Sunday, October 30th: All Saint's Day

There is a lot of groaning going on today. Throughout the Christian church, preachers who follow the lectionary scriptures are inwardly groaning at the charge of proclaiming this gospel passage. The theme of the texts and the topic of the day is hypocrisy. And nothing humbles a preacher more than being reminded that we are supposed to practice what we preach. Reading this first of seven woes proclaimed by Jesus to the teachers of the law is a recipe for feeling convicted. As I meditate on this passage, I cannot help but wonder how often in my sermons I have bound up a heavy burden to deposit on your shoulders even as I refuse to bear the exact same burden. How often have I been like a Pharisee, preaching one message and living another? How can a preacher preach about hypocrisy without facing her own hypocritical nature?

In the months since I’ve been preaching regularly, I’ve realized how much more easily I feel convicted. It’s one thing to read scriptures about the dire importance of loving God and neighbor and failing to do so; its another thing to passionately encourage your congregation to love God and neighbor and turn around and treat one of God’s children unlovingly.

My friend Stacey, who is a pastor in the Reformed Christian Church, recently wrote about her struggles with aligning her walk with her talk. After delivering a fervent message on forgiveness, she found herself in a situation that tested her own ability to forgive. She wrote, “I don't want to be forgiving. I don't want to care about reconciliation. What I want is to… at the very least, bid someone a fond "Don't let the door hit you on the way out." I want to get all righteously indignant and engage in some good old fashioned smiting. I want to lay out point by point exactly what was done wrong, in the least gracious way possible, and call it "church discipline."

Yes, I have a bit of a temper.
Sigh. Remember sermon. "Forgiveness is a better way, God's way." What was I thinking? Why do I emphasize the compassionate, loving aspects of God? If I had talked about judgment, at least I'd have an excuse...

It sounded so nice when I was saying it to someone else. I don't really even want to try to work toward forgivenss right now. But here comes that nasty, sneaky, little poking feeling of God saying, "You know, if you're going to get into a pulpit and tell people this is the best way, perhaps you ought to at least make a good faith effort yourself."

Rev. Stacey ended her recap of her internal argument by declaring that she has got to start preaching about smiting.

I can relate to Rev. Stacey’s struggle. One of the issues I struggle with is the dissonance between my ideals and my actions regarding consumerism. I could preach a fiery message about the spiritual vacuum of overconsumption. I could sound like a good old fashioned hellfire and damnation preacher, pounding on the pulpit as I condemn the culture of buying much more than we need, of allowing material goods to eat up large portions of our incomes, of failing to give generously on account of enormous credit card debt. And then I’d go home to the Sunday paper and make a beeline for the Target advertisement, forgetting my high-minded values as soon as I see the new designer series. Consumerism may break my heart, but it continues to break my pocketbook.

I may have new appreciation for the issue of hypocrisy, but Jesus’ teachings on the importance of practicing what we preach is relevant for all Christians. Clearly, Jesus was not happy with the Pharisee’s failure to coordinate their teachings with their actions. His central accusation is that they are prideful and blind to their own brokenness. He says, ⁵They do all their deeds to be seen by others... ⁶They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, ⁷and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.” They love the prestige of being religious leaders, but they are not transformed by the religious teachings they proclaim. The Pharisees put themselves before God; they wear their piety like a badge, using it to procure privileges.

Hypocrisy is a potent catalyst for mistrust. When you see that someone has behaved hypocritically, you feel betrayed. You no longer trust what the hypocrite says. And religious people have an enormous reputation for hypocrisy. Many non-Christians have strongly negative opinions about Christians, and the reason is that they perceive many Christians are hypocritical. Whether or not it is fair, non-Christians judge Christians when their actions fail to live up to biblical standards. No matter that no one is perfect; when a Christian acts in a manner that is unchristlike, people notice.

When words and deeds do not match up, a chasm forms. And that chasm is more dangerous than we might imagine. Faith can fall into that chasm of mistrust and disillusionment, and be lost. Many people have become so disgusted by the actions of Christians that they have rejected the church altogether. I have heard so many people claim that they like Jesus just fine—they just don’t like his followers. There are certainly lots of Christians who would send me running in the other direction if I wasn’t securely rooted in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Sometimes I wonder if people who claim to be Christians are any less likely to lie, cheat, steal, abuse, and judge.

