ might be present among us. Instead, our hope is that, because Christ is already present among us, we have the power to overcome whatever differences and disagreements seek to pull us apart. God did not wait for humanity to get its act together before sending God’s Son to the earth. God came and brought God’s kingdom to the earth in order that we, in all our brokenness, might be made whole. As those who have been restored to unity with God in Christ, we have been given the power to make that unity manifest throughout the earth. Now, that isn’t easy. It isn’t easy to reach out to the one who has wronged us and seek reconciliation quietly instead of sharing our hurt with the world in order to bring shame upon our adversary. But that is the work of God’s reign on the earth. That is where Jesus is to be found. For where two or three are gathered together despite all that would pull them apart, there Jesus and the power of God’s kingdom will be found—even right here in the midst of us.

Seeing, Believing, Giving

August 23, 2020 – The 12th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 16A
Isaiah 51:1-6; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20

© 2020 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the service can be seen here. (The sermon begins around 21:50)

A Christian. A believer. A disciple of Jesus. A follower of the Way. A member of Christ’s Body. Born again. We use lots of different labels to identify the followers of Jesus. Which one of them fits you? Maybe all of them. Maybe none. 

I don’t know where you are on that mythical spectrum of conviction that reflects the breath of our congregational life. I don’t even know how one could express the complexity of the Christian faith in a rhetorical device as simplistic as a scale from 1 to 10. You might think of yourself as a Christian. Or maybe you think of yourself as a seeker. Or perhaps you’re just tuning in because you like what this church does in the community or because you have found this to be a friendly and welcoming congregation. Regardless, you’re here, and I’m glad you’re here. I trust that you’re here because you want to be, and, no matter why you’ve decided to join us, you are most welcome. You don’t have to be a Christian to take part in our worship, but today I want to talk about the ways in which being a Christian—in which being a follower of Jesus—affects our lives.

In today’s Gospel lesson, we see that when someone recognizes Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the Living God, that person’s life begins to change dramatically. Jesus looked at his disciples and asked, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” They replied with a range of options: “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” In other words, the crowds were so impressed by Jesus that they likened him to the great religious figures of their tradition. But then Jesus turned the question back on them, and asked, “Who do you say that I am?” And Simon Peter replied, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” After that, everything changed.

This was a turning point, not only for Peter and the other disciples but for the entire Gospel narrative. This was the first time that a human being had identified Jesus as the Messiah—as God’s anointed one. For the first half of the Gospel account, Jesus had spent his time teaching, preaching, and performing miracles in order to show his followers who he really was—the one through whom God’s fullness had come to the earth. But, now that Peter had put all of the pieces together and recognized Jesus for who he really was, Jesus’ focus shifted. 

From this moment on, Jesus began preparing for his departure by equipping his followers for what they would do in his absence. Notice what he said to Simon Peter: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” With those words, Jesus began the process of handing over his authority to his followers. As soon as Peter identified Jesus as God’s Son, Jesus began giving him new work to do. And the same is true for us. 

There comes a point in a Christian’s spiritual journey when that person’s focus shifts from trying to figure out who Jesus is to trying to figure out what that person is supposed to do because of it. For some of us, the realization that Jesus is the Son of the living God comes to us the way it came to Peter—in an instant. But, for many of us, coming to faith is an awakening that unfolds gradually over time. Regardless of how we get there, however, the result is the same. When we recognize who Jesus is—when we grasp that the one who ate with sinners and outcasts and wrestled with the powers of his day and proclaimed the nearness of God’s reign and died upon the cross and was raised from the dead is the one whom God sent to transform this world into the paradise that God has in store for us and all people—then we can no longer afford to think of Jesus as a great religious figure. In pursuit of God’s fullest dream for us and for our world, we must proclaim him as the ultimate authority of our lives, to whom our every thought, every word, every action, and every impulse belong. In other words, once we, like Peter, recognize who Jesus really is, we can’t go back to the way things were because we, like him, now have important work to do.

