Do As I Say …

Sunday, October 30th, 2005
Pentecost + 24
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 23:1-12

1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; 3 therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. 6 They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, 7 and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. 8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9 And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father--the one in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

To open the Bible and to read it with a humble heart and an open mind is to invite scandal into your life.

Half the time, you draw comfort from what you are reading. Passages flow into you that reassure and sooth, that give you courage and encourage you and give you something to smile about or something to ponder, something to enrich your life, but that’s only half the time. You read it, and you hear God saying ‘from where you’re sitting it may not look like it, but someday, if you continue to do the right thing, someday it WILL be rewarded, and justice will flow down, but there’s still the other half of the time.’

The rest of the time, if you are honest with yourself, you find yourself on the short end of the stick. You are more likely to identify with or be identified as the one in the story who DIDN’T GET it to begin with, the one who isn’t shown in the best light in the parable, the one who God is speaking against – who Jesus is speaking AGAINST. It’s not necessarily a reflection of what your sense of self-esteem is doing at the moment, it is more a matter of realizing that for all your good and potentially good qualities, there are most definitely some qualities in you that deserve the withering blast that Jesus levels in today’s passage.

One of the most common excuses given for why someone doesn’t go to church is that ‘church is full of hypocrites’. I suspect most all of us have heard it at some point in our lives, perhaps even thought it ourselves. I remember distinctly being so fed up with my perception of what the membership consisted of in the big Baptist church in my college town in Kentucky that I very nearly stopped going altogether, and contemplated going in one of two directions: withdrawing from the faith community altogether, or heading out on my own, me and my roommates, just doing our own thing, being as true to the Gospel as we could be. And although it can be an either-or proposition, in some ways it ends up being both things. In my endeavor to go deeper, to understand more what it means to be a follower of Christ, to be as zealous, as honest as I could be about faith, it caused me to do what I mentioned the Pharisees did themselves. You withdraw from community, you withdraw from fellowship, and so you’re left with this “thing” that you are trying to bring back together.

I looked up the origin, the etymology of the word “Hypocrite” last night. It is a transliteration of the Greek word hypokrites, which means "actor on the stage, pretender." So I was encouraged to know that at the tender age of 7, Caleb is a bona-fide, card-carrying hypocrite. As Leslie mentioned earlier, he is in the Westmoreland Players’ production of ‘A Christmas Carol’. So he is, by definition, a hypocrite. He is pretending to be a schoolboy, the son of a coal miner, and the personification of ‘ignorance’. Others in the play are being hypocrites pretending to be Bob Cratchitt, Tiny Tim, Ebenezer Scrooge, and any number of other characters.

Interesting, isn’t it, when you use a word in its original sense rather than it’s acquired sense? It seems that the word’s original meaning quickly became applicable to not only those who exercised a craft onstage, but to those who exercised a similar craft on their own stage, in life.

The critical difference between the hypocrites we call actors and the hypocrites for whom we have NOT changed the name is another actor’s term: motivation. With an actor, it is an understood tenet of the agreement between audience and actor that it is UNDERSTOOD that the actor is PLAYING a part. It is generally NOT the case that the actor is trying to actually BE the character he or she is representing onstage IN REAL LIFE. But the term STUCK for those who practice the craft in their daily life.

What I find myself asking each time I come to this passage and the rest of the chapter, is ‘what side of the conversation am I on? Is Jesus talking TO me or ABOUT me? Am I, right now, one of the Pharisees, or one of the poor souls Jesus says the Pharisees are loading down with all the unnecessary baggage?’ And I’ve felt like both.

It’s a process that has taken on a different dynamic since I’ve been in full-time ministry.

Used to be, since I wasn’t standing here on Sunday mornings, it was much easier to sit back and put my hands behind my head and say ‘He’s not talking about ME. I’m not even in the same ballpark with those guys. I’m not pretending to be something I’m not.”

But the question always comes back, regardless of whether I’m up here or sitting down there. Am I TRULY NOT trying to be something I’m not? It was and continues to be a nagging question. If there is a key piece to the puzzle of what it means to live as a follower of Jesus Christ, it is to be genuine, to be AUTHENTIC: to be true to God, to be true to Jesus, and to be true to yourself and to your brothers and sisters in Christ. And that can be terribly hard sometimes.

Especially in a culture such as ours, and by that I don’t mean the American culture, I mean the southern, protestant, white, Anglo-Saxon BAPTIST culture, where there are heavily traditional expectations of what a pastor should say in any given situation, what a Pastor should do and how a pastor should speak. Those expectations are, to be fair, changing. There is a move away from the slick-haired, Bible-waiving, stentorian-voiced preacher, with a ready joke, and an outgoing-to-the-point-of-being-overbearing personality, and a move towards allowing Pastors to be people too; to have real problems and weaknesses, deep struggles and hardships that are seemingly as hard to get through and over for THEM as for anyone else.

