"We are beggars. It is true." -Martin Luther

March 19, 2017  3rd Sunday in Lent              Matthew 19-20

Once again we find Matthew’s gospel challenging us and maybe even offending us.  Let’s start with what is perhaps the most offensive of all in these two chapters, the young man.  Although perhaps if you grew up going to church you know him as the “rich young ruler.”   If you do I want to challenge you to set that image aside.  This scene appears in three of our gospels.  Mark calls him rich.  Matthew adds young.  Luke calls him a ruler.  Thus, “the rich young ruler.” 

Now you could argue that we have three reasonably reliable historical sources here and we are wise to combine them to give a richer and more complete picture of the situation.  Indeed Christianity has done that many times over the centuries.  The problem is that we get this image of a rich and powerful young leader and we easily caricaturize him into a self-righteous elitist snob.  And that is something none of the gospels want us to do.  As we read Matthew’s gospel we always want to keep in mind that we are in the story world Matthew creates around Jesus.  It is the world he uses to teach us about Jesus and ourselves.  We are best to leave Mark and Luke out; not supplement with them.

So, how should we picture this well-off young man?  In today’s imagery think of him as the guy you want to have as your next door neighbor.  He’s the kind of guy you want to have as your dad.  He’s a good guy: honest, fair, dependable, hard-working and the ideal role model.  He’s the neighbor you put on your kids emergency contact list at school.  He has the three-bedroom suburban house with a deck, back yard and man cave in the basement.  He’s not perfect however.  He has just enough flaws to be likable.  There are mud puddles under each of the swings on the swing set in his back yard.  The flowerbeds around his house are well kept but there are a few weeds.  And his minivan has a ding in the back he’s never bothered fixing after a neighborhood kid ran into it with his bike.

So, when this man who has and really deserves a mug that says, “World’s Greatest Dad.” comes to Jesus and asks, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” we expect Jesus to say, “Great job man!  You’re in!  Will you be the poster child for my ad campaign?  I’ve already got a photographer lined up.”

By the standards of that day, and by the standards of our day, this is the perfect man.  “…go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

The disciples say, “Then who can be saved?”  Jesus replies, and this is one of those verses that you want to carve deeply and eternally into your brain, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”

If you can grasp that verse then the rest of these chapters will make perfect sense.  For mortals it is impossible.  For God all things are possible.

You live in an impossible situation.  I don’t care how perfect you are by any and every worldly measure, you are a hopeless lost cause.  You have one and only one way into eternal life, and that is by a power you have no control over and have no capacity to influence.

There’s no point trying to impress God.  There’s nothing you can offer God that God doesn’t already have.  You’ve heard me say before Martin Luther’s last written words before he died, “We are beggars.  It is true.”

Keep all that in mind as we look at the other scenes in Matthew 19 and 20:

The parable of the laborers in the vineyard; again, by all worldly standards this is highly unfair – equal pay for unequal work.  But if God’s grace were logical or could be calculated it wouldn’t be grace.

The request of the mother of James and John to be seated in the seats of power at Jesus left and right, in light of God’s grace this request is utterly absurd.

The two blind men healed at the end of Chapter 20, they had nothing to offer Jesus at all but he heals them.

In a similar light, Jesus blessing the little children, they also had nothing to offer Jesus.

And perhaps the most directly cutting of all of Jesus teachings we read today; Jesus teachings on sexual ethics at the beginning of Chapter 19.  Christians have always squirmed with that teaching and always tried to come up with exceptions, escape clauses and more wiggle room.  But Jesus doesn’t mince words.  He means what he says.  He roots sexuality to God’s creative actions and intentions.

Maybe your life fits those intentions, maybe not.  If no, then call a spade a spade.  Adultery is adultery.  It is a sin.  It always has been.  It always will be.  You’re a sinner in need of God’s redeeming.  If yes, your life fits God’s intentions, then great for you… remember what Jesus told “the world’s greatest dad.”  You’re still a sinner in need of God’s redeeming.  We’re in the same vein of thought that we’ve had since reading the Sermon on the Mount.  If one thing doesn’t catch you then something else will.

Matthew portrays Jesus as impossibly demanding, and ultimately impossible to impress.  This is not to portray God as cruel, but in order for every person who ever reads his gospel to recognize they are caught in the net of sin, and thus in need of God’s grace.

The ultimate message, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”  Trust in that.  Rejoice in that.  Because God does the work therefore you can reflect God’s work in your life.  

