How to Be Ready

Psalm 78:1-7

Matthew 25:1-13

This is a year that has been all about weddings for our family, and I discovered something. Wedding coordinators carry a lot of stuff in their bags. I suppose they learn how to be ready; it’s part of the job. From their personal experience and probably from one another, they learn all the possible things that might go wrong on a day that is supposed to be perfect. They pay attention. They take heed, because the wedding couple depends on them to fix whatever goes wrong.

And so they come to the wedding dragging a suitcase full of emergency supplies. Safety pins, bobby pins, straight pins. Needles and thread and buttons. Fashion tape, duct tape, scotch tape, and glue. Stain remover, nail polish, lint remover, zip ties. Pain meds, drinking straws, batteries, scissors, breath mints, energy bars, and more. And they wear their running shoes, because if there is something they don’t have, they might need to make a quick run to the nearest store to get it.

You just never know, really, what kind of need there might be. So you have to be prepared.

That seems to be the message of the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids. It comes at us blaring through a megaphone too loud to miss. You had better be ready. Have everything you might need, and have enough of it, because you do not know when the moment will arrive and what it will demand.

The stakes are high. If the wedding coordinator doesn’t plan carefully, they might find themselves in a position where they are unable to help, unable to solve a problem for the wedding couple. That could be a real problem for the coordinator; the last thing they want to do is let the couple down on their big day. It could destroy the wedding coordinator’s reputation, destroy their career. 

The stakes are high for the young women in Jesus’ parable, too. The women who failed to bring sufficient quantities of oil found themselves barred from the wedding banquet, which they have been waiting for all night. Upon their return, after frantically running out to find more oil for their lamps, the bridegroom says to them, “I do not know you.”

The stakes are high; this is mission critical. So serious is this matter that it is every bridesmaid for herself. Do not expect anyone to cover for you. Do not expect anyone to carry you through this. You are on your own.

That is actually the most puzzling aspect of the parable, I think. The fact that no one is willing to share their resources with the poor foolish women, seems to contradict our fundamental understanding of the gospel: that we are all in this together, we are the beloved community, that we are to share all things in common. When you think about it for a minute, it seems that maybe the selfish women who refused to share their oil ought to have been the ones left out of the banquet.

This story is confusing, hurtful, it’s scary. Since when is it good to be selfish? Is it really that bad to have forgotten to bring extra oil for your lamp? Is this an unforgiveable offense? And even if it is bad, why isn’t anyone mad at the bridegroom for being so inexcusably late? Late to your own wedding? Now that seems bad. This is pretty disorienting. 

But then we remember this is a parable. And it is not really about a wedding. It’s not really about oil. It is about the church, the life in Christ, and the kingdom of God.

And it is not really about sharing our stuff with one another – which is generally good to do. It is certainly not about the very practical issue of finding a 24-hour convenience store in ancient Palestine to buy a refill bottle of oil. This parable is about the church, the life in Christ, and the kingdom of God.

We are in the 25th chapter of Matthew’s gospel – we are near the end. And Jesus has been concerned with final things. He has been speaking to his disciples about the end of the age. He knows that he will soon be leaving them, and there are some assurances he wants to give them: that he will return to them, that the kingdom is coming. That they must be vigilant. They must wait.

He warns them that there will be persecutions to come. He promises them that the Son of Man will come to gather them together. But no one knows the hour or the day. He tells them they must watch and wait. They must be faithful so they will be ready.

That is what Jesus said to his disciples, according to Matthew, around the year 33. But Matthew is writing these words for the church about 50 years after that. And in that time some things have happened.

He is writing to a church that has been waiting for what feels like a long time already. A church that has suffered rejection from their brothers and sisters. A church that remembers what Jesus said about returning and now they are wondering. And growing weary of the wait. They wondered, “How long?” They wondered, “When?”

And it is good that they wondered. It is good that they were waiting, even as they grew tired of the wait. Because the worst thing that can happen to the church is that we stop waiting. The worst thing we can do is to stop expecting. A church that stops expecting has lost its faith. A church that stops watching for God to move in the world has stopped believing in this God.

The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids is really about just that. What happens to a church that is foolish enough to stop watching and waiting for the kingdom of God to move in this world and right the wrongs that have weighted us down and wearied us for so long? The parable is an urgent message for the church to stay on the path. Keep your lamps burning. Expect the bridegroom to come. Be ready.

The watching and the waiting and the expecting is for the end times but also for right now. It is waiting for the ultimate day when God will create a new heaven and a new earth. But it is also for the small moments in any ordinary day when God’s justice breaks in to this world. It is for the glimpses we might miss of God’s light of righteousness to shine. The watching and the waiting and the expecting are to seize the moment to be a part of it. Be ready.

But what, you might ask, does one do to be ready? Good question.

Because we are expecting the kingdom to come, we live as citizens of this kingdom. Because we expect the kingdom to come, we know what truly matters and we live our lives attentive to the things that matter. The way to be ready for the kingdom is to live as though it is here. 

The foolish women are not ready because they have not been attentive to the things that matter. I have no idea what they were paying attention to, but as we hear the parable we must understand that the foolish women have neglected to live lives of faith. And that is something each one of us has to do – you cannot expect someone else to give you some of their spare faith. You cannot expect anyone to “do” faith for you.