And it is none too soon for the change, if you ask me. But even for me, even welcoming the change, it carries with it an element of risk, of radicalism apart from the obvious. It is actually what drew me that final step into the ministry. I’d known pastors who were from both camps – those who never let you see their true selves, and those who did nothing other than that; those who would take the Sunday Sermon to hit you up ‘side the head with a two-by-four and those who took the Sunday morning time to walk with you through a passage or thought in the Bible. To illustrate how the passage fits into the greater Gospel message of Grace & forgiveness.

Jesus looks at our hearts. We’ve seen it time and time again. He’s said it time and time again.

The phylacteries that are mentioned, I’m sure you’ve studied in the past, were and are in some traditions of present-day Judaism, little leather boxes that carry inside them a couple of passages from the old testament, written on velum – on sheepskin – Exodus 13:9 and Deuteronomy 6:8-9 they are strapped to the forehead and the left arm, the fringes were blue twisted tassels worn on the four corners of the outer garment, both served as reminders of the place that God’s word should have in our lives. If that were all they had remained, Jesus wouldn’t have had a problem with them in the least.

It was what they had become that he had a problem with. The phylacteries had slowly grown in size, as had the fringes in length, so that anyone could see them from across the room, or across the square. They stopped being for the individual and started being for show. They started getting bigger and bigger, and of course, size matters, so if it is bigger, then that MUST mean that you are holier, or more righteous. How does that translate into how we live out our faith today? If we have a bigger building, a taller steeple, a bigger organ, a bigger screen, would that make us better Christians? I think not.

Jesus is going for what is of meaning, what is of essence, in following him. Jesus doesn’t want anything for show. He’s looking for honesty, whatever that honesty entails. The verse of that song came up, and I couldn’t get through it, what was it? ‘Women of faith, sing from broken hearts?’ (Stand and sing to broken hearts) – That’s where it is! It could’ve gone a lot smoother up to this point. Thankfully, we still have power. I could have skipped a slide, I could have moved the slide a little slower at one point, but that’s not what makes our worship. Our worship comes from here, from our hearts. That is what Jesus has always wanted. That is what we bring. That is what he longs for.

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that we need to be constantly checking ourselves. We need to be constantly … going back to the actor analogy, we need to be checking what our motivation is. Where are we living? Are we on a stage acting, or are we down in the meat of life, in the daily existence, are we learning how to live, how to apply, how to be Jesus in daily life, or are we just pretending? It’s not an answer I can give you. It’s an answer we each give ourselves.

So the invitation this morning is to check. To find out why we’re doing this, why we’re here this morning? Are we here in obedience and worship, or are we here because if we weren’t, people would talk about us? Are we here because WE need to see who’s here, to check on THEM? Can we find strength, can we find comfort? Can we find family, here? MY answer for MYself is a solid ‘yes!’ I hope it is for all of us.

Let’s pray.

Hang the Law and the Prophets!


Sunday, October 23rd, 2005
Pentecost + 23
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 22:34-46

34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” 41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: 42 “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,
44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
until I put
your enemies under your feet”’?
45 If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” 46 No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Have you ever been witness to or been involved in a paradigm shift?

There’s another term that might be more familiar to you; a sea change.

There are several that have occurred over the last 40 to 60 years: the way and frequency with which we travel for pleasure. Used to be, pleasure travel was reserved for the wealthy. In the last 4 or 5 decades it has become commonplace for anyone with an automobile or the means to purchase an airline ticket to travel just about anywhere they want.

The way we communicate has probably seen one of the most drastic changes. It has evolved in our lifetime, from mailed letters and expensive shortwave radio equipment to phone calls to faxes and emails to instant or text messaging on your cell phones. If you have one particular company, you can now use your phone as a walkie-talkie throughout the United States, Canada, and several South American countries. The part in our congregational benediction about the world now being “too dangerous for anything but truth” is becoming truer and truer. In the middle of campaign season, I think it is great that there’s a website, factcheck.org, which dedicates itself to the sole purpose of confirming or correcting what politicians say in the course of interviews, speeches, and campaigns. It keeps people on their toes. I wonder if there’s one for preachers. J

Jesus came to Jerusalem to check the facts that the Sadducees and Pharisees had been dishing out for hundreds years. And, to put it mildly, they didn’t like it.

