Participating in the Party

 

Matthew 22:1-14 (Read the text first. No, really, do it. When it was read in church today, faces all over the sanctuary were scrunched up in disgust, heads shaking. When I got to the pulpit, someone called out, "Good luck, Kara!") There is a gentle, G-rated version of this parable in Luke. I kind of wish we’d gotten that one today. It skips the rampant murdering and the gnashing of teeth. Years ago, Pastor Lisa called Matthew’s the ‘Quinten Tarrantino version.” Matthew goes for the garish violence, the action movie effects. You can almost hear the dissonant soundtrack. I’m more in a Norwegian Christmas movie mood. My week began with friends gathered in the presence of the living God with trust and gratitude, and devolved into freebasing alarming news about our world and country and worrying about my kids on their college campuses.   But then, Matthew was written not long after Jerusalem was burned to the ground and the temple was destroyed, amidst deep class divides, heavy taxation, stark inequality, and great tension between religious groups. The people would have listened to this story. Like a mom breaking through to a kid in mid-tantrum, maybe the tone matched the moment.    So maybe, sitting here today, with whatever are our own “mountains crumbing into the heart of the sea, earth-shaking, waters roaring” circumstances, as the psalmist so aptly describes, maybe what we need is not a soothing lefse-laden distraction, but a spicy shot of hyperbole. In any case, that’s what we’re getting.   So, first, let’s clear up, what even is a parable?  It is not a fable – a simple little tale with a direct moral lesson like The Tortoise and the Hare or The Boy who Cried Wolf. And it’s not an allegory with a singular aim like Animal Farm or Pilgrim’s Progress where the pilgrim named “Christian” gets insight on his journey from someone named “Interpreter” and help from, you guessed it, “Help.”    Parables are exaggerated stories meant to provoke and evoke. Jesus spoke in parables a lot. One thing I love about the TV series The Chosen is how confused and sometimes annoyed the disciples are by Jesus’ cryptic parables. He rarely explains what they mean. He just drops these perplexing, unsettling stories that shake up the soul, and then goes quiet and leaves it there.   One more word of prep. Remember, to every scripture we read we bring two things: we bring our question, Who is this God and what is God up to? But we also bring ourselves and our world, and whatever is happening here and now, (sometimes we articulate that as the always-lived question, What is a good life and how do we live it?) Then we trust that showing up together, with our hearts open in the presence of the living Christ, the Holy Spirit will move through it all and somehow we’ll leave here with a word from God.   So let’s get to it, and listen again to this intense parable for the word of the I am-with-you-God to us today.   The king of a land is throwing a party. And it’s personal. He’s overjoyed. His son is getting married. This party is more food than you’ve ever seen at one time, the best meal you’ve ever eaten, dancing and music and conversation and merriment, inside the home of the king. As might be expected, those with status, power, and money are invited to attend. The world as it is.   But something inconceivable happens – the lords and ladies of the land turn down the invitation. Every single one. I have too much to do, they say, to a person. I’m too busy. I couldn’t possibly stop. My work needs me. I’m important, essential. I am making things, growing things, building things. Don’t interrupt me.  Perhaps some have even quite forgotten about the king, except as an idea, a concept out there. Their world has constricted to their own domain; they’ve lost all connection to everything and everyone beyond. An invitation to party with the king is an irrelevant fantasy, a junk-mail child’s tale, a silly side story that doesn’t matter in real life. Their life. Life with them at the center.   But the king persists.  He sends new messengers. Please come celebrate with me. Look, the table is set, the feast is prepared, it’s lavish and wonderful and ready for you. All you have to do is show up.   Then some become enraged. As though we could just drop everything and come to a party?  How dare you insinuate our work is so worthless? How dare you interrupt us again? Then, as the idiom suggests might happen, they torture and kill the messengers.   Now the king is angry, and his power and reach is greater than theirs, so he sends his army and wipes out all the murderers and burns down their city. Now all they had going is gone in an instant -  as though swept away by a hurricane or wildfire, wiped out by a stock market collapse or decimated by stage 4 cancer. Because nothing lasts anyway, and our self-made, insulated realms of safety and control are fleeting illusion.    Now with labels, power, and ranking torn down, the rat race wrecked, and no work left to do, with the wealthy unworthy, and everything exposed as fleeting and false – the king doesn’t cancel the wedding to rebuild the city, doesn’t redirect reception funds to reestablish the destroyed economy and elevate a new elite.  He goes ahead with the party. The invitation goes out a third time. This time, the king invites everyone –far and wide. This feast is for all.  And there is no more way to earn your way in. The city is in ashes, so everyone, everywhere, come to the party and find abundant food, and satisfying company. Come linger in the presence and joy of the king and one another.   