Year A, Proper, RCL: (Joshua 3:7-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13; Matthew 23:1-12)

Sermon by Matthew Bader on October 30, 2011.

            Once again, Jesus has thrown us a loop.  Most of us would be happy using Jesus’ message here as an excuse to point at church hierarchy and complain about how they always get the seat of honor at the table. Sure, Jesus does use the Pharisees as an example of what not to do, but I really don’t think Jesus is just talking about them. So what is the message here? Why can’t we call our male parent ‘Father’? What does he expect us to call him? Hey you? Steve? Sam? Jim? Chuck? That is just silly. Obviously, Jesus is not saying ‘Do not call your Father, Father!” Jesus is reminding his disciples and followers that there is a higher authority, one that loves us as a father, one that nurtures us, one that created us in his/her image and likeness.

            Well, what about the other comments? Why can’t we call ourselves ‘teacher’ or ‘rabbi’? Is Jesus really banning us from appreciating any level of authority we may achieve? Should we all call Tim or Vern “Hey, you!”?  Again, how silly. Jesus is using this extreme example to remind us that we should not wrap up our beliefs or education, in an earthly figure or way, but instead, put our trust and belief in God, the Creator.

            I do enjoy how Jesus uses the art of exaggeration in this text though. His image about the phylacteries and the extra long fringe, symbols these offensive rabbis use to proclaim their holy nature, almost puts a smile on my face. We have all had the experience of running up against some church authority, which used their position or office in ways of power. He/she flaunted their position, and frequently said “NO” more than “yes”, intentionally opposed sound ideas, simply because he/she didn’t think of them first, or because the idea was contrary to some outdated tradition that no longer served the community. I’d be willing to bet that everyone here is thinking about that person right now! Yep, we have all had our run-ins with those lousy so-and-sos. Trust me, I know about being put in the seat of honor. It can really go to your head. Let me tell you!

            Back to Jesus and his confusing message. I looked up the word humble on dictionary.com and found that the first meaning mentioned is “not proud or arrogant; modest”. The web site includes 5 separate meanings for this 2 syllable word. I need to mention the second definition: “having a feeling of insignificance, inferiority, subservience, etc.” I believe that many of us like to embrace this meaning of the word. I think this meaning tends to give us comfort. Here’s what I mean – how many of us (and I do know you are out there) have ever used this phrase after we’ve been complimented for something, “Oh, it’s no big deal.” “It’s nothing really.” “No, I’m not really that talented.” “No, it was easy.” “It was nothing.” Or maybe you tend to respond with, “Oh, it was so much work. First I had to go to the printers. On the way there, my car broke down. Of course, I’d left my phone on the counter, and do you know how hard it is to find a pay phone? Yada, yada, yada.” Doesn’t sound humble? Of course, it is. It’s that low insignificance, subservience humility. “Look at all I went through to do this.”

            I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s not the humble Jesus meant when he said the humble shall be exalted. He wasn’t saying – put yourself down, disown your gifts and talents, which my Father gave you, by the way – don’t complain about how you slaved to get it all done. No. To me, that is a false modesty, a false humility. It is not humble to disavow who you are. In a sense, that is quite arrogant - the opposite of humble. I believe we miss the boat when we get hung up on that.

            So, let’s bring this message home, to our house, to us at Grace. I don’t think Jesus pointed his finger at the Pharisees just so we can justify our anger at some church administrator. No. Sorry. If we believe all the other teachings, from Scripture, from Anglican theology, we have to understand that Jesus is pointing his finger at us.

Here’s a little story – think about a ministry you perform here a Grace. Maybe you’re a lector, or maybe a LEM. Maybe you’re a greeter, whatever. So here’s the scene-you notice that the person or persons performing the ministry make a mistake – they read too fast, or maybe too slow; they forget to read one of the prayers of the faithful; or they don’t greet you as you enter the church. Oh, no. Now what? What goes through your mind? “Why is she reading so fast? I can’t understand anything.” “He forgot to turn to the left; or turn to the right” “Well, I always walk up to people as they approach the church door to greet them and give them their name tag.” Uh-oh – did the fringe on your phylacteries just grow longer?

            Or maybe you are the solo in your ministry – it’s only you. You kind of like it that way, secretly, I mean. After all, there’s no one to do it wrong, or not the way you think it should be done. Oops – how’s your fringe doing? Looking pretty prestigious?

Don’t think this warning of Jesus does not apply to me personally.   I have a Masters in Theology from the Franciscan School of Theology at the Graduate Theology Union at Berkeley, CA and 12 years of experience as a RC priest. Does not that give me some level of authority for teaching?  I have sat here and thought, “Why did Vern do that? I would have done it this way.” Why did Tim say that? “That is not how I would have done it.”

