The Triumphant

 

All Saints' Day

I have officiated the Burial Office seventy-nine times in the thirteen years and one month I have served as the Rector of St. Paul’s Church.  To be honest, I don’t remember some of the people for whom I offered these sacred prayers.  Others I think of often.  One was a young husband and father, another a young mother and wife.  One was a brother.  One was a son whose father I buried a year later.  One was a curmudgeon, another was a four-foot/eleven-inch cyclone of energy in the parish who constituently reminded me I would miss her when she was gone… and she was right! 

Those who were active in parish life each made a unique and irreplaceable contribution to our work and mission.  Some sang in the choir or served on the Vestry.  A few were faithful to our food pantry ministry.  One used a backhoe to install the vaults of our columbarium and a barbeque grill to roast the lamb and chicken for our Agape Meals.  Some were second or third or even fourth generation members of the parish, faithfully following in the footsteps of their ancestors’ witness of service to our church and to our community.

About a third of the burials involved a loved one of a person who most likely is watching today’s live stream.  They flood your memories often and especially on this All Saints’ Day.  You can see their faces, hear their voices, and perhaps even remember the feel of their touch.  You have a memory giving rise to a smile on your face or maybe even makes you laugh out loud.  You have a memory bringing tears to your eyes.  Perhaps you have a memory of something left unfinished or something you wish could be undone. 

Seventy-nine feels like a big number, but it pales in comparison to the burials held here before I began to serve as your rector.  And it pales in comparison to your loved ones who were buried from a different parish or in accordance to a different tradition.  “All those we love but see no longer” is an incalculable number.

This year I miss our All Saints’ tradition of writing names on streamers of paper and suspending them above the Chancel.  As the streamers move and dance in the air it is as if the presence of all those we love but see no longer is revealed.  They are with us and we sense they are much, much closer to us than we imagine.

Our Eucharistic liturgy invites us to “join our voices with angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven.”  It is a powerful reminder more is happening in worship than can be experienced through the senses - who we see and what we hear.  Christian tradition speaks of the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant.  The Church Militant is comprised of those of us who are currently engaged in the struggle to make the Kingdom of God the kingdom of this world.  The Church Triumphant consists of those people who fought the good fight and God has exalted to heavenly glory.  As we gather at the Lord’s Table the entire Church – Militant and Triumphant – is always present. 

Every time we say or sing the Sanctus something amazing is happening.  We join our voices with the voices of the Church Triumphant in a single chorus of praise proclaiming God’s holiness and glory.  Our voices are joined the voices of Billy, George, Peter, Esta, John, Eva, Doc Thomas, Art (although he might be carping about why more people are not in attendance), Stephanie, Vivian, Francis, Walter, Betty Anne, Shirley, Marie, Henrietta, Vince, Jack, Johnny, Curtis, Sue, Connie, Tom, Esther, Matthew, Carol, George, Wynter, and so many, many others. 

It seems to me All Saints’ Day, like Easter, is a day of respite from our sense of grief and loss.  On Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and so many other days of personal and public remembrance, we experience an acute sense of who we have lost.  Yes, time heals (to a certain degree), but scars marking loss remain and prove naggingly resilient and painful to the touch.  But Easter and especially All Saints’ are different.  Today is a day when we live into the hope of our faith, when we allow the doctrine and teachings of the Church (based on the unbreakable promises of our Savior) to sink in… and sink in deep.  Today is a day when each of us acknowledges the loss of seventy-nine dear souls (or whatever the number is for you), yet embraces or grasps or clings to or rests and relaxes in the knowledge the Triumphant exist in a bliss beyond our imagining, are nearer to us than we can ever know, and one day (guided by our Good Shepherd) we will be led to a place of reunion with all those we love but see no longer.

A Complex Word & a Simple Commandment

 

Matthew 22:34-46

Proper 25 / Year A

Confucius observed life is simple, but we insist on making it complicated.  Tax forms and outlet mall parking lots are just two examples.  It just seems we humans are wired to make life more challenging.  Social theorists have identified something they call a “complexity bias”, which is our tendency to focus on the 10% of a problem or situation that is difficult, while ignoring the 90% that is doable.  On their blog site. Marc and Angel Chernoff, authors and life coaches, identify twenty things many of us do to make our lives way more complicated than they need to be:

·    We try to do too much

·    We try to control too much

·    We lose our patience and our poise

·    We respond with negativity

·    We seek constant validation from others

·    We spend too much time with toxic people

·    We let the haters get to us

·    We feed into the drama

·    We worry constantly about our problems

·    We hold on to tight, to everything

·    We hesitate every step of the way

·    We focus on every time and place other than right here, right now

·    We try to cut corners

·    We avoid the tough and necessary conversations

·    We lose track of our priorities

·    We procrastinate

·    We have far more baggage than we need

·    We let old mistakes live on in our hearts and minds

·    We give up on ourselves too soon

·    We compare ourselves to others who seem better off

If more than a few of these seem to describe you, chances are good you are making your life more complicated than it needs to be.

