This is the second article in the How to Talk about God series. Last month I spoke on what it is like to talk to God and I used television shows to explain two perspectives. This month, I would like to complain about the problem of hermeneutics, the fact that everyone has preconceived notions. Something that we all experience when we try to speak to non-Christians about our faith is that people want to tell us what we think instead of listen to us. There is a two fold reason for this.
First, we as humans want to teach more than we want to learn. This is a pretty well documented sociological fact and remembering this when we encounter people who always dispute our facts, opinions and faith goes a long way towards keeping us in charity with our fellow humans. We are who we are and we like to be 'in the know.'
Second, we live in a post Christendom era. The Anabaptist Network have put together a FAQ of their “Core Convictions” and one of them sums this idea up perfectly. “Western culture is slowly emerging from the Christendom era when church and state jointly presided over a society in which almost all were assumed to be Christian. Whatever its positive contributions on values and institutions, Christendom seriously distorted the gospel, marginalized Jesus, and has left the churches ill-equipped for mission in a post-Christendom culture.”
Our world is still full of default Christian values and traditions. Christmas and Easter are still considered national holidays, people running for public office are expected to profess Christianity, and the media and marketing industries cater to the perceived desires of Christians, which we all too often defer to ourselves. Whatever Jesus WOULD do, I highly doubt he would buy bumper stickers. No matter how much I enjoyed both Wonderfalls and Joan of Arcadia, should I have been letting my understanding of the gospel and that of non-believers be molded by people trying to make a few dollars from advertising bathroom cleaner?
We are called to be set apart from the rest of the world. This is not because we know we are better than the other inhabitants of the planet, but because we know that we are worse. We are called apart to serve people in need and not to cater to the power brokers of this world. When we want to talk to people about God, are we doing this? And more importantly, how are we doing this? Asking people if they are saved and do they know Jesus invites one of my favorite bumper sticker responses, “Born OK the first time.” These questions are phrased in a language set apart, and the secular understanding of them will never match the 'technical term' status we assign them. What I think of when someone says 'chaos theory' and what the physicist think are radically different.
Hermeneutics is the study of the problem of preconceived notions. We must be careful that we understand this problem, and we understand what the preconceived notions are before we try to talk to someone about church, or Jesus, or Christianity (three very different things). When we ask people what they think first, before we speak, we acknowledge their world view and perspectives. This gives us a language, their language, as a place to begin the conversation. This allows us to address other peoples actual needs, which is the true service instructed by the gospels and what we are actually trying to say when we ask, Are you saved?
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Naming as Creation
Genesis 2:28-24
Two chapters into the bible, and we have already created the world twice. Most of you have probably heard some or all of this passage before in marriage ceremonies. What I think gets ignored when we read this passage with the intent to justify marriage is the remarkable gift that God gives man, that of naming. Sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists, indeed most other fields ending in -ology know that the act of naming something brings it into reality. It isn't enough to see a cow; if you can't tell someone about the cow, you can't get help getting it our of the road. This is because we are creatures of community. We survive by common knowledge passed down through generations. This, and other stories of the Septuagint are stories that bind a people together. So first, lets look at how this story binds people into covenant with God, then we can move on to how this story is reinvented in the new covenant of Jesus Christ.
There are two creation stories in the bible. I didn't get that impression as a child, and many adults still don't know this. Sunday school, in my experience, tends to use the first creation story to explain the beginnings of Adam and Eve. I think this because “be fruitful and multiply” sounds more like homework to grade schoolers than “...a man... clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” Racy stuff, and I admit, I haven't read this to my own kids either.
But what are we losing by focusing on the “And God Said” version of creation. This God is outside time, outside interaction and outside comprehension for us. True, God is all of those things, but this is our story of events, and we are not outside time, and we are not outside creating meaning from our interactions with God. The first story is like a perfectly planned pregnancy with a clear understanding of parent and child. The second is like a baby in a basket found on the doorstep; God and Adam are now in this together.
'In this together' is a much better explanation of the covenant relationship than that of parent and child. When we envision a parent-child relationship, our first image is always that of the greatest difference in power, babies and mothers, or fathers and five year olds. God is infinitely more powerful than us and to focus on the power aspects of our covenant with Him gives us the excuse to undervalue our own contribution, and it offers us the excuse to not act. This second story of creation is much more meaningful because in it, we are co-creators.
