The pastures of compassion

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Psalm 100
Ephesians 1:15-23
Matthew 25:31-46

Where is all this going?  All this organized activity, all this material and cultural production, all these institutions of education, government agencies, commercial enterprises, courts of law, military, medical, and religious organizations, in short everything that we call “the modern world” or “civilized society”—what is it all for?  Suppose we say that its purpose is to establish a just, peaceful, and prosperous world order.   Who gets to decide what is justice, what is peace, and prosperity?  How can we tell whether we are getting closer to them or further away?  And if it happens, as U.S. public opinion polls show, that a majority of our citizens believe that we are “on the wrong track”, what are the standards to guide us, how do we find the bearings for charting a better course?

It  is  a measure of  the superficiality  of  most  of what passes for  politics in the world  today  that these  questions are  at the margins of the  debate,  if they enter it at all.  But as Christians we have no choice but to ask them.  When we acclaim, as in the collect prayer that began this liturgy, that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords, we are giving him a political   title.  We are saying that there are answers to these questions about the ultimate end of human society, and the means to get there.   We are saying that those answers are found in him.  

The story that Matthew’s gospel gives us today tells us that entrance into Christ’s kingdom requires answers so radically different from the conventional wisdom, so unlike any that had ever been given before, that it represents a parting of the ways.    Those for whom these answers are true, who make them central to their  identity  and action and  sense of purpose, are going to  be as different from everyone else  as sheep are from goats.

We tend to think of standing before the throne of judgment as an individual act.   But the Gospel is quite clear—The Son of Man will come to judge the nations.    All of this is consistent with the idea of election found in the Hebrew scriptures—God chooses a holy nation.  His covenant of salvation is with the entire people and he gives them the law to set them apart from the nations around them.   Their greatness is not to be measured by the conventional standards of military conquests, or the pomp and splendor of their rulers, by magnificence of their palaces, fortresses, and cathedrals, or the cultural refinements of their elites.  Their nation will be judged by its faithfulness to the God of creation and their scrupulous observance of the law.  

But the Son of Man in the gospel goes further—he judges with no partiality at all.   Israel is not mentioned in this passage, either with prejudice or approval.   His standard of judgment has no more to do with religious purity or pious belief than with valor in battle or ethnic superiority.    The Kingdom of which he is the Lord is not the successor of any existing political entity or cultural system, but is the inheritance of what was already present and active at the creation of the world.   It is rooted in the wisdom through which God made all things and pronounced them good, and fashioned men and women in the image of God. 

The Son of Man comes to judge the nations and his standard of judgment will be his own incarnation.   He is that same man of flesh and blood, who was poor, who was without honor in his own home town, who ministered to the sick and the sinful and the demon-possessed, and who identified himself with them to the point of being condemned as a criminal dying on a cross.  

On Wednesday a dozen or so of us from St. John’s went to breakfast at the Veteran’s Memorial Hall.  We came at the invitation of the Committee on the Shelterless, or COTS, a local agency that provides food, shelter, and supportive services for homeless children and adults.   The understood purpose of the gathering was to raise money, but my experience was that there was a spiritual purpose t0 it as well.    John Records,  COTS’  Executive Director, began the  morning’s program by  describing the daunting  challenges of these time—a   40% increase in homelessness  in  Sonoma  County in the last three years, Federal and State funding that is disappearing, possibly  never to return,  a  waiting list  for beds at the COTS shelter  that stretches into  the months.

But he also spoke of something that I think we all felt as we looked around us at the 600 other people crowded into that room, and that was hope.   He spoke of a dark time in his own life, a time when he was close to giving up, and of the people whose love and caring helped him to find purpose in his life again.   He spoke of the joy and the meaning he has found in becoming one of those people for others, one who offers hope.  A few minutes later one of the COTS members came out, a man who became homeless after an auto accident that put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and he told similar kind of story.   He spoke of his achievements of the last year, how he is now renting his own apartment and attending community college, and how he now serves as a mentor for newer members of the COTS program.   

