Tied Up In Love

“An Active Love”

Matthew 22:34-46

October 23, 2011

            This is my wand.  

             Some of you have already seen it on visits to my office.  Some of you have not.  But this is it.  This is my Harry Potter wand from Ollivanders Wand Shop at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.

            I realize that some people think it’s a bit silly for a woman of my age to have her own wand.  But I love it.  I love it because I love Harry Potter.  I love the books!  I grieved when they came to an end.  I’ve loved the movies as well, especially because the actors in those movies brought the characters to life.

            But I will always love the books the most.  I love them because of their depth and the emotional response that they bring out in me.  But I mainly love them because they are absolutely wonderful stories.  I know that in some circles they have been seen as controversial, even anti-Christian, because the subject matter is about wizards and magic.  But I will proclaim to my dying day that there are no better tales about what is at the heart of our faith than the Harry Potter stories. 

            I say that with all certainty because what is at the heart of these stories is love.  And not just love as sweetness and light, sugar and spice all things nice, but sacrificial love – the power of sacrificial love.  The power of sacrificial love is quite literally imbued within the Harry Potter story from the very beginning to the very end.  It is what saves Harry’s life when he was a baby, making him known as the boy who lived.  It is what saves Harry’s life, and the lives of so many others, at the end. 

            In case you don’t know the basic premise of the Harry Potter stories, here’s a few essential facts.  Harry loses his parents when he was just a baby.  They were murdered by Lord Voldemort, a wizard of great power and great evil.  As I said Harry’s mother, Lily, sacrificed herself to save Harry.  When Voldemort tried to kill him, Harry survived.  Voldemort was reduced to almost nothing.  Not dead, but not alive either.

            Harry doesn’t know he’s a wizard until age 11, when he is given an invitation to attend Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  From this point on his life is irrevocably changed.  In each book he is tested in a new way. Voldemort is trying to regain life and power.  And Harry must contend with this threat at every twist and turn of his journey.  Not only does he have to deal with Voldemort, Harry must also cope with doubts, ridicule, and ostracism from his classmates and others.  His home life with his muggle (that’s non-magic folk to the unenlightened) aunt and uncle is downright abusive.  And he’s not without his own self-doubt and fears. 

            But from the beginning to the end love is there.  It is the one thing that Voldemort underestimates.  Because he does not know love, he cannot understand how or why it motivates others – even those who seem to be loyal to him. 

            In the end Harry must sacrifice himself in order to stop Voldemort.  Just as his mother was willing to sacrifice herself to save him, Harry willingly sacrifices himself to save everyone else.  Why?  Love.

            Love is the answer that Jesus gives to the Pharisees in today’s passage from Matthew.  Love of God, love of neighbor, love of self.  At the very core of our faith lies love.

            We are at the last of the questions asked of Jesus in today’s passage.  From this point on the die is cast.  Jesus is heading to the cross.  He knows it, but still he doesn’t shy away from taking on tough questions.

            Yet today’s question doesn’t feel as tough as the others have.  Well let me rephrase that.  Today’s answer doesn’t feel as tough.  I have to be honest.  When I saw that this was the passage for this week, I breathed a sigh of relief.  The issues in Matthew’s gospel the last few weeks have been intense to say the least. 

            So I think preachers everywhere gave a loud cry of joy when they read that Jesus answered this final question with a word about love.  Because who doesn’t want to preach about love?  I mean this should be the easiest sermon ever, right?  It’s all about love.

            Note to self.  Amy, remember please that whenever you think that you’re going to have an easy time with a sermon because you think the topic is easy, than you’re setting yourself up for problems. 

            Love is a wonderful topic, but easy?  No, it’s not easy. 

            It should be, I guess.  We should love as easily and as naturally as we breathe.  But we don’t.  At least we don’t love in the way that Jesus spoke of. 

            I know I’ve preached this to you before, and I’m sure I’ll preach it again and again, but the love that Jesus referred to is not a sentimental love.  It is not the warm gushy kind of love.  He was not telling the Pharisees to go out and give big bear hugs to everyone they meet because they just love everybody.  That’s not the kind of love that he was talking about.

