The Rev. Jennifer L. Adams – September 28, 2014 – Proper 21, Year A:  Matthew 21:23-32

I’m going to start with the very opening of passage we just heard and say that that was really kind of a funny beginning to a gospel story.  Jesus entered the Temple, not such a big deal one would think.  And as he entered, he was teaching people, which was not that remarkable either, it would seem.  But then before he could even settle in, the chief priests and elders came to him and immediately asked him a somewhat accusatory question. And then Jesus immediately asked them a question back.  And then while Jesus stood waiting, the chief priests and elders huddled together, debated how to answer Jesus and finally decided (after pooling all of their experience, education and wisdom) that “We don’t know,” was the best they could do. And so they came out of their huddle and replied, “We don’t know.” To which Jesus said something that seemed to run along the lines of “Well if you’re not going to answer me then I’m not going to answer you.” And then he told them a parable.

So what’s that all about?  There’s so much that doesn’t seem quite right! Where were the greeters when Jesus entered the Temple?  Where was the handshake, the “good morning” or “good afternoon,” or the “nice to see you?”  What a rude welcome to a place of worship!  Before Jesus could even get his foot in the door they were confronting him.  And while we’re at it, why was Jesus so indirect and sort of evasive in his response to their questioning of him?  It doesn’t exactly seem like the respectful dialogue or even the reflective listening that one would expect of the Savior of the world.  It just seemed to go downhill so quickly on everyone’s part, which is not particularly impressive if you ask me, considering that the players involved were religious leaders and the Christ himself!

It just doesn’t make sense. So let’s broaden the picture a bit and see what else is going on.  Maybe it will help us understand some more about why this played out the way it did.

If we back up a few verses in Matthew, it helps.  Turns out that the setting was already a hard one, harder than we’d know from just pulling this passage out by itself and reading its few verses.  Just a day or so before this interaction in the temple Jesus had entered into Jerusalem to shouts of “Hosanna!”  “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” they had shouted as they waved branches of palm in the air.  Jesus was being hailed as king and the tensions around him had risen just about to the breaking point in Jerusalem so this parable’s actually told during the peak of the whole gospel story, the point at which Jesus had a large and significant following and when tensions were at their absolute highest.  And so the questions from religious leaders that day reflected those tensions which is why they were coming at him with such intensity and even a bit of a threat.

It also helps to know that the first thing that Jesus had done when he entered Jerusalem, the day before the one we heard about in today’s gospel, the first thing he’d done was to visit the temple. So today’s story is actually about his second visit. And on the first visit, Jesus had turned over the tables of the money changers while shouting quotes from Jeremiah who prophesied about the temple’s destruction. So it’s no surprise really that the greeters had run for cover when Jesus came back this time.  And it’s no surprise that the temple authorities didn’t roll out the red carpet or reserve a special pew in welcome.

To top it off (as if it needed topping) all of this took place around the Passover – so the city and the temple were packed – the Roman authorities were on high alert and the religious leaders were needing to look good, to serve their people but also to make all appearances of being a calm and peaceful people so that they wouldn’t suffer at the hands of the secular authorities that ruled over them.  The Temple couldn’t afford the kind of unrest that accompanied Jesus. The last thing they needed was someone who was being heralded as King turning over tables and stirring up the passions of the people.  The Temple leaders were actually likely in their own minds and hearts, anyway, protecting their people.

So this wasn’t exactly Jesus sitting on a peaceful hillside telling a story.  And this wasn’t just a random day of worship on which a guest walked through the doors of the sanctuary. Which explains some of why this happened the way it did.  The stakes were high and Jesus had swung about some threats of his own the day before. So, the question that the priests and elders asked was justified, “Just who do you think you are?”  There was a lot of pressure on these leaders and their question was legit – they wanted to know who had given this guy the right to come in and completely disrupt the temple scene during what was in their minds anyway, for the sake of their people, the worst possible time for something like that to happen.

And so they asked Jesus, “By whose authority are you doing all of this?” and then Jesus did what Jesus had been doing all along; and (just for the record) he had learned this method from the chief priests and elders themselves.  He responded to their question with more questions.

First he asked them a can’t win about John the Baptist. And they caught that they couldn’t possibly answer that one safely so the chief priests and elders responded with a relatively wise, “We don’t know.”  And so Jesus continued, “Well, what do you think about this, then. . .” And then, (true to their own method,) he told them a story:

A man had two sons and he went to both of them and told them to go work in the fields.  And the first son said he wouldn’t go, but then later he changed his mind and did go and work.  The second son, however, told his father that he would go into the fields but he never did.  “So which of these two sons,” Jesus asked them, “did the will of their father?”

