Prepared for What?

Years ago an elderly woman invited me to visit her two-story garage, which was larger by square footage than any house I have lived in.  The woman’s husband had passed away and she was trying to deal with all the stuff he had accumulated over the years.  He had an old parachute, she told me, that I might want to use for games in the church’s children’s ministry (and no, we did not have kids jumping from the steeple).  When I entered the garage I encountered the vast remnants of a man who suffered from what is called compulsive hoarding behavior.  It is characterized “by the excessive acquisition of and inability or unwillingness to discard large quantities of objects that cover the living areas of the home and cause significant distress or impairment.”  As just one example, the man had collected enough fishing gear to open a tackle shop.  If he saw a lure he liked he bought the entire display.  I was so overwhelmed by the magnitude and diversity of items he had accumulated that to this day, my memory of that experience is vague and jumbled.  Suffice it to say there was a lot of stuff.

This morning’s parable about the wise and foolish maidens, with its emphasis on preparedness, is not encouraging us to be like that man.

Have you ever watched the television show Doomsday Preppers?  I have not, but apparently it focuses on survivalists who are preparing for various circumstances that will cause the end of civilization; economic collapse, military or terrorist attack, and pandemic plague being the most common.  According to a description of the show, new preppers are featured on each episode and a panel of experts grades their efforts and makes recommendations for improvement.

This morning’s parable about the wise and foolish maidens, with its emphasis on preparedness, is not encouraging us to become a doomsday prepper.

When I first moved to Virginia, being a northerner, I had to adjust to the southern way of engaging winter weather.  In Richmond, if snow was in the forecast, everyone hurried to Ukrops to buy bread and milk.  We do that here in Suffolk too, only we don’t have Ukrops.  Similarly, if a hurricane is moving up the coast and threatening the Hampton Roads area, you can expect a run on bottled water and other non-perishable staples at our local grocery stores.

As prudent and practical as this may be, this morning’s parable about the wise and foolish maidens, with its emphasis on preparedness, is not encouraging us to stock up before a storm.

Three remarkable women have been in the news this week: Leah Still, the four-year-old daughter of an NFL player who is battling a rare form of cancer; Laureen Hutton, a freshman at Mount St. Joseph College who fulfilled her dream of playing in a basketball game before a different rare form of cancer takes her strength and eventually her life; and Brittany Maynard, a 29 year-old newlywed who, dying from cancer, moved to Oregon to take advantage of its death with dignity law.  Last Saturday, on All Saints’ Day, she consumed a prescribed lethal dose of medication that ended her life, but also launched an important national conversation.

Even though it is essential that we share end-of-life wishes with our loved ones, this morning’s parable about the wise and foolish maidens, with its emphasis on preparedness, is not about dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s on medical directives and legal documents. 

Why is the parable not about these things?  Because each of the scenarios I mention describes being ready for something that (for lack of a better word) is negative, whereas the parable encourages us to be prepared for something that is joyous.  And I don’t think it is talking about getting everything lined up you need for a Thanksgiving dinner or getting all your shopping done early for Christmas.  I think Jesus is talking about something much deeper and more spiritual than that.

Those first followers of Jesus expected him to return at any moment.  It could be tonight, or tomorrow night, or some time next week.  No one knew exactly when it would happen, but initially everyone believed it would be soon – real soon! 

But as time passed, weeks and months at first, but then years and even decades, those followers had to rethink their position.  Perhaps Jesus was not going to return for a long, long time.  And some even began to wonder if they had gotten wrong the whole notion of a ‘return.’  If so, then it was time to roll up their sleeves and get about the business of life.  Many followed this new path, but not all.  The hold-outs began to emphasize the need for vigilance and the possibility of missing out.  Look at the last line of today’s parable (where the meaning of most parables is conveyed), “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”  It is a warning from one group to the other: stay with our program or you may get locked out.

And, two millennia later, their debate has very little relevance in our lives.  Yes, there are those who are caught up in the whole “Left Behind” mentality, but most of that thinking has only been around for a hundred years or so.  It is hardly a classic articulation of Christian theology down through the ages and it is something that, if we took the time to think it through, would reject as silly and preposterous. 

When I read today’s parable it suggests to me that the kingdom of heaven is always breaking into our lives, presenting us with moments of deep joy and cause for celebration.  One of life’s great challenges is to be in a position to recognize God’s kingdom in our midst and to appreciate it for what it is.  How do you cultivate a spiritual openness to joy and develop a capacity to be aware of the grace and goodness that is all around us?  Without these spiritual skills we are like the maidens who have no oil.  The kingdom of heaven comes close to us, but we are not in a position to receive it.  It is like we are colorblind.  Yes, we see the world, but are unaware of the vast and vivid hues that fill it with glorious and delicate beauty. 

