Grace Enough To Spare

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I preached this sermon in 2011 when I was pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Sherman, Texas. It is specific to that congregation, and dependent on the exegetical work of many different ministers, including Anna Carter Florence in Lectionary Homiletics.

“I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ Matthew 25:25

 

The easiest way to deal with a weapons-grade parable like this is to turn it into an allegory—turn it into a story in which each character stands in for someone and each thing stands in for something else. That way, when we get to the part about a worthless slave getting thrown into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, we can make sure that the worthless slave is a stand-in for somebody else, not us.

The challenge we face, though, is that Jesus never took a course in literary forms of biblical literature; therefore, he felt free, and Matthew the writer of this parable felt free, to tell a story that sometimes works as an allegory and sometimes works as a parable.

“The Kingdom of heaven is as if . . .” That phrase begins a creative, imaginative story of a wealthy landowner, and we can easily make the connection, “O.K., wealthy powerful guy who owns everything, I know That Guy, it has to be God.”

We hear about the distribution of talents and we learn from the footnote that a talent is a huge measure of gold, but we make the automatic correlation with talents in the English language and think about the gifts God has entrusted to each of us.

We hear about the three slaves, two of whom do well and one who buries his talent in the ground and by this time, we’re on a roll, this is easy—that first guy is me, the good Christian, the second one is my friend, the first runner-up in the good Christian contest, and the third one, the one who deserves to be thrown into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth? As I heard someone say in a Bible study once, “I know that guy! He’s my no-good lazy ex-husband!”

That’s always a comfortable way to read scripture – to weaponize it and wield it against somebody else. It may be comfortable, but it doesn’t hold up to a close reading.

The problem begins to arise when we hear the slave’s description of the wealthy landowner, as someone who reaps where he did not sow and gathers where he did not scatter. Maybe the third slave is just mistaken, but that sure isn’t a description of God who created the heavens and the earth. And, at the end, when he tells the third slave he should have invested the talent in the bank to collect interest? Interest is an acceptable way of doing business now, but in the first century Jewish culture, it was strictly forbidden by God’s law. It makes no sense that a stand-in for God would advocate such a thing as the least you can do.

And then, the word “talent.” Our English word “talent” comes from the Greek language in which Matthew wrote, but Jesus did not tell this parable in Greek, (he would have used the Aramaic/Hebrew word kikkar) and besides, the English language had not yet been invented. In its original context, there was no automatic correlation between this weight of gold or silver, 3000 shekels, and our contemporary word for gifts and skills.

So, what’s going on here?

Let’s think about how the parable would have been heard by the gospel writer Matthew’s congregation. This is the second of three parables in the twenty-fifth chapter telling us about a community that is waiting for the return of someone, but they do not know the day or the hour.

For a community that had expected Jesus to return any day, and it had now been forty years, and almost all of the people who had walked with Jesus had died, these parables address the question, “What are we supposed to do now? What do we do while we wait around to die or see the end of the world as we know it?”

This parable, along with the other three parables of the Kingdom in Matthew 25, make this much clear: the Gospel has been given to us, but not for us to have and to hold. Jesus gave us stories that we would repeat them; Jesus gave us his life that we might live for others. He gave us the bread of life and the cup of salvation that we would eat and drink and remember his presence from one day to the next.

We read the slave’s declaration, “Master, I knew you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; 25so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’” And we realize, yes, that slave got it wrong on two fronts.

First, the Master he describes is not the One who sent his only Son to die that we might live.

And second, his misplaced fear led him to do exactly the opposite of what the Master desired.

It is human nature to hoard what we value, to try to keep it, save it, preserve it. The surprise of this parable, maybe the shocking recognition, is that the last thing Jesus wants to hear when he walks through those doors and into this sanctuary is, “Look Jesus, we kept it for you just the way it was when you gave it to us!”

It takes energy, intelligence, imagination, and love and all the gifts of the spirit to do what God has called us to do, to put it all out there, to risk proclaiming the gospel with all the assets with which God has entrusted us, whether it is money, or this building, or the new building, or our emotional reserve, or our style of worship, or anything else. It does not happen by accident, it only happens through a commitment and intent to be obedient to Christ even when we are afraid.

Many, many years ago, when I was still the new pastor here, [Covenant Presbyterian in Sherman, Texas] and we did not yet know each other well, I got a phone call from a funeral home while I was on vacation at Nancy’s mother’s house in Pensacola. A family member of an immigrant Hindu family had died, and they wanted to do the funeral service in Sherman where their friends and colleagues could attend. Wynne Chapel was being remodeled, and several other churches with a sanctuary large enough to accommodate them had declined to host a funeral in the Hindu tradition.