As we’ve seen happen over the last few weeks, the religious leaders are at it yet again. Trying to trap Jesus and discredit him – undercut the authority with which he had been preaching and teaching for the previous three years. So they send out a lawyer – the person described in the text as a lawyer would today be known as a religious scholar – also called a scribe, and a member of the Pharisaic sect.

Let’s digress for a minute. This passage – The Greatest Command, is found in all three of the synoptic Gospels – here in Matthew, Mark, which I quoted from last week, and Luke. There are slight differences in the wording in each of them, The Gospel according to Mark – 12:28 and following – presents the exchange in an almost-conciliatory way – first Jesus states the commandments, then the scribe repeats them back to him, affirming what Jesus said, then Jesus says to the man ‘you are not far from the Kingdom of God”. Not exactly the same emphasis that Matthew places on the exchange, though they do both end with the same ‘no one dared ask any more questions.’

The Gospel according to Luke has the passage in an entirely different place in the ministry of Jesus. We find it in Chapter 10, beginning in verse 25. The intent is still the same, to test Jesus, but the question is posed differently. The question is ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus’ answer is to ask the scribe to quote to HIM what he finds in the Law that is required to inherit eternal life. The scribe quotes the passages from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 as a single piece. Jesus affirms the response, but the conversation keeps going, in response to the second commands’ ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ the scribe asks Jesus to define for him who his neighbor is.

I know we’ve spoken about how the term ‘Christian’ was originally a pejorative term – a term meant to actually make fun of those who followed Jesus Christ, and accepted him as their Lord. Did you know that the Pharisees received their name the same way? The term ‘Pharisee’ means ‘Separatist’. As they became a movement of their own within the Jewish faith, their purpose was to maintain their holiness and righteousness, but in order to do that they had to pull away, to withdraw, and to separate from those who were ritually unclean, in order to establish an order that maintained its ritual cleanliness – and they did it zealously.

Just as the term ‘Baptist’ was originally a way to make fun of those who practiced immersion baptism, so were the terms ‘Pharisee’ and ‘Christian’.

Jesus answered the scribe’s question about who his neighbor was with the parable of the Good Samaritan.

The name Pharisees called themselves was another word: ‘Haberim’.

Would anyone care to venture a guess as to what that word means?

It means ‘Neighbors.’

Imagine calling yourself a ‘neighbor’, and asking a question with a very specific, very restricted set of people in mind, and having the very term you use to define yourself turned inside out like that … would YOU be able to come up with another question for Jesus?

What is intended in each passage is the whole self given to God and to others. Mechanical precision was not a goal important to biblical writers.

****
The Pharisees had quantified the Law of Moses into 613 commandments: 365 prohibitions (DON’T do this) and 248 positive (DO do this) commandments. Though they allowed for an occasional summary statement in one or a few commandments here and there, Pharisees held firmly to the principle that each commandment was as important as the others, the ‘light’ commandments being just as important as the ‘heavy’ ones, hence, the strictures to follow each and every law to the letter.

Jesus redirects them to the spirit of the Law: Love. Jesus makes love not only the great commandment, but also the essence and fulfillment of the law and the prophets – our Old Testament. The earlier version of the Revised Standard Bible translated the word ‘Krematai’ as ‘depend’, and it DOES apply. It DOES get the point across.

But the word, literally translated, is what the later, New Revised Standard has; ‘hang.’ It paints a more vivid picture. The image is of two hinges, and a door. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Hang the law and the prophets on that, and you’ve opened the door to everything it is that God expects of and can do through you.

The expectation is not lightened when we interpret the law through Love. It is heightened and deepened. It is a heavier demand, much more so than legalism. Love both liberates and binds. It freely gives and yet requires the whole of oneself for God, neighbor, and oneself. Jesus didn’t come to do away with the law, but to fulfill it, and it is in this passage that we see what that fulfillment involves. Jesus began a sea change in how people perceived God. It is a paradigm shift that continues to this day.

We are still caught in a mindset that we have to please God in order to attain salvation, that we have to DO something to make ourselves better than we were, somehow make ourselves acceptable to God, when in truth, Jesus is the only way we can be that.

The Gospel doesn’t end there. It doesn’t stop at ‘Love God.’ It continues through ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

We are called to love God, of course. That is a given. But how that love is expressed is critical to how we truly believe what we say we believe. How we live out what our faith IS.

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that we should constantly be reevaluating what the term ‘neighbor’ means to us. Have we settled into thinking of ourselves only as ‘Haberim’?