We are clearly not talking about oil here. We are talking about faithful living that each one of us is ultimately responsible for. Your sister might have enough crackers in her bag to give everyone a snack, but your sister cannot give you her faith. Your brother might have enough tools in his garage to take care of your every repair need, but your brother cannot give you his faith.

Faithful living – the watchfulness and vigilance that Jesus is speaking of – is a kind of daily life. A life built on the daily practices of letting your actions and words be a reflection of Christ. To borrow words from Nietzsche, it is a long obedience in the same direction. The life of waiting that the church is called to is a life of being conformed to the image of Christ each and every day.

No one knows how long the watching and waiting will be, Jesus tells us. But know this: eventually the hour will come. The bridegroom will arrive. When the foolish women return and see that the wedding celebration has begun without them, and the doors have been closed against them, they cry out, “Lord, open to us!”

He says to them, “I do not know you.” I think what he is really saying is, “You don’t know me.” 

You don’t know me because you have not actually tried.

The day and the hour will come. But now is the time to be ready.

Remembrance

 

1 John 3:1-3

Matthew 5:1-12

Frederick Buechner described an extraordinary dream he once had, where he was in a hotel room. In the dream, he really loved this room. Much more than you should, actually, love a hotel room. Somehow, in this room he felt happy and at peace. It seemed like everything in the room was exactly as it should be. And it felt as if he, himself, was exactly as he should be.

At some point he wandered off to other places and did other things, the way it often happens in dreams. Eventually, he returned to the hotel, but this time he was in a different room and it was not a comfortable experience. He went to the front desk. He explained to the clerk that he would like to have his old room back, that everything about it was perfect and he would much rather be there. Unfortunately, he told the clerk, he couldn’t recall the room number or where it was located. The clerk said, “I know exactly what room you’re talking about. And you can return there whenever you like. All you have to do is ask for it by name.”

He said to the clerk, “I don’t remember the name of the room. What is the name?” And the clerk told him the name of the room is Remember.

Then he woke up. But he never forgot this dream. It was a good dream, but not only that. Buechner felt it was a true dream.

Remembering is something so central to the story of God and God’s people. Time and again the scriptures tell us that God remembered God’s people, which is another way of saying God cared for them, loved them. And in the same way, the scriptures continually urge us to remember God and all the many ways God has provided for us.

In remembering, the way the scriptures encourage us to remember, we know how we have come through so much in our lives. When we remember we see the highlights, but also the dark moments from our past. We see the triumphs but also the losses, every life has both, and all manner of stuff in between.

In remembering, we see all the other people who mattered to us along the way. We remember how they supported us, guided us, loved us. Maybe we remember how they said just the right thing at the right time; that when there was something we needed, they were there to provide it.

When we remember in truth, we know that we came through all the highs and lows of our lives not on our own power. No one does this alone; we have the help of one another. But yet, in the room called Remember we sense that there is even something more than that.

In remembering, we know that what has carried us through it all is something called grace; we know that we are only here, in this place and this time, by grace.

And so we are able to remember with a sense of gratitude – grateful for God’s grace, with us through every step of our lives. By the power of God, which we receive through God’s grace, we may remember our lives in their totality – the joys we experienced, but also the very difficult and painful times when we even thought it might be better to die than to have to live with such pain. When we remember, we know that God was with us through those moments, too. We know that we survived it all by God’s grace.

Even in our gratitude, the pain may remain. The act of remembering the saints, as we do every year at this time, is by its very nature painful. We ache for the losses – the ones we loved, the ones we now long for. We cannot deny that even in gratitude, the pain remains.

But there is also this: In remembering the ways that God has been with us and for us through all that life has dealt us, we know something about God that allows us to have hope for the future. Remembering the blessings we have received in the past, we may have hope for these days and the days to come.

It is a blessing for us to remember, remember the all of it: The blessings and the woes, the celebrations and the grieving, the fullness and the emptiness.

On All Saints’ Day we give particular remembrance to the saints who have come before us, remembering the lives they lived and the ways in which they bore the image of Christ. The image of Christ we see in the beatitudes.

When Jesus ascended the mountain, turned to the crowds, and began to speak, he set down a vision. This, he was saying, is what I am about. There is a kingdom beyond this worldly kingdom where love and grace and peace reign. The beatitudes give us a glimpse of this kingdom.

There are many people in our midst as well as in our memories who have carried that vision, who have glimpsed the light of God and lived their lives accordingly – with love toward their neighbors, even when they disagreed; with empathy for the needs of others and generosity to give what they could. Many of the saints who have gone before us live on in our memories and serve as an inspiration for us to do the same.

To practice humility and mercy, to mourn with those who mourn, to work for God’s righteousness and peace for all of God’s beloved world. And to know ourselves blessed.

We remember the saints today; we thank God for them, for the blessings they gave to the world. And at the same time, let us recognize the saints in our midst.

The Protestant tradition teaches that the saints are comprised of all believers. All of us who have been given the gift of faith are given the gifts of the Holy Spirit as well, which frees us to live our lives according to Jesus’ vision.