And what is that work? What does the life of one of Jesus’ followers look like? What do our lives look like when the reality of who Jesus is takes over? For each of us, the Christian life may take on different pursuits, but, collectively, that life is characterized by sacrifice. In particular, it looks like “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.” The part of Paul’s Letter to the Romans that we read today is his appeal to them that they might live lives that reflect the fullness of their faith. He has already outlined the significance of who Jesus was and what God has accomplished through him, and now he shows them what it means to live a Christian life: “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” 

How often do you think of your relationship with God as one of sacrifice? Not the bloody, violent kind that is designed to appease an angry deity, but the generous, self-giving kind that is, at is heart, a full cooperation with God’s purposes. Think about the kind of sacrifice that a baseball player makes, when, instead of swinging for the fences, he lays down a bunt, knowing that he will get out but that, in the process, one of his teammates will get closer to home. Or think about the kind of sacrifice that a chess player will make—not as a trick to fool an opponent but as an intentional giving up of a piece in order to secure something more valuable in return. If Jesus really is the Son of the living God—the one through whom God’s fullness has come to the earth—what part of your life wouldn’t you give over to him, knowing that, whatever the outcome, it is in Christ that your best future lies? 

If we believe that Jesus is who we proclaim him to be, our lives are no longer our own. You cannot agree with Peter—you cannot share the faith of Paul—you cannot proclaim Jesus as the Son of the living God—and only give back to God a part of your self. To believe that Jesus is God’s anointed one—the one through whom God’s purposes are being fulfilled—is to make more than a commitment of your intellectual or emotional capacity. It asks more of you than ten percent of your income or one day of your week. This faith we share consumes your whole being. If you think that that is asking too much, don’t give up yet. Keep exploring the Way of Jesus Christ. Walk that path until you discover where it leads—until you see fully who it is that beckons you to walk beside him. Because, when you do, when you recognize who Jesus really is, you’ll want to give him everything.

Infinite Mercy

August 16, 2020 – The 11th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 15A

Isaiah 56:1, 6-8; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15:10-28

© 2020 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the entire service can be seen here. (Sermon begins around 20:15.)

It feels pretty good to be on the side of inclusion, doesn’t it? Whether it’s race or gender or sexuality or education level or immigration status or wealth, when you’re on the side of a debate that thinks that everyone belongs, that everyone should have access, that everyone is equal, it feels like you’re on the right side of history. But you know how you can tell if your concept of inclusion is misplaced? If it excludes someone.

For months, now, we’ve been making our way through Paul’s Letter to the Romans. It is his treatise on the gospel—his systematic exploration of the Christian faith. It is his masterpiece, his magnum opus. In it, he has explained how the good news of Jesus Christ is the means by which God has brought the fullness of God’s reign to the earth. And, if you read the first eight chapters, you get a pretty good understanding of how it all fits together. But, when we get to chapter nine, we hit a wall, and the name of that wall is Israel.

Israel is God’s beloved child, God’s first love. And, just as the prophet Isaiah had foretold, God was using Israel to reveal God’s salvation to the ends of the earth. This is one of the reasons that Paul knew that Jesus was more than a prophet—because through him all nations were finding their way into relationship with God. And, as God’s great work of salvation was nearing completion, the same God who time and again had gathered together the outcasts of Israel had now begun to gather the other peoples of the earth to Godself. Isaiah’s prophecy that all would worship on God’s holy mountain—that God’s house would become a house of prayer for all peoples—was being fulfilled. The apostle Paul and the Christians in Rome had witnessed how God had used Jesus Christ to accomplish that great work and bring even the Gentiles into covenant relationship with Israel’s God. But there was just one lingering problem: Israel.

Even by the time Paul was writing to Rome, the way of Jesus had become a mostly Gentile religion. What had begun as a branch of Judaism dedicated to spiritual renewal had become a faith in which non-Jews had begun to call themselves the spiritual descendants of Abraham. All the while, Abraham’s biological descendants had been quite happy to keep to themselves, thank you very much. But, if Jesus Christ were the means by which God had, once and for all, brought all nations to Godself, why weren’t the children of Abraham getting onboard? If Jesus really was who he said he was and who Paul said he was, how was Paul supposed to explain the near universal refusal of his fellow Israelites to adopt the faith of God’s messiah?

For the most part, he didn’t. And, more than that, he seems to have been critical of those who would try. At the beginning of today’s lesson, Paul wrote, “I ask, then, has God rejected God’s people? By no means!” But, in the part of chapter 11 that the lectionary skips over, Paul turned his focus to those who would presume to take Israel’s place: “If some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you.” It seems that some of the Gentile Christians had interpreted Israel’s rejection of Christianity as a sign that God had moved on—that God had withdrawn God’s love for God’s people and transferred it to the new Israel. But Paul wouldn’t have it. “The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable,” he wrote. There must be another way.