Do we, consciously or subconsciously, stratify our community, divide people into categories, those who are okay to help, those who are not, those who are worth spending time with, and those who are not, those whom we would greet readily if we saw them on the street or in the store, and those we’d not go out of our way to greet?

It’s an easy trap to fall into. We are wired that way. There are always going to be people that we feel less comfortable around, people who suck away our energy, people who don’t seem to respond the way we’d like them to. But a paradigm shift means that the basis for how you view the world shifts, so everything shifts. Jesus is calling us to not only think outside the box, but to think outside ourselves. To see the world through God’s eyes, to hear the world through God’s ears, to hold the world in God’s own heart, and make his heart our own.

That is what makes the expectation heavier. That is what makes the task one that we cannot do as individuals, but must do as community. We must come together in purpose and in spirit.

And that spirit, that unity, can only come through the law of Love.

Let’s pray.

To Each His Own

Sunday, October 16th, 2005
Pentecost + 22
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 22:15-22

15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. 17Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’ 18But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, ‘Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19Show me the coin used for the tax.’ And they brought him a denarius. 20Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ 21They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ Then he said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ 22When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

What belongs to God and what belongs to … the world? At heart, that is the question in this passage.

We are again picking up right where we left off last week. As we’ve seen over the past few weeks, Jesus is in Jerusalem with his disciples during the Passover that preceded his crucifixion, and as we move through the week, we’ve seen the tensions escalate between Jesus and his followers and the religious and political leaders of the nation.

Over the years, I’ve heard many sermons preached on the text, and the single bit of information that stands out time after time is the mastery of Jesus’ response to a question that was intended to entrap him.

The tax in question was a ‘head tax’, what we would recognize as a poll tax – one which every male over the age of fourteen and every female over the age of twelve had to pay using the coin in question – a special silver denarius minted for just that purpose, until they were 65. The coin bore the likeness and name of the reigning Caesar, which in and of itself violated the law and conscience of the Jewish people against idolatry.

In fact, it was this very tax that caused a revolt in Palestine when Jesus was barely a toddler. The question was not a general interest, “just asking because we’re curious” kind of question. The feelings that generated the revolt three decades earlier, and which would play a significant part in prompting the revolt, uprising and war that would ultimately result in the destruction of Jerusalem a little more than three decades later were still very much present.

The Jews were under occupation by a foreign power. To make matters worse, the foreign power was polytheistic. In other words, the rulers and oppressors of the Jews, who were monotheistic – worshipped one God and did not allow for the existence of multiple gods – were reminded every day of their subjugation to a government that not only allowed for the existence of a single God, but in fact encouraged the worship of a multitude of gods, to the point that the very emperor of Rome was worshipped as a god himself. The issue at hand was this: to be a good Jew, you needed to find a way on some level to express your disagreement, your righteousness, as it were, in the face of that polytheism by either refusing to pay this tax using a coin that proclaimed Caesar to be a deity, or to do it under duress.

The rub comes into today’s scene with the presence of the ‘Herodians’, or followers of Herod the great and his descendants, into the crowd that is listening to the exchange. The Herods were dependent on the Romans for their position as Kings over the years, so they naturally supported the tax about which Jesus was asked. The trick of the question was that, if Jesus had answered that the tax should be paid, he would have failed the test of the Pharisees, who believed it to break Jewish law, and was a blatant and sometimes painful reminder of the subjugation they lived under.

If Jesus had answered that the taxes should not be paid, he might have gained a temporary measure of respect from his enemies, the Pharisees and Sadducees, but would have given the Herodians and the Romans ample reason to arrest, imprison, and torture and probably kill him immediately, since he would be advocating the stopping of paying taxes to Rome, which was considered treason, which was, of course, punishable by death.

So in responding the way he did, Jesus did again what he does best. He put things in perspective not only for those who were listening to him then, but to us hearing his words again for the umpteenth time here this morning.

His response could be read as almost dismissive. Imagine him shrugging and saying “If the coin belongs to Caesar, let him have it. So what? It’s only money.”

It’s the second part of his answer that I think bears dwelling on this morning. Give “to God the things that are God’s”.

If I were to ask the question “what belongs to God?” In this context, in the middle of a sermon during a worship service in a Baptist church in rural Virginia, I suspect that everyone answered that question immediately in their minds with a single word: ‘Everything’. It is the expected answer, the correct, the church answer to the question. The answer seems clear in our minds when we think about it here.

The issue becomes somewhat less than clear when we leave this place. It is not surprising. We are surrounded by a society that rates success and achievement in direct proportion to the acquiring of material possessions. Therefore you are a successful business if your business grows and gains more and more clients each year. Your church is a successful church if you grow bigger and bigger each year. YOU are a success if you get a new car every couple of years, and move through progressively larger houses throughout your life.