And so today we also give thanks for the saints who are our neighbors, those who labor alongside us in the Lord’s vineyard, holding Christ’s vision for all to see. Because we know that we need them; no one walks this path alone.

Let us lift one another up in prayer. And let us remember in deep thankfulness the lives of the saints who have fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith.

 

Under Pressure: How Faith Handles the Test, Part 3: This One Thing

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

Matthew 22:34-40

In this section of Matthew, we have borne witness to the battle between the religious powers and Jesus. First, Jesus told them a set of three parables. He told the parable of the man with two sons, followed by the parable of the wicked tenants, and finally the parable of the wedding banquet. Each one layering criticism upon the Pharisees and Sadducees, and chief priests and scribes. By the time he is finished they have heard the message loud and clear. How do they respond? “So then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him.” 

They pose a set of three questions to him, meant to trick him into incriminating himself. The first question we discussed last week – is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? – which he handled quite well. 

The second question was a complicated word problem about a woman who married and survived each of seven brothers, and the problem is whose wife will she be in the afterlife. In the first two questions they pose to him, Jesus doesn’t take the bait. He doesn’t allow the authorities to set the terms of discussion because he knows that God’s truth doesn’t fit into their narrow terms. 

In response to these first two questions, Jesus does not give them a direct answer. He reframes the question. A marvelous skill that we should all practice. Many ugly and fruitless arguments could probably be avoided if we did what Jesus did.

So then they come at him with their third question – the magic of threes. Which commandment is the greatest?

We should know that they are not just talking about the 10 commandments here. Christians have elevated these ten that Moses brought down from the mountain because they seem to be such an elegant summary of God’s law. But when it came to the law, Israel had much more to be concerned with than just ten. There were 613 laws written down in the scriptures. They are in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, primarily. 613. And they were all deemed essential.

Given what we have already seen, given the way he has handled the first two, we would expect him to skillfully sidestep this question. To reframe it in some way, as he has done before. Like, “Why would you even ask which one is the greatest? Is there anything that comes from God that is not perfect?” I mean, that’s what I would have suggested. If Jesus asked me.

But he didn’t. He didn’t ask me, and he didn’t do what he had done before. Jesus answered their question this time – clearly and concisely. And in doing so he gave the world one of the most beautiful and memorable verses in all the scriptures.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself. That’s it.

What did he do here? Well he answered their question simply and directly. But then again, he didn’t. He didn’t choose one particular ordinance. He didn’t argue the case for one specific rule – out of all the rules governing family life, community life, farming, diet, dress, worship, and so on. He went back to something so simple that it was one of the first thing every child of Israel learned. Something so basic it hardly seemed mentioning. Love God.

And then, ignoring their specific request for only one, he went on to slip in another, which, he says, is just like it: love your neighbor as yourself.

And just like that, he makes these three things inseparable: Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. Everything else hangs on this one thing.

And you know what? I am so glad that, this time, he just answered their question.

Because when he answers their question, he says to us that the basic things are the greatest things. And the most basic thing about God is love. 

Which is really good news. I love to be loved. And loving others is great. And it’s simple. Easy, right? 

Sure, loving people is easy – except when it’s hard. And when it’s hard, let us count the ways.

Sometimes it is hard to love people because they are just too distant, because we don’t actually know them, we know very little about them. People who are too far away from our lives can become just a blur, a sea of insignificant shadows.

Think about all the billions of people who live on the other side of the world, who seem so different. Suspect. Dangerous. Often because we fail to recognize them as real human beings. 

In the words of the extraordinary writer, Annie Dillard, “There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what this means, simply take yourself – in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love – and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it.”

And actually, there are a few hundred million more people in China now. 

To love the people who seem like unspecific masses of humanity to us is a challenge to our faith. On most days, we may simply feel indifferent about what happens to them. But it is a particular problem for Christians to feel indifferent about a people’s suffering. 

It is a particular challenge at this time when we consider the Palestinian people. Perhaps it is because we don’t personally know any Palestinian people. And it is so easy to paint them all with the broad brush of terrorism, so they are not human beings who give birth to children, whom they love and cherish. They are not people who fight against illness, from the common cold to cancer. They are not people who have hopes for their lives and the lives of their children. Because we just can’t see them well enough to know these things.

Sometimes loving people is hard because they are just too distant. But that is not all.

Sometimes it is hard to love people because they are too close. And we are stuck with them, and we have to deal with them in all their humanness. This is a more “in your face” kind of challenge.

When I was a high school student I worked at the local A&P grocery store. I was a cashier. There were all kinds of people who came through the line and depending on my mood, I liked them well enough – or not at all. 

At the age of 17, I didn’t think I had any bigotry. I thought I was a pretty loving, tolerant person. I liked or disliked people purely on the basis of their individual personal qualities. But working at the A&P, I discovered something about myself.

There were quite a few men who would come in the store who were from another country. A different culture. I did not know any of them by name. But I started to dislike them with some intensity.

I disliked the way they spoke English. They all managed to communicate well enough, I had no trouble understanding them, but I didn’t like the brokenness of it. 