And there is nowhere left to aspire to than that – but there never has been, really.  Some of these guests never thought they’d set foot on the royal grounds, let alone inside the banquet hall. Others may have been striving and straining to one day be worthy of such an invitation, but today all that is over. They are all already invited.   So, the people come from far and wide. The good and the bad, Jesus says. The truly deserving and the completely undeserving. They set down their labor and labels, and they show up.     And when one arrives at the wedding of a gracious host, you are provided with a robe fit for the occasion and fit to you, clean and scented, ornately decorated and comfortable. The robe is draped over you as you enter the door. Dusty from the road, worn out from the journey, having lost it all, or stumbling in unawares, just as you are, however you are, whoever you are, however you came you’ve now become an honored guest of the king. Each and all, without distinction or merit, equally claimed, equally esteemed, equally welcomed.   This is where Luke – which already excluded any murdering or other unpleasantness in his telling – ends the story. But Matthew continues.    Among the guests is one not dressed for the occasion. Imagine he came in his scrubs, or a three-piece suit, his marathon number, or mottoed t-shirt, sloganned cap, or unique, one-of-a-kind artsy jacket. Waving off the robe held out to him, with his arm outstretched and phone recording, he captures his own arrival live for his 400K followers. Or maybe he slinks in like he’s crashing the joint, bypassing the front door to creep through the garden hedge.   The King spots the man, Friend! The king calls him, How did you get in here without a wedding robe? And the man is speechless. He has no answer. He came in the identity he cultivated; he came in the self he’d been constructing. He came ready to compete and compare, to impress and inspire. He didn’t need a robe like everyone else; he had his own garb.  How are you here, the king asks, if you refuse to receive and participate?   So the guest is dismissed, or rather, he’s forcibly removed, with all the drama and cartoonish gore of the rest of the tale.  Cell phone smashed, he is bound hand and foot tossed into ‘outer darkness.’ Which is to say, perhaps, that the lurking void of terrifying nothingness he’d spent his life fleeing and guarding against now swallows him whole.   Jesus concludes the parable with, “For many are called, but few are chosen.”  Everyone is invited, all are called. And if you wandered around the party asking people how they ended up there, every one would answer with joy some version of, “I didn’t do a thing! I was chosen!”   The kingdom of heaven is like a king who throws a party.    The king is extravagant but not indulgent, generous but not indifferent. This matters. It’s not a side thing; it’s everything. The party will cost you nothing and nothing less than everything. You’re invited but this is not your party. You don’t set the terms. It’s the King’s party and everyone is invited.   There’s a new reality coming and you can be part of it. Come, God invites. Just show up, and if you do, I will give you everything you need. You will lack nothing. This is grace. But there is an expectation. That you leave behind everything - the work, and the ranking and labels. The fears that grab you, and the defenses you build. The stories you weave and the self you construct to beat back the terrifying void—you can’t bring those in. Come vulnerable and receive. Participate in the party. You must allow yourself to be claimed and provided for, honored, welcomed, and chosen.   Sometimes the gentleness and beauty of the Luke-style invitation will do it, and I am there. This is the reality I want to live in.     But sometimes I am so entrenched in fear and illusion that I need my ego project murdered and city burned down Tarrantino-style, because I will hear the invitation and refuse. That was me this week. I’ll stay in the world, in my work, I will center myself and my fears, I will let the noise and clamor of the crumbling empire fill my ears and ignore the invitation. Sometimes the invitation feels way too invasive or risky, it pokes right at my personal projects, and I lash out, defensive, self-protective. I kill the messenger or refuse the robe. And that’s an option. We can consign ourselves to the world that is ending, the story line that reaches its conclusion in the nothingness and darkness we’re running from but won’t admit it. God does not force us to join in the freedom being extended to us.   But hear this: God is remaking the world.  God is tearing down what’s broken and bringing the new. The life of reconciliation to God and all others is ours in Jesus Christ.  The new creation in complete belonging to God and all others is being extended to us, even right now, today, during, and in the middle of, everything else we see and hear and feel and are convinced must be most real and most powerful. Within this breaking down world, unbreakable life is already underway. The Spirit of Christ is here, healing, renewing, connecting. This cannot be stopped. In the suffering we find joy. In the dying we’re given life. Beauty and hope break into the ugliness and despair. God has come, God is with us, God’s love will be all in all for all.  Holy One, help us surrender all and accept your invitation, receive your grace that gives us what we need, and participate in the party. Amen.