How do we store up oil; that thing which makes us ready to participate in the kingdom of heaven when it draws near?  You know as well as I do the importance of solitude and prayer.  You know how the workday interruption may carry with it the most grace-filled moment of the day.  You know that religion and spirituality are more than coming to church on those Sunday mornings when you are in town.  It is an attitude and a perspective you carry with you at all times.  You know the power of gathering regularly with fellow seekers.  I can sit in the quiet of this space in the evening, light some candles, open a hymnal, and sing carols, but it will not come close to doing for me what will happen when we all come together on Christmas Eve. 

For the most part, we know what to do to add oil to our lives.  Our challenge is doing it; doing it consistently, passionately, and authentically.  Look around you; not just to notice the people who are here this morning, but also to think about all the people in your life: family, friends, and co-workers.  Do you ever get the feeling that they are getting something deeper and more joyous out of life that you are not?  If so, it may just be a sign that you need to attend to the lack of ‘oil’ in your life. 

In the parable of the wise and foolish maidens, the kingdom of heaven arrived as a single, one-time event.  Either you made it in or you did not.  The good news is that God’s kingdom draws near to us all the time.  We may miss a moment here or there – heck, we may miss most of them – yet still the kingdom keeps coming near.  It is never too late to get the oil you need to be a part of it and even if the doors get closed to today’s celebration, another one will take place in no time at all.  And guess what, you’ll have all the oil you need for that one.

Just the Essentials!

Israelites in Jesus’ day took the law very seriously, and by law I mean the Torah, God’s law.  In a commentary on the Torah known as the Mishna, Rabban Gamaliel II, who led the Sanhedrin after the fall of the Temple in 70 AD, is quoted as saying:

“The more flesh, the more worms;
the more wealth, the more worry;
the more women, the more witchcraft;
the more maids, the more lust;
the more servants, the more larceny.
But the more Torah, the more life;
the more sessions, the more wisdom;
the more counsel, the more understanding;
the more righteousness, the more peace.”

We read the great 19^th Psalm on the first Sunday in October:

The law of the Lord is perfect
and revives the soul; *
   the testimony of the Lord is sure
   and gives wisdom to the innocent.

The statutes of the Lord are just
and rejoice the heart; *
   the commandment of the Lord is clear
   and gives light to the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is clean
and endures for ever; *
   the judgments of the Lord are true
   and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold,
more than much fine gold, *
   sweeter far than honey,
   than honey in the comb.

By them also is your servant enlightened, *
   and in keeping them there is great reward.

Some in the Christian tradition revere studying the bible with affection similar to the Jews’ passion for Torah, but we Episcopalians don’t have anything in our practice that comes close to their devotion.  If you have ever known a baseball fanatic who has memorized all the statistics and records of every player living, retired, and dead and heard that person get into a discussion - neigh argument – with other people of similar knowledge then you have an image of the centrality of Torah in the life of the Jews.  It was everything, life itself.  And just like baseball stats, the Torah has a lot of minutia.  For every homerun record, Torah is riddled with the equivalent of what left-handed, red-headed pitchers are likely to throw in a day game on a Tuesday when the count is 3-2 in the first inning.

Throughout his public ministry, people came to Jesus and asked him to comment on different aspects of the Torah.  On two separate occasions Jesus was asked to identify the single most important commandment in all Torah.  A young seeker poses the question in the 12^th chapter of Mark’s gospel.  Jesus answers him by saying,

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

The seeker, hoping for more elaboration, then asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”  Jesus responds by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan; one of the greatest teachings in the history of civilization.

Today’s assigned reading from Matthew recounts the other time Jesus is asked this question.  This time, it is not a seeker who queries him, but rather a person hoping to trap him in some form or fashion so that charges might be pressed.  Jesus’ answer is the same, but rather than follow it up with a parable, he asks a Torah question of his own.  It is obscure and technical and impossible to answer and as a result the verbal challenges come to an end.

Out of this tense encounter we have confirmed for us the core of the Christian faith: Love God and love your neighbor.  The problem for us no longer is finding the right answer.  The problem is living it.  Frederick Buechner sums it up pretty effectively:

The difficulty is increased when you realize that by loving God and your neighbors, Jesus doesn’t mean loving as primarily a feeling.  Instead, he seems to mean that whether or not any feeling is involved, loving God means honoring and obeying and staying in constant touch with God, and loving your neighbors means acting in their best interests no matter what, even if personally you can’t stand them.

Love is not primarily a feeling.  It is a disposition of the will that results in actions either directed upward toward God or outward toward others.  Think about Paul’s great treatise on love written to the Christian church in Corinth:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Note two things about this passage.  First, it never once hints that love is a feeling.  And second, remember that this was not written to a couple getting married in a romantic setting, rather it was written to a church caught up in the throes of personality conflicts.  To believers who are at each other’s throats, Paul says you must be patient, kind, not rude or boastful or irritable, nor are you to insist on getting your way.  You must endure and believe and hope and bear all things.  This is to be the way love is manifested in your conflicted community.

