Let's Get Down to Business

'The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, had its beginning in this way.  It was written in Isaiah the prophet:  "Behold!  I am sending my messenger before you to prepare your way.  He is the voice of one proclaiming in the wilderness:  make ready the way of the Lord; make his paths straight!" 

Now it happened that John, the one baptizing in the wilderness, was proclaiming a baptism, based on repentance, for the remission of sins; and all those dwelling in Jerusalem and in the region of Judea were going out and being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.  John wore a cloak of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his loins; and his food was locusts and wild honey.  He said also in his proclamation:  “There comes after me one that is mightier than I, the strap on whose sandals I am unworthy to undo.  I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

--Mark 1: 1-8 (P.H. Epps Translation)

There’s a lot of reasons why the Gospel of Mark is my favorite. My great-grandfather translated it, for one. It’s the earliest, and a great many scholars suspect, the most accurate retelling of the story of what is sometimes called the Jesus Event. Also, Mark wastes no time getting into the story; I’m probably dating myself here, but one of my favorite albums just out of high school was The Eminem Show by the rapper Eminem, and one of the first songs on the album is called "Let’s Get Down to Business." That’s Mark’s Gospel, getting right down to it because, to quote a line from that song, Mark “ain’t got no time to play around.” 

Cover of the 2003 album 'The Eminem Show.'

Unlike the Gospels that would come later, Mark wasn’t written, at least not initially. It was a performance piece, done in the same style as the Iliad or the Odyssey. Someone would stand in the middle of a town square and shout: “Ἀρ¦χὴ τοῦ εὐ¦αγ¦γε¦λί¦ου Ἰ¦η¦σοῦ Χρι¦στοῦ.” and launched into the story. This is why Mark’s attribute – the symbol that is used to represent this Gospel – is a lion, because it begins with all the force of a roaring lion. In case you can’t tell, when it comes to talking about Mark, I can do this all day!

I find it somewhat humorous that in this week's Gospel we hear Mark start off with a proclamation that this is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but we don’t actually hear from Jesus. Instead, we are introduced to John the Baptizer, a person we will learn later in the Gospel of Luke, is Jesus’ cousin, himself born to parents who had given up all hope of that ever happening. John, we’re told in these opening moments, appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance – the Greek word is metanoia, which means to turn oneself around. John was likely part of a group called the Essenes, which, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, were a group of Jews with their own ideas and practices, and in their case, they had grown weary of city life and its various corruptions, and moved into the wilderness because, after all, that’s where the Israelites had met God in the first place (remember Exodus?). The ascetic practices of the Essenees fascinated the folks left behind, and so they headed out to seek wisdom from these desert-dwellers like John, who compelled them to be baptized – the Hebrew word is mikvah, a ritual bath that cleansed a person, both on the inside and outside.

An Eastern icon of Saint John the Baptizer

To be sure, John wasn’t exactly patient, or even friendly. Not many folks, I suspect, would want to call John the Baptizer as their Rector! He called people out for their hypocrisy and warned them against merely coasting by on what they thought to be true. But in Mark’s introduction of this itinerant preacher, there’s something that characterizes John’s proclamation to the people, and that’s hopeful anticipation. John looks ahead to the promised time of one coming who was more powerful than he, who would baptize with the Holy Spirit, as John had baptized with water. 

This hopeful anticipation is a theme that runs through all of our Scriptures from this past Sunday. The despair of last week is replaced with the assurance that God’s mercy is soon to be made manifest in a fresh, new way. Isaiah writes in anticipation of the exiled Jews going home (Isaiah 40: 1-11). Several decades after Mark’s Gospel, the author of the second Letter of Peter reassures the faithful that, despite Jesus not having come back yet, God’s timing isn’t ours, and that that promised day of salvation is still on its way (II Peter 3: 8-15a). Even the Psalmist recalls God’s saving grace in the past and looks with hope for that to happen once again (Psalm 85: 1-2, 8-13). This is the same hopeful anticipation that Mark’s Gospel roars at its listeners out of the gate.

Hopeful anticipation often starts small and then builds into something unstoppable. A great way I’ve seen this play out was with the 2011 revival of the musical Godspell. It was done at the Circle in the Square Theatre in New York City, which, as the name implies, is a theatre-in-the-round. The show opens with a moving number called Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord set out in the wilderness where John is baptizing. In the revival production, the baptismal waters were depicted as a single drop that came down from the rafters into a small pool underneath the stage’s floorboards. But as the song picked up, more and more people joined, and eventually that drop turned into a full-on waterfall by the time Jesus showed up to receive his own baptism. Hope may start small – like the lone voice of one wild man in the wilderness crying out for people to turn themselves around – but when nurtured by God it grows and grows until the point that nothing’s gonna stand in its way. That’s how hope works, and it is mighty powerful.

The opening number from the 2011 revival of Godspell, note the water coming down from the ceiling.

God knows we need some hope right now, something positive for which to anticipate. As the war between Israel and Gaza intensifies along with bigotry at home, we need some hope. As we hear news of yet another mass shooting, this one at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, we need some hope. As many of us prepare our hearts for the first Christmas without someone we love, we need some hope. Dare I say, we need a John the Baptizer to speak truth to power, to proclaim a hope that is more than surface-level and that anticipates God’s light and love breaking through.

I’d like to think the folks who went out into the wilderness to hear John went back into their city lives changed somehow, eager to prepare the way themselves. I’d like to think the same thing about us, we who are the ones to prepare for the second Advent as John did the first. How?

We are, simultaneously, the messengers and the message; as we say where I come from, you might be the only Bible anyone ever reads; for good or ill. We try to listen for what is ours to do, but it can be so very hard to hear, can’t it? Are we to take the lead now and call forth others to follow, or wait and see how things play out? Are we to lay down old expectations, old hurts and habits, in order to heed a new way, a new idea, a new message? This is discernment, the process of listening for our place, our call into something new that God is doing in our midst.

This Jesus, whom we love, for whom we listen and look, is quite fond of the new; and to be sure, the comfortable lives we’ve been living mean little when compared with whatever new hope God is bringing to life right now. How will we respond? 

Prepare a path for the new, you who are inheritors of the Baptizer’s message and bearers of a newfangled one. Be submerged into the waters of hopeful anticipation cannot be quenched, that cleanse you from the inside-out. Turn yourselves around and see Jesus staring back at you, you who are a roaring lion, called to fiercely proclaim by word and example the evangelion, the good news, the Gospel, of Jesus that is coming into the world. Let’s get down to business. 

The Beginning Is Near

'Jesus said, “In those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”'

--Mark 13: 24-37

There is a meme that shows up around this time of year and makes its rounds on the social medias. It’s a picture of a rather dapper dressed man in a bowtie and horn-rimmed glasses, holding a piece of cardboard with the words written on it, “The Beginning is near.” I couldn’t find the origins of the image, but it seems obviously a reframing of those street preachers with signs proclaiming “The End is near,” and in that way, it’s a perfect encapsulation of Advent.