Fed and Formed

 

Exodus 16:1-15 (16-36)

This week I spent three days with a very small group of Christians from around their state. This group is just forming, longing together for a deeper focus on God and prayer in their congregations and Church. They know each other but barely, mostly sharing an openness and willingness for whatever God may have for them. 

Before I arrived, the initial 12 people became 8. Then, 8 became 5. One could be with us only in the evenings. Another was bearing the grief of two dear ones currently dying. But they all wanted to be as present as they were able. I had planned what I would do, but when I got there, the situation called for something different.  In coming to talk to people about trusting God and responding to God’s leading, I was having to scrap my plans and pay attention in the moment to what God was doing and respond. 

Could it be any other way?

Mostly, we prayed. We talked about praying, shared stories about prayer, read scripture about prayer, rested, played and prayed. Morning, midday, evening prayer and compline, prayer stations, and all the ways of prayer we practice on Saturdays I shared with them in our contemplative prayer guide. And for three days, that’s what we did. 

I started the retreat saying we were going to pretend God is real and see what happens. And God kept meeting us. This is not an idea, it’s an experience. It can feel like a pressure in the chest, a ‘kathunk’ in the gut, tears, warmth, aha!, being drawn beyond yourself into something bigger, both deeply vulnerable and held safe.  God met us in art and nature, in sharing and listening, and especially in two ways: the songs I brought from our congregation – every single one was new to them and they fell right into them and gratefully sang, even though we were just a handful of people. And then, especially, and completely unexpectedly, in these strange, unplanned pockets of sudden silence.

Every time something ended – a meal, a conversation, a liturgy—a heavy, holy silence seemed to descend, and we sat there. Silent. And weirdly, it was not forced or awkward. Nobody felt compelled to speak or hurry away. When I did say something that broke the silence, it would just resume afterwards as though my comment was fine, but an unnecessary interruption of what was really meant to be happening.

When I realized that something was happening around silence, instead of the hour-long midafternoon silence on the schedule, like we usually have on our own sabbath retreats, I asked if they would like to try a Benedictine ‘Great Silence’ that extends from the end of Compline until lunch the following day. Without hesitating, they said yes. 

That night, they wanted to start compline early, so we prayed, and then departed the campfire at 7:45 pm into a silence that extended for the next 16 hours.

Who is this God? And what is God up to?

The scripture before us today is the theological beginning of our faith story. The part of the story we consider the beginning is told from the perspective of the relationship God forms with the people here, in the Exodus. It is here, 3500 years ago, that this question, Who is this God and what is God up to? begins being voiced and answered in our faith ancestors. Everything before and after flows from right here. 

But in this moment, they don’t know what’s happening. They don’t really know who they are yet, and they’ve barely just met this God their people have been worshiping for some five hundred years. Belonging to God is an idea, not yet an experience. we are glimpsing in these verses the first moments of this relationship forming. It is here that this God they’ve only heard stories about begins engaging them directly. Here is where they begin being made into the people of this God.

The Hebrew people who find themselves starving together in the harsh wilderness are a smattering of twelve, small, loosely related but separate, nomadic, tribal clans with an oral history tradition, who have been enslaved by the Egyptians for centuries. When we meet them here, they don’t have the law, the Ten Commandments or the Torah. There is no Sabbath practice or temple worship, no formalized religion or scripture at all, not even a unified, written language.  Everything that comes before this moment in our bible—Father Abraham and Mother Sarah, Isaac who was promised, Jacob who wrestles-with-God, and Joseph who saved the Egyptian empire from famine— it is all passed down, generation to generation, family to family. Nothing is written down yet. “The God of our Ancestors” is worshiped by each family and clan praying to this God, and telling their children the stories of God’s faithfulness to their forebears, while they themselves are slaves to the Pharaoh of Egypt. 

Then one day, Moses, a nobody nomad, stuttering shepherd, is out in the wilderness with the sheep and sees a bush continuously on fire, and hears from it his own name being called. Take off your shoes. You are on holy ground. Moses, I AM this God of your ancestors, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. My name is I AM, Yahweh. (God’s name is an always present, always past, always future, outside time and timeful, I am who I am, I am who I was, I will be who I am…)

Yahweh tells Moses, I have seen the people’s misery, heard their groans, and know their suffering. I am going to set them free and make their home in a land flowing with milk and honey. And you, Moses, are going to lead them out of Egypt.

Then God acts. When the Pharoah repeatedly refuses to listen, God visits plagues on the Egyptians. Through Moses God unites the people into one, and in early morning hours they flee.  They’re chased by the world’s most formidable army, and God delivers them by parting the sea to lead them through on dry land. And day after day, God guides them onward by a cloud in the day and pillar of fire at night.

Who is this God and what is God up to? 

So far, that is being answered this way: Yahweh listens to our cries. Yahweh is more powerful than the mighty Pharoah who does not listen and his booming empire built on the backs of the weak. Yahweh is greater than the greatest army that cannot stand against God’s power. Earth, water, wind and fire are at Yahweh’s beck and call. 

That’s all a good start. Only now, the people have been out there in the wilderness for several grueling weeks, and the food has run out. They’re hungry and miserable, trudging through heat and barrenness, with no end in sight.  Unsurprisingly, the complaining kicks up. “If only Yahweh had killed us back there when we were slaves, at least we had enough to eat!”  The people yell at Moses and Aaron, his brother and spokesperson, “You brought us out here to kill the whole lot of us by starving us in the wilderness!”

But before Moses can respond, or bring their complaints to God, God is already responding. God says, “I am going to provide enough food for the people for each day, and that is all they are to gather. I will test the people to see if they will obey.”

Think of this like a pre-test. Where are we at, people? Do you trust me? How much teaching will I have to do? Yahweh is out to form them into God’s people, to shape them into this personal, covenant relationship of belonging to God they’ve heard about from the stories of their ancestors, but do not yet know themselves. And this shaping is not first through instructions and words. God didn’t line them up before they left Egypt and give them the Ten Commandments like reading them the rules before they get on the field trip bus. 

Trust is felt. They need to know what it is to be taken care of by God in their bodies and spirits. They are not going to be told how God operates until after their hunger is fed, their needs are provided for, and the rhythm of obeying, trusting and resting begins to be lived out in their daily actions and their conscious surrender into this way of God. 

The people keep complaining to Moses and Aaron, but they keep pointing back to God – you think we’re leading you? God is leading. God is listening. God is providing. 