            When Jesus, and likewise Paul, spoke about love, they were talking about love as a verb. Love as an action.  Love as a way of being and doing.  They were not speaking about the emotion of love.  They were not talking about the love we see epitomized in romance novels and, what my husband calls, “Chick Flicks.”  This isn’t even the kind of love I feel when I look at my children sleeping.  Jesus spoke of an active love.  A love that was, that is, proactive. 

            The Pharisees have heard that Jesus silenced the Saducees, so now they’re giving it one more shot.  They gather together, supposedly to formulate a plan.  One of the Pharisees is a lawyer, so he decides to ask Jesus a question that will test him.

            “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

            As usual Jesus knows what they’re up to.  He answers, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

            The Pharisees were so astounded by his answer and his next words about David, that they went away, unable to ask him any more questions, but perfectly able to plot the death of this man and his troublesome ways and his troublesome talk about love.

Because love, as Jesus spoke of it, is troublesome.  Love in this context doesn’t just require us to feel something.  It requires us to do something. 

This past week I read a commentary on this text by two preachers.   They took on the idea of being spiritual versus being religious.  Being spiritual, they claimed, is easy.  Their argument was that people who claimed spirituality over religion are those who simply want to feel loving.  It’s easy to say “I’m a spiritual person.  I love God, but I don’t want to get bogged down in all that religious stuff.” 

That puts spirituality on an amorphous plane.  It doesn’t require anything but warm fuzzies on our part.  So it is easy, say these preachers, to be spiritual.  It is easy, in this way, to love God. 

But loving our neighbor?  That’s the challenge.  And that’s where they took up the call to be religious.

The word religious comes from the word legare which means to be tied, to be bound.  Our word ligament also comes from legare.  What do ligaments do? They hold our bones, our muscles, our joints together.  Extrapolating from this means then that religion binds us together.  It ties us to one another and to God.  I can understand how some people see this as challenging at best.  We don’t always like the implications of being tied to one another. 

But think about those ties in terms of love.  Active love.  Loving our neighbor as ourselves means that we are tied in love to one another.  The other’s welfare is equally as important as our own.  We are called to do acts of love for one another.  Our community meal this afternoon is an example of that.  What do we get in return for feeding the hungry in our community?  We don’t get money.  We don’t get membership.  We may feel good for having done it, but ultimately what we get doesn’t matter.  It is what we give.  It is what we do.  We feed the hungry because it is right.  We love the hungry actively.  We love our neighbor as ourselves because we are tied to one another.  Even when those we’re trying to love seem unloveable.  Even when loving them is the most difficult thing we can do.  That’s the kind of love Jesus was talking about. 

And the good news is that when we love one another in this way, we’re also loving God.  Jesus wasn’t drawing lines of demarcation between these loves.  I don’t think he was creating a hierarchy of love.  Instead I think he was trying to show the Pharisees and anyone else with ears to listen that when we love God, we love God’s children.  And when we love God’s children, we love God.  Legare.  Tied.  Love. 

We are called to love actively, to work for the good of others, even as we hope others work for our good as well.  We are called to make love a verb, not just leave it as a noun.  We are called to tie ourselves up in the legare of love.  Because God is tied up in love with us.  Alleluia.  Amen.

Thanks to WorkingPreacher.org and The Text This Week for their resources.

Speak Freely. Listen Responsibly.

A while back there was an article circulating on Facebook about a controversial t-shirt for girls sold at JC Penney stores.  It wasn't controversial in that the t-shirt was too skimpy or revealing.  It raised eyebrows and blood pressures because of the message it proclaimed.

"I'm too pretty to do my homework, so my brother does it for me."

I was outraged by this.  So were a lot of other people, parents and otherwise.  The anger was so great and widespread that it forced JC Penney to pull the shirts off their shelves.  It seems obvious to me that the message the shirt conveyed was negative and degrading to females.  The last thing I want my impressionable, almost adolescent daughter thinking is that she doesn't need brains as long as she's pretty and can entice males to do her work for her.

I realize that the t-shirt message falls under the heading Freedom of Expression.  A right that we're guaranteed under the First Amendment.  Freedom of Expression includes freedom of religion, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly.  I don't have a problem with free expression.  My sermons, this blog, what I read, what I write, what I watch -- free expression all.

