One Flock, One Shepherd (Good Shepherd Sunday; Easter 4B)

One Flock, One Shepherd

Easter 4B
29 April 2012; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Homily Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Anthony A. Hutchinson 

at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon
Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18 

“The day after they had arrested Peter and John for teaching about Jesus and the resurrection, the rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, "By what power or by what name did you do this?" Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’ There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:5-12) 

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

We have been having a lot of funerals here at Trinity in the last weeks.  At a couple of them we have used as the Gospel reading the passage from John 14, where Jesus says that in his Father’s House there are many way stations.  The passage is warm, reassuring, and comforting.  It ends with Jesus saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one comes to the Father, except by me” (John14: 6).   One of the deacons asked me somewhat abashedly if she could read the Gospel but end the reading before that last half-verse, “no one comes to the Father except by me.”  “It might be offensive to some of the visiting bereaved, who might not be Christians.” 

She asked as if she were afraid my response might be “But this is the BIBLE we are talking about here, and I’ll not have a verse of GOD’S WORD edited out because it might be offensive to those who are going to destruction anyway!”  But she asked it anyway, because she knew that I am no fundamentalist, and believe that in order to be understood, God’s word on occasion needs to be reframed or even rephrased. 

Today’s Gospel reading, shares the same problem.  “I am the Good Shepherd” Jesus says, not “a good shepherd.”  And he adds, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”  Likewise, in the Acts reading, St. Peter ends his short speech on Christ being the stone once rejected but now made head cornerstone by saying, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

We here at Trinity Church glory in the fact that we are inclusive.  One of our core values is hospitality.   We believe that inclusiveness and hospitality are what God calls us to.   We believe that because of what scripture teaches us. 
During the life of Jesus, everyone knew that one of the great images of the Hebrew scripture for God’s saving act at the end of time was that of a great banquet. Even though there were plenty of passages that said, like Isaiah 25:7, that this banquet would be for people of all nations, many of the religious teachers around Jesus taught that this would be an exclusive event limited to a few of God’s chosen only.

Jesus replies to such a stingy image of God with parables. He points to the weather and says that God gives his rain and sunshine to both good and bad people alike (Matt. 5:45). He says this tells us about God’s love for all and should be a model for us in how we treat others. Jesus points to families and notes that when children ask for bread to eat, parents do not give them stones, or when they ask for an egg to eat, do not give them a scorpion. “If even average parents try to give their children good things, how much more generous will God be?” (Matt. 7:9-10; Luke 11:11-13)

Jesus’ actions matched his words. He regularly ate and drank with people that his religion told him would make him unclean. He had dinner parties with drunkards and prostitutes, much to the horror of Jesus’ “righteous” opponents. “It is the sick who need a doctor,” he would say, “not healthy people.” (Matt. 9:12)

But not everyone wanted a God as generous as the one Jesus described. They would quote scriptures that “proved” God was picky and exclusive. Jesus would reply by quoting other scriptures, where God looked more loving. 

Jesus reserved his deepest anger for people he accused of “refusing to enter God’s door, and also barring the way to others” (Matt 23:13). He told other parables to explain why it was that despite God’s overwhelming goodness and generosity, some people were right with God and others were not.  The ones who were not truly thankful for God’s generosity, and were not likewise generous to others, were the butt of such parables (Luke 18:10-14).

When Jesus described what he believed the dividing line on the Last Day will be between those who stand and dwell with God and those who do not, he said that it was whether people had been hospitable, and whether they had cared for the marginalized  (Matthew 5: 35-40). 

So inclusiveness and hospitality are core to the Gospel, not just affectations of Trinity Ashland.   

What, then, are we to make of the verses of the New Testament that seem exclusionary? 

Here in post-modern America, with its wide diversity of religious and non-religious traditions, it is always a temptation to simply ignore these verses or deny that they hold any truth or value.   In a landscape of radical diversity, all religious options seem equally valid, valuable, and true, with the exception of views that exclude or subordinate others, or claim unique truth or authenticity.   This often finds expression in a consumer’s approach to religious belief:  pick and choose those things of religion—any religion—that appeal to you, that suit you, and moosh them all together into your particular faith.  “I’m spiritual but not religious” is a common tag line of such boutique faith.  A little bit of Christianity, of Buddhism, of mystic Islam or Judaism, stripped of their authoritative claims or difficult doctrines, of their craziness, and you can arrive at a pleasant blend all your own, like some customized pipe tobacco or drug stash.

To those who might find boutique religion attractive, it is important to remember wise words from the Dalai Lama.  He says that if you take a little of this faith and mix it with a little of that one, you have neither the one nor the other and cannot be properly formed by either. You never will sink your roots deeply enough into a single tradition to truly grow and mature spiritually.  It is only when you sink your roots deep, with an open heart and mind, and acquire some spiritual maturity that you can “branch out” and truly enjoy the fruits of another tradition.  “If you are Christian it is better to develop spiritually within your religion and be a genuine, good Christian. If you are a Buddhist, be a genuine Buddhist.” (H.H. the Dalai Lama, The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus, p. 46).

Historically, the Church has read these verses and taught that Christ is the sole savior.  This usually entails claims that other faiths are deficient, and are only true or valid in the degree that they copy or agree with elements of Christian faith.  The most exclusionary form of this for the Roman Church has been the doctrine of extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside of the Church, there is no salvation”).   Protestants have their own form of the doctrine, based on Romans 10:9.  Paul’s “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” in this view becomes, “unless you declare this with your mouth and believe this in your heart, you will not be saved.   

