10-19-14: Taking Sides

Taking Sides

Matthew 22: 15-22 (NIV)

Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?” But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

In 2008, the band Everclear released an intentionally provocative, controversial song titled "Jesus was a Democrat"--and it hit the airwaves just in time for people who listen to alternative rock groups like that one to hear this song before casting a vote for our nation's President that November. That was six years ago, but all you need to do is Google "Jesus was a Democrat", and you'll find the lyrics to that song, and a link to listen to it on YouTube.

If you Google anything to the effect of "Jesus would vote Democrat", or "Jesus was a liberal", you'll get a ton of hits. Similarly, if you Google "Jesus was conservative", or "Jesus would vote Republican", you'll also find a wealth of hits. And, without fail, every year as we approach election season, even in a year like this one when we're not electing a new President, we get messages on our answering machine at Vine Valley telling us to vote for this person or that person--this person supports Christian values much more than the other guy, Jesus would vote for this person.

The point is, there's no shortage of interest out there in seeing Jesus as politically partisan. Whether it's right or not, there's a lot of people out there that would love to imagine Jesus taking a side.

And this isn't a new phenomenon. In Jesus' own lifetime he was constantly being challenged by those who feared, disliked, and distrusted him to take stands on lots of divisive issues, especially as they related to the marginalized people in his community. He was also challenged, by the same people, to take an official stand on Palestine's complicated political relationship with Rome. That's exactly what we see in this morning's Gospel reading.

In this morning's Gospel reading, we see the Pharisees taking yet another crack at Jesus, and we also see them finding an unlikely and somewhat bizarre ally: the Herodians. The Herodians, as you might guess from the name, we're the party of people who supported the foreign occupation of Palestine by Rome, under the reign of King Herod. The Pharisees, on the other hand, as devout Jews very concerned with abiding by the letter of God's Law, fiercely resented King Herod and wanted the Roman officials out of Palestine. So why on earth are the Pharisees hanging out with the Herodians this morning? It would be like Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken getting together for brunch.

Well, the reason why we see the Pharisees and the Herodians together this morning is because they're under the influence of the old proverb, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. They have only one thing in common: they can't stand Jesus. So they've figured out that if they teamed up and picked the right trick question to stump him with, they could bring him down.

And they had no trouble at all picking the right question, the one question that would get to the very core of the differences between the Pharisees and the Herodians: Should the Palestinians pay their census tax to Rome? The Herodians believed the Palestinians absolutely owed this money to Rome, in exchange for some of the kickbacks that a small but powerful contingent of people enjoyed as a result of belonging to the strongest empire in the world. The Pharisees strongly resented paying the tax. Jesus couldn't possibly agree with both sides on this one, and if he even tried to answer this question surely he would make some people very angry.

Why was this tax such a big deal? Well, because the Pharisees didn't just resent the annual census tax of one denarius per person just because that was a lot of money for a community struggling greatly with poverty. It was, but there's more to it than that.

The denarius was a silver coin with a graven image of the Roman emperor on it. The writing on one side declared the divinity of the emperor, and the writing on the other side proclaimed the emperor as the High Priest of the empire. Paying your census tax made you use this coin. Paying your census tax made you use a coin that declared that the emperor of Rome was not only a god, but your God. The Romans occupying Palestine were forcing the Jews who lived there to blaspheme every time they paid their taxes. Rome's oppressive rule over Palestine was making the Palestinians betray not only their own human dignity, but also their God.

So who's side is Jesus going to take? Is he going to side with the Herodians, say that the Palestinians should pay their census tax, and incite the rage of all of his followers, who desperately wanted to see Jesus defy Rome? Or, was he going to publicly declare his disobedience to Rome by telling everyone not to pay their taxes, and likely be arrested and executed? The Pharisees and Herodians could only see just those two ways of answering this question. Jesus had to pick one side or the other, and either way he went, he was going down.

But Jesus was not naive enough to fall for this trick. He knew he had adversaries, he knew people were out to trap him, and he lived on the lookout for those people. So he could smell a trick question coming from a mile away in this morning's story, especially after he heard the Pharisees and Herodians try to lull him into a false sense of security by buttering him up. Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Yeah, okay. Jesus heard that and thought, Oh boy, here we go.