Again, no one is perfect. We are all human and given to human failures; as we all know, being in relationship with God doesn’t prevent us from sinning. But this problem of hypocrisy among the Body of Christ is truly a crisis. Too many Christian people are acting like the corrupted Pharisees—and that is precisely what the gospel advises against.

The crisis of hypocrisy is causing many Christians to struggle with their identity as Christian people. We live in a culture that increasingly mistrusts Christianity; how, then, are we supposed to go about our way sharing the gospel of Christ from our doorsteps to the ends of the earth? This issue came up often during the eight weeks of our Talking Faith discussion group. We are people who have chosen to follow the way of Jesus; how do we communicate that to our neighbors in the shadow of so-called Christians who proclaim not the way of Jesus but the way of judgment, hatred, and deception?

We’ve got to get back to the basics, and recommit ourselves to not simply believing in the gospel, but living in a way that is fully informed by the good news of Jesus Christ. When we wake up each morning, we need to begin our days with a humble prayer, asking God to help us embody the love, grace, and forgiveness of the gospel. We can’t waste too much time fretting about the Christians who continue to practice hypocrisy; after all, judge not, or you shall be judged. We’ve just got to take a deep breath of the Holy Spirit and let that Spirit recreate us again and again according to the will of God.

There is a wonderful quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi— “Preach the gospel always. When necessary, use words.” I might use words in the pulpit as the one called to be pastor of this community. But we are all called to be ministers of the Gospel when we are baptized in the name of the Creator and the Christ and the Holy Spirit. And part of the ministry all believers are called to is the ministry of preaching. Perhaps not often with words. But always with actions. We must preach the gospel with every inch of our lives. That is not to say that we will not make mistakes. We will continue to fall short. But when we falter, we can model a way of humble repentance.

We can ask for forgiveness and do what is right to restore relationships when our actions hurt our neighbors.

During this season each time of year, the Church Universal celebrates All Saint’s Day. This is a time in the life of the congregation to remember those who have passed away, and to celebrate the lives of the whole communion of Saints. I know that this congregation has lost some extraordinary members in recent years, true Saints of the Church who lived graciously. These people were not perfect, but their integrity and humility make the connection between their walk and their talk seamless. Remembering and honoring this communion of Saints is part of our work as Christian people. As we endeavor to rid our lives of hypocrisy and become more Christlike, we need the examples of men and women who have traveled this same path.

We might groan under the burden of loosening ourselves from the grip of hypocrisy. I meant it when I said this scripture makes me groan as a preacher; I am humbled by my many failures to live up to the words I pronounce. But God’s grace transforms our groaning into songs of praise. God’s love turns our expressions of repentance into illustrations of forgiveness. Thanks be to God.

Sunday, October 23: The Greatest Commandment

Sorry I got behind, folks! I will post October 16th soon- I seem to have misplaced the file. For now, here's a sermon on the Greatest Commandment according to Matthew, which you can read here.


Love. That’s the subject of the day. Love. The content of the greatest commandment, the moral, ethical, and behavioral ideal that faithful people are called—or more precisely, commanded, to uphold. This is the big one, as far as commandments go.

The gospel story we heard today is short on plot and long on importance. A lawyer asks Jesus which commandment is the greatest. This question, like so many posed by those associated with the Pharisees, was a trick question. The goal was to discover that Jesus had a preference for the moral law or the ceremonial law. The correct, orthodox, party line answer was to say that the whole law was equally great. After all, the law was instituted by God. No one aspect of that law could be any better or worse, and greater or lesser, than any other part of the law, because the law, according to Jewish tradition, was God’s. Jesus goes and answers this trick question with words that have been stamped on many a greeting card and embroidered on countless parlor pillows: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” He goes on to add an additional commandment, a second commandment that is like the first, indeed, inextricably linked to the first. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Love. How can love be commanded? You can’t compel a kid to like brussel sprouts. You can’t force a French horn player to enjoy rap music. And you can’t demand that someone feel affection for you. Isn’t love the heart of all that is romantic? Or if you’re a bit of a cynic, maybe you understand love to be the result of a chemical reaction in the brain—simply the consequence of a particular set of electrical fireworks going off in the mind.