But this exclusionary doctrine has undergone a great shift in the last 40 years, primarily due to the work of Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, who developed the doctrine of the Anonymous Christian.   The idea is that a person can live in God’s grace and attain salvation through Jesus even outside explicitly constituted or stated Christianity.  If a person, say a Buddhist nun or a Muslim imam, tries to do the right thing, be right with whatever God they conceive of, and follow his or her conscience, that person might be considered an anonymous Christian and be saved through Jesus’ victory over death and sin.  They would not have to explicitly accept Jesus or Christianity, or might even, because of circumstances and constraints, have rejected these explicitly.  But God’s universal salvific will and the greatness of God’s grace would save them too. 

The idea of the Anonymous Christian was promulgated as official Roman Catholic doctrine in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. 

The idea is also found among Protestants. The final book of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle, has the character Emeth, a Calormene prince who had fought against Aslan and Narnia and served his own god, Tash.  He has done his best to live uprightly within the traditions he as raised in.  In the end, Aslan receives him as one of his own with these words, “I and [Tash] are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.^”  

The doctrine is also found in our Prayer Book, where we pray, “Remember all who died in the peace of Christ, and those whose faith is known to you alone; bring them into the place of eternal joy and light” (p. 375).

Some have criticized this effort at Christian inclusivity saying that it is condescending.  “I’m Jewish, thank you very much, and do not want to become Christian, even anonymously” expresses the idea.  These critics say that a tradition is truly inclusive only when it recognizes that other traditions have truly separate paths and confesses that these too are valid, without need for any “anonymous” adoption into our tradition.  

There is, however, a prior issue here.  The verses that Christians use to endorse exclusivist claims, when examined carefully, don’t actually teach the doctrine of exclusive, brand-conscious religious truth.  They are concerned, rather, with something else.    Remember that Paul in Romans did not write, “if you don’t confess and believe, you won’t be saved.” 

Take also the verse at the end of today’s Acts reading: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”  That phrasing should strike you as odd if indeed what Peter had meant to say was “there is no other name by which we can be saved.”  The problem is starker in the Greek of the passage, which says “by which it is necessary for us to be saved.”  The context of the verse provides the clue necessary for us to see what it is actually trying to say:  Peter is answering the authorities’ question of how, or under whose authority (“by whose name”) he has performed a miracle.  In verse 9, Peter says he is explaining “how this man has been healed.”  The word healed translates the verb sosthenai, “to be saved,” the same verb he uses when he says “there is only one name given under heaven by which we must be saved.”    The logic of the argument in the passage requires that the verses in question mean something like this: It is through Jesus’ name that we healed this man.  Such healing does not come from just anywhere.  For Jesus is the only one God has ever raised from the dead.  Thus, if you use his name, you just have to be healed. You can’t say that about any other name that I know of.” 

Similarly, when Jesus in John says “I am the Good Shepherd, … and there will be one flock and one shepherd,” this is more an affirmation of the reliability of Jesus and an exuberant expression of how good this is, not how deficient others might be.  Though the text contrasts this model shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep with other “hireling” false shepherds, it chooses the Greek word for “one” that means “one among many” (heis) rather than the Greek word for “one and only one” (monos).   

We often lose the point of the image of the model shepherd:  shepherds, to be effective, need to establish a caring relationship with their sheep, being attentive to their various wanderings, bad choice of plants to eat, and the first signs of sickness.   It is the quality of the relationship with Jesus experienced by the believer that is at heart of the Good Shepherd image, and lies behind all the passages that might be construed as exclusionary. 

This is why we should not ignore these verses or believe they have nothing to teach us. 

We who have experienced the joy and sweetness of being shepherded by Jesus are bound by the quality of that experience of faith to share it with others.  But this is sharing, not sales promotion or brow beating, and must be based in the joy of our experience and our love for others, not some silly and misdirected fear that somehow they won’t be saved or blessed by God if they aren’t like us.   And this joyful sharing to which our experience and God calls us can only be cheapened if it is linked to a looking down our noses at the experience and faith of others as deficient or inadequate.   

Bishop and theologian Krister Stendahl once said that Christ calls us Christians to be the kind of people that others want to be around, not to constantly harp at others to become like us.  We must so show the joy of the good news that others will wonder at and want what we have, whether in their own tradition or by adopting ours.   

St. Francis said that we should preach the Gospel at all times and in all places, and only occasionally open our mouths to do so.   

That is why I told the deacon to go ahead and not use that half verse.  “I am the way, the life and the truth” was sufficient for our purposes at the funerals, and “no one comes to the Father except by me” raised far too many questions with little time to answer them. I happen to agree that it is almost inconceivable to experience God as Father in as an intensely personal way as Christians do apart from a faith in Christ as the Son of God.  But that does not mean that God is not at work in other faiths. 

May the love of the Good Shepherd, the power of this Jesus who calls us into relationship both with him and with those who differ from us, help us be the more respectful of others, and more intent listeners when their stories diverge from ours.

In the name of Christ, Amen.   

God Here and Now, Fully In Charge (Proper 12A)

God Here and Now, Fully in Charge

24 July 2011

Proper 12A

Spoken Eucharist 8:00 a.m.; Sung Eucharist 10:15 a.m.

Parish Church of St. John the Baptist

Seattle Washington

Genesis 29:15-28; Psalm 105:1-11, 45b or Psalm 128; Romans 8:26-39;

Matt 13:31-33, 42-52

 

Jesus put before the crowds another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

"Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."  (Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52)

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen

What would the world look like if everything were as it ought to be?  What would it be like if God were truly in charge, right here, right now, of everything? 

This is a question that Jesus regularly asked himself, and which became the core of his teaching.  Mark says that Jesus’ message was a joyful proclamation of the arrival of God to reign in power.  “The time has come.  … God’s kingship has come near. Change your ways and believe the happy news!” (Mark 1:14-15).   When Jesus teaches us to pray, he tells us to ask God, “your kingdom come” (Matt 6:10; Luke 11:2). He works marvelous things and then says, “If I by the finger of God heal the sick and cast out demons, then the kingship of God has come near to you” (Luke 11:20).

