The good news about who God is

Hebrews 4:12-16

There’s a trope in some versions of Christianity, of a harsh, judging God and Jesus as a best friend / boyfriend / approachable pal type.  When we blow it, God is ready to come down on us with ferocity, and then in the nick of time, like a codependent mom to an intimidating dad with explosive anger issues, Jesus soothes God’s temper and helps get us off the hook.  This text doesn’t not contribute to that idea.

All are naked and laid bare- literally "neck splayed open to the sword" – to the one to whom we must render an account.
 
Nothing is hidden from God. The word of God that speaks into being all that exists, can judge thoughts and intentions of the heart, is able to slice that fine line between soul and spirit, joint and marrow, selfishness and boundaries, pity and compassion, confidence and pride.   God can see what we can’t. God can see it all clearly – before God no creature is hidden. Not any of us, not ever. 
 
But Jesus is the high priest who has been through all we have and meets us with grace.
 
The Lutherans like to call this law and gospel: the terrifying news that we can’t possibly measure up to God’s ideal, followed by the terrific news that Jesus has done this for us. The bad news before the good.  But as Presbyterians, we actually believe that it’s all good news. That grace meets us even in the judgment, grace first, grace in the middle and grace at the end; it’s all grace. 
 
So this message – that every dark, shadowy corner of our souls is exposed to God, that nothing is hidden, that we are known utterly, vulnerable completely, that nothing we can do can hide us from the ultimate judge of the universe - is already, in itself, good news.
 
I felt that this week. My knives are dull, I hack away at chicken, bend and tear the skins of tomatoes, and I can’t cleanly divide stubbornness from integrity, or clearly separate seeking support from engaging in gossip.  I’m a muddy mess inside.  When relationships get challenging or situations feel complicated, guilt and sorrow get mixed up and cloud my thoughts and emotions, and I am not sure if I can trust my own judgment.  

What a relief it is to come to this passage and hear that to God, it is all clear. That when I can’t even see what it is I need to be freed from, God already knows completely.
 
It’s also good news to me that the whole world, every creature and society is likewise laid bare before God. No amount of covering up evil, no clever spin or mass manipulation can obscure God’s view. God sees it all as it is, knows us all as we are. God’s word exposes the truth. Period.
 
There is a place to anchor our lives in something beyond us and our uncertain and bungling assessments of the world or our ourselves. A fiercely trustworthy, entirely qualified, unwaveringly just authority already sees and knows it all, and one day we will all have to own up to all of it. This is good news. 
 
We are completely exposed and vulnerable, at the mercy of this God.  
AND, we are at this God’s MERCY. God came to share this life with us - Jesus felt tension, fear, worry and sadness, Jesus had convoluted relationships, knew pain and loss, struggled to make sense of things, dealt with frustration and confusion.  Jesus lived our human struggles, but without the division from God and others that we call sin. 
 
So we are invited to approach this God with boldness.  Because what we find when we come to this God is mercy and grace.  Mercy and grace based on an accurate and true assessment of things. Mercy and grace that comes from knowing from the inside the weakness and anxiety of being human. Both are true. 
 
THIS is good news.  
God doesn’t let us off the hook because we’ve pulled the wool over God’s eyes like we do to ourselves and each other: tell half the story, paint ourselves in good light, set up others as the real problem, or pin ourselves under crushing blame.  God knows and sees all of it, missing nothing, and ALSO meets us with mercy – mercy we can’t seem to extend to each other, or to ourselves.   The all-knowing, righteous judge of the universe chooses to extend this mercy to us.  In fact, God does more – God meets us in our weakness with grace to make it through, grace that helps us forgive ourselves and each other, grace to start over when we fail, grace to begin again when we think we’re out of chances, grace to face a broken world with love and mercy too, grace to start seeing our own selves as we really are instead of as we wish we were or as we fear we might be.
 
The past two weeks we’ve dug into our question, What is a good life and how do we live it? Now we are seeing our other question play out, Who is this God and what is God up to? 
 