We are not just creating names for animals, we are creating relationships. And we are creating ourselves. Even before there were two of us, we were already longing for community with each other. God was too exalted, to perfect for us to be really comfortable with. And verse 20 says, “The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.”
If God was too exalted, then the animals were not exalted enough. We gain more understanding all the time about how animals can communicate with each other, but no matter that we say dog is a man's best friend, dogs can't get really excited about politics, plowing or procreating. We need each other, and God created us to need each other, even before we could know ourselves in relation. God put Adam to sleep and used him to create a match, someone with the same abilities and desires as himself. When Adam saw her he said, Finally, someone I can talk to about how stupid this dog is.
This story is part of a saga, a sweeping narrative that the Jewish people have used as part of a set of stories to set themselves apart and define their covenant with God. This story has passed through the minds of man for far more years than we can credit the bible. We are not the Jewish people but we worship the same unchanging God, and we keep their oldest stories alive in our tradition because it is our history too. This creation story is archetypal of our powers of creation. But it is formulated under the old covenant. What we really need to know is how Jesus told us we should be using that power.
In Luke 10 we meet a Lawyer, not in the laws of the land, but in the laws of Moses. He asks Jesus, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus lets him answer: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the Great Commandment of our faith, and it is not something new. These exact words come from God, written in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy.
But Jesus is offering us a new vision of the old covenant that God has made with the Jews and the lawyer wants to remain righteous. So he asks for clarification, “Who is my neighbor?” You know he is expecting to hear, Jews or maybe something more vague like, People like you,. This is what the church leaders would tell him; that is what his mother would tell him. But Jesus doesn't tell him that. Jesus is offering him and us another way to use the power of creation we have in the naming of a thing. He is showing us how to redefine who we think of as “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”
Do you remember the answer to the lawyer's question? It is the parable of the good Samaritan. A man half dead and naked on the side of the road is passed by a representative of God himself, because if he does not keep purity he can no longer go into the Temple. Likewise, an assistant to the representative of God himself passes by. This poor man is surely thinking God has forsaken him, if God's own select, the very people who spend their lives in communion with God won't help him, why would anyone else?
But along comes a Samaritan, someone who doesn't speak his language, someone his faith tells him to avoid, and that man, whom he himself would not help, picks him up, cleans him up, and puts him up to recover – for two months, and offers to come back later and pay off any extra expenses. That is some neighbor.
What just happened here? The lawyer is in a tailspin, and so are we. Jesus just took our power to name people and turned it upside down. We all use language to bring people like us close and to push away people who are different, then we use that distinction to determine who benefits from our resources. We name our neighbors all the time, based on their physical proximity to our homes, their socio-economic status in relation to ours, their political affiliations, their religious preferences. Jesus said, you have been given a power by my Father to define your relationships, to define each other, to define yourselves. Do not limit yourselves. Take this creative power and use it to break down the limits you have created for yourself.
All through the New Testament Jesus is taking the prescriptive, negative, laws God gave to his people because they could not recall their powerful relationship with Him, and turning them in to proscriptive, positive expressions of a life lived fearlessly. Adam did not start out afraid of God, he started out beside Him, asking for his needs and offering himself as a means to fulfilling those needs. But like every human life must go through a time of trial, also known as adolescence, so the whole human race must go through an adolescence. The laws of Moses, the THOU SHALL NOT's can be seen as a time of youth, where our Father, God could only speak to us by setting down the negative outlines of behavior. Jesus came through and said, grow up already. It isn't about what you can't do, it is about what you can do. Don't you remember? Don't you remember when you were a child of God and you loved Him and all the things He gave to you, all the freedom He allowed you? Remember how happy you were to see another person? Why are you treating each other as though you are not all equal in the eyes of the Lord?
Jesus is still asking us this today. Why are we adding limits to the command to Love our neighbors as ourselves. Was the parable of the Good Samaritan not clear enough? The first thing God gave us after life itself is an amazing power indeed, that of naming the things in our world. And he has given us something else, a desire to live in community with each other and the means to do so. When we put up walls, literal and figurative, in our world, we are putting up walls in our relationship with God too. Each one of us needs to look into our own lives and find the walls we are building with our words. Who are we denying a relationship with God by our defining them as other?