Who is this God? 

The answer now expands. Yahweh is the God who provides, who listens to our complaining and responds to our need. 

Our lectionary text stops the story with God providing: Quail and manna, all they need, for today and only today.  But if we were to read on, we would see that this lesson is reinforced miraculously and insistently with the manna itself. God tells them a per person amount they should collect. But some of them gather scads of it, and some just a little, only when they go to measure, it is all exactly the amount God commanded them to pick up, enough for each person in their tent to eat and be filled. But then, some don’t eat their whole portion, they stay a bit hungry to squirrel way part of it for the next day just in case. And when they do, it becomes wormy and rotten, and Moses gets angry with them.  “Morning by morning” the scripture says, “they gathered it, as much as each needed, but when the sun grew hot, it melted.” The provision of God can’t be saved up, and it also can’t be postponed.

What you need today. All you need today. Enough for all. No one with more. No one with less. No rationing and saving up for tomorrow. No delaying receiving the gift. Participating in this new way of being. Morning by morning, new mercies. God will take care of you. Now. And again tomorrow, now, I AM is your God. 

After five days of slowly learning, they’re told to gather twice as much on the sixth day, because God is going to give them this new thing: a holy day of rest. They will have enough food for the seventh day and will not need to gather. But when the seventh day comes, some of them try to collect again and find nothing there. And poor Moses and Aaron have to keep verbally reiterating these lessons Yahweh is teaching them. You can’t hack the system and save yourself. Trust. Obey. Receive. Rest. Live into these rhythms and rituals that hold you in this relationship with the God to whom you belong.

Who is this God and what is God up to? 

Now it’s deeper: Yahweh is trustworthy. This God knows and provides exactly what we need. Yahweh thwarts our attempts to live apart from God for ourselves. Yahweh expects us to participate in God’s way of life. God will continue to take care of us. Bit by bit, God is freeing them from slavery’s patterns and self-protections, freeing them for belonging to God and each other.

Teach us to pray, the disciples will ask Jesus, 1500 years later. And now the God who encountered the Israelites in the wilderness and taught them to trust through daily bread is standing right in front of them in the person of Jesus Christ, who says I AM the ‘the bread of life.’  A new kind of relationship is forming, and they don’t know what is happening yet, or how it all fits together, and they certainly don’t know what is to come. They only know that they want to learn something Jesus seems to know. So they do like we all do and ask a “How?” question, and like their ancestors, they get a “Who?” answer. How do we live? How do we help? How do we know what to do? How do we pray? 

 Jesus answers them, and we have named his answer a “How” answer by calling it ‘The Lord’s prayer,’ but it is really a Who, answer, drawing them toward I AM. 

Loving parent, not bound by time and space, 

draw us into your life, your way of seeing and being in this world. 

Feed us today what we need for today. Teach us to trust. 

Form us into people turned toward you, ready to receive. 

Release us from what separates us from you, and help us release others from what divides us from them.  Don’t test us to see where we stand; instead deliver us from evil (and this word deliver means literally, save us to and for yourself). 

“Jesus, teach us to pray.” is what this group I was with said this week, 2000 years after the first disciples. And we kept being fed with silence. Over and over.  Delicious, rich, strangely satisfying silence that we had clearly been starving for. The I AM, just hanging out with us right there.  I don’t yet know what God was doing in that, or will do their congregations, or their diocese, or what is to come for them.  But whatever it will be, something was beginning. 

God is always forming us into a people to and for Godself. Whatever we think we are asking for, what we receive is God, I AM, who pulls us into Christ’s life and through his death to the vulnerable and safe space on the other side, where we embody for the world the shared human reality of our belonging to God and all others.  We are learning to obey, trust, receive and rest. We begin by being as present as we are able. Then we watch for what God is doing and respond. 

Amen.

Back to School Blessing: Giraffe

 Every year my congregation blesses the students and teachers returning to school.  They receive a blessing buddy to carry with them (or display in their classrooms). This year's was a giraffe.

 Past years' blessings (eg, Camel, Hedgehog, Penguin, Octopus, etc) can be found here.