Christian Community

March 12, 2017  2^nd Sunday in Lent               Matthew 18

Today’s chapter from Matthew is sometimes called the “Community Discourse.”  It parallels the “Missionary Discourse” that we read in Matthew 10.  Like a lot of things in Matthew it follows a structure, and I hope that came out the way we read it.  There are two sections each broken into three parts: One, the topic is introduced; two, Jesus gives a teaching; and three, the teaching is illustrated with a parable.  Taken as a whole this is about how we should treat each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.  Like everything, it is challenging, and it upends everything we do in daily life.

We humans like to make distinctions and have stratifications.  We measure people based on how smart they are.  We even quantify it with IQ tests.  We measure people based on how much money they have – that is easily quantifiable even if it is socially unacceptable to share your net worth in public.  We measure people based upon their looks, their athletic ability, their charisma and on and on and on.  Sure, as Christians we know it is wrong, but it is also unavoidable and we should resist it.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “We should try to get them as members,” after a person or family has visited; however it doesn’t happen with every visitor.  Consciously or not, I think we have a model in our minds of what makes a valuable new member.  We want those people.  And, therefore unavoidably, there are also people that we don’t really care about as members.  While we won’t exactly exclude them, we won’t pursue them as vigorously.  This is wrong, but we do it.

I think we are drawn to people who help us get ahead, or who amuse us, or who make us feel good about ourselves.  We are repulsed by people who offend us, or who make us work on things we don’t want to work on.  You’ve heard me say before that living in the suburbs or a bedroom community is very challenging to faith.  Not everyone can afford to live in places like this.  Those who can have really bought themselves the best of all worlds – close enough to the good parts of urban life to easily enjoy it, but removed from the bad parts.  When you and everyone else around you has done the same thing it becomes its own culture.  Then instead of recognizing that you are an extraordinarily fortunate person, inadvertently you start to think of it as the norm.  You expect it.  You demand it as your right.

When I inspected bridges we usually worked at least ten hour days when we were in the field.  The exception was the one bridge in Harlem.  There we started at 7am.  By 4pm we finished up, climbed into the company van and drove back to a Red Roof Inn in suburban New Jersey.  It was time to leave the filth and the crime and the violence and the noise behind.  We called it, “the armpit of the world.”  Now of course the Red Roof Inn is just run of the mill accommodations, but it was a palace by comparison.  I sometimes reflect on what life was like for the thousands who couldn’t climb into a company van every night and drive away from it all.

In our gospel reading notice that the disciples are starting to get that God loves everyone and invites everyone into his kingdom.  That’s good; they’re learning.  But while they know that Jesus loves everyone they want to know ‘who’s your favorite’? 

How do they get ahead?  How is social rank established in God’s kingdom?  What makes one person a more valuable member than another?  What qualities should they work on?

Jesus calls a child and uses the child as an example.  A child had no real social rank in those days.  Children certainly didn’t have school and sports schedules that ran their parents ragged.  No, a child held no position and had no rank.  While being friendly to children was considered a virtue, a child could not help you advance in social rank.

Jesus’ teaching upends all social ranking systems.  They simply don’t exist in God’s kingdom.  That’s a good thing.  Do you really want to spend eternity fighting for social rank?  Perhaps if you were the cool and charismatic jock or cheerleader in high school you’d like to keep that superiority forever.  You could forever look down on others.  But if you were the nerd or the kid being bullied or ignored you certainly don’t want to spend eternity like that.

It would be wrong to say that everyone is equal in heaven.  It is more like there is simply no ranking or status above or below others at all.  Jesus uses the parable of the lost sheep to illustrate that.  God wants all.  We can’t determine that someone isn’t worthy of God’s love and therefore not share God’s love with him or her.

That this is serious business is proven by the cutting off limbs and plucking out eyes teaching that Jesus repeats.  We saw that first in the Sermon on the Mount and he repeats it here.  This is not just a matter of convenience for Jesus’ followers.  This is not something that you can just say, “That’s a nice thought Jesus.  I’ll do it when it’s convenient for me.”  No, this is a solid demand and expectation from our Lord.  If God loves all equally then we must too.

The same theme is present in the second section about forgiveness.  If the first part is about inviting people in, then the second part is about kicking people out.  Here is one of the Bible passages that actually bears the weight of law.  The constitutions of all ELCA Lutheran churches cite Matthew 18:15-17 as the rule for disciplining members.  It bears the force of law.  When I was in seminary I was on the student ethics committee one year.  When a student was brought up on charges of ethics violations the first question was if Matthew 18:15-17 had been followed.  It turns out it wasn’t and the student brought a civil lawsuit against the seminary.

