Kingdom of God within the Borders of the Epidermis

25 Pentecost A p. 28 November 19, 2023
Judges 4:1-7 Psalm 123
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 Matthew 25:14-30

Lectionary Link

The parables of Jesus are wisdom allegories to teach in very indirect ways.  They are not like a syllogism of logic that starts with premises and end with logical conclusions.  Rather, they are units which evoke experiential musings.  As stories they relate the inexactness of life situations and asks of listeners and reader to learn the intuitions of the art of living.

The parables are as instructive in what they leave out and they are open-ended in their meanings.  They are teasers and koans to return to in continuous reflection and they take on different meanings which mirror the particular message that we might need at different times in our lives.

The well known parable of the talents is assigned in the fall when most parishes are conducting their stewardship campaigns in doing financial planning for the next year.  Certainly many can and do use the parable of the talents to promote stewardship in the mission of the church.  

Stewardship is not just for raising money for the parish, because it is a very basic message of Jesus.  Life is a gift that is given but it is very undeveloped.  Human lives must be developed, and done so in optimal ways.  The epitaph that none of us wants on our tombstone would be: He had lots of potential.  Imagine a gardener inviting you to his house to view his seed collection.  Lots of seeds but no garden.

In the parable of the talents, the mostly absent boss hands out money to his servants to invest, in amounts of five, two, and one talents.

Those with five and two talents, invest their talents and when the boss returned they had doubled their talents, and were praised highly for their investment efforts.  The servant who had been given one talent confessed that he was afraid of losing it, so in fear he buried it in the ground so that he would at least not present his boss with a loss of his asset.  And so, his one talent was taken from him and given to the one who had doubled his five talents.

This parable bespeaks the law time and growth where change is inevitable and so the quest is to influence the outcomes in time.  This parable is about the seeming cruel law of atrophy; use it or lose it.  We must work in ways to influence positive outcomes in our lives and the belief of Jesus is that we as human beings have significant freedom to influence outcomes in our lives.  Remember that this Gospel literature is being read by an oppressed community who might be intimidated by their circumstance.  What freedom do we have in light of the Caesar's control of our lives and community?

But where is the strength of the realm or kingdom of God most poignantly to be active and influential?  Within the borders of the epidermis of the human body.  The kingdom of God needs have no rival within the epidermis of the human body.  Don't let the outer environment intimidate or steal from the individual who resides at the volitional command center within the borders of the epidermis.

The parable of Jesus is meant to inspire human agency within the realm in which each person has volitional control, namely, within one's own person.

Rather than treat the parable of Jesus as being cruel in its punishment of the man with the uninvested talent, we should merely let the parable inform us about probabilities within the field of freedom in our lives.

One of the important lessons in life is not to let fear paralyze us from developing the gifts of our lives.  Fear is being persuaded more about a negative outcome rather than a positive outcome.  The opposite of fear is faith, and faith is acting toward hopeful outcomes.

This parable highlights one of the central transformations espoused in the Gospel: transforming the energy of fear into the energy of faith.

Fear is based upon the belief that we have no agency to develop better outcomes in our lives.  Faith is being persuaded that we can continuously cooperate with events of grace to invest and invest and invest the gifts of our lives toward better outcomes.

I think the message of Jesus is about the discovery of the events of grace which provide the stimulating power to act persuasively toward better outcomes in our lives.

The message of the parable is an invitation for us to move on from the paralysis of fear to the grace activation of faith, whereby we choose to live celebrating our agency to be better today than yesterday, starting with the kingdom which is found within the borders of our epidermis.  And if we can bring better outcomes within our interior lives, we can begin to effect positive changes in the exterior environments and communities of our lives.

May God help us to the graceful insight of faith as the ideal transformation of the negative energy of fear.  Amen.

Kingdom of Heaven, to Be or Ever Has Been?

24 Pentecost, Cycle A proper 27, November 12, 2023
Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25 Psalm 78
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Matthew 25:1-1


Lectionary Link

We have read the parable about the bridesmaid who were prepared and those who weren't and this wisdom parable of Jesus presents to us some insights about the realm of God in our lives.

Those with apocalyptic propensity prefer to use this as the preparation for some cataclysmic end of the world has we know it.  And there are many Christians who resort to a sort of apocalyptic fatalism, one in which their perceived foes are punished and they who are God's preferred get spirited away to rapturous bliss.  The obsession with this kind of apocalypticism is so pronounced, it really seems at odds with a creating loving God who called creation good.  The apocalyptic sects of Christian religions are not environmentalists; "why save the environment if we are soon going to leave this wretched place for a better world?"  As proclaimed "dominionists" they believe the world should be dominated for their benefits and there is very little notion of stewardship care for this world which the creator God of Genesis called "good."

I believe the injunction to be prepared has a fuller meaning than than what the distorted views of the apocalyptic crowd proclaim.

When Jesus proclaimed the Realm of God, he was not proclaiming something new, he was observing what was always already, namely, if this world derives from the plenitude of God then the plenitude of all that is, is the realm of God.  Or, as St. Paul of the Acts of the Apostles reminded us, "we live, and move and have our being in God."  God is our Realm and our kingdom, past, present, and future.

Then why does the notion of the kingdom of heaven seem to be limited to an event or "events" in time?  The events in time have to do with the human perception of what is always, already.   We are always in the Realm of God but we don't always perceive it or live as though we are in God's Realm.

Being prepared for the kingdom or realm of heaven is about how we live toward the future.  The words of Jesus, "the kingdom of heaven will be like this," namely it is a future continuous tense.  The realm of God will be.....

And how are we to live toward what will be?  We are to live in ways of being ready for the future.  In the past, we have lived and moved had our being in God, in the present we live and have our being God , and it will also be such in the future.  

Being prepared is about holistic integration of our lives.  It is to be very practical.  The Boys Scout Motto is "Be prepared."  If one is going camping then one needs to be logistically prepared, with proper attire, proper supplies, and proper skill sets to meet the challenges of the trail and the remote places of the camping sites.