To be sure, religion is not immune to complexity bias.  There are 613 different commands in the Law of Moses.  That is a lot.  The number of corollaries emerging from them over the years becomes astronomical and oppressive by Jesus’ day.  A website by Christian Assemblies International states there are 1,050 commandments in the New Testament (most are statements in the imperative) and breaks them down into 69 categories with headings like…

·    7 things to abstain from

·    7 things to avoid

·    3 things to ask for

·    2 things to awake to

·    74 “be’s”

·    30 “be not’s”

·    14 “beware’s”

·    3 things to cast away

·    6 things to honor

I could go on (and on and on and on), but you get the idea.  Just as with life, there is a pull to make religion more complicated than it needs to be.  It is so refreshing and freeing to hear Jesus distill all of it down to two basic commandments: Love God and Love your neighbor.  As one theologian observed, everything else in the bible after this is merely commentary. 

“Love the Lord your God with all you heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  What does this look like in practice?  Well, it certainly is not love as in a teenage crush.  It manifests itself through adoration, worship, honoring, and obeying.   “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  What does this look like in practice?  In part, it has something to do with valuing every person as much as you value yourself.  How do I want to be treated?  This is how I am to treat other people.  Want to I need from others?  This is what I am to offer.  How do I want my dignity to be affirmed?  This is how I am to respond to every person I know and every person I meet and every person who is influenced by my actions.

Wendall Berry, the poet and farmer, rephrased the Golden Rule in this way: “Treat the people downstream the way you want the people upstream to treat you.”  That is a wonderful image for want it means to love your neighbor as yourself.

I read an interesting article this week by Joan Cook on the subject of post-traumatic growth.  Cook is an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and in the article she describes the realities making hyper-stress the normative experience in our society today: the pandemic, the coarse and corrosive political climate, natural disasters associated with climate change, and on and on.  Cook details the adverse affects these things can have both on individuals as well as our society as a whole, but notes “trauma can also positively transform people and leave them with a renewed, reinvigorated perspective on and purpose in life.”

Writing about a 1990 study of middle-aged adults going through bereavement, Cook says positive changes emanating from post-traumatic growth can include “improved relationships, more empathetic feelings and compassionate behaviors, additional coping strengths or mastery muscles, living more in line with one’s values and an increased connection to spirituality or God, as well as a deeper, sweeter appreciation of life.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we emerged from these strange times better for the experience.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we found a way to value simplicity rather than complexity; basic decency and goodness rather than vitriol; kindness and gentleness rather than violence; generosity and helpfulness rather than self-preservation and self-promotion; godliness and humility rather than arrogance.  I don’t know if it will happen or not, but one thing I do know is this: it can start with me and it can start with you.  It can start by each of us refocusing on what is the most important commandment of all: Love God and love your neighbor.

 

Seeing the Holiness of God

 

Exodus 33:12-23

Proper 24 / Year A

I had just graduated from high school and a classmate was throwing a party at his home to celebrate.  Now, the thing you have to know is this friend had an older sister who was a senior when we were lowly sophomores and she was drop-dead gorgeous – the kind of angelic being we put on a pedestal and revered from afar, but could never approach.  Well, at the party I was standing with Ward Ballard at the dining room table, filling our plates with food.  The older sister appeared out of nowhere with one of her equally spectacular girlfriends, looking to get some get some food from the other side of the table.  Try to imagine it as a movie scene filmed in slow motion with sweeping music behind it.  Then, the unthinkable happened.  The sister looked up from her gathering, looked across the table, looked us right in the eyes, smiled her beautiful smile, and said, “Hello.”  It was as if a goddess from above had noticed us and validated our existence in the universe.  “Hello”, my friend Ward and I said in response, but we were so dumbstruck (or awestruck) neither of us could think of a single thing more to say.  So then and there, in the presence of these two heavenly beings, Ward turned to me and said, “So Keith, a-ba-a-ba-a-ba-ba-ba!”  I have never laughed so hard in all my life.

That memory came back to me as I pondered this morning’s reading from the Book of Exodus.  Moses seeks assurance the Lord will journey with him and his people.  “My presence will go with you,” the Lord responds.  But Moses needs more.  He wants to see the Lord face-to-face.  He wants to encounter God’s full glory.  Now this is not a passing fancy or a mere curiosity.  For Moses, it is a passionate desire.  Most of us, I suspect, want to perceive how God is at work in the world.  We want to know what God would have us do.  We have certain needs and concerns we turn over to God.  But I have meet very few people in life we want to “see” God eye-to-eye, face-to-face.  Perhaps it is because we imagine God does not have a physical ‘body’ that can be seen.  Perhaps it is because we sense we are unworthy of such an audience and honor.  Or maybe perhaps it does not occur to us this should be or could be a spiritual goal.

