Come as you are …

[excerpts from sermon preached at Disciples Christian on September 28, 2014]

Dr. Phil, television’s most well-known celebrity psychologist, was once asked the question: If you could interview anyone in the world, past or present, who would it be? Dr. Phil replied without hesitation, Jesus Christ. I would really like to interview Jesus Christ. I would really like to have a conversation with him about the meaning of life.

I’ve read that Dr. Phil and his wife are devout Christians, so this makes me wonder if Dr. Phil has read this particular passage of scripture. Because in today’s passage, with an entire panel of questioners, made up of the most learned minds of the religious day – it did not go well for the interviewers. Jesus made quick work of the chief priests and elders, refusing to answer their questions by asking his own. Sitting down with Jesus as the esteemed host treating him as the interviewee – with all due respect for your interviewing skills, Dr. Phil. I’m thinking, no, you wouldn’t really want to interview Jesus because such conversations are dangerous. Your world will not be the same at the end of it. More likely your head would be spinning, and your life will be on the line.

And I love this that I read this week: You will be both confounded and claimed.

Of course the Pharisees didn’t exactly catch Jesus at the best time for a sit-down interview. To set the context: Jesus has just ridden through Jerusalem on a donkey to the thrill of the crowds — we call it Palm Sunday –when according to Matthew’s gospel, Jesus entered the temple and became enraged when he saw the goings-on with the money-changers.  After driving them out by angrily turning over their tables, Jesus got down to the work he was called to do.  Healing.  And welcoming children. They were noisy children apparently (are there any other kind?) which further disturbed the temple leaders. So Jesus left and went to Bethany to spend the night with friends. It seem he didn’t wake up in any better mood, because on his way back into the temple in the morning when he saw a fig tree by the side of the road — a tree that didn’t have any figs on it — he cursed it.  And the tree withered to its death, right then and there.

So by the time he arrived at the temple, he was in no mood for their questions.  They had their chance to redeem themselves, and we know Jesus as our Redeemer, the paragon of forgiveness and giver of second chances. But they gave the wrong answer. They gave a very considered, careful, and political answer. As in: well, I can’t say this or I’ll anger this constituency. I can’t say the other thing because it would set off the other constituency. Maybe our own politicians learned this art from these chief priests. They cannot bring themselves to say what they really think. They cannot express what they really believe, if they even know what that is. They’re certainly hesitant to ask another question. The best they can come up with to Jesus’ question of his identity is: We don’t know.
I’d like to think that if they had given an honest answer. An answer from their hearts. Even if their answer acknowledged their doubts and fears, I think Jesus would have shown compassion to them. But in their doing the safest thing they could think of– giving no answer at all – Jesus could see that they were not really concerned about his authority, they were more concerned with hanging on to their own. Jesus rebuffed them, and it wasn’t gentle.

Remember the context. This is Tuesday of Holy Week and by the weekend, he will be dead. This is his last day in the temple. His last day to teach. His last day to issue warnings or to dispense advice. With understandably little patience for this interview in the final days of his earthly life: he puts before them the question central to his ministry: he has asked it before:
Who do you say that I am?
A life of following Jesus is not about us sitting Jesus down or parsing his words or asking him to tell us the meaning of life. To demand of him some standard of truth by which we can be convinced that he is the one. As theologian Stanley Hauerwas puts it: If one needs a standard of truth to insure that Jesus is the Messiah, then one ought to worship that standard of truth, not Jesus.

Jesus told this story:  A man had two sons. He needed their help in working the vineyard. He didn’t ask them to go, he told them to go. The first son refused but he later changed his mind and got to work. The second son said he would go but he didn’t. Unlike other parables, this one isn’t difficult to figure out the answer of which son did the will of his father. The first son, of course.

It may seem a simple answer, but it was a stinging indictment of the panel of questioners. These men who held such knowledge of scripture, who spoke in a religious language unintelligible to Gentiles, who lived most of their lives within the walls of the temple. These men who had said Yes to God yet cannot see Jesus (and John before him) as the embodiment of their God. Standing right there before them.

Which son were these? The ones who said Yes and then stayed right where they were. Jesus said it would have been better for you to have said No.

This is about our willingness to go to where God is. Which son are we?

We’re no longer all men in the temple, and we don’t claim to be religious authorities, but most of have been in church for a long time. Years, maybe even lifetimes. Most of us, with the exception of our younger children and newest visitors, have professed that Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We have promised to follow him.  We have said Yes, Father, I will go work in your vineyard.