The issue of the wise and foolish bridesmaids in the parable was simply a matter of logistics of having an ample supply of oil for the lamps.  Those who did not have enough oil had a good excuse: "How were we to know that the bridegroom would be delayed?"

And isn't this a main issue of life?  How do we know the timing of future event so as to be properly prepared?

The warning words of Jesus for his early followers was this; you don't need to be prepared for some event of final salvation as to be able to live spiritually healthy lives no matter what befalls. 

The kind of preparation which Jesus asks for is not a fatalistic waiting for some final end of life as we know it, but rather an attitude of faith which can adjust to the actual conditions of life as we know it.

This is a wholistic and holistic kind of faith preparation.  It is integrative of the ways that we have to be prepared to live, and move, and have our being in God, even as such living includes living with all the people of our daily lives and world.  It includes using our past experiences and the experiences of others to anticipate the probabilities of what may yet happen to us.  It is practical and commonsensical; as such it means that human beings are mainly the answers to their own prayers.  There is enough to go around in the world; it is human failure which accounts for great personal needs of so many.  Therefore preparation of realization of the Realm of God is spiritual and moral, because the material world, the world of science and brute facts has to be accompanied with the moral and spiritual realization of the worthwhileness of everyone in God's realm.

From a cursory observation we can say that we are not prepared yet for the Realm of God, because the will of God in the heavenly realm is not yet being done on the earth of the visible realm.

The preparation for the kingdom of heaven for us is to bring the parallel heavenly values of love and justice to the actual surface of this visible world.  We cannot be complainer about not knowing that such things would happen to us; we must be those who are studying the ways of love and justice to be made known in whatever may come.

It is not realistic for us to complain about not knowing the specifics of future events, since the future will be much like the past and the present with the array of probable occurrences.  Preparation is not about pretending that we know specifics of the future, it is about knowing that God is equally present in all times.  If we are prepared in knowing God is present now, then we can carry this preparation to know that God will be present in our futures as well.

The message of the Gospel for us today is that being prepared means living in being God aware.  We prepare for the future by living God aware lives.  Let us be prepared by knowing God as the common great feature of all the times of our lives.  Amen.

Finding the Identity of Identities

23 Pentecost, A p26, November 5, 2023
Micah 3:5-12           Ps. 43
1 Thessalonians 2:9-13,17-20 Matt. 23:1-12

Lectionary Link

 
Because we are people in relationship and location and social settings we come to have many personal identities in our lives.  The list of identities are many and varied: father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, uncle, cousin, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, all kinship identities.  But we also have vocational identities: student, teacher, athlete, business man or woman, police officer, priest, and so on.  We receive important identity from what we do.  We receive identity from where we live: other side of the tracks, ghetto, rich neighborhood, gated community, and blue collar neighborhood.  We receive identity from associations and institutions: alumni, Mason, parish, diocese, denomination, and faith community.

Identities can be a positive or negative thing.  They can be something that we are proud of or ashamed of.  They can be how we regard the very worth of our lives.  They can be seen as how people regard our worth.

Our social lives might be regarded as trying to clamor for the best and highest identities.  We want to be part of the "in-crowd."  I am important because I am father, son, in such a such a family.  I am a businessman and millionaire.  I live in a very expensive house.  I went to the best schools.

But what if we are socially stuck with some not so fortunate identities?  Someone poor, someone uneducated, someone who has cancer, someone unemployed?

Identities which are socially forged can become the very basis of personal esteem and personal self worth, and the way in which others in society regard us.

The words of Jesus from our appointed Gospel address the identity issue for the members of the early Jesus Movement.  Many of those who followed Jesus had less than positive identities within their social settings.  Jesus appealed to those who were not given high regard in society.

The Jesus Movement was a movement to get people restored to their primary identity.  And what was that?  Created in the image of God, and therefore a child of God, first and foremost.  So this is where each person begins their identity.  Every other identity is simply how one is called to manifest the primary identity of life, namely being a child of God.  How am I a child of God as a father, mother, teacher, lawyer, business person, student, son, or daughter?

The words of Jesus were not meant to deny or get rid of the other identities in our lives; they were to remind us that whatever we do, whomever we are, we are first and foremost children of God, and therefore in our being and doing we are strive to perform our identities in godly ways?  And how do we do this?  By loving God, our neighbor as our self.

The Gospel message for us today is to found our identity upon being children of God and then in our various callings in life, strive to be godly in our behaviors, and seek our esteem in being children of God and treating others with that same esteem.  Amen.

Moses the Law Giver Is Dead; Long Live the Law

22 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 25, October 29, 2023
Deuteronomy 34: 1-12 Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 Matthew 22:34-46

Lectionary Link

How many law, rules, and regulations govern nearly every facet of our lives?   Seeming endless laws and unless we are legal experts or who have access to specialists, we might be breaking laws of which we are ignorant.  The church has laws, called canon laws and people can get into church trouble if they don't obey the canon laws.

We are familiar with the Big Ten, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments.  But the Torah lists a total of 613 commandments and these recommended behaviors and procedures were to be followed for the various areas of life for the members of tribes of Israel.  Certainly the judges, priests and scribes would continually have to be consulted in order to certify one's compliance with all these commandments.

We have read the account of the death of Moses, perhaps, the most famous Law Man of history.  Moses received the Law and one can imagine that the best case scenario is to have present both the law and the law giver.  When Moses was alive, he was like a living Torah, a living law and he was present to adjudicate and address any legal situation.

But what happens when the Law Giver dies?   Moses is gone; long live the Law.  The textual law is what is left after Moses is gone and there needed to be successive replacement figures for Moses.  There arose judges, priests, scribes, teachers, and prophets to be the living interpreters of the law.