And we’re seeing James answer it this way: God is the One, all-knowing being in the universe who rightfully renders judgment on us all, because from God nothing is hidden. But instead of condemning us to separation from God and each other, God claims us anyway and joins us right here in Jesus Christ, suffering in all the ways we do, but without the muddy mess of division and contradictions, without all the stories we tell ourselves that keep us from our true belonging to each other and God. In our time of need, we find mercy and grace from this God to help us through. That is who God is and what God is up to.  All the time, and right now. 
 
So come boldly.  Tell it right to God; God knows it anyway.  When you shout it, or write it, or weep it, you will find relief, mercy, grace, help.  Both because Jesus has been there, and because God sees you exactly as you are and loves you completely. This is good news.
 
Amen.

In on the Miracle

 

Matthew 5:1-12

Right now feels like we are poised on the edge of a significant, history-making moment. 

Friday a friend on the phone with someone in Washington DC said this person was watching out her window as the city was being boarded up. The National guard is standing by, ready to be deployed. Nobody knows what is going to happen next, or how we all will respond to what happens next. 
 
Of course, it’s already history-making, we’re in a global pandemic and all.  But it suddenly really feels significant and history-making.  Our country feels fragile, things are charged and divided, we are raw about racism and doing hard introspective work about the changes needed in our nation. Our mental health is affected by our limited our ability to be together, the loss of our normal routine with jobs and school, with no way to imagine the future or timeline for when this might be over.  We’re struggling to hang on when the ground feels so unstable. So we are coming into this significant historical moment exhausted from nine months of virus vigilance and let’s just say, we aren’t at the top of our game.  
We are going into this future-shaping, unknown outcome, amped up stakes, moment feeling especially vulnerable, particularly powerless, and parched in our hearts and souls.  Some of us feel a kind of alert, attentive stillness, preparing for whatever comes next, others of us are flailing and wringing our hands in worry, and sighing or swearing a lot.
 
Perhaps I am not speaking for you, and you’re feeling mostly terrific and unfazed at the moment.  If that’s you, I’m genuinely glad for you.  If you’re like me, though, what Jesus says today might sound like good news: 
 
Blessed are the poor in spirit.  
Ok, God, I’m listening.
 
Blessed are those at the end of their rope. Blessed are the bone dry, those who can’t fake it, those who are facing their own nothingness and know it: God’s way of life is for them. 
 
I want God’s way of life! I want to live beyond the striving and comparing, the judgment and the fear. I want to remember that we belong to God and each other and that can never be taken away. I want to remember that love is real and it never ends. The way back into that that reality is not by determined will or strong faith, but through our own emptiness and longing. 
 
Jesus comes into our death with new life. It is in our impossibility that Christ meets us.
 
Blessed are… all these beatitudes begin, this whole sermon on the mount starts with a litany of blessing like statements of fact. Happy, contended, grounded are those…. Then it flips everything upside down and says a bunch of things we don’t prefer and wouldn’t chose, and pull us into grace. “Grace means nobody gets what they deserve but infinitely more.” Fredrich Buechner says, “Blessed is the one who gets the joke, who sees that miracle.”
 
Blessed are the parched souls, God’s way of belonging and grace is especially for them. 
 
Also in on the miracle?  Those who mourn. They will be comforted.
 
This word for mourn is the strongest possible word for mourning.  And comforted here is the strongest possible word for comforted. So, blessed are those who are in absolute abject despair.  All defenses crumbled, unable to fake it, actively surrendering to all-out no-holds-barred grieving.
They will be comforted, not made comfortable, as in, hanging out in a familiar place with a hot cup of tea and your feet propped up.  But comforted, as in completely propped up on someone else’s strength.  When we let out our agony, others will bear us up and walk with us, and carry our burdens with us, and not let us be lost or alone. 
 
We are all mourning something. There is loss that we keep in or downplay, that we are invited to let it out. 
 
By the way - Jesus did not say blessed are those who mourn for they will find inner strength to triumph over their circumstances, or blessed are those who mourn for they will be delivered from the things that are causing them sorrow. No, he said, blessed are those who mourn for they will be joined and held up in their grief and their circumstances.  When we mourn we find right here the Christ who suffers with and for us. In the presence of those who come around us to lift us up is the actual the presence of God. 
 