Today’s Gospel has several parables comparing this arrival of God to rule in power to images taken from everyday life: the Mustard Plant, the Yeast, the Hidden Treasure, the Costly Pearl, and the Dragnet.    We are reading them in the Gospel of Matthew, which regularly uses the discreet euphemism “kingdom of heaven” for what everyone else in the New Testament knows as “the Kingdom of God.”  Again, the idea is God coming to reign in power, the world becoming as it ought to be, what things would like if God is here and now, fully in charge. 

What would it be like if God were truly in charge, right here, right now?  Jesus’ parables answer this question. His answer is not like those round him.  The Saduccees and Hasmoneans argued that the world as it ought to be was one fully compromised with the Imperial Power, with its Roman Peace, and in which money, prestige, and control of the religious rites brought order and submission.  The Essenes or the Dead Seas Scrolls covenanters argued that the world as it ought to be was one where their kooky sectarian religion had conquered all others by force of arms in apocalyptic struggle and no one but observant and faithful Essenes remained.  The Zealots thought the world as it ought to be was one where they had revolted against the Roman occupiers and set up their own state controlled by their own people, practicing their own religion.  The Pharisees taught that the answer lay in personal piety, scripture study and prayer, and putting a fence around the law so as to separate Jews from gentiles more and more.

What would it be like if God were truly in charge, right here, right now?  Jesus parables do not repeat the tired formulas of the religious groups around him.  They usually grab you and throw you for a loop—demand a change of perspectives and overthrow conventional expectations, politics, and religion.

God coming here and now, fully in charge—It’s like a mustard plant:  a tiny seed that produces a huge plant. Most people think it is a weed and not a cultivated crop.  It grows in unusual places, unplanned, apart from human control.  If it is noticed, it is unwelcome.  If it is some place no one cares about, then it can go wild.  It then will grow really big, though it will never be what you call “mighty.”  It does not measure up to the usual images for God’s kingdom—vineyards, olive trees, or the great cedar tree, which in Ezekiel shelters the wild birds in its branches.  For Jesus, the kingdom is the mustard weed.

God coming here and now, fully in charge—is like a woman who hides a bit of yeast in three measures of flour.  Note—religious Jews did not link Passover, hopes for redemption, and the ideal King of the future with leavened bread.  It was unleavened bread—without any yeast polluting it and making it impure—that was the controlling image.  But Jesus says it is the bread of ordinary life that is like the kingdom.   Besides that, the measures of flour at issue here are grotesquely big—the three measures mentioned equal about fifty pounds in our system, much more than a peasant woman could bake and consume before it would go bad, precisely because it was not unleavened.   Note also here that the kingship of God is likened to a woman's work, to domestic activity.

God coming here and now, fully in charge—is like a peasant who finds a treasure in a field he is working in. Excited, he buries it, and then scrapes together everything he has so he can purchase the field and have clear title to the hidden treasure. Note that it is a field worker, not the land-owner, who finds the treasure.  Usually it is only the ones getting their hands dirty in the work, not the mid-level or senior managers, who actually know its details and run into its unexpected realities. From the point of view of the land-owner, this is a morally and legally dubious affair.  The treasure is his, right?  But the reality is that the peasant feels no obligation to protect his oppressor’s so-called “right” to further property based on the property he already has:  Finders keepers, losers weepers. The point is that no matter how hard it is for the poor peasant to scrape together the necessary capital to buy the field, he will do it once he has had a glimpse of the treasure, since it is so wonderful. 

God coming here and now, fully in charge—is like a purse-seine or a drag-net that catches all sorts of fish.  It is not selective or discriminating.  It does not distinguish between clean and unclean, between normal and abnormal.  It works below the surface, hidden, but catches everything it touches.  The point is the net’s inclusiveness.   The mention of separating the good and bad fish on the shore, which works against this basic image, is almost certainly an addition to the parable by St. Matthew, who repeatedly in his Gospel tries to tame and regularize some of Jesus’ more “anti-religious” statements.  Where Jesus was trying to simply shock his listeners into engagement with God right here, right now, Matthew was trying to guide a religious community. 

God coming here and now, fully in charge—is like a jewel merchant who runs into the absolutely most ideal pearl he has ever seen or is likely to ever see.  Like the peasant in the field, he sells everything he has in order to purchase the prize.   That net, as we just saw, catches all sorts of fish.  Not only dispossessed field hands can find a treasure.  Those accustomed to trading fine things can as well.  Maybe even the religious, maybe even the pious and observant--those who are often the butt of the jokes found in Jesus’ parables—may yet encounter God, and be permanently changed.   But the cost for them is just as high as for the dispossessed.  The final remark in this reading—“a scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who lovingly shows his guests his treasures—old and new”—is Matthew’s ways of restating this.  Even scribes like him, with their concern for keeping unchanged what is valuable from the past, can be totally changed by this coming of God, here and now, fully in charge. 

Note that most of these ways of describing God in charge contain a shock element: unclean leaven, a dishonest means of gaining a treasure, a fish harvesting method that makes no distinction between clean and unclean, a weed that takes the place of the noble Cedar of Lebanon.   But they also include pure, unmixed joy and overwhelming, almost grotesque abundance.  And they provoke a desire to sacrifice all to have to obtain that joy, to share that abundance. 

I think that often we don’t hear the parables because they are so familiar, and because they use images that come from common life experiences in Jesus’ Palestine, but not so common in our modern lives. 

So I propose here several modern parables to make the same points, with a similar shock value. 

God coming here and now, fully in charge is like a woman who buys a winning lottery ticket.  She not only wins, but she wins big.  For a dollar ticket, she wins a prize of 10 million dollars.  Imagine how happy and shocked she is. 