The basic insight of the law is good order in all things.  There are too many bumper cars in life with the tendency of wanting to be in the same place at the same time.  So there needs to wise application for the avoidance of harm, chaos, and disorder in the world.

We can appreciate the basic insight of the law as the need for order and the recommended behaviors for good order and for the teaching of the good habits of order.

But the basic insight of the law can be lost; we can sully our relationship to the law.  We can turn the need for good order into legalism without humanity serving purposes.   We can accumulate thousands of law and in the proliferation of so many rules and law, we can lose the good purpose of law.  We can come to regard the performance of rules as being the certification of certain people's privilege in society.  "I am good because I publicly perform these laws.  Aren't I good, aren't those who don't keep the rules like I do, bad?"

When laws are made to highlight my goodness then the true motive of the law is lost.  In the quest for the best laws among the 613 commandments and among all the new rules and regulations that have come to human communities around the world, Jesus offers the secret to good legal thinking.  He offers the secret to how to discern good behaviors of speech and deed when one does not have access to the legal scholars or priestly casuists.  What is the secret?  Love.  St. Paul wrote that love fulfills the law.

Jesus harkened back to the spirit of the law which was present from the times of the story of Moses.  Love God.  That is how we grow our hearts.  God is too big for us to get our feelings around, but we keep stretching to increase our capacity to love by loving a much greater than us God.   And in this effort, we are asking for the experience of grace.  We seek to love God whom we don't see, to receive grace to love the ones whom we do see, namely our neighbors.  And we seek to love them even as we apply appreciative love for ourselves.

Jesus gives us the key to living lawfully, even when we may not know all of the rules and regulations.  In discerning how we should speak and act, we ask ourselves, "is my word and deed consistent with loving God and my neighbor as myself?"

The interlocutors of Jesus did not get the love message; they preferred to argue about the theological issue of the Messiah.

And isn't that what Christians often do with each other?  Why don't you believe and articulate the doctrine of your faith in the way that I do, the correct way?

We often would much rather look for theological reasons to disagree and to dislike each other, whereas, Jesus reminds us about the basics: Love God, and love your neighbors as yourself.  Amen.

Kingdom of God and a Worldwide Theocracy

21 Pentecost, Cycle A, Proper 24, October 22, 2023
Exodus 33:12-23 Psalm 99 1
Thessalonians 1:1-10 Matthew 22:15-22

Lectionary Link

Governments and nations built around divine laws are often called theocracies.  Some Islamic states aspire to have the religious law of Sharia be also the governing law of the entire country.  And in thinking that, what God thinks is best for us is also best for everyone else in the world.  There is an impulse in regional theocracies for them to spread and become universal.

The telling of the event of Mount Sinai originated within the people of Hebraic traditions and it revealed the divine right of the Law of God which is accompanied by an account of the relationship between Moses and God.  God is too great for human comprehension and so the saying, "No one has ever seen God."  No one has the capacity to equal God's greatness.  In the story of Moses' relationship with God, he was not about to see the face of God or directly perceive God even though he made the impossible request to do so.  In the story, Moses is given permission to see the back side of God.  This bespeaks the Orthodox expression that God cannot be known in God's essence, but only through the divine energies, the emanations or the things around God which can be known or revealed to humanity.  The invisible, unseeable God can be known in the Godly effects.

The theocracy of Hebraic religion is the discovery of divine laws or rules of recommended behaviors for people who center their lives around a belief in the One God.  Such laws within community could be construed to be political structure for the stable perpetuation of that community throughout time.

But was such a theocracy for the Jews to be just for them?  Or were they to be a hybrid proto-community for bringing such a theocracy to the entire world?  The prophets proclaimed the Temple to be a house of prayer for all peoples.  The self evidential logic around the belief in One God, is that the One God is for all.  The people of Israel were to be the politically exemplary society to bring the witness of their One God to the entire world.

The record of the Hebrew Scriptures indicates that by their own assessment of their own history, they failed to live up to the standards of God's law that had been given to them.  Often the kings of Israel and Judah did not keep even the first and most important commandment, namely the requirement of loyalty to the One God.

Nations with other gods who also gave their rulers divine right of rule impinged upon the people of Israel who did not ever seem to be able to achieve complete success in implementing a theocratic society built around a divinely revealed Law.

One might say that the Roman Empire was quite successful in attaining a worldwide theocracy simply because the belief in many gods and goddesses could be compatible with the main political theocracy, the cult of the Emperor.  If the Caesar is declared to be a god and son of a god, a savior of the world, and the one to enforce peace, one could see an effective political theocracy.  The wedding of the cult of the Emperor with the genius of Roman law truly provided the world with a worldwide structure.  The Emperor's cult was perhaps a proto-catholic religion to unite the cult of Emperor devotion with political and military power.

Jesus of Nazareth, born into family and country with a failed theocracy provides us a tradition of a hidden total kingdom of God, co-existing with the existing Roman kingdom of a successful theocracy of the cult of the Caesar.

The early followers of Jesus and the Jews had to forge their identities with the acceptance of being oppressed communities that had to survive within the successful theocracy of the Roman Emperor cult.  One of the ways in which the Emperor related to all of the people of the empire was through collecting taxes.

One of the most visible signs of unity in the kingdom of the Roman Empire was the image or the face of the Emperor superimposed upon the coinage.  The image, the icon, of the Emperor was proof of the Emperor's powerful presence throughout his world empire.  It was proof that he had power to collect taxes, that is, to exact from the life revenue of everyone within the Caesar realm.

One can see the obvious question that would come to Jesus and his followers.  One of the most basic messages in the logia or sayings of Jesus was his proclamation of the kingdom of God.  "So here we have it Jesus, the kingdom of God or the kingdom of the Caesar god, how do you negotiate between these two perspectives?"  And should those who claim allegiance to the kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus pay taxes to the Caesar-god of the empire?  Is one betraying the One God proclaimed and exemplified by Jesus if one pays taxes to the Caesar-god?