But the most extraordinary thing he said was that if he could go back and live his life over, and never have the accident that cost him the use of his legs and put him out on the street, he would not do it.   He said that he wouldn’t change anything.  His testimony was to a greater hope than “rehabilitation”, a hope that goes beyond becoming once again a “fully-functioning member of society.”    It is a hope that I think all of us share, even if don’t think about it much, even if we are well and securely housed, gainfully employed, and meet the standard definition of “able-bodied.”

It is the hope that in the wisdom of God suffering is not a curse to be lifted but can be a strange kind of gift.  Our wounds are also the openings through which compassion comes to us from others, and through which our compassion goes out to them.  The places where we are broken are also the places where the barriers break that separate us from other people.  The whole blessing of our humanity, which includes sorrow and anguish and death, is to hold out the hope of living in a world where we actually trust each other.  It is to look for the triumph of a new kind of power that does not victimize the vulnerable, or ostracize the sick, or punish the erring.   It is the hope for a new and redeemed humanity and for life in a just and holy nation. 

God’s promise is to establish that kingdom, where He himself will be our shepherd.  She has prepared it from the foundation of the world.    It is present among us now, as the gift of Christ’s own flesh and blood.   Not for us who are pious.   Not for us who say “I thank thee, Lord, that I am not like other men” and “there but for the grace of God go I” but for us who say, “I thirst” and “my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”   Not for us proud who confide in our own strength, but for us who are poor, who are meek, who mourn, who are merciful, who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. 

Jesus’ last words from the cross echo his first teachings from the Sermon on the Mount.   And they remain the words on which the world’s salvation turns.   Are we to go with the goats down into the maelstrom of never ending violence, cruelty, competition, exploitation of the earth and the poor?  Or are we to go with the sheep, to feed on the pasture of God’s compassion, on God’s coming to be among us as one who suffers, as one who serves, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords?

Don't bury your precious gifts

Judges 4:1-7
Psalm 123
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

We are coming close to the end.  Two more Sundays and the church year is over.     This ending coincides (at least in Northern Hemisphere) with the end of the solar year, and the descent of the earth into the darkness of winter.    The lectionary, the cycle of scripture readings which for the last year has guided us in its meandering but logical course through the story of Jesus as it is told in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, now asks us to think about the end.  The end--or is it the beginning? 

 In the Godly Play Sunday school room we teach a lesson called the Circle of the Church Year, and the material for the lesson is a circular calendar made of wood that looks kind of like a clock.  And lying on top of the calendar around the face of the clock is a gold-colored cord.   When we are about to tell the story we take that cord and ball it up inside of one fist.  Then we begin by holding up the fist and pulling one end of the cord out very slowly.   And we say that people sometimes speak of time as if it was a line.  Time in a line.    But then we point out that as the cord gets longer the part that was the first to come out of the fist is now the oldest part and there is a new newest part coming out all the time.    Eventually we come to the end, which is the newest part of all.  Then we ask the children, “do you know what the church did?” and then we tie the ends of the cord together to make a circle, so the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end.

The Christian hope is that every end is also a beginning,   In Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians, he reminds the church that what we wait and watch for is not nightfall, but day.   It will come suddenly, like the onset of labor that says “ready or not, here comes the baby.”   In Matthew’s  Gospel, when Jesus’ is walking out of the Jerusalem temple for the last time,  and  his ministry is at an end but for his anointing for burial, and a last Passover meal with his friends, and his suffering, and his death, his disciples choose that moment to ask him about the end of the world.    He gives them a long answer, the last of the five great discourses in Matthew that began with the Sermon on the Mount.  He foretells a time of trial, upheaval, of persecution for the church and suffering for all the earth, which he also likens to “birth pangs.”  For the end will also be an advent, an arrival, a coming, a coming back, a coming to be with forever.   