The next one feels a little icky. Blessed are the meek. God knows, and this is on full display right now, we will choose security above all else. We will choose it over goodness or cooperation or justice, we’ll choose the way of fear’s promise of safety over love’s vulnerability in a heartbeat.  We want to be strong, and right, and self-sufficient, and respectable and buffered from loss. We don’t want to be “meek.”
Lisa once said, “It is hard and humbling to realize that faith leads not to security but to vulnerability.” We belong to God and we belong to each other- we are dependent and interdependent. No amount of striving can make us ever not need God and each other.  So saying Blessed are the meek is like saying, Contented are the honest. In on the joke are those who get that they are recipients of grace alongside everyone else. The antidote to our obsessive striving for security is humility.
Lisa said it this way, “To be meek not to be ashamed or small or groveling. It is only to be at peace with our place in the universe, not to be secure, but to be at home.”
In on the miracle are those who are at home in God’s grace, they are at home in the whole world.

And blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness!  We who long to live in God’s way, to see justice and kindness and mercy and love as way of life in this life, we will be filled. Because it is not we who bring about God’s reality, it is God who is already and always bringing it. So we watch and wait and pray and yearn that we all could live our belonging to God and each other, and the promise is, that in longing for it, we will experience it.

And being at home in God’s grace, and longing for God’s belonging to be shared means getting comfortable with mercy. But that is not a popular stance these days. Mercy feels risky and embarrassing, and so outdated. Right now our world feels like a very punishing place, without a lot of room for mercy. We’d rather punish others. We ourselves would rather be punished harshly. We are not good at accepting mercy or extending it to others.  We’d prefer to restore order, or pay penance, or earn acceptance. Even better, we’d rather just cut people off completely and move on with our lives. 
 
But in the kingdom of God mercy is what keeps us all afloat.  Because mercy is how grace works. God’s way is forgiveness and compassion that are not deserved and cannot be earned. 
And the promise is, you brave souls who reach your hand toward another with no guarantee they will accept or appreciate it, when you may not get the recognition or justice you deserve, You will receive mercy.
 
Giving mercy washes away the hardness and the stuckness in our hearts, and receiving it sets us free from the self-judgment and self-punishment we often choose instead. 
 
Blessed, then, also are the pure in heart, those who welcome mercy and live in it, those who for whatever reason, have chosen NOT hard and cynical, NOT self-protective and cunning.  Those whom we might dismiss as naive or weak, easily taken advantage of, are the ones who are tuned in to the song of kindness and love and mercy and hope that the rest of us mostly ignore. These are the ones who get to see God.
In on the miracle are those whose hearts are vulnerable and open.
 
Then there are the peace-makers.  The Hebrew word for Peace, Shalom, means “fullness” or “completion”.  So the greeting, Shalom, means “May you be completed.” When we contribute to others’ fullness, fullness in the world around us, and fullness between us, we literally share in the substance of God’s life, here and now.   Whenever we say, by our words or our actions, “May you be completed,” we make peace. 
We smile it, and knit it, and bake it, and write it, and march it, and speak it, and hug it, and listen it into being, we break down strife and strain by wishing wholeness and fullness upon others. And those who are doing this, Jesus says, know with confidence whose and who and whose they are. 
 
But just to be clear, being peace-makers doesn’t mean we’re suddenly no longer tension-makers and crazy-makers too.(Back to the poor in spirit!) It means, as Glen Stassan says, we “abandon the effort to get our needs met through the destruction of our enemies.” Being a peacemaker starts with surrendering our own troubled hearts to God’s mercy, and letting God bring peace through us.
 
And Jesus ends the whole thing with, Blessed are you when you are deeply misunderstood, labeled, dismissed and hated for living like the game is pretend, and choosing to live in God’s belonging instead.  And, then here comes the only command in the whole beatitudes – you should rejoice and be glad, because what you are doing is noticed.  You’re undermining the way of fear; you’re making good trouble. And there is a whole cloud of witnesses—those who’ve been in on the miracle longer than you have—cheering you on.  And one day, when all this is over, you will be thanked by the Creator for your participation in the miracle. 
 
This moment is significant, and historical, and it is fraught. But beloved children of God, we live in a deeper reality, deeper than any moment, and with a further horizon beyond all the significant historical moments gone before and all those to come, and we know this world belongs to God, and every one of us in it belongs to each other.  No matter what, and always. And God is always working.  No matter what and always.  God’s grace holds us and sustains us.
 