But freedom doesn't negate responsibility does it?  I don't think so.  If anything, it requires more responsibility rather than less.  JC Penney had to learn this the hard way.  Selling that t-shirt, even though it expressed a free opinion, brought consequences.

Tonight I perused Facebook and saw a video shared by a dear friend.  The video was made in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on the Environment in Rio de Janeiro.   In this video a young woman named Severn Suzuki from Canada gave a speech to the delegates gathered there.  Suzuki was no more than 13 years old, approximately the same age my daughter is now.  She introduced herself as a member of the ECO -- the Environmental Children's Organization.  Then she proceeded to give a heartfelt, impassioned and eloquent speech on how the grown ups of the world were failing her generation and the generations to come.

Their actions or lack of action were killing the environment and quite literally putting the world at peril.  She called them to task for forgetting that their first responsibility was to the children they were called to protect.  Suzuki reminded them that not only were they the representatives for their countries, but they were also parents.  Their children, the world's children needed them to step up, take responsibility and do the right thing so that she and future children would have at least a shot.  The grownups, according to Suzuki, were not practicing what they taught.  Even kindergartners are taught to share, to play nicely, to treat others with respect, to take care of the world around them, to clean up their mess.  The same adults who teach those values to their children don't live by them in the rest of their lives.  The word "hypocrite" was not used explicitly, but the implication was there.

While the entire speech was powerful, I found one statement profoundly moving.

"If you can't fix it, stop breaking it."

We can't necessarily undo the damage we've done to the world around us, but we can stop making it more broken.

It was an amazing speech.  A beautiful moment.  She held the attention of hundreds of people.  And this conference resulted in the Rio Declaration, a statement on how countries around the world would act to take care of the globe.

But here's the thing about free speech and freedom of expression.  It seems to me that we have to claim responsibility for what we say AND what we hear.  We don't seem to know how to clean up our messes any better today than we did in 1992.  We are living out the consequences of climate change.  We haven't stopped breaking what we don't know how to fix. 

What are the consequences of Severn Suzuki's free speech?  What are the consequences of our not listening?

The Things That Are God's

“The Things That Are God’s”

Matthew 22:15-22

October 16, 2011

            In a performance at the Metropolitan Opera House back in the early 90’s, Robin Williams – yes, I said Robin Williams – told a variation on an old joke.  “How do you get to the Met?” 

Maybe you’ve heard it.  How do you get to the Met? 

Practice, practice, practice. 

But Robin’s version goes something like this.  How do you get to the Met? 

Money!  Lots and lots of money!

I thought perhaps telling a light hearted joke might help to get us started as we move into a topic that most of us don’t like to talk about.  Especially in church. 

That’s money.

One of the ways I prepare for my sermons these days is to listen to a weekly podcast on the lectionary passages called Sermon Brainwave.  Professors and pastors from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota discuss the upcoming week’s scripture and their conversation gives insights and ideas about the different passages for pastors like me trying to figure out how to understand and interpret God’s word for us. 

            One of the professors, Rolf Jacobsen, made the comment in reference to these verses from Matthew that he would like to hear a preacher talk about money in church on a Sunday when he or she wasn’t actually asking for money.  And if you think about it, most of the time, we preachers don’t like to broach the subject of money unless its stewardship Sunday, which my intern supervisor referred to as his annual passing of the hat sermon.

            So when I heard that comment, I thought, “I’ll take that challenge.  I’ll talk about money especially because I don’t have to ask for it.”  Plus the fact that I’m still pretty new here and you still like me. 

            So let’s talk about it.  Let’s talk about money.  Jesus certainly didn’t shy away from discussing it.  Considering the current global economic climate and the Occupy Wall Street protests that are happening around the world, I can’t imagine a more important discussion to have.

            So what do we say about money?  It seems to me that the most comprehensive statement I can make is that all of our lives are driven by money.