But it is a spiritual goal for the author of the 99^th Psalm, which we read just moments ago.  One of six psalms known as “Enthronement Psalms”, it proclaims the Lord is King.  It is a carefully constructed piece of poetry composed for four stanzas, each with three lines.  It mentions “the Lord” seven times and uses a pronoun to refer to the Lord seven additional times (seven being the Hebrew number for perfection and completion).  And three times, in three different ways the psalmist calls on us to proclaim the greatness of the Lord for the Lord is holy.

Holiness, something wholly other.  The poet grounds the Lord’s holiness in three things.  First, the Lord is King, reigning over all creation.  Next, unlike earthly kings who may rule out of self-interest, show favoritism, and impose tyranny, the Lord’s holy Kingship is marked by justice and righteousness.  Finally, the psalmist reflects on how our holy King elects to be in relationship with the human family in order to ensure justice and righteousness in human affairs.  We are to seek the Lord who sits enthroned.  We are to bow down before the Lord’s footstool.  We are to worship the Lord upon his holy hill (Jerusalem). 

The 99th Psalm calls us to reorient our spirituality from being me-centered to being God-centered; from being me-focused to being God-focused; from looking at ourselves to looking at God.  

Which brings us back to Moses.  He wants to do more than perceive God, he actually wants to see God.  Once God understands this the Lord tells him it simply is not possible.  “You cannot look on my glory and live.”  So God tells Moses to stand in a cleft in a rock and says God’s hand will cover Moses as God walks by.  And once the Lord is past, God’s hand will be lifted and Moses will be allowed to see God’s back as the Lord walks away.  While still awe-inspiring, this experience will not be so overwhelming as to be deadly. 

I was thinking about Michelangelo’s famous painting The Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel.  It is the work depicting God as an old man reaching out his hand to a reclining Adam who is reaching out his hand to God and their fingers almost touch.  In the painting Michelangelo has Adam looking squarely into the eyes of God.  It suggests as originally created we were made to be in complete communion with God, but once sin is introduced into the world, artists like Michelangelo portray Adam as walking away from God, head bowed in shame, with an arm shielding his face in attempt to prevent God from seeing him and to negate any possibility he might look at God. 

I’ve told you before of an experience I had several years ago when I was a chaplain for a senior high youth conference.  I led devotional times and helped campers prepare for evening worship, which they led.  After a session where I introduced the young people to C.S. Lewis’s book The Great Divorce (in which fictional characters go to heaven but opt to leave because other things are more important to them than meeting God), I worked with a dozen campers to plan the evening service.  We decided each person would spend to time pondering what they believe heaven will be like and what about it they are most looking forward to about it.  The plan was to have them share their thoughts with the entire camp during the evening service.  They did a great job, but one thing struck me.  They talked about things like playing their favorite sports and never getting tired, but not one of the young people mentioned anything about meeting God or worshipping God or adoring God.  Heaven, for them, was a me-centered place.  Perhaps we can chalk it up to youth, still, I suspect many of us want heaven to be what we want with little consideration of what it will be like to be in the presence of a holy God who makes us go “a-ba-a-ba-a-ba-ba-ba!”

When Moses asks to see God’s glory he is in what is know as “The Tent of Meeting,” which Moses erected outside of the Hebrew camp.  It is where he would go to speak to the Lord while his people tarried in the Sinai wilderness.  In response to his request, the Lord instructs Moses to carve out two stone tablets.  You will recall Moses smashed the originals when he came down from the mountain and found his brother leading his people in the worship of a golden calf.  So Moses does his chiseling and carries the stones back up the mountain (not an enviable assignment!).  And there on the mountain the Lord passes before Moses and Moses bows down and worships.  The Lord promises to be “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”   It becomes God’s covenant promise to all people through Moses. 

Does seeking God’s glory make a difference?  You bet it does.  It leads to the Lord defining God’s relationship with the human family, a promise which cannot be broken.  And it changes Moses.  His face becomes radiant and as a result his brother and his people become fearful in his presence.  They now have the “a-ba-a-ba-a-ba-ba-bas” when they are around him.  But this is not Moses’ desired outcome, so he begins to veil his face in their presence.  Maybe in another sermon I will explore what it means to withhold some of your personal experience of the Holy One, but (as they say in business meetings with newsprint) “Let put that idea in the ‘parking lot.’” 

Here is what I take away from today’s readings:

· God is awesome and worthy of your interest and pursuit.