I challenge each of you to spend the next week listening to the words you use, and the words of those around you. Who isn't getting fair treatment in housing, in employment or in our courts because we don't see them as a neighbor? Who don't we see in our community, and so don't see in communion with ourselves. John 3:16 says “For God so loved THE WORLD.” It doesn't say for God so loved the Jews, or for God so loved the Christians, and neither should you. We are to bring about the kingdom of God, and that kingdom will never happen as long as we are using our God given powers to destroy rather than to build. Listen to your words, are you using them to be a Pharisee, or are you using them to be a Samaritan?
Amen.
Two chapters into the bible, and we have already created the world twice. Most of you have probably heard some or all of this passage before in marriage ceremonies. What I think gets ignored when we read this passage with the intent to justify marriage is the remarkable gift that God gives man, that of naming. Sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists, indeed most other fields ending in -ology know that the act of naming something brings it into reality. It isn't enough to see a cow; if you can't tell someone about the cow, you can't get help getting it our of the road. This is because we are creatures of community. We survive by common knowledge passed down through generations. This, and other stories of the Septuagint are stories that bind a people together. So first, lets look at how this story binds people into covenant with God, then we can move on to how this story is reinvented in the new covenant of Jesus Christ.
There are two creation stories in the bible. I didn't get that impression as a child, and many adults still don't know this. Sunday school, in my experience, tends to use the first creation story to explain the beginnings of Adam and Eve. I think this because “be fruitful and multiply” sounds more like homework to grade schoolers than “...a man... clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” Racy stuff, and I admit, I haven't read this to my own kids either.
But what are we losing by focusing on the “And God Said” version of creation. This God is outside time, outside interaction and outside comprehension for us. True, God is all of those things, but this is our story of events, and we are not outside time, and we are not outside creating meaning from our interactions with God. The first story is like a perfectly planned pregnancy with a clear understanding of parent and child. The second is like a baby in a basket found on the doorstep; God and Adam are now in this together.
'In this together' is a much better explanation of the covenant relationship than that of parent and child. When we envision a parent-child relationship, our first image is always that of the greatest difference in power, babies and mothers, or fathers and five year olds. God is infinitely more powerful than us and to focus on the power aspects of our covenant with Him gives us the excuse to undervalue our own contribution, and it offers us the excuse to not act. This second story of creation is much more meaningful because in it, we are co-creators.
We are not just creating names for animals, we are creating relationships. And we are creating ourselves. Even before there were two of us, we were already longing for community with each other. God was too exalted, to perfect for us to be really comfortable with. And verse 20 says, “The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.”
If God was too exalted, then the animals were not exalted enough. We gain more understanding all the time about how animals can communicate with each other, but no matter that we say dog is a man's best friend, dogs can't get really excited about politics, plowing or procreating. We need each other, and God created us to need each other, even before we could know ourselves in relation. God put Adam to sleep and used him to create a match, someone with the same abilities and desires as himself. When Adam saw her he said, Finally, someone I can talk to about how stupid this dog is.
This story is part of a saga, a sweeping narrative that the Jewish people have used as part of a set of stories to set themselves apart and define their covenant with God. This story has passed through the minds of man for far more years than we can credit the bible. We are not the Jewish people but we worship the same unchanging God, and we keep their oldest stories alive in our tradition because it is our history too. This creation story is archetypal of our powers of creation. But it is formulated under the old covenant. What we really need to know is how Jesus told us we should be using that power.
In Luke 10 we meet a Lawyer, not in the laws of the land, but in the laws of Moses. He asks Jesus, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus lets him answer: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the Great Commandment of our faith, and it is not something new. These exact words come from God, written in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy.
But Jesus is offering us a new vision of the old covenant that God has made with the Jews and the lawyer wants to remain righteous. So he asks for clarification, “Who is my neighbor?” You know he is expecting to hear, Jews or maybe something more vague like, People like you,. This is what the church leaders would tell him; that is what his mother would tell him. But Jesus doesn't tell him that. Jesus is offering him and us another way to use the power of creation we have in the naming of a thing. He is showing us how to redefine who we think of as “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”
Do you remember the answer to the lawyer's question? It is the parable of the good Samaritan. A man half dead and naked on the side of the road is passed by a representative of God himself, because if he does not keep purity he can no longer go into the Temple. Likewise, an assistant to the representative of God himself passes by. This poor man is surely thinking God has forsaken him, if God's own select, the very people who spend their lives in communion with God won't help him, why would anyone else?