Being successful in the context of our society is no sin in and of itself. There’s nothing wrong with a business ‘booming’. There’s nothing wrong with a church gaining new members. There’s nothing wrong with being able to afford a new car every couple of years. Technology is improving day by day, and in order to be good stewards of the earth’s resources, we would probably do well to step up to more efficient transportation. What IS at risk is the possibility of that becoming the focus of our existence. That all we occupy our minds with is the mindless accumulation of wealth in order to meet the expectations of a society that is not exactly focused on the higher truths of existence. What TRULY makes us valuable? What do WE truly VALUE? What is, in fact, lasting? Is it our possessions, or is it our relationships with each other?

So what does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Brandon Harcum and I are going through a series of studies for his Cub Scout badge focusing on God and Family. This morning’s lesson was talking about foundations, and brought out the foundational passage in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, for the people of Israel, the “Shema” – “Hear Oh Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might.” And the New Testament passage in Mark 12:29-31, where Jesus repeats the Shema, and then expands on it in two ways – by engaging our minds, and by equating the love of neighbor with the love of God.

We are, throughout our lives as we grow as Christians, learning what it means to follow Christ, what it means to be obedient, what it means to put our faith into action. Jesus is telling us in Matthew that all we have belongs to God, and we are giving BACK to God what belongs to God, not that we are giving God something that belongs to us FIRST. That is, our hearts, our minds, and as Paul calls them, our bodies as living sacrifices. God HAS given us that, and calls us to freely, willingly return them to God’s service. Jesus is telling us in his restatement of the Shema that the only way to live out the love for God that we have is through living out that love in our relationships here on earth, with each other. Not just those who are in this room now, but with everyone we come in contact. Jesus expands the definition of family to include the family of humanity. He did not qualify his definition of neighbor. The words of the hymn are exactly right: “We are called to be God’s people, showing by our lives his grace” not only his Grace in OUR OWN lives, but through us INTO the lives of everyone around us. We are simply and profoundly called to be Christ’s presence in the world today.

Let’s pray.

Everyone You Find


Sunday, October 9th, 2005
Pentecost + 21
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 22:1-14

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: 2 ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other slaves, saying, “Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.” 5 But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. 8 Then he said to his slaves, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” 10 Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. 11 ‘But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, 12 and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.’

Last night, we ate supper with a friend of ours and her family. We’ve been trying to get together for almost a month, but schedules had not permitted, and although we had everything worked out last week to get together, towards the middle of the week we realized that our friends Doug and Lea and their daughter Karen were fast running out of time available to visit with friends and family before flying out today to return to Hungary, so I sent our friend an email asking if it would be possible to postpone our dinner until last night. Her response was quick and easy. There was no problem. Having explained the reason for the request, she fully understood, and would have done the same thing had she been in our situation. It was an understanding among equals that there was no intention to show disrespect or belittle the person making the invitation; it was simply a matter of time constraints and encroaching separation. Our dinner last night was as enjoyable as it might have been earlier, with no repercussions from having postponed it twice before it actually took place.

The parable Jesus presents us with today does involve an invitation to a banquet, but the similarities stop there.

The invitation is offered, in the story, by a King. And the folks receiving the invitation reject it for a number of reasons. Remember, Jesus is facing down the Pharisees and Sadducees in Jerusalem in his last week of mortal life on earth, and following the previous two passages we’ve gone over the last two weeks, this one in some ways is a culmination of a progression of indictments that Jesus is leveling at the leaders of the religious establishment of his day.

As we move through these passages towards the end of the Gospel according to Matthew, we are faced with Jesus telling everyone around him what is about to happen to him and trying to describe to them how God is going to respond. Always in human terms, familiar terms, regular day-to-day images, but with outcomes or events being described that strain the imagination. The depth of the depravity, the coldness and arrogance and defiance described is one that just cannot seem to BE real. It can’t POSSIBLY exist, can it?

The sad truth is that it does and always has, since nearly the beginning, existed within the human spirit. It is one of the aspects of having a free will that makes for horror stories of atrocities committed in the name of race, religion, ethnicity, class, age, sex, and any number of other distinguishing factors. And the scary truth is that we find it not ONLY in a society that generally ignores the fact that there is a God who loves all of humanity and longs to be in relationship with all of us, but that we also find it hidden away – and sometimes not so hidden – within our own psyches, within our own hearts. settled in and making a home for itself as though everything it believes is normal, understood, and obvious, and not totally contrary to the teaching of the gospel.