The beginning…of everything…of a new hope…of the kingdom of God, is near. Yes, preacher, we know. We’re good Episcopalians who understand that Advent not only marks the start of a new church year but also a season of preparation for the birth of Jesus. All this has happened before, and it will happen again, and the beginning of the greatest story ever told is right around the corner. We get it.

If that were the case, though, why does Advent not start on a joyful note? Instead, our Gospel fills us with something more like despair. We start the new church year the exact same way we ended the last one, with Jesus talking about a coming time that sounds anything but joyful. 

We find Jesus this week speaking with four of his apostles – Peter, Andrew, James, and John – while sitting on the Mount of Olives, opposite the Temple in Jerusalem. They had just been in the Temple, and one of his disciples had commented about how magnificent a structure the Temple was, to which Jesus responded that not a single stone of the Temple would be left standing when all was said and done, which prompts these four apostles to ask him what will be the signs that that time is near. Jesus borrows imagery from the prophet Daniel and paints this picture of doom and gloom – the sun darkened, the moon not giving light, stars falling, and heaven itself being shaken, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria; in fact, Jesus quotes Daniel verbatim when talking about the Son of Man coming in the clouds. It sounds pretty hopeless. Sure ain’t joyful.

Yet if we remember the purpose of this kind of rhetoric – the kind prophets like Isaiah and Daniel used and that Jesus’ own apostle John will use – it’s to reveal something to the people, to reveal hope in the midst of hopelessness. This is apocalyptic, a tearing away of the veil so that the people can see the truth. 

Advent is an apocalyptic season. It serves a dual purpose. The first is to remind us that, in spite of the very best intentions of the people of God, the Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel to already be here, hasn’t quite come in its grandest fulfillment, and so the prayer of Advent is that Christ will come again to rule among God’s creation with grace, mercy, and justice. This beginning of this day, we hope – in the words of our Creed – is near.

The second purpose of Advent is to take us back to the beginning, back to that time of Jesus’ first Advent. And in the midst of our own times of hopelessness, to capture the spirit of hope folks felt back then, a spirit of yearning for that which some might’ve said was too good to be true: a new and unique expression of God’s intention to save this broken world was breaking through.

Capturing that spirit of hope is, I suspect, what Jesus means when he uses a fig tree as a parable for being able to observe the signs of the times. Such observing means paying close attention to all that is happening in our world, regardless of what we are afraid to see. This hope enables us to see our day’s news with the eyes of the heart, and not hide out in the fog of secular numbness or hyper-sensitivity. We often pretend to be remote or untouchable, shrouding ourselves in willful ignorance, but to read the sign of the times is to dare to acknowledge what is hidden in plain sight – what is being revealed to us right now– and to dare to find our part to play, our song to sing, our small task to fulfill in the unfolding drama of God’s Kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven. No, we can’t take in all of the heartache and pain we see – our species wasn’t designed for it, our brains literally can’t handle it, which is why the overflow of information that we experience creates in us anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. Yet we can find that small task in our small corner; because we’ve all got our part to play in that promised day’s arrival.

Such a day can’t get here fast enough, we might say when we see all that plagues this world, which may lead us to reading such signs less as an invitation to participation and more as a portent to something we must fear, maybe even try to predict. But, Jesus reminds everyone, about that day or hour no one knows, not even him! So hurry up….but wait?! What kind of Messiah double-talk is Jesus going on about?

It's active waiting. Sounds oxymoronic, but that’s Advent, and it’s how we operate in a kingdom that has both already come and not yet. For those of you who host holiday parties or are expecting loved ones to visit this year, think about how you prepare for those guests. You wait for them, sure, but is it passive? Lord no! I bet you’re looking out for the stray dust bunny to sweep or making sure the beds are prepared for those overnight visitors. It’s the same way for those of us living in the Second Advent, waiting actively for Jesus to be born anew in our lives, neither trying to predict when it’s gonna happen, nor being passive – but surrendering to God’s timing while actively looking for the one who is already here, finding our place in this kingdom that is both already and not yet. If your head hurts, it’s ok, means you’re thinking. Trust God.

Lately as I’ve walked by the lake behind our house, I’ve felt a surge of wind each time. It’s overwhelming, so much so that I worry it might knock me off my feet. That’s Advent, coming like wind off the lake to wake us up to the truth. And what is the truth? The truth is that all that we see is not all that there is. The truth is that you, and I, and them, are more precious and more important than any of us can ever know. The truth is that the love that came down at Christmas is as real now as it was then, and it coming again – as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.

The winds are blowing. The signs are all around. So, you there, who keep falling asleep in shallow waters, floating on the surface of your life, wake up! Stop staring blankly, numb to the wonder of who you are and whose you are. The God who searches for you in the holy mundane of your life is near. The revealing of your true self, and your role in the unfolding of this kingdom, is near. The beginning of everything is near.

King of the Goats

'Jesus said, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”'

--Matthew 25: 31-46

My mother loved goats. On South Fork Road, a little less than five miles from the house where I grew up, there was a hillside that, for years, had goats roaming across it. Mama used to say that someday she wanted to live with goats – that never happened, and maybe for the best, since she had no idea how troublesome they ae. One year our priest, Fran McCoy, preached on this Gospel text from Matthew 25. I was too young to remember exactly what she said, but there was something about separating sheep from goats. Likely thinking of my mother, I went up to Fran after the service and asked, “What’s so bad about goats?” Fran later told me that she knew then that I would be a priest. I’d like to think both my mama and my priest were having a nice chuckle in heaven watching me preach this past Sunday. 

Totes m'goats!

Fran never really answered my question, but I’ve come to understand that the answer was, nothing. There’s nothing bad about goats. They’re goats – totes m'goats, if you will – they only act the way God intended for them to. Living in a society of shepherds, Jesus uses the imagery of sheep and goats less because goats are evil and more to highlight how those in his audience would naturally try to keep the sheep and the goats separated. This kind of imagery is used by Jesus when giving his final parable about the eschaton, the coming of the kingdom of heaven, what is sometimes called the Second Sermon on the Mount because it’s given on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem mere days before Jesus’ death. A king, he says, will separate folks out – righteous from unrighteous - like a shepherd separating sheep from goats.  

And what is it that characterizes the righteous from the unrighteous? The righteous are those who clothed the naked, fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, visited prisoners, and all around showed care and love for those in need. In doing so, the king says to them in the parable, you did all of those things to me. The unrighteous, though, are the ones who saw such needs and did nothing, as though they were ignoring their own king by ignoring the needs of others.

It's not a stretch, I believe, to say that the entire Christian ethic for how we care for anyone in need, is right here at the end of Matthew 25. Why clothe the naked, feed the hungry, or visit the prisoner? Because in doing so we do it to Jesus himself. But did you notice one little detail? When the king in the parable tells the folks standing before him at the end of the age about the kindness they showed to him, they ask when was it that they saw him in such states? They didn’t help those people because they thought they’d get credit for it. They didn’t do it simply because it was an expectation or to assuage their guilt. They did it for the sake of being in relationship with the other, going out and meeting those folks where they were, finding out what their need was, and helping in the ways they could. Maybe if the so-called unrighteous knew this they would’ve actually done something, but that’s the point of the parable. To serve their king was to serve others, especially when they weren’t even aware they were doing so.