This was the question posed to Jesus and I think it highlights perhaps a dilemma for people who believed in One God who were being oppressed and forced into compliant empire behaviors by the Caesar-god and his forces.

The question to Jesus was about whether the Caesar should be resisted and rebelled against.  And the answer of Jesus is really a wisdom insight based upon some very ancient Hebraic wisdom.  What is that insight?  Caesar is only a human being, not a god, but the image of God resides on the Caesar.  So it is the duty of Caesar and all people made in the image of God to pay their lives as God's coinage to God.  Let Caesar have his coins in his empire game; the image of God is upon everyone and so everyone including the Emperor belonged to the One God.

This subtle wisdom answer reveals the secret of the growth of early Christianity.  The words of Jesus were not to overthrow the Caesar but to appeal the total divine ground on which everyone always already lives.  This Gospel of Matthew came to textual form after Paul wrote for his community in Rome to pray for the authorities in Rome.  The Jesus Movement was an under-the-radar-movement which ironically rode the coattails of Roman world expansion such that the Roman ability to connect the entire known world through roads, transportation, and administration became also the media for the spread and the travel of the message of Jesus Christ which was this, the image of God is upon everyone, and Jesus came to make that evident.

Today people may still try to make their local practice of religion with all its specificities into the one practice of religion for everyone.  The positive feature of this insight is that it is charitable to regard one's best gift and insight as being available to everyone else.  The negative is that it is too easy to over identify the cultural details of one's own situation as being coercively absolute for everyone else.  The fracture of the Christian religion into so many expressions is proof of the arrogance of trying to make the very local, the universal for everyone.

The Gospel for us today is this, like Moses, we are only located to see a very partial facet of the "back side of the divine," and we should not presume otherwise.  Like St. Paul, we can remain as humble relativists in confessing, "Now I only see in part."  We only see the part of the Whole, and we should be humble about this, and in our humility we should affirm that the kingdom of God is so vast and such an inward iconic reality, that it can co-exist with the incredible faith differences which occur in our world.

The Gospel Jesus says to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars; the anthropomorphic stamped upon every human product.  At the same time, we have the privilege to render unto God the things that are God's because the image of God is a rendering or a branding of everyone as belonging to God.  The Gospel message of Jesus is that you and I have the privilege to be a part of everything including ourselves being rendered back to the everlasting God because the endless future One is the only One with the duration to truly include and collect all in All.

Let us be those whose lives are gladly without resistance or competition, rendered back to God today.  Amen.

Who Is Invited to the Wedding?

20 Pentecost, Cycle A  Proper 23, October 15, 2023
Exodus 32:1-14  Psalm 106
Philippians 4:1-9 Matthew 22:1-14

Lectionary Link

The biblical record is a history of sorts of various people who discover relationship with God.  History is presented in before and after linear ways and in such presentations, one can be left the impression that God becomes something more after than what God was before.  And this may seem true in the progressive understanding of God in human awareness.

The parable of Jesus about the invitation protocols for a great wedding feast illustrates the difference between prior understandings of God and more enlightened understandings of God.

Since the Hebrew Scriptures indicate that a people had a distinct identity built around the story of their discovery of and relationship with a singular unique God, such a storied relationship could give them or any people a sense of being first and favored of all humanity in the eyes of God.

By the time Jesus was telling his teaching stories, much of his crowd were aware of the favored people, such that people believed that God had A listers, B listers, C listers, and outcasts.

We perhaps need to understand the parable in a reverse way.  God is love.  There is and has never been outcasts with God.  Everyone has, always, already been invited to the God wedding, the wedding of divine with the created order by virtue of creation bearing the image of God.

But this divine wedding of God has not always had ideal and universally promulgated invitations.  Israel discovered their invitation in their covenant with God as consummated in their receiving of the laws as their wedding vows with God.

In the record of the people of these covenant vows with God, they are honest about their failure to keep the vows even while maintaining their sense of having an exclusive lock upon who has access to this great on-going wedding feast of God's immanence in the created order.

In a linear presentation of the history of relationships with God, it can seem that many people have not heretofore been invited to the knowledge of this great marriage of God and creation.  The fact that the seeming previously uninvited are finally invited, is not the truth of an always inviting God; it is truth of how people come to the awareness of God.  It is the history of how some people presume to hoard or presume an exclusive relationship with God which is not offered to others.

The parable of Jesus establishes the fact that God invites everyone to the divine presence in the created order.  This universal invitation challenges those who believe that they have some exclusive privilege with God.

The parable also highlights in a rather enigmatic way God's egalitarian and social leveling ways.  In the wedding of God, God provides the dress for all to meet the dress code, the equal grace that is provided for all, irregardless of their ethnic, social, or economic condition.  In the parable one guest treated it as though it were the Met Gala, in wanting to stand out in his unique garb trying to make his statement about being "better dressed" than the others.  The punishment seems harsh but it is only evocative about there being no replacement for the equality of grace in the invitation and the entrance into the realm of God.

We are invited today to regard God, the way that Jesus did, first as the One who has always, already universally invited all to be aware of the divine realm in which we live and move and have our being.  And we are invited to don the social leveling garment of grace which has been provided for us and everyone to meet the appropriate dress code for the perpetual celebration of the marriage of divine with the created order.  May God help each of us know that we and everyone else has been invited to this great event of Love of God for us and our world.  Amen.

Apparent Possession Is Nine Tenth of the Law?

19 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 22, October 8, 2023

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 Psalm 19
Philippians 3:4b-14 Matthew 21:33-46

Lectionary Link

What is the difference between a contract and a covenant?  A contract is a legal agreement which has juridical consequences, like punishment and penalties if one does not fulfill the terms of the contract.  Any punishment in a covenant are the self-punishments which occur because of bad behaviors in the covenant.

A covenant is like a contract but it is based not upon potential penalty but upon relationship and the quality of that relationship.