God coming here and now, fully in charge is like a man who gets a bad tattoo.  It is not what he had in mind, since he poorly explained what he wanted to the artist, and the artist was not all that good anyway.  After several years of being dissatisfied, ashamed, and unhappy every time he sees the tattoo, and wearing long sleeved shirts to hide it, he goes to another artist, known for his skill and ability in adapting old tattoos into new ones.  Seeing photos of the artist’s work, the man gets excited, and goes and refinances his house to get the money together.  After many hours of pain in the chair, the man looks at what the artist has done:  he used the defective ink-work as part of a larger piece.  The result is much better than even what the man had in mind originally, and he is so happy with the result that he constantly tries to find occasions where wear short sleeves so he can show it off.

God coming here and now, fully in charge is like the Boston Red Sox in 2004.  From 1918 on, the curse of the Bambino meant that the Sox could not win any title game.  Then one night, the Red Sox came back from a 0-3 best-of-seven deficit to beat the Yankees in the League Championship and then went on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals in the the World Series.  The joy in the streets of Boston that night is like God coming in full power here and now. 

God coming here and now, fully in charge is like a woman in the process of a nasty divorce.  Her husband hired the better lawyer, and she is about to lose almost everything.  But in sorting through things that the husband couldn’t be bothered to look at, she finds the old coin collection he inherited from his father a few years after their marriage and which he has never bothered to even look at.  She notices a couple of coins that look rare and checks up on them.  They are worth more than all their other assets combined.  So she says nothing, puts the coin collection on her ledger in the agreement, which the ex-husband signs happily.

God coming here and now, fully in charge is like an HIV/AIDS patient who is cured by an experimental stem-cell treatment. 

Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom emphasize the presence of God in everyday life—glorious messy everyday life.  But they stress the utter strangeness of God in this messed up world we are used to and to the messed up people we are.  In these stories, you encounter constantly abundance, joy, the fulfillment of human desire and the turning of tables on the oppressor. God is immanent, and this brings abundance and joy.  But God is also transcendent, and this calls us to joyfully sacrifice all for the abundance he offers us, and to change our ways of thinking and of behaving.   This is in sharp contrast with the ideas Jesus’ contemporaries had of God’s kingdom, the results of political or military action, of sectarian isolation, of legalistic religious observance, or of accommodating oneself to the systems of oppression we see around us. 

God come fully in charge—here and now.  Here indeed is something that calls us to joyfully give up what alienates us from God and from each other. 

May we this week work in our prayers and quiet times to identify the areas where we are the oppressors, where we enable the oppressors, and where we, "in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and left undone," have alienated ourselves from God and from what God intends for us.  And may we pray for the joyful abandon that we might turn away from these things and make amendment of life.  May we pray and live, “your kingdom, your will be done,” and know the abundant joy of God coming here and now, fully in charge.   May we live the happy news that Jesus proclaimed. 

In the name of God, Amen. 

Crazy Love (Prodigal Son) Lent 4C

Crazy Love
Homily delivered For Sung Eucharist 

for group of Expatriate English Teachers
Saturday 13th May 1 p.m. Haidian District, Beijing
4th Sunday of Lent (Year C RCL TEC)

Readings: Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

In Luke chapter 15, Jesus gives three parables describing God.  The first sees God as a shepherd with 100 sheep.  When one gets lost, he leaves the 99 to fend for themselves, and seeks out the lost one.  He then brings it back on his shoulders, rejoicing, and is so excited that he throws a party (Luke 15:1-7).  Clearly the shepherd is a little wacky—he risks all his sheep and probably spends way more than he can afford on the party.

The second parable compares God to a slightly eccentric woman who has 10 silver coins.  When she loses one, she lights the lamp, sweeps the house, and, when she finds it, throws a party to celebrate with her friends (Luke 15: 8-10).  The party may cost more than the coin's value.

The third parable told is today’s gospel, often called “The Prodigal Son.”   If you listen to it carefully, though, you soon realize that it should probably be called “the Parable of the Loving Father with Two Lost Sons” or the "Parable of the Dysfunctional Family."  It too is about a slightly crazy person, a father who does not respect the conventions of good parenting in his society and who throws a party in his joy at the return of a wayward son.  In this parable, the coin and the sheep in the previous parables talk back in the persons of the eccentric father's two sons. 

The family is clearly dysfunctional (as most families seem to be in some way, once you get to know them).   A younger son is impatient for his father to die off, and demands his share of his inheritance in cash, now.  The father is not a good father by the expectations of Jesus’ society:  he does not stand up to defend his own position, his own dignity, and does not defend the integrity of the family nest egg or put up anything even approaching an argument to dissuade the son.  He simply caves and gives the son what he wants.  The son goes off among hated and despised gentiles, and wastes all the money in pleasure seeking and immorality.  When the money runs out, he is reduced to feeding the unclean pigs the gentiles raise for food and hits bottom when he realizes that the pigs are eating better than he is, and that slaves in his father house are better off than he is.  He resolves to go back and ask to hired as a servant in his father’s house, knowing that there is no warrant at for him to be restored to anything close to his former status after the harm he has done his family.  But the father, again, does not meet even the minimum standards of decency and honor then expected of parents.  Not worrying about dignity, honor, or even fairness to the other son, he loses all semblance of acting as a proper father should and runs out to meet the boy as soon as he sees him in the distance.  He doesn’t even wait for the reprobate to come to him and beg forgiveness.  He welcomes him back, and throws a big party. 

At this point, the older son’s reaction takes center stage. He is the one most disadvantaged by his brother’s actions, and by his father’s lack of concern for his own duties and the family’s standing in the community.  “I’ve worked night and day my whole life to build our family’s security.  I’ve obeyed and honored you without question.  And now this son of yours [note he can’t even bring himself to call him his brother] comes back and you throw a big party for him.   You never threw a party for me.” 

