explain

I'm on vacation in Florida for a week, and changes are in store for the pantry when I return!

Death and Taxes (sermon)

>Do you like to be scared? Do you like to be “jump three feet off the ground and scream like a girl” scared? Do startling noises, people popping out from behind a tree, ghost stories, amusement park rides, skydiving—take your pick—do they get the old adrenaline flowing and make you feel alive? Do you like to be scared?

The youth group was having a discussion on Facebook this past week about the possibility of going to Nightmare New England—which I take is a scary place, right? The talk centered around the cost and the timing. Someone inferred that it was too pricey, and that money better be used for the New Orleans trip. That received little attention from the kids. Then someone suggested they go Sunday evening--tonight..

At which point I chimed in and reminded them about confirmation class that evening. (Major buzz kill.) To which a certain youth leader who shall remain nameless (Tall Guy), posted his response—a comment on the idea of saving the money which ended up with “Besides confirmation might just be scarier than Nightmare New England!”

Some scary things can also be fun. Like Nightmare New England, roller coasters, horror movies, and confirmation. But there are other scary things that aren’t any fun at all. They’re just scary. Things like cancer. Scary. I remember when I was diagnosed with cancer almost twenty years ago. I almost passed out. Horrifying. Parenthood—that’s scary stuff. To think that every decision you make has the potential of an adverse if not catastrophic effect on your child. Bone chilling! And how about waiting up for your teenager to get home with the car—those are scary thoughts that run through your head.

Since September 11^th we have a communal fear: terrorism—an always just below the surface anxiety that’s periodically summoned up by the media or politicians to scare us some more. The senselessness of it and it’s random cold-heartedness makes terrorism a frightening thing indeed.

But nothing—not the avian flu, nor triple E, nor tainted tomatoes, lead laden toys, or melamined milk—nothing puts fear in our good old American consumer hearts like the happenings on Wall Street these past two weeks. Talk about your roller coasters. The Dow was going up and down so sharply you could loose an eye just looking at the graph.

Couple that with a still-depressed housing market, a mortgage foreclosure meltdown, several of the world’s biggest and most trusted financial corporations failing and having to be bailed out by the fed—and couple all that with a rise in food and oil prices, plus a $700 billion stimulus package, dwarfed only by the 1 trillion $ national debt and the estimated $2 trillion loss in value of 401ks—Take into consideration all of that, squeeze all that into your head, then add a 24 hour a day news cycle that is constantly stirring the pot and adding any ingredient that will keep glassy-eyed viewers tuned in—no matter how outrageous or inflammatory, and you have a scary situation indeed. Monster in the closet scary, boogie man scary, flying monkeys scary!

And yet, no one—no one—not the Federal government, or the news media, or the political candidates, not even Joe Sixpack or Joe the Plumber—no one—no one dares use the dreaded “R” word. They’ll go right up to the line in their commentary and proposals, but they won’t say that R word. You know the word I’m talking about, right? What is it? (recession) Oh no, not that r word. This one: repentance.

Repentance. Literally it means turning around 180 degrees. Figuratively it means to change one’s mind, to forsake a direction you’ve headed in that has proved false or dangerous, to set your face in a new and sure direction. Repentance is most associated with sin and forgiveness—it being the cessation of sin and the catalyst that results in a spiritual reaction of forgiveness.

In the financial scenario previously described one could quite easily jump on the fundamentalist bandwagon and think that God is punishing us for something—greed, gluttony, usury, or right to life or gay marriage, or some equally non-tangential causality. And that if we only repented and returned to being a Godly nation like we were in the good old days, then everything would be coming up roses once again. The Dow would rise from the dead and AIG could go on that fancy retreat—heck we all could! There fixed—easy as apple pie. Ha! If only it were that clear cut, that black and white, that ultimately controllable by our actions.

Cause it’s not. It’s scarier because it’s not an easy fix. But neither is it God punishing us, despite what Yahweh seems to say in the first reading—“I am the Lord and there is no other, I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things.” True nothing happens in all of creation without God’s hand in it somehow. But the idea that God punishes us on such a grand scale is very scary indeed. For that would implicate God in the wanton destruction of innocent human life. That’s not the God personified in Jesus Christ. That’s not the God that we call Father. That’s not the God we have in our very being through the indwelling of the holy Spirit.