The biblical writings are about a covenant with God and the collective and cumulative insights that people throughout the years gained about a loving relationship with God.

St. Paul wrote that to love is to fulfill the law, and a chief definition of God is Love.

This means that a profound energy of relation, Love, is the perpetual lure which pulsates through Nature and Love is the Super-Nature is which always already present and able to be engaged by all who are born to love and be loved.

The biblical writings are about how we as human beings have discovered our failure to be loving with God and each other.  God as a loving parent does not disown or disinherit unruly children especially those who live in ignorance of their original blessing and calling to love and be loved.

Children who are ignorant of their own limited probabilities as well as their own positive potential need to be instructed in best practices for fulfilling the human vocation to love and be loved.

One could say that great 10 commandments were a watershed moment in people coming to wisdom about recommended behaviors which were founded upon a relationship with a loving God and in discovering this, discovering behaviors which made for loving behaviors within human community.

And this is the age old human vocation.  Discovering God in loving relationship and using this relationship to build loving relationship within human community.

Some people might fault God for being too inapparent in this covenant relationship.  God as a Luring Energy of Love, might not be in-your-face or coercive enough to be effective like we grown accustomed to with earthly authorities.  We perhaps would rather have a Teddy Roosevelt God who "walks softly but carries a big stick," to intervene at anytime to bring unloving behaviors to an immediate halt.  Those who have entered the covenant in the discovery of loving relationship with God, may get impatient with God's seeming inapparency. 

God being seemingly, inapparent means that we can note that humanity often lives by the famous law stated as "Apparent Possession is Nine Tenth of the Law."  Namely, if I can appear to be the owner and no one is actively intervening to dispute my use of the property, then for all intents and purposes I can act as though I am owner of the property.

The parable of Jesus present this scenario: The absentee landlord keeps sending agents to collect his rent and the tenants resist and even destroy the very son of the landlord.  This represents the complete blindness of humanity to the Greatness from which we came and the Greatness to which we belong.  We act like emperors with fifteen minutes of fame in our relative short lifespan in comparison to the Everlasting One who still own everything after our petty pretensions about our "apparent" but usurping ownership.

The members of the communities which read the writings we call the Gospel of Matthew believed that many people were tripping over Jesus as a cornerstone to a new manifestation of what it would be like to build our lives acknowledging God's ownership.  Many treated Jesus as one who challenged their exclusive claims of ownership on this world.  Jesus came to not to take away the fact that the world is fully give to the Jews and to everyone, but to make sure that everyone was invited to this covenant of a loving God who calls us to love.  St. Paul also wrote, "Do you not know that you were bought with a price so that you are not your own and that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?"

The witness of Jesus was to better define the stewardship roles for us given to all by a loving God.  No one, Jew or Gentile could claim to be God's exclusive stewards.  A loving God does not exclude but lovingly lures all to tap into the power of divine love which allows the stewardship of loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Today, we can be fooled by God as an apparent absentee landlord and we can pretend we own our lives and all which we seek to hoard.  Or we can discover the loving lure of God who has given all for our enjoyment and use, and who invites us to stewardship, stewardship of our relationships with each other, and stewardship in our loving care of our world.

Let us live this covenant of love with God and with each other and make God apparent to this people who desperately need this covenant of love.  Amen.

Christ As A Study in Authority and Power

18 Pentecost, a p 21, October 1, 2023
Exodus 17:1-7 Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16
Philippians 2:1-13 Matthew 21:23-32

Lectionary Link

The Christian presentation of God is ironically about the voluntary weakness of God.  And this might seem oxymoronic since the definitional essence of God would mean that God has no rival in power and authority.

Our common notion of power and authority involve persons or entities which are able to dominate, suppress, oppress, intervene anywhere at will and enforce their willful desires upon anyone.  This means our common notion of power means being able to be an individual or a corporate tyrant.

Certainly Machiavelli tried to dress up the ugliness of a tyrant's power with appearances of power diplomacy but the common political meaning of power, is how to get one's power goals by any means possible.

God in Christ in the presentation of his life is a very counter notion of power and authority.

The Gospel interlocutors asked Jesus by what authority he was doing what he did, in his teaching and in his healing, and in his new presentation of what God wants of us.  How Jesus answered was by implying that the authority healing is in effect upon the person healed and the authority of teaching in the enlightening effect upon the learners life.  He did this by asking them about the authority of John the Baptist.  The ministry of John the Baptist had gained a crowd and the success of baptism and repentance in the lives of people was a legitimizing authority and it was so significant that the interlocutors of Jesus did not want to question the authority of John's success.

Where then does authority come from?  It comes from doing the will of God.  Not saying that we will do the right things, but actually doing what is right.  The parable of Jesus indicates that there were people who could not get their words and deeds to line up.  Some said that they would do right but didn't, others initially said they would not do what is right, but then became converted to do what was right.  There is an authority which comes in doing what is right.

The location of where authority is found is in will to act.  What is the crucial feature of authority?  The freedom to act.

And this brings us to the ironic authority and power of God in Christ as it is expressed the famous hymn found in the letter to the Philippians.   The authority of the divine is seen in being emptied into the experience of the human person Jesus.  This bespeaks the voluntary weakness of God in being submitted to the free conditions of living within an incredible field of probabilities.  And one probability was the God-human being completely emptied into the experience of death, the seeming state of having no authority, no power, in the state of lifelessness.  The weakness of God is the power of a totally free Being, God, sharing a degree of freedom with everyone and everything and submitting to those very conditions of freedom.  This is what accounts for moral significance, the honoring of the true conditions of freedom in this life.  This is what makes human choices truly worth something.

And now we are called to the same ironic power of God in Christ.  Where we have power, knowledge, and wealth, we are not suppose to grasp equality with these symbols of power as our identity; rather we are to empty the power, knowledge, and wealth into service on behalf of those who don't have enough.  The witness of Christ to power is to equalize the spread of dignity among the people of the world through knowledge, sharing of wealth, and the empowerment of the value of their lives for the well being of the community.