There’s something wrenching in reading of the offer to attend a wedding banquet. The offer comes from not just anyone, but from a KING. It is understood that the party will not be a run-of-the-mill one. Royalty are expected to have more, do more, and be more… They can do, be and have because they are ROYALTY, by virtue of their position they have access to so much more than a regular person would have.

This would’ve been an obvious understanding to the hearers of the parable in the temple that day. They lived in a society where the King lived a life so far removed from the daily, desperate struggle of the men and women in the streets that they were practically a different species.

One of the professors at Southern, a New Testament Scholar who has since passed away, was in the process of writing a book about a singular aspect of the parables of Jesus. That is, the fact that in most all of Jesus’ parables, there is a predictability to the story that draws the listener into the story, but at a certain point, something happens in the story, either a character is introduced, or an action is taken, or a response is given, that causes that listener to rear back and go “WHAT??!!” … or more accurately, “HUH??!!” in reply.

That happens in this parable. Note that this one is different from the last few parables we’ve been studying over the last couple of weeks. Those didn’t have “the kingdom is like” at the front of them, remember? Jesus was presenting situations that were antithetical – completely opposed – to what the Kingdom was supposed to be like. Here, AFTER having gone through those, he comes back and introduces this parable with the familiar formula: “the kingdom of heaven may be compared to …”

The wrenching comes in at the same point where the listeners would have reared back with the shocked look on their faces: in verse 5, we read that in response to the King’s second attempt to invite the people to his wedding feast, “they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them.”

They are not exactly up on Emily Post’s book of etiquette, are they? To reject a King’s invitation is to not only be rude, but it is an affront to the King’s authority. Jesus has been dwelling on that theme for the last three weeks, since that was the issue that the religious establishment was challenging him on.

It was becoming increasingly obvious to both the regular people as well as the temple leadership that was listening to him that the characters in the parables that were either mistreating or outright killing those sent from or by the king – whether in this passage or in the previous passages we’ve read – were the folks who more than anyone else considered themselves deserving of a place in the Kingdom of God. After all, they were the best of the best, the purest of the pure, and the most obedient of all.

Jesus’ whole thrust with them was to try to make them realize that it wasn’t about what you looked like or said on the outside – it was who and what you were like on the inside that TRULY determined what your relationship to God would be.

So we have Jesus declaring that those invited to the wedding feast are turning the invitation away. On a larger scale, Jesus isn’t talking only of the temple leadership; he is speaking of the people of Israel. They have been tested and found wanting. Their response to Jesus himself has been mixed at best. Though there are those who have committed themselves to him, there are more who have pitted themselves against him – not JUST the temple leadership, but the population as a whole. From history – and we’ve seen this to some degree in our studies on Wednesday nights through the book of Acts – there was almost from the beginning of the church a growing tension between the Hellenist and Judaist branches, if you will, of the emerging Christian faith – those who came from a Gentile background and those who came from a Jewish one. We also know from history that the same people who welcomed Jesus at the beginning of this week during which he told these parables with shouts of ‘blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’, ended the week with shouts of ‘give us Barabbas!’

Calling and election (or chosen, in the words of verse 14) … roots in God’s grace, not in a person’s merit. The wedding hall will be filled, whether or not those most privileged respond. The picture is one of a generous grace that opens and spills beyond the accepted bounds of society and seeks to include EVERYONE YOU MEET in the invitation. It is both a blessing and warning. It is a blessing to the newly invited, since they would have otherwise had no chance, perhaps, of BEING invited, had those first invitees accepted the invitation, and a warning to the originally invited – to be aware that the invitation does not last forever.

We find a parable within a parable in verses 11-14.

A man is found at the party not wearing a wedding robe. At first reading, it would seem somewhat arbitrary for the King to have this man bound and gagged and tossed out just because he’s not wearing appropriate dress. The truth goes deeper than simple clothing.

The Wedding robe referred to was probably not so much a particular piece of clothing, but it had more to do with the condition of the clothes being worn. God’s free gift of salvation is often pictured as ‘garments of salvation’, or ‘a robe of righteousness’ (Isaiah 61:10) In rabbinical interpretation of Ecclesiastes 9:8, “let your garments be always white,” the robe stands for repentance. In Revelation, a white robe is symbolic of purity or repentance (3:4, 5, 18; 19:8). So here, the wedding robe may symbolize God’s gift of salvation, or specifically, repentance and righteousness. Salvation is offered to Tax collectors, prostitutes, and Gentiles, but it is not indulgence. It is gift and demand.