I prefer to believe that God lets us punish ourselves. With the consequences of our actions. We don’t share the bounty of the earth equitably, and so people starve to death. We spew pollutants into the air for a half a millennium, and so the global climate changes. Or…or, or we lose touch with reality when it comes to money, and so the house of cards collapses, and we are convulsed with fear and doom. What do I mean by losing touch with reality when it comes to money?

The Pharisees tried to entrap Jesus by asking him if it was lawful to pay tax to the Emperor. If he answered “no” they’d have him arrested as a tax evader and general rabble rouser. If “yes” than he’d be about as popular with the crowds as a guy wearing a Rays shirt in Fanneuil Hall.

But Jesus isn’t falling for their con game. He asks for a coin of the realm. And they instantly produce one (even though foreign currency is not allowed in the temple, not to mention the graven image of a false god, Caesar, stamped on it!) He asks them, “Whose picture is on it.” “The emperor’s,” they answer. And then Jesus zings them. “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” OOOO!

But wait a minute here—wait just a second here. Did Jesus just say the emperor and God are two mutually exclusive entities in this equation? That there are some things that belong just to Caesar, and the rest is God’s?/ Isn’t everything God’s? “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” as it says in the Psalms. How could anything be Caesar’s? Aren’t Caesar’s coins actually God’s? Isn’t the majesty of Caesar’s palace in Rome really God’s? And by the way—isn’t even Caesar himself God’s own creation?

So what gives? Is Jesus saying that we should obey the government, and not mix that up with obeying him? Kind of. Let’s return to where this excursus began, and that is with the statement “we have lost touch with the reality of money.”

The reality of money is that money is not God. It is a false God. A very potent one. And quite often, we unwittingly worship that false god. For all the things we believe it does for us. We think it makes us happy, when in reality it makes us restless for more. We think it is our security, when in reality it leaves us open to calamities like we have experienced in the global economy. We think money buys power, prestige and admiration, when in reality it only leases those commodities.

The big problem for us is that we can get carried away by money, and then it begins to rule us—which it does not through excess, but by scarcity. How many of you usually know day by day what the Dow Jones has done by the closing bell. Not many. Now, how many of you kept watch over it last week like a mother hen with her chicks? We get real interested when the stocks go down and down and down. Scarcity – the news is far more scary when the blue chips are down. When they’re up, the news that hundreds of families were being forced from their homes is oh so ho-hum. And I doubt any of us got out of our Mutual Funds, so as not to share in big oil’s windfall. Scarcity grabs our attention by hitting us right where we live.

Scarcity even effects the way we talk here in church. Lately there’s been lots of talk about money—mostly concerning a lack of it. We voted in a deficit budget. And we’re about to run that deficit. And in presenting that information to you, we may have scared you—perhaps it’s fairer to say we wanted to scare you. Because we were scared.

But that all is scarcity mentality. And it can take over if left to its own devices. It can even replace God as our ultimate concern (to borrow Tillich’s definition), the thing that matters most to us. When what our eyes, ears, hands and mouths should be attending to is the abundance God has given us. An abundance of talent, of resources, of kindheartedness, of compassion, or work to be doing. We’ve looked away from God’s abundance and fixed our gaze on this seeming shortfall. Well, I’m here to tell you: that’s Caesar’s attitude, and we should give Caesar what is Caesar’s

We should repent. Stop what we’re doing. Turn away from seeing a half empty cup, and turn towards the God whose love is an ever flowing font. For you see, the key to the gospel passage for today is not in the question that the Pharisees ask Jesus. It in his answer—which has little to do with taxes, coins, or emperors. Jesus’ answer to those Pharisees is both a promise and a challenge.

A promise of the steadfastness of God’s love for all creation and his true dominion over all. We say, “Nothing is certain except death and taxes.” Jesus says, “God’s love is stronger than death and you don’t need to fill out a lot of forms to get it.” God’s love is certain, and it is abundant. And spreading that good news to anyone on the highways and byways of Hillsborough county is where we have focused our ministry historically, and it will continue to be—if we approach our mission not from a deficit position, but from a surplus waiting to be tapped. If we approach the upcoming Mission Freedom debt reduction campaign not from an attitude of paying our debts, but of giving to God from the abundance that is God’s.. The Mission Focus process that we have just entered into will help us discern how to do that—but for now, I can think of no better way to begin than to repent.