            Here I am a former RC priest privileged to have the opportunity to become an Episcopal priest.  What makes me so special when there are others here who may have the same calling but the same opportunity?  But is that false humility on my part.  Am I lessening the gift I have?

            Now I’m not saying this is intentional. I’m saying – here is Jesus giving us a reminder – a reminder that we are not here alone, a reminder that we need to be aware of our intention, a reminder that we can easily slip into a place of arrogance and pride about our ministry.

            Here is the central message.  The greatest among you will be your servant. Interesting word--servant --to be of service.  Is not that what Jesus is saying? That our primary call is to be of service? We aren’t lectors, or priests, or LEM’s, or ushers. We are servants. We do the bidding of our Heavenly Father. We act out of this premise. This is our call:  to have a servant’s heart.


Sermon,  October 23, 2011
Proper 25
Grace Episcopal Church - The Rev’d Vern Hill

In Australia, a walk-about is a retreat into the wilderness to do some self-straightening.  We – Melinda and I, were in the midst of a three month “walk-about” (actually 5th wheel-rolling-about) the second Sunday in September when you here at Grace began the Season of Creation, a season within the Season of Pentecost.  In an odd, serendipitous way, this new season of beginnings, of Genesis, and the admonition that “creation is good” began on 9/11. 

In this season within a season, the Matthew gospel readings have led us through many of the parables and teachings of Jesus.  A kind of sacred dance has been at work between these Gospel stories and the other readings.

That dance continues today in what you just heard from Leviticus and Matthew.  To get to today’s Gospel story, I feel the need to re-enter through the door of last Sunday’s Gospel – you recall it was the familiar situation of entrapment used effectively in all political combat – First a sarcastic complement from the opposition – “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth,” and then follows the setup – “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’”

This was no simple question with an obvious answer nor was it a modern argument for the separation of church and state – it was full blown entrapment with the options of treason or heresy.  If Jesus is faithful to Hebrew scripture and says no, then he has committed treason under Roman law.  If he says yes, he has broken the covenant which defines Israel’s existence and committed heresy.  Of course you know what he said as Tim explained last week – “Give . . . to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  Followed by huge silence.  Every faithful Jew within listening distance would have known, nothing really belongs to the emperor – all of creation comes from and belongs to God.  It is the core of Genesis and Torah.  To say anything different and you would no longer be a Jew.  You see, that Gospel story about coins really had little to do with paying taxes; it does have to do with being faithful to the words  “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One.” Shema

 Yisrael        From this acclamation in Deuteronomy (6:4) [bulletin cover] flows the soul of being human.  It defines the what and the why for human creation.  Setting the stage for today’s Gospel, the verses following in Deuteronomy contain the instructions to “love God with heart, soul, and might; to remember all commandments and instruct the children; to recite the words of God when retiring or rising; and to inscribe them on the door-posts and on the city gates.”

Shema Yisrael in Deuteronomy creates a kind of “Jewish Trinity” – To be truly human is (1) to love God, (2) to love your neighbor and (3) to love yourself.  These are synonymous – co- existing.  So when the lawyer – no lawyer jokes – asks Jesus, “which commandment in the law is the greatest?”, Jesus repeats this Jewish Trinity - “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” 39And . . .  “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Belief and ethics are not separate venues.  Again – they coexist in the same time and space.  Loving God and behaving unjustly to your neighbor or denying your own worth is simply impossible.   

Now for the dance part.  This brings us to everyone’s favorite book in the Bible, Leviticus.  Contrary to what has become popular thinking, Leviticus is not a book of one verse that has grossly been abused by people who are clueless about Shema Yisrael not to mention the heart and soul of Jesus’ teachings and parables.

Leviticus lays out the impossibility of living in a world of split personalities – the impossibility of saying you love God, but not your neighbor, or not yourself.

Typically when we read passages like those in Leviticus, what we fix on is the message of threat and punishment - the  “If you will not obey me”  stuff.  There is something in our DNA, perhaps our religious roots from earliest times, or from our Reformation roots in Calvinism and Puritanism or from modern day Evangelical Christianity  - that causes us to hear only half the message. 15if you spurn my statutes, and abhor my ordinances, so that you will not observe all my commandments, and you break my covenant, 33. . . . your land shall be a desolation, and your cities a waste.”  “If you will not obey me” means not being obedient to the covenant of our creation in Genesisit means to manage what God has gifted, to nurture the Land and the People of the Land.  So, when we stand back and look at the big picture, what the writer in Leviticus is saying is that there are consequences to our choices; there are consequences to our responses.  Torah denies that we live in a world pre-destined to disaster or a world of fates which we are dragged through.  We exist in a world of choice.  Our humanity is exercised in our choice making.  It is our link to divinity.  And with choice making comes consequences. 