Peter asks Jesus if a fellow Christian sins against him how many times should he forgive?  As many as seven times?  Seven times was the Jewish expectation of forgiveness.  It was also the number symbolizing completion.  But Jesus replies not seven times but seventy-seven times.  The parable that follows shows Jesus point.  A king forgives the debt of a man who is deeply in debt to him – 10,000 talents.  A talent was worth about 15 years wages for the average laborer.  So to put that into perspective, if the average household income in Ontario County is about $60,000 then this amounts to a debt of around $9 billion!  This is no ordinary debt forgiven.  One has to wonder how someone wracked up that much debt in the first place!  But then this fellow turns around and imprisons someone who’s in debt to him to the tune of a hundred denarii.  A denarii was a day’s wage so this would be like $20,000-$25,000.  Definitely a sizeable sum, but nothing compared to $9 billion!  When the king found out he revoked his forgiveness of the huge debt.  Jesus concludes by saying, “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Though it may be hard for us to see ourselves as significantly sinful people, (After all we try to do right don’t we?) this is God’s business and not our own.  Last week we talked about God’s power.  It is not for us to judge the magnitude of a sin.  That is God’s and God’s alone.

A neighbor recently posted on Facebook, “Just love everyone.  I’ll sort them out later… God.”  Indeed that is God’s role.

Now don’t take this the wrong way.  It does not mean we have to be syrupy nice to everyone.  It does not mean that criminal and destructive behavior should be overlooked.  No, there is still accountability.  But in terms of your relationship with your brothers and sisters in Christ and the people around you, you don’t get to pick and choose who you love and who you favor.  All our God’s.  Your job is to love and to work to build others up. 

Let me conclude with Martin Luther’s advice from the Small Catechism on the Eighth Commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”  Luther writes, “We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations.  Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light.”

God's Power, Not Yours

March 5, 2017  1^st Sunday in Lent                  Matthew 17:9-27

If you grew up going to Sunday school you may have learned songs like, “I am the church, you are the church, we are the church together.”  And little finger poems like, “Here is the church.  Here is the steeple.  Open the doors and see all the people.”

I think we all know that the church is not a building or an institution or a collection of traditions.  The church is people.  However, defining the church beyond that starts to get tricky.  Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession, the theological constitution of the Lutheran Church, defines the church as the assembly of believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the sacraments are administered rightly.

That sounds like a good definition, the kind of thing a smart and educated person would say when told to define the church.  Indeed the Augsburg Confession was written by a university professor by the name of Philip Melanchthon.  But that definition quickly runs into problems.  If the church is the assembly of believers then how come there’s so many problems all the time?  Why don’t people in the church get along?  Why can’t all Christians come to a consensus about things like morals… and politics for that matter?   And of course just remember back to the Catholic priest scandals and you have to ask how come there’s so much that is downright evil and wrong with the church?

Go a little bit farther to Article 8 of the Augsburg Confession and you find Philip Melanchthon writing, “Again, although the Christian church, properly speaking, is nothing else than the assembly of all believers and saints, yet because in this life many false Christians, hypocrites, and even open sinners remain among the godly, the sacraments are [effective] even if the priests who administer them are wicked men…”  So, for example, if you are baptized by a pastor who later on gets kicked out for all sorts of horrible behavior your baptism is still perfectly valid.

It turns out that defining the church is hard to do.  In our gospel reading today we’re seeing the very beginnings of community being built around Christ.  You might remember from previous chapters that Jesus has reached out to the Jewish religious establishment and been rejected.  It is as if Jesus was reaching out to them to invite them to a new expression of their traditional faith.  But this was not to be.  The only thing then is to create a new community.

Two weeks ago we saw its beginning.  Jesus said to Peter that he is the rock upon which the church will be built.  We discovered pretty quickly that Peter is not a very solid rock; but in time that will come.  For now, things are still pretty shaky; although they’re improving.  The four scenes we have in our gospel reading for today show that.

The first scene is the disciples asking about Elijah.  We see at the end of that scene the disciples and learned that Jesus was talking about John the Baptist. 

The second scene is the curing of the epileptic boy.  Again the disciples are asking a question.  You’ll remember from previous chapters that Jesus has given these disciples powers of healing and casting out demons.  Exactly how they had that power may raise some questions in our minds, but to dwell on that is to miss the main point here.  Here the problem is that they cannot take care of the problem of the epileptic.  That sets the scene for Jesus to say, “…truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’”

What little child hasn’t tried that?  I tell you, as someone who used to work on roads and bridges it sure would make road construction easier if we could do that!