Every giraffe’s spots are unique, no two patterns are ever the same. Giraffe spots darken and become more distinct as they age. They do not make this happen; it just is.   You are you. Nobody else can be you, and you can’t be anybody else. We love watching you be you.  We thank God for making you just the way you are!    Simply by living, eating, and breathing with their heads in the trees and their feet on the ground, giraffes help pollinate the world around them.    God made your life to be a blessing to the world around you.  We love to celebrate all the ways you join in making life wonderful.    When they are born, baby giraffes drop six feet into this world and crash onto the hard ground. Soon after, they stand up on their new, spindly legs, and they are fed, cared for, and encouraged.    There will be shocks and bumps this year.  You will have pain.  That is just part of being alive. You are not alone. We will help you stand.  We will be with you through whatever comes.   Giraffes have been given natural compression socks to help blood circulate throughout their nearly 20-foot-tall bodies. Their spots are chock full of special, tiny blood vessels that release heat to keep them cool. Their 19 inch long, powerful tongues grasp leaves and branches to easily strip off leaves. Their muscular legs and flexible knees make them fast, joyful runners (over 30 miles per hour!), power their forceful back kicks when lions come at their heels, and gently lower them in the splits all the way down to drink water. Their huge hearts weigh 24 lbs, and their long, flexible necks reach high up food, bend freely for scuffling and playing with other young giraffes, and raise their heads for a wide, far-reaching ‘giraffe’s eye view’ of the world.   God made you capable and adaptable. God gives you what you need.  This year may you explore your gifts, test your skills, and grow your abilities.  May your heart get bigger.  And from time to time, we will remind you to look up and all around, to remember the wider picture, and see your place in God’s great big world.   Giraffes are intelligent and watchful, and while to us they appear quiet, they actually communicate with each other at a frequency difficult for the human ear to pick up.    We never know everything that is going on with other people;  there is always more to discover about each other.  This year, may you see each person with love and kindness,  even if you can’t understand them.   No giraffe lives alone. They navigate the world together, learn and play together, look after each other’s young, and grieve when one of their own dies. But even though they’re tight with their friends, they also like to hang out at the watering hole and share shade with other gentle animals who are very different than them.    This year, may you find your people and love all people.  And may the love of Jesus live in and through you.    Blessings as you begin another school year!  God is holding you, and so are we.  Amen!

The Life of the Reconciled

Matthew 18:15-20

There is a particular kind of video that brings a of gleeful pleasure to watch. It flies across social media, picking up likes and building momentum, and giving that jolt of satisfaction to its viewers that makes you want to pump your fist and say Yes! Or lean back with a hearty Ha! 

It’s the video where somebody gets what’s comin’ to them.  When the arrogant, unkind, thoughtless, or insensitive person gets put in their place, wow, is that satisfying! 

Justice. Is. served!

If there is something to be said for us in this day and age, it is that we’re down for some righteous retribution! We love us a good shunning! And it’s not that hard to do. We can collectively punish a despicable person or shut down a bad business with just the tipity-tap of our fingers on a little screen. 
This happens on the personal front – delete, block, erase – and on the international front—line em’ up, hit send, and the drone does the rest. 

They came at you?? Don’t let that stand. End them. 
Someone hurts you? Bye, bye! Move on. They’re not worth it. No longer your problem. Put the nail in their coffin - make them fodder for the frenzy, grist for the mill. Did you hear what he did? Did I tell you what she said? Can you believe it!
 
We even have word for it, a phrase that didn’t exist before our lifetime. We call it “canceling.”  We can cancel a person. Figuratively wipe someone out, erase them. Make them as though they are not here, were never here, as though they do not matter. They get what they deserve, and we got to dish it out. Sweet Justice. 
 
 So today’s scripture feels like it comes from another time, a different place. And it does. It comes from a different realm altogether, actually. It comes from the Kingdom of God. In God’s kingdom, justice looks different than we’d like it to.
 
Jesus’ view of justice doesn’t satisfy our thirst for retaliation. It demands suffering and co-humanity. God’s justice reinforces our belonging to each other instead of ending it.  
 
Jesus is talking here to the disciples. To the people whose lives are oriented toward God through Christ. They’re the ones brought into Christ’s life and purposes in the world. All these centuries later, we are a part of that same community. By coming together like we do, and being church like we are, we acknowledge that we belong not to ourselves but to God, and we declare that we exist not for ourselves but for the world. 
 
And this is such a powerful calling, Jesus says, it’s as though we stand between heaven and earth, bridging eternity and time, living in time for love.  We are incognito agents of the eternal Kingdom of God right here in our very own neighborhoods and families, on our streets, in our schools, at work; we are here with and for our fellow human beings. 

To live between worlds like this, to be brought into this work of Christ, is to stand in people’s pain and suffering and watch right here for the presence and action of God. And it is to simultaneously stand with God, and watch the life of the world with compassion that longs for its wholeness and healing. 

It’s to be a channel of communication; we speak to God about the brokenness and aching here and God listens to us, and we listen to God about God’s love and promise, sorrow and hope for the world, and we speak that into the world. We call this two-way communication ‘prayer.’ 

And when two or three of us are gathered, God is right here with us and we acknowledge and welcome God’s presence. We call that gathering together with God ‘worship’.

And when our hearts are in unison, what we say and do in the name of Jesus is as though Jesus himself were here doing and saying those things – and in fact, he is. We call that participation in Jesus’s work ‘ministry.’  

We are people of prayer, worship and ministry, in whom, and through whom, the living God is moving and speaking and working. 
 
So then, how could there be a place for building up resentment, letting division fester, cutting each other off? When righteous indignation says, You hurt me, I will never trust you again, have we forgotten who is our Lord? Have we made ourselves above reproach? 
Christ alone is the righteous one.

And the righteous system meant to dispense justice killed him. 

Who do you think you are? You think you’re a prophet? The promised Messiah?  You think you’re the king of the Jews? You’re over.  

The word of God made flesh who dwelt among us was erased by the world he came to save. His voice was silenced, his body broken, his existence ended by righteous retribution. Taking all human injustice and injury into himself, Jesus gets canceled.
 
We serve a crucified God. Our Lord is one on the cross who has been canceled. 