            That is not meant as a condemnation on my part.  Saying that we’re driven by money isn’t an implication that we’re all motivated by greed or avarice.  Nor am I hinting that we are mercenary about money.  But we are driven by it.  How can we not be?  Like it or not, money is essential for surviving.  We all know that it can be a cold, tough world out there and without money, it’s even colder and tougher. 

            Again, I make the assertion that we are, like it or not, driven by money.  It is a reality of our lives.  You need a certain amount of money just to survive.  If you don’t have it, survival is more than just a basis for a reality show.  I get enough calls every week asking for assistance with utilities and rent to know how necessary having money is, and, more importantly, what it means not to have it.

            The topic of money is certainly at the heart of this passage. And from that flows the idea of priorities.  But one informs the other.  That becomes the question that is put to Jesus.

One of the commentators on Sermon Brainwave likened the combination of the Pharisees and Herodians to Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner teaming up together to take on a common enemy.  That common enemy was Jesus.  They knew that Jesus was a threat to them so they devised a question to snare him.

The question was about Roman taxes, one tax in particular.  It was the Roman census or the “head tax” that was instituted when Judea became a Roman province.  The tax was not only considered unfair, it went against Torah.  The land of Israel belonged to God alone.  Since Caesar was a usurper, paying the tax was considered an act of disobedience to God.

The Torah forbade any graven images.  The coins used to pay the tax, the coins the Pharisees produced to show Jesus at his request, bore the image of Caesar.  The hypocrisy of that, having a coin like in this in the holiest of places, was not lost on Jesus. 

But their trap was set.  If Jesus said “yes,” that paying the tax was lawful, then the common people opposed to Roman occupation would surely turn on him.  And if Jesus said “no,” that it was lawful to pay the tax then they had reason to haul him to Pontius Pilate right there and then.  Either way their plan to get rid of him would not only be set in motion, but essentially accomplished for them.

Jesus, as usual, sees through these kinds of questions.  He knows what they are doing.  He names what they’re doing and he names them. 
            “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?’

Then he brilliantly redefines the question.  He calls for a coin, looks at it, and asks, “Whose head is this and whose title?” 

When they answer, “The emperor’s,” he responds “Then give to the emperor what is his and to God what is God’s.”

Or as many of us heard it translated growing up, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”

I have often heard this passage interpreted as helpful guidance for believers trying to find their way in a complex world.  Just decide what is Caesar’s and what is God’s then give them what you’re supposed to give them.  Simple, right? 

It has certainly been used as justification for the separation of Church and State. 

See, even Jesus implies that there is a dividing line between them.  The two should not mix.  Keep them separated.

But thinking about the context and the culture of the time, I doubt that a reader of the gospel would have thought in those terms.  To a Jewish listener, they would have assumed that everything belongs to God.  Even the tax paid to Caesar.  That belongs to God.  Heck, let’s face it, even Caesar ultimately belonged to God. 

So the idea that God and State were two entirely different entities would have made no sense to a person at that time.  Religion, faith, God was the underlying factor of all things, all life.  Politics included.

            It seems to me that Jesus would have been well aware of this.  I’m not so sure then that this was just a way to give a set of rules for how to prioritize one’s life.  Nor was it just cleverness on his part at outthinking the religious forces trying to entrap him.  It was Jesus, doing what he often did, putting the question back on them.  Forcing them to ask for themselves what the answer might be. 

            And in so reading this, the question is now put back on us as well.  What belongs to God?  What belongs to Caesar?

            But before we answer all too glibly, “Well everything, duh,” think about it.  Really think about it.  What belongs to God?  What belongs to Caesar? 

            If it’s true that our money and all that we have and everything that we are belongs to God, do we actually live that?

            Professor David Lose says that perhaps the best thing we can do is to say “I don’t know.  What do you think?”  And that’s not to worm out of giving an answer, it’s to honestly say, I don’t know.  Your answer, your thoughts, your ideas are as meaningful as mine.

            I know that just making a separate check list of what belongs in which category doesn’t really work.  In theory it should.  I’ve tried.  But in reality, those kinds of categories are ambiguous at best.    