I thought, this would be a great discussion for our session to have, but I was thirteen hours away, the clock was ticking, and there was no way to get the session together in time to make this decision. I had to make it, yes or no.

When I thought, “What would Jesus do?” it was very clear to me. The one who told the story of the kind Samaritan, the foreigner who showed kindness to the stranger in need regardless of their religious differences would not hesitate to give them comfort in their time of grief.

I thought of that and all kinds of other reasons that it was the right thing to do as a church, and I tried to anticipate all the reasons people might give for declining to have it here.

I told the funeral home we would be glad to do it, and I ran down to the coffee shop with wifi where I could get an email out to the session that just said I had to make this decision today, here’s what I told them, and here’s why I think it’s the right thing to do.

I did not yet know you well. I feared I might get fired. I thought someone on session might take some disciplinary action against me to the Presbytery’s committee on ministry. I did not know what might happen.

But, I’m not the hero of this story. You are.

Here’s what happened. It turns out I was foolish in my fears. Every single email that came back from the session members said the same thing, essentially: “Good decision, this is who we are as followers of Jesus Christ. We are a people with grace enough to spare.”

A few years later, our daughter Rachel asked me to come and pray and read scripture and pronounce a blessing as she and Lili promised each other that they would stay together as long as they both shall live.

You all know that my views on gay and lesbian partnerships is more liberal than the average Presbyterian. The Permanent Judicial Committee had ruled that Presbyterian clergy such as I could perform such a ceremony as long as I didn’t publicly refer to it as a wedding or a marriage, but we all knew what it was. It was my daughter’s wedding.

I know that many of you have strong feelings on the other side of this issue, just as strongly-held, just as theologically genuine as my own. So, when I wrote to you in the church newsletter [the web page did not yet exist] to let you know what our family was going to Florida to celebrate, I waited with some trepidation for the phone to ring on the day the newsletter hit the mailboxes.

And the phone began to ring. And every single person who called us, regardless of what they thought of gay marriage or ordination, was asking why we didn’t include an address for Rachel and Lili so they could send a gift.

Whatever else we may be here at Covenant, with all our imperfections and struggles, this is something I know for sure: we are a people with grace enough to spare.

There are many, many good things in this world that need our time, energy, prayers, and money. If we supported them all as we wish we could, I fear, perhaps foolishly, that there would be nothing left to live on.

Here’s what keeps me wanting to support the work of this congregation with more money, time, and energy than any other cause. I believe that the greatest need of this world is the grace of God in Jesus Christ; and, I have never known another congregation that is so generous, so profligate, so reckless and Christ-like in extending grace to a world in need.

So, friends, let’s put it all out there, with grace enough to spare. It’s who we are as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

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A Day of Wonder

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I wonder.

Training for triathlon in this fall weather reminds me how much I love to run outside. After a rainy couple of days indoors on the dreadmill and the bicycle trainer, I shot out of the door today like a horse that’s been cooped up in the barn all winter. With temperatures in the Fahrenheit fifties and the sun shining, even the one-mile intervals at a speed too fast to talk while running feel like play, not training.

Doves fly around today with lowered anxiety since dove hunting season has passed. Deer season opened last week, so the deer creep warily out of the morning shadows, glance at me from too far away to see that I am unarmed, and then disappear into the brush.

A coyote crosses the road carrying a rabbit, or, to translate literally from the coyote language, breakfast.

mmm, breakfast
mmm, breakfast

On days like this, every breath brings thoughts full of wonder. How can the world contain so much beauty? How has nature wrought the complexity of a human body that can respond to the stress of training with adaptations of improved strength and speed? How has the ecosystem produced the balance of nature that yields rabbits slow enough to keep coyotes fed but fast enough to survive long enough to procreate? As a wannabe naturalist, I can explain the process of natural selection that has led to such a wonder as today, this moment right now, and all the things around me that are growing and dying and feeding new life and rising, but it is still a wonder.

Then, my knee begins to hurt.

And I catastrophize.

Maybe it’s not just sore. Maybe I have permanently damaged it and this is the last day of my life that I will ever be able to run.

The knee pain shifts my thoughts from Psalm 118,

This is the day that the Lord has made, Let us be glad and rejoice in it!

To Ecclesiastes 3,

For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; 

as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath,

and humans have no advantage over the animals;

for all is vanity.

All go to one place;

all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.

That pain in my knee turns my wonder in the other direction: Why must there be so much suffering? Why must rabbits die for coyotes to eat? Why must our bodies deteriorate with time? Why must we die for worms to eat?