Unintimidated, Jesus calls these people on what they're trying to do to him, and he's especially hard on the Pharisees. He asks a Pharisee to show him this coin, a denarius, that the Palestinians use to pay the tax. Whose picture and inscription is that? he asks. When the Pharisee answers that that's the emperor's picture on that coin, he also knows that Jesus has just pointed out his hypocrisy. The Pharisees are the ones walking around buying things with these blasphemous coins. If the denarius offends them so much, they may as well pay the tax so they can get rid of them.

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.

But, lest the Herodians smugly walk away thinking that Jesus agrees with them, or, much worse, that Jesus sides with Rome and doesn't have compassion for his friends and neighbors who are suffering under Rome's tyrranny, Jesus adds,

And render unto God what is God's.

Doesn't everything belong to God?

Jesus doesn't take a side on this controversial issue, to the disappointment and amazement of the Pharisees and the Herodians. And it probably cost him his life--a few chapters later, when Pontius Pilate offers to release Jesus instead of crucifying him, the people insist on executing Jesus and freeing Barabas, who was arrested for rebelling against Rome.

Jesus doesn't take a clear side here, not even to save his life. But instead he leaves a strong example for us. Because a lot of times, living as people of faith, we get presented with these kinds of political issues that almost put us in the shoes Jesus found himself in this morning. Controversial moral issues that people look to you to pick a side on. You, a person of faith, you, a lover of Jesus, you, a person of integrity. You must have an answer to these highly emotional, highly controversial, highly political questions--right? Questions that, no matter how you answer them, you're bound to make someone very mad.

You've heard these questions. They go like this:

Should our tax money go toward providing food, shelter, and healthcare for people who can't afford them? Should kids have a time of prayer in their public schools? Should public, secular meetings be opened in prayer? Should the Ten Commandments be posted in schools and court rooms? Should undocumented immigrants be granted amnesty? Should same sex couples have the right to get married? Should they have the right to adopt children? Should a woman have the right to choose to end her pregnancy, or should the law protect the sanctity of life starting at conception? Should churches pay taxes?

You might feel very strongly about the answers to at least some of those questions. Or, you might feel like some of those questions have no clear, good answer. You might be hoping that I'm going to answer some of those questions, but I'm not going to, not in this sermon anyway. Most of all you might turn to your faith, to Jesus, to take a side on these questions. In fact, when some of these issues come up, you might be sure that Jesus would align with one clear side.

Maybe. At the end of the day, living in a society with its own government means that we have to live with laws we don't approve of, and even with laws that seem to conflict with our personal, faith-based beliefs. When we find a way to make it work, we render unto Caesar. But when we pray for God to give us the wisdom to navigate these controversial waters while keeping our integrity, we render unto God what is God's. And, at the end of the day, at least where it concerns our own actions, we need to understand that, even though our government may make the laws, it's God who rules over us, and we need to serve the world as God would have it.

Amen.

10-12-14: The Golden Calf

The Golden Calf

Exodus 32: 1-26 (NIV)

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.” But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “ Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’ ” Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, “There is the sound of war in the camp.” Moses replied: “It is not the sound of victory, it is not the sound of defeat; it is the sound of singing that I hear.” When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. And he took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it. He said to Aaron, “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?” “Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!” Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied and came to him.

Matthew 22: 1-14 (NIV)

Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’ “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless. “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

Friends, in a way, this week's sermon is like the sequel to last week's sermon. I didn't plan it that way, but a combination of providence and our Revised Common Lectionary are at work here. You never know what God will put on your heart to deliver to his people.

Last week I titled my sermon "wait for it". We talked about Moses receiving the Law from God, and we talked about how we don't always see the blessings of obeying God's Law and respecting our covenantal relationship with him right away, but if we wait, we will in time. This week's Old Testament passage makes us question, what happens if we can't "wait for it"? What happens if we get impatient with God? What happens when we get tired of waiting for God to provide for us, so we start making up our own rules?