            And I think that brings us back to the issue of money.  Because it is how we spend our money, how we use our money that can give an insight into how we prioritize our lives in relation to what belongs to God.  I make a big deal of buying coffee that is Fair Trade and organic.  It’s important to me to do this because a close friend from seminary spent a year in Nicaragua and returned with horror stories about the terrible things done to the workers at coffee plantations.  Her stories convicted me that buying coffee that was grown and traded justly was the only way to go.  So I do everything I can to buy Fair Trade. 

            But even as I say that, I don’t know who made the clothes I’m wearing this morning.  I can tell you where I bought them.  I can tell you how much I paid for them.  But I don’t know who made them.  Were they created and sewn in sweat shops?  Quite possibly.  But my money bought these clothes.  My money is used to support systems of injustice.  The Roman occupation was unjust, and the taxes levied against the people were oppressive.  They were the early forms of the austerity measures we hear about today.  They harmed the people who could least afford it.  Yet paying those taxes or refusing to pay those taxes meant the difference between life and death. 

I could not, in good faith, stand in this pulpit today and encourage any of us to not pay our taxes.  It’s a reality of life. 

            I think Jesus recognized this.  But he wasn’t afraid to ask the larger question about where all of this fits into what we owe God. 

            As David Lose said, “I don’t know.  What do you think?” 

            It is easy to say everything.  But it is much harder to live that out.  It’s hard to do that with my time, with my talents and with my money.  I know that I owe God everything, but Casear takes up the majority of my time and my income.

            So I am left with ambiguity.  What are the things that are God’s?  William Willimon talked about it as dis-ease, that maybe the best we can take from this passage is a sense of unease about the tightrope we walk between the world and the kingdom.  Yet the good news is, and I think there is always good news to be found, is that even the realm of Caesar lies in the larger realm of God.  So let’s talk about these things.  Let’s talk about money.  Let’s talk about how we prioritize.  Let’s talk about it, knowing that the ultimate good news is that we have the ability, even more the responsibility, to do so; to ask the hard questions and to know that God is with us always as we live into the answers.  Alleluia!  Amen.

               

           

Why My Church Rocks or Whee Shawnee!

Well I asked for it, and I got it.  On my most recent Facebook status I asked for suggestions for blog topics.  I received one serious minded one about the responsibilities of free speech.  That is one I will attempt to speak to (no pun intended) in the near future.  Thanks to a high school buddy for that one.  I was also encouraged to write about how awesome my new church is.  Thanks to a parishioner and pastor nominating committee member for that one. Believe it or not, I even came up with a completely separate idea on my own.  Go figure. 

Unless linear time stops tomorrow, I'll be able to get to these topics and any other ones that come my way.  And knowing my Facebook friends, I'll have plenty more topics to choose from. 

I thought, though, that since I've spent a lot of time writing about the past and saying goodbye and homesickness, et. al. (and probably ad nauseum), I should also give some time to the new thing that I am doing and the hopeful future I see before me.

I am the soon-to-be installed Pastor of United Presbyterian Church in Shawnee, OK.  And yes, it is, officially, having passed all the state required tests, an awesome church!  If there is, indeed, a scale or chart for church awesomeness, than Shawnee has rocketed off it.  

I hear you talking amongst yourselves.  "Why" you want to know.  "Is this really an awesome church or is this just the honeymoon glow talking?"

Certainly I am in a honeymoon phase with my new congregation.  People are glad to have me here, along with my family.  I still seem new and fresh and exciting.  The sermon ideas continue to flow, although some Sundays my creativity seems to eke out more as a trickle than a rushing stream.  But so far, so good.

And it is the same for me with the congregation.  Their excitement feeds me.  They are committed to the life of the church and to the life of this community.  I cannot help but admire their commitment, not just to keeping the doors open, but to really doing ministry and living out their faith.

One of the reasons I think this church is awesome is because they have been living, breathing hospitality.  One couple gave me a home when I first got here and adopted me into the family.  Moving day brought help, groceries and dinner for the evening.  We've been invited to lunch, provided with meals, given tickets to the theater, and had more offers of help with moving and getting settled than I could possibly have imagined. The members have not only been concerned with my well being, but they are mindful of the well-being of my family.  That means more than I can say.