This past Sunday marked the end of both season we call Ordinary Time and our church year as a whole. That day we wore white to make what is known as Christ the King Sunday (or Reign of Christ Sunday, in some contexts). The Feast of Christ the King was created in 1925 by Pope Pius XI. The world was just seven years removed from the Great War, but fascism was on the rise, and in less than 15 years there would be a Second World War.  In response to the growing popularity of authoritarianism, the pope wrote in his encyclical Quas Primas, that the faithful should gain strength and courage from the celebration of this new feast, as they were reminded that Christ must reign in their hearts, minds wills, and bodies, and that the leaders and nations would see that they were bound to allegiance to Christ, not the state. It is Jesus alone who is our sovereign, the one from whom we take our cues, and the one to whom all of our praise and adoration is directed because he is the only one worthy of any of it. Something tells me we need to remember that today, as we head into an election year.

But the portrait of soverignty painted by Jesus in this parable in Matthew 25 flies in the face of what we are told authority is meant to look like. Top-down, right? Power-over?  Not so with Jesus. This is what makes the Gospel so radical. The very principles of power held by nearly every single civilization that has ever existed are turned on their respective heads in the person of Jesus.  Kings are seated on thrones in palaces, they eat at banquets and are clothed in splendor.  Not this Jesus.  Not this king.  His is power-with, not over. He dines with the riff-raff of society.  His clothing is tattered.  He covers himself with a newspaper when he sleeps on the park bench.  He reaches his hand out to us and asks us to help him.  This is our king, this Jesus, and we meet him every single day.

Homeless Jesus statue outside of the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C.

The mark of salvation, according to Jesus in this parable, isn’t that we have faith it’s how we do faith. How am I – how are we – doing faith in real, meaningful ways? We hear Jesus’ words in this parable and we are prone to say, “Yeah, I’m on board with that!” and so we go out and volunteer at a soup kitchen or take donations to a second-hand store. That’s really nice, but what then? We return to our lives segregated by race, or class, or religion. How often are we transformed by those experiences and forge new relationships through them? When do we ask ourselves what’s our motivation for doing what we do? Is it simply because Jesus tells us to do things, or because we might get some merit points for the afterlife? Or, is what we do for the sake of being changed by forming relationships with people, understanding that it is in the eyes and hearts of the other that we meet Jesus, our king? What's stopping us from going out and meeting people where they are, addressing their need, and forging new, transformative relationships?

Many understand, for example, the importance of inviting people who don’t look like us to come to church, especially if there’s a guest preacher or program promoting racial equality, but what’s stopping us from going to their church to sing their songs, pray their prayers, and be changed by them there? We raise money and sometimes volunteer for charitable organizations, but why not actually spend time with the people who go there seeking help; after all, Desmond Tutu said it’s not enough to pull people out of the torrid waters, we must go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.

The parish where I currently serve is next to one of the Finger Lakes. It's a gorgeous location, and very often we see folks fishing off of our lakeside, despite signs up saying they're not supposed to. But - I asked our parishioners on Sunday - what if we went out and met them, learned their names, heard their stories, and let them know they were welcome here? What might happen? What’s stopping us from going out and meeting the folks who fish off our lakeside, hearing their stories and letting them know they’re welcome here? 

Such are the places where we’ll find Jesus, where we’ll find our king, and it’s in those relationships that we forge with the other that our own relationship with Jesus finds meaning and purpose. 

At my ordination in 2012, Fran told me, “Now, Joe, your job is to go be with the goats.” Jesus has a way of bringing people into our lives at the most inconvenient times, making unreasonable requests. What is asked of us is not to fix or be someone’s savior, they already got one of those, but to just be with those in need where they are and do what we can however we can. That’s how we love and serve the Lord, serve our King Jesus. King of glory, king of peace, we will love thee!

Apocalypses Right Now

While living in New York City in 2011 you couldn’t help seeing posters saying the world would end on May 21 of that year. The group Family Radio and its founder Harold Camping were so convinced that Jesus was coming back that day, that they spent millions of dollars on an ad campaign in the biggest city in the country. Not to keep you in suspense, but it didn’t happen; in fact, I preached on May 22 at my home church of All Saints, Norton, VA and began by observing that, I didn’t know about everyone else, but I was surprised to be there. Once again, it seemed we had avoided the apocalypse. It wouldn’t be the last time.

One of many, many signs around New York City in 2011 heralding the end of the world.

Now there’s an appropriate word for today: Apocalypse. It conjures up images of pain and death. It ain’t pleasant. Yet the word itself is merely Greek for “unveiling” or, more popularly, “revelation.” Even though we don’t read from the last book of the Bible this week, it’s worth pointing out that the actual Greek title of the Book of Revelation is The Apocalypse. And just as that complex and illustrative letter from Saint John the Divine tears the veil away from the hardships faced by Christians in the 2nd century, our readings for this week also are apocalyptic in nature. But whereas we often associate apocalypse and apocalyptic literature as something portending a terrifying fate, what’s really going on is present-moment truth-telling.

'Thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord: Alas for you who desire the day of the LORD! Why do you want the day of the LORD? It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake. Is not the day of the LORD darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it? I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.'

--Amos 5: 18-24

Amos is my favorite prophet. He was a poor farmboy from the southern kingdom of Judah, called by God to travel to the northern kingdom of Israel and preach this apocalyptic message to the king. On the surface, Israel was thriving. The economy was great. They weren’t engaged in any wars. But behind the scenes, if you pulled back the veil, the poor had been neglected. The widows and immigrants in the land had been forgotten, and so Amos came preaching to the king that the day of the Lord – God’s breaking through human history at the end of time – was not something for which they should look with anticipation. For them who had mistreated the marginalized, it would be a day of consequence. Amos’ prophesy was a warning, an attempt to bring the people back to living the way God intended for them, but it fell on deaf ears, and soon the northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians. 

'We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.'

--I Thessalonians 4: 13-18

Remember that most, if not all, Christians in the first three centuries after Jesus believed that the Day of the Lord – or the Eschaton, Day of Resurrection, or Second Coming - was coming very, very soon. This included the people of Thessalonica, who were afraid that when that day came the living and the dead wouldn’t get to be together. Paul wrote to reassure them that, in fact, the dead would be raised and that, in his words, “we who are alive” would join them. See what he did there? He believed, as they all did, that he would be around to see the end. For the Thessalonians, Paul’s words brought comfort that they would be with their loved ones during a time of great hardship, even though he pulled a Harold Camping.