It's easy to see how badly the Hebrews are disobeying God in this morning's story, but I also really sympathize with them. God's promises were just on the horizon for them, but they had no reason to believe that. They were liberated from the bondage of slavery to a tyrannical, foreign ruler, and Moses was leading them to the Promised a Land, where God would provide a great and prosperous future for them. But that future was very far away, and the Hebrews were getting fed up. They'd been wandering around in the middle of nowhere with Moses for practically forever, and there was no light at the end of the tunnel as far as they could see. And they were right to feel like this journey was taking forever, and to fear that they may never see the end of it. After all, they were out in the desert for forty years. Given how short your life expectancy was in those days, the Hebrews knew enough to foresee that nearly all the people who left Egypt with Moses would die in the wilderness, and that, at best, it would be their children who saw the Promised a Land, not them. When you don't trust your leader, that doesn't sound like much of a promise.

They pleaded and argued with Moses to just let them go back and be slaves in Egypt, but Moses trusted God too much to give in, so here they are, stuck in the wilderness with nothing but the few things they left Egypt with. And if that wasn't bad enough, now even Moses is gone, off to some mountain to go talk to some God who calls himself YHWH. And he's been away now for a really, really long time. So long that even his own brother, Aaron, was starting to wonder if he was ever coming back.

Meanwhile, we're starting to see the exhaustion of leadership taking its toll on both Moses and Aaron. Moses hasn't had to deal with it during this time that he's been up on the mountain, but since he left Aaron in charge, now Aaron has been left with all of the responsibility of taking care of this angry mob. And they're getting angrier every day that they see no progress, no leader, no home, and no god.

Sometimes, even when we know better, and even when we do have the patience to wait through a difficult time, we still find ourselves bending over backwards to peer pressure. This is one of those times for Aaron. He can't take all the complaining anymore, and he'll do anything to make it stop. And if he can make all these people happy then he can feel like a leader, even if he's really betraying Moses' trust.

So Aaron and his company of thousands of Hebrews disobey God, and revert to a very familiar old lifestyle: idol worship. Before Moses came along and started telling them about this YHWH character, they belonged to a culture that believed that there were many gods, one for every purpose and need, and that any one of those gods was as worthy of worship as any of the others. Aaron collects everyone's gold jewelry, turns it into a gold calf, makes an altar for it, and says, It's ok, everyone, you have a god again. Worship this thing and everything will be fine. So you can all stop yelling at me now.

This was not Aaron's finest hour as a leader, and when God and Moses catch wind of what's going on at the bottom of the mountain, neither of them are too happy about it. The lectionary cuts out Moses' reaction, maybe to preserve our image of Moses the stoic leader. The truth is Moses looses it.

He comes down from Mt. Sinai, Law in hand, ready to intervene and spare his people from God's anger. But then he sees all the Hebrew people partying around this false god, led by his own brother, and he throws one of the biggest temper tantrums we see in the whole Bible. He smashes the tablets that had the Law of God inscribed on them. Then he takes the golden calf, grinds it into powder, puts the powder in water, and makes everyone drink it. Moses is very angry.

Then he asks Aaron to explain just what in creation he was thinking letting this happen. Aaron just sputters, it wasn't my fault, honest! You know how easily these guys get tempted! We threw our jewelry into the fire and this calf just came out!

The Bible doesn't say what Moses said back, but I'm sure some unChristian words were exchanged.

We can laugh at this story, and we can remove ourselves from this text, and assume we would never find ourselves in a situation like this one. And we'd be half right thinking that, we probably never will take off all our jewelry and melt it into a golden calf and start worshipping it.

Unlike the Hebrews, we know that there's no other god in the world but our God. But that doesn't mean we're without our golden calves.

What are our idols? We may never take it this far, but we're all human and we're all tempted by them. And as much as idol worship is a specific cultural and historical act, idolatry, in itself and by definition, means giving excessive attention and adoration to something that isn't actually that special or worthy.