But along comes a Samaritan, someone who doesn't speak his language, someone his faith tells him to avoid, and that man, whom he himself would not help, picks him up, cleans him up, and puts him up to recover – for two months, and offers to come back later and pay off any extra expenses. That is some neighbor.
What just happened here? The lawyer is in a tailspin, and so are we. Jesus just took our power to name people and turned it upside down. We all use language to bring people like us close and to push away people who are different, then we use that distinction to determine who benefits from our resources. We name our neighbors all the time, based on their physical proximity to our homes, their socio-economic status in relation to ours, their political affiliations, their religious preferences. Jesus said, you have been given a power by my Father to define your relationships, to define each other, to define yourselves. Do not limit yourselves. Take this creative power and use it to break down the limits you have created for yourself.
All through the New Testament Jesus is taking the prescriptive, negative, laws God gave to his people because they could not recall their powerful relationship with Him, and turning them in to proscriptive, positive expressions of a life lived fearlessly. Adam did not start out afraid of God, he started out beside Him, asking for his needs and offering himself as a means to fulfilling those needs. But like every human life must go through a time of trial, also known as adolescence, so the whole human race must go through an adolescence. The laws of Moses, the THOU SHALL NOT's can be seen as a time of youth, where our Father, God could only speak to us by setting down the negative outlines of behavior. Jesus came through and said, grow up already. It isn't about what you can't do, it is about what you can do. Don't you remember? Don't you remember when you were a child of God and you loved Him and all the things He gave to you, all the freedom He allowed you? Remember how happy you were to see another person? Why are you treating each other as though you are not all equal in the eyes of the Lord?
Jesus is still asking us this today. Why are we adding limits to the command to Love our neighbors as ourselves. Was the parable of the Good Samaritan not clear enough? The first thing God gave us after life itself is an amazing power indeed, that of naming the things in our world. And he has given us something else, a desire to live in community with each other and the means to do so. When we put up walls, literal and figurative, in our world, we are putting up walls in our relationship with God too. Each one of us needs to look into our own lives and find the walls we are building with our words. Who are we denying a relationship with God by our defining them as other?
I challenge each of you to spend the next week listening to the words you use, and the words of those around you. Who isn't getting fair treatment in housing, in employment or in our courts because we don't see them as a neighbor? Who don't we see in our community, and so don't see in communion with ourselves. John 3:16 says “For God so loved THE WORLD.” It doesn't say for God so loved the Jews, or for God so loved the Christians, and neither should you. We are to bring about the kingdom of God, and that kingdom will never happen as long as we are using our God given powers to destroy rather than to build. Listen to your words, are you using them to be a Pharisee, or are you using them to be a Samaritan?
Amen.
Sunday, October 9, 2005
All Dressed Up, Where to Go?
The Lectionary Committee has once again left in a passage of the Bible that we would gladly never read. My first, oh 10 readings of this, absolutely confirmed my opinion that Jesus would never have said anything like that. And I really wished we could have skipped over to the Lukan version which does not include the misplaced guest. But the last, well, one of the last, nice things that John Williams did for me before he left was to tell me, hey, I think that pants aren't really what Jesus was talking about, and Pat says, of course not, its more like righteousness and good living and the sacraments and things like that. Pat doesn't really talk like that, but I remember the feeling of a stone shifting in my heart and finally being able to read this passage without revulsion. So lets take a minute to put it in its place in the story of Jesus and in the story of the Gospels, because I will always think that this is one of my most important tasks in preaching.
First, we need to remember the Gospel that we are reading. This is Matthew, written for Jewish-Christians who approached their Christian faith as the fulfillment of their Jewish traditions. If there is anything we take with us from Sunday School lessons of the Old Testament, it is that God can and will smite the enemies of his chosen people and Israel too, if she gets out of hand. The compliers of the book of Matthew read the material through the lens of their lives and their faith in God, and as much as we don't like to think about it, God does smite.