If our definition of love is that it is a mysterious feeling, explained either by romance or science, then this scripture, this greatest commandment, is troublesome. But as Christians, our definition of love cannot be solely rooted in emotions. Emotions, in and of themselves, are not bad. Bursting with wonderful feelings of love for God and for our neighbors—is a wonderful thing. It just isn’t exactly what Jesus was talking about when he commanded to love with all our soul and all our mind. Even the part of this greatest commandment that demands that we love God with all our hearts is not dealing exclusively in the sphere of emotions. Love is a verb. That might sound like a cliché; so much has been said and sung about love that it is easy to sink into layers of cliché. But I mean this literally. The Greek word for love that Matthew uses in writing this gospel narrative is a verb. The greatest commandment does not pressure us to have a feeling. The greatest commandment demands that we love. Love with the totality of our hearts, souls, and minds. Love God, and love our neighbors. And this means that we are called to hard work, because authentic love is more akin to manual labor than a walk in the park.

One of my heroes of the Christian faith is Dorothy Day, the lay Catholic woman who started the Catholic Worker in the early 20th century. Our own Come and Be Fed program is indebted to the Catholic Worker; the original community of Christians in New York City more or less invented the concept of the Soup Kitchen. The Catholic Worker movement was dedicated to witnessing Christ by strenuously practicing the virtue of love. The workers provided the basics for the destitute residents of New York City’s ghettos. They offered food, shelter, and advocacy, loudly protesting the plight of the least of these, arguing for a major reform of how the poor, disabled, and mentally ill were treated in the United States. And the core of the Catholic Worker’s motivation was the desire to live out the greatest commandment, the call to love. Dorothy Day didn’t romanticize this commandment. In her ministry, Day repeatedly referred to the words of Dostoyevsky, who wrote, “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.” For Dorothy Day and the members of the Catholic Worker community, loving God and neighbor meant sacrificing—laying down privilege and creature comforts for the sake of people they didn’t even know. They did more than simply feel a warm and fuzzy feeling. They loved hard enough to break into a sweat. And, quite importantly, they understood the deep interconnection of the first and second commandments. They understood that you can’t love God without loving your neighbor, and you can’t love your neighbor without loving God. Day put this another way. She said, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”

As Christians, we believe that love is elemental to the nature of God. The first letter of John even equates God with love. He writes, “Let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” These are strong words. The writer of this letter clearly takes seriously the importance of the greatest commandment. He recognizes that the absence of love is the absence of God.

I recently read a retelling of a very profound story in a sermon posted on the internet. The story, called The Great Hunger, was written by the Norwegian novelist, Johan Bojer. Since I have not read the story myself, I’m going to stick with the way the Professor Zersen told it. He writes,
“It happened that an anti-social newcomer moved into the village and put a fence around his property with a sign saying, “Keep Out.” He also put a vicious dog in the fence to keep anyone from climbing it. One day, the neighbor’s little girl reached inside the fence to pet the dog and the dog grabbed her by the arm and savagely bit and killed her.
The townspeople were enraged and refused to speak to the recluse. They wouldn’t sell him groceries at the store. When it came time for planting, they wouldn’t sell him seed. The man became destitute and didn’t know what to do. One day he saw another man sowing seed on his field. He ran out and discovered it was the father of the little girl. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.” The father replied, “I am doing this to keep God alive in me.”