I didn’t like the fact that they always wanted to pay by check, no matter how small the purchase. And they never seemed to have a pen to fill out their check. And instead of asking for a pen they asked me for a pencil. And I knew, even at the age of 17, you didn’t write a check with a pencil.

These are reprehensible feelings I had, I kind of knew it even then. And most shameful of all, I disliked the way they smelled. Because they lived in small apartments without good ventilation, and so they tended to smell like the food they cooked. I know now that I would have enjoyed eating the food they cooked. But back then I knew nothing.

And so with this particular cohort of human beings, I discovered my bigotry. And I can remember having the realization: I would like these people just fine, from a distance. But when it came to sharing space with them, my resentment blossomed.

And that is a challenge that we are confronted with today as our community grows more and more diverse, as we are faced with sharing space with others who seem different.

Whether it is because they are too close or because they are too distant, the failure to love is really about our failure to see their humanity, to recognize them as brothers and sisters, beloved children of God. Each one made in God’s image.

The greatest commandment, the greatest teaching, we hear Jesus say, is this one thing: Love the Lord with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself. These two are alike. They speak to the completeness of love.

Holding these two things together, loving God and loving the neighbor, is actually a hard thing to do. Yet this is a form of faith and life Jesus calls us to. And being able to hold this together is so very important for the church, for it will prevent us from worshiping a distorted image of God.

Loving God and loving neighbor are two sides of a coin; they are the warp and the weft of a woven cloth. Jesus says not that they are number one and number two, but here is one and “here is a second that is like the first.” They must be held together. Jesus wants the Pharisees and Sadducees and Chief Priests and lawyers – and all the people – to see that.

Love God and all God’s family. Because, as we read in Genesis, God put a piece of God’s self in every human being. The image of God in each one of us. To love God is to love one another.

We began this short series as a follow-up to our series on spiritual transformation in Christ. In other words, we have received new life in Christ by virtue of our baptism. We are transformed. Different, somehow. But we all know that our baptism is not the be-all and end-all of our faith. It is merely the beginning of this journey. 

During these three weeks we have looked at a few ways we encounter pressure from the world, tests that may make it harder for us to live this life in Christ we have chosen. In this world that is broken by fear and hate, prejudice and greed. This final encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees gets to the heart of it. God asks us to do this one thing: choose love. Love for God, love for the neighbor, love for yourself.

Choose love, even if it makes other people mad. Choose love, even when it is against conventional wisdom. Choose love, even when it is hard. Especially when it is hard – that’s when it really makes a difference.

Under Pressure: How Faith Handles the Test, Part 2: Your Money, Your Life

 

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Matthew 22:15-22

Some of us are old enough to remember Jack Benny, the comedian. His comedy made fun of himself for being stingy, miserly. One of his best remembered bits was a man sneaks up behind him and points a gun at him, saying “Your money or your life.” And Jack makes a pained expression and says, “I’m thinking it over!”

In real life, I have heard he was actually very generous.

It’s a good schtick, because we get it. We know all about the tug of war inside of us when it comes to money and possessions.

And, honestly, doesn’t the demand “your money or your life” sound like a trick question? I have had many thoughtful and sincere conversations with people who feel the conflict because we know that, in this world, we cannot live without money. We also know that as we grow old, we want to have something set aside lest we should become a burden for our loved ones. When the subject of money comes up in the gospels, we feel the tension.

Sometimes, it is Jesus who raises the topic of money and possessions. When he tells the rich young man that he ought to sell all his possessions and give to the poor. When he says do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. When he says woe to you who are rich. In all these cases, no one asked him for money advice. But in this case, when the religious leaders approach him, it is different.

There are some political machinations at work here. The Pharisees have been on Jesus’ case for a while. They don’t like Jesus. They feel he is interfering in their domain, that his teaching is not kosher, in a word. And that he is a risk for Israel. He attracts large crowds, he excites people, he is disturbing the Pax Romana. With Jesus, the Pharisees believe, the Jews are at risk.

The Herodians are something different. They are not a religious faction, like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the priests and the scribes. The Herodians are like a political party. They back the Herods, a line of kings who had ruled in Judea under the Roman Empire.

The Pharisees need Herod’s support if they want to eliminate Jesus. So they brought the Herodians along to this event and set a trap for Jesus. “Tell us, teacher. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

They speak to him as a religious teacher, an authority on the law of God. Although they didn’t actually seem to believe that, they are attempting to flatter him into believing that they see him that way, that they seek his opinion about whether or not paying taxes is the lawful and righteous thing to do.

Yes or no, Jesus, what is your answer?

If he says yes, then some of his followers might be angry with him or disillusioned with him. The hope of many is that they will be set free from the oppressive rule of the empire. If he is truly the Messiah, there is an expectation that he will be the one to set them free. If he says yes, the Pharisees may be thinking, that could be the end of his movement.

But if he says no? Sure, some of his followers would rejoice to hear this. But to say no, it is not lawful or pleasing to God that you pay taxes to Rome, is to pit the law of God against the law of the empire. To say no, it is unlawful to pay taxes to Caesar, is to put himself in the crosshairs of the civil authorities. This is what the Pharisees wanted the Herodians to witness. This is, very likely, what they thought Jesus would say.