What are our idols?  What do we find ourselves giving way too much attention and praise to? Or, what do we find ourselves turning to to feel good and happy and fulfilled right away when we get too impatient to keep waiting for God? What's your golden calf?

For some people it's money. For some people it's technology, or the internet, or social media. For some people it's a material object, it's stuff. For some people it's their job. For some people it's drugs or alcohol. For some people it's even a relationship--someone that they lean on way too much to try to fill a void that only God can fill.

Some of those things aren't all that bad, and can even he helpful to us, in moderation. Where do you draw the line? The key is that we start worshipping an idol we we use any of those things excessively. What's excessively? When we think any of those things are more important, or more special, or more worthy of our attention and praise than God. And when we find ourselves starting to bend or break the rules God asked us to follow all so we can give way too much of our attention to something else, then we know we've found our golden calf.

God knows we're human, and that we get tempted. And God shows us grace when we stray, just like he extended grace to his Chosen People, the Hebrews.

But during our trying times, when we can't understand why God hasn't helped us out yet, or why God hasn't revealed his plan for us yet, or why God hasn't answered our prayers yet, instead of turning to that golden calf, that quick fix, that thing that we hope will fill the void but can't, let's turn to a friend, a brother or sister in the faith, someone who can support us during our time of trial and remind us that, even when we can't see it, and even when we don't believe it, God has a plan and a calling for us that we will see when the time is right and we're ready for it.

Amen.

10-5-14: Wait For It

Wait For It

Exodus 20: 1-20 (NIV)

And God spoke all these words: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. “You shall not murder. “You shall not commit adultery. “You shall not steal. “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”

Matthew 21: 33-46 (NIV)

“Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.” Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: “ ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’? “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.

So this morning, in the way of our Old Testament lesson, we hear about Moses finally making his way back from Mt. Sinai, after 40 days and 40 nights, with the Law in hand. And the first and most important piece of that Law that he delivers to the Hebrew people is the Ten Commandments.

Before I go on with what I have to you this morning, I have 2 disclaimers:

• If you, like me, don't like people telling you what to do, this might be a harder Sunday for you. Bear with me, because there's a method behind all of the rules in the Law. And you know how us Methodists feel about our methods. There's a much bigger picture at work behind all the "Thou Shalt"s and "Thou Shalt Not"s.
• We're intimately familiar with at least the idea of the Ten Commandments. And the tragic irony is that that familiarity doesn't necessarily help us actually follow the Ten Commandments. We may know this Bible story, we might even know it well, and we might be able to name most or all of the Commandments. But between our popular culture's interpretation of the sacred statutes, and all of our ongoing public controversies about whether the Ten Commandments should be posted in schools and court rooms, we can start to lose sight of what God is actually commanding of us. So even though this can be really hard to do, I invite you to try to hear the words of this morning's Old Testament lesson not like they're words you've heard many times before, but like they're words you're hearing for the first time.

So Moses finally returns to the Hebrew people after being gone on Mt. Sinai for so long that they were positive he was never coming back. The text says it was "40 days and 40 nights", but we know that that's what the Bible always says when what it really means is "a really really long time". And when Moses comes back, he emerges from this very long talk with God wherein God just laid out thousands of laws that he wants his people to follow, the most important of which are these Ten Commandments.

How would you feel if someone that you frankly don't even know that well, someone that just dragged you away from the only home you've ever known and led you out into the middle of nowhere, only to take off for practically forever, handed you a giant list of rules you suddenly have to follow, all to appease a God you've never heard of and don't believe in?

If you can try to imagine that, then you can imagine how the Hebrews felt in this morning's story, after they got served with the longest list of rules you've ever seen in your life. And, just in case you don't know what I mean when I talk about this "long list of rules"--Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible that we sometimes call the Pentateuch make up what people of the Jewish faith call the Torah, or the Law. So if you pick up a Bible, and flip through just those first five books, and you see just how many words and just how many pages that is, that is the Law. That is what Moses told the Hebrews they were going to have to abide by, or else face serious consequences.