And so, we are the community of the canceled. Anyone canceled is brought in. We are the community of the failed, the community of the humbled. Here we are all unrighteous. And we are all in need of love and care, of grace and hope.  Now we are given Jesus’s life, made righteous through him. 

Where the world delights in retribution and severs ties easily, Jesus frees us for love, and binds us together as those already canceled, already dead, who no longer need to enact our own justice, or prove our own worthiness, or earn our own life.  

So, we can be in this together, this strange life shaped by communion, humbleness, honesty, forgiveness. Here we live toward each other in humility, as those who confess our unrighteousness. Here we accept the gift that meets us in one another, and let the justice of Jesus, who bears our brokenness, uphold us always in our belonging.  
 
Of course we will disagree. We have different experiences and perspectives; thanks be to God! And we will hurt each other by accident, or even sometimes on purpose, because we’re human beings. But we don’t get to cut off from one another. We didn’t make this bond in the first place; it’s not ours to break. This is not a self-chosen club of the like-minded, compatible and upright! This is Christ’s body, broken and given for the world, to reconcile the whole world to God.

So, when there is a conflict between us, we are bound to work it out, Jesus says. In fact, the places of sin toward each other become the very grounds for grace! Our impossibility is where the Holy Spirit does what we can’t do. 
 
When someone hurts you, Jesus says, say something to them directly and in private, uphold their dignity and allow them to own their actions and apologize. And if they don’t share your desire to clear the barrier between you, bring a mutual support and try again, and if that fails, bring it to the whole community for help. Do not give up on each other. 

Because this grace, this love, can only be known in community. It is not found in right-ness or strength, and it couldn’t be further from getting the upper hand or enacting revenge. 

The justice of Jesus is all people upheld in their belonging to God and each other. 
 
Here is how you share in me, Jesus calls us, go sacramentally, as broken for one another, a gift to each other in your humility and forgiveness. Where the world avoids discomfort and ends the relationship, be honest about pain, and humble about mistakes, and forgive generously. Here is where Christ meet us with new life, with justice that restores us into the belonging of God to one another.  And here is how it works, reconciliation is the very shape of our life together, because it's the action of Jesus in the world. And if you confess, you will find new life here, but if that disgusts you, it will send you running. If you cannot receive this gift, it will feel like a curse. 

Which brings us to this line- if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector.
 
In a Way of Fear way of reading of this line, which lifts up righteous indignation, and glorifies payback, we assume this means excommunicate them. Some mid 20^th century bible translations even actually say that. Cut them off. Cut them out and don’t give it another thought - they’re dead to you. They’re not worthy of your attention. Cancel them. Ghost them and move on.
 
But that is actually the opposite of what this means. 

Because who was Jesus always in trouble for hanging out with?  Who did he come for?

Jesus says so himself, “I did not come for the righteous, but for sinners”! Sinners, outcasts, Gentiles and tax collectors, misfits and ne’er-do-wells were his favorite—Matthew himself was a tax-collector. 

It’s just that for Gentiles and tax collectors, belonging to God and others is not their lens. Their answer to “What is a good life and how do I live it?” is not spoken in the language of prayer, worship and ministry. They did not center their lives on obedience to God or loving their neighbor as they love themselves. They specifically do not see themselves as servants of God, people called to lay down their lives for others. 
 
‘Tax collector’ and ‘Gentile’ here is shorthand for people who are not bound by up in a covenant life of promise with the God of Israel revealed in Christ. They are either living overtly, even corruptly, for their own gain, or they are casually oblivious to the deeper reality in which we are all held in God. They do not share the identity, calling and mission of a canceled Lord. Nevertheless, they are human beings; they belong to God and they belong to us. Just like us, they are in need of love and care, of grace and hope.  
 
So, Jesus says: if someone among you refuses to be reconciled, refuses to be reconnected, acknowledge that you are no longer living inside the same reality together. They no longer desire to share in the sacrifice and vulnerability of being shaped by and for love by the grace of God. So you must no longer expect them to participate in the work of staying connected in humility or being joined in mutual community anymore. You do not expect them to see the world as you do, and you now longer attempt to live in the same kind of shared life that you once expected to share.  
 
But you do not cancel them, you don’t write them off.  They are not ‘dead to you.’  They remain, as they have always been, a beloved child of God. Only now, rather than a conscious bearer of grace with you for others, they’ve become one pursued by God, one specifically for whom Jesus came.

Jesus is not saying to abandon the one who refuses to be reconciled. Jesus is telling us respect them as our fellow human being and expect no reciprocation from them. Instead of a fellow minister, an agent in God’s Kingdom, someone who, with you, is working with Christ for the reconciliation of the world, they are now those to whom we are sent. They are the ones we are meant to eat with at table, to listen to, to stand up for, to stand alongside, to show compassion toward. 

Their repentance is the Holy Spirit’s work to do.  Awakening in them awareness of their belonging to God and all others is God’s responsibility, not ours. 
 
This is not easy to hear for those of us shaped by empire and ego.  

It’s no wonder the very next part of the conversation between Jesus and his disciples is Peter asking how many times we’re expected to forgive someone who’s done us wrong. (Spoiler, Peter suggests a nice big number and Jesus responds with, essentially, Nope, you forgive infinity times). 
 