· This pursuit will change you in ways you cannot imagine.

· Your pursuit of God’s glory in your life will have a profound impact on those around you: your spouse and family, your friends, your church, your community, your nation, your world, and even all of creation. 

· If there is nothing in all creation more worthy than the holy Lord, then there is nothing more worthy of our interest and our pursuit.

Clothed in Christ

 

Matthew 22:1-14

Proper 23 / Year A

The ending of the 2013 Superman movie Man of Steel created controversy among diehard fans as well as the production team.  Superman, the ultimate good-guy, defeats Zod, his nemesis, by snapping his neck before the villain can kill thousands upon thousands of people.  Most movies are previewed by a test audience and those who saw this ending did not feel good about it.  Superman simply does not kill.  Christopher Nolan, who produced the movie, argued for an ending where Zod is banished, rather than killed.  But Zack Snyder, the director, was steadfast on the neck-snap and eventually even got DC Comics (who own the rights to Superman) to buy in.  Well, to say the least, not all fans or all professionals got the ending they wanted and this happens with more movies than you might imagine.

By their very nature, parables are meant to shock, to startle, and/or to surprise.  I like to say they are Jesus’ stories and he gets to tell them any way he wants to tell them.  Well, sort of.  When Luke records the parable we just heard read from Matthew he omits the last part of the story where the individual not wearing a wedding robe is bound and cast out of the banquet.  Sometimes the fans get their say, but today we will consider the original and darker version.

The king in Jesus’ story is a fascinating character.  He is incredibly generous (throwing a lavish wedding feast for his son, inviting guests, reminding them twice it is time to come, and inviting new guests when the original invitees refuse to attend) and he is volatile (responding to insult and violence with lethal force and banishing to torment a last-minute attendee who is not wearing the appropriate garment).  Given the king represents God, Jesus presents the Heavenly Father as deserving both our love and our respect.

The original guests are a curious lot.  Who wouldn’t accept an invitation from the king?  Who wouldn’t want to attend a feast?  Who wouldn’t want to celebrate?  Some of my favorite times in ministry and family life have been around the weddings of people with whom I am close.  And yet this group of folks, honored by the king by virtue of an invitation, elect to return to the drudgery of daily life instead.  And as if this is not bad enough, they attack the king’s messengers and put them to death.  In Jesus’ story this group represents the people of the original covenant who were called to be God’s light to world, but failed over and over again to live up to this high purpose.

The new invitees represent you and me.  Our group consists of people who are good and people who are bad.  God’s new invitation does not discriminate.  It is open to everyone.  We have been invited to a feast Jesus calls the Kingdom of Heaven.  You don’t merit this invitation, you don’t earn it, you simply respond to it. 

But what about the gentleman without a robe?  He responds, but this alone is not good enough.  Why?  Given the last-second nature of the invitation, it seems unfair to expect him to have the right clothing on.  And yet, everyone else at the banquet manages to have on a wedding robe.  In fact, it is possible the king even provides the robes for the guests, making the one single act of defiance even more egregious. 

But what exactly does the robe represent?  Given the allegorical nature of the parable, understanding the meaning of the robe is critical to understanding the meaning of Jesus’ story.

Throughout scripture the image of clothing is used to describe one’s virtues and values.   Job said, “I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban” (29:13).  Paul wrote this to the Church in Galatia: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ” (3:27-28).  Being clothed in Christ creates a new identity for each of us and a new community for all of us.

Early Christians practiced baptism by immersion.  As candidates entered the water they stripped off their clothes, symbolizing nothing of their old life remained.  As they rose out of the water they were given a new white robe to wear, symbolizing their new life in Christ, their new identity.  Over the course of the rest of their lives, these baptized followers grew more and more into the image of Christ.   

In Genesis 1, God says, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.”  Image and likeness.  Allyn Smith Jr., and Orthodox priest, writes, “Image is our permanent potential for communion with God, likeness is the actual communion...  We are already in the image of God, yet this will not be fully realized until we grow into God’s likeness.”

What does the robe in Jesus’ story represent?  All of this.  It represents Christ and our desire be like Christ.  It represents our willingness to be who God created us to be and the effort we make to make it happen. 

At baptism we state our desire to turn away from Wickedness, from the corrupting influences of the world, and from living for self alone.  We commit ourselves to the teaching of Scripture, the fellowship of believers, the sacramental life of the Church, and the life of prayer.  We promise to resist evil, and should we sin, we promise to repent and return to the Lord.  We promise to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ through what we say and through what we do.  We promise to love our neighbors as ourselves and to seek Christ in all people.  We promise to strive for justice and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being.  This is how we grow into God’s likeness.  This is the robe we put on when we accept the invitation to be at the table of God’s feast.