I like this story, and what it says about love, because it doesn’t paint a warm and fuzzy portrait of love. It doesn’t teach, like so many pop songs and even some of our own beloved hymns, that love is a feeling. I think it is safe to assume that the father of the girl who was killed did not particularly like the man responsible for his daughter’s death. He most certainly did not long for the man’s friendship. He quite understandably felt anguish and perhaps even rage toward the man who owned that vicious dog. But he acted lovingly. He loved the man in a devastatingly simple way: he planted seed in his field. That act of love was rooted in the deep faith that God is love, and failing to love is failing to receive the presence of God.
Love is the foundation for so much. Without love, grace is a sham. Without love, forgiveness is impossible. Without love, we live and move and have our being in chaos.
This active love we are called to embody with our hearts and souls and minds—this love is a commandment. We are not politely requested to act lovingly. We are not playfully cajoled to love God and neighbor. We are commanded by the very Creator of the Universe to love. This is law, sisters and brothers. God’s law. We who have tasted and seen that God is good—we must respond to God’s goodness by obeying God’s law. But we cannot live up to the expectations of this law on our own. We are not asked to love on our own. As followers of Jesus, as members of the Body of Christ, we have been given a bouquet of crucial gifts. We have been given the example and teachings of Jesus Christ. We have been given the power of the Holy Spirit. And we have been given the unparalleled gift of grace.

There is a lot of hard work to do as we endeavor to fulfill this commandment to love. But ultimately, the only way we shall be capable of following the greatest commandment is by opening ourselves up to God’s love. By the grace of God, we shall become channels of God’s own love, ordinary vessels for God’s extraordinary compassion for creation. By the grace of God, let us love.

Sunday, October 9th

If this were a story of a perfect party, a party drummed up by Martha Stewart, a party made memorable only by its gourmet cuisine, I wouldn’t know quite what to do with it. Such parties are all but foreign to me. My family history includes a number of parties that didn’t work out quite right. Sure, we had a few successes, but we seem to have a terrible track record. There was the time my grandmother literally made a VAT of potato salad for my sister’s graduation party. A week after the party, we still had three quarters of a vat of potato salad left, and my mother decided to discreetly send it down the garbage disposal while my grandmother bathed. Let this be a word to the wise: garbage disposals do not appreciate being asked to consume gallons of week-old side dishes. My mother was frantically trying to unclog the sink when my grandmother returned from her bath. Neither were terribly happy with the scene. Then there was the time my parents threw a sweet-sixteen party for my eldest sister. They decided to play it safe, and hire one police officer to patrol the parking lot of the city lodge to ensure that none of the teenagers got too rowdy. Well, the police apparently didn’t have much to do that night, because soon the police officer’s colleagues starting showing up to visit. By the time the kids’ parents came to pick them up, there were four police cars outside the party. Not that there was anything inappropriate going on—no loud music, no alcohol. But all the parents who saw the squad cars were appalled. So much for our reputation.

Parties are dangerous business. They are supposed to be fun, but so many factors threaten their carefree goal. There is the matter of food. Will we have too much, or too little? There is the matter of entertainment. Will people appreciate a game of charades? What if no one likes the band? And then there is the matter of invitations. Who’s in, and who’s out? Do we risk hurting the feelings of those who do not make the cut? And what if no one comes? Then what?

The parable set forth by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew unfolds within the ordinary context of a domestic party. A King wants to honor his son and daughter-in-law with a Wedding Banquet. Immediately, what should be a joyous occasion takes a terrible turn. The invited guests refuse to show up. The King sends out his slaves to plead with the guests to come. He encourages the slaves to describe the feast he has prepared— and this is no shabby feast. The guests of this party will dine on oxen and calf—the finest meats available. But the messenger slaves are treated with unconscionable violence. Some are even murdered. This celebratory feast is transformed into a violent rejection. The enraged King returns violence for violence, sending his troops to decimate the cities of the offenders—even as his dinner still simmers over the fire! And then he devises a new plan to populate his party. He tells his slaves to invite anyone and everyone they find on the street to come to the wedding banquet. Since the ones who had appeared worthy turned out to be disinterested at best and violent at worst, the King tries his luck with the ordinary riff-raff, the random folks who happen to be on the street when the slaves sweep by with the invitation.