Just as the power of Christ seemed to be nothing compared with the Caesar and the agents of the Roman Empire, today we have the same situation for those who advocate Christly power.  The tyrants and the hoarding greedy wealthy and fame hounds seem to define what power and authority mean today.  Meanwhile in myriads of ways countless numbers of people are using their power to empower other people through plain everyday ordinary service.  It may not be flashy or noticed but every child who gets tended to exemplifies the kind of power of the humility of Christ who always, everywhere inspires sacrificial service.

We live in this weakness of God, which is known as the sacrificial power of service to others to equalize the spread of manifold gifts which are present within this world.  This sacrificial power is known and manifested in the freedom to do the will God, which is the promotion of love and justice in this world.  Let us discover this emptying grace which gives us the power over selfishness and impels us to serve those in need.  Amen.

How Is Justice Seemingly Unfair?

17 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 20, September 24, 2023

Jonah 3:10-4:11 Psalm 145:1-8
Philippians 1:21-30 Matthew 20:1-16

Lectionary Link

Our country is currently experiencing some labor union strikes.  Worker want fair wages and benefits and there is justice in that.

The parable of Jesus that we have read for today presents an unfair wage situation to evoke an insight about what justice means in actual practice.

The workers of the parable who worked long hours got paid the very same as the workers who worked but a very short time.  And so they naturally cried, "Unfair!"

The prophet Jonah believed that his people had an exclusive covenant contract with God, and when God called him to share the benefits of a covenant with God with the foreign people of Ninevah, he was angry.  His behavior said to God, "It's not fair.  We are God's favorites, and we have favored nation status with God.  Why should I have to share news of God's favor to foreign people?"

God's grace and favor belonging to everyone, can seem to us in our presumption of specialness to be unfair.

We proclaim that all are made in the image of God and this means each person is blessed with the dignity of bearing God's image.

But we are not equal in our appearance, our DNA, skills, age, talent, health, social, political, and economic circumstances.

How does the equality of God function in the circumstances of vast differences of human conditions?  This question is the spiritual, social, political, human, and Gospel question.

A young child might complain about the privileges of an older sibling.  "Mom, why can't I stay up as late as my big brother?"  It is apparent that there are conditions in life which require different treatment, seeming unequal treatment.

How do we treat people differently according to their circumstance but do it while affirming their equal dignity?  This is the question of applied justice.  Applied justice can seem unfair in actual treatment situations.  Mom and dad have good reasons for have different bedtimes for their children, and yet they have equal love for all their children.

The God contract with everyone is the same.  That is where we are all equal, equal in bearing the dignity of the image of God.

The probable conditions of freedom leave us in an ocean of differences among people.  The great Gospel question is how can we honor the equal dignity of every person while honoring the very specifics of their life situations.

The wide array of differences in people's life situation makes the work of justice very difficult; it makes it a "feeling art," one based upon having empathy with others to know their situation and act in their best interest within their community of people.

The church was established by the early followers of Jesus to be a hybrid community of living the wisdom of applied justice for people with differences.  And this is still our Gospel task today; to model applied justice with the people closest to us as a way to spread the divine dignity which is upon the lives of everyone.

Societies provide us laws of applied justice as well; but Gospel justice is based upon an enhanced meaning of the worth of each person in having the treasure of God's image upon them.

Our task as Gospel communities is for the release and the development of the treasure of God's image on each person in life.  The task is not easy; it requires the persistent discernment of what is needed for each person to know dignity in their life situation.  This means learning how to live with each other well.

Today, the Gospel invites us to the mission of learning, discerning, and practicing applied justice to the many different people in our lives.  Amen.

Forgiveness as the Chief Strategy of Reconciliation

16 Pentecost, Cycle A proper 19, September 17, 2023
Genesis 50:15-21 Psalm 103:8-13
Romans 14:1-12 Matthew 18:21-35

Lectionary Link

In Second Corinthians, St. Paul wrote, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their sins against them."

So one could say that the big task in the world of vast differences is the task of reconciliation.

And this is a big dream, and one might think that it's an impossible dream.  But even those who do not believe in God, have this dream.  Just take a look at the John Lennon song, "Imagine."  Imagine a world, with no heaven, no hell, no killing, no possessions, no religion, but peace and the brotherhood of all.

And religionists would say that such a dream is based upon unreality.  Let's just pretend that people do not sin and that everyone is a perfect angel.

Whether we believe in God or don't, the dream of reconciliation hangs over us a reminder that we need to be better.  The dream remains because the highest standard needs to inform the direction of our aspiration.

The insight behind reconciliation is that everything belongs together with a purpose.  Such an insight might be called the harmony of justice, or giving each being its dignified place in the great mixture of the community of all things.

It is quite one thing to dream impossible dreams of reconciliation for all things; it is another thing to actually do the work in real life situations.

The mission of the church as it came to writing in the New Testament was this great mission of reconciliation.  And to make reconciliation more than a grand theory, such reconciliation needed a strategy.

And the specific strategy of reconciliation is the strategy of forgiveness.  The church was to be a model community where reconciliation was practiced through events of forgiveness.  And often, we might think that churches and their members have been better at fighting among themselves than at reconciling.  Even so, it remains the mission of the church to be the laboratory of forgiveness, proving love in the specific practice of forgiveness and becoming a model for the greater task of reconciliation in the world at large.

The practice of forgiveness is a chief strategy of reconciliation.  Forgiveness is both difficult and necessary for the survival and the effective functioning of family and community.

Today in our world of bad news which scream louder than the good news; we can get the impression that the work of reconciliation is failing on a grand scale.  We can note that human populations reside in places of great natural disasters which take human lives.  And we can bewail that human life patterns do not seem to be reconciled with the great happenings in nature.  And when we look at the war, fighting, gross inequality, and the oppression of tyrants, we wonder about any success toward reconciliation in our world.