But about those consequences. In this morning's Gospel passage, Jesus tries to shake up his listeners by telling them one of his more unsettling parables. We're back in the vineyard, where his parables have taken us for the last 2 weeks, and Jesus is telling us about some very disobedient tenants of the vineyard--people that were entrusted to care for the vines, but turned around and killed the servants who came to collect the fruit of the vines. Jesus gives us the chilling lesson that we're as bad as those tenants, and deserve the same punishments as they do, if we fail to grow fruit in our vineyard, and more importantly if we fail to be respectful tenants and return that fruit to our landlord.

Sometimes when you really need someone to follow your instructions, but you know they might not get it, and you know they might not be mature enough to take your word for it and just do what you asked, and especially if that person you're giving instructions to doesn't trust or respect you enough to take you at your word, you have to frame those instructions as rules. And, unfortunately, sometimes you know the other person won't follow those rules unless you emphasize the punishment they'll get if they break the rules.

So for example, you tell your kids be home by curfew or you're grounded. You don't do that because you want to be mean, or because you want to see your kids stuck at home and miserable for a week. You do that because you need to know you're kids won't stay out all night and get into trouble, and you know they won't obey you unless there's a punishment they want to avoid. When you grow up, the police tell you click it or ticket. In more words, if we catch you driving without your seatbelt, we're fining you. The police aren't trying to be punitive, or to ruin your day, or to wreak havoc with your money. They're trying to protect you. They want everyone wearing a seatbelt so that you'll be safer if you get in an accident. But they know that a lot of people simply won't bother unless there's a punishment for violating the law.

This is how it was between God and the Hebrews. They were all grown up, but spiritually they were very immature. They didn't know God. Their ancestors worshipped God, but they worshipped idols. God was a stranger to them. They didn't believe in him, and they didn't trust him. They didn't have the kind of close relationship with God where he could tell them to do something, and they would obey just because it was the word of God. There had to be a punishment for disobeying God, and it had to be a rather serious punishment. After all, these people were recently slaves. God had to lay down a rather harsh punishment or the Hebrews simply wouldn't have cared.

And more importantly they were incredibly vulnerable. They were homeless, and living off of nothing but the water and manna God provided them. They were in the middle of the wilderness, and would be for a long time. They had a leader they just barely tolerated, and they didn't know where he was taking them. There were dangers lurking around practically every corner as far as God was concerned.

So, when you take care of little kids that have the potential to do a lot of damage, you have to set a lot of rules. When you drive on a really busy street, or a street that's had a lot of accidents recently, you have to follow some strict driving laws. And when you have a chosen people that you're trying to rescue from slavery and establish in your Promised Land, and there's a lot at stake, you lay down a lot of laws.

The Hebrews weren't ready to be their own free agents yet. They weren't ready to make their own decisions and be autonomous. So they needed rules about every aspect of living until they were ready to live with a little less structure.

Thousands of years later, we don't abide by the vast majority of the Law of Moses, because we have an established relationship with God and we don't need all that structure. But we abide faithfully by our Ten Commandments. Now, remember when I told you to bear with me if you're not much for rules because there's something bigger going on here? That "something bigger" is the covenant between us and God.

The covenant. The purpose of those Ten Commandments is to lay out the terms of our covenant with God.

A covenant is a sacred relationship based on a mutual promise. When you're in a covenant, you're making a promise that you'll do certain things if the other person promises to do certain things. But if one of you breaks your promise, and doesn't hold up your end of the deal, then the other person isn't obligated to keep their promise anymore and the covenant is broken. As a modern example: a marriage is a covenant. When you get married, you promise to love, honor, and be faithful to your spouse if they'll promise to love, honor, and be faithful to you. Marriages thrive when both partners respect the vows they made to each other, but sadly often fail if one partner doesn't uphold their vows. A divorce is often a broken covenant, or one partner saying to the other that because you didn't keep your promise to me, I don't have to keep my promise to you.

In ages past, when our spiritually immature ancestors couldn't grasp the gravity of being in a covenant with God, God had to break it down by saying that there were a bunch of rules his people needed to follow, or they would be punished.