The old man’s reply is touching.  “But we had to celebrate!  This whole place is yours, I know.  But this is your brother we’re talking about.  He was dead, and now he has come back to life!  We have to throw a party!”   The father seems genuinely bewildered at the cold, self-seeking calculation of the older brother.  He seems to vaguely recognize the validity of the older son’s demands for fairness—he says, “Yeah, yeah, everything I own is written over to you in the will.”  But he seems totally stunned by the older son’s contempt and anger, contempt perhaps even worse than that of the younger son when he ran off.  “He’s your brother.  He was dead, and now is back from the dead.  We have to throw a party.” 

Jesus here is saying that God is more than a little crazy when it comes to loving us.  In God, love trumps demands of dignity, of face, of justice, of purity, or even of fairness.  The calculus of God’s love is not a zero sum, but a geometric expansion.  This parable of a dysfunctional family has the same point as the parable of the bad personnel policy (the parable of the day laborers) found in Matthew (20:1-16).  There, laborers who work throughout a long hard day complain when latecomers hired in the last minutes of the day are paid the same wage as they.  There, the boss says, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?  Are you going to going to give me sour looks because I am generous?”  

Jesus did teach that there was one situation where God's love was not so obvious, where, in fact,  it looked more to its recipient  as anger, not love.   It is in when God stands before a heart that because of its lack of gratitude itself has no love, no mercy.  There is the parable of the merciless servant-- whose own debt of millions is forgiven, but then who is unwilling to forgive a $200 debt from a coworker.  The boss is merciless on him when he hears.  In the story of The Pharisee and the Tax Collector Jesus tells the story of  a “religious” man who goes to the Temple and prays, “Thank God I’m not like the sinners around me.” Beside him stands a traitor—a collaborator with the occupying Romans, a man who profits from the sufferings of God’s people. The traitor stands far off due to his shame. He won’t even lift up his eyes to God because he fears that God might give him what he deserves. “Have mercy on me, a sinner,” he prays. And Jesus says that the traitor went away right with God while the so-called religious man went away as stone-cold-hearted as he came (Luke 18:10-14).

The difference is the heart itself.  When I was a much younger man, for several years I went around with what I now see what an attitude of resentment.  "Why don't people give me what I deserve?  Why doesn't God give me what I deserve?" I'd ask.  As long as I was this way, I caused a lot of damage to the people around me.  Finally, when I hit a bottom like the younger son looking at the pig's food, I changed perspectives entirely.  I let go, and let God.  My attitude now was, "Thank God hasn't given me what I deserve!"  I was a lot easier on myself, and a lot easier on others.  Much of the previous damage was healed, and the past redeemed. 

Jesus' point is that the basic, most fundamental nature of God is to love.  It is a love that is non-contingent.  It does not respond to requirements met, to expectations satisfied, to standards conformed to.  It is a love that actively creates gratitude and love in its recipient, and with this the ability to better meet expectations, standards, and requirements.   And it is not accountable to standards of fairness, justice, honor, or convention.  But it produces in the heart of a person who willingly accepts it such gratitude that that person, too, goes a little crazy and loves wildly. 

In Jesus’ parable picture of God’s love, it is always a little over-the-top, inappropriate, and, the truth be told, embarrassing.   If our hearts are right with God, it is the kind of inclusive, accepting love we should have as well. 

In our society, we like to praise the value of love, but we tend to deceive ourselves about what unconditional love actually means.  It means ignoring our deep-felt need to establish our own dignity and “save face.”  It means losing our ego.  It means losing our self-seeking, and pursuing mercy to the point of ignoring appeals to fairness on occasion.  It means forgiving the unforgivable, and welcoming not just those seen as outcast by others, but those who we ourselves think should be cast out.  

Being a little crazy in loving doesn’t mean being stupid.  Jesus does tell us to be as clever as snakes but harmless as doves.  But often we tart up our ego and fear and call it street smarts.   But the issue here is our hearts, not the pretty self-deceptions we are able to sell ourselves on. 

God is crazy about us.  God is crazy about you.  Let us be thankful, overwhelmingly so, and respond in kind. 

In the Name of God, Amen. 

The Sprouting Seed (Proper 6 B)

The Sprouting Seed
Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6)
14th June 2009
Cathedral Church of St. John the Evangelist, Hong Kong
11:45 a.m. Choral Matins
CoE CW Daily Office Lectionary Year B Pentecost 2 Primary Service
Ezekiel 17:22-end; Psalm 92:1-4, 12-end; 2 Cor 5:6-10, 14-17; Mark 4:26-34
God, breathe into us a desire to change— take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Today’s Gospel includes two of Jesus’ parables—the parable of the Growing Seed and the Parable of the Mustard Plant. They both are intended as comparisons for “the kingship,” or “the reign of God.” In order to understand what they are about, what questions they are trying to answer, we need to look a little at the history of the times when Jesus lived.


Jesus lived at a time of world empire. He grew up in Galilee, a minor client state on the fringes of the Roman Empire. Rome had conquered, bought, and otherwise swallowed up all the world known to people living around the Mediterranean. But the Pax Romana, like every “world order” put in into place by force, was largely a creation of the state’s propaganda machine: the leader of a nation about to swallowed up by Rome, is famously reported to have said, “You crucify or enslave whole populations, burn their cities and leave smoldering ruins in their place, and then use the word “peace” to describe the burned-out desert you leave behind.” The state spin-doctors would say again and again that the Emperor was God’s son, and that the Empire was the order and peace intended by the Gods. Like our world today, this was a place where might seemed to make right, and where money and power seemed to count for everything.