No matter what and always, this remains true: when we feel parched in our hearts and souls, God’s way of belonging and grace is for us. And when we express our heartbreaking grief we are lifted up on others’ arms. And when we’re at home in God’s grace we find the whole world to be our home. And when we long for God’s belonging between us we find fullness, and when we’re brave and generous with mercy we ourselves are awash in mercy.  And when our hearts are vulnerable and open, we see God.  And when we surrender our troubled hearts to God’s grace and let God’s fullness come to and through us, we remember whose and who we are, part of the eternal community of good trouble makers, persistent love-seekers and brave hope-bearers. 
 
This week, and always, may we know ourselves to be in on the miracle.
Amen.

PRAYER PRACTICE:

Using a journal, or verbally with a quiet few minutes to reflect and pray, let yourself express to God what is on your heart in this way:

God, I am mourning...

God, I long for...

God, thank you...

Repeat as many times as necessary.

The real life

Luke 6:17-38

James Finley used to go to Thomas Merton for spiritual direction. When he arrived, Merton would ask him, “How’s it going?’  If Finley answered, “It’s going well!” Merton would respond, “Don’t worry, before too long it wont be going so well.”  And if he answered, “It’s not going so well.” Merton would respond, “Don’t worry, before too long, it will be going well.”

You aren’t sleeping through the night? 

Don’t worry, soon your kid will be done teething. 

You are sleeping through the night? 

Don’t worry, soon your kid will be out driving late at night with friends. 

You are stable and happy and healthy and have a job you love? 

Don’t worry, before too long you’ll get sick, or lose your job, or face some financial hardship. 

You are going through a difficult illness, hunting for a new job or struggling to make ends meet? 

Don’t worry, before too long your treatment will be finished, you will find employment, and one day you will be finished paying off your student loans.  

Jesus is among a crowd of people in what sounds like an overwhelming scene: a massive gathering from the whole region, pressing in on him, trying to touch him because power is going out from him and people are being healed of all sorts of things. In the middle of this scene Jesus looks up at his disciples and he gives them this sermon.

First, a collection of blessings and woes, which is to say a litany of How good you have it!s and Sucks to be you!s.  

How good you have it, you who are poor, or hungry, or weeping, or when people say terrible things about you!  You should leap for joy!  For yours is the kingdom of God, you will be fed, you will laugh, and you are in good company! 

And you who are rich and full and happy? Sucks to be you! 

For all of that will disappear and you’ll be left with nothing. 

Whatever it is that we look to for security, stability, for comfort and ease, the things we assume are defining and sustaining of our lives – they are fickle and changing.  Ability, disability, health, illness, weakness, strength, beauty, cruelty, happiness, despair, our lives cycle through it all, and we don't ever stop and stay somewhere, as though we’ve arrived. 

So even though we like to imbue them with power, they don’t actually determine reality.  
There must be something else, something greater, something deeper, that holds us than this. 
We must have to rest our souls, our security, our trust, in something or someone more than what we feel and experience.  

But we don’t get there through strength.  

When we avoid our pain, pretend what someone said doesn’t hurt, prop ourselves up with our assets and gifts and our “at least”s – at least I have my health, at least I have friends, at least I’m not as bad off as they are, we give those things the power over us and we become trapped by the pain, captive to the messages, enslaved to do everything possible to preserve ourselves and at least not lose our at leasts.  We cannot be free.  But that doesn’t stop us from doing everything we can to avoid the nothingness.

The real life, the real security, the real hope, is found in our weakness.  When you know nothingness; you will be ministered to by God. When you don’t try to flee it or avoid it, but acknowledge it and even receive it, you will find that the God who comes to us as minister will minister to you. 

My friend Phil in my pastor group is teaching the Enneagram in prison, gathering with groups of prisoners who want to talk about what unthought responses and defense mechanisms of their personality types trap them and get them into trouble.  When he first started, he kept marveling to the rest of us about how receptive the prisoners were, and and how dramatic the changes in them once they started recognizing their patterns. These are people living right up against their impossibility. They have no illusions about their weakness.  Their gut reactions and unthought responses have clearly not worked out for them.  He said, “They are so much freer than I am. They have nothing more to lose and no illusions about their own imprisonment. I get to walk around feeling like I’m doing pretty well.  My defense mechanisms are working pretty well, thank you very much.  I get to pretend I am not trapped in my own ego and cut off from real connection and relationships.” 