Second, we need to remember that this is from that same series of parables that we have been reading for the last several weeks. Jesus is still in the temple where his authority to teach was questioned, but he is no longer speaking to the priests, now he is turned back to the crowd. The Pharisees and priests and elders are all still standing there, so he is still speaking for their benefit, but he is no longer addressing them directly.
So lets look at this parable again with these frames of reference in our minds.
We think of weddings as big deals now, and credit cards and brokerage firms are all doing commercials about a daddy and his daughter out shopping for her wedding. They are trying to tell us something we may have forgotten with all our talk of love, but weddings celebrate marriages, which are alliance making deals, just like any other board room transaction. Marriages are covenants, just like God's covenant with Israel. We may not ever have to climb a mountain and carry big hand hewn rocks back down to make a covenant for God, but we will all likely experience a wedding. This is something we can relate to.
And if you have ever had a hand in putting a wedding together, you can feel the rage that the king felt when people didn't bother to show up. Then just imagine the lawsuits to follow if you sent out the reception staff to lead people into the reception and the guests started punching or shoving them or even pulling out guns like a Quinten Tarantino movie and shooting them?? Imagine the rage if the wedding was actually a peace accord to stop the fighting of two families or of two countries. How much greater then would that anger be if it was to unite all the people of God and no one bothered to show up?
What would it feel like to be a minor nobody invited because you are the second cousin twice removed from the step brother of the groom? You would probably be right to think your picture was never going to get into the wedding album, but free drinks and a meal are nothing to sneeze at. You would probably be cowering under the pews if the honored guests started beating up the ushers. You might start trying to work your way under the sub-flooring when the hosts started shooting back.
At this point, you are thinking, party's over, and I have not even a story to tell in polite company. But now the host, victor from the vantage of the doorway, brushes off the ushers and sends them off looking for people to eat at the reception. If the guests don't want lobster puffs, then as God as my witness, I will find someone else who does.
OK, that was fun for us, but what does it have to do with the actual story? Remember where Jesus is? He is in the temple courtyard talking to people who are compelled to attend temple, but never get to go inside. Wedding guests invited to fill in the back pews of the church so the pictures make the groom appear more popular than he in fact is. Remember who else is listening? The people who do get to go inside, who do get to sit in the front row, and who are invited to sit at the bridal party table. Doesn't seem like such a great story to them. My father sent prophets to tell you of my wedding, says Jesus, and you ignored them. My father sent more people to lead you by the hand to my wedding, and you killed them. So you are no longer invited, Jesus tells them. This marriage, this covenant, is no longer by invitation only, Jews and Gentiles are equally welcome. The rich and the poor are equally invited. The full and the hungry have equal access to the feast.
So what about that guest who get thrown out, wailing and gnashing his teeth in the outer darkness? What about the idea that many are called but few are chosen? I choose to believe that Jesus didn't say this in a red lettered sort of way. I choose to believe that this is an addition, in Mathew, of Jews who have professed Jesus, and who have been spurned by their families and friends, in those ways that Jesus says that being his follower is likely to do. I chose to believe that a people for whom the Old Testament expressions of God are still the most natural have chosen to continue expressing him in those ways.
For those who complied Matthew, and Matthew is full of parables that end in gnashing, wailing, outer darkness and the call of many and the few chosen, there is a need to confirm that they have made the right choice, we all want to know we have made the right choice, especially in a choice as hard as following the prince of peace. And if that means there is a little of the my dad can beat up your dad in this community, it only means they are human, the same as us. And if you don't think so, my dad... well, you get my point.
So what do we do with this parable? What are we supposed to take away from this story that is applicable and relevant to our lives? Maybe we shouldn't have big parties for our marriages. I didn't, but I am notoriously cheap about things like parties, all parties are potlucks at my house. Maybe we should expand our guest lists, not treat people as commodities but honor all of them as guests in our churches, in our lives, in our hearts. Maybe what this is telling us, who are not Jews being persecuted by our families for following a radical untrained teacher, is to watch what we wear.