'Jesus said, “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”'

--Matthew 25: 1-13

We’ve mentioned many times this year how the theme of the Day of the Lord runs throughout the Gospel of Matthew. This is due largely to the destruction of the Jewish Temple in the year 70 AD, which resulted in folks reading less of the Torah and more of the prophets, reinterpreting their warnings and truth-tellings in light of their own personal tragedy. Matthew, writing around the year 80, has folks asking Jesus over and over what that day would look like. In this section from the beginning of chapter 25 Jesus hearkens back to the language of prophets like Amos., warning people to be awake, to be prepared, like the wise bridesmaids who brought enough oil to get them through the night.  

An Orthodox icon of the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids.

When we read texts like these, so very long after they were recorded, are we supposed to freak out about the end or wonder if things we see happening were foretold long ago? We might feel a little less flummoxed if we accept that time is a made up construct. We literally reset out clocks last week and just pretended like that was normal. But that sort of proves the point. We invent time, and we give it meaning: what will happen in the future, we ask? But in the Kingdom, there is no future, there is no time. It’s a concept called the Eternal Now, and it’s what I’m referencing when I talk about Communion happening “round the clock” in heaven.. It’s we who fret about the future, and in the midst of crisis – like Assyrian occupation or the destruction of the Temple - folks thought they were right smack in the middle of the Day of the Lord and that the veil of time has been ripped away and the future was now. That’s apocalypse. When evangelicals and folks like Family Radio try predicting a future event using these texts, they miss the whole point of apocalyptic literature like these, which is that they speak to a present reality, not some far off future to fear.

Folks treat the prophets, or Paul, or even Jesus, as if they had some clairvoyance that let them see the future, but all they were doing was paying attention to what was happening in their time. They didn’t see what the status quo wanted to be true, but what was actually true, and their message was clear: stay on this course and it’s ain’t gonna be pleasant. They read events around them and understood the consequences of those events. It’s a wake up call, not judgment.

It's still true, even now. If you look reality in the face and fully take in what is, you’ll tear the veil away, and can see the writing on the walls. There are simply, actions – or lack thereof – that, if continued, will lead to a disastrous future. 

The insanity of the last three years has ripped the veil away, wouldn’t you say? Little mini-apocalypses have popped up – teenagers who just want to go to school without fear shouting for gun reform, people marching to remind others that Black Lives Matter, women who’ve been treated as second-class citizens defending their reproductive rights, scientists insisting that climate change is real, and doctors and nurses begging people to be vaccinated. These voices reveal hard truths about who we currently are and offer us a wake- up call for who we want to be. Even now, in the land where these texts we read, study, and venerate originated, innocent people are slaughtered, and folks, rather than paying attention to what the suffering is revealing, are taking hard sides – some even rejoicing because they falsely believe apocalyptic biblical texts say all this has to happen for Jesus to come back. We often place our trust in stories of the past, and in so doing ignore the prophetic voices, the apocalyptic messages for our own time. Not messages of doom and gloom that are far off, but cries for justice and a turning around toward the mercy and love of God right now. 

March For Our Lives, one of the many apocalyptic messages being sent in the last few years.

Where are you seeing the apocalyptic moments, revealing hard truths for the present and pointing us to a changed future? Pay heed to them, as the audiences for these holy texts of ours tried to do. Let the unveiling of our present inform the future selves that we want to be, not for the sake of the kingdom that is to come – God’s got that taken care of anyway in the Eternal Now – but for the sake of the kingdom that is already here

Someone Is On Your Side

In the second act of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods, the four remaining lead characters – the Baker, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack – come together to sing the show’s penultimate number called No One Is Alone. After the long, arduous journey they’ve been on, each one having experienced tremendous heartache, they try to understand the consequences of the things for which they have wished throughout the show, and they begin to decide to place community wishes over their own. The song itself serves a dual purpose: first, to show that each of the characters’ actions – and by extension our own – are not made in a bubble and that no one is guaranteed to be the protagonist of their own story. And second, and I would say most importantly, the song demonstrates that even when life throws its greatest challenges at us, we do not have to face them alone, that there are still people who love us, believe in us, and are cheering for us.

No One Is Alone, from the final act of Into the Woods.

I would add, even when we cannot see them. For that is what the Feast of All Saints is about, the companions we have had along our journey through the woods of our own lives, those who showed us the way, who may have gone on to glory, but whose lessons, whose love, whose spirits live on and inspire us to keep going and remember, to borrow the last line of that song: things will come out right now/we can make it so/someone is on your side/no one is alone.

Most of y’all, I suspect, are familiar with the Paschal Triduum, which are the three sacred days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. They are the holiest days in the Christian calendar, marking Jesus’ passing over from death to life. This springtime Triduum of life is mirrored by a Triduum of death in the fall of All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day, which happen in each on October 31, November 1, and November 2, respectively. All Hallows Eve was the day when Christians remembered that death doesn’t have the final say, and thus is not something to be feared, so they dressed up and mocked demons and devils to their faces. All Saints marked the celebration of the apostles and martyrs, confessors and doctors of the church, the big deal folks who have stained glass in their honor and stuff named for them. All Souls, then, was the day to remember everyone else, all the faithful departed. Over time, though, and because All Saints is one of the few major feast days we can move to the following Sunday, All Saints and All Souls got conflated and merged together, while All Hallows Eve became a purely secular holiday that a lot of Christians even openly opposed. 

Which is where we found ourselves this past Sunday. All Saints Sunday is not just about remembering folks like James the Greater, for whom this church is named, but all those who we love but see no longer. Personally, this day takes me back to little All Saints Episcopal Church in Norton, VA, a place where the directory is the front and back of one sheet of paper. This place baptized me – along with my mother and sister, the only triple baptism in their history – confirmed me, and ordained me – and later my dad. And while they didn’t have a staff or lot of programs, they have lived into their name. Saints that have worshiped there included Joe and May Straughn, who sang in the choir. Frances Herndon, the faithful altar guild chair who insisted I preach her funeral even before I was ordained. The Rev. Fran McCoy, the priest responsible for me even being here today. And my mother, Susan Mitchell, who I still see in the second pew on the right in every place I preach. They are just some of the saints, the companions on the way, the ones who reminded me and many others that none of us is alone.

My mother and me after my first mass as a priest at All Saints in Norton, VA (June, 2013)

And that is what the saints truly are to us, our companions. That word is taken from the Latin com, meaning “together or with,” and pan, meaning “bread.” Our companions are literally the ones with whom we share bread. And just as your closest companions are the ones you invite to share bread at your dinner table, at the eucharistic Table that is the altar of God, Christ brings us together – he who himself is the bread of life, the bread of heaven, the bread that feeds and sustains us . We share that Bread with each other, yes, but when we come to the rail and reach out our hands we do not do it alone. None of us is alone. The heavenly banquet that we know our loved ones are sharing right now is nothing less than the Eucharist itself. In the great prayer of the Church we hear Jesus’ words to his apostles, echoed through eternity for all the saints, “Do this for the remembrance of me.”  Remember.  We do not partake in this holy meal to simply recall an event in history, no.  We re-member; that is, we become a member again, we reconnect with Christ and with all the saints who partake in this communion, we reaffirm our place in the communion of saints by the communion of Christ’s own body and blood.  With those words of his, the lid is blown off of time.  The past is brought into the present, and the eternal is now.  We are tied to all who have ever offered this prayer before us, bound together with all throughout history who have shared the Bread and Cup.  We are united through the future to the heavenly banquet, where the feasting never ends.  In the midst of that celebrating, while moving beyond time, we are joined by the saints of God at this very rail, kneeling – or standing - beside us.  Our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, grandparents, grandchildren, and dear friends.  They are here.  We will name them shortly, and soon and very soon, we will share with them in what Saint Ignatius of Antioch called “the medicine of immortality.”