But Jesus, in his wisdom, finds a totally different path. This is something I think we should all try to learn – when we find ourselves in arguments about serious matters, we might take a pause and ask ourselves: is the way our opponent is setting up the argument the same way I see it? Is there another way of thinking about this?

Jesus does this. He takes their yes or no question and he finds a different framework from which to address it. Jesus invites us to question the premise. Is this a binary matter? Is it a yes or no, this or that, question? No, actually. It is not yes or no; it is yes and yes.

Yes, you need to give to the emperor all the things that the emperor demands, all that he is owed. And yes, you must give to God all that belongs to God.

Yes, you live in the empire. You must pay your taxes because you use the roads the Empire has built; you take the jobs that the Empire provides. You live in this system and so you pay what is your debt. This much is true.

But, by the same token, you live in God’s world. Every day you wake up and breathe the air God created, see by the sunlight God created, eat the fruit of the earth God created. This much is true.

The powerful Empire created everything that makes up the system; Caesar holds everything in his fist. And at the same time, everything that makes up the system, including Caesar, is being held in the palm of God’s hand.

Everything that is owed to the Empire is also owed to God. How is that possible?

Listen, this is who God is: God is limitless and, therefore, not bound by the limits of our imaginations. Although we cannot understand it, we are still bound to acknowledge, to hold this mystery, even if it is uncomfortable for us.

This is God’s call and claim on us – and it goes well beyond money and possessions. For us, this has many implications. For example:

We are not forced to choose between caring for the welfare of Israel and for Gaza simply because we cannot imagine holding both. God can imagine it.

We cannot shrug our shoulders at the notion of the eradication of poverty simply because we cannot imagine it. God can imagine it.

We cannot wash our hands over the situation of our Haitian neighbors who have lost their Temporary Protective Status, or any immigrants who are being mistreated under current policies. Yes, there is the law of the land, but there is also the law of God. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s; give to God what is God’s.  Maybe we cannot imagine it, but God can imagine it.

Just as Jesus was tested, we are also tested. We are citizens of this nation. But we are also children of God. For us, it is not a choice between being a good citizen of our nation or being a faithful disciple of Jesus. It is a decision to love God, to love our neighbor, and – as the prophet Jeremiah said, to seek the welfare of the city where God has sent us.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what belongs to God.

After Jesus finished speaking, the ones who questioned him were amazed. And I am too.

Under Pressure: How Faith Handles the Test, Part 1: Testing, Testing …

Philippians 4:1-9 

Matthew 22:1-14 

While Paul sat in a prison cell, he wrote to the Philippian church, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Some days we might hang on to these words like a life preserver. If only we could do this.

Toward the end of the book of Acts, there is a story about Paul being arrested, one of many times this happened to him during his ministry. Paul saw the inside of many jail cells. This time he has been taken to Caesarea and is brought before the governor, Felix. Caesarea was the capital of the Roman government in Palestine.

The lawyer for the Jewish authorities, Tertullus, begins to make his case. He says, “We find this man, Paul, to be a pestilence! A plague!” And what is Paul doing that is so offensive? He has been preaching the way of Jesus Christ. Tertullus says to Felix, “Thanks to you, most excellent governor, we have enjoyed peace for many years.” Tertullus and his colleagues liked their position. They were comfortable with this kind of “peace.”

Which brings to mind the words of the prophet Jeremiah, “They’ve treated the wounds of my people carelessly, saying ‘peace, peace’ when there is no peace.”

The ones who were doing okay, thought that everything was okay. And there was Paul, posing a threat to all that. He was a pestilence, a plague.

They might have called Jesus the same, now that I think about it.

It is kind of challenging to hold Paul’s words in the letter to the Philippians next to Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet. Because if I was going to think only of things that are pleasing, I probably would not be thinking of this parable. But the thing that is needed, the place for us to begin is to see these words of Paul as coming from a particular place; a place in this world but not of this world. He is speaking from the perspective of new life in Christ.

We just recently spent a few weeks with Paul’s letter to the Romans, on the journey of spiritual transformation. Transformation is an ongoing process in life; we are always “under construction,” so to speak. We are always a work in progress.

The parable from Matthew’s gospel presents an interesting, while very challenging, perspective on the transformation.

There is a lot of crazy scary stuff happening in this story. This king, who seems perfectly respectable at the beginning. His son is getting married. He is hosting a banquet – wonderful! But then suddenly things take a violent turn. The ones who were invited disrespect him, badly, and then for no apparent reason, attack the king’s messengers. This enrages the king, who then declares all-out war against the people. He sends his army to destroy them and burn down their city. All this for a wedding banquet. I have never attended a wedding where the stakes were so high. Have you?

Not to be defeated, the king announces the celebration will go on, for there are others he can invite. He’ll just need to extend himself a bit farther. It won’t be his inner circle folks who attend the feast. These guests are, maybe, third or fourth-hand acquaintances. The invitation goes out, the people accept, and the banquet will go on. But we are not past the danger yet.