The other thing that Jesus says about this end that is also a beginning is also echoed by Paul —don’t bother trying to predict the time.   It will come upon us suddenly like birth pangs, or like lightning that strikes in the east and lights up the sky as far as the west.    You will know it when it happens, so those who announce it ahead of time are to be distrusted.  That is what false prophets do.   The anticipation of the end is not about getting there first.   It is not about timing our sprint to the finish line.   It is about living every day, every lifetime, in a state of readiness.  It is about being fully alive, fully awake at all times to the possibility of God’s coming in the very next moment.   And it’s about holding nothing back, because we know that tomorrow may never come.

Most of all it means living with only one fear.  I think that’s a point that many people misunderstand.   They think that the God who comes will be vengeful and violent and really, really, pissed off.  And I would say that we can’t discount that image entirely.   We are talking about coming face to face with a power of love and truth that is completely beyond our imagining.  It will lay bare our illusions and pretensions and excuses and false idols utterly and forever.  It will break once and for all the systems of thought and orders of power that oppress and destroy and make life not worth living.  But there is a Christian twist on this idea of the end, which is, after all, found in many religions, and now even has its secular, materialistic version.  And it is this—not only is the end also a beginning, but it will come to us with a shock of recognition.   It will be a reunion, because the one who is coming at the end is one we’ve met before.  

And in that sense, we do know what to expect and we do know how to prepare.  We can be ready because Jesus of Nazareth showed us what it is like to live face to face with that power of truth and love.   He’s already been through the birth pangs, already entered the new creation that waits to be born.  And so if we really want to be ready, we have his words to live by, we have his pattern to follow.       

In Matthew’s gospel Jesus’ career as a teacher ends with a set of three stories about how to live while we’re waiting for his return.  The first one, the “Parable of the Wise and Foolish Maidens” is about staying awake and alert, keeping our wicks trimmed, and a supply of lamp oil ready to hand so that when the bridegroom comes we are ready to light his way into the feast.  Today we heard the second of these stories, the so-called “Parable of the Talents.” The first thing to notice about this story is that before the master leaves he entrusts what he has to his slaves.   And these are not insignificant amounts of money.   Remember the slave who only received one talent? Well, he was getting the equivalent of 130 pounds of precious metal—gold or silver.  It is not that surprising, then, that he was afraid of what might happen if he lost it.   What if it was stolen?    What if he was taken advantage of by confidence men?   Rather than run that risk, he figures, let me bury the master’s treasure in a secret place that only I know about.   

And if we fear the Lord who is coming, not in the sense of speechless awe at his glory, but by freezing up in dread of judgment and punishment, we are liable to make the same mistake.    We can make “not screwing up” the focus of our relationship with God.  You and I have been  entrusted with invaluable and precious gifts us so that we might go into the public  marketplace and invest them, put them at the disposal of others, trade with  them, circulate  them,  put them to  work, so that they are  multiplied, and bring more honor, inspire more love, evoke more gratitude for the Lord  who gave them to  us  and is  coming  back to gather all the world’s riches into the house of joy.     Our one fear at his coming will be that we took the precious treasure we received, and because we were afraid to screw up, we hid it from the world.

To look truth and love in the face and know we did that--that, my beloved friends, is judgment.   That is punishment.  That is the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.  

We need to value our talents.  Not for what they are worth in the eyes of other human beings; certainly not for what we can get for them in the way of power, and possessions, and prestige; but for how God will increase them if we trust him enough to put them to work, to put them in play, even to put them at risk, in God’s service.

What are the talents you have been given?  Are you investing them in the world?  The end is coming.  What are you bringing to the celebration?  

It's God's world

Exodus 33:12-23
Psalm 99
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I start to worry about things.  I worry about all the things that I have to do for my work.  I worry about all the things that need to be done on my house.  I worry about my family and my health and my finances.  I worry about you, about the problems you’re having, if I know about them, or problems I imagine you might be having.   I worry about the world and the nation and politics and the news.  Sometimes this can go on for hours, running and re-running the same worries over and over again in my mind.  And I’ve found over the years that the best antidote to this kind of worried mind is prayer. 