In reflecting on today’s reading, the theologian Marcus Borg says that being a Christian is about loving God and loving what God loves.  And what does God love, he asks?  Well, the best-known verse in the bible, John 3:16, says, “God so loved the world that he sent his only son.”  God loves the whole world and wants it to be a better place.  The problem, Borg says, is that our human inclination is to love ourselves first and foremost.  Therefore, he says, we need to be transformed from who we are naturally into who God calls us to be.

For Episcopalians, the sign of our desire for transformation is baptism.  In it, we turn from Satan, the evils of this world, and a focus on self alone in order to embrace Jesus as our savior, our Lord, and our guide.  Through it we pray to be open to God’s grace and truth, filled with the holy and life-giving Spirit, and taught to love others through the Spirit’s power.  Our old selves symbolically drown in the baptismal waters and we rise reborn in the image of Christ.  It is not a one-time experience that fixes us once and for all, but rather a sign of our on-going desire to be transformed into a person who loves God and who loves others.

It is a rigorous process, but we are sustained in it by regular participation in Eucharist.  The weekly pattern of praise and thanksgiving, of confession, pardon, and renewal, and of participating in the life of Christ through receiving his body and blood feeds and fuels our heart, soul, and mind in this transformation process. 

It has been said of the Anglican way that we are about majoring in the majors and minoring in the minors.  By this we mean that we will focus on what is absolutely essential to the practice of the faith while being quite open and tolerant regarding the manifestation (or lack there of) of the non-essentials.  This morning we hear again what is most central to the Christian faith: love God and love your neighbor.  Major in this and the rest will take of itself.

Whose Image is Inscribed on You?

Earlier this week I was reading a lecture by the English bishop and scholar N.T. Wright.  In it, he argues that the Enlightenment shaped our modern worldview in two primary ways.  First, he said, it separated church and state which led to a mindset of a removed God who is concerned about heavenly things while we deal with earthly matters.  And second, it divided people into one of two camps: those for revolution verses those who seek to preserve the present order; the roots of liberalism and conservatism.  So here we are, several centuries removed from the Enlightenment and religion has become largely a private matter because God is relegated to “up there” and banned from the public square.  The liberal/conservative polarization means that every idea must be pushed in one direction or the other and then fought over rather than be evaluated on its own merits.

These assumptions of the way things are and work were not the worldview held by our biblical ancestors.  In the first reading we see Moses in dialogue with the Living God pleading for the Holy One to be present with the people and to rest in their midst.  The gospel reading gives us insight into the politics of Jesus’ day.  There were no liberals or conservatives, just a dominant foreign ruling power - the Romans.  Among the Jews, there were capitulators (like the Herodians) and there were faithful purists.  The purists were divided between nationalists, zealots, separatists, and others. 

When Jesus says “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s,” we today interpret this through our post-Enlightenment worldview.  We hear it as a directive for each person to determine what he or she will give to God and we evaluate what the state does with its take based on our liberal or conservative ideology. 

Jesus’ listeners would have heard something very different.  His words cut right to the heart of the political and theological debate of the time.  Caesar demanded that every person under Rome’s control worship him as a deity.  For a faithful Jews who serve only the true and living God, this is not possible.  And Caesar’s profile inscribed on a coin is for them a graven image and a tangible, concrete symbol of this issue.  Faithful Jews avoided the currency at all costs.  It is a small but striking detail that the Herodian capitulators had to produce a coin for Jesus.  He, like all other faithful Jews, would not be carrying one and certainly not in the Temple. 

For Jesus, this teaching was not what it is for us.  It was not a message about stewardship and paying taxes.  First and foremost, it was a clever way to extricate himself from a trap that, if not handled well, could have resulted in charges of insurrection.  Beyond this, Jesus’ true intention is up for debate.  Was he calling on people to do what they had to do in order to get along?  Was he calling for people to resist, knowing that all things belong to God?  Was he doing something else altogether? 

If you like to read the bible, Peter Enns has written a helpful book titled The Bible Tells Me So: why defending scripture has made us unable to read it.  In it he sets out what he calls the 10 Commandments for reading the bible.  Let me share of few of them with you:

1. The Bible doesn’t answer all — or even most — of our questions.  Many of our questions, even some of the more pressing questions we face daily, aren’t answered in the Bible.  The Christian Bible isn’t an answer book but a story of how Jesus answers for us the biggest question of all: what God is like.

5. The Bible is open to multiple interpretations, not just one meaning.  The Bible is ancient and obscure, and its stories are “gapped” and flexible, which allows — even demands — readers to interpret the Bible legitimately in various ways.  This is exactly what has been happening among Jews and Christians for over 2,000 years.

6. The Bible invites debate.  In fact, it can’t avoid it, given how open it is to multiple interpretations.  Winning Bible feuds with others, getting to the right answer, isn’t the end goal.  The back-and-forth with the Bible, and with God, is where deeper faith is found.