Most importantly, these are not simply individual consequences (so the good guys can escape the fallout and only the bad guys suffer in the end), but consequences tragically shared by all the people of the Land.  Choosing badly and we all suffer.  It’s a web of life thing.

There is another half to this Leviticus reading, which we tend to miss in the preoccupation with punishment.  There are consequences to choosing badly AND there are consequences to choosing well, a blessing which comes from living Shema Yisrael,  loving God and self and neighbor, of doing justice and living  peacefully within creation. 

While we modern urban folks have a difficult time relating to farming metaphors – e.g. where does milk and eggs come from?  The store! –  I think we can understand the larger message in what Leviticus is metaphorically saying – if the land is respected and given its Sabbath rest (the seven-day creation thing where you rest the land from over-cultivation), if the poor are fed a fair portion from the land’s harvest, then “the land shall yield its produce and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.” 

You see, there is a symbiotic connection between our responsibility to care for the environment and for justice and compassion for the earth’s many people: Since the land is God's, not only must it be guarded from abuse and misuse, but its rich produce must be shared among the poorest of God's children.

During the on-going debates (which are really Q&As) one candidate for leader of the free world recently stated as fact that the poor only have themselves to blame for their poverty;  that nothing within the social-economic system has anything to do with the increases in poverty in the United States in the last 10 years.  This is the antithesis of today’s Gospel and  Leviticus’ warning of consequences of self-centered, greed-driven behavior.  It is to be blind to what God has created us for.

The voices speaking to us from antiquity – these words of Leviticus – are speaking of a reality that already was there’s in painful ways.  It is a warning of consequence as well as a promise of blessing we need to take seriously today.  Our world and our choices and our actions, what we do, are not unlike our brothers and sisters in the past. 

Perhaps it would be good for us to post Shema Yisrael on our city gates and doorposts and most certainly in our hearts and minds.  Amen – to embracing and participating and taking our part in a world that is made good.  We are told to have dominion over the earth, but the word “dominion” doesn’t mean to dominate or pillage;


October 16 (Year A, proper 24)
Days of Creation 6
October 16, 2011

Exodus 23:1-13      Psalm  96:1-9       Colossians 1.15-22            Matthew 22:15-22

What counts [in the emergence of ethical monotheism] is that, in one way or another, moral value shall have been placed above the other values that human beings properly recognize: power, wealth, pleasure, beauty, knowledge . . . the list is long. All these goods of human life must somehow be gathered into a single perspective and ranked, and moral goodness must be assigned the top rank.”

—Jack Miles

God: A Biography

"Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."

Uh, Jesus, could you clarify that a bit?



Some background is necessary here. In Jesus’ day, the denarius, the coin in question in today’s Gospel, had a portrait of the emperor. Often the denarius had the inscription—“title” in today’s reading—DIVI FILIUS, “Son of the Divine One,” “Son of God.”

To the Jews, this was blasphemy. Idolatry. So, in a sense, to use the denarius was to be both a blasphemer and idolater. Some Jews wouldn’t even touch Roman coins with DIVI FILIUS on them.

"Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's" expresses—but doesn’t resolve—an abiding tension: we are people of faith, but we must also live our lives circumscribed by government.

In our present political climate, some argue that we’ve enslaved ourselves economically and socially to Big Government; we‘ve made ourselves the Emperor’s servants and slaves, with many of us dependents waiting on a handout while others of us pay for these freebies. We’ve become both co-dependents and enablers. I’ll call this the conservative position.

Liberals argue that the wealthy have jerry-rigged the system so that they get richer while everyone else gets poorer. The top 1% of our country, for example, now controls 40% of the wealth. The 99%ers now protesting on Wall Street, across the country, and even in Bakersfield, are making this discrepancy a passion play for all America.

The point I want to make is that all people of faith have God and the Emperor lobbying for our votes. This is not a conservative vs. liberal, Republican vs. Democrat thing. It’s a struggle each of us, as a person of faith, must not only accept, but embrace.

Sometimes we’re caught in the no-man’s land between God and the Emperor, with bombs exploding and bullets whizzing by; sometimes we’re at a wrestling match, but instead of being spectators we’ve been thrown into the ring as God and the Emperor slug it out.

So, what do we do? Today’s readings suggest an answer,

Most of you know that I have a bumper sticker on my car: “What Would Jesus Cut?” (By the way, I have one left—ten bucks.)