No one is alone. Salvation is not something we achieve on our own – contrary to popular opinion, we do not go out and “get saved” by ourselves. We pray, we break bread, we study, we grow, we fail, we fall, we repent, we forgive, and we keep moving closer and closer to salvation together. The lives of the saints remind us of that fact. They remind us that no one is alone.  

It is into this promise today that we baptized Brooks Matthew Binga at St. James in Skaneateles on Sunday. The Feast of All Saints has always been one of the Church’s principle baptism days. It connects the living to the dead and the assurance that, as members of the Body of Christ, our bond with them can never be broken. Brooks now has taken his place today as part of that great cloud of witnesses, and everyone in the parish promised to uphold him in his life in Christ. We baptized him into the same baptism for the forgiveness of sins as his ancestors, but not because he has sinned but so that he will know the promise of forgiveness whenever he does fall – which he will, like all of us. All Saints Sunday is the Church’s chance to let Brooks and all those joining the Body of Christ through the baptismal waters know that they will never be alone. And as we were all splashed with those same holy waters through which we have been redeemed, we remember that promise for ourselves, our connection to one another, to the saints, to the assurance that none of us is alone on this journey toward salvation.

Sometimes I’m asked why we Episcopalians pray for the dead; after all, they’re fine now because they’re with God. There’s two reasons, really: 1) to remember that, as the prayer says, in death life is changed, not ended, and that those we love are still alive in the presence of God, and 2) because they are praying for us. On that side of the Kingdom is the Church Triumphant, those who have finished their earthly course and have found their triumph with Christ, and it is their ministry to pray for us here in the Church Militant – a term we use for us here on earth who are still in our struggles. We pray for them because that relationship is not over because it rooted in love, which is the very nature of God. I am fond of reminding folks that love is the most powerful force in the whole universe, it cannot be destroyed by time or space. Love never dies. Love is what unites us, the living to the dead, and reminds us that we are not alone.

For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blest. And let the church forever say: Alleluia! And Amen.

Everything Else Is Commentary

'When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”'

--Matthew 22: 34-40

If I were to ask y’all which Amendment to the US Constitution is the greatest, what might your answer be? Maybe the first: freedom speech, of the press, of the right to practice whatever religion you want – even if it’s none at all? Or the 13th: the abolition of slavery? In this part of the country the 19th – suffrage for women – might be the popular choice. Based on many of the bumper stickers I see, though, I have a feeling the 2nd would probably win out. As heated as that debate might get, so too have been the arguments amongst rabbis through the centuries about the commandments of Torah.

On the Tuesday of the last week of his life, Jesus was asked by a lawyer – Oh those lawyers! – which of the commandments was the greatest. This wasn’t an unusual request. There are, after all, 613 Commandments in the Torah – that’s a lot more than 10 – and those debates about which was the most important were commonplace.

The Talmud—which is a kind of companion and commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures and laws – includes a story about a Gentile who approaches a well-known rabbi named Hillel, who died just six years before Jesus was born. The Gentile asks him to recite the whole of Torah—the whole of the Law—while standing on one foot.  He expects the rabbi to dismiss him or call him crazy for making such a request, but Rabbi Hillel puts one foot behind him and says, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.  That is the whole Torah, while the rest is commentary thereon; go and learn it.” 

An artist's depiction of Rabbi Hillel the Elder.

When Jesus is asked a similar question, he actually gives two answers. He first quotes the Shema, the ancient Jewish declaration of the oneness of God – which is found in Deuteronomy 6: 5: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” Jesus adds mind to the list. The Shema is THE foundational statement of the Jewish faith because it asserts that God and God alone is the supreme power and the only one worthy of our praise and worship. Our Jewish siblings to this day open all prayer with the Shema and mount it on doorposts in containers called mezuzots and on their arms and heads in boxes called tefillin or phylacteries.

This would’ve been enough for the lawyer, but Jesus does one better. He adds the second half of Leviticus 19: 18 – “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” -  calling it the second commandment. For those of you who know your list of 10 Commandments – and I’m sure you do – you’re no doubt saying to yourselves, that’s not the 2nd Commandment; it’s “You will not make nor worship any graven image.” Connecting these two passages from two different texts of the Torah is a brilliant move from Jesus. Do you see what he does here? He explicitly connects love of God with love of neighbor. You cannot have one without the other.

If you know your Synoptic Gospels – and I’m sure you do – you may recall that in Luke’s version of this encounter, the lawyer responds by asking, “Who, then, is my neighbor?” Jesus’ answer is, of course, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the oxymoronic story in which the exemplar of neighborly love is one of those traitors to the faith and heritage of the Jewish people because they had intermingled and married foreigners during the takeover of their land by the Assyrians centuries before. So let that sink in.

The implications for this text on our lives right here and now are pretty significant. We cannot love God without loving our neighbor, it seems so obvious and simple that it’s kind of a Christian cliché; after all, at our 7:30 Rite I Eucharist we recite this exact quote, this Summary of the Law, by Jesus each week – albeit in 16th century English. But what does it really mean and look like for us now? Were not the people shot at a bowling alley in Maine this week not neighbors of the man who gunned them down? Are not Israelis and Palestinians – Jews, Muslims and Christians alike – not neighbors of one another? What do we even mean when we talk about loving God and loving our neighbor in the midst of such madness, especially when those in positions to actually do something about it shrug their shoulders, quote their favorite amendment, and insist Jesus himself wouldn’t or couldn't do anything?  

This is one of those moments when I feel compelled to complain about the English language and its limitations. We only have one word for love, and we use it all the time – “I love my spouse. I love my dog. I love the Bills. I love lamp.” The Greek language, the language in which the Gospels were written, has seven words for love. The one, perhaps, with which the majority of us are familiar, is agape, which doesn’t have a clean, direct English equivalent. Agape frequently implies cherishing with reverence, rather than affection. It’s a higher love than, say, eros, which is romantic in nature. It’s agape that Jesus uses; in fact, it’s always the word Jesus uses when he talks about love. It’s the kind of love that sees the imago dei – the image of God - in another human being and connects it back to the Shema, to the acknowledgment and love of God That kind of love is deeper than feeling, deeper than words. It is active and alive, and anything but passive and quiet. The love Jesus talks about is the kind of love that is inspired, that takes to the streets, that cries out with the Psalmist, “How long, O Lord?!” and then looks for ways to help. Even when our neighbors don’t love us, this is how we act in reply, with love rooted in non-violent resistance. But what do we do when we cannot do the first part – love our neighbor – because we can’t even do the second part – love ourselves? 