Let me read to you something from Eugene Boring in the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary:

“One should not infer from [this passage] the guilt-inducing conclusion that when hoped-for miracles fail the problem must be our lack of faith, and that if we had “enough” faith we would be able to avert all tragedies and heal all afflictions.  Neither can we infer from it that faith itself is a power that accomplished miracles, for God is the one who acts, not an attitude called “faith.”  …this is not a saying about the power of faith but about the power of God…  And ‘faith’ is not a quality of the one praying, but a relationship of practical trust with the one to whom prayer is offered.  We might be tempted to reason that, if the smallest faith moves mountains and our achievements seem quite ordinary, our faith must be smaller than the smallest – good math, but pedestrian exegesis [in order words, bad logic].  Rather, this disruptive picture pushes at us the gnawing reminder that as disciples we are agents of the church in which Christ himself is ‘with us,’ which means God-with-us, and that with God nothing is impossible, a guard against fitting God into our ideas of what is possible…” (Volume 8, Pg. 369)

Said more simply, faith is a relationship of trust in God who has power.  Faith itself is not power.  This is a basic lesson for the beginning Christian community to realize, and it is a lesson for us as well.  I think this is the biggest teaching from our gospel today, and you may want to stop here and mull it all over a bit, but I do want to touch on the other two scenes also.

In verses 22-23 Jesus is again teaching the disciples that he will be betrayed into human hands and be killed, and on the third day be raised.  This distresses the disciples, and they don’t get it yet, but it is a show of progress.  The first time Jesus brought this up you’ll remember that Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him.  Then in response Jesus rebuked Peter saying, “Get behind me Satan, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

So with baby steps and with plenty of confusion and mistakes Christian community begins to take form.  It has a long way to go as we’ll see in the coming weeks.  One of the biggest issues for this community to deal with is how does it interact with the world around it?  Should Christ-followers reject the world?  Should they go off an live apart?  It’s tax season and there are advertisements everywhere offering help with your taxes.  Should the followers of Christ pay taxes?

Right now it might be nice if Jesus had said to his disciples, “You are exempt from paying taxes,” but that’s not what he said.  In the fourth scene from our gospel Jesus tells Peter to go fishing.  He will catch a fish with a coin in its mouth that they can use to pay the temple tax.

At first we think, “Okay, we have to pay taxes to the government.”  But there’s more to it.  In Jesus’ day there was a roaring debate over paying the temple tax.  Who had to pay it and how often?  The temple tax was essentially voluntary.  The Jewish leaders did not have an Internal Revenue Service that would audit people’s finances and punish them if they didn’t pay.  You could easily be a Jew and ever pay.  Yet Jesus says pay the temple tax – even though it is the temple system that is going to arrest him and have him killed.

Jump forward a few decades to the time of the writing of Matthew’s gospel.  The temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed.  There’s no longer a Jewish temple tax but the Romans are now taxing all Jews for the support of the temple to Jupiter in Rome.  Not surprisingly, paying a tax to support a pagan god they don’t believe in didn’t go over to well with the Jews!  And should these early Christians agree to pay a religious tax to something against their faith?

Jesus’ answer: yes.  Pay it.  In a few weeks we’ll get to Jesus’ famous words, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and render unto God the things that are God’s.”

Along the same lines as the power of faith, all human understandings of wealth and power and capability are completely and totally irrelevant to God.  Pay the money to the pagan government.  Who cares?!?  It does not diminish God’s powers one bit.  Ultimately the disciples will discover what we should also discover.  There is no power to faith.  There is no real power in the Church.  The power is God’s.  The church and faith are founded on trust in God’s power.  May we all have such faith.

Open to God's New Ways

February 26, 2017  Transfiguration Sunday   Matthew 17:1-9

When I think of the disciple Peter I think of someone who speaks first and then thinks later.  How often does he say something in haste only to be proven wrong?  Perhaps his most infamous guffaw is when he vehemently promises that he will never deny Jesus.  Then that same night when confronted by a lowly female servant he denies Jesus, and then does it two more times.

However sometimes Peter says things that are right on target.  We see both his ability to be amazingly insightful and his tendency to put his foot in his mouth in the verses immediately before our gospel reading for today.  There we find Jesus has asked the disciples who do people say that he is.  The disciples reply that some people say he is Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets, or that he is John the Baptist.  Then Jesus says, “But who do you say that I am?”  And Peter famously replies, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus commends Peter, and for a few glorious moments Peter is flying high.  But then Jesus goes on to explain what it means that he is the Messiah.  That he will be rejected and arrested and beaten and die.  Now when Peter says, “God forbid it Lord.  This must never happen to you!”  Jesus replies, “Get behind me Satan!  You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Shortly thereafter comes the Transfiguration that we read about today.  A question on our minds might be what sort of proclamation is Peter making this time?  Is he brilliant or is he foolish?