So, how good it is to be you when things aren’t working out so well, because you can confess your death and be met by life.  And sucks to be you when you’re doing a good job escaping your nothingness and deluding yourself that you’ve got it handled. Because your death is going to come as something of a shock.  How good it is to be you who can embrace your nothingness.  And sucks to be to you who believe you can escape it.

That’s the first part of Jesus’ sermon. And I like to imagine that the chaos has died down a little bit around him and people are straining to eavesdrop as he continues talking to his disciples.  

And the part he says next would get a lot of clapback on Twitter.  Social media is a perfect medium for destroying each other.  The extraordinary speed and venom with which we can soundly condemn someone is matched in force only by the hopelessness of finding redemption once you’ve been condemned. 

So imagine how Jesus’ message would go over with us: Bless those who curse you-? Love your enemies-? Don’t just love those who love you, that’s meaningless. Love those who hate you! Reach out to those who’ve rejected you from their tribe! Pray for those who abuse you! When someone does something terribly hurtful to you, deserving to feel the sting they’ve inflicted on you and the pain they’ve caused you, don’t give it back.  Instead show them mercy, pray for them, be kind to them. Share your stuff with the people who don’t return it-?  Lend to those who may not repay you-?  Big whoop if you engage in an economy of trading and bartering things and emotions and respect.  What does that prove? Anybody can do that, he says. 

Weirdly, God is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.  We’d much rather see the ungrateful and wicked taken down a few notches.  In fact, we’ll gladly do that ourselves. We’ll call them out, shred their reputations, give them one star and call them trash. We will make them pay for their ingratitude and wickedness. 

But Jesus says, Live in God’s mercy and extend it to others. Live in God’s forgiveness and extend it to others. Live in God’s grace and extend it to others.  Especially when they don’t merit it. That’s when it really matters.

Don’t judge and you wont be judged, don’t condemn and you wont be condemned, forgive and you’ll be forgiven, give and it will be given to you. Trust in this reality where there is enough – enough love and forgiveness and grace and hope, and where we are not heaping judgment and condemnation on each other and ourselves.  

Live this way and this is how you will live. 

It was important that he said the first part first.  

Because this part is harder, and makes no sense without the first part.  

You’re always stuck in impossibility, Jesus tells us, so surrender. The only way to move from the way of fear to the way of God is through death and resurrection. Die to yourself and all you thought might keep you safe or make you invincible or good or immune.  Die to what you thought was giving you life. 

When you surrender, you get your humanity back.  When you’ve surrendered to your nothingness and embraced your death you are no longer ruled by it.  You will not be overtaken by comparison, or consumed by jealousy.  You will not need to prove yourself better than or equal to others.  You will not need to get caught in defensiveness and retaliation. You will be free.

Everything we do in life is to escape nothingness – we’re terrified by it, obsessed with it. It’s why Adam and Eve ate the apple, and it’s why we tweet. We want to build our own somethingness and fiercely uphold it.  But if you’re my disciple, Jesus says, walk right into nothingness. Walk into your weakness and surrender to it.  Lay down your life and you will find it.  Live with your nothingness.  

Right up against it is where you’ll find the love and grace, the mercy and forgiveness of God. Right up against it is where you’ll find freedom. You can’t kill what’s already dead, Paul reminds us. And we are those who have died and been raised into new life with Christ. We are those pulled into the love and care of the Father to the Son by the Spirit.  The grace of God inside the Trinity spills out into the world to create and claim us, as beloved, in God’s own image, and God ministers to us in our need. 

If this is where you begin – already in your nothingness and impossibility, then you cannot be pulled into the game of creating your own somethingness and defending your own possibility.  It is in our nothingness, our poverty and hunger and sadness and death, that God comes to us, and gives us back our humanity.  And it is here we minister to each other, giving and receiving love and care, living out the image of God.  God puts us in communion with God and each other, to rediscover our true belonging that is at the core of it all – to return to the love we most deeply long for, and that we recognize in our deepest self when we experience it.