8. The Bible was written by Jews (and at least one Gentile in the New Testament) in ancient times.  This may sound too obvious to say, but it’s not.  The biblical writers were ancient writers expressing their faith in God using the vocabulary and concepts of their ancient cultures.  When we transpose our language and concepts onto biblical writers, even if we are trying to understand the Bible, we will actually distort it.

Keeping all of this in mind, let me say that debates about civic duty as well as reflection on the nature of Christian stewardship are both important endeavors for every baptized person.  These are our issues and concerns and, to use Enns’ language, we have transposed them onto Jesus’ words “Render unto Caesar…”, thus making it speak to something very different than it did in its original context. 

I wonder if we Christians would be better served by adopting the worldview of our biblical ancestors.  By doing so, we would hold to God’s intimate presence in all aspects of our life and we would set ourselves apart from capitulation to the dominate Caesar of our day – the modern secular culture that lifts up pleasure, possessions, and personal freedom as the keys to happiness.  We live in opposition to this as we live faithfully into our baptismal promises.  The tension between modern culture and our baptismal covenant is every bit as deep and as layered as the tension between Rome and Jerusalem was in Jesus’ day.  Can we live with a foot firmly entrenched in both kingdoms or do we need to make a decisive choice for one over the other?  Now there is a question that invites debate and is open to multiple interpretations.  How might render unto Caesar and render unto God contribute to our conversation around this question?

I keep a folder for every specific Sunday in the three-year lectionary cycle.  In each folder I keep printed copies of my old sermons, commentaries and snippets on those passages, and an occasional note or two.  Earlier in the week I looked through today’s folder and found a note I had written to myself 3, 6, 9, or 12 years ago, I don’t remember.  I have a vague memory of a thought that came to me sometime during a service when I preached on this text.  I thought it might be worthy of further exploration in a future sermon and I didn’t want to forget it.  The note says only this, “Whose image is inscribed on you?”

Whose image is inscribed on you?  What values and beliefs does your life reflect?  What witness is made by the way you live your life?  Are you a product of the culture or a person baptized into the Christian faith and life?  Whose image is inscribed on you? 

 

The other day I saw a picture of a man who got a tattoo so that his bald head looked like a New England Patriot’s football helmet.  That speaks loud and clear about something that is central and dear to him, doesn’t it.  You and I bear a tattoo on our foreheads where the oil of chrism at baptism marked us as Christ’s own forever.  It is, of course, an invisible inscription that we make visible through our lives and actions.  Is that the image you want people to see inscribed on you?

Invitation & Expectation

The king said to the man without the wedding garment, “How did you get in here”?

One of the most popular movie genres going is the heist where super-smart, super-patient, super-criminals pull off a super-complicated robbery.  The Italian Job, Ocean’s 11, and The Thomas Crown Affair are fascinating films because of the intricate, elaborate detail involved in the plot.  And in end, standing in an empty vault, some poor police detective is left to ask, “How did they get in here?”  On an August weekend in 2005, a real-life team of robbers managed to steal over $81 billion dollars from a bank vault in Brazil, but it didn’t take authorities long to figure out how they got in.  The bandits left behind a tunnel the length of a football field.  They had spent months digging under buildings and city streets in order to launch a stealthy, subterranean assault on the bank.  One of my all time favorite lines from the movie Police Squad, a spoof on heist films, is when Leslie Nielson encounters a suspicious man who appears to have broken into a building.  “Who are you and how did you get in here,” Nielson’s character demands to know.  The person answers, “I am a locksmith, and I am a locksmith.” 

“How did you get in here?”  In Jesus’ parable, it isn’t that the person without the proper wedding garment breaks in to a place he is not supposed to be.  He was, after all, invited at the last minute.  His offense is wrapped around how he presents himself.  He is inappropriately dressed for the occasion (and let me assure you from personal experience that is not a good feeling!). 

Jesus’ parable revolves around a king, a wedding, and the invited guests.  In the Hebrew culture of that day marriages were often arranged between families.  A bride and groom were given in marriage, but before they live together the husband goes off to prepare a home.  It may be in the same village or it may be far away.  It may take a few weeks to complete the task or it may take many months.  When all is made ready the groom returns for his bride and a celebration begins.  Typically these feasts last for days and days and they are “don’t miss” occasions in the life of a community.  No one knows exactly when the groom will return for his bride, but when he arrives, all work stops and everyone makes ready for the celebration.

Given this background, some of the elements of the parable begin to make sense while others leave us scratching our head.  It makes sense that the king has to send out messengers to alert the invited guests.  It does not make sense that the guests casually refuse, preferring rather to go about the drudgery of daily business.  This would be puzzling no matter who hosted the feast, but standing up the king is an unthinkable offense.  When given a second chance, the invitees seize the messengers and mistreat some while killing others.  The king is enraged.  Now, instead of messengers, he sends troops.  The judgment is swift, severe, and (given the times) predictable. 