The truth is that we cannot love God or our neighbors without first loving ourselves because to love ourselves is to love the imago dei that stars back at us in the mirror. Sadly, for those who have been caught in cycles of abuse – mental, emotional, and physical – loving oneself can be extremely difficult, if not impossible. We humans are relational creatures, and we cannot dig deep down inside ourselves to find love if someone isn’t out there mirroring it back to us. Too often we hear the stories: mass shooters who are ostracized, mocked, abused, or lonely, and feel they have no other recourse but violence. Even in the Holy Land, Palestinian terrorists like Hamas or Islamic Jihad attack Israeli citizens because the Israeli government maintains an apartheid state upon Palestinian citizens. Hurt people hurt people, it’s been said many times. But healed people also heal people.

Agape love is a love that passes human understanding and is the only thing that can heal a disparaging world. Many times, I’ve heard folks read this Gospel or hear a sermon preached on it and say, “It really is that simple, just love one another. Wow!” But it’s not simple. Love isn’t simple – none of the seven Greek words for love are! Love as deep, as broad, as high, as passing thought and fantasy as agape love takes effort, sweat, tears, and more than a little pain. 

This is what the cross shows us, love in the midst of suffering and death. The cross is where heaven and earth meet…and so is this altar, the Holy Table, where love is poured out, where we feel it in our hands and taste it on our lips. This love is food and drink for our journey into a chaotic and crazed world where neighbors don’t even know each other, let alone love each other. 

But we know love, don’t we? Because at this Table the love of God is mirrored to us in Bread and Wine, so that we can mirror it to our neighbor. We know healing comes not from pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps and trying to go it alone, but rather from love found in Communion - the kind we receive at the Table and the kind made up of people; a body of folks who are just as wounded but also just as hungry for that kind of love. We need that kind of love that is known is the sharing of broken bread and the mending of broken hearts. Nothing else can heal this world but that kind of love for God, for neighbor, and for ourselves. Everything else is commentary

The Third Way: There's Always a Choice

'The Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.'

--Matthew 22: 15-22

At this time of year one of my favorite traditions is the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Halloween Special. Among the very best of these came in 1996, just ahead of that year’s presidential election. In the episode it was revealed that the two candidates – Bill Clinton and Bob Dole – were, in fact, aliens bent on conquering Earth. When the big reveal comes the people of Springfield are mortified, but the aliens point out that there’s nothing they can do, it’s a two party system and they have to vote for one of them. The people look around and mutter to each other, "They're right! It's a two party system!" and after one of the aliens wins – does it matter which? – the people are enslaved and the world falls apart. It’s not like they had a third option, right? Right?

From The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror VII 

We operate much of our lives from a two-party system, an either/or mentality, without considering that there might be a third way. Jesus wasn’t about either/ors. He never said that someone was with him or against him. He never operated out of a binary. So often he was put in positions where folks tried to force him to make a choice between only two options, but oh so often Jesus would get creative, throw them a curveball, and offer a third way that no one had considered before. Granted, this meant Jesus made enemies on both sides, but his example of finding a creative third way continues to be one of his most impactful teachings for us today.

In our Gospel texts from the previous three weeks, we’ve heard Jesus using parables to answer a question from the Pharisees concerning where his authority came from. Now that he has totally not answered their question, we find the Pharisees today aligning themselves with the Herodians in an attempt to trap Jesus.

Let’s pause for some context. The Pharisees were the folks who desperately tried to hold on to their faith and its practices in the face of Roman occupation. They were anything but pro-Roman, and they strictly observed the Law of Torah as a sort of defiance against Rome. The Herodians, meanwhile, were a group of Jewish folks who were totally ok with Roman occupation. They got their name from their loyalty to Herod, a puppet of the Roman government who had been put “in-charge” of the region of Judea and given the title “King of the Jews.” The Pharisees and Herodians had no love for each other, but hey, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?

So they come at Jesus as a kind of tag-team. And after buttering him up a bit – “you’re sincere”, “you show no partiality.” – they ask him if it’s lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not. 

This may come as a surprise to a more educated modern audience, but folks didn’t like paying taxes back then. The question seems legit, and at the same time volatile. Ever since this area had been added to the Roman Empire in 63 BC, Rome had required a large annual tribute from the Jewish people, which was collected by local authorities through an assortment of taxes.  Folks were itching to hear Jesus’ answer, probably hoping that he’d give them some kind of out.

But the question isn’t sincere. The two groups just want him to pick their side, knowing both chooses spell trouble. If Jesus says no and sides with the Pharisees, he’ll be charged with sedition and arrested, having said the quiet part out loud. If he says yes and sides with the Herodians, he risks losing his credibility with the crowd, who for both economic and religious reasons resented Roman occupation and taxation on their land. Taxes to the emperor implied that he owned the land, but Torah was clear that all land is God’s, and that we are just tenant farmers – that’s Leviticus 25: 23. What’s Jesus to do? Gotta pick one or the other, right?

But Jesus does something unexpected and offers a third option. He asks for a coin, which his interrogators produce. He looks at it and asks, “Whose head is this and whose title?” Their answer, of course, is the emperor’s. This move by itself shames them. You see, in Judea at this time, there were two types of coins : one type, because of the 2nd Commandment, bore no graven images of people or animals, while the other type, used by the Romans, had such images. The denarius featured the head of the current emperor – in this case, Tiberius – with the title “Son of God.” No self-respecting Jewish person would’ve carried the second coin, and thus Jesus exposes them as part of this collaboration system that kept both the religious and Roman authorities in power. If it’s got the emperor’s face on it, give it back to him; otherwise, give to God what belongs to God; after all, it may be the emperor's coin, but it's Jesus title! Their trap is evaded by Jesus’ brilliant rhetorical strategy, and they leave amazed.

Render unto Caesar art from the English School.

Some of y’all may have heard this passage preached as a kind of establishment by Jesus of what we might call a separation between church and state. Christians have had a tendency to read it that way, as if Jesus is telling us that we have to split ourselves between our so-called secular and sacred lives. The 20th century theologian William Barclay, for whom I hold a lot of respect, wrote that the Christian had a dual identity as a citizen of both earth and heaven, and should pledge allegiance to earthly authorities because of the provisions and protections they provide while also praying to God. This, however, creates a kind of  psychological splitting within us, which can – and often does – lead to justifying some pretty bad behavior: consider Christians in the 1930s that acquiesced to dictators or those today who decry peaceful protests, all because they’ve been told that Jesus says to obey whatever the civil authorities tell us to do. But that splitting between secular and sacred lives is a modern construct – the truth is that there is no such distinction, it’s all sacred because it’s all from God.  What, then, is Jesus trying to teach us now?

This is one of those Gospel moments that is tough to apply to our time due to the specific context of the Pharisees’ and Herodians’ positions, the occupation by Rome, and the ancient Jewish relationship to foreign political powers. None of these really apply to our modern context. Besides, Jesus doesn’t even give a real answer to the question about taxes because that wasn’t the point of the encounter. If you were looking for either a justification for loyalty to the state or an excuse to not pay taxes, you’re outta luck this week. There must be a third option for how this text can apply to us now.