We are the community of the canceled,  the people of prayer, worship and ministry, in whom, and through whom, the living God is moving, and speaking, and working. We live between eternity and time, here, in time, for love.  

It works differently here. Having nothing to prove, and nothing to earn, and nothing to lose, having already died and been resurrected into Christ, we are free to live in the love from which we came, the love to which we will return, as recipients of reconciliation and agents of the eternal Kingdom of God. 

So we receive each other as gift, stand by each other in suffering, and remember together that God’s grace is always at work in us, and through us God’s grace pours into the world. 

The power of the Spirit of Christ does this.
Amen.

The things we all need to hear

St. James the Just 

(Presided over the Council of Jerusalem around 50 CE, 

where his concluding decision shaped how Gentile Christians related to Mosaic law).

 James 1:27-2:8, 2:14-17

Can you imagine growing up with Jesus as your brother? I mean, your literal, hand-me-down clothes, share the bathroom, which of us is Grandma’s favorite, brother?
On our journey through the bible, we’ve been spending the past couple of months in the letters of Paul. Today we are reading a letter, or epistle, of James.** The brother of Jesus. One of the earliest pieces of scripture we have. James was Jesus’s actual brother. 

So, Jesus’s brother, James, or as modern people like to call him, Jesus’s “half-brother”, wrote this letter. But he was not a disciple of Jesus before he died. After Jesus’s resurrection is when James became a follower of The Way, and eventually the well-known and respected leader of the first church ever, in Jerusalem.

Paul’s letters were, for the most part, written to specific communities with specific circumstances, certain people, particular scenarios. This letter is not written to a specific community. It is written to all the churches scattered around the Roman Empire. And it is not about one thing, it’s kind of about all the things. It’s a mashup of Jesus’s teachings and wisdom sayings, filled with pithy lines like the Book of Proverbs, gut punch truths and direct statements that you can’t help but remember, because they catch you off guard and call you out.
Such as:
Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

Faith without works is dead.

Testing your faith produces endurance.

Every generous act of giving and every good gift is from God.

How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. 

From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. This ought not be.

A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. 

Let your ‘Yes’ be yes and your ‘No’ be no. 

The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

The wisdom nuggets James drops throughout this letter instruct, and remind, and hope to inspire and direct a wide but intimate audience, a scattered community united in calling and purpose to guide them in this new life they’re now living.  It’s like the first pope’s first encyclical. 

I spent some time this week just imagining this community. We already heard with Paul’s letters how their way of living undermined the whole structure of society, how they cared not just for the people who looked out for them but especially for those who could not. Women and slaves were leaders, children were valued, and they were a strange group of people not afraid of death who refused to be silenced or stopped in this way of love by the empire’s rewards or punishments.  

But I got pretty caught up on this being written by Jesus’ brother. And he and Paul knew each other! Paul visited James in Jerusalem, sat with him on councils, mentions him in his letter to the Galatians. Then I wondered if Paul knew Jesus’ whole family. Surely, he knew Mary, who was also a leader in the church. And while there is no historical record, sacred tradition holds that as Mary’s death approached, Paul and other disciples and church leaders gathered in Jerusalem, where undoubtedly James convened a blessing for his mother, their mother, our mother.

I won’t digress further here into my meandering wonderings about the childhood family dynamics or sibling rivalries in the household of these brothers James and Jesus (Ya'akov and Yeshua), or what elements of big brother’s origin story details were discussed with the other children, only to note that we are not told any of these things because they are not the point. Jesus had an ordinary life in an ordinary family, and that is perhaps the most extraordinary thing about God becoming human. 

All we have of God is what God has revealed to us of Godself, by coming, embodied, in Jesus Christ. And all we have of Jesus Christ is what those who knew him or knew of him wrote to each other about him, or passed on in oral tradition until someone wrote it down for the rest of us. 

Except that’s not all we have, because Jesus did not stay dead like ordinary humans. So the life he lives that cannot die is now our life, and the connection he shares with the Father that cannot be broken is now our connection, and the way he loved all people as siblings, each one a beloved child of God, is now our way, of loving, of being.  The risen Jesus lives now in and through us; we are part of his life that cannot die, caught up in grace, released from whatever might try to trap us in shame, or anger, or isolation, and held in this belonging to God and all others. The real reality of God’s eternal love brought to fulfillment in Christ is our origin, our destination, and our path.

Therefore, as Paul would say. Because that is the truth, live like it’s true. Here’s James’s therefore: Quit adopting the mindset of the world. Care for those who need help. What good is it if you say ‘I have faith in God’ but don’t help the people around you?’ They belong to God and so they belong to you, there is no faith in God apart from our neighbor! What good is it to say ‘go in peace and be warm and fed’ but give them no food or shelter? Jesus didn’t come to us in nice thoughts and kind wishes; he came in hunger and need and was fed and cared for by those he came to.  And how is it living in the real reality to decide some people are better or more worthy than others because of their outward appearance? When you forget that the poor have a special place in the God’s kingdom and kiss up to the rich instead, what fear, insecurity, or lies is your life really being guided by?