We recognize that forgiveness in practice is very difficult since the paths of avenging, revenging, or passive aggression seem to even the sides of harmed people.  This is why we need to focus upon the great reconciliation which is evidenced in each moment of life, namely everlastingness itself.  The continual renewal of everything in time is proof of everything being forgiven and given another chance in a new moment with slightly different conditions than the previous moment.  What we call the sustaining work of God is also God's forgiveness of all that was so that all that is can still become something better.

God's sustaining is the always already forgiveness for all that is, to have another chance at becoming.  And this sustaining is God ever present forgiveness of what has been.

And we need to learn how to reside within this great forgiveness of God to let everyone and everything continually have a chance at being better.

We need not be sentimental or naive about reconciliation or forgiveness.  Both co-exist with the needs for confession, penance, reparations, juridical punishment, as well as the extreme sicknesses of psycho and social pathologies which highly complicate the practice of forgiveness.  The practice of forgiveness is not a naive pacifism in face of some horrendous evils.

While the big evils dominate our world news, it is the myriads of acts of forgiveness which preserve human community and helps us continue to function toward a better justice for all people.

And so let us not grow weary in continuing to pray, "forgives us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us."  "God let us survive another day to improve as we allow others to survive another day to improve as well."

And let us stop counting how many times we have to forgive.  God's sustaining forgiveness is endless, and we need to live in the train of the grace of forgiveness.   In this way we will be with Christ in reconciling the world to God, and us to each other.  Amen.

Church Conflict and the Presence of Christ?

15 Pentecost, A p18, September 10, 2023
Ezekiel 33:7-11 Psalm 119:33-40
Romans 13:8-14 Matthew 18:15-20

Lectionary Link

College football teams have eleven players on the field at a time, but some universities have in their home game what they call the twelfth man.  And who is the twelfth man?  The twelfth man is the home crowd advantage.  The twelfth man is the thousands of screaming hometown fans.  Odds makers actually determine point spreads by factoring the twelfth man, the home crowd advantage for the local team.  The mystical twelfth man seems like there is another person present playing with the eleven on the field to give the home team an advantage.

This seeming trivial example of a human phenomena highlights the phenomenon of the experience of another kind of presence within a group gathering.  If a group survives with an identity, the secret of survival involves its mystification in the experience of the arrival of another presence, a presence of identity.

The success of the church throughout the ages might be attributed to this mystical presence which has and can occur among members committed to the original values of the founding person.

We perhaps have learned to neglect the mystical presence that can and does occur.  Why?  The church or churches have become such outward and institutional presences that their external presences have become what we regard to be their guarantee of continue presence into the future.  It is so much easier on our senses to look at all the outward signs of the church's presence in our world, the hierarchies, the liturgies, the buildings, shrines, and traditions.  Churches have such obvious physical presence within the world, that we rely on these outward signs for her future continuation.

The Gospel of Matthew, read for today, highlights perhaps the secret of the success for the survival of the early Jesus Movement.  We associate the presence of Christ with so many outward signs or with favorable conditions of peace and comfort, but we forget the context of a very familiar saying of Jesus, "Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."  I have heard this quoted over and over again for many church situations except the actual context presented in the Gospel where it appears.

The context is actually conflict, disagreement, and even sin within the community.  How can and how does the community survive the crises of conflict, disagreement and sin?  Well, the church includes members who continue to gather in small numbers or large numbers.  How does the church gather?  In the name of Christ, that is believing that the Risen Christ remains committed to us and we remain committed to the Risen Christ.  And within this inner mystical transaction, another presence is known, the Risen Christ is known in resolving ways to the crisis of the family, and parties can know the wisdom of resolution.  It does not mean that the resolutions will be pain free or that egos will not be bruised and it does not mean easy forgiveness.  What it means is that the presence of the Risen Christ has a largesse about it to co-exist with lots of community conditions as members struggle to stay together, to love, to forgive, to remember their mission beyond themselves in the spreading of the love and justice of Christ.

A community has to learn to survive itself by taking its focus off itself and reaching out beyond itself to those whose needs are more important than our own community disagreements.

And this other beckoning presence of the Risen Christ realized in our continuing persuasion about the values of Christ, is the secret of how we can continually be comprised so that we can bear the Christly presence within our world.

Let us not forsake gathering with Christly values, and let us get over ourselves with our community conflicts, and re-purpose our energies to the ends of care, justice, and mercy for the many in our world in need.  Amen.

Wishful Thinking and Opiate of the People?

14 Pentecost,  A p17, September 3, 2023
Jeremiah 15:15-21 Psalm 26:1-8
Romans 12:9-21  Matthew 16:21-28

Lectionary Link

Two of the most famous Jewish atheists, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud had their critiques of religion.  Religion for Freud was an illusion built mainly on wishful thinking.  For Marx, religion was for oppressed people an opiate to help them bear up and tolerate the actual material condition forced upon by the powerful and wealthy who used religion as a ideology to give poor people a mental analgesic for their pain.  Another philosopher, famous for his atheism, Nietzsche, criticized the beatitudinal message associated with Jesus as a transvaluation of noble values, because the beatitudes turn the values of  human preferred conditions on their head.  Poverty?  Blessed.  Being persecuted.  Blessed.  Mourning?  Blessed.  Giving your coat away.  Blessed.   So one was to regard one's deprived conditions as a blessed and favorable state?  Nietzsche was perhaps suggesting that the values of Jesus were masochistic.  How can one declare negative conditions as being blessed or favorable and be regarded as psychologically sound?