But for us here today, we can hear the bigger picture. We are the bride of Christ, and we are in a covenant with God. And God's promise to us is his Kingdom. Our promise is to show God's love to the world in everything we do and don't do. We're God's people, and we have to act like it. We have to be a vine that grows fruit. That means worshipping nothing and no one but God, and respecting God and his name. That means taking a break from the frantic speed of the world around us, and taking time to renew our spirits. That means respecting people in authority, even when you're a grown up. That means valuing life, respecting other people's property, being good for your word and being grateful for what you have, not jealous of what you don't.

If we can't keep that promise, then we have to understand that God doesn't have to keep his. And if we don't grow fruit in our vineyard, and if we don't offer that fruit back to our own Creator, then there are serious consequences for that. And a lot of people of faith focus on the consequences of not obeying God, because it makes for a strong incentive to keep our promise.

What Jesus talks about in this morning's parable is the consequences of breaking our covenant with God. But we don't have to make that our focus. We don't have to focus on the punishment for breaking the rules. When we grow up spiritually, we can focus instead on the benefits of keeping our covenant with God.

We can focus on the fruit of the vineyard. We can focus on how much better, how much richer, how much more prosperous our lives will be if we dwell in God's Kingdom, with God's blessing and protection over us. We can focus on the joy we will feel in knowing the greatest love there is. We might not get to feel all of those benefits at once right now, but if we wait for it, we will see God face to face in a world that reflects his image.

Amen.

9-28-14: Decide For Yourself

Decide for Yourself

Matthew 21: 23-32 (NIV)

Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?” Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?” They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.” Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things. “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ “ ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” “The first,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.

So this week I've got a story to tell you, about two of my old friends from my college days. Let's call them Anne and Nicole.

Nicole was very spiritual. She called herself a born-again Christian, and Jesus was her everything. The first time I ever talked to Nicole the very first thing she told me was all about how much she loved Jesus. To say that Jesus was her Lord and Savior isn't hardly enough. Jesus was absolutely the core of her whole being. Jesus was her best friend, her brother, her teacher, her healer, her comforter, her lover, her everything. The first thing she did every morning, and the last thing she did every night, was pray. Before she did anything, she thought about what Jesus would do. And even though she was heading into a totally secular profession, she was determined to live a Godly life, and to glorify Jesus in everything she did--I'd never heard of applied mathematics being such a holy major.

Nicole was from a very evangelical background, in a big city, and believed a very important part of loving Jesus as much as she did was telling people about him--quite the gutsy move in a very secular school like the U of R where quite a good number of students, if I speak from my own experience, don't believe in God and think you must not be very smart or studious if you do. So she wrote Gospel quotes everyday on the white board outside of her room, so people passing in the hallway would catch a glimpse of the words of Jesus. Then she'd go to the communal girls restroom in the dorm, and tape pieces of paper on the walls with uplifting, Jesus-centric quotes written on them. She invited everyone she knew, and a few people she didn't, to go to Sunday morning worship and Wednesday evening Bible Study with her. And while she was sitting around in her dorm room studying, she would leave her door open and play Gospel music on her stereo, letting the words of those songs echo down the hallway.

Jesus was Nicole's everything, and The Way, The Truth, and The Life for her. And if she ever had a question about anything, she brought it to Jesus in prayer, and faithfully waited for an answer.

Then there was my friend Anne. And she was absolutely as spiritual as Nicole, but had a whole different God-language to express it with. Unlike Nicole, who grew up in an urban, evangelical church, Anne grew up going to parochial schools in the suburbs, and attended a pretty traditional, conservative church with her parents. Anne's faith was the most important part of her life, and she lived that faith out in her personal, private prayer and devotional time. Anne's also one of the smartest people I've ever known in my life--she's working on her master's thesis right now--and she came to the U of R so she could be surrounded by other brilliant minds who could engage her. So after she'd been to Sunday service, after she'd read her scripture, and after she'd said her prayers, she loved getting into deep, involved, intellectual conversations with other people about her faith. And twelve years of parish school made her quite learned. She could quote scripture off the top of her head. She could tell you about philosophers, and poets, and psychologists, and scientists, and tell you about their studies, their works, their reasoning, and how they made her feel that much stronger about her beliefs.