When asked to explain what right he had to enter (not HOW he got in) without the garment, the man was speechless. Presumably he had no excuse. The point may be that his defiance of authority was greater even than that of those first invited who spurned the invitation. They defied the King’s authority by refusing to attend the feast. This man defied that authority in a more arrogant way, by trying to attend on his own terms.

God is inviting us, yes, and always. And we are free to accept or reject that invitation. The issue is that when we accept it, the invitation is on God’s terms, not ours. Yes, Jesus meets us where we are, but he doesn’t leave us there. His call on our lives is to a life of commitment, of service, of love, of giving, of sacrifice, of care, and of reconciliation.

And that is what the invitation is this morning. To the table that represents Christ’s own sacrifice in our place. It is for all who would come. But it comes with a price. That price is your life for Christ, as was Christ’s life for yours.

(communion, prayer)

Being Church, Doing Church


Sunday, October 2nd, 2005
Pentecost + 20
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 21:33-46

33 ‘Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. 34When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. 35But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. 37Finally he sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” 38But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ 39So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ 41They said to him, ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.’ 42Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the scriptures: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes”? 43Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. 44The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.’ 45When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. 46They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

”If the preacher don’t step on my toes, don’t tell me what I’m doin’ wrong, then I don’t want to hear him. I won’t go back. That’s what I go to church for, to be told what I’m doin’ wrong!” this, from a man just this past week, in a conversation following my being introduced AS ‘the preacher from Jerusalem’.

The comment prompted the thought, “do I do that enough?” quickly followed by, “Do I WANT to do that more?” It goes without saying that there are a multitude of views of what a Minister or Preacher is supposed to do when he or she gets up to preach on Sundays. But I think we can all agree that the primary purpose is to bring God’s word to God’s people. And we find it all, don’t we? We run the gamut, from praise and encouragement to … pretty severe tongue lashings. Today’s passage is a continuation of Jesus giving the Pharisees and Sadducees as severe a tongue lashing as they ever received.

Remember from last week, we’ve jumped ahead into Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem before his crucifixion, and as the week progresses, the confrontations between Jesus and the religious leaders grow more pointed and more heated. Note, there is no ‘the Kingdom is like’ at the beginning of this parable, just as there wasn’t at the beginning of the parable of the two sons in last week’s parable. Jesus isn’t presenting an image of the Kingdom, he is presenting one of the day in which he was speaking, and to this day as well.

Jesus was using everyday language and imagery – terms and characters that ANYONE could understand and identify with – to get his message across. Vineyards were a common sight in first century Palestine. Most everyone knew what was involved in setting up a vineyard, knew that a fence was needed, knew about the pit to be dug, and the tower to be built, and landowners and tenants. That is even familiar to us today. Edward Markquart, a Lutheran Pastor in Des Moines, Washington, summarizes it like this:

The meaning of today’s parable was clear in Jesus’ day: That is, the religious leaders killed God’s prophets in the Old Testament and soon would kill God’s own Son. The kingdom will be taken from those who do not produce good fruit (righteousness, goodness, mercy, gentleness, self-control) and be given to those people who do (the tax collectors and prostitutes we read and heard about in last week’s passage.)

The meaning of this parable is also clear for our lives today. That is, nowadays people often silence the messengers of God, in order that we can live our lives the way we want to, in order to pretend that the vineyard is ours. We want to run OUR vineyard the way WE want to. We human beings often silence God’s messengers, including the voice of his Son, in order to live a lie that it is MY vineyard and that MY vineyard belongs to ME.

As we do so, we often do not produce good fruit or healthy lives of loving service to others. The Lord God says that he/she will find people who live a life of loving service to others and THEY will become God's people.
Pastor Edward F. Markquart, Grace Lutheran Church, Des Moines, Washington 98198

http://www.sermonsfromseattle.com/

How much harder and more pointedly can you step on someone’s toes than to tell them that they will be responsible for God passing their people by if they don’t grasp the concept of true righteousness and a repentant, loving heart, and teaching it and, much, MUCH more importantly, LIVING it?

Today’s message comes from the Gospel of Grace, but it is a heavy word for us if we are on the wrong side of the parable.

So here’s the (hard) word of the Lord for today: each of us, are, have been, or will be on the wrong side of this parable at some point in our lives. That is what it means to have a hard heart. It is what happens when we settle into the idea that we know and understand EVERYTHING about what God is all about, WHERE God is going, and WHAT God is doing. We must learn our lesson from those Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ day, and those who would be the modern-day Pharisees and Sadducees, who would tell us that they alone guard and hold the truth of scripture, those who sit and make pronouncements on where God is and where God is not, what God is blessing and what God is not blessing.