All around you the lie is going to continue to rage that says we are apart and against and there’s only enough belonging for some and only enough respect for a few and the winners will win and the losers will lose and it can be locked in, settled and final, as we human beings strive to avoid and overcome the nothingness.

But the core of it all is God’s grace and mercy. And the kind of world God made and has redeemed us for is one of deep connection and love.  And it comes through death, not apart from it. Don’t protect or guard yourself from being hurt, or try to create and uphold your own possibility in the world, but surrender. Surrender to the impossibility and the inability to save yourself and find there your salvation. 

The time is coming when nobody will be hungry or poor or sick, when everyone will have enough and nobody will be less than, discarded or overlooked. This is God’s reality; it is as things are meant to be and will one day be for good. It is where we all will one day stop and stay.  We join in it now.

Then, beyond the game and the illusion and the constant striving and comparing, we are participating in the real reality.  We are acting as though we belong to one another because we do. 

Treat someone as worthy of respect, even if they don’t deserve it.  

If someone takes your coat, give your shirt too.  

Give more than is demanded unfairly of you.  Upset the apple cart.  Be the one who sets the terms.  

Don’t react and keep track; die to that way of life and rise to a different way of being.  

Refuse to be divided by other people’s actions or words.  

Refuse to let them make you reject them. 

Refuse to let their pain or rage or hatred or vitriol set the terms for how you will treat them. 

Instead of strong, be weak.  

Instead of wary, be generous. 

Treat people as more deserving of kindness than they generally are, says Jesus, who right as he is saying it is also doing it, showing kindness, without distinction, liberally healing all those who come near. They touch him and they’re healed. They don’t even have to ask the right way, or show they’ve earned it, or be a good person, or have the right religion, or turn their live around and use it for good. Jesus is just healing them. Because it’s who Jesus is.  It’s what God does.

Jesus is standing in a sea of broken and longing people, very few deserving at the moment and those who are wont be for long, people who are mostly confused, mostly unkind to each other, people who are lost and frantic to escape their nothingness, people not unlike you and me and all those we know.  And he’s just giving out healing and hope willy-nilly, without prescreening or checking credentials, and in the midst of this madness he’s gathering those of us who are longing to follow and are willing to be sent, and he is inviting us to face our own nothingness.  

He’s telling to embrace our own impossibility, to recognize the futility of our reliance on anything to save us – be it goodness or health or wisdom or financial security or reputation or hard work or people’s praise and good opinions of us, because just wait, tomorrow it will be gone. 

Instead, he’s inviting us to live as though we are already dead, which is to be truly alive.  To discover in our honesty and weakness that our ground of being cannot be shaken, because it extends deeper than the things that come and go on the surface; we are rooted and grounded in love. We are held and upheld in God. 

And then he’s giving these ludicrous instructions, these self-emptying kind of instructions. These ministry kind of instructions.  Be merciful like God who is merciful, who empties Godself to take on the form of a human being and come right in alongside us. So empty ourselves and go toward death, toward suffering, toward the nothingness and impossibility inside of us and others.  Let our utter vulnerability make us invulnerable to destruction.  Let our weakness becomes the strength to go right in alongside each other where Jesus is. 

Go toward each other, make the kind of relationships where people are seen and heard. Live the deeper truth. 

Live the wider hope. 

Live the greater mercy. 

Show forgiveness – a rare, upsetting and potent thing these days. 

Live in grace, which is to share in God’s fullness and contribute to others’ fullness. 

Surrender to God, who surrenders to us, and then surrender to each other. 

Come alongside each other as God comes alongside us.  

Be ministers. 

Let God set you free. 

And it will be contagious. It will be returned to you when you don't expect it; it will be filled up bubbling over kind of infectious.  

Live this way and this is how you will live.   

Amen.

God is not fair

Matthew 20:1-16

Parables Series - Week 2! (Here's Week 1,  Week 3 and Week 4)

Peter is so reliable at asking the things everyone else just thinks but is afraid to say outloud. He’s like an adorable, feisty kindergartner who predictably shoots up his hand and waves it frantically around, brow furrowed, biting his lip, at nearly every new thing the teacher says. You want to be annoyed with him, but he’s so darn sincere and trying so hard to get it right, that you can’t help but smile. Just like last time, today's parable is an answer to a question by Peter. 