The really interesting thing about both Anne and Nicole, though, was how they felt about our Church's teachings. When we'd sit around and talk about controversial, worldly issues (which happens so often when you're finally voting age and surrounded by political science majors), both Nicole and Anne felt fairly certain that they knew what was right and ethical because of their faith. Anne, especially, would say that her favorite part about her devout beliefs was that she felt like she didn't have to question right from wrong, because the Church always pointed her in the direction of what is right. In fact, Anne pretty much felt like she didn't have to ask a whole lot of big questions at all, about right versus wrong, or about what she should do with her life, and certainly about God, because her Church provided really clear, dependable answers to all her questions. Truth be told, I've never met anyone with more certainty about the nature of God and the world than Anne and Nicole, and that kind of certainty really is not the norm in our Christian experience. Sometimes, that kind of certainty is downright enviable.

Sometimes we really wish we could be that certain about who God is, and how his plan is supposed to unfold in our lives. In this morning's Gospel passage, the chief priests and elders are looking to get that kind of certainty from Jesus--a totally clear, totally honest, no beating-around-the-bush answer about exactly who he is, and exactly where all this power and authority he has comes from.

Even though these temple leaders are so frequently depicted as antagonists to Jesus, especially in Matthew's Gospel, I can really feel for them in this story. They just want a succinct answer to a succinct question. How often do we ever get that from Jesus--either in the Bible, or in our daily lives?

Well the chief priests and elders don't get it this morning, either. They ask Jesus to explain to them how, and from whom, he has the power to do everything we've seen him do in the last twenty chapters. Jesus, of course, is smart enough to recognize right away that, as much as the chief priests and elders may want to believe they're asking a straight-forward question, that that's actually a rather complicated question, and if Jesus tries to answer it's very likely one of the temple authorities will take what he says and use it against him. So instead of just answering the question, he responds in kind. He says I'll answer your tricky question if you can answer mine. So riddle me this: how does my cousin, John, have the power to baptize? Realizing Jesus has put them in a tight spot, the chief priests and elders withdraw their question and give up.

Then, genuine as ever to his preferred teaching style, Jesus tells a parable. He takes his listeners back into the metaphorical vineyard, and he compares two brothers: one who says he'll go work in the vineyard, but never actually does, and one who says he won't go work in the vineyard, but then changes his mind and goes.

I don't blame the chief priests and elders for challenging Jesus to see if they can get him to just answer a question for once. And it can be pretty tempting to get frustrated with Jesus when all we want is a clear, straight-forward answer from him, and instead we get a riddle and a parable.

This is often exactly how it is between us and Jesus. And, as much as we might want to think, like my friends Anne and Nicole did, that Jesus will give us the answers for all of our questions, more often, as we pursue a meaningful relationship with him, we find ourselves with less answers and more and more questions.

We don't get a lot of certainty from our faith. We don't get a lot of straight-forward answers to complicated, controversial questions. That's not the kind of teacher Jesus is.

Rather, Jesus is the kind of teacher who wants us to keep thinking. He's the kind of teacher who wants us to spend a lifetime learning, not the kind of teacher who wants us to think we have it all figured out at once. And the more we learn about Jesus, the more we explore our faith, and the more questions we ask, the more we will grow in love with our Lord.

In the meantime, don't try to ask Jesus why he's worthy of our praise, as the Temple leaders did in this morning's Gospel. Instead, consider what you already know about him, consider what you've seen him do in your life, and consider how much our love-starved world needs him, and then you can decide for yourself who Jesus is and why he deserves our time and talents. At the end of he day, only you can decide if that's enough for Jesus to win your heart. No one but you can decide who your Lord and Savior will be.

And, if like my friends Anne and Nicole did, you do decide that Jesus is that Sovereign Lord of your life, you may never feel like Jesus answers all your questions, but, like Anne and Nicole, you can serve him with the open and honest heart of a willing servant.

Amen.