Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Yr A, Proper 23, Oct 11 2020

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Yr A, Proper 23, Oct 11 2020

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

In the gospel of Matthew we have been reading the stories of Jesus' journey to Jerusalem, Jesus' final entry into Jerusalem, and Jesus working incredibly hard to teach the disciples everything that he thinks is essential for them to know when he is gone. Jesus seems to be tired and impatient as he finishes this task of imparting knowledge in the form of parables. And, the parables we have been hearing from Matthew have been terribly troublesome. 

In this parable, as with the one we preached last week, we are catching a glimpse of the low point in an intense family feud. I want to emphasize the word “family” here because Matthew and his community are caught up in a struggle with their Israelite kin about how to be faithful to the God of Abraham and Sarah and, in particular, whether Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah Israel’s prophets had promised. This is not a Jewish-Christian dispute – though in the centuries that follow Christians will use this passage to further their anti-Semitism (which is one of the things that makes this passage dangerous) – but rather it represents the pain of a community sundered from its family and trying to figure itself out.

So, maybe this parable really asks the question, what happens when people we love, our brothers and sisters, our friends and family, believe differently than we do, or disagree with us, or do not believe at all? We all come from families or friendship groups just like this, and especially right now, in these days, we have much disagreement.

What does the kingdom of God look like in this case? Matthew answers this intra-family dispute by telling a story about a king who resolves this difficult matter in a very dark and violent way. We have seen in our own culture, and in the diverse cultures and religions of the 21st century, we have seen the same kind of violence in disagreement. If you believe differently than we do, we have every right to capture you and kill you, which is the extreme, a bit less extreme but as violent, is that we have the right to condemn you and hate you.

For those who follow Jesus, that is not the answer. The answer is that in the kingdom of God there is love enough for all of the characters in this story.

Weddings these days are fascinating. In the last few years I have attended weddings as a family member, as mother of the groom, and I have been the presider at a few. Weddings are varied, they can be in the church, at the lake or in the park. And, we've witnessed amazingly varied wedding wear on the diverse people that have been gathered for these weddings. The most interesting wedding wear was at the wedding of my nephew the actor who lived in New York, there were many New Yorkers there, young like him, 30ish, very well tattooed and pierced. The wedding attire ran the gamut from amazingly dressy to jeans and t-shirts, there didn’t seem to be any expectation of any particular appropriate dress.

And in my life, an invitation to a party is an exciting thing. Part of the fun of a party is the expectation, the anticipation. Part of the fun of a party is being included, belonging.

Unlike the response of the people in our story from Matthew today, who made light of the invitation, and even killed the messengers who delivered the invitation. 

The king may have shrugged and said, well then, if the chosen are not interested in the wedding celebration, then go and invite any one you want, they went to the outer reaches of the kingdom, they went to the margins, and those who eventually came to the celebration were honored to be there. The God of abundance has made a great offer, come to the feast. The God of abundance has set the table and has prepared a wonderful banquet.

The thing about an invitation is that we can choose to come, or not. The thing about this relationship with God is that we can choose to be in it or not, we are never compelled. As all these people arrived, people from all over the kingdom, people who were honored to be there; the ones who were tattooed and pierced, the ones who were curious and doubtful, the ones who were questionable and the ones who were upstanding, the ones who loved and hated, but all people who respected the king and the occasion for which they gathered, these people received a wedding garment, a robe. The people gathered for this wedding banquet mostly were the people gathered from the margins, they were the people who responded yes to the great offer made to them. The wedding garment was provided for them, and they put on the wedding garment with honor and respect to the King.  

Except the one in our story. He won’t put on the wedding garment. Not putting on the wedding garment is the very same thing as saying no to this relationship into which he was being invited. So in this case, the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, is of his own choosing. Putting on the wedding garment, putting on the robe, reveals a willingness to respond to the abundant banquet that is available to us now, and available to us at the fulfillment of time. When I reread this story, I was reminded of the garment each of us puts on at baptism, figuratively and literally. The baptismal garment re-presents to us that new creation we become when Jesus calls us over the tumult of our life’s wild restless sea, day by day his clear voice sounds, saying “Christian, follow me.” We are dressed as one ready, ready to follow, ready to be a voice in the cacophony, ready to dive into the relationship that is offered to us by the one who prepares the banquet of abundance, the one whose heart's desire is to be in relationship with us. 