How might we respond to these critiques?  First, we might respond by acknowledging the piercing insights of each of these critiques.  In fact, the encounter presented between Jesus and Peter in our appointed Gospel highlights these issues of the early Jesus Movements particularly for Jews who had preferred notions of what a Messiah should be.  Peter who was congratulated by Jesus for confessing Jesus as the Messiah was immediately rebuked as a messenger of Satan because he could only understand the Messiah to be a triumphant over-powering person who would establish a kingdom with superior power to set Israel free and to place his favorites as leaders in his kingdom.

What was obvious to everyone?  The Caesar of Rome was still the King of this world, so what was Jesus?  If Jesus was not a greater King David who would unseat the Caesar of Rome, could he really be the Messiah?

What was the reality for the early followers of Christ, and what is often the reality for many many people?  Many people are oppressed and beaten down by the people who are powerful and wealthy.  And if we don't realize this, it probably means that we more naturally identify with the people in power than the oppressed and the poor, and we live lives of comfort.

What most Christians in Western Christianity today have not really grasped is that the New Testament is basically written from the conditions of and for people who were oppressed and they did not have much political or economic power in their world.

The New Testament is not a book to give prosperity Christians an affirmation of their right and privilege to be prosperous; rather it is comprised of writings which I might call a program of Christ-recommended martial arts for people without much social or political power.  The New Testament writings were survival manuals for people living under the radar in private communities within the cities of the Roman Empire.

If you are an oppressed people, you have to find ways to act for survival.  Think of the slaves in our America experience or the indigenous people whom we ran off their land; the New Testament was written more for people such as them needing survival than it was for the oppressing people who colonized and who enslaved.  It is quite a travesty to see pompous, prosperity preachers of privilege claiming to own the New Testament as certifying their postures of privilege.

In Paul's letter the Romans, we can find seeds of the beatitudes, which were written over decade before the beatitudes of the Gospel of Matthew came to text.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Paul is writing a program of Christ-like martial arts for persons in Rome who have no political power or public prominence. But Paul believes that they can have the witness of a profound lifestyle which can be winsome to people. How does this profound winsome lifestyle happen? It happens when one's interior life is over-shadowed and remade in such ways as to make kindness natural, when it would seem to be more natural to hate one's oppressors or compromise with their values so as to survive in the situation of being a small minority.

The Gospel dialogue between Jesus and Peter, is the dialogue of the early church for their members. "You are not called to a lifestyle where you will have positions in government on behalf of King Jesus who leads thousands of soldiers; rather you are inwardly overtaken by a Risen Christ in Holy Spirit power to provide you with a way to live like Jesus did. He did not live as one who was to lead an armed revolt against the Romans; he lived as one who modeled what it was like to let an inner God-possession put one on a path of transformation. And in living in this way, you can attract, invite, and see many initiated into this new lifestyle which derives from this inner mystical experience."

The free conditions of our world today renders a field of probable conditions. There are oppressors or seeming respectable people of power who consciously suppress people for their own gain or do it unconsciously because their social training has taught them thus. Frankly, the American Church and the Western Church, has been more on the side of those with power than it has been on the side of the oppressed. We have a cruel history of participation in the slave trade and practice, as well as being horrendous invaders of indigenous people who removed them from their land and living situations. And so we should heed the critiques of people like Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche and seek a just understanding of our relationship to the New Testament, a literature for the oppressed while we occupy our identity with parties of privilege and power.

Do we allow the New Testament to be an ideology of mere comfort to convince oppressed people to tolerate their conditions of poverty and lack of access to a fair share of the goods and services of our societies?

To Marx, Freud, Nietzsche and skeptics I would assert that it is a best part of human nature to be wishful thinkers. Perhaps within all the woe in life, we have the smiling for no reason infant retained within us as the always already occasion for new birth. We are wishful thinkers and hopeful thinker because we are oriented toward the future of something better. The Bible is part of a program of wishful thinking about our future even while being realistic about our shadow nature and the freedom for lots of bad things to happen. The New Testament happened to develop this wishful thinking program for living among people who had no political power and it became such a successful Christ-martial arts lifestyle that it caught on.

Wishful thinking programs also serve as an analgesic through the visualizations of justice being realized in practice and in punishment. Christian need not apologize for the analgesic literature of the apocalyptic with visualizations of quick and imminent interventions by future rescuing heroes. We should be quite mindful that today the apocalyptic visualization has moved into the general culture in art and cinema. The cinema versions of the future and intervening superheroes reveal that our culture are more apocalyptic in visionary art than the Bible ever was. So wishful thinking and visualization of freedom from pain and oppression is the opiate, the analgesic which all people take for the pain, the pain of knowing lots of bad things are happening to us and world at any given time.

We need not apologize for our wishful thinking or for wanting creative visualization to end pain and suffering and for the establishment of justice. But Bible readers have become a scorn for the skeptics because of their failure to defend their writings consistent with sound anthropology, the soundness of coping with life as it is.

The Gospel for the early community where the Gospel of Matthew was generated was the insight presented using the dialogue of Peter and Jesus. The message to the early church was this: "Jesus was a suffering servant; so too the followers of Jesus will be walking in the path of the suffering servant, and so it must be walked with the Christ-like martial arts of winsome living demonstrating the life of the Risen Christ."

Let us who are not oppressed and who enjoy power, wealth, and privilege not presume to think that our lifestyles instantiate the lifestyles of New Testament suffering peoples. And if we don't consciously go out and seek to suffer, what can we do?

We are obliged by the Gospel of Christ, not to be oppressor when we have power, wealth, and privilege. We are obliged by the Gospel of Christ to care for those who have known the brunt of oppression, suffering, and social persecution.

A Christ-like martial arts for those of us on side of privilege in our society is to live a life of care for those in need through direct active deeds but also in being active citizens influencing programs for the common good of the most possible number of people.

The Gospel challenge for people of privilege is to sell all that we have in terms of our personal power and greed, and use what we have to help those who do not have have access to care, compassion, and social dignity. May God grant us a Gospel path so as not to be embarrassed or ashamed of our lifestyle practices and choices today. Amen.