As I see it, the Good News that lies in this text is the fact that Jesus finds a creative third way. Bombarded by people who insisted he had to take an either/or stance, Jesus doesn’t bite. And right now, in so many facets of our lives, we are hit with that rhetoric. You’re either with our team or the other one. You’re either a fascist conservative or a godless liberal. You’re either one of us or one of them. Gotta pick a side, right? Not like we have another choice.

But we do. We have the choice of finding the third way. Because that’s the path where we’ll find Jesus. Not on one side of an issue, blaming the people on the other side, but being with the people caught in the middle. That’s where Jesus is. That’s the third way. Whenever we get caught up in either/or thinking, we need to be more like Jesus. We need to find our third way and discover an option that we had not thought possible before. The key to doing so is creativity, wonder, and imagination. There is, in every scenario, in every argument, in every debate, in every question of life, a creative third way. And that’s the way of Jesus. The way of love. What does it look like for you?

Which Banquet?

'Once more Jesus spoke to the people in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so 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 a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”'

--Matthew 22: 1-14

There is an old proverb found in many cultures that highlights one key difference between the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of heaven. In the kingdom of this world there is a great banquet, filled with all sorts of succulent foods. People of all kinds are gathered around the table at this banquet, only there is one problem: the spoons and forks are 3-feet long. The people grumble and complain, as they try to use the extended utensils to feed themselves, finding it utterly impossible to do so, as they hit each other in the face with the elongated utensils. Meanwhile, in the kingdom of heaven, there is also a great banquet, filled with all sorts of succulent foods. People of all kinds are gathered around the table at this banquet, only there is one problem: the spoons and forks are 3-feet long. The people, however, look across the table at one another and laugh, and then use those extended utensils to feed one another. To which banquet, it is often asked, do we find ourselves? Depends on how we use the utensils provided.

The Kingdom of Heaven (left), and the Kingdom of This World.

The imagery of a banquet or great feast has long been associated with the coming of God’s kingdom. The prophet Isaiah, preaching in the midst of exile, foresees a day when God will make for all peoples a banquet of rich foods and well-aged wines, as God wipes away the tears from all sorrowful faces and takes away all shame. In the parable we just heard from Matthew’s Gospel – the last of three parables Jesus has offered in as many weeks – the kingdom is compared to a banquet to which those who were invited didn’t show up, but the king – God – is determined that the hall should be filled, and has attendants to go into the streets to bring in every kind of person, “good” and “bad”, all to enjoy the feast. 

For the earliest Christians the banquet wasn’t just an allegory for the kingdom but an integral part of their own communal identities. Hal Taussig in his book In the Beginning Was the Meal points out that the worship we would come to call the Eucharist, Communion, and the Liturgy, was a continuation of the Greek symposium, the dinner parties that were regularly conducted among groups of like-minded individuals. What made the Christian version different was that, as Dr. Taussig puts it, the presence of poor and hungry people at meals was clearly a deeply held position in the Christian communities, and as folks of from every walk of life ate together, they prayed and told stories and worshipped God until, eventually, we get something that looked an awful lot like what we do today. Simply put: this right here is a banquet hall, and this is the feast to which all are invited, the feast of the world’s redemption.

The Greek symposium depicted on an ancient vase.

Knowing how important the banquet meals were can help us understand why it matters that Jesus uses this imagery to talk about the kingdom. We had a mini-Bible study around this Gospel at a clergy gathering last week, and I’ll be honest, many of us really struggle with this story. Why does the king have to be so harsh? What is with all of this talk of being cast out, with the weeping and gnashing of teeth – Matthew loves that, for some reason? Who’s the guy without a robe? And why does that even matter? Where, O where, is the Good News?

What we are seeing in these parables over these last three weeks is the nadir, the low point of a family feud between the religious authorities and Jesus. The severity of the language being used in the Gospel can be linked to what was going on in the real world when the Gospel was written – namely that the Temple and Jerusalem had been destroyed and folks were angry, scared, and looking for someone to blame. Matthew’s Gospel, unfortunately, tends to read as if the Jewish authorities, and thereby the Jews themselves, were the responsible party, even though this is a gross misunderstanding, albeit easier than trying to explain the complexities of the situation. 

And, again, I’ll be honest. As a preacher I find it downright irresponsible to not somehow address what we have all witnessed going on in Israel-Palestine and the Gaza Strip over the past week. Some, in order to avoid explaining the complexities of that situation, might offer some grossly misunderstood reading of Israeli-Palestinian history. If you’re looking for an easy explanation from me, I don’t have one, and I sincerely believe anyone that says they do don’t really understand the situation. We are seeing, as in the days of Matthew writing this Gospel, the nadir, the low point of a family feud between our siblings in the Abrahamic traditions. While it is perhaps an oversimplification, this is a part of the world that, for the better part of ¾ of a century has looked like the banquet where the folks have tried to use the 3-ft. spoons to feed themselves, resulting in a lot of frustration, heartache, and death.

Jesus don’t like killing, no matter what the reason’s for. John Prine sang that, and he was a preacher, albeit an itinerant one. And while I agree with the late-great Mr. Prine, I also know that it is certainly not the place of Christians to tell our Jewish and Muslim sisters and brothers that Jesus has the answers, but it is to Jesus that we are drawn to seek for ourselves some kind of solace, some kind of meaning in the absurdity of what is happening – certainly this is what our Palestinian Christian family members are doing right now, particularly at Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, which is a ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem and suffered a horrendous attack that killed 500 people this past Tuesday evening. Where is Christ? Where is the banquet? What do we do?

A scene from the aftermath of an attack on the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza. Image courtesy of the Palestine Chronicle.

It's important for us to always remember that Jesus is right there in the midst of suffering. Jesus is the first to cry when a building is toppled onto a house or a rocket smashes into a school. The crucified Christ took with him all the sufferings of the world, not only up onto the cross but down into hell itself, which is precisely why we find him in our own moments of suffering, our own personal hells. Not necessarily fixing the problem. But suffering alongside. And it’s important to keep in mind that while preachers – myself included – have equated the banquet in the parable with Sunday morning church worship, and the person who doesn’t put on the wedding robe with the person or persons who think all they need to do is just show up and not actually take responsibility, Jesus wasn’t talking about church attendance. He was talking about the kingdom, that’s what the banquet in the parable symbolizes, and just like the early Christian banquets emphasized the welcome of the poor, the hungry, the outcast, God will bring everyone – Israeli, Palestinian, Jew, Muslim, Christian, agnostic, “good”, “bad”, us, them, everyone – into the joys of that kingdom, that banquet that cannot be halted by bombs or rockets. 

As we say where I come from, y’all means all…y’all, and all y’all have a seat at that banquet, even the ones you might be surprised to see there, and the ones who might be surprised to see you. 