When we put on the wedding garment, or the baptismal garment, it does not signify that we are finished, that we have arrived, or that we are perfected or done, because we are only beginning. We are saying yes to the abundant and amazing love that waits for us. We are saying yes to the journey of life and yes to the knowledge that the journey is not by ourselves, but with the one who creates us, the one who reconciles us, the one who revives us. Life is not a journey that should be taken by oneself; it is a hard and treacherous journey, as well as a joyful and exciting journey. It is a journey of love and forgiveness; it is a journey of grace and mercy. And it is a journey that our creator God desperately wants to accompany us on.

So much so, that God came into this time and space, to be just like you, just like me, with all the joys and hopes, all the pain and the suffering, that human life has to offer. And so much love, that Jesus was willing to put himself in our place, to offer himself to suffering and death, so that you and I are not condemned to pain and sadness and tragedy for ever. This abundant banquet is there for the taking. Nothing is held over our heads, no strings attached. The love that provides the banquet flows in and through and among us, and we have the opportunity to respond. We have the opportunity to pay that love forward. We have the opportunity to show forth the love that has been offered to us, and to be people of love and forgiveness ourselves. The response to this abundance that God offers to us through God’s son Jesus, is to offer that same love and forgiveness to others. It is not to hoard; it is not to keep to ourselves. It is to offer ourselves, as Jesus offers his life to us, we offer this love to others.

The hard part is that Jesus offers this love to everyone, sinners included. Thank God for that, because that means you and I have a place in this amazing kingdom too. But that was the sticking point for the gospel writer Matthew when Matthew first heard this story and then interpreted it in his own way. And equally exciting is the abundant banquet that is in store for us at the fulfillment of time. We get a foretaste of that banquet in the bread and the wine that we share together. We get glimpses of grace, and those glimpses are powerful.

So one of those glimpses of grace is that everyone is included. You and I are included, the liar and the cheat are included, the tax collector and the sinner are included. I think what is hard for us is that we come to believe that abundance is the reward for right behavior, so that those whose behavior is not up to a particular standard can’t be part of the banquet. But that’s not the way it works. It’s the invitation that changes us. It’s the abundance that transforms us. It’s the anticipation and the expectation of seeing our friends and our loved ones that causes us great joy.

Once we put on that wedding garment, or that baptismal garment, we are not the same. We are made new, God’s love, God’s power, God’s abundance changes us. We can love others; we can forgive others. We no longer live for ourselves, or for greed, or for power. We move toward compassion, mercy, justice, kindness, and the kingdom of God comes near.

Thanks be to God.

2 Pentecost Yr B

I am reminded of a story we used to read to our children, after the little bird breaks out of the egg, his mother goes to find some food and the baby bird tumbles out of the nest to find his mother. He walks right past his mother and does not recognize her, and then he continues on and asks the kitten, the hen, the dog, the cow, the car, the boat, the plane and the snort, Are you my mother? Of course they were not, luckily the little bird ended up back in the nest, and his mother came home with a big fat worm to eat, and the little bird knew that that was his mother. How did the little bird recognize his mother? in the feeding and in the eating..... This story from Mark is told in the context of a meal.

Mark has Jesus ask this question, who is my mother, who are my brothers, who is my family? In this story that Mark tells us, Jesus redefines the criteria for what constitutes his true family. True family is determined by who does the will of God. What Mark asks us to do with this story is to rethink all relationships a new light, in a kingdom light. Jesus makes a claim about what it might mean to belong to other people, what Jesus does is to make a claim about identity.

People who follow Jesus are people who belong to God and who belong to one another. Our identity is a beloved child of God, we are marked as Christ's own forever, we are in relationship with our creator and the rest of creation. In the time in which Jesus lived and a little later when Mark was writing, this claim made one a crazy person, as evidenced in this story, and it made one guilty of sedition. The scribes who came down from Jerusalem, the religious heavy hitters, decided Jesus must be insane, because surely he would not make claims about kingdom that would make the empire mad, that would just not do. But indeed, Jesus was not crazy, so maybe his claims about kingdom life could be true.