I’ll repeat the Lord’s Prayer silently in my mind, and when I find I’ve lost my way two or three lines into it and have started thinking about the cracks in the  brick walkway in front of our house, I’ll start again at the beginning.   Or I’ll use the “Jesus Prayer”, silently saying “Lord Jesus Christ,” with my inbreath, and “have mercy on me” with my outbreath.  And my breathing will get deeper, and I’ll let out a sigh or two, and I’ll start to relax, and pretty soon I’m asleep.  

Sometimes, though, these kinds of prayer are not effective.  The worry-wheel will just keep churning along, rolling over everything I try to put in its path.   And on these occasions I have to get a little firm with myself.  I remind myself of some words of wisdom that I came upon once but can’t remember where.   What they said was how arrogant we are to think we can’t take a little break, even in the middle of the night, from managing our lives.  The hours of night, and of sleep, are the time when we get to let go, and let God take care of everything. 

I’ll remember this and then as each worried thought comes up I’ll give that thing, that person, that problem or situation over to God, entrusting it to God for the night.   I’ll do this over and over,  acknowledging that every particular thing in my life, and my life itself, belong ultimately to God, who can take better care of them than I can, and I will give them back to their rightful owner.   And in this way I can gradually let go of the need to worry, and drift off to sleep.

There are lots of places in the Gospels where Jesus encourages us to trust God and not to be anxious about earthly things.   The story we heard today is not really about that theme, but it does contain a pointed teaching that all those earthly things belong to God.  When Jesus says, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's,” he is not setting up two separate spheres of influence.  He is not saying that there is one arena of life, the political and economic, where Caesar reigns supreme, and another, the “religious,” where God’s rights are paramount.  Any devout Israelite, including the Pharisees’ disciples, would know Psalm 24, which extols the sovereign power of God, and begins with the words “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and all who dwell therein.”

But the division into rival spheres is what is assumed by the question “is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”, and the ones who ask it hope to trap Jesus in the contested boundary region where the two spheres meet.  If Jesus answers by saying “no, it is not,” his enemies will denounce him to the Romans as a teacher of rebellious sedition.    If he says that it is lawful, they will discredit him before the Judean masses, who rankle under the rule of the idolatrous pagans.    In short, while they flatter him as a sincere religious teacher, who cares more for God’s truth than pleasing people, they want to lure him into choosing which people to please.  They are pressing him to take sides on a political question, as if one side or the other encompasses the position of God.

Some commentators make a big deal about the fact that Jesus has to ask the Pharisee’s disciples for the coin for the tax, as if he is somehow better than them and us because he doesn’t carry money.  But I don’t think that’s the point.   When he holds up the coin, and asks “whose picture is this, and whose title?” he does point out absurdity of opposing the Emperor on religious principle when you’re passing his image from hand to hand all day long.   But he’s not saying the problem would be solved if we just didn’t use money.    He is saying that Caesar has his place and we owe him his due.   But he’s also reminding us that Caesar’s place is not eternal, and that Caesar also owes a debt, one he must someday repay.  Because everything Caesar has, no less than everything we have, belongs to God.  

It is to remember this that we have our stewardship season.  There’s a reason why we take some time every year to ponder what we’re doing when we make a commitment to give to the church.   Because it’s not about the hard sell, gradually wearing down every bit of resistance, until that final form is completed and returned.   But then why make such a big deal about it.   What about it is so important that we spend a month  thinking about it, talking about it, and praying about it?  I think the answer is that if we look carefully at our practice of giving to the church, it can teach us a profound truth, one that all the other contractual exchanges that we engage in every day try to conceal.

The other transactions that go on in the world all promise to give us something we don’t already have, to do something for us we can’t do for ourselves, or make us feel something we can’t feel any other way.  And all those same promises come into play here, too.  After all, this is not some separate sphere, as if when we come within the walls of this room we are now in “God’s world.”  It’s all God’s world.  