What exactly does this mean? It means that, in my understanding of who Jesus was and what the Gospel says about him, we should have, as the Liberation theologians say, “a preferential option for the poor.”

In other words, for us as Christians the poor should be our number one priority. We should cut the military budget (1) and raise the budget for social programs, especially help for the poor and creating jobs.

God: one; Emperor: zero.

One in six Americans now lives in poverty. To get a better grasp of what that means, it means that 46 million people in this country live in poverty.

You don’t have to be religious to have your heart break when you hear that. What you have to have, as Governor Perry says, is a heart.

What would Jesus, as a Jew, have learned about our obligations to others?

Love God and love your neighbor. On these two commandments depend everything that’s in Torah and the Prophets. Everything.

God: two; Emperor: zero.

Here’s what truly puzzles me. How do those who don’t want our first obligation to be for the poor ignore what Torah, the Prophets, and Jesus say? How do those who want to wage war ignore what Torah, the Prophets, and Jesus say?

Really, I-just-don’t-get-it.

You’ve heard from this pulpit, both from the lectionary and from sermons, that the prophets accuse Israel of two main sins: idolatry, and abuse of the poor.

You could say, really, that these two are one big sin: idolatry. When you value money—made in the image of the Emperor—and the power that money brings over everything else, including your fellow humans made in God’s image, you’re an idolater.

Of all the prophets, Amos most starkly reminds us of our sins:

Hear this, you that trample on the needy,
and bring to ruin the poor of the land,

buying the poor with silver 
   and the needy for a pair of sandals, 
   selling even the sweepings with the wheat (Amos 8:4-6).

Contrast these economic idolaters with what Moses says to the people in Exodus today:

For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard (Exodus 23:10-11).

Idolaters, as Amos accuses, sell “even the sweepings with the wheat,” not only grubbing for every penny, but at the same time starving the poor.

By contrast, those who live a covenant relationship with God give to the poor not only the sweepings, but for a year the land itself.

God: three; Emperor: zero.

What God through Moses commands here—not asks with a “pretty please,” but commands—is called the Jubilee.

The numbers “six” and “seven” are extremely important in what Moses says. Every Hebrew of Moses’ day and every later Israelite and Jew would have understood that “six” parallels the six days of God’s creation.

Six. When Moses equates human work to God’s work, human work becomes not some punishment inflicted by God when Adam and Eve fell and got kicked out of the Garden. No, human work, like God’s in creation, is good. In our work, therefore, we are co-creators with God.

Seven. On the seventh day God rested. So should we. But resting means much more than watching football and drinking beer: by setting our labors aside we honor our covenant; by living out this covenant, we proclaim that our relationship to God and what God asks of us is more important than money.

God: four; Emperor: zero.

But, believe it or not, we are to go further than God. As Jesus says in John’s Gospel: Greater things than I do you will do.

Genesis doesn’t say what God did when he rested. Maybe he went to the Bahamas and sat on the beach drinking margaritas.

We, in our rest, both literal and metaphorical, in a sense do not rest: we actively let the land “lie fallow, so,” as Amos says, “the poor. . . may eat.”

God: five; Emperor: zero. A shutout. Not only a shutout—a no-hitter. Not only a no-hitter, a perfect game. God as Sandy Koufax. The Emperor as some poor schmuck batting .150 who can’t hit a curve facing Koufax.

When Jesus and Moses today tell us to care for the poor, they do so in commandments.

But I think what they say goes far beyond duty and obligation. Both Jesus and Moses say that in loving our fellow human beings, we bring forth from the treasury of our hearts both love and compassion.

Be compassionate as God is compassionate.

Think about that: when we’re compassionate, we’re not only like God, we become God’s equals.

Final score:

God: eighty gazillion; Emperor: zero minus love, no limit (2).

Amen.

NOTES

1.     The military receives 55% of the Federal budget now; in 1960, in the middle of the Cold War, it was 35%.

2.     A reworking of a Dylan title, “Love Minus Zero, No Limit.”



October 9, 2011

The Wedding and Communication
Robin

A king gave a wedding banquet for his son and invited some friends, but they declined the invitation. So, the king invited everyone in the streets to the wedding, both good and bad. And, when he came in to see his guests, he noticed that one guest was not dressed appropriately, so he had him thrown out of the party.

I know there is a profound biblical message in this story having to do with who does and does not get into heaven, or something like that. However, I am not a biblical scholar and so I am not going to attempt to decipher or explain its meaning in that way. I am a student of communication, and my perspective as such is this: maybe nobody came to the king’s party because he criticized them for what they were wearing when they did show up.