Nobody likes to feel scolded. (Martin Luther was not a fan of this letter). But there is some extra punch, I feel, to James’ words, because he is not writing them right to a certain community or situation. These messages are not directed at a certain group especially busy with bad behaviors. This letter is sent all throughout the Roman empire, church to church, house to house, family to family, wherever the people of the Way are gathered, these words apply. They are for all followers of the Way to hear.

When we read directives, we like to look around at who most needs to hear the message, then nod along and decide it pertains to those other Christians over there.  I may not be perfect all this, at least I’m not as bad as they are.

So, there is something both heartbreaking and deeply comforting to know that these specific mindsets and behaviors James is addressing are universal struggles. He is dealing with pitfalls shared by all Christians living in empire, starting with the very first church, and including us right now. No partiality or prejudice; this is wisdom every one of us needs to hear. 

James is warning us about falling back into a way of living that fractures us, from each other, from God, and from our true humanity that finds its wholeness when we are living with and for each other. We’ve called these two paradigms the way of God and the way of fear. One is true and brings freedom, the other is a very persuasive lie that enslaves. So, James sends to everyone a letter that can already guess what our temptations will be, because they’re his too, they’re all of ours. Believing and living these lies is not new to us. This is sin – back to the beginning, human beings turning from the source of life and love and and trying to somehow acquire on our own, over and against each other, what is already given—and can only be given as a gift—from the source of all life. And this lie is fed to us every day by the empire.

We need reminding that we don’t strive to advance in some board game of life or faith, stepping on others on our way up.  We are transformed from the inside out by the power of the Holy Spirit, who is the energy that flows between the God who is so wholly other than us that our imaginations cannot even begin to reach toward, and the incarnate Son, God’s own self-revelation on earth, God’s act of reaching out to us and saying, Here is who I am. This is me. I am for you.

We have been claimed by this God for this holy, ordinary life. This God, who is for us, has made us for God and for one another. This life of belonging is a life of presence and of participation. It’s a life of mistakes that are confessed to those we’re here for, and hurt that is forgiven by those we’re here with, and (as our own Marty Christensen used to say) we are here to take care of each other. In this reality, the real reality, those of us who are right now most in need are who we are most here for.  

It has meant so much to E and B (a family in our congregation going through some very challenging medical circumstances) to have us praying for them. And we are. Every day we are praying. And also, the more I say to E, we are praying for you, the more it feels like words without actions, Be well! Take care! Thoughts and prayers! A few of you shared this week how sad it felt to eat the meals you’d prepared for them and were unable to deliver. And I keep on reiterating, we are here for you, whatever you need, and being unable to really provide anything, because they’re living in such suspended liminality at the moment that what they most need is our prayers, so we keep praying. And thank God we are able to do that, both that they are letting us do that, by sharing what’s going on and not holding back, and also that God gives us this way to participate in what God doing. Prayer is an act of obedience and trust, and, as James reminds us, the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

But last night I prayed for some way to do something. And I was immediately reminded that the gathered church breaks bread together and we serve one another communion, and this is one way we practice receiving and living in this real reality, sharing each other’s place and being remembered into our belonging and our calling.  So last night I reached out to E and offered to bring communion to them after worship. Pastor Lisa and me, more people from church, just one of us, none of us, whatever would feel right to them. She checked with B and came back saying B said he would love to have communion with whoever of us wants to come. 

So later today we will put action to our words and be the prayer we’ve been praying. Here now, with you, for B.  And even though it means only a few of us can go in the ICU, and we can’t end pain or bring relief or hope, we can be with and for them, and this is how we see and know God who is with and for us in Jesus. 

We can pretend life’s long, pretend it’s easy, deny the suffering, act like we don’t need each other, choose not to see each other, hide from other people’s pain, prop up the powerful, ignore those in need, and make our lives all about ourselves, but all that pretending won’t change what’s real. 

This life is short, and it’s hard, and it’s filled with suffering, and everyone dies, and in Jesus Christ God is here, with and for us, belonging us to God and one another, siblings, all, in this human family. And inside and underneath it all we’re held in God’s love that cannot be stopped by our selfishness, altered by our fear, dampened by our suffering, broken by our pain, or ended by our death. This love is our origin and destination, and it is our path—we are here to take care of each other.  So let’s live what’s real. 

Amen.

______________________

**Here is a fun bit of biblical trivia I just learned this week: In Hebrew James was Ya'akov and Jesus was Yeshua. So, they could’ve been called Jacob and Joshua, but technically, Jacob is actually the same name as James and Joshua is the same name as Jesus. It’s just how they evolved through Greek, Latin and English.  And weirdly, wherever the name is used in the Old Testament English bibles have translated it Jacob, and in the New Testament it is translated to James, just to keep straight who is who among all our bible characters, even though Greek calls them all Iacobos.  

Here are the Linguistic Progressions Broken Down: 
JAMES: Ya'akov (Heb/Aramic) = Iakobos (Gr) = Iamobos (Lat) = Iames (Eng, pre-1500s) = James (Eng, post-1500s, after "I" and "J" became separate letters).
JESUS: Yeshua (Heb/Aramic) = Iēsous (Gr, because lacks "sh" sound and needs 's' masculine ending) = Iesus (Lat) = Jesus (Eng. post 1500s when "I" and "J" differentiated).