Last night we had supper with Doug and Lea and Karen Coppage, who will be returning to Hungary a week from today, to continue working with the deaf population there. In the course of the evening’s conversation, Lea mentioned a joke that she’d been reminded of, and it seems appropriate to mention it here.

The Cowboy and Church

One Sunday morning an old cowboy entered a church just before services were to begin. Although the old man and his clothes were spotlessly clean, he wore jeans, a denim shirt and boots that were very worn and ragged. In his hand he carried a worn out old hat and an equally worn out Bible.

The Church he entered was in a very upscale and exclusive part of the city. It was the largest and most beautiful church the old cowboy had ever seen and the people were all dressed in expensive clothes and accessories.

As the cowboy took a seat, the others moved away from him. No one greeted, spoke to, or welcomed him. They were all appalled at his appearance and did not attempt to hide it. The preacher gave a long sermon about Hellfire and brimstone and a stern lecture on how much money the church needed to do God's work.

As the old cowboy was leaving the church, the preacher approached him and asked the cowboy to do him a favor. "Before you come back in here again, have a talk with God and ask him what He thinks would be appropriate attire for worship." The old cowboy assured the preacher he would.

The next Sunday, the cowboy showed up for the services wearing the same ragged jeans, shirt, boots, and hat. Once again he was completely shunned and ignored.

The preacher approached the man and said, "I thought I asked you to speak to God before you came back to our church." "I did," replied the old cowboy. "If you spoke to God, what did He tell you the proper attire should be for worshiping in here?" asked the preacher.

"Well, sir, God told me that He didn't have a clue what I should wear. He says He's never been in this church!"

It’s funny, isn’t it, unless we feel more like the preacher or the parishioners than the cowboy? If on some level we identified with THEM rather than the outsider, then we have SOME idea of how the Pharisees and Sadducees felt when Jesus started telling these parables and it was clear to everyone present that THEY were the bad guys.

Jesus told THIS parable in the same sitting as he did the ones we heard last week – about the two sons, and the comments about the prostitutes and tax collectors. There was no mincing around. The truth he spoke to the religious leaders facing him then is the same message he has for us all now, here, today.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church in Emmerton?

We are, by virtue of our presence here this morning, religious leaders. Because we choose to be here, we stand in the tradition that has been carried out for centuries and centuries. We mark the week by dedicating at least a portion of this first day to God, and to the public practice of faith. So here is the rest of that message from Jesus: if being a religious leader is defined simply by those two acts – BEING here and going through the ritual – following the order of service in our worship bulletin, and then going home and living the rest of our week as if we’ve done our duty, then someone else is going to get the baton, because although this is an important part of what it means to be a Christian, it means NOTHING unless the faith we speak of, the love and grace and joy and suffering and sharing we sing about or read about or hear about gets demonstrated on the outside.

The title for today’s message, “BEING Church, DOING Church” contains a couple of implied questions. They’re not “either-or” questions. They are “both-and” questions.

As a family of faith, how well are we ‘BEING’ church? This speaks to how we are … ‘internally’. How are we “being” loving to each other, lifting each other up in prayer, recognizing, respecting and honoring the presence of Christ in each other? These are about how WE are individually, in our heart of hearts, growing to be more like Christ.

The next question is now more outward, but it doesn’t start down the road, once we get into town, or across the Rappahannock, it doesn’t start beyond a certain point in either direction up or down route 3, it doesn’t start outside the walls of this building. It starts on the other side of our skin. Some things are admittedly easier to do in a small congregation like ours than they would be in a larger congregation. Let’s recognize those, acknowledge and celebrate them, but at the same time, realize that we are probably more challenged to do those things that make us uncomfortable; the outreach, the speaking kindness to strangers, the open invitation to receive from us what service we can offer. When someone asks why we do this, many times I have stammered something along the lines of ‘Oh, we just want to help’. A church in South Korea, in extending the blessing by offering help and assistance to members of their community, realized they needed to have a more complete answer ready when someone asked them why they were doing these intentional acts of kindness. Here’s how they answer the question:

“I am a disciple of Jesus. I am serving him by serving you, because that’s what HE came to do.”

So how do WE answer the question? Is our Christianity about being a member here, or being a witness outside ourselves? Is our faith a combination of words and motions that are simply part of the routine of being a church member, or is it an expression of what Christ has done in our lives and continues to do on a daily basis in us and through us?

Remember the quote from Frank Stagg last week:

“Radical demand and limitless mercy come together in the teaching and manner of Jesus”

So we are again faced with that radical demand from Jesus: to follow, to serve, to submit and take his yoke. To take his cross and follow him.

How will we answer?

Let’s pray.