The guests come to the celebration, they’re eating, drinking, and dancing. And when the king enters the hall, he finds a problem: one man did not pay attention to the dress code. Friend, he says to him, grabbing him by the collar of his flannel shirt, how did you get in here like that? A colleague of mine likes to say that when you hear someone called “friend” in Matthew’s gospel, you know that’s not a good thing. It is likely that guy is not a friend.

And so it goes. The man without the right clothes is tossed into the outer darkness, where none of us wants to go.

It is a parable that we struggle to make sense of, because it seems like all the characters behave irrationally. But there are a few bits of advice I want to offer that should help.

First, don’t assume this king is a stand-in for God. He is a man with all kinds of human frailties. At some points in the story he has God-like qualities, yes, but that does not mean that every single thing about him represents God. Most of Jesus’ parables are kind of squirmy like that. We always want to allegorize them, impose a one-to-one correspondence between the story’s characters and real-life or divine characters. But parables are not that simple. This king is kind of scary. In ways that I don’t believe God is.

Second, don’t assume that the friends who insult the king and kill his messengers are the Jews. That is actually an interpretation that has been embraced by the church at times. Through the history of the church, many have been tempted to read “the Jewish authorities” and think “all the Jewish people.” Many have been tempted to read a story where one group of people kill the king’s messengers, and say the Jews rejected God.

What appears to be happening here in this parable, is that Matthew is pulling together a number of separate threads. While he is, apparently, thinking about the stories Jesus told in his life, he is also thinking about hard things that have happened since then.

He is, perhaps, thinking about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, which is, honestly, something that is on the minds of all the gospel writers, in all they write. The temple destruction, which occurred in 70 CE, was a turning point. You could compare it to those moments about which we say, “Where were you when this happened?” Where were you when JFK was shot? Where were you when the twin towers fell? Where were you when the temple was destroyed? Acts of such massive evil seem to change our world.

Matthew is, perhaps, thinking as well about the persecutions the followers of Jesus have suffered. When they have gone out into the world carrying Jesus’ message of radical good news – some just ignored them, yes. But others called them a pestilence, a plague, and threw them in prison cells or, even worse, killed them.

And finally, Matthew is thinking about the future. The end of days when the banquet has fully arrived.

So, we see there is a lot of tough stuff in this parable. But you know, I think it is this little detail at the end, about the poor guy who came to the banquet in his everyday clothes instead of the formal wedding attire, that bugs us the most. We kind of gloss over all the horrors we see in the first part of the parable, but this thing leaves us with our mouths hanging open.

It feels so unjust. How does the king expect him to have the right clothes? Some guy who just got pulled in off the street to be a wedding guest at the command of the king. Where would he have found such clothes? When would he have had the time to acquire such clothes?

Now some have argued, well there would have been a selection of wedding garments available at the banquet hall, he should have put one on like the other guests did. And I have no earthly idea if that has any credibility. But I don’t care one way or the other.

Here is one more bit of advice. Don’t fall in the trap of reading the parables literally. For some reason, we always want to do that. Maybe it is because the parables trigger our feelings and we just want to reconcile things, so the feelings go away.

This is a complicated and hard parable. But here’s the point. You and I are invited to the wedding feast, the kingdom of God. The invitations went out. We’ve been given a foretaste of the feast. We have heard the message.

You and I are invited to the wedding feast. We have been given directions: Follow Jesus. He will show us the way.

You and I are invited to the wedding feast. And we have accepted the invitation. But here’s the question. Do we look like people who follow Jesus?

Have we put on the new life? Do we, in what we say and do, show forth the light of Christ?

Do we?

You know, if you do put on the garment, put on Christ, people will sometimes call you a pestilence. A plague. It’s not always the most comfortable garment.

You will sometimes make comfortable people uneasy.

You will sometimes make people in authority angry.

You see, Jesus came to change us, but not everyone wants to be changed.

My brothers and sisters, there are times when the church is called to enter that space, to let the world see our wedding garment, to speak out against the injustice all around us. It is such a time we are in now. Our Haitian brothers and sisters who came here at our invitation are now being treated as criminals. Our neighbors who have established lives here and worked for the good of this place right along with us, are now being hunted down and locked up.

Will we treat their wounds carelessly? Will we say, “peace, peace,” when there is no peace? Such a thing is not pleasing to God.

Dear ones, the wedding feast, the kingdom of God, is near. We can glimpse it in this place. Let us be a reflection of the kingdom in this world.

They might call us a pestilence. But it didn’t bother Paul. Let’s not let it bother us either. 

Under Construction, Part 4: A Finished Work in Progress

 

Romans 12:1-8

Genesis lays out the story of God’s creation of the world as six days of work. And then a day of rest. Time to admire this thing God made.

Now we have reached the end of this series – Under Construction: A Spiritual Journey of Transformation. And we are at the end of the construction project in our sanctuary. For now.

But the reality is there is always more to do. There is always change. As long as Wicomico Presbyterian Church exists, there will be change. As long as we are living, there is opportunity for growth.

And so, while we now rest from the work of this renovation project, we know that God is not finished with is. And for the work of spiritual growth, we know that we are always a work in progress. 