I had a really hard time getting past the clothes and into the metaphor. Jesus was a guy in hand me down shoes who regularly gave away his coat. The only reason he had a coat to give away was that people kept giving him another one. Of all the people to associate status with clothing.... Then I extended the metaphor. OK, I didn't, but Pat explained it very clearly and slowly for my closed ears and open mouth. Jesus wasn't telling people - wear a suit or I'll be back. Jesus was telling people to participate in the sacraments, to stay in right relationship, in our hearts, with God and with the commandments. Do we love God with all our heart and with all our strength and all our mind – all the time? Do we love our neighbors as ourselves – all the time? Because if we are doing so, when someone asks us, what are you wearing? Why are you a Christian? We will not be speechless, we will have ready at our lips the proclamation that Jesus died for our sins and has freed us to be in a right relationship with God, he has confirmed our faith in God and he has cleared from our countenance the worry and the fear that result in putting ourselves and our small worries before the Kingdom of Heaven.
What are you wearing today? Do you have on your wedding garment, the certain knowledge that God loves you, that Jesus died for you, that you are adding to the Kingdom of Heaven? Did you put on a fancy hat to hide your eyes and hope no one would recognize you when you drove up to church? Are you prepared to be a defender of your faith in the same way that Jesus is prepared to defend you before the Father? Are you hoping no one will ask what a nice person like you is doing being a Christian?
The community who developed the scripture we now call Matthew never saw Jesus walk through the temple, just like us. They did not hear him with their own ears, just like us. But they complied a testament of the Gospel that is timeless. The variations in their story, like the variations in the other Gospels, give us more fuel for our faith than they could have ever intended. Last week I much preferred Luke's telling of this story, it was simple and seemed easily understood within my frames of reference, and preaching on that version would not have brought me the growth in my faith that I experienced in having to ponder a piece of clothing and the idea of speechlessness. We are always exhorting others to read the Scriptures, but while I can and do find insights in them when reading them alone, I invite you to find a partner or small group to read them together. For when 2 or 3 are gathered in his Name, He will be with us. We are a community, Christ demands that we acknowledge our community and our inter dependence. This is a great party and every day we re-accept the invitation. So break out the party shoes and when someone asks why you are all dressed up, tell them. Don't be speechless. Amen.
First, we need to remember the Gospel that we are reading. This is Matthew, written for Jewish-Christians who approached their Christian faith as the fulfillment of their Jewish traditions. If there is anything we take with us from Sunday School lessons of the Old Testament, it is that God can and will smite the enemies of his chosen people and Israel too, if she gets out of hand. The compliers of the book of Matthew read the material through the lens of their lives and their faith in God, and as much as we don't like to think about it, God does smite.
Second, we need to remember that this is from that same series of parables that we have been reading for the last several weeks. Jesus is still in the temple where his authority to teach was questioned, but he is no longer speaking to the priests, now he is turned back to the crowd. The Pharisees and priests and elders are all still standing there, so he is still speaking for their benefit, but he is no longer addressing them directly.
So lets look at this parable again with these frames of reference in our minds.
We think of weddings as big deals now, and credit cards and brokerage firms are all doing commercials about a daddy and his daughter out shopping for her wedding. They are trying to tell us something we may have forgotten with all our talk of love, but weddings celebrate marriages, which are alliance making deals, just like any other board room transaction. Marriages are covenants, just like God's covenant with Israel. We may not ever have to climb a mountain and carry big hand hewn rocks back down to make a covenant for God, but we will all likely experience a wedding. This is something we can relate to.
And if you have ever had a hand in putting a wedding together, you can feel the rage that the king felt when people didn't bother to show up. Then just imagine the lawsuits to follow if you sent out the reception staff to lead people into the reception and the guests started punching or shoving them or even pulling out guns like a Quinten Tarantino movie and shooting them?? Imagine the rage if the wedding was actually a peace accord to stop the fighting of two families or of two countries. How much greater then would that anger be if it was to unite all the people of God and no one bothered to show up?
What would it feel like to be a minor nobody invited because you are the second cousin twice removed from the step brother of the groom? You would probably be right to think your picture was never going to get into the wedding album, but free drinks and a meal are nothing to sneeze at. You would probably be cowering under the pews if the honored guests started beating up the ushers. You might start trying to work your way under the sub-flooring when the hosts started shooting back.
At this point, you are thinking, party's over, and I have not even a story to tell in polite company. But now the host, victor from the vantage of the doorway, brushes off the ushers and sends them off looking for people to eat at the reception. If the guests don't want lobster puffs, then as God as my witness, I will find someone else who does.