Most importantly, I think Shawnee is awesome, not because it's perfect, but because it truly is a call.  My call.  I was told from the very first moment of the interview process that the church has seen hard times.  There have been conflicts and declining numbers.  The church building is beautiful but old and in great need of repair.  Like every smaller church out there, Presbyterian or otherwise, finances are an issue.  So, no, the church is not perfect.  It has its flaws and foibles and failings like any other congregation.  Like any individual.   Like me.  Yet we're a fit.  A match. 

The Church Leadership Connection of the PC(USA) did its job well.  But then again, so did the Holy Spirit.  Thinking about why I love my new church reminds me that the Spirit has worked in my life in countless ways and at countless times.  At every good moment and in every low point, the Spirit has been there.  I haven't always recognized it or been willing to acknowledge its presence.  But I'm grateful nonetheless. 

United Presbyterian Church of Shawnee, OK

Y'all Come!

“An Invitation”

Matthew 22:1-14

October 9, 2011

            There is a show on E television called Fashion Police.  It originally only aired after the major awards shows; The Oscars, The Emmys, The Golden Globes, etc.  Joan Rivers, Kelly Osborne and two other fashionistas review the fashion choices of celebrities at different events and discuss them in an intelligent and thoughtful way. 

            (long, long, long, pause)

            Wrong! 

            The words intelligent and thoughtful don’t really suit the show Fashion Police.  Shallow, silly, racy.  Those are better words.  With Joan Rivers’ tasteless jokes taking the lead, the humor is often inappropriate to say the least.  More often than not it’s just downright raunchy.  But, just like reading People at the dentist’s office, Fashion Police is a guilty pleasure.  Obviously I know about it, because I’ve watched it a time or two.  Fans watch it to see what styles the fashionistas don’t like as much as what they do.  And trust me, when they don’t like something, they really don’t like it.  If I were a celeb and heard such scathing reviews of my outfits, I’d be afraid to go to the grocery store much less walk the red carpet at an event again. 

            But even Joan Rivers' put downs about a celeb’s fashion choice seem mild compared to what happens to the wedding guest who isn’t wearing his wedding robe at the feast.  As far as I know no celeb has been bound, hand and foot, and thrown into the outer darkness for wearing tacky heels and a too short skirt. 

            But that’s what happens to this guest at the wedding banquet of the king’s son.  This particular part of the story is according to one commentator, “a parable within a parable.”  And even though it comes at the end of the story, it’s certainly what we seem to remember most vividly about the entire story Jesus tells.  So it seems fitting, no pun intended, to start with the clothing.

            I’ve learned that clothing in a parable like this one doesn’t just mean fashion choices.  Clothing represents change.  The guest who showed up without a wedding robe responded to the invitation of the king but hadn’t made any significant changes.  Hence the king responds with such terrible retribution.  You wouldn’t think that not wearing a wedding robe to a banquet that you didn’t expect to be invited to in the first place would bring such a horrible punishment, would you?  But that’s what happens.  The king orders that he be tied up and thrown out.  It is a violent ending to a story of violence.

            And that takes us to what else really bothers us about this parable.  The violence.  There is a similar story of a banquet in Luke’s gospel.  But Matthew’s telling takes the story to a new and really frightening level.

            As in the other parables that Jesus has been telling in Matthew, it begins with “the kingdom of heaven …” 

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.” 

It could almost be the beginning of a fairy tale.  But what happens after this is not the stuff of fairy tales.  The king sent out his slaves to bring the folks who had been invited to the feast.  But the folks would not come.  In Luke’s gospel the guests offer excuses.  I can’t come because I just bought some land and I have to go out and see it.  I can’t come because I have five new oxen and I have to try them out.  I can’t come because I just got married and I have to stay home.

But there are no excuses offered by the original guests in Matthew’s telling.  They just don’t respond at all to the servants.  They just won’t come.

Then the king sends the slaves out again.  Basically the king instructs his people to tell the guests that the feast is ready.  Supper’s on the table.  Essentially it was the king’s way of saying “y’all come.” 

This is the king we’re talking about.  This isn’t a neighborhood potluck.  It’s an invitation from the king.  You would think that this announcement would have brought the invited guests running to the party, but two of the guests made light of the invitation and went on their way.  The other guests seized the slaves.  They mistreated them.  They tortured them.  They killed them. 