There is a danger, I think, that, in a similar way, we would inadvertently restrict God’s mercies by casting God’s great work of salvation in the image of our own inclusion, and I think the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman exposes some of those tendencies. How do we hear this shocking story? How do we make sense of Jesus’ words and the woman’s persistence? Whose limited understanding of salvation is being challenged here? Is it Jesus who is being taught a lesson, or are we the ones who have something to learn?

That Matthew would identify the woman anachronistically as a Canaanite and not, as Mark did in his telling of the same story, with the more specific ethnic label of Syrophoenician is not an accident. Matthew wants us to imagine this encounter as if it were a direct manifestation of the conflict between the ancient Israelites who had taken possession of the land that had been promised to Abraham and the Canaanite residents who had stood in their way. In other words, in Matthew’s version of the story, the woman isn’t merely a Gentile; she is, to a faithful Israelite reader, a very real obstacle to the fulfillment of God’s promises. But, instead of finishing the story as if the only possible outcome was a triumph over God’s enemies, Matthew shows us that those who represent impediments to God’s salvation can become the very means by which that salvation is accomplished.

Kneeling at Jesus’ feet, the woman says to him, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Her faithfulness is not a rejection of the harsh-sounding words that Jesus had said to her but an expansion of them—a twisting of them to make clear an even fuller reality. Jesus had rightly come to rescue “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That’s the way God’s salvation must work. It has to start with God’s chosen people. It’s what they were chosen for. It would not be right to reject God’s love for God’s covenant people—to take the food away from the children in order to give it to those who would come after them. But, because God’s reign was coming to its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, it was now possible to see God’s covenant love expanding to include even those who for centuries had stood in the way of God’s salvation. 

I wonder whether we’ve become so accustomed to being recipients of that salvation that we’ve forgotten whose mercies really determine how that salvation works. We have a tendency to say to God, “We’re the enlightened ones. We’re the inclusive ones. We’ll let you know who truly belongs in your kingdom.” But what we don’t realize is that even our best efforts at being inclusive will always fall short of God’s great and limitless mercies. No matter how wide open our welcome may be, we will inevitably reject some whom God would embrace. Don’t think so? Which political or religious group has members that you find the hardest to love? Whose ideology or platform has convinced you that they are nothing more than an obstacle to God’s reign on the earth? In the end, who do you think gets to decide whom God will love? 

Like the Pharisees, we have a habit of substituting our version of holiness, which we naturally understand to be the fullest possible expression of God’s love, for the real thing. But Jesus shows us that God’s love is always bigger than we think it is. Even if it works on us in reverse, the encounter with the Canaanite mother proves that. Do we really think that Jesus is the one whose vision of God’s kingdom is too small? Do we really believe that we’re the enlightened ones who have it all figured out? The good news of Jesus Christ is that God loves everyone—even those whom we would never imagine that God could love. And, if that truth doesn’t shock us, then we have underestimated not only God’s love for others but God’s love for us as well. As people of faith, as followers of Jesus, we are called to believe that God’s mercies are always bigger than we expect them to be. Otherwise, we can’t know what it means to belong to the one who loves us that same way.

Not Going To Leave Us Now

 

August 9, 2020 – The 10th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 14A

Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

© 2020 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the service can be seen here. (The sermon starts around 23:15)

At the end of his life, Moses stood before the people of Israel and delivered one last pep talk. They had been on quite a journey together. From Egypt, through the Red Sea, and into the wilderness, where on Mt. Sinai God had given them the Law. Then on toward the River Jordan and the land of Canaan, which the people were now prepared to enter. Moses knew that he would not be completing this last leg of the trip with them, and he wanted to leave them with some words of encouragement. “Blessings and curses,” he reminded them. “Those who obey the Lord will be blessed, and those who don’t will be cursed. As long as you remember that, no matter what hardships await you in the land that you are about to enter, God will be with you, and you will be blessed.”

But the people weren’t so sure. There was some murmuring among the crowd as one person whispered to another, “Easy for him to say; he’s Moses! He’s been telling us to obey the Lord our God ever since he came down the mountain, and how has that worked out for us?” But Moses wasn’t finished. “You haven’t made it this far for God to abandon you now. You’ve come all this way and now stand on the edge of the land that has been promised to you. Surely God hasn’t brought you here to leave you now. Quit saying that this commandment is too hard for you. Quit worrying that you’ll never find it. It isn’t up in heaven or across the deep. It’s very near to you—even on your lips and in your heart. Belonging to God isn’t something you accomplish. It’s who you are. All you have to do is remember that, and everything will work out for you.”