Messengers are now sent throughout the region to invite any and everyone to the feast.  The wedding hall is filled with guests.  The party appears to be a smashing success but just when everyone has settled in and is having a good time, the king notices a person who is not wearing a wedding garment.  Scholars vary on this detail.  Did the king supply his guests with a wedding garment or did they bring one of their own?  In the end it matters not because everyone else managed to appear with the right thing on except this one individual.  What is equally clear from the story (and perhaps lost to us as listeners from a very different era) is that the absence of the robe is an egresses offense and a horrible insult.  The king has the person bound and thrown out of the party. 

The parable suggests that with the invitation there are certain expectations.  “How did you get in here?” is a way of saying, “Why did you accept my invitation if you were not willing to meet my expectations?”

Remember how Jesus begins this parable: “The kingdom of God may be compared to this story I am about to tell.”  It is a simile and not at all a kind one to Jesus’ audience at the time.  He told it to a group of religious leaders and politicians on a Wednesday afternoon in Jerusalem.  They perceive correctly that in Jesus’ parable God is the king and they are the initial invitees who refuse the invitation, at first rudely but later violently.   They are so enraged by Jesus’ condemnation that within forty-eight hours they will have him hanging from a cross.

You and I are a part of this parable as well.  We are among the second wave of guests, each called in a unique and distinct way.  Look around the church this morning.  How did you get in here?  Some of you were born into this parish; either the second, third, or even fourth generation of members.  A few of you married into St. Paul’s.  Some of you are Episcopalians who moved here from another city.  Some of you have been attending for only a couple of years or months, or even weeks.  Each Sunday over the last month and a half we have had people attend a service here for the first time.  I believe that no matter who you are and no matter what your story is, you are here because God invited you – YOU – to this place, to us, to St. Paul’s.  No one is here by accident.  Carried inside each person who walks in the door is a story.  Embedded in that story is the reason God drew you here – HERE – today.  And that is the reason why every person, from the first time visitor to the oldest living member of the parish to a new born baby to a lost and hurting soul, is welcomed here with open arms.  We want you here because God wants you here.  We are like the kingdom of God when we welcome you into the marriage feast that is our common life together. 

That is the invitation that God issues to each one of us.  But what are the expectations that accompany it?  What does the wedding garment represent? 

Among Evangelicals it has become popular to associate the garment with St. Paul’s theology of righteousness.  Christians ‘put on’ the robe of Christ’s perfection in order to be justified in God’s eyes.  If we don’t put on Christ, but rather insist on relying on our own goodness to be saved, we will be rejected.  The only way to be saved is to put on Christ’s righteousness.  I tend to play down this kind of theology because it makes the whole pursuit of religion sound like some heavenly transaction that has little to do with us and our response.  It makes “believing in Jesus” feel like little more than purchasing car insurance: I’m covered so I am good if something happens.

Jesus’ expectations of his followers were more basic and concrete than Paul’s esoteric ideas.  First, like John the Baptist, he called on people to repent.  It was not so much a demand in order to get into the kingdom but a path you walk that leads away from the destructive nature of sin and toward the life and health of faithful obedience.  Next, Jesus called on people to believe in him; that he was sent from God and that his words and witness reflect the life God offers to all.  Finally, Jesus says that his followers are to pattern their lives after his by loving God and their neighbor.  If you accept the invitation than the expectation is you will repent, believe, and follow. 

So again, how did you get in here?  What ‘invitation’ brought you to this place?  And, are you meeting the expectations that come with accepting it? 

If we were to ask the people in today’s first reading “How did you get here?” they would answer, “Well, Yahweh brought us out of Egypt and delivered us through the waters of the Red Sea, and led us out to here into the wilderness.”  If you were to ask them how they are doing at living up to what is expected of them, they would look at the golden calf, look down at the ground, kick their feet in the sand, and have not much to say. 

In Jesus’ parable, the judgment on the first guests as well as the judgment on the person without the wedding garment is excruciating and final.  Every parable has its limits.  It tells us something of what God’s kingdom is like, but not everything.  No one parable can do that.  The truth is this: in this life there is no final judgment.  When we do wrong, with that judgment there is always the offer of mercy and grace.  There is always an opportunity to repent and return to the Lord. 

I have said before that my favorite image of the Christian life is the way or the path.  It suggests that we are moving from where we were and making progress getting to where we want to be.  Some days we make more progress than others.  Some days the path is easy to navigate while other days it is difficult and rugged.  Some days we make no progress at all and there is the occasional day when we lose our way altogether.  But always and every day we never walk alone.  The One sent from God gives us the very Spirit of God as a companion on the way.  And the One sent from God invites us into communities of faith so that we can walk with others who are on the way as well.  Each of us accepts the invitation and seeks, as best we can, to repent, to believe, and to follow.

Beaten Down / Raised Up!

“The tenants seized the slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.  Again the vineyard owner sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way.” 