In the 12th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans, we see he is turning a page onto a new subject. Having set the stage for us – filled with grace that comes from God through Christ’s extraordinary triumph over the power of sin – we have arrived at this place of forgiveness and the invitation to new life. We can now turn to the matter of how we are to live. How do we live as new creations, no longer under the power of sin and death, but filled with the Spirit of God?

Or, we might ask, how do we make ourselves useful in Christ’s church? How do we become the body of Christ Jesus for the world?

About this, Paul says something kind of strange. He urges his readers to present their bodies as a living sacrifice – that is, a sacrifice of the old self, former life, for the sake of something new. He asks them to be renewed and transformed by the grace of God.  We give up the old for the sake of the new life in Christ, as his body in the world. 

Paul says in these verses that we are to be not conformed to the world, but to allow our lives to be transformed by the power of the Spirit into something new. Yet we struggle to understand just what this means for our lives. Sacrifice might make us nervous. How does one embrace such a thing?

Let me try to address this by telling a story.

Babette’s Feast is a Danish film made in 1987. There are many reasons why you would not have seen this film. It is very dreary – dark and colorless. It is in Danish, so you have to read subtitles. Nobody you know is in it, so it has no box office appeal. There is no reason you would have seen it except that someone may have told you it is an absolutely extraordinary film.

The story takes place in an isolated village in Denmark in the 19th century. It is inhabited by a rigid sect of Christians who try to practice an almost complete separation from those things that are valued by worldly standards. They have interpreted Paul’s words about the spirit and the flesh quite literally, and they shun all pleasures of the flesh – in their food, their dress, their furnishings, and all their activities. In these matters, they are making themselves a living sacrifice.

Babette comes to them from Paris as a political refugee. They cannot turn her away because it would not be virtuous to do so. But they don’t know what to do with her – she doesn’t fit in to their community. They are simple, pious Christians who shun worldly pleasures. Babette is from Paris. 

She offers to cook for them, to earn her keep. She is an excellent cook, and she is happy to share her gift with them. But she has to learn how to accommodate their bland tastes – because good-tasting food is a worldly pleasure of which they do not partake. She lives with them and cooks for them for fourteen years. 

Suddenly one day Babette receives some remarkable news.

When she lived in Paris, Babette played the lottery. Since she left, a friend who remained in Paris renewed a lottery ticket for her every year. This year, Babette won the lottery.

She tells the community that she wants to celebrate by making them a real French dinner. She makes arrangements for all the necessary supplies to be sent from Paris, and as these items begin to arrive, the people grow more and more worried: exotic birds, strange vegetables, crates of wine. This is going to be extravagant, they see. They don’t want to refuse Babette’s offer, but they are very uncomfortable being the recipients of such an excessive, sensual pleasure.

They decide among themselves that this is a temptation being put to them and they will steadfastly refuse to enjoy it. They will eat it because they have to but, with God as their witness, they will not enjoy it.

On the day of the feast they sit at the table and Babette places before them one course after another. The rich food and excellent wines they force into their mouths in small measure. They speak little and only about banal things like the weather.

However, there is one guest at the table, Lorens, a visitor who is not a part of this community. He isn’t aware of their plan to forgo enjoyment, so he does what any normal person would do. He exclaims over the wonders of each taste, praising the talents of the chef. He reminisces about a meal he enjoyed many years earlier at a famous café in Paris. Each sip of the wine makes Lorens more voluble in his praise, more sentimental in his remembrances. 

At the same time, a remarkable thing happens among the community. The others at the table can’t help but mellow a bit as they too have been drinking the fine wine and filling themselves with the rich food. Gradually, as they sit at table together and share course after course of this splendid feast, words are spoken that have been withheld for years. Old wrongs are forgiven, love that has become stale is renewed. There is redemption and a general renewal of the human spirit at this table. They had feared that this sensory pleasure would awaken a wickedness in them, but it does not. Instead it has awakened their hearts to love.

Babette, it turns out, was the chef at this famous Paris café Lorens remembered so fondly. 

Later that night, someone says to Babette she must be looking forward to returning to her life in Paris, now that she has won the lottery. But Babette tells them she spent all of her winnings on this meal for them. 

You see, the people of this community have been somewhat confused about what is valued. They thought that if they turned their back on all pleasures they would become a more Christlike people. As it turns out, in denying themselves so many things they had also denied themselves a great deal of love and forgiveness. Transformation had taken place at that dinner table, thanks to Babette’s gift.

They thought that Babette, and others like her, put value on the wrong things. Her life in Paris had been about creating earthly pleasures for people to enjoy, and no higher purpose than that. How shocked they were to discover that she had put all her worldly treasure into creating just such a feast for them to enjoy. Babette valued the wondrous things that could be done with the gifts of the earth, food and wine. And, perhaps without even knowing it, in this little village her gifts had been put to a higher purpose. Her life had been transformed by the gifts she had received in this simple community who gave her shelter. And in turn, her gift had transformative power for them.

What are we to say about such things? Perhaps only what Paul says: God gives us all the gifts God chooses for us, for the purposes of God alone. And God takes the offerings of each one of us as they are presented, doing amazing things beyond our expectations. In the giving and the receiving we are, and the world is, transformed.