And sometimes we do. This is not an across the board indictment. I’m not ready to say that we are all of us that second son. But it’s most definitely a question worthy of our consideration.  Which son are we? Putting ourselves in the position, not as interviewers of Jesus, but of those anticipating what Jesus’ questions might be to us:

• Are you entrenched within these walls – this church where you love to be – that you’ve lost your curiosity about where else God might be at work in the world?
• Are your eyes so focused on the screen (or at the hymnal) that you don’t see the same world that I see?
• Would you prefer to sit me down to ask him about the meaning of life, rather than to model your lives according to mine?
• Who would you say that I am?
• Did you realize that when you said Yes in the waters of baptism that was not the end of your work, that was the beginning?

We are not evil people. We’re not worthless people. Neither were those men in the temple evil or worthless. They were being careful, and they were reluctant.  We are careful and reluctant too, and we have a tendency to self-limit. Those are self-limits, but are not God imposed limits. The good news is, those limits are not irreversible, everlasting, eternal or abiding.

Remember that first son. Reluctant. Not ready. Even disobedient.

Until he wasn’t. Until he was willing to not only say Yes but to get to work.

As Martin Luther once said, a faithful life is not about overcoming God’s reluctance. It is about laying hold of God’s willingness.  We are created in God’s image. And God is not reluctant – God is willing to ask us. God is not reluctant, God is willing to send the Holy Spirit to be with us in our toils. And God was not reluctant; God was willing to send us his son Jesus, the paragon of forgiveness and giver of second chances.

May God’s willingness both confound and claim us.   YES!

Pastor.  Parent.  Activist. 

[excerpts from a sermon preached on Sunday, September 21 at Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights, OH]

I missed being with all of you last Sunday … well, sort of. It was my birthday but that wouldn’t normally have taken me away. I’ve had a lot of birthdays and I’ve probably worked on most of them. But last year began a whole new phase of celebrating when our first grandson was born on my birthday. This year, as little Walt was turning 1 year old, his parents had an out-of-state wedding to go to, David and I were asked if we could come and stay for the whole weekend. Since we’re the only grandparents who must rely on Skype waves at a computer screen instead of grabbing a hug anytime we want to stop by, this was the stuff of which grandparents dreams are made. An entire weekend when the only stresses were would the little guy sleep all night? Would he stick to the schedule his parents so very carefully wrote out for us? Would he be glad to see us in the morning, when we were still there on the 4th morning?
But those stresses very quickly melted into what were 4 days and nights of unparalleled joy. Joy from such seemingly inconsequential moments that they seem almost too small to put into words. Smiles and giggles. Taking a step or two until falling on his bottom. Watching his little hands smashing a piece of banana, whether it was to feed it to himself or to the dog who waits patiently right next to the highchair. His small little redhead resting on my shoulder when he would get sleepy, and a big smile waiting for me when he woke up. We were only 5 hours away from real life, and yet it seemed like we were in an alternate universe.

That’s where I was while you were here listening to Rev. Amy Gopp preach. And can that woman preach!  But for as skilled as she is, what makes her sermons come alive is that she has lived the gospel. She’s lived it from her hometown of Kent and in her growing up years at Camp Christian, Croatia and Bosnia, Sarajevo and Manhattan, and too many others to mention. I listened to her sermon on Tuesday when I got back, and she described the world that she has seen from her personal experience and professional position that we only wish was the alternate universe, instead of the real world.  She told us of the man whose home was on the steps of the church she served in Manhattan, and a church that needed a vote to decide if that was OK or not. She told us of women who must sell their bodies in order to feed themselves and their families. She told us of migrant workers picking tomatoes, unable to make anything close to a living wage, while we enjoy the fruits of their labor at the neighborhood Taco Bell.

After hearing all that, I was tempted to get in my car and drive back to where life seemed ideal.  But that not being an option, I did what I do every week — I dug into the text for the next sermon. Jesus is teaching us by parable this week. You know about parables? Those stories where the leading roles are played by people just like us, where circumstances happen just like they do in our own lives. Parables are always about how the world ought to be and how people ought to behave in order for God’s desire for how the world is supposed to be. They end with a moral imperative, of course, but before that, there’s always an unexpected twist that turns what we think we know upside down. A twist that makes us realize how wide is the chasm between how things are and how they would need to be for God’s vision for the world to be the reality.

Parables describe God’s kingdom here and now that we’re supposed to be at work building. Building, not trying to escape the parts we don’t like as I did last weekend. And not by accepting the injustices as Amy described last week. But by living in it according to what Jesus taught. That’s what parables are about. What parables are not is making us feel good about everything or to tell us that our work here is done.