Here is one of my all-time favorite stories.  It will give you a chuckle, not a laugh, but it comes back to me again and again.  A man owned a bakery that was famous for two things: fabulous, fresh-baked bread and a talking parakeet.  The bird repeated almost everything the baker said.  Well, as you can imagine, the shop was very popular and at different times of the day was jammed with customers.  It was not uncommon for multiple people to shout an order at the same time.  In the face of such an onslaught the baker would insist, “One at a time!  One at a time!”  One day the unthinkable happened: the parakeet escaped out the front door of the shop.  The baker, only a step or two behind, dashed outside and spied the parakeet perched on the branch of a nearby tree where it had already attracted the attention of a huge flock of mean-spirited crows.  Dozens of birds were diving at the parakeet from all directions.  It was then that the baker heard his parakeet squawk, “One at a time!  One at a time!”

I suspect each of us knows what it feels like to be that parakeet.  No one gets through life without being challenged, and my experience is that challenges don’t confront us in a nice, orderly fashion.  They tend to come in bunches, don’t they?  Doesn’t the old expression ‘kick a person when he is down’ hint that challenges tend to attract more challenges, hardship seems to begat more hardship, affliction has a way of multiplying, and tough times often test us with even tougher times.  At one time or another, everyone one of us has been that parakeet in the tree.  Some of us are ducking for cover right now and screaming or pleading or begging with all our might, “One at a time!  One at a time!”

Earlier this week I happened upon a blogpost written a few years ago by Christine, a forty-year-old woman who lives in Massachusetts.  She has been diagnosed with Sjogren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease that attacks the glands that secrete tears and saliva.  Some time after she began to deal with this, Christine developed blood clots in her lungs.  Then she was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, where the immune system attacks nerves and leads to profound muscle weakness.  More treatment led to head pain, nausea, and increased tremors.  Add to this dealing with health insurance, which is not easy even under the best of conditions, as well as the day to day challenges we all face (her computer crashed) and it is pretty easy to understand why Christine gave her post the title “Beaten Down.”

“My body wants to feel pretty again,” she wrote.  “It feels disfigured from the bruises and the rashes.  From the hair that is starting to fall out, from the steroids and the often pale, makeup-less face that stares back at me in the mirror... the darkened eyes that used to be so much more vibrant.   My body does not understand that it is an effort to get it clean every day right now.  Will I ever be able to do an activity again for more than ten or fifteen minutes without needing to sit or lie down,” she wondered?  “Will I ever be able to stoop down again without falling over or needing help to get up?  Will I ever be able to shower and wash my hair again without it being this epic event that exhausts me and makes me shake?”

Some of you have been in that place, others not far from it, and surely the rest of us can sympathize with Christine and her plight.

When Jesus tells a parable he invites us, the listeners, to locate ourselves in the story.  Which person or character are you?  We may see ourselves in multiple characters, or, as our life changes, may recognized that we have shifted from one person to another.  Where do you see yourself in today’s parable of the vineyard owner and the wicked tenants?  If things are going well then you may not identify with the servants and messengers who are treated rudely, disrespected, beaten, and/or killed.  But my guess is there have been times in your life when you are they and they are you.  You don’t have to have been victimized by thugs to fill their shoes.  Sometimes life itself is the thug and it hits us with more than we can handle.  As with Christine, it may be health crisis.  It might center on a relationship.  It could involve employment.  Life has lots of ways to beat us down.

When I was younger I had a problem.  I believed that life should never do me wrong.  It wasn’t like I had never been challenged.  My father died when I was twenty.  I had the girlfriend or two who broke my heart.  I had a friend or two that betrayed me.  But I was making the path for my life laying one brick at a time and it seemed that nothing could or should get in my way.  That assumption was challenged mightily after I graduated from seminary and took my first job as an assistant to the rector of a parish.  Nothing in life had prepared me to work with a person as dysfunctional as he was.  He meddled and manipulated and basically made miserable both my professional and my personal life.  To make matters worse, I was completely unequipped to deal with such a person and that is a recipe for disaster.  Eventually, I was unemployed and nearly broken by the experience.

Last week I told you about a decision I had to make: keep my word and work for a church whose job offer I had accepted, or break my word and accept a new, second offer.  That dilemma came during this time of unemployment.  I hope you remember the counsel I received from priest who had welcomed me into the Episcopal Church (“What do you want your word to be worth?”) and the letter he wrote to me (“Blessed is he who giveth his word to his brother and dissappointeth him not… even though it be to his own hindrance”).  You may recall I said that letter was the most powerful and formative correspondence I have ever received. 