Judas Maccabeus

One of the peoples thus subjugated by Rome was Jesus’ own, the Jews. Just a century and a half before, they had hoped dearly for deliverance from all their foes and the establishment of God’s just and right kingdom. Judas Maccabee and his army threw off the harsh oppression of the Greek Seleucid kings left behind by Alexander the Great. The Book of Daniel, written at that time, had predicted that the Maccabees and their state would grow and grow, like a rock from the mountains cut out without hands, until it would fill the whole world and smash all systems of oppression and wrong. But that effort had gone seriously wrong. The Maccabees themselves became tyrannical, their rule oppressive and harsh, and their religious establishment hopelessly corrupt. The Temple itself became as much a symbol of oppressive taxes and impossible rules as of God’s presence on earth. Members of the Temple establishment, called Sadducees during Jesus’ time, became quickly the quisling darlings of the Romans. What Daniel had hoped would be the kingdom of God had become just another petty and corrupt oligarchy with a compromised religion and horrendous rulers.

Some Jews fled the Maccabean establishment and went into the Judean wilderness, seeking to “prepare in the desert” a way for God’s true kingdom. They called themselves the “sons of Zadok” or the “sons of Light,” and their city at Khirbet Qumran at the north end of the dead Sea, “Damascus.” They advocated a separation of true believers from the rest of the world, whom they called “the sons of darkness,” and believed they would one day destroy them in a great war for God’s kingdom, together with the evil “Kittim,” or Romans. They are the ones who wrote and left what are now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jewish historian Josephus called them Essenes.

Others reacted to the collapse of political independence with the arrival of the Romans and to the clearly compromised credibility of the Temple authorities by calling for more and more rigorous study and application of the Law of Moses, and for greater and greater distinctions between Jews and non-Jews. We call these people the Pharisees, and it is from them that all modern Judaisms trace their teaching.

Others reacted to the political subjugation of the Jews by the Romans by calling for military rebellion. According to Josephus, a Galilean named Judas led a major revolt against Rome around A.D. 5 in reaction to a census by Roman Procurator in Syria, Quirinius, to increase taxes. The Romans crushed the revolt, and then crucified thousands of the defeated Jewish soldiers. A few surviving guerillas fought on as bandits and terrorists. They are called the Zealots, and were later to lead another revolt from Rome that would bring an end to the Temple, ancient Jerusalem, and most Jewish life in Palestine.

All of these groups in their different ways were trying to answer some basic questions that trouble us even today. What is the relation of Imperial power to the power of God? What is the kingdom’s position n the oppression of the poor? Why does evil seem to be in charge? Why do good people suffer? Where is God and why doesn’t he act? Is he asleep? Is he a monster who can’t be bothered? Is he weak or incompetent? What do we need to do to make God’s kingdom come? Is God’s kingdom just a matter of trying personally to do God’s will and feel good about ourselves? Or is it about social justice? Can it be said to exist at all while evil still rules in the world?

When Jesus first began to preach publicly, it caused quite a stir. People were excited. Here was a prophet from the backwards part of Palestine, Galilee, declaring that God was beginning to act to establish his kingdom. “God’s kingship has come near, and is in your midst.” He quoted Isaiah, saying the time had come to declare liberation to the captive, freedom to the prisoner, and sight to the blind. And when he began to heal people as part of his message that God’s kingdom had arrived, they really started to flock to see him and hear him. Would he overthrow the Romans? Would he thrown out the corrupt priests from the Temple? Or would he just cause a stir and get himself and his followers killed in the process? And then, of course, people started to ask him how the Kingdom of God could have come already when the rule of evil, and of the Evil Empire, was still all too evident. How could Jesus possibly mistake his pathetic little gatherings for sermons and healings with the overthrow of evil and the great and terrible day of judgment promised by the prophets?

Jesus told stories as a means of letting people know about what he thought about these questions. He wanted to challenge their beliefs and assumptions about God, God’s reign, and what its arrival means. That is why many of his parables begin with the words, “The kingdom of God (or, in Matthew, “of heaven”) is like…”


In the parable of the growing seed, he says the kingdom of God is like a seed—it sprouts and grows all on its own regardless of whether the person who planted it knows that it grows or understands why it grows. Jesus reminds his listeners that the seed is God’s kingdom when he ends the story by noting that the planter, seeing the grain is ripe, thrusts in his sickle to harvest the grain. “Harvest” is one of the images used in the Hebrew scriptures to describe the “great and terrible day of the Lord,” when God’s kingdom would put an end to the reign of evil.

Jesus says that God’s kingdom comes primarily through God’s acts, not ours.

God will ultimately set things right, and settle accounts, but that is not yet now, he says.

The kingdom, however, is already here, at work, he says. It is like a seed that sprouts and grows on its own, no matter whether see are aware of it, or understand how.

The kingdom won’t come through force of arms. The kingdom will not come merely through human acts. But it will come. It will come. Regardless of how bad things are, how much the evil triumph and the righteous suffer, how overwhelming the imperial power seems to be or how corrupt the religious establishment is, it will come. God actually is in charge, and God’s reign is here and now. And its full manifestation will come. Trusting in God means not worrying that it will, because it will.

The other parable we read this morning is the parable of the mustard plant. Jesus says the kingdom is like a mustard seed—it is one of the smallest of seeds, but produces a huge plant. This parable is about the disproportionality of the kingdom now and the kingdom in its full manifestation. Jesus elsewhere uses the parable of the leaven to make the same point: the small and apparently insignificant or difficult to notice kingdom we see now is tiny compared to what its results and end will be. It only takes a tiny bit of yeast to leaven dough that makes a whole kitchen full of bread. In the parable of the mustard plant, Jesus again makes sure his listener knows he is talking about God’s reign by making allusion to an image from the Hebrew Scriptures about the coming kingdom of God: the allegory of the cedar sprig and tree in Ezekiel that we also read today. In Ezekiel, a cedar representing God’s kingdom is so huge that all the birds of the air can find shelter in its branches.

So how do these stories connect to us?