The party commences. The memory of the day’s violence must still be on the minds of the King and his slaves. But the smell of the meat is delectable. And the delight of these guests—some good, some bad—must be palpable. They didn’t know they would be attending a feast when they woke up this morning. Some probably assumed they would go hungry. I can imagine their gratitude that they have been welcomed into this opulent gala. On Wednesday I received a call from a man desperate to find dinner for his family. He didn’t know about Shared Bread. As I told him the particulars and ensured him that there would be plenty for his whole family, he sighed deeply with relief that the crisis for the day had been averted. The gift of a meal is sometimes the best invitation a person can receive. But as the guests settle into their seats, the King notices that one guest has come unprepared. He is not outfitted in a wedding robe. The King’s honor is thoroughly offended, perhaps even worse than it had been by the guests who outright rejected his hospitality. He demands that the guest be cast into the darkness and prevented from reentering the party. The story concludes with foreboding words—many are called, but few are chosen.

The thing about parables is that they utilize symbols that we don’t always understand. We live in a different context, so some of the objects that are given special meaning in Jesus’ preaching are foreign to us. The wedding robe is one such object. To our 21st century American ears, it is easy to hear “wedding robe” and assume that this means appropriate wedding attire in our context. If that is true, this is a troublesome story, particularly if we are to assume that the King in this story demonstrates something about the nature of God. If we don’t understand the meaning of the symbols in this parable, we are in danger of seeing a mean-spirited God. After all, if you invite an impoverished homeless person to attend a swanky wedding reception, you can’t very well expect her to show up in a Sax Fifth Avenue gown. We need to read this parable in context— and we know from a whole slew of biblical passages that Jesus would never condemn someone for being economically poor. Jesus blessed the poor, and handed out a fair amount of warnings to the rich.

The wedding robe is not a symbol of economic privilege. The wedding robe is a symbol of honor, of preparation, of respect. When the King’s guests donned their wedding robes, they were not only accepting his invitation, they were allowing his invitation to transform them. By clothing themselves in the wedding robes, they were doing more than just showing up. Whether they were good or bad, rich or poor, the second-string wedding guests demonstrated that they were responding fully to the unexpected invitation.

The wedding robe symbolizes the way we respond to God’s gracious invitation to the heavenly communion feast. We are all invited—we are all called—but do we take the invitation lightly, or do we let the invitation transform our very souls?

The wedding banquet guest who failed to respond fully to the gift of the feast was caught totally unawares. Jesus said that he was struck completely speechless. He had nothing to say for himself. He had shown up—wasn’t that all that was required of him?

God issues an invitation to each and every one of us to come to the table of grace and redemption. The gift of faith is extended to all. But we are called to be more than Christians in name. We are called to more than simple belief. We are called to be followers of Christ. We are called to all kinds of hard actions that are part and parcel of the Christian faith. Accepting the invitation to the feast of God and genuinely receiving the gift of faith living lives that reflect God’s grace. This is not a matter of earning salvation by doing good work. As the apostle James wrote, faith without works is dead.

Authentic faithfulness means living and loving like Jesus. Following Christ means repenting from anything that holds us back from God. Following Christ means seeking justice and righteousness. Following Christ means forgiving those who have hurt us. It means loving each and every human being with whom we come in contact. An evangelical writer once said that the Christian need only cultivate two loves: the first, for God, and the second, for whoever is standing before you at the moment. When we accept the invitation to the feast of communion, we are not joining a country club. We are committing to carrying the cross of Christ—sharing the burden of planting seeds for the Kingdom of God in a broken world.

This parable is a searing judgment—through and through. It is a reminder that we worship a God who is more than simply nice. Through Christ Jesus, God has taught us how to live— not just what to believe, but how to live. But we must recognize that in the parable, only the King had the prerogative to send away the unchanged guest. This parable does not give the go-ahead to judge other Christians whom we deem to be ungracious, unloving, or unrepentant. This parable is a reminder to each and every one of us that we are called to be gracious, loving, and repentant.

The feast to which we are all invited is a sacrament of the Kingdom of God. We experience a taste of it here, as we take and eat the bread and the cup. This meal proclaims a heavenly feast in which all are reunited and united—good and bad, enemies and friends. Be transformed by this feast, sisters and brothers. Receive the invitation and respond to it with your whole life—for the gift which we are given is life everlasting. Amen.