I have a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Communication Studies, and I have been teaching communication classes and workshops since 1993. I want to share with you some of what I know about communication in case you are - like the king - extending invitations that no one accepts.

We communicate in order to get a desired response. When we say “hello” we want a “hello” in return. When we ask a question, we want an answer. When we tell a joke, we want a laugh. Every time we send a message, we want a response in return. In the king’s situation, he sent an invitation and wanted guests in return. What prevents people from giving us the responses that we want? In most cases, we do. We are the barriers to our communication success. How so?

We have a communication style that helps us get our desired response and also prevents us from getting our desired response. Our communication style is impacted by our personality style. People have been studying personality styles since Aristotle roamed the earth, and over the centuries, there has been a consensus that there are basically four personality styles. I like to use the DISC personality profile to explain communication styles.

The “D” in the DISC profile stands for Dominant, Doer, Driver, and Dictator. The Dominant personality communicates in a very direct, to-the-point manner. They boldly proclaim how they feel about things (they have an opinion on everything) and usually feel their way is the right way. They tend to be loud, very assertive (some would say aggressive), and task-oriented. They are not bad people, they just tend to be more interested in getting things done than in how people feel about doing them. They tend to get their desired response because people know exactly what they want. However, they also prevent themselves from getting their desired response because they can appear to be harsh, overly critical, unfeeling, and brutally honest.

The “I” in the DISC profile stands for Initiator, Influencer. These folks tend to be very high energy, talkative, personable, entertaining, joking, good storytellers, emotional, and dramatic. They tend to get their desired response because they are so likable and fun to be around. However, they prevent themselves from getting their desired response because they are sometimes too emotional and dramatic for others.

The “S” in the DISC profile standards for Steady, Satisfier. This personality style tends to be on the quiet side, offering opinions only when asked. They tend to live by the rule “if you can’t say anything nice” and take great pains to be diplomatic and not hurt others’ feelings. They get their desired response because they are so nice. However, they prevent themselves from getting their desired response because they don’t speak up or are so indirect that others don’t hear what they are saying.

The “C” in the DISC profile stands for Conscientious, Critic, and Conservative. These folks are logical, analytical, and tend to be on the quiet side. They usually do not like to talk – about personal things especially – but can go on at great length about facts, figures, and data. They do not display a lot of facial expressions or vocal inflections, and tend to be very business-like and task-oriented. They get their desired response by insisting that others have their facts straight when talking to them. However, they prevent themselves from getting their desired response by sometimes appearing cold and emotionless to others.

Our communication style is also impacted by our gender, culture, age, education, religion, politics, and everything else that we are. Our style helps us to get our desired response from others and it also prevents it.

We communicate in order to get a desired response. Psychologist Abraham Maslow put it another way. He said we communicate to get our needs met. According to Maslow, we are very needy people and he created a hierarchy of our needs to illustrate his point. He said we send messages in order to have those needs met. However, our success in getting our needs met depends upon how we send the message. For example, one of our needs is love, belonging, and companionship. I had a grandmother who tried to get this need met by telling her children and grandchildren “You never come visit.” Do you think that inspired us to visit? How are you expressing your needs? Do you do so in a way that inspires people to meet them or to run in the opposite direction?

Communication is very complicated. Even when we are expressing our love and affection for others we can completely miss the mark. Gary Chapman wrote a book called The Five Love Languages, which illustrates this point. Chapman said that we generally express our love for others in one of five ways: verbally (words of affirmation), quality time, through gifts, acts of service, and physically. If your love language is verbal and you are trying to express your love to someone whose love language is acts of service, they might not hear you and, thus, feel unloved. You’ve got to learn to speak their language in order for them to feel loved.

Now back to our story about the king. When the king sent an invitation to his friends and they declined, he got mad at them. We do the same thing. We often blame others for not responding the way we want them to. Instead of blaming others, we should ask ourselves, what am I doing or not doing that is preventing others from responding to me the way I want them to? Do people not respond to you because you are too harsh, dramatic, indirect, or business-like for their taste? Are you expressing your needs in a way that inspires others to not meet them? Are you expressing your affection for others in a way that they can’t hear it? Don’t get mad because others don’t respond the way you want them to. Looking at ourselves and how we impact others is the way to improve our communication with them. 

Jesus was the great communicator and he knew how to communicate to get the response he wanted (although I still have trouble deciphering those parables). He spoke in a way that worked for his listeners. You can be a great communicator too. It begins by looking at the way you come across to others and making some minor adjustments if necessary. And, when you do that, people will want to come to your party.