But there is something about our giving to the church that is unique.  Because the essential truth about the transaction that happens here is that the church does not promise us anything we don’t already have.   Or to put it another way, anything we receive from the church that is of the essence of what the church really is, comes to us purely by the gift of God.  Here is a giving and receiving that is completely free.  God does not need your giving, as if to supply some deficiency in him.   Everything you give, your money, your time, your talent, your mind and heart and your life itself, already belongs to God.   And every gift that God gives you, she gives in love, expecting nothing but love in return.                

And so this mundane exercise of St. John’s annual pledge drive, which can feel ever so slightly tawdry, actually connects us with the sacred mystery at the heart of the church.  The faith of Christ, who gave the whole world back to God on the cross, invites our giving.   God’s giving Christ back to the world, in his resurrection, is everything we hope to receive.  But for all the glory of that redeeming exchange, we don’t need to look askance at what we have to offer.  As much or as little as it is, as tainted as it may be by the world’s sharp practice, our giving participates in that free transaction of love that is the true life of the world.  Everything that is given for Christ’s sake belongs equally to God.  And so do we.

Going to the wedding feast

Exodus 32:1-14
Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

In its essence this parable of the great feast is a likeable story, with the wry, subversive message of so many of Jesus’ parables.  If we associate ourselves with the random and gratuitous guests who make it into the feast in the end, we feel quite nice about it.   Or we would, if it weren’t for all the violence.   Luke’s Gospel gives us the same story, only it’s not a king and there’s no wedding and no son.  But there’s also no murdering or destroying or burning, or binding hand and foot, or weeping and gnashing of teeth.  So what is Matthew up to?   

One way of understanding the bloody mess that Matthew makes of this  parable is as a struggle to understand  how the coming of Jesus, which was meant to be the renewal and fulfillment of God’s saving acts in history through his people Israel, was met not just with indifference,  but with violence.  The community out of which this Gospel emerged likely had first-hand experience of that violence, which began with the murder of Jesus but did not end there.   It did not end with the Jewish War of rebellion that came later, or when the armies of Rome recaptured Jerusalem, massacred the population, and burned the city to the ground, an event to which this text probably refers.  The violence did not end when some Jews were forcibly expelled from the synagogue for their insistence on acclaiming Jesus as Messiah.   And it did not end when the church moved from the persecuted margins to the center of power and began to use texts like this one to justify wave upon wave   of violence against Jews. 

It still goes on, the needless, absurd violence of history, when God’s only desire is to call us together into the wedding feast of his Son.  And that, in some sense, is why we are here today.  We come at God’s invitation to remember and to celebrate the promise that there is a meaning and purpose to human history deeper than the clash of religions and empires.    In Christ we find that deep purpose of God, and when we come to his table we experience just a taste of his wedding feast, where all divisions and disagreements are forgotten and we are reconciled with God and one another in the abundance of mercy and love.   

Sound nice, doesn’t it?   So why, then, does Matthew have to go and spoil everything?  Why, when we’d begun to relax and feel like the tension in the story is resolved, does he have to ratchet it back up again by putting in this bit about the man who got thrown out of the party for wearing the wrong clothes?

To answer that we have to understand another use of the rhetoric of violence in Matthew’s Gospel.   You can actually see the same thing in lots of places in the Bible—like in the story of the golden calf that we also heard this morning.  In these cases, this language is not a reference to literal, historic violence, but is meant to convey the power of emotion.   It is a way of speaking of the intensity, and vulnerability, of God’s love.   Anger, jealousy, vengeance are metaphorical ways of saying that here is a place where, if we’re not careful, we are liable to betray God’s trust.  But it’s also a point about which God is not indifferent, not lukewarm, or just kind of interested.  