OK, that was fun for us, but what does it have to do with the actual story? Remember where Jesus is? He is in the temple courtyard talking to people who are compelled to attend temple, but never get to go inside. Wedding guests invited to fill in the back pews of the church so the pictures make the groom appear more popular than he in fact is. Remember who else is listening? The people who do get to go inside, who do get to sit in the front row, and who are invited to sit at the bridal party table. Doesn't seem like such a great story to them. My father sent prophets to tell you of my wedding, says Jesus, and you ignored them. My father sent more people to lead you by the hand to my wedding, and you killed them. So you are no longer invited, Jesus tells them. This marriage, this covenant, is no longer by invitation only, Jews and Gentiles are equally welcome. The rich and the poor are equally invited. The full and the hungry have equal access to the feast.
So what about that guest who get thrown out, wailing and gnashing his teeth in the outer darkness? What about the idea that many are called but few are chosen? I choose to believe that Jesus didn't say this in a red lettered sort of way. I choose to believe that this is an addition, in Mathew, of Jews who have professed Jesus, and who have been spurned by their families and friends, in those ways that Jesus says that being his follower is likely to do. I chose to believe that a people for whom the Old Testament expressions of God are still the most natural have chosen to continue expressing him in those ways.
For those who complied Matthew, and Matthew is full of parables that end in gnashing, wailing, outer darkness and the call of many and the few chosen, there is a need to confirm that they have made the right choice, we all want to know we have made the right choice, especially in a choice as hard as following the prince of peace. And if that means there is a little of the my dad can beat up your dad in this community, it only means they are human, the same as us. And if you don't think so, my dad... well, you get my point.
So what do we do with this parable? What are we supposed to take away from this story that is applicable and relevant to our lives? Maybe we shouldn't have big parties for our marriages. I didn't, but I am notoriously cheap about things like parties, all parties are potlucks at my house. Maybe we should expand our guest lists, not treat people as commodities but honor all of them as guests in our churches, in our lives, in our hearts. Maybe what this is telling us, who are not Jews being persecuted by our families for following a radical untrained teacher, is to watch what we wear.
I had a really hard time getting past the clothes and into the metaphor. Jesus was a guy in hand me down shoes who regularly gave away his coat. The only reason he had a coat to give away was that people kept giving him another one. Of all the people to associate status with clothing.... Then I extended the metaphor. OK, I didn't, but Pat explained it very clearly and slowly for my closed ears and open mouth. Jesus wasn't telling people - wear a suit or I'll be back. Jesus was telling people to participate in the sacraments, to stay in right relationship, in our hearts, with God and with the commandments. Do we love God with all our heart and with all our strength and all our mind – all the time? Do we love our neighbors as ourselves – all the time? Because if we are doing so, when someone asks us, what are you wearing? Why are you a Christian? We will not be speechless, we will have ready at our lips the proclamation that Jesus died for our sins and has freed us to be in a right relationship with God, he has confirmed our faith in God and he has cleared from our countenance the worry and the fear that result in putting ourselves and our small worries before the Kingdom of Heaven.
What are you wearing today? Do you have on your wedding garment, the certain knowledge that God loves you, that Jesus died for you, that you are adding to the Kingdom of Heaven? Did you put on a fancy hat to hide your eyes and hope no one would recognize you when you drove up to church? Are you prepared to be a defender of your faith in the same way that Jesus is prepared to defend you before the Father? Are you hoping no one will ask what a nice person like you is doing being a Christian?
The community who developed the scripture we now call Matthew never saw Jesus walk through the temple, just like us. They did not hear him with their own ears, just like us. But they complied a testament of the Gospel that is timeless. The variations in their story, like the variations in the other Gospels, give us more fuel for our faith than they could have ever intended. Last week I much preferred Luke's telling of this story, it was simple and seemed easily understood within my frames of reference, and preaching on that version would not have brought me the growth in my faith that I experienced in having to ponder a piece of clothing and the idea of speechlessness. We are always exhorting others to read the Scriptures, but while I can and do find insights in them when reading them alone, I invite you to find a partner or small group to read them together. For when 2 or 3 are gathered in his Name, He will be with us. We are a community, Christ demands that we acknowledge our community and our inter dependence. This is a great party and every day we re-accept the invitation. So break out the party shoes and when someone asks why you are all dressed up, tell them. Don't be speechless. Amen.
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