What I shared with you last week was the first part.  Today I want to read the second half, which addressed the residue I carried with me after the pain and disappointment of my first calling:

You may feel your experiences in ministry to date warrant cynical and angry responses.  The truth is that negative experience does not exist.  There is simply experience.  The Lord is with us when we use our experience to deepen our love and to strengthen our praise.  The cross was not a “negative” experience.  On the contrary, it is for us the ultimate witness to the power of God to evoke grace in every circumstance.  I pray that you will be entirely free of the fault of resentment which will rob you of all joy and disable you as a man and therefore as a minister.  Let all clamor cease in your heart, and if that is not possible, lay that fault penitently and incessantly before God in prayer.  Resentment and self-pity are the virtuous vestments put on by unregenerate egotism for disguise.  No one, of course, is deceived, except oneself. 

Congratulations on your new appointment.  Accepted with humility and offered in love, your ministry will be blessed.

Over the years the truth and wisdom of his words have been born out in my life time and again.  Life, like the ocean, is what it is.  Sometimes the tide goes out, sometimes it comes in.  Some days are calm while others are rough and choppy.  There are days when everything is as you would like it to be and other days when a hidden rip current is ready to take you for a ride into the unknown (and unwanted).  More than when I was younger, I now receive moments of grace with thankfulness and humility and I am better at facing adversity with joy, faith, and patient acceptance.  To quote again my friend, “The cross was not a ‘negative’ experience.  On the contrary, it is for us the ultimate witness to the power of God to evoke grace in every circumstance” and “the Lord is with us when we use our experience to deepen our love and to strengthen our praise.”   I see and sense that better now than I did years ago.

At the end of Christine’s blogpost she writes this:

I was sitting in church this morning and looking around at the various people scattering the pews and wondering how many of them were feeling beaten down right at this moment?  Or wondering how many of them had maybe felt beaten down at a different time in their lives?  A time where some things did not make sense or that they felt they had endured more than their fair share of beatings so to speak.  I don’t have to know all of their stories to know that those stories are there in some form or another.  Tales of survival.  Tales of people who became stronger and more compassionate people because of what they had to endure.  Journeys that were easier than mine and definitely journeys that were more difficult than mine.  People who were beaten down but yet rose up.  Again.  And again.  And again.  Just like I will.

Her words remind me of the ancient Japanese proverb: “Fall seven times, stand up eight.”  “My strength didn’t come from lifting weights,” another person said.   “My strength came from lifting myself up every time I was knocked down.”

In the parable he told, Jesus is of course the son who is killed, as he himself one day will be crucified.  He then quotes a rather obscure psalm that describes how the rejected stone becomes the cornerstone.  The message for us is straightforward: Life’s challenges and trials have a way, through the grace of God and the power of resurrection, to make us stronger, better, and more useful than we were before.  We who gather here this morning are stones weathered and hewed by the experiences of life, yet witnesses to God’s grace to use every experience to evoke a working of grace.

Working the the Fields

Well, lets get the morning off to a good start with a couple of jokes about brothers.  Did you hear the one about the teacher who asked a student what his father does for a living?  The boy answered, “He is a magician.”  The teacher, intrigued, asked what was his most daring trick.  “Well,” said the boy, “it has to be when he cuts people in two.”  “Is he good at it,” the teacher inquired?  “Not really,” came the answer.  “And do you have any siblings,” the teacher asked?  “Yes,” said the boy, “I have two half brothers.” 

Then there was the mother who for breakfast made pancakes for her two young sons.  The boys, both hungry, began to argue over who would get the first batch.  Well, the mom, being a good Christian woman, seized the opportunity to instill a moral lesson.  “If Jesus was sitting here,” she said, “He would say, ‘Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.’” The older brother then turned to the younger and announced, “Today, you get to be Jesus!”

Finally, an infant boy was baptized at a beautiful service.  Everything went fine until his four-year-old brother began to cry inconsolably as the rite was ending.  In front of the entire congregation the kindly priest said, “Johnny, what’s the matter?”  The little boy looked at the priest and replied, “You said that my baby brother should be raised in a good Christian home.”  “That’s right,” said the priest, “So why are you are so upset?”  “I don’t want my little brother to be taken away,” little Johnny sobbed.  “I want him to be raised my family!”

Today we hear Jesus’ parable about a father who had two sons.  He asks both to work in the family vineyard.  One refused, at first, but later went and did what had been asked of him.  The other agreed to work, but never followed through.  At the time of its telling, the story highlighted how some self-righteous religious leaders had failed to live up to their promises to God, while various sinners, in coming to Jesus, had done what they at first (through their actions) had denied.

In our day and time, the parable points toward moral dilemmas that we all face.  There are, of course, moments when we simply do not know the right thing to do.  These are times we possess little more than poor choices, none of which leads to an adequate response.  Other dilemmas occur when we are faced with confusing or conflicting options and cannot see the way.  This parable is not about these kinds of challenges.  It is about the times we know what to do (or what not to do), yet lack the conviction and determination to follow through.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines integrity as “soundness of moral principle, the character of uncorrupted virtue, esp. in relation to truth and fair dealing; uprightness, honesty, sincerity.”  If you think back to high school math, you may recall that an integer is a whole number, one that cannot be divided.  A person with integrity, therefore, must be an indivisible person; the kind of person whose life is guided by one magnificent obsession: to be the kind of person God calls each one of us to be.  Still, integrity involves more than just having the right set of values.  It includes having the strength and will to live out those values.