And given this perspective, Jesus’ parable comes a little more into focus.  The person without the robe accepts the invitation, but never enters into the new life it offers.  He refuses what everyone else at the feast embraces.  He is the living embodiment of the old adage sitting in a Church does not make you a Christian just as sitting in a garage does not make you a car. 

This is the third Sunday in a row we have heard a parable about rebellion and judgment.  Two weeks ago it was a parable of the two sons whose father asked them to work in the vineyard.  One refused at first, but then went to work.  The other accepted, but then reneged.  Last week we heard the parable of the tenants who lease a vineyard and then refuse to give the produce to the owner at the time of the harvest.  These are dark stories to be sure.  This is not the shepherd going out to rescue the lone lost sheep or the physician who comes to heal the sick.  These are the stories John the Baptist must have anticipated when he proclaimed one is coming who will lay the axe to the root of every tree not bearing good fruit. 

The bishop called for a meeting of the deans last Monday and her practice is for us to begin our time by reading scripture and having conversation about it.  The passage she put before us was today’s reading.  One of my colleagues made an interesting observation.  The king, he said, commands the man without the robe to be bound hand and foot, then throw into the outer darkness, which is a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth.  And as unpleasant as this sounds, my colleague noted it is not a place of death.  The man will have an opportunity to reflect on what has happened, to repent, and to amend his ways.  It occurred to me a place of judgment is not necessarily a place without hope. 

And this is so important because as Jesus’ parables speak to us today we realize how they speak about us.  We can see ourselves in each of the characters and in all of the elements.  There is that within us to be praised and also that which needs to be condemned.  We are at times faithful and at times foolish.  If Jesus told a parable with you or with me as a central character, sometimes we would be the hero, while at other times we would play the villain.  But once we are clothed in Christ we begin a journey toward Christ’s likeness.  It is not like a driving trip where you get frequent millage markers telling you how far you are from your destination.  Our progress toward the likeness we desire is uneven - sometimes coming in leaps and bounds while at others demonstrating amazing resistance to change. 

But here we are.  This is what we are.  And guess what, we are invited to join the Kingdom of Heaven and clothed for the celebration.  The party has begun and it will never end.

The Spirituality of a New Locker Room

 

Some years ago a small town high school with a long tradition of winning football started to slump and struggled through several seasons with losing records.  To turn things around the school hired a new football coach: Dick Butkus, the hall-of-fame linebacker from the Chicago Bears who is arguably one of the toughest players ever to put on shoulder pads.  Coach Butkus had his work cut out for him.  At every practice he told the players the game is 90% mental and he told them they had to stop thinking like losers.  They had to think like winners and practice like winners and act like winners if, in fact, they wanted to be winners. 

To help facilitate this change, the school boosters raised a ton of money to build the team a brand new, state of the art, locker room facility.  During summer two-a-day practices, Coach Butkus took the team in to the new facility to show it to them.  The boys were in awe, to say the least.  “Take a good look around,” Butkus said to them, “because I won’t let you back in here again until you earn it.”  The boys’ jaws dropped, their eyes about fell out of their sockets, and a stunned silence fell over the team. 

Earn it?  Was he kidding?  No, Butkus was serious.  This is how he explained his thinking: “When something like this is just given to you, it doesn’t mean as much as when you have to work for it.”  And so for days the boys did nothing but talk about stepping it up… at practice, in the classroom, at home, and on the field.  They were determined to get that locker room.  And they succeeded.  After the last practice before the first game of the season, Coach Butkus allowed them move in to their new facility.  For some of the young men on that team it was the first time in life they earned anything.  Before then everything had been handed to them.  All that they had had come to them through little or no effort on their part. 

That football team tells us a lot about what has changed in our society.  As recently as a generation or two ago the American dream consisted of finding a way to do something better, cheaper, or more efficiently.  The typical American worker understood honest labor and prudent saving could improve one’s lot in life.  The common thread connecting everyone’s work ethic was a belief personal productivity would get one ahead in life.  And getting ahead looked like educating yourself and your children, contributing something useful to society, and having a good name in the local community.  Today the American dream looks more like, well, winning the lottery, which is little more than a hope someone will hand you a better life.  An entitlement mentality permeates much of our common life.  We all expect more and more to be done for us and we expect someone else to bear the cost.

This shift in mindset plays itself out in every facet of our society, including congregational life.  Two generations ago people attended church to discern what God required of them.  Today, churches strive to offer programs catering to the wants and desires of its members and the wider community.  The public call to be transformed into the image of Christ is hushed, if heard at all… drummed out by the need to promote what the church can do for you rather than focusing on who God calls you to be and what God has created you to do.

Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel reading suggests this is really nothing new.  It is the human condition to want to get something for nothing, to underachieve and yet still overreach, to covet and to take rather than to give and to work.

The parable builds on absolute bedrock theological truth.  This world is God’s world.  God imagined it.  God called it into existence.  And God sustains it.  But God entrusts a part of the sustaining work to us.  Like the laborers in the vineyard each of us is given work to do; and think of work in the broadest terms… doing a job, raising a family, and contributing to the common good.  For this we have been created and with this we are charged.  This is God’s plan for the world and doing what we are called to do gives us a sense of purpose and place and dignity.  In a real sense this work, as the old saying holds, is its own reward.

Or it can be.  But Jesus’ parable highlights the darker side of our human condition.  Rather than finding our meaning and joy in doing the work we have been given to do, we decide that we would rather hold the place of God.  We want to call the shots and possess all we covet.  And we want to get it in the easiest and most selfish way possible… bypassing the call to serve one another through our prayers and labor in favor of having more and bigger and better and new.  And why do we want all of this stuff?  Because it is a substitute for what God’s call gives to us: a sense of purpose and place and dignity.  We all need reinforcement and affirmation of our worth.  The question is where will we turn to find it?  Will we accept the call God extends to us or will we turn to the ways of the world and the offerings of our consumer-driven culture?

St. Paul, in his letter to the Church in Philippi, writes this: “This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”  He says we have a choice to make.  Either we can live our lives to obtain earthly things or we can strive to live like citizens of heaven… people who are in the world, but not of the world.  One goal leads to the highest imaginable purpose in life.  It brings order and coherence to all that we do because we align how we live and move and have our being with the way that God has created life to be.  The other way perverts and distorts life as God intends it by making earthly acquisitions and achievements to be the ultimate goal, and by obtaining them through any means necessary.

Jesus’ parable tells us how we live and how we work and how we contribute to the common good are spiritual issues.  These activities can be rooted in faith and practiced as a part of our devotion, or they can be rooted in selfishness and be carried out completely indifferent to God’s call. 

Does the decision we make make a difference?  Go back to that high school football team.  Had the coach simply let the boys have the new locker room it would have been just one more thing given to them.  Perhaps early on they would have appreciated its new shine, but eventually the shine would have worn off.  Then they would have sat back passively waiting for somebody else to give them something new.  But because they earned the facility through their hard work and practice the locker room had more value to them.  It is a value springing from their own efforts.  And for the rest of their lives they will value that facility because their goal was not to have a new locker room, but to be worthy of it. 

Does the decision we make either to live for ourselves or to live for God make a difference?  You bet it does!  It makes a difference to God and it makes a difference in how we experience life, what we get out of life, and what it all means to us. 

 

Plain Talk about Pledging

 

Matthew 21:23-32

Proper 21 / Year A

Which brother did the will of the father? I guess the one who said at first he wouldn’t work, but then did… but for my money, both boys deserve little more than a lump of coal in their Christmas stocking this year! At its heart, Jesus’ parable is a story about responding to God – responding to God’s will, responding to God’s love, responding to God’s mercy and forgiveness. We all know what it is to commit, but fail to follow through. And we all know what it is to resist, but then embrace.

There are many facets to this reality, but I want to focus in on just one of them this morning. I want to speak plainly and practically about personal stewardship and about contributing financially to the work of the church. Now, having called my shot, I can almost hear the clicking of computer mice all over the city as people log off our live-stream, but if you are still with me I hope you will hear some things that encourage you, inform you, surprise you, and challenge you.

I first began giving money to the church when I was a child. Well, to be truthful, my parents gave me a quarter each Sunday to put in the collection basket in our Sunday School room. Back then a quarter was a lot of money to me. It could buy me a comic book and a candy bar… and more than once it did! I engaged early on the struggle of holding on to what I have verses letting go and giving to God.

When I got a little older I was able to make money as a paperboy, so I made my first pledge to the church. I think it was something like a dollar a week. When I got hopelessly behind on my commitment I learned first-hand the experience of despair and defeat. I was not able to follow through on what I said I would do. I grew from that experience, continued to pledge, and in subsequent years did a better job of keeping current on my commitment.

Over the years I have come to believe each of us is called to be good stewards of all God entrusts to us. This involves (as they say) our time, our talent, and our treasure, which is to say, we are called to use our time, our abilities, and our money in good and godly ways. A part of this call and responsibility requires us to give away a part of our financial means to support God’s mission and ministry in the world. How much? Some lift up the biblical example of the tithe – 10%. I like to talk about cultivating generosity because for some, 10% at this point in life is out of the question while for others it is not nearly enough.