All is vanity and chasing after wind, says Ecclesiastes.

I walk a few steps, then stop and stretch. I touch my toes, then bend a knee and grab each ankle in turn and stretch out my quads. I lean against a mailbox and stretch out each of my calves.

I stride out a few steps, then a few more, and a little faster, and all is well, the pain is gone. I chase after the wind, and it feels good, so good.

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The Church Is Like A Family. Your Family.

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“When I became an adult, I put away childish ways . . .” 1 Corinthians 13:11

Presbyterian Disaster Relief volunteers get playful.

If the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. breaks out of the doldrums and thrives for generations to come, she will do so because our generation answered God’s call to lead her members to a higher level of self-differentiation.

What is self-differentiation? It is the ability to think and act calmly and clearly according to one’s deepest values and principles even in the midst of a highly anxious emotional system. People who are highly differentiated can disagree with others over significant issues and still maintain a good relationship with them.

Years ago, I helped two different couples prepare for their marriages. One couple (The Stones) agreed with each other about all the major issues they could identify from religion and politics to child-rearing philosophy and money management. The other couple (The Golds) did not. She was raised Catholic, he was raised Jewish. She was Republican, he was a Democrat. She came of age in rural California, he came of age in urban Atlanta, the deep South.

Conventional pre-marriage counseling would have predicted that the Stones, having everything in common, had a far greater chance of staying married than the Golds. However, the Stones have divorced and the Golds continue to enjoy a very happy marriage. The missing question in conventional pre-marriage counseling is the level of self-differentiation of the couple. The predictive factor I did not include in the brief description of the couples above was how playful the Golds were around their disagreements and differences and how serious the Stones were about everything. The Golds continue to live comfortably with their disagreements and enjoy engaging and teasing one another about canceling out each others’ votes on election day. The Stones divorced because they could not accept each other’s differing views over the very small issues that inevitably showed up. Mr. Stone’s absent-minded habit of leaving the toilet lid up escalated into accusations of disrespect, a spiral of passive-aggressive behavior from both of them, followed by a yelling match that sent Mrs. Stone to the divorce lawyer.

In a counter-intuitive paradox, the playful people are the grown-ups.

What does this have to do with the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., or any other denomination?

I predict that after our disagreements over gay ordination, gay marriage and the Middle East calm down, we will find different divisive issues in the future (which is as risky a prediction as foretelling market volatility at some point in the future). The pendulum may swing back and forth between conservative and liberal, but we will never go to a General Assembly in which all the votes are unanimous. (How boring would that be?)

Our future health as a denomination does not depend so much on whether we can assume God-like power over the minds of others so that they agree with us and start acting and thinking right. It depends on our ability to love one another in the midst of our disagreements. It depends on our ability to win graciously and lose without resentment. It depends on our ability to speak, not in the tongues of mortals or of angels, but in the language of grown-ups who love each other.

When have you seen church leaders or members of your family acting in a highly self-differentiated way? How has that affected you and your family and/or church?

For All the Saints, Martyrs, and Liars

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If you are preaching or listening to a sermon this Sunday from the All Saints Day lectionary, you may encounter 1 John 3:1-7. It’s a strange paragraph, pulling us back and forth between the assurance that we are children of God to the warning not to be deceived about lawlessness. My article today addresses the context of 1 John as a whole rather than a verse-by-verse analysis, but I thought you all might find it helpful.

My thinking about the whole New Testament has been greatly influenced by Amy Jill Levine’s The Misunderstood Jew and, of course, Rabbi Edwin Friedman’s Generation to Generation. Though neither of them address this particular passage, they address the larger issues. Levine reminds us of the Jewish origin of the New Testament and Friedman writes of emotional reactivity and family cut-off as if he were addressing the situation of first century members of the Christian community as their relationship to the synagogue disintegrated.

When we remember that the dividing line between Christian and Jew did not exist in the first century the way it does now as a religious and ethnic designation, it influences the way we read all of the New Testament. In the first century, Christians were a subset of Jews. Even those Gentiles who joined the first century church saw themselves as becoming Jews. The whole circumcision controversy would not have arisen if the church did not think of itself as a Jewish institution. It wasn’t until the second century (decades after the writing of 1 John) that Christians embraced an identity separate from Judaism.