Every freshmen who takes a class in psychology learns of the classic study where four people are placed in a room and given a simple task.  They are to look at a couple of lines on a chalkboard and tell the examiner which one is the longest.  One line is clearly longer than the others, so the task would appear to be straight-forward.  The real test, however, is that three of the people are “in” on the experiment.  They point to a shorter line in order to gage whether the fourth person will hold his or her ground or cave in to peer pressure.  An overwhelming number go with what the other three say, even if they believe differently.  The study demonstrates the degree to which people will conform in order to be accepted.

How different that response is from the convictions of the Old Testament figure Job.  When his so-called friends bring unrelenting pressure on him to say things that are not true, Job’s respond is this:

“As long as I have life within me, the breath of God in my nostrils, my lips will never speak wickedness, and my tongue utter no deceit.  Till I die, I will not deny my integrity.  I will maintain my righteousness and never let go of it; my conscience will not reproach me as long as I live.” - Job 27:3-6

Years ago, I was facing a rather difficult decision.  I had accepted a job offer to be an Assistant to the Rector of a particular church and he had announced the hiring to the parish.  Then I received a second offer that had some distinct advantages over the first.  The circumstances had changed to a degree that I no longer wanted to fulfill my initial promise.  I was not sure what to do so I asked some people for advice.  I spoke with one of the bishop’s assistants and explained the situation.  What he said to me, in effect, was this: “If you take the second offer I will make sure your decision will follow you for the rest of your career.”  I left his office feeling threatened, but with no more clarity than when I had entered. 

Then I went to the priest who welcomed me into the Episcopal Church and encouraged me to go to seminary.  His counsel was different.  He talked to me about integrity and character.  Who did I want to be in life?  What did I want my word to be worth?  Who did God want me to be?  As a result of that conversation, there was no question in my mind what I needed to do.  I turned down the second offer and fulfilled my commitment to the first.

A few days later the priest I had talked with wrote me a letter.  To this day it remains the single most powerful and formative correspondence I have ever received:

My dear Keith,

There are moments when the tattered ends come together.  Some say these are “inspirations” that give life depth and range.  Sometimes we pray for years to have them, but they cannot be forced.  I remember such a moment thirty-five years ago in my life.  I had gone to visit a friend.  At some point he was called away and I found myself inspecting his collection of long-playing records.  Among them I found one which featured some Trappists monks.  I cannot explain why, but I was moved to put that recording on the turntable and for the next half hour I listened to the chanting of ancient psalms and hymns.  I recall as if it happened yesterday how the music moved me, almost to tears.  The simplicity and purity of the plainsong tones seemed to clear a space in my soul.  I remember that one of the psalms especially moved me, the 15^th.

“Lord, who shall dwell in Thy tabernacle, or who shall rest on Thy holy hill?  Even he that leadeth an uncorrupt life, and doeth the thing that is right and speaketh the truth from his heart… he that sweareth unto his neighbor and disappointeth him not, though it were to his own hinderance…”

I confess that I was more moved by the mystical than the moral aspect of the music, but as the years have past, the integration of the beauty and the duty have happened in my life now and then.  I blush to think how seldom, but I rejoice that it has happened at all.

Your decision the other day will bring you peace, more in the years to come than in the coming weeks… You will be grateful that you disappointed not your brother to whom you had given your word.  On such decisions character is built, without which nothing good and true can come.

Did you know that the English word for character comes from a Greek word meaning “an engraving tool and the mark it makes”?  Our character is the mark we make with our lives.  But more than that, our character is a byproduct of our walk with God.  Our lives become a reflection of the noble qualities of godliness that comes from walking daily with the Lord and acting upon that relationship.

Today we are called to examine our lives, to search our hearts, to confess our sins (those that are small as well as those that are large, those that are titillating as well as those that are petty, those which society abhors as well as those which society has come to embrace), to seek forgiveness, to amend our lives, to delight in God’s will, and to walk in God’s way.  Today we are called to be persons of integrity.

We fall short.  I fall short.  And yet the goal remains the same.  The good news is that the parable’s father, like our heavenly Father, loves both of his sons.  His lips are always quick to say, when appropriate, “Well done, my good and faithful son (or daughter).”  His ever-loving embrace is always ready to wrap around our remorseful souls. 

In many ways, I have built my life on that experience of so long ago and the way that priest interpreted for me.  I have not been perfect.  I have disappointed my brother, my sister, and my neighbor more times than I can bear to recount.  But the bar and the measure of integrity that was lifted up for me remains my goal.  It remains the object of my devotion to God.  I give thanks for every time and to every person I have been able to embody what I hope to be.  I give all thanks to God for those moments and rest in his mercy for those times when I have fallen short.

A father asked his two sons to go and work in the field.