So—do you repent of an attitude of scarcity? (I repent!)

Do you repent of putting money before mission, budget before blessings?

Do you repent of trying to blame our anxieties about money on others?

Do you repent of staying silent in church when it comes to talking about money?

And finally, do you offer your repentance freely? (I do!)

Now that wasn’t so scary was it? And a whole lot more fun than paying your taxes. And now that we’re facing God and his abundance, we can move forward. Amen

Second Course - Soup

Last year my wife and I took a cruise to Bermuda. The food was really great (and the scenery too).
And exotic. One of the things my wife and I tried was snails (which sounds nicer in French - escargot). They tasted mostly like the butter and garlic they were slathered with, but they were tastier than I imagined.

Another thing she tried but I didn't was cold soup. I can't remember the types. But, in my humble opinion, the words "cold" and "soup" don't go together unless you're complaining to the maitre'de! To me eating cold soup would be right up there with taking a big slurp of your coffee--only to find it had cooled off! Yuk!

Still you can't knock it unless you've tried it, as the saying goes.

I think that every time I read this Isaiah lesson, which describes the great messianic feast at the end of time. Fine wines I can deal with--it's the part about the marrow that makes my stomach cringe. I wonder if there's a vegetarian option in heaven?

But for the first listeners, that marrow would have been something to drool over--representing all the goodness of eternal life with God. Marrow was something decadent--something so rich, so sought after as to be highly desired.

I guess I just could just substitute French Onion Soup for the marrow blue plate special in my mind. It's savory goodness evokes warm and rich imagery in my mind. Unless it's cold!

First Course - Appetizer

The lessons from Isaiah and Matthew both speak of grand feasts. So what better way to explore them than through the theme of a banquet? So, without further adieu, here is the appetizer, our first course. Its purpose is to whet your appetite for the goodies to come...

(from Matthew 22:1-14) ..."When the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?' And he was speechless..."

The story of the wedding banquet with reluctant guests is familiar. The King holds a wedding party for his son, but when the invited are summoned to the table, they are too busy and indifferent to come. Some even "shoot the messengers." So those people are "destroyed," and new guests are found (wherever) and invited (whomever). They have the good manners to come when they are called to dinner!

Everything is going great--the feast is on and the band is playing the bunny hop, when in comes the king (fashionably late for a neat entrance), and lo and behold he spots a guy in the corner who is not wearing black tie. Immediately the king calls him on it--stupefying the poor guy. (And then has him tossed out on his butt!)

What gives with this moment of Miss Manners on steroids? Isn't the "King" supposed to be gracious? Hey this kind of feature whets my appetite for knowing more!

In those days one was issued the duds you were to wear to a wedding feast. So either this guy has slipped in uninvited, or he's dissed the king big time by refusing to wear the robe assigned him. Either way he is both a stand out, and bonehead for thinking that no one would notice!

Which leads me to believe that what we see here is some editing by Matthew. Perhaps the original parable ended with the hall being filled with new guests. And the part we're discussing was added on, maybe from another unrelated parable, to address the reality Matthew's church was facing. That being a separation from the Jewish community, and a need to explain why some were not "chosen." (Because they refused to.)

There's more to these two (?) parables than that. There's eschatology, soteriology, and theology wrapped up in these stories. But for now we must be satisfied with this delicious tidbit, and wait for the next course...

Let it begin with me

I wanted to start off this week on a serious note. But it didn’t work out that way! Because, first I want to talk with you about good news, and bad news. As in, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.” Ever hear that kind of joke? But did you know that they have some specifically for pastors?

Like: Pastor, the good news is Mrs. Jones is wild about your sermons. The bad news is she’s also wild about Keeping up with the Kardashians, Survivor Hoboken, and reruns of Three’s Company!
Or: Pastor, the good news is church attendance rose dramatically in the last three weeks. The bad news is you were on vacation.
Or: The good news is it’s your birthday, Pastor. The bad news is the youth group decided to surprise you with an unplanned visit at 3 in the morning. And the worse news is: they have flamingos!

Good news and bad news.