This is an unexpectedly violent response to an invitation to a feast, especially when the invitation comes from the king.  It is understandable that the king is furious at the treatment of his servants.  But the king’s response is unnerving as well.  The king sends his troops who destroy the murderers and burn their cities.  Think about that.  The servants are killed by the guests.  The murdering guests are killed by the troops.  It’s horribly violent. 

If we were reading a novel or watching this as a movie, we’d expect this to turn into an all-out war.  But once the murderers have been murdered, the king tells more servants that the wedding feast is still on.  The ones who were invited originally were not worthy.  So now they are instructed to go to every major intersection, every major thoroughfare, every main street and invite the people there.  Gather every person you can find, both good and bad, so that the wedding hall will be filled with guests. 

The people come.  The hall is filled.  The wedding banquet is full.  Everything should be fine, right?  No.  Not even close.  Now we’re back to where we started.  The king arrives in the hall to see the guests and he sees this one guest without a robe.  He questions him about it. There’s a hint of sarcasm in the king’s use of the word, friend.  “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?”  The hapless guest is speechless.  So the king orders his attendants to tie the guy up and throw him out.  And we are left with the final word, “For many are called, but few are chosen.” 

Had the parable ended with the inviting of all the guests, as it does in Luke, I think we could have overlooked the violence that happened early on.  Instead it ends with more judgment, more violence.  And a statement from Jesus that is, quite frankly, terrifying.  What does this mean?  What do we do with this?

  I don’t think we can fully understand this parable without understanding the context in which Jesus is telling it.  And as I’ve said in previous sermons, I think we have to be careful to keep this as a parable rather than see it allegorically. 

If you’ve been paying attention the last few weeks, you’ve probably noticed that the parables Jesus tells are getting tougher and tougher.  But let’s think about where he is.  He is in Jerusalem.  He is headed to the cross.  He knows what lies ahead.  He knows the consequences for his words and he’s ready to take them.  Jesus is willing to die.  Jesus knows that death is upon him, so what does he have to lose?  When you think about it in those terms, it’s understandable that his parables have a razor sharp edge to them.  If I knew for a fact that I was going to die soon, than I would not mince my words.  I would say what I have to say and I wouldn’t think about the cost of those words.  I would just say them. 

It seems to me that this is where Jesus is as well.  I don’t mean to imply that Jesus was not honest in his stories before this time.  But they have taken on an intense urgency.  In other words, Jesus is saying, “Look folks, the time is upon us.  Here is the kingdom of heaven.  Here is the invitation to come along.  Do you accept or don’t you?”

That’s what this wedding banquet really is, isn’t it?  An invitation.  An invitation to be a part of this great feast that is being served in our midst.  And the invitation is urgent.  Come now.  The food is on the table.  Everything is ready.  Will you join us or not?

When the original guests don’t respond.  When, in fact, they turn on the servants of the king, new guests are invited.  Anyone from anywhere can join the feast.  Certainly we can understand this call as inclusion of all people.  No longer is the banquet restricted.  All are invited.  This is the finale of Luke’s telling of this parable.  But Matthew’s gospel is an intense gospel and he doesn’t leave it at that. 

All are included in the invitation.  But our response still matters.  The clothes we wear count.

This seems to fly in the face of how we understand salvation and grace.  We affirm wholeheartedly that we cannot earn our way to heaven.  It is grace alone.  Yet our response counts too.

Sharon Ringe, Professor of New Testament at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. holds this part of Matthew’s parable in tension with James, chapter 2, as well as Paul’s affirmation that we are entirely dependent on God’s grace.  We are saved by grace alone, yet our faith is also shown in our “works.” 

According to Ringe, “My suggestion about the reason for James' position is that Paul's costly and radical notion of faith as the commitment of one's entire life may have become watered down to a matter of intellectual belief or emotional trust that does not bring one's behavior into play. It seems to me that Matthew is in the same place that we find James. He affirms the boundless generosity and inclusive reach of God's grace, but he also affirms that for us to be "worthy" of God's gift requires nothing less than our whole life.”