Yes, Peter? What is it?

What could Peter have asked to get Jesus to tell this story?  

What burning question compelled him?  

Just before this Jesus has just been approached by a very wealthy man, who asked him, What good deeds must I do to have eternal life?  And Jesus answered, “Why do you ask me about what is good. There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” The man asked which ones, and Jesus listed them off.  I keep them all, he answered.  What do I still lack?  And Jesus responded, if you wish to be perfect, sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor and follow me. And in the space between paragraphs, the man disappears, never to be heard from again. 

Now Peter gets anxious, again, and the questions bubble up.  

If the key to winning God’s favor is not by how well you do, then it must be by how much you give up.  So he waves his hand and says “Oh, oh, oh, Jesus! Jesus, look, we have left everything and followed you.  What do we get?” 

And Jesus answers him with comforting words of future glory – Don’t worry Peter, you will be absolutely taken care of in the end.  But then Jesus throws in the zinger, again, the last will be first and the first will be last.  And he follows it up with this parable, which boils down to:

The people who get picked up to work at the end of the day get paid the same as those who worked all day long. 

I can feel myself get riled at the fairness factor here. It’s not fair. Not remotely.  If you work longer, you get paid more. Period. Everyone gets how these rules work; we base whole societies on these things.  How come this landowner can’t seem to stick with the program?  And I feel utterly justified feeling that way, too, until I get to the line, “You have made them equal to us.”

And isn’t that the heart of it?

Are you envious because I am generous? The landowner asks the first workers, when they complain about being paid exactly what they were promised, but were upset because those who worked shorter than they did, didn’t make enough less money than them to make it fair. 

Am I not allowed to do what I choose to with what is mine? Or are you envious because I am generous? Neither of these options are one I would want to fess up to in the moment.  Obviously it’s his money, he can spend it how he wants. I’m not about to disagree with that.  And yes, he did pay me just what he said he would – he’s not cheating me in any way.  So then, do I admit I am envious?

What if I just want things to be fair?

If I am the first worker, is there any conceivable scenario where I would switch places with the last? In other words, given the choice, would I have preferred to have secure employment from the beginning of the day, with a clear sense of what I was earning, and get paid just what I expected, or, would I like to spend the day standing around listless, anxiously watching the hours tick by not working but wishing I was?  Which would you want?  Would we have wanted to wonder and worry all day long and then feel grateful to get at least an hour of work in? Even with the amazing surprise in the paycheck, would we have chosen that roller coaster over getting the same amount without a day filled with fear and apprehension?

Let me take a stab at these fictional parable people and say, with some confidence, they don’t want to switch places. They are not jealous. They are envious. Envy is not wanting what someone else has, it is not wanting them to have it.  They are fine with what they have. They don’t want someone else to have it.  “You have made them equal to us.” they said. 

This landowner broke the rules.  

The unwritten ones that we all live by in the accounting system, the way of fear.  

How can we know how well we are doing unless we can look back on those we’ve passed up?  How can we be assured of our own security, or our progress, if others are given a place at the table right next to us and they didn’t have to work nearly as hard as we did to get there?  

The rich man walks away because Jesus took away his measuring stick. 

You know all the commandments and follow them perfectly. If it was about earning your way, you’ve clearly earned your way here and everyone can see that. Now, give it all away. Have nothing left to show for your success, or your faithfulness. Just follow me, without getting any credit for it, without even knowing how to credit yourself. 

And that was too much for him. 

And Peter, Peter, Peter! What will we get, then, Jesus? If we have already given up everything to follow you?  We must surely get more than others, right? Because we’ve sacrificed more? Followed longer? Been ready to do what that rich guy wasn’t?  We should be super assured of our superior place, right Jesus? That’s only fair!

 

Peter keeps forgetting that the Kingdom of God is not fair. 

That’s a goal of the accounting system, not the Kingdom of God.  

Jesus doesn’t care one tiny bit about fairness.  If you want fair, you’re looking in absolutely the wrong place.  And Thank God for that, actually. 