This past Sunday our lectionary selected Psalm 23, which we read together. How fitting! No doubt, at the same time that we were reading and praying that Psalm, there were folks hunkered down in Gaza and Israel-Palestine doing the same. Right there in the literal valley of the shadow of death, people were praying to remember that God is their shepherd, that God has set a banquet before them, even in the midst of their troubles, hoping to recall God’s mercy all the days of their lives. We hold them all in our hearts. The parish in which I serve opened its doors all day on Tuesday to observe a day of fasting and prayer at the urging of the Archbishop of Jerusalem. And so we gathered and prayed together.  Saint Augustine of Hippo said that we should pray as if everything depended upon God and work as though everything depended upon us. What is the work before us? I don’t know for sure, perhaps it is to pray, to listen, to educate ourselves, and emphatically call for an end to the killing. Maybe if we, as Desmond Tutu said, do our little bit of good in our little corner, we can somehow make this world look more like the banquet where we use those elongated forks and spoons to feed not ourselves, but each other. 

From Rejection to Transformation

'Jesus said, “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:

‘The stone that the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone;

this was the Lord’s doing,

and it is amazing in our eyes’?

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.'

--Matthew 21: 33-46

I started this blog in 2014 as a repository for my sermons, so that folks could read them if they missed a Sunday. For anyone who may be new and isn't familiar with my favorite hobby, the name of the blog - Father Prime - and its subtitle - "Wishing and working for a world transformed." - are references to the Transformers, those robots in disguise from the 1980s that turn into planes, cars, animals, and a whole host of other things. More than once they've been helpful in my preaching and teaching as a priest, and this past Sunday was another such example.

The very first commercial for the Transformers back in 1984 began with the line, “It is a world transformed, where things are not as they seem.” I’d like to think that that line, the idea of transformation, the potential for change, got lodged way down deep in my subconscious as a child of the 1980s and eventually led me to a calling, a lifestyle in which I remind myself – and others – that human eyes don’t always see the world the way God does, that there is more to this world than meets our own eyes.

Promotional poster for the Transformers from 1984. Image courtesy of the TFWiki.

The way things seem is not always the way things are. This, I believe, is what Jesus means when he tells us that we must have eyes to see and ears to hear, to see, hear, and know that which is in harmony with God’s own dream for this world; a dram of shalom (peace) and hesed (justice). To be sure, Jesus had the eyes to see and ears to hear; Jesus saw that this was, in fact, a world transformed by what he called the Kingdom of Heaven, which, as he said, has already come near, has already given us a glimpse of the God’s dream of peace and justice, even if it hasn’t yet reached its fulfillment.

An individual who understood on a deep level that the Kingdom was here, and who dared to see the world with a kind of transformed eyes, was Francis of Assisi, in whose honor St. James' Church held its first Blessing of the Animals this past Sunday. Last week the parish brought back its Healing Eucharist at noontime on Wednesdays, and – wouldn’t you know who won the pony? – it just so happened to be the Feast of St. Francis that day. We heard once more the story of Francis' extraordinary life: he was born into a wealthy merchant family, heard God say ‘rebuild my church” and thought he should use his money to literally repair and restore a damaged building, but then when he realized God meant the church with a big C, he gave away everything he had and lived the nomadic life of a bootleg preacher. Francis stirred up trouble, like Jesus before him. He saw things differently; saw them the way God sees them. He called the sun his brother and the moon his sister. He preached to the birds and brokered peace between the villagers of Gubio and a wolf that was terrorizing them because it was hungry. Francis and his sister Clare modeled something for us, which is so radical in its simplicity: that everything belongs.

An image of Francis of Assisi from Camberwall Parish.

Richard Rohr followed in Francis’ footsteps and became a Franciscan friar and has written dozens of books and while he doesn’t have a blog like a I do, he sends out a daily meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation, which he founded in Albuquerque in 1987. One of his books is called Everything Belongs, and he says in it that “only when we rest in God can we find the safety, the spaciousness, and the scary freedom to be who we are, all that we are, more than we are.” This comes when we see the world with the same eyes as a Francis, as Jesus, who reminds us in this parable that that which we may reject, that which may seem unworthy or unlikely, is, in fact, a new foundation on which God is doing something beautiful and holy.

Franciscan friar and author Richard Rohr, who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation.

The familiar line “the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” comes from Psalm 118. Hearing the story in the context of Jesus’ confrontations with the religious authorities, we may be prone to think that the parable’s saying that, while the authorities had rejected Jesus, God had not, and that therefore God had taken the gift of the Kingdom – the vineyard in the parable – away from them, the “wicked tenants.” Yet we must resist any urge to read such judgment here. The idea that God took something away from the children of Israel and gave it to the followers of Jesus is a heresy called supersessionism, and it is a harmful, sinful way of thinking, though too many preachers have preached on this parable suggesting just that. On behalf of such preachers, I am sorry.

At the core of this parable isn’t an argument between religious traditions but is a lesson about how some, especially those in positions of power and authority, can be so blind to not see how God can and does transform this world, taking that which seems unimportant and making it central.

The Resurrection of Jesus is proof enough that God can and does do this, but it’s not just in such bold, outward expressions. Living fully into this transformed world is both an inner and outer journey and requires both inner and outer work. In my experience, church folk are great at the latter, but it’s the former that’s a bit tricky, the work on ourselves from the inside-out. And so, just as Jesus illustrates for the religious authorities God’s ability to take a rejected stone and make it the corner for something new and majestic, what parts of yourself have you rejected that God might be using to transform your life and the lives of those around you?

What aspects of ourselves, of each other, do we most discard and cast off? What character traits seem unusable, unreliable? What if the rejected parts are meant to become the cornerstone of our next beginning? 

To trust God fully is to trust the totality of our lives, the complex layers of each of us, and all of us together. Every single one of us has something to offer, in spite of our feelings of inadequacy. We are God’s partners in creating this holy realignment, this world transformed. Rejection itself is rejected! Because when we reject ourselves and believe we have nothing to offer, nothing anyone would want to hear, no gift that could do any amount of good, we reject Christ who dwells in us and among us. To love Christ, and to love everyone around us, begins with loving ourselves and realizing that every part of us belongs.

That radically simplistic principle is at the core of our theology of stewardship, not as something required or forced upon us like dues paid to a country club, but instead as something we do freely, as a way of showing our gratitude for what God has done and will do, through our time, our talents, and, yes, our treasure. Stewardship isn’t a season of the church, but a way of being year-round. And it starts with realizing that even when we think we have nothing to offer, God says otherwise. When we feel like the stone that has been utterly rejected, God has a use for us. We should not always be so sure that we know how everything will turn out, when God has proven time and again, that things which were cast down are being raised up, and that what was once old is being made new, and that all things are coming to fulfillment – being transformed – by Christ, who is alive in us and through us, and calls us all to see our that no matter who we are, no matter how much we reject the parts of ourselves that we deem unworthy, God calls us to tend this vineyard, build this Kingdom of justice, love, and mercy, knowing that we all have a place and everything and everyone belongs.