More than 1200 years later, the apostle Paul had his own pep talk to write. The Christians in Rome were discouraged. They had come into the church because they had been convinced that the way of Jesus was the way that led to their salvation. But, since then, things had gotten tough. Persecutions were on the rise, and faithful believers were being handed over to the Roman authorities for torture and even death. These nervous Christians were beginning to wonder whether they had made a bad decision—whether choosing the way of Jesus had been a mistake. But Paul wanted them to remember why they had come into the Christian faith in the first place. He wanted them to remember that their salvation wasn’t something that they needed to go and find. It was already very near to them—on their lips and in their hearts. All they had to do was to remember that and to trust that everything would work out for them. But holding onto faith in the midst of struggle isn’t easy. 

To make his point, Paul did something rather remarkable with the story of Israel’s journey through the wilderness. He set up a contrast of ideas—not as a theological conflict but as a temporal dialectic—a tension of experiences in order to convey a fuller truth. In our reading from Romans 10, Paul quotes Moses from two very different moments on the journey from Egypt to Canaan. First, he pulls from Leviticus 18: “The person who does these things will live by them.” Moses had said those words in the shadow of Mt. Sinai. There were part of long list of commandments that God had given God’s people. This was a moment when Israel was still discovering that belonging to God meant behaving in a particular way. But, in the very next sentence, Paul quotes Moses from Deuteronomy 30, when Moses had addressed God’s people at the end of their journey, right before the crossed the River Jordan. That’s when Moses had said, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.” At that point, Israel could look back at their time in the wilderness and know what it meant for God to be with them even when they struggled to do the right things. 

Paul labels the first idea as “the righteousness that comes from the law” and the second as “the righteousness that comes from faith,” but he doesn’t present those ideas as oppositional to one another. He describes them as if they are two moments from the same journey. Having reached the end of their struggles in the wilderness, the people of Israel were able to see that because God’s word was near them—even on their lips and in their hearts—they could do and live by what God asked of them. Paul believed that the same was true for the Christians in Rome. If they could believe that the cross of Jesus had given way to the empty tomb, they could know that God and God’s word would be with them no matter what. If they could believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead, they could maintain their faith in God despite whatever hardships they faced.

How might the same be true for us as well? All we really want is to know that everything will be ok. That’s why we ask our beloved if they really love us. That’s why we seek our parents’ affirmation even after they’ve given it for the 1000th time. That’s why our cat brings in little wiggly presents from the backyard when we come home from vacation. We will do whatever it takes to know that the ones who hold our hearts and lives in their hands will take care of us—that they will shield us from all that threatens us. And only when we’ve come through significant struggles and have seen them prove that their love and protection are certain can we live into the confidence of that certainty. Only then can the relationship between us blossom as one that does not depend upon our attempts to win another’s affection but upon a love that transcends those attempts.

We live in a time when strife, sickness, anxiety, and isolation are mounting. Things aren’t getting better, and it doesn’t seem like they will get better anytime soon. We are desperate to know that, in the end, everything will be ok, and it feels like we’ve reached a point where there’s nothing we can do to convince ourselves that it will be. That’s why we need faith. Having reached the limits of our own efforts, we need to turn back to the one who loves us with a love that has no end. We need to lean on the one whose salvation cannot be broken. We need to rely on the one whose care for us is bigger than our moments of struggle and is founded instead upon goodness and mercy.

Paul knew the transcendent power of believing in Jesus Christ. He knew that Jesus was the ultimate sign of God’s abiding presence and love. He knew that the same God who turned Christ’s death on the cross into a triumph over the grave would save God’s people from all danger because, in Christ, God would be with them always. 

You are one of God’s people. Look back over the journey that you have been a part of—a journey from bondage into freedom, from death into life. As a child of God, you have already travelled with your spiritual ancestors through valleys of great peril into a land of promise and plenty. God has not brought you this far only to abandon you now. You may face dangers and hardships, but you do not face them alone. God is very near to you—on your lips and in your heart. Belonging to God isn’t something that you accomplish. Because of Jesus Christ, it’s who you are. All you have to do is remember that, and everything will work out for you.