Because as noble a goal as it seems, it’s a farce. “ Fair” is an unachievable illusion. And the idea that we can somehow earn our security permanently – whether here or in eternity – is an utter lie as well.

Putting our trust in the rules is a dangerous mind game.  

Like the rich man trusting his wealth, and Peter trusting his sacrifice – it’s thinking that something we do can make or keep ourselves secure, or worthy, or good, or safe, or somehow other than vulnerable human in it alongside everyone else. 

We may not be wondering today where our food will come from, but we may be wondering how long our health will hold out.  We may not be stuck waiting to be hired for work, but we may be stuck waiting for test results, or word that our child is out of harm's way.  

Sometimes we invest our money wisely, and financial markets crash.  

Sometimes we work for 30 years for the same company and get pink slipped without warning.  Sometimes we follow all the advice and steps for a good marriage and end up divorced. 

We like to feel in control of our own destinies.  But we’re not in control of our own destinies.  We like to think we are the first workers, and always will be, the ones with choice, the ones who “deserve it.”  Longer work equals higher reward. Simple. We can sign on to that and then work hard, right? That’s fair.

But the kingdom of God, shows that illusion for what it is.  No matter how fair we may try to make things, they are never really fair.  It’s easier to do well and go far, for example, if you’re raised with enough resources, with tons of people who believe in you, in a culture where you speak the dominant language and look like the majority.  It doesn’t hurt at all to have an extra dose of math skill in your genes, or the good looks and athleticism that opens doors, or to know someone who knows someone.  On top of that, it’s handy to avoid any genetic conditions, serious illnesses, unforeseen accidents or devastating natural disasters in your lifetime, not to mention personal mistakes or failures on your part.  And, if you can at all help it, try to never, ever, get old or die.

And for those times we happen to be in the first shift, for the times when we are lucky and the system is working well for us, it is easier to delude ourselves that we are somehow earning our worth or securing our lives.  But the truth is, that while life is a lot of things, fair is not actually one of them.  Not even when that’s what we are aiming for as the goal. 

Life is precious, and scary, and holy, and messy, and precarious, and no matter how we feel about the matter, according to this parable, God actually doesn’t care at all about being – or even appearing to be – fair. 

Instead, “God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”  (Psalm 145:8) God is a dangerous affront to our idea of fairness.  

And Jesus’ parables are designed to peel back the surface and step into something deeper, something troubling, something that is risky and life-giving, but at first it is going to feel like dying. 

He says following him is going to feel like losing your life instead of saving it. It is going to be like letting go of all your security and measuring tools.  It will feel like being last instead of being assured you are first.  The kingdom of heaven is like this, Jesus says. 

It always confronts the kingdom of earth.  It always dismantles the accounting system.  It always strips away illusions and false security. 

God’s kingdom welcomes us only when we are our most basic, human selves, quite apart from any earnings or deservings we may or may not have.  The Kingdom of God is much easier for the last to recognize than it is for those who’ve gotten used to being first.

The day is coming when Peter wont be so confident, in fact, he will be crushed completely. He will let himself down in the worst way he can imagine: he will fail Jesus. It doesn’t matter how much he’s given up, or how much he’s done, or how well he follows, he will lose forever any shot he had at earning his way or proving his worth as a disciple when, despite being warned--three times!--he denies even knowing Jesus to save his own skin. Three times he will betray the one he said he was more committed to than anyone else was. 

And then the risen Jesus will find Peter in the depths of his despair, in his own personal death, and welcome him close, and say to him, If you love me, feed my sheep. 

The kingdom of God is not an accounting system.  

God doesn’t keep track like we do.  

God is not interested in fairness; God is interested in life. 

When you are beyond hope, God is there.  When you have wandered so far that you can’t find your way back, God will rescue you and nurse you back to strength.   When you have squandered all that God has given you and you limp home ashamed and miserable, God will run to you with open arms and embrace you as his beloved child.  When all that your luck, or bad choices, or poor planning, or the hand you’ve been dealt, allows for is one measly hour of work at the tail end of a long day, you are not paid by what you have earned, but by the generosity of our God, who makes the last first, and the first last, and every last one of us: beloved.  

Amen.