Nothing less than our whole life.

It seems to me that the guest who accepted the invitation but didn’t wear the proper clothing was like one who commits himself in word alone.  I’ll accept the invitation.  I’ll show up at the banquet.  But I won’t give my whole heart.  I won’t commit my whole life.  I won’t wear the proper clothes. 

I’m old enough to remember what Sunday best was.  There were some clothes you only wore on Sundays.  They were your best clothes and they were saved for the Sabbath day.  As a child that meant dresses, special socks with lace around the trim, shoes that my dad polished every Sunday, a special locket I was only allowed to wear on Sunday and sometimes little gloves. 

And my attire was nothing compared to what some of the people wore.  The finery in my childhood church on a Sunday morning was a sight to behold.  But as I got older I began to realize that the Sunday best stopped with the clothing.  Many people accepted the invitation to come to the feast, but few of them seemed to really understand what it meant to give their whole life.

I’m not sure that I fully understand or live that either.  But I know that an invitation has been issued.  I know that the moment is urgent.  And I know that our response counts.  Will we accept?  Will we come to the feast?  Will we make the changes necessary to give our whole selves in response?  What clothes do we wear?  Amen.

Saying Goodbye

The drive from Dubuque, Iowa to Decorah, Iowa was rainy and seemed to take forever.  I drove my electric blue/purple Neon with my not-quite-two-year-old daughter, Phoebe, in the back seat.  My husband drove his blue Subaru with our dog Boris in the back seat.  We had been on the road two full days, driving from our former home south of Albany, New York.  And this day, the third day, technically the shortest driving day of them all, seemed the longest.

We were leaving everything and everyone we knew back in New York to move to a town we hoped would be a welcoming place to raise a family.  We also hoped that the tales of the long, cold, snowy winters were slightly exaggerated.  We were right about the first part.  Decorah was a welcoming place to raise a family, but let's just say we didn't escape the cold and the snow while living there.  Snow from November (if you're lucky) to April (if you're really lucky) and mornings with temps that hovered at 40 below.  That's without windchill.  Of course at that point who cares about windchill? 

Now we've moved again.  As I write this my children are in various stages of grief over the move.  I understand.  I've grieved with every move I've made -- leaving Nashville, leaving Richmond, leaving Maryland, leaving New York and now leaving Iowa.

I know that the grief is necessary.  We have to go through it.  We think our hearts will break with the weight of it.  As I told a friend, it's like the game, "Going On a Bear Hunt," that I used to love playing as a kid.  Grief is something you can't go over.  You can't go around it.  You can't go under it.  You have to go through it.

We're grieving because we're looking back.  When the moving truck had finally taken every piece of furniture and various and sundry stuff, our house was so empty it echoed.  But just because the stuff is gone doesn't mean that the memories are.

When we finally got to the house that rainy fall day, Phoebe and Boris ran joyfully back and forth across the the length of the living room, relieved at being out of the car.  A little less than a year later, we brought our new baby Zach home from the hospital.  We set up tents in the living room for winter "camping" and had picnics on the back porch.  We celebrated birthdays, argued over how big the Christmas tree really needed to be, argued a little more when the too big tree fell during the night, hosted sleepovers and curled up in front of the wood stove on snowy days.

We've mourned the loss of family pets.  Our beloved Boris died two years ago and we held a memorial service for him, Fiona the ferret and Nolan the hamster in the backyard, complete with a 21 Nerf gun salute.  And we've mourned the loss of loved ones, family, friends and parishioners.

It's hard for all of us not to look back and wonder if we've done the right thing leaving our home, the only one that Phoebe and Zach have ever known.  But I also know that we have so much to look forward to.  As I said in my sermon this past Sunday, my family has one foot in the past, one foot in the future, and the present is surrounded by boxes.  Our new house is more like a vacation spot for cardboard right now than a home.  

But hard-won experience has taught me that we will, eventually, get settled.  Our world, so chaotic and unsettled right now, will fall back into place -- a different place, a new place, but a place nonetheless.  We'll make new friends and new memories.  Life, wonderfully, inexorably, unceasingly, goes on.

                                                                   

Our house in Decorah, Iowa