Sometimes the scriptures that we hear read aloud in worship are good news—so full of hope, so infused with grace, so saturated with the gospel that you can almost taste salvation in the air. Sometimes the scriptures that we hear read aloud in worship are full of God’s care and concern—indicative of a god who has nothing but steadfast love for his people. In fact, most times, the scriptures we hear at worship reveal a broken, yet salvageable relationship between God and humanity that God cherishes and covenants with us restore to whole and right. Most times.

Today, not so much.

Today we have the tales of two vineyards—one sung by Isaiah, the other told by Jesus to the crowds and religious authorities in the Jerusalem temple. These are not happy stories. They’re not the kind you would read to your kids at bedtime. There are no knights in shiny armor. Instead there is a vengeful God. There are no lives lived “happily ever after.” Instead there is death and destruction. One cannot imagine these stories eliciting anything but gloomy-doomy faces amongst the people gathered to listen to them. It’s the “bad news,” the bad news that, in these vineyards, there are consequences for misguided actions—dire consequences.

In the Old Testament story, the vineyard itself bears the brunt of God’s wrath. [The vineyard being an allegory for the people of Israel.] God spared nothing in providing for the well-being and continued good fortune of the vineyard (good news), but instead of fine, cultivated grapes, the vines produced musky, old, wild grapes. (Bad news.)

So, the hedge that keeps out the animals is torn down, the wall that protected it is leveled, the vines are no longer cared for, the plot is overrun by useless weeds and thorns, the wild grapes are devoured by wild animals or smashed underfoot, and even the clouds won’t rain on the vineyard anymore. (You know you’re down and out when it won’t even rain on you.) Basically this divine meltdown portends the devastation of Israel and Judah, their total and complete abandonment. (Even worse news)

In Jesus reworking of this prophetic passage, he describes a landowner who, although he is non-resident, has still provided everything necessary for the successful cultivation of grapes and the production of fine wine. Tenants are selected, an agreement is reached as to the harvest, and they are well set. (Good news.)
But the harvest comes, and the tenants choose to renege on their agreement with the landowner. They abuse or kill the collectors he sends—not once, but twice. (Bad news.) And then they audaciously carry out a plot to take the vineyard for themselves by murdering the landowner’s son. (Worse news.)

Now. We could get all allegorical on these two stories, and assign each and every character a real life counterpart—for example, the vineyard in Isaiah could be Israel, God is the vintner, and in Jesus’ story, the collectors were the prophets, and the landowner’s son is Jesus. We could even get creative and determine modern day allegories for them. The tenants are those who have not worshiped God rightly, the new tenants are those who are pure in worship and doctrine.

But this approach totally misses the point of these two vineyard stories. Isaiah sang this sad love song to Israel and Judah. Not to entertain them, but to hold a mirror up to them, that they might see just who he’s singing about. The story’s details are meant to draw them into a scenario in which they recognize that Isaiah is singing about them!.

With the gospel reading as well, the point is in not the details and portrayals. It’s in the listeners’ sudden realization that Jesus is accusing them! The chief priests and the elders of the temple figure out that Jesus has made them a character in his vineyard parable. Not a flattering characterization, either.

That’s a difficult realization to come to. The people of Israel ignored (or killed) the prophets for the most part, rather than accept the notion that everything weren’t just hunky-dory between God and them. And it took three stinging parables and a fig tree for Jesus to get the point across to the temple crew. Even then, they didn’t clean up their act, ironically they moved towards fulfilling the story. They want to arrest him. To kill him.

Now, if we believe that the bible is the living word of God that speaks to us still today (and we do), and that it is multivalent in interpretation (and it is), then what we could extract from these two tales is the same sense of revelation that struck the Israelites in Isaiah’s time, and the temple authorities in Jesus’. That being, to sum it up with a song lyric—It’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer! Me! Mea culpa. I have sinned—I am a sinner.

And it is so hard to admit our culpability. It’s so much easier and more pleasant to think that such passages are polemical and don’t include “us” as characters—except maybe as those bearing good grapes, or the new (and improved!) tenants. Like the disciples at the last Supper, we ask incredulously, “Is it I, Lord?” Secretly thinking, “I just know it’s someone else.”