While I believe every person baptized into the Christian faith and life is called to be generous, I do not believe anyone is required to give money to St. Paul’s Church. Each of us has to decide how we will use our time, our talent, and our treasure to support God’s work. Most of us recognize the need to do this locally and most of us sense our common life at St. Paul’s is an effective and necessary way for us to do this.

I hope your sense of generosity extends beyond the walls of our parish. The lion’s share of what I give away I give to our church, but I also have minor monthly commitments to my college, my seminary, our diocesan camp and conference center, Episcopal Relief & Development, and a campus missioner. In addition I remain open to supporting various causes and initiatives as they come to me. A few years ago Nora Buttler organized us to volunteer ringing the bell for the Salvation Army. Since then I always have a dollar ready every time I pass a kettle. I call it my “Wal-Mart Tax” and I give it joyfully both to support the cause and to encourage the ringer.

Let me tell you about St. Paul’s finances. Our fixed expenses each year run around $275,000. This includes salaries and benefits, utilities, office supplies, insurance, and our financial commitment to the common life of our diocese. We entered this year with income projected to be 10% short of our fixed needs. As they say, God always seems to provide.

Our income comes from four primary sources: pledges (what members commit in advance to contribute over the course of the year), plate (money received, but not pledged and loose money put in the offering plate), donations from building use (including parking lot rental), and a portion of the income earned by our Endowment Fund (which, depending on how the market performs, usually runs between $25,000-$30,000). As you might imagine, plate and building use income are down dramatically due to the pandemic, but so are some of our fixed expenses.

St. Paul’s is blessed to have an Endowment Fund of about $1,100,000, comprised largely of money people have designated to the church in their wills. The majority of the endowment is dedicated to building upkeep or is undesignated. Under the rules of the fund, the Vestry can use 75% on the yearly income of the undesignated money for whatever purpose it deems good. Over the last several years, the Vestry has used this money to supplement our Operating Budget. Some might look at our endowment and think St. Paul’s has a lot of money. In truth, we are blessed to have a financial asset and we are called to shepherd it with good stewardship so it will remain an asset well into the future.

In a couple of weeks you will receive a pledge card in the mail and a letter asking you to consider making a financial commitment to St. Paul’s in 2021. As I said, while God calls you to be generous, God does not require you to give a single penny to our parish. But most of you value the work we do here and want to support it. More and more I find I don’t open my mail and never seem to get around to following up on what is in it. If you are at all like me in this regard, please do pay special attention to this mailing.

I hope you will give serious consideration to making a pledge to the church. With so much having changed in our world in 2020, it is vital for the Vestry to know how much income we can expect next year in order to respond accordingly. Your pledge helps us to plan. It will help us to be faithful stewards of what you and God provide to us. Given the state of our economy, we suspect some people will not be able to give as much as they have in the past. We understand and no one should feel poorly if you have to cut back.

Perhaps some of you have never considered making a pledge. I hope you will do so this year. Maybe you think St. Paul’s has all the money it needs. We don’t. But even more important than what the church needs is what you need. You need to cultivate a sense of generosity. You need to know the spiritual blessing of you are doing your part in God’s world. You need to let go of a little in order to know you will be OK without it… to know all things come from God. Perhaps consider pledging $25 or $50 a month to the church. For most of us, this sacrifice can be covered by passing on eating out once a month.

If you are pledging and want to push yourself little, figure out your take-home pay, do a little math, and discover the percentage your are giving away. I remember reading somewhere the average church member gives away about 2.2% of their income. If this is where you, consider what it would look like to give away 2.5% of your income in the coming year. The year after that, push it to 3.0% and so on. What I gain by doing this is not that God gives me back ten times what I give away, but that I use more wisely what I retrain. There use to be an old saying: “A penny saved is a good example to the rest of the dollar.” Well, Christian generosity works like this. What you give away has a way of transforming what you do (and don’t do) with what you keep.

Please remember, a pledge is a commitment, not a contract. The church will not send you a bill at the end of the year telling you to pay up. We will not foreclose on your favorite pew if you fall behind. Your pledge helps us to plan. And it shifts your giving from how you feel on any given day (let’s be honest, how often does anyone ‘feel’ like giving away hard earned cash?) to something aspirational (a specific plan to cultivate a generous life-style).

Well, this is just one way we can see ourselves in today’s parable of the two brothers. Each of us is called to work in God’s vineyard. Either we can say yes or we can say no. Either we can actually follow through or we can walk away. The choice is ours to make. How will you respond to the will of the Father?

Complaining about Complaining

 

Matthew 20:1-16

Proper 20 / Year A

Moses said to the people, “Draw near, for the Lord has heard your complaining.” 

If there is one thing connecting today’s two readings it is a deep sense of dissatisfaction.  I know complaining when I hear it because I can complain with the best of ‘em.  According to a website aimed at people in their sixties, these are seven things people my age complain about the most:

·       The weather.