Because, boy oh boy, when we read today’s story of the Vineyard workers, do we see that there is work to be done! This story hits us all.  Anyone with a strong work ethic. Anyone who has shown up every day on time to punch the clock and stayed until the work was done. Anyone who must travel far to where the jobs are.  For union guys.  Feminists who demand equal pay for equal work.  For any manager who answers to a boss whose eyes are on the bottom line. Shareholders who vote. Bankers who loan. Investors whose job it is to maximize portfolios.  To anyone of the above, this story just doesn’t make sense. There’s no metric by which we measure success that makes this good business practice. To pay people the same amount for fewer hours of work.
And if we’re brutally honest here, especially to pay people the same for fewer hours of work when they are those people. Those people who show up late or unprepared. Unskilled, uneducated, maybe even undocumented. Those people who don’t want to work. We might say under our breath: They’ll take whatever they can, as long as someone’s willing to give it to them. That’s how we picture day laborers or those who stand on street corners, isn’t it? We live in a world of those givers and takers, to listen to our politicians.

This story does not bring out the best in us.

In a parable, God is always one of the players. And so by now we’ve figured out that it is the landowner this time who is God. Because no one else would describe such a workplace. No one believes in the worth of every person. Even in those who aren’t chosen first or chosen at all. There is humiliation in not being chosen. I can still remember back to 5th grade, not being chosen for a kickball team. No one who wanted to win would have chosen me first or until there were no better choices available. But this isn’t fifth grade; this is serious as anyone who is without a job in today’s tight job market will tell you. Whether you’re too old or the wrong color or gender or someone would work cheaper, or whatever else can be decided by an unfair whim. Judgments that we make about who is left standing and unchosen at 5:00 in the afternoon are most often mistaken and unfounded. This landowner who we’ve now figured out is God believes in those left standing at 5:00 so much so that God gives to them all that God has promised to us, and we don’t know what to do with that. Mostly we don’t like it because …

You’re making them equal to us.
And God says, Yes. Exactly. High five. Fist bump. Now you see what I mean. You get it. Now we can get started on building that world. Won’t take long now that we’re all on the same page.

And we answer:  Hold on, God, wait just a minute. We’re not there yet. Not sure we have the same measure of generosity that you do, God. At least not until we’re sure that we have enough of what we need, be it wages or respect or fairness or assurance of our own security or to cash in on the privileges we’ve work so hard for.

To which God replies:  are you envious because I’m generous?

Don’t you hate it when God cuts through all our words and comes quickly to the point? Don’t you dislike it when God so efficiently separates out what it is we think we need and instead gives us what is enough? Isn’t it maddening when God so pointedly puts us in our place, when it’s not at all the place we think we’ve earned, separating us from them. Doesn’t it frustrate and confuse us when we hear these stories that remind us that God will always choose the side of the weak, when we live in a world in which the strong can crush the weak, and we have to survive somehow.
We are envious, to be sure. But we are also in need of convincing that we too are worthy of God’s generosity. For many of us, that will take our entire lifetimes. It’s why we worry that we won’t have enough. It’s at the root of our fears, that we won’t be kept safe, included, forgiven, and loved. We’re not convinced that God has our back while also making the way safe for us to travel. Maybe we don’t really believe that it’s also there for us. But as the poem on the front of your bulletins will remind you this week, the sun shines on every face and each day ends with grace.

We are made in God’s image, and today’s image is one of generosity. It’s in our DNA, and if as followers of Jesus, we could claim that and own it, there wouldn’t be such a wide chasm between the world these parables describe and the world in which we live.
In that world, a shepherd could leave behind 99 sheep to go after just 1 that lost his way and not lose his job. That woman could take the time to turn her house upside down for just one small coin, and we wouldn’t think it a waste of valuable time. That father whose adult son has utterly disgraced him could not only welcome him home but would break into a run in order to throw his arms around him, when no dignified man of his day would run unless chased. Instead of a world in which we spend time debating what constitutes abuse in father-son relationships, not for adult sons who have squandered fortunes, but for 4 year olds riding in the back seat of a car.

What world is Jesus describing? The world God desperately wants us to be a part of. The world God desires. The world God is expecting us to build. A world in which everyone has enough and everyone has a place and everyone is given the privilege of serving.

We spend far too much of our energy hoping and even claiming that God is on our side. When, as Abraham Lincoln once said, our greatest concern needs to be that we are on God’s side. And on God’s side, generosity isn’t something to be understood or accounted for, calculated, quantified, or begrudged of the one who receives it.

Because that someone is you. And that man sleeping on the steps of Park Avenue Christian Church. That someone is me and my grandson safe and snuggled. And that someone is a child racing to cross our border to escape the horrors of her homeland.
Who needs to be first in line when we will all receive a full measure of God’s generosity?

Pastor.  Parent.  Activist