In our contemporary society, which is a post-christian society, to claim identity as a follower of Jesus is tied to being a beloved child of God, this identity is tied to being part of a community of faith, a community of reconciliation, makes one seem crazy. This identity flies in the face of autonomy and individualism and self-determination. Even much of what some call Christianity today is about individual salvation, it's all about me and God. But this passage from Mark is about Jesus' claim of kinship, that we are all related, that we indeed belong to each other, we belong together, and that is like what we experience as family, but it is also bigger, broader and deeper than what we experience as family. The image is much more like an intricate web in which the thread continues infinitely, than a hierarchy in which one person is at the top, or even a wheel in which any one of us may be the hub.

As a follower of Jesus, we find our identity in being a beloved child of God, who has brothers and sisters for whom Love wins. We find our identity in being marked as Christ's own forever in baptism. We are loved, we are precious beyond measure, created for loving relationship with the source of all life and with one another. So what does this mean for us today? What does it mean to be part of this family that Jesus calls together? What does it mean to do the will of God?

Since I have placed this story from Mark clearly in the context of identity, and I have suggested that our identity is formed by being a beloved child of God, and being marked as Christ's own forever in baptism, I will answer those questions about what does this means by looking at the blueprint for following Jesus, our baptismal covenant. According to Dwight Zscheile (Schylie) again, his book People of the Way, Renewing Episcopal Identity is a must read for all of us, "community experiences God's grace and healing in the Eucharist, where the brokenness of our lives and the world is transformed into a foretaste of the heavenly feast. Christian ministry begins in baptism, where our identities are changed and we live no longer for ourselves but for God, for one another, and for our neighbors in the world. We become participating members of the body of Christ through the power of the Spirit."(p.89)

We promise to continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers. Continuing in the apostles teaching is a central challenge for us. For many, the bible is an intimidating book that seems difficult to enter into meaningfully. We don't necessarily like everything it has to say. But we must listen to it, we must be informed by it, and we must teach our children and grandchildren it's stories. We must let it become our story so that we may be part of the story. You have opportunities at St. Andrew's in bible study and in Education for Ministry. And if we don't have what you want or need at the time you want or need it, please get it started yourself. The central activity for us as we gather together is sharing bread and that is good. This space is a depository of all of your prayers, you come here and we share our prayers and praise, and you bring that Spirit back out into the world as agents of reconciliation and peace.

We promise to persevere in resisting evil, and whenever we fall into sin, to repent and return to the Lord. The call to following Jesus is a call to transformation, deep change that encompasses our hearts, minds, and every aspect of our lives. This part of the baptismal covenant acknowledges the persistent reality to sin, to miss the mark. The persistent reality of evil isolates people, fragments people and relationships, breaks relationships, and causes people to do horrible things to one another. We dis-integrate in the face of evil. God is the single most integrating force in this world. We are transformed from disintegration to integration, from individuals to a body of christ.

We promise to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ. It is time to tell Jesus' story, it is time to tell your story, it is time to identify where God is your your life and in our live together. This is the story of wholeness, of reconciliation, of peace. This is the story about God's choice to walk with us, to walk with humanity through the pain and suffering of this life. This is the story of suffering and death, and the reality that our creator walks with us through that, doesn't take it from us, but walks with us in the midst of it. It is the story of resurrection. This is a story you all know well. New life happens, Love wins. We need to tell this story by word and example. We need to give others the gift of walking together and not alone, we need to give others the gift of community, of meaning, of purpose.

We promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as ourselves. As followers of Jesus we need to love others as we have first been loved. I have heard people say things like they don't deserve to be treated with respect, or she didn't deserve that painful death, or he doesn't deserve to have that tremendous gift. The reality is that what we deserve and what we get have nothing to do with each other. Jesus walked this journey on earth, suffered humiliation and pain, went to the cross, not because he deserved it but because of love. On the cross Jesus absorbs all that pain and suffering and takes it out of the world with him, and non of us deserve any of that. God loves, love wins, and that's enough. Christ comes to us as the stranger or as the guest. We are called to love others, in whom the image of God is present.

We promise to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. We are marked as Christ's own forever, we are called to God's mission of restoring human community, the place in which we live and move and have our being, to right relationships. Living as followers of Jesus means sharing in Christ's compassion for the vulnerable, suffering, hungry, homeless and poor. We do so as participants in God's kingdom, as participants in God's family, not because we can solve the world's problems through our own strength. This is God's work in which we share, this is God's mission in which we participate. As Bono, of the band U2 has said, "Stop asking God to bless what you're doing. Get involved in what God is doing -- because it's already blessed."

We are family, we are followers of Jesus, they may call us crazy, but what a way to go.
Love wins, Amen.