·       Other drivers.

·       Waiting on hold.

·       Little aches and pains.

·       Professionals who don’t act professionally.

·       “Kids these days…”

·       The cost of food, gasoline, and just about everything else.

Somehow complaining about what the neighbors across the street are doing in our church parking lot failed to make the list!

Another site suggests there are three different kinds of complainers.  First, there are chronic complainers – the folks who are never satisfied… ever.  Cognitive research has discovered perpetual negativity actually re-wires a person’s brain so that every experience is filtered with a slant toward what is wrong with it.

The second type of complainer is the venter.  They express dissatisfaction in order to garner attention and receive validation in the form of sympathy.  Vesting tends to release energy building up inside, but at a cost.  Once the energy is dispelled, so is the drive to fix whatever one finds so frustrating.  And often the energy doesn’t just go away, it gets transferred to the person listening who must now carry the venter’s emotional baggage.  As an anonymous wag put it, “I think some people enjoy complaining almost as much as they enjoy doing nothing about it.”

The final type is known as the “instrumental” complainer.  This person takes the complaint to source of dissatisfaction, names what is wrong, describes its impact, stresses the importance of change, and cooperates in appropriate ways to make it happen.  There is an old saying that holds, “The pessimist complains about the wind.  The optimist expects it to change.  The realist adjusts the sail.”

One of the striking features of Israel’s forty years in the wilderness is how passive the people are.  They want, they need, and they expect God to do everything for them… the kinds of things most of us do for ourselves.  A predicable pattern emerges: God provides and the people complain.  The manna is tasteless.  The water has a funny taste.  What’s for dinner tonight?  Don’t tell me.  Let me guess.  Quail! 

Some 750 years later God’s people undertake a second kind of Exodus; this time leaving exile in Babylon to return to Jerusalem.  Although they were exiled, they where not enslaved like those who left Egypt.  These Jews become part of an advanced civilization, rise up in the ranks of society, and mingle with other exiles; exposing them to new ideas and possibilities.  They don’t need God to deliver them.  They simply go to the king and ask his permission to return home.  And when they get to Jerusalem they find its walls breached, gates burned, and the Temple destroyed.  What do they do?  Under the leadership of Ezra, they roll up their sleeves and rebuild the Temple.  Under the leadership of Nehemiah they repair the wall and construct new gates.  They don’t complain to God.  They get to work.

If you know your Virginia history you know the Jamestown settlement struggled mightily its first few years.  Thirteen years later the colony in Plymouth was equally challenged.  Both began as collectivist efforts where everyone worked for the common good of all.  Shortages and deprivation were common.  You should not be surprised to learn both enterprises reversed their fortunes and began to thrive after allocating a parcel of land to each to each individual.  The work each person put into his/her field benefitted him/her personally.  It seems in life either we work hard to make for ourselves the kind of life we want or we abdicate this duty to someone else and complain about the results. 

Jesus’ parable about the day labors in the vineyard can just as easily be called the Parable about the Responsible Employer.  By paying a full day’s wage to those who do not work the full day he ensures each laborer (and each laborer’s family) will have enough to get by on for that day.  Short of a day’s wage, those workers who started later in the day would be in real trouble.

There wouldn’t be much a story here if Jesus had changed one little detail in how he tells it.  He could have had the owner pay first those who had worked the longest.  They would have walked away content with the pay they had agreed to work for.  Then Jesus could have had the owner pay those who did not work as long and no one would be the wiser… but it wouldn’t nearly be as interesting of a story. Jesus has those who worked the most watch those who worked the least get paid the same amount.  It doesn’t sit well with them and we get it.  It does not seem fair.

Barbara Brown Taylor raises an interesting question about this parable.  Why is it, she asks, as we listen to this story we so closely identify with those who worked the hardest rather than with those who worked the least?  Why are we drawn to the moral outrage of those who get shorted as opposed to the gratitude of those who get more than they deserve?  If we are honest with ourselves, we will acknowledge we have each caught our share of the breaks, been blessed beyond what we merit, generally have it better than 99% of the people who have ever lived. 

Of course Jesus’ story is not about business practices and social responsibility.  It is a story about God and about you and me.  God blesses each one of us not because we earned it, not because we worked for it, and not because we deserve it.  God blesses of us because God loves us.  God knows we need the daily bread of justice, mercy, and forgiveness.  God knows each of needs to feel loved, valued, and accepted.  God gives to me as God gives to you as God gives to the people parking in our lot, working on their cars, and (on occasion) dumping their trash. 

So here is a hard, but important truth… the person you complain about the most… well God loves this person just as much as God loves you.  It may not seem fair.  It may not seem right.  But it is the way it is because it is the way God is.