People around Jesus had all sorts of ways to excuse God for not acting, or to try to force God to act, or to act in God’s stead. Jesus focuses on the core issue, the trustworthiness of God. That seed will sprout regardless of us, and will result in something so huge that the whole world can shelter in it.

We need to trust in God. We cannot let our impatience get in the way of this trust. We cannot let our laziness get in the way of this trust. We cannot let our pride and desire to control things and have them our way get in the way. We need to surrender to God, and know, in the words of the prayer, that he is doing for us more than we can ask or imagine. That doesn’t mean we are off the hook and don’t have to do anything. But it means the first thing we have to do is trust and realize it is God at work, not us. We have to let God change us and move us to do the works of his kingdom. But again, the seed sprouts and grows on its own. We simply need to let go and let God. We need to get our will and ego out of the way, and let God do his thing.

In the name of God, Amen.

Free Tickets; Expensive Event
(Matthew 22:1-14)

21st Sunday after Trinity (Proper 23), 12 Oct. 2008
Homily delivered at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Evangelist, Hong Kong

God, let us not accept that judgment that this is what we are. . . . Inflame our hearts with the desire to change—with hope and faith that we all can change. Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen. (adapted from Dorothy Day)

In addition to being a cathedral chaplain here at St. John’s, I have another job where I regularly have to plan and organize, and often attend, big events. Here in Hong Kong, people often go to dinners, eat breakfasts, attend parties, and go sailing on junks with people they barely know, and we call these things “social.” But we are more accurate when refer to them as “obligations,” as in, “Sorry, I can’t attend. I have a prior obligation.” We are obliged to go to them because of our jobs: to network, to develop contacts and relationships, to grease the skids of our business. We all know these events-- some of us as guests; some as hosts or organizing staff; some as support staff, actually preparing or serving the food and drink, providing the entertainment, or cleaning up afterwards.

Make no mistake -- in a place like Hong Kong, “social events” are about power and money. How many of us find ourselves at events we might not have attended had the event not involved our boss, a possible major contributor, or a client? How many of us have dutifully served for hours as “party stuffers” – props to make the event look lively, full, fun, and attractive? How many of us have had to scramble to get more guests to come when we get an unexpectedly high number of “regrets” to an RSVP? How many of us have had to wear uncomfortable but stylish clothes, or funny-looking uniforms serving at such events, simply so that they “look right”?

Occasionally the events work and we actually enjoy them, which is, after all, the whole point—you make what might be an otherwise unpleasant task or adversarial relationship into something more pleasing and conducive to cooperation.

It is about just such a “social” event that today’s Gospel reading from Saint Matthew is about. Jesus recounts a parable—a comparison that tells us about our relationship with God by drawing a parallel with something from regular life—a detail, practice or story—sometimes mundane, sometimes unusual.

The parable as told here has a real edge, and at first blush appears to be about a bunch of seriously disturbed people. A king orders the senior members of his court to the prince’s wedding banquet. This provokes serious insubordination by some, who simply blow the invitation off, and outright rebellion by others, who proceed to kill the king’s messengers. At this the king flies into a rage and sends in the troops to wipe out not only the rebelling nobles but their city as well. He then orders his staff to scramble to find someone—anyone— to serve as party stuffers. Once the random passersby are seated at the party, the king notices that one of them isn’t wearing just the right attire for an event of such dignity. He again goes a little crazy, and orders his people to tie the poor man up “hand and foot” and throw him outside into the darkness, where there is nothing but “weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth.”

Matthew ends with a moral to the story: “Many are called, but few are chosen” that is, “the invitation may have gone out broadly, but only those who accept the invitation and come in proper clothes can stay for the whole party.”

Now over the ages there has been no shortage of capricious, erratic leaders who behave in ways that encourage rebellion, murder whole villages, abuse their staffs, and change their minds about guest lists and appropriate evening dress at the last minute. But Matthew is not trying to say that God is like one of these sadly familiar characters. His description of the original invitees’ bad RSVPs, both insubordinate and rebellious, and the bit about the poor man in the wrong clothes underscores that the story is about how the guests behave, not the king. It is about how we respond to God’s invitation and then act at the event.

The Gospel of Luke, written about the same time as Matthew, tells an earlier form of the parable, one that is also preserved in the Apocryphal Gospel of Thomas.

Here is how the original parable probably went:

A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many guests. When all was ready, he sent his servant to summon the guests. But one by one, they all began to give excuses for not coming. The servant reported this to his master, who in a rage commanded his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in here anyone you find. I want my home to be filled for the banquet.’

When Jesus originally told the story, everyone knew that one of the great images of the Hebrew scripture for God’s saving act at the end of time was that of a great banquet. Even though there were plenty of passages that said, like today’s Old Testament reading, that this banquet would be for people of all nations (Isaiah 25:7), many of the religious teachers around Jesus taught that this would be an exclusive event limited to God’s people only.

Jesus replies to such a stingy image of God with parables. He points to the weather and says that God gives his rain and sunshine to both good and bad people alike (Matt. 5:45). He says this tells us about God’s love for all and should be a model for us in how we treat others. Jesus points to families and notes that when children ask for bread to eat, parents do not give them stones, or when they ask for an egg to eat, do not give them a scorpion. “If even average parents try to give their children good things, how much more generous will God be?” (Matt. 7:9-10; Luke 11:11-13)

Jesus’ actions matched his words. He regularly ate and drank with people that his religion told him would make him unclean. He had dinner parties with drunkards and prostitutes, much to the horror of Jesus’ “righteous” opponents. “It is the sick who need a doctor,” he would say, “not healthy people.” (Matt. 9:12)

But not everyone wanted a God as generous as the one Jesus described. They would quote scriptures that “proved” God was picky and exclusive. Jesus would reply by quoting other scriptures, where God looked more loving. He reserved his deepest anger for people he accused of “refusing to enter God’s door, and also barring the way to others” (Matt 23:13). He told other parables to explain why it was that despite God’s overwhelming goodness and generosity, some people were right with God and others were not.