The work here is finished – for now. We are and will continue to be a work in progress. Every day let us offer our lives to God, a living sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

Picture from the 1987 film, Babette's Feast

Under Construction, Part 3: Wired for Power

Romans 8:1-11

There have been times during this chancel renovation project when it feels like nothing is happening. Every morning I come in and open the sanctuary door with anticipation. And there have been days when I would see – well, nothing new. Day after day it looked the same. Like nothing was happening.

But something was happening, actually: the wiring. All kinds of work was going on under the surface to wire us for power. 

We have electrical outlets, and audio connections for speakers and microphones. We have special outlets for the organ to be plugged in when it arrives. And wiring that will all be needed for the organ to play. So much was happening under the surface. As it happens in life, many critical works are hidden from our eyes.

Such as the work of the Spirit. 

We don’t see the Spirit of God. We hardly know what to say about this third person of the Trinity. We think of her as breath, as wind – and I say her because the Hebrew word for spirit, ruach, is feminine. The Spirit blows where she will. As Jesus says to the Pharisee Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

In the eighth chapter of the letter to the Romans, Paul conveys to us that it is the presence of the Spirit of God that marks us as Christ’s own. Because where the Spirit is, Christ is also.

And just as we can see the effect of the wiring by the sounds that it will enable, we can see the effect of the Spirit by the life she enables.

Paul contrasts the life of the Spirit with the life of the flesh, using language that, unfortunately, is easy to misunderstand. You might infer from it that anything that gives pleasure is sinful. Eating good food, dancing to beautiful music, playing games – and throughout history there have been faith communities that have drawn that line, saying bodily pleasure is, by definition, sinful. Some Christian communities have banned dancing. Some have prohibited singing anything other than the Psalms. Some have even tried to ban enjoyment of food, by making food so bland and tasteless, who could enjoy it?

But that’s not what Paul is talking about. What Paul means here is something a bit more nuanced. When he speaks of the flesh, he is not referring to our physical bodies, but rather our orientation to the world, to life. The life of the flesh is a life turned inward so that the self becomes the center of everything, and the central priority is consuming pleasure. “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh,” Paul writes. The life of the flesh is a life of idolatry, where one’s own pleasure takes the place of God.

It sounds kind of crazy, extreme, and it certainly can be. For that reason, it is a real danger. It is important for people of faith to examine ourselves for signs that we may be turning inward in these ways. 

Even Christians sometimes choose the flesh – that is, choose to trade in God’s care over us for sin’s control – which is choosing a kind of spiritual death.

God did not make us for the life of the flesh, as Paul sees it. God offers us new life in the Spirit.

The life in the Spirit, in contrast, is to be set free from bondage to sin and self. To be in Christ and to receive the Spirit is to turn your life over to God, and to turn your life over to God is a freedom unlike anything else. Because we understand here that we are not doing any of this under our own power – it is the power of the Spirit.

The transforming work of the Spirit changes us, allowing us to live according to the Spirit, set our mind on things of the Spirit. And perhaps surprisingly, this reorientation connects us with our world in a deeper way. For to live in the Spirit is to live not only for ourselves but for the community, for the world God created. 

Through Christ, God offers us this different kind of life – to live at peace with God and our neighbors. And that is a powerful thing.

The writer Walker Percy wrote a story that illuminates these ideas Paul is presenting. It is called The Thanatos Syndrome. It was the last book he wrote before he died. It’s a strange sort of sci-fi story where residents of a small town start changing, all in essentially the same ways. They are becoming duller. Their language becomes much simpler, with short, abrupt sentences, and an apparent inability to follow a logical flow of thought. Their speech is flat, lacking any emotional resonance. 

They appear to be losing their ability to care about anything other than base appetites. They are losing some of the essential qualities that make them human, regressing to a less-than-human state. And, it turns out, there is an enemy who is doing this to them.

It is, literally, something in the water. Chemicals are being added to the town’s water supply that are having these dulling effects. The intention is to create a more subdued and controllable populace. A people who are, as Paul might say, living in the flesh rather than the spirit.

What happens when we turn from the power of the Spirit? We become dull, thick. Not less intelligent, per se. Just less interested in the fullness of life that God offers. Maybe bored. And boredom can lead to more regression. 

This turning away from the Spirit and toward the life of the flesh causes the people in the story to be more placid about anything that is happening in their world. But the Spirit leads us in the opposite direction. The Spirit gives us power to rejoice in beauty and goodness, and power to reject evil, to resist evil in all its forms. Life in the Spirit gives us power to care for all life. 

For a person who is in the Spirit, it can be very disturbing to see signs of this kind of regression in the ones who lead us. Such as -

When our leadership presents a view of the world God made that we may not recognize, a world that is only “dog eat dog,” lethal competition. 

When our leaders speak and act as though there is no reason to care for someone who cannot do something for you, that everything in life is transactional. 

When our leaders prioritize self-interest at the expense of others, particularly when it comes at the expense of those they are entrusted with leading.

A life powered by the Spirit enables one to speak against these things, to resist these forms of evil. Our baptismal vows call upon us to renounce these and all forms of evil.

Here is a beautiful thing: A life powered by the Spirit enables us to see a different way, to live a different way. And in that living, to show others a different way.

picture: ChurchArt.com