One Sunday the pastor of St. John’s by the Delicatessen determined that he needed to preach on sin. His flock had been straying a bit, especially the old bachelor farmers. They’d been spending too much time at the local pub. Couple that with the usual gossip and backbiting that goes on in any group, and the pastor’d seen and heard enough. Today he would convict them all. (He could steer them back to the gospel and its sweet forgiveness next week.)
He ascended to his pulpit, drew himself up, and had at it—decrying everything from taking extra packets of sweet’n’low at the local diner, to tattling on your little brother, to taking the Lord’s name in vain. He even worked up a sweat, laying into them for their own good. And he thought that he had made an impact.
Until, at service’s end when he stood at the door and shook hands with the folks. Never had he had so many responses to one of his sermons. Usually he got a, “Great sermon,” from the head usher, and Mr. Greene invariably weighed in with a, “Nice job Reverend.” But today, just about every person shaking his hand did so with comment on the sermon. Unfortunately they were all the same. “You sure gave it to those sinners today, Pastor. They’ll never show their faces here!”

Donald Miller is the author of what has been called the best look at Christian spirituality from a non-Christian perspective, Blue Like Jazz. Miller speaks to this type of “hard look in the mirror” when he relates his experience protesting in NYC at an World Bank event President Bush was attending. After the president was whisked off without being seen, much less engaging with the protesters, Miller suddenly has a moment of intense clarity about the futility of the blame game and a basic tenet of the Christian faith.

"When we were done [protesting], I started wondering if we had accomplished anything. I started wondering whether we could actually change the world. I mean, of course we could -we could change our buying habits, elect socially conscious representatives and that sort of thing, but honestly don't believe we will be solving the greater human conflict with our efforts. The problem is not a certain type of legislation or even a certain politician; the problem is the same that it had always been.

I am the problem.

I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.

More than my question about the efficacy of social action were my questions about my own motives. Do I want social justice for the oppressed, or do I want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don't have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself. I am not browbeating myself here; I am only saying that true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change would have to start with the individual. I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read "I AM THE PROBLEM!""

You are the problem, that’s the bad news.

But here’s the good news. You are also the solution. Gathered together as one great holy people spanning the globe and time itself, we’ll hear the words “given for you,” and shed “for you.” God comes to us individually with love and forgiveness, enabling us to live again for others.

And here’s the really, really good news. Renewed and strengthened by the body and
blood of our Savior Jesus Christ, we are transformed. Our past ceases to be a sinful burden and instead becomes a trove of wisdom and experience—even as we come to realize that the things we once valued above all, are now not important, and can easily be sloughed off. And in this transformation, which by the way comes from the Holy Spirit, in this transformation, we are empowered. In the same way it hits me that “I am the problem,” I know now—I know—that I can make a difference. I can change the world!

You might think this is a pipedream, a fantasy, an exercise in naïveté. But let’s take global warming for instance. We all know we should reduce our individual carbon footprints as much as we can. But I think that deep down we consider it futile—that it is really the factories and power plants belching acrid smoke into the upper atmosphere who are to blame. That unless these behemoths green up, the cause is dead.
And yet, according to the Wall Street Journal, 64% of green house emissions are caused by individuals. So mea culpa—I’m going to switch lightbulbs, tune up the furnace and do whatever I can—because it has been revealed to me that I am the problem.

Where else am I the problem? (Don’t answer that!) It may be in Darfur. It may be in feeding the world. And it might even be something so close to home as this fellowship. Where are you a problem? Where am I a problem?

That, I trust will be shown to me, And if today’s readings are any indication (and they are!), it will be shown to me in surprising ways—like in a story in a major newspaper, like out of the mouths of children, like in the bible (even those books that are so hard to find—Nahum), like in the supermarket checkout line, like via e-mail! Like in a song. You know the one I’m thinking of—Let It Begin with Me.

Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me. Let there be whatever—religious tolerance, an end to racism, a sanctuary full of people on a Sunday morning, mission and ministry for others in the name of God, let there be people of many Christian denominations gathered at the Lord’s table despite their different interpretations of that admittedly foundational event. Let there be all of these things. But let them begin with me being convicted and admitting my guilt, with me knowing that I am the problem, then with God transforming my sinful life into a weak-strong vessel, and with God inviting me into a relationship of co-creation. Let it begin with me. Together, we are the solution to the problem. Amen?
AMEN!