One is the story of The Pharisee and the Tax Collector: a “religious” man goes to the Temple and prays, “Thank God I’m not like the sinners around me.” Beside him stands a traitor—a collaborator with the occupying Romans, a man who profits from the sufferings of God’s people. The traitor stands far off due to his shame. He won’t even lift up his eyes to God because he fears that God might give him what he deserves. “Have mercy on me, a sinner,” he prays. And Jesus says that the traitor went away right with God while the so-called religious man went away as stone-cold-hearted as he came (Luke 18:10-14).

It is in this context that Jesus tells the parable of the Great Banquet. His point is that God’s banquet is open to all, not just those originally invited. Some people, thinking they’re too important, may actually turn aside God’s love. Jesus, as a Palestinian Jew, loved and respected the Law that set his people off as God’s chosen ones. But he knew that the Law was not enough. Human beings could take even something as holy and pure as God’s Law and twist it into something ugly and oppressive. That is why he is so insistent, in his stories and deeds, on what St. Paul later calls grace and how we must be aware of our need for it.

The writer of the Gospel of Matthew is a good Jewish Christian who follows Jesus in all of this. But he is also lives in a world where the Church has already been opened up to gentiles, and trying to understand how God could have let Jerusalem and the Temple be destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70. Matthew tends to blame this national catastrophe on the rejection of Jesus by the religious leaders—that is probably why he adds the nobles’ murder of the king’s servants and the destruction of their village. Matthew is also afraid that some Gentile Christians have taken liberties with very basic things that should not be taken advantage of. His detail about the proper wedding attire underscores that regardless how broad the Church has grown, there are still be standards for the gentile late-comers to God’s banquet.

There is nothing so holy or good that we human beings, left to our own resources, cannot manage to mess up. In his day, Jesus stressed that we can twist God’s Law into something ugly and oppressive. Matthew, in his, said we also can misuse God’s grace, and twist it into an excuse for cheap self-will. You know what I’m talking about. How many of us haven’t wondered at some point whether we might go ahead and do something we know in our heart is deeply wrong thinking “it’s O.K., I’ll repent later. God will accept me back.” Phillip Yancey, in his book, What’s So Amazing about Grace?, calls this twisting of grace into an excuse for sinning as “the loophole of grace.”

Just before and during World War II, Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book The Cost of Discipleship used the term “cheap grace” to describe using God’s grace as an excuse for spiritual laziness or mediocrity in following Christ. He argued that we should dutifully and joyously follow Jesus out of gratitude for his grace. Such gratitude for expensive, precious grace on Jesus part requires a lifelong commitment to the way of the cross: self-sacrifice and service. Bonhoeffer had been studying and working in the United States but then returned to Nazi Germany in order to serve his fellow German Christians and witness against the wrong that was overtaking his country. Unrelenting in his witness, he was ultimately executed brutally by the Nazis.

It is precisely “cheap grace” and the “loophole of grace” that St. Matthew condemns in his image of the man caught without proper wedding clothing. This celebration can have no party poopers, no half-hearted acceptance of free tickets, no cheapening of the event by haughtiness of the original invitees or inattention by latecomers.

To summarize in other words: in order to accept the invitation, we have to be open to receive it. St. Augustine says, ‘God gives where He finds open hands.’ You can't receive the gift if your hands are already full, or are clenched tight.

In yet another parable, Jesus compares God’s kingdom to a narrow path and a tight gate, which at any given time only a few can manage to squeeze through (Matt 7:13-14). This is because in order to get through such a tight fit, people have to be willing to abandon all the baggage they are carrying, whether riches, resentments, self-will, sins, or even what appears to be good things if they are getting in the way.

This is a far cry from the loophole of grace, from “cheap grace.” Yancey tells of a friend who asks, “will God forgive me of the really bad thing I’m about to do?” After a lot of thought, Yancey answers, “Of course [God can forgive you.] . . . Forgiveness is our problem, not God’s. [But] what we have to go through to commit sin distances us from God—we change in the very act of rebellion—and there is no guarantee we will ever come back. You ask me about forgiveness now, but will you even want it later?”

Likewise, C.S. Lewis said that asking God to forgive our sins without also sincerely wanting to amend our lives is like asking God to change us without changing us. Cheap grace, the loophole of grace—these simply misunderstand what is at issue in grace, and what is at issue in sin.

What does accepting grace, freely offered, look like in practical terms? It looks like me admitting that I am helpless and hopeless. It sounds like the sincere phrase “I am sorry and I humbly repent.” It feels like a heartfelt cry, “I throw myself totally on the merits of a merciful Jesus.” None of these are payments in a transaction, or actions that merit God’s favor. None of them provide excuses to cheapen the price with which we were bought. They are simply acceptance of grace offered. In the long run, a life lived in that grace starts bearing what St. Paul called the fruits of the Spirit: we begin to follow Jesus in self-sacrifice and grace toward others.

I myself have known God’s grace. At a particular time in my life, all was hopeless and helpless, through my own “thoughtlessness, weakness, through my own deliberate fault.” Marriage was unraveling, health was fading; career was careening. I found that I had to surrender to God, and accept my own powerlessness. Then gradually, steadily, God worked wonderful changes. I am still far from what God wants. But I live each day in gratitude that I am not what I was.

I suspect that many of you have had similar experiences. If so, continue in faith and gratitude, and share the invitation to the party through your actions and words.

If you have not had such an experience, then please listen to this call to God’s banquet, you random passerby. The tickets are free. But they are not cheap. And neither is the celebration. The banquet is priceless, the bread the finest, and the wine, a vintage that makes our hearts gladder than any other.

Come to the banquet, and let’s try to wear the right clothes.

In the name of God, Amen.