The community of John (I’m convinced that the Johannine pastoral letters and the Gospel grew out of the same community) thought of themselves as Jews who believed Jesus was the Jewish messiah. The expression John uses in the gospels that is translated “the Jews” refers to some group of Jewish leaders, not the whole ethnic group or all the members of the synagogue. It’s probably more complicated than that, but the main thing to remember is that Jesus and all his disciples and almost everyone mentioned in the Gospel according to John were Jews except for the Samaritan woman at the well and her friends in chapter 4. So, whoever it is John refers to when he uses that Greek expression “hoi judaioi,” (translated “the Jews” in the NRSV) it’s clear that he uses it in a very different context than our own. We use it to distinguish between Jew and Gentile. He uses it to distinguish between one group of Jewish people and another.

The next thing to remember is how emotionally devastating it was for them to be cut off by their synagogue and many family members. (Emotional cut-off is the essence of the word translated “hate.”) It was so devastating that many members of the Christian community left to return to their families and the synagogue, renouncing their claim that Jesus was raised from the dead because they were unable to withstand the emotional pressure of the cut-off. (Here’s a bit of polemic John uses against them in 1 John 2:18, “many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us.”)

The claim that Jesus is the Messiah, and that his resurrection is the evidence, is the central claim of the Christian community and the claim that the leaders of the synagogue would not allow people to teach in the synagogue. It was, they said, a lie, and those who proclaimed it were liars. John joins in the name-calling. He turns this claim around with his polemic against “liars” who say they have not sinned and “liars” who say they love God but hate (cut off) a member of their own family or community. While we ordinarily read his proclamation that “God is love” (4:8) as a gentle description of our Creator, it is, in context, part of a screed against those whom John feels have betrayed him and his community by cutting them off or leaving to return to the synagogue.

Another issue the letter addresses is the accusation from some synagogue leaders that Christians were libertines. The fine line John walks between those who say they have not sinned, whom he calls “liars,” and those who abide in Jesus and therefore do not sin (3:6) makes sense only as part of that larger controversy between Christian Jews and synagogue leaders over the definition of sin. To the synagogue leaders, sin was breaking the commandments, but to John it was breaking this one commandment with two parts, “that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another just as he has commanded us.” (3:23)

The letter of 1 John, then, sends encouragement to a community of disciples of Jesus who had been cut off from (hated by) their families and their synagogue. John tells them that they are the truly faithful ones, that those who hate them (cut them off) are the liars and the sinners, and that the only way to stem the hemorrhaging of members is by loving one another as brothers and sisters.

Here’s my own reflection on this. The Johannine correspondence records for us John’s struggle to make theological sense out of the rejection of Jesus and his resurrection by the leaders of the synagogue and the tearing apart of family and community relationships. His polemical tone, using labels such as “liars” and “antichrists” indicates that the emotional reactivity had reached such intensity that those Jews on opposite sides of the resurrection claim could no longer hear each other. This emotionally charged letter records a sad failure of the church and synagogue to maintain their relationship in the face of disagreement. Certainly, the synagogue had withstood disagreements before, but this one led to the tearing apart of families and communities, and that’s hard to make sense of in the context of a loving God who calls us to love one another. Often, John presents his explanation in terms that fan the flames of division: God loves us because we love Jesus, but those who don’t love Jesus are liars who only say they love God, but they really hate God because they hate us, their brothers and sisters. While John’s rhetoric soars in places, he is at his worst when he claims the victim badge for himself and his community.

The question for us I think is this: To what extent has this emotional process of cut-off, victim-thinking, and name-calling of our adversaries repeated itself within the church? To what extent was it replicated in the Reformation? What would happen if we refused to engage in the cut-off, victim-thinking, and name-calling? What if we could embrace John’s soaring rhetoric on love without using it as a weapon against our adversaries? What if we never tired of reaching across theological, denominational, and ethnic boundaries in love? What would it look like to reach across to our Jewish brothers and sisters? Our Muslim brothers and sisters? Our Roman Catholic and Orthodox and Protestant fellow Christians? What if we simply rejected the divisions that evolved from the emotional process of the first century Christians’ failure to negotiate a peaceful coexistence with, or amicable divorce from, the synagogue?

On a more positive note, the Johannine community clearly survived because they took up John’s challenge to love one another as brothers and sisters. They provided one another with the love and strength it takes to withstand the rejection of their own families. What would it look like for us to provide one another with such love to withstand every rejection of the world outside (or other churches) while still reaching beyond our boundaries to those outside our own community?

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More Wine, That’s the Ticket

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John 2:1-11

9When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 

More Wine, That’s the Ticket

Weddings are accidents waiting to happen.