To our ears his words immediately sound foolish.  What is this that he offers to make three dwellings on the mountaintop; one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah?  What on earth is he thinking?  Is he trying to make this mountaintop experience to last forever?  Is he trying to win favoritism from these three great giants of faith?

But let’s look at Peter’s words more carefully.  I think we’ll find he’s actually said something quite profound.

A big holiday in first century Judaism was the Festival of the Booths.  It was an eight day harvest festival that took place at the end of September or early October.  It was a celebration of the harvest and giving thanks to God for the season’s produce.  The key part of the festival was to dwell in booths or tents in commemoration of the 40 years the people wandered in the wilderness under Moses.

In Jesus day the festival was also a celebration of the end of time and God’s ultimate salvation.  It was believed that Moses and Elijah would have a part in all of those events.

And so look at it from Peter’s perspective.  He knows that Jesus is God’s anointed one, the Messiah, the Son of God.  He knows that Moses and Elijah are going to come at the end of the age.  He sees Jesus and Moses and Elijah all together on top of a mountain and he comes to a well thought out, theologically astute conclusion.  The end has come!  This is the ultimate Festival of the Booths!  He offers himself in service to these men to make the tents or booths for them.

But of course Peter is totally wrong!  I think this is indeed one of Peter’s shining moments.  He’s made the right offer and he’s said the right thing, yet he’s completely missing what God is up to.  The voice from the cloud interrupts Peter while he’s speaking and says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”  God is about to do something new.  There are no precedents.  It is totally unpredictable.  So the disciples are to just listen and watch.  Of course that something new to come would be the crucifixion and eventual resurrection.  The disciples had absolutely no way to put that into anything they understood about God.

I think it is helpful for us to think well of Peter here, and not to mock him, because we’ll see a lot of parallels with ourselves.

This church has been around a long time.  None of us were alive when it was founded.  By God it has served generations of people: teaching them, shaping them, maturing them into disciples of Christ.  How many people have been baptized here, confirmed here, married here, and had their funerals here?  A lot.  You know well how to be the church in this place.  You know how to care for the poor and the needy.  You know how to take care of this building and property.  You know how to do worship and do it well.  All in all you know how to be faithful Christians.

Several years ago I did a funeral for a teenager in my community.  We expected a huge crowd for the service.  A local funeral director and I had worked out how we thought it best to handle it all.  But for some reason a woman from another church, who I will kindly describe as a “busybody,” kept horning in and checking to make sure we had it all under control.  She even came an hour before the service to check our preparations and see if we needed help.  Of course she found our preparations lacking and rambled on endlessly about what we were doing wrong.  I rarely lose my temper but I turned and snapped at her, “This church has been doing funerals for 110 years!  I think we know what we’re doing!”  The funeral director guffawed in laughter.  And indeed, everything worked as planned.

We know what we’re doing, and we know how to do it well.  Peter knew how to do things, and do them well.  There’s certainly nothing wrong with that.  But we know Peter’s well-informed offer was missing something.

Notice the voice from the cloud does not scold Peter.  The other times Peter says something outright wrong Jesus takes him to task for it: “Get behind me Satan,” and, “Before the cock crows you will deny me three times.”  No, there’s no criticism or correction at all for Peter at the transfiguration.  It’s not that he’s wrong.  It’s that he hasn’t listened enough to know what to do.

I don’t have to point out to you that despite the fact that we know how to be a church and be a church well, that way of being isn’t working too well anymore.  Recent polls show that all church denominations are declining.  Even the charismatic mega churches that were once envied are also declining.  What does this mean?  Are we all doing something wrong?

We easily beat ourselves up when our churches don’t flourish the way we think they should.  While we do indeed need to be self-critical and disciplined, we have to remember that the church is ultimately God’s – not ours.  God will make sure that what God needs to get done will get done.  You can try to hinder it all you want, but God’s will is still going to get done.  We are honored for God to ask us to participate in that work, but it does not rest exclusively on our shoulders.  Therefore we do not worry.

God is up to new and dramatic things every day.  In our knowledge and experience let us not be like Peter and think we can know for certain what God will do.  No, instead let us approach each day and each moment with eyes open to new things.  Let us not let our knowledge get in the way of seeing what God is doing.  No, let our knowledge remind us that God is unpredictable; dependable, loving, forgiving; yes… but not predictable.

God is amazingly good.  God is amazingly loving; more amazing and loving than we can imagine.  So let us not be surprised when God stretches our imagination.  Jesus was revealed in glory at the Transfiguration.  May we too see God in glory.  And may we always be open to the new things God is doing.