Modern bible critics, especially feminist ones, have questioned the implied equation between love and violence in this kind of theological metaphor, but that’s a topic for another day.   What I’m suggesting now is that this little episode of the man without the wedding  garment is Matthew’s way of saying that God’s promise, what’s really going on in history, what we really  should be orienting our lives toward, in  spite of  all the ambient craziness,  is a wedding feast— and this  promise really matters  to God.   We shouldn’t think that just because we were invited to the feast graciously and at random, we can just slide in for the free food and beer.   It’s the king’s son we’re talking about here, and we need to show up with our best.

My cousin Joui, the San Francisco fashion  designer,  who got married in August,  sent out  wedding invitations that included instructions on what to wear.  It was kind of a head-scratcher—as I recall there was something about “think  Great Gatsby meets Bollywood”—but  as near as  any of us could figure out what she was really  trying to say was  “be creative.”   Don’t just reach into the closet and  pull  out that suit you keep there for weddings and funerals.  Have some fun.  Make me happy and show up with some flair.  Well, we stodgy older relatives kind of grumbled about it and rolled our eyes, but then we set to work on our costume because we knew it was important to her.  And we did end up looking quite colorful, I must say.  My eighty-year old dad took the prize by showing up at his niece’s wedding in drag.  When we asked him why, he said that he went  to the thrift store  to try to find suitable attire,  but nothing on the men’s rack fit the bill, while there was lots of glamorous ladies’ clothing just his size.

Today we kick off our annual  pledge  season at St. John’s.  It’s a time when we celebrate the generosity of God in calling us all together into the banquet.   We’re marking the occasion with a kind of party in the Parish Hall where we show off for one another about all the good work we’re doing and all the fun we’re having doing it.    Over the course of the next four  weeks  we’ll  be  hearing from representatives of our congregation  about what a difference it makes in  their  lives  to respond generously to God’s invitation—to come to the wedding dressed to the nines.   And we’ll have inserts in the bulletin each week that invite us to share in a reflection on the themes of abundance,  gratitude, and generosity that is taking place across the Episcopal Church.

Those of  us who  planned this stewardship program want it to be a low-key and enjoyable affair.   Whatever form your participation takes will be welcome, even if it comes off the ladies’ rack.   But  as  much as we insist that  giving  to the church is good for our health (which it is), and that St. John’s is worthy of our support (which it  is),  and as careful as we are to  keep the tone upbeat and encouraging and positive (which  we should) there is still that little bit of  tension  that  inevitably  comes along with  pledge season.    At  least  there  is  for  me.   When  I look  into it and try to understand  what that tension  is  about, I find  that Matthew’s Gospel,  that reliable guide to what is simultaneously so sublime and so challenging about  the Christian life, has an answer.  

The first explanation for that inevitable tension is that we can’t accept the invitation  to the wedding feast without also thinking  about all  the  things  going on in the  world  that make us afraid and hinder our generosity.   We  can’t help it—we think about the  wars and the economy and gas prices and how will I educate  my kids and what about my retirement, and will the crops fail and what happens when the fish are all fished out of the sea?   When we commit ourselves to give such and such an amount of our money and our time to St. John’s in the coming year, we have to push through all those anxieties and say, “God—I’m coming to your feast, because that’s the world that I believe in.”  That’s not easy, it takes faith, and hope, and love, but it goes to very  heart of what it means to follow Christ.

And the second reason why there’s always just a little tension around this pledging thing is that we can’t escape the nagging suspicion that it matters to God.   There’s this little voice deep down, when I get my pledge statement and see how much I’ve given (or how little), or when I’m relaxing at the end of a long week of hard work, that says, “was that your best?   Is that your wedding garment?”   It’s not about being guilty, or feeling inadequate, or fearing God’s wrath.  It’s not even about how much I love St. John’s Church, and want it to succeed.   It’s about knowing how much God loves St. John’s Church.   It’s about how deeply God yearns for us, here, to live in the kingdom.  It’s about feeling in my heart how passionately God wants to use us to invite anyone who will come to the wedding feast of Christ the Son.