Ask any minister.  We have all had a moment, after several meetings with a couple for pre-marriage counseling in which both the bride and the groom presented themselves as normal, sane, and deeply thoughtful people, when, suddenly, we begin to doubt our  initial judgment.  It is the moment when Continue reading →

What Motivation Wants

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Neill Morgan, at mortalironman.com

When the road looks seductive, running is easy. When it’s not easy, how can we motivate ourselves?

Motivation is a lover who needs and deserves your attention if you expect her to stay faithful to you.

Here’s what Motivation wants:

  1. Atmosphere. Keep the environment conducive to her mood by laying out your clothes and shoes the night before. Make sure the shoes, shorts, and singlet look and feel good, that they’re not old, stinky, or worn out. You want to get out of bed each morning and tell your Motivation, “Let me slip into something more comfortable.”

 

  1. Frequent Feedback. Tell your Motivation how much she means to you
    There’s nothing like a healthy resting heart rate and blood pressure to keep you motivated.

    with frequent feedback. Weigh often. Measure your waistline. Take your blood pressure and measure your resting heart rate each morning. Test your fitness with a weekend race or a time trial on the track and plot your results on a chart. With frequent feedback, you tell your Motivation, “You make me a better man.”

Continue reading →

Five Things Many Mainline Christians Believe about the Bible that their Pastors Don’t

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Throughout 30 years of ministry, I have seen little change in the gap between the beliefs of seminary-educated clergy and our parishioners. While a very small minority of people make it through a Masters degree program at an accredited mainline seminary still clinging to the fundamentalist approach of numbers 1-4 below, and fewer than half number 5, I continue to hear many parishioners in mainline churches assume that all 5 are orthodoxy.

  1. Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible.

    Leningrad_Codex_Carpet_page_e
    Leningrad Codex, thought to be the oldest existing Hebrew text of the Bible.
  2. Paul wrote all the books with his name on them.
  3. Revelation was written to predict the future.
  4. The Gospels quote Jesus accurately.
  5. The Bible condemns homosexuality.
  1. Clergy who paid attention during their Old Testament class know that the expression the “Book of Moses” refers to 5 books written about Moses, not by Moses. They arose over generations of oral composers who were edited during and shortly after the Babylonian exile, many centuries after Moses died.

Continue reading →

Knock Knock Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door

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Matthew 25:1-13

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. . . . the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. 11Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ 13Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

One of my high school teachers had a few verses of scripture memorized that he liked to pull out of its holster and whack us with when the occasion presented itself. When he coached track and cut people from the team, he sent away those who didn’t make it with, “Many are called, but few are chosen!”

And, if someone was late to class, he slammed the door as soon as the bell rang with the proclamation of the Gospel, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you!”

I’m all for dramatic presentations of biblical passages, but I thought it the wiser course of action not to instruct the ushers today to slam the doors at 10:50 and send away the latecomers.

Instead, I thought it better to look at this parable in its context.

First, we can look at this passage in the context of the community that produced the Gospel According to Matthew. The were a predominantly Jewish community, both by ethnicity and in practice, who believed in Jesus as the Messiah described Continue reading →

Sabotaging Stewardship

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This time of year, church leaders sharpen their pencils and write budgets, and preachers turn to the most inspirational sermon material we can find to motivate people to pledge and give enough to support those budgets. We do our best to talk about stewardship more inclusively than making a budget, and some of my friends do that very well. We preacher-types have become very skilled at laying out the benefits and joys of stepping up to a higher level of stewardship of our gifts, whether that means giving away more money or time, becoming a better friend, spouse, or parent, or taking better care of this earthly tent in which we live. What we almost always fail to tell anyone about is the dark side of stepping up:

If you become a better steward of your gifts, you will be sabotaged.

If you step up your leadership of an organization to the next level, and maintain a new sense of vision and clarity for more than a week, you will be sabotaged.

If you raise your fitness regimen, or your practice of spiritual discipline and ethics to a higher plane, you will be sabotaged.

Sabotage may come from others, especially Continue reading →

Watcha Gonna Wear?

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Exodus 32:1-14

Aaron . . took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

Philippians 4:1-9

Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Matthew 22:1-14

‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless.

Watcha Gonna Wear?

The story of the golden calf and Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet stand together in today’s readings as a gift to that part of ourselves that feels wise, intelligent, and more worthy when we focus on those who really mess things up.

I like to think that if I had been in Aaron’s place, I would have counseled patience to the people who waited for Moses to return from the mountaintop. Maybe pull out the guitar, sing “Here I Am, Lord,” while we wait. Not that silly Aaron. No, he starts fundraising to diminish his anxiety. “Give me the gold rings from the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters,” Which, of course, were plundered Continue reading →