And unlike some parables, this one had an easy answer. “The first one,” they said. Which is obvious, right?  It wasn’t what each son said that had mattered it was each son eventually did that mattered.  Anybody could see that.  Thank goodness, because maybe for a moment or two there was some relief on the scene.  The chief priests and elders had answered correctly! So maybe this rebellious, so-called Messiah would key it down for a while and at least let them get through the week.  Here they were on common ground after all, agreeing to the interpretation of this parable.  Whew.

But Jesus wasn’t done yet, because his role wasn’t just to relieve tensions, it was to bring about a larger scale transformation and that’s a huge part of this story.   Jesus pressed on with the already uncomfortable conversation with a direct hit –  he told the chief priests and elders that they were actually the second brother in the story.  They were the “bad brother,” the one whom nobody wanted to be.  Right to their faces, Jesus told the chief priests and elders that they were the ones who said the right things, but weren’t doing the work God was asking them to do.

And then as if he hadn’t said enough already, Jesus added one final piece – he said that the tax collectors and prostitutes – the most sinful of the sinful – the most outcast of the outcast – the most despised and least religious among them –  would go into heaven ahead of them (not instead of them, catch that – but ahead of them which was bad enough.)  And it was enough to send the chief priests and elders completely over the edge.  And probably enough – given everything else that was happening – to send Jesus to the cross.

And so this story is about a lot of things but before we touch the parable I want to look at Jesus here because I think this is first a story about how sometimes the Body of Christ needs to be that presence that agitates, that looks into the heart of a system that means well and pushes it over the edge, because the edges aren’t in the right places.

The irony here is that the leaders of the Temple were so intent on protecting the people by saying and doing the “right things,” that they themselves had essentially become barriers to God’s grace. It’s a hazard of the trade.  The leaders of the Temple were so intent on protecting the people – that they themselves had essentially become barriers to God’s grace.

There was so much more to God, so much more to grace, so much more to forgiveness, and holiness, and love, and Jesus had come to show that “so much” to the world.  There was so much more to God than even the temple leaders themselves had acknowledged! The temple leaders got pushed over the edge because their edges were in too close.

And Jesus came to tell them that.  It was the prostitutes and sinners and tax collectors – those outside of every religious line that had been drawn who were getting this good news.  Sure accepting that level of radical grace came with risk, but of all the risks that could be taken, Jesus came to say this was the one to run with.  This was the risk to die for.  God’s love?  Abundant! Forgiveness? All around! Children of God?  Not such a select group after all.

As scary as it probably sounded to the religious authorities, especially since they’d relied on those edges their whole lives, Jesus had come proclaiming that maybe there weren’t meant to be any edges at all.

And if you are someone who had said yes to the original invitation, that would be somewhat of a surprise, a potentially threatening one.  And it would change the work you had been given to do.  It would change your work from protection to invitation.  From guarding grace to helping discover it.  From containing and purifying the people of God to sending them out into the fields to encounter all the various kinds and sorts of people and gifts and stories and healings and faithfulnesses that were out there too.

Now truth is that we are all on some level the second brother in this story.  Don’t be offended; we’re in that together too.  There are parts of the fields that we have yet to enter, yet to trust, yet to believe that God is actually at work in in ways that pass even our understanding.  So maybe our best bet is to just get out there, and there and over there too, to let the Body of Christ push us over our own edges, trusting that God’s power reaches farther than we can imagine, trusting that the fields themselves are in the hands of one’s larger than our own and that the workers (all of them) are too.

Amen.

 The Rev Jennifer L. Adams, Rector – September 14, 2014 – Proper 19, Year A: Matthew 18: 21-35

So the parable in the passage we just heard is relatively straightforward – almost too straightforward by the end of it in fact! So before we dive in, let’s a take a minute to remember the context of Jesus telling this story. . .

This passage follows directly after last week’s which involved Jesus telling his disciples and others who had gathered that if they were sinned against, (or better when they were sinned against since it happens to everyone, right?) they needed to take that offense to the person who had done the offending. And if that didn’t work, the person who had been sinned against was to ask for help from another person and they were to approach the offender together.  And then if that didn’t work, the people were to ask the church for help. And so the church “whenever two or three are gathered” was how Jesus put it in that passage– the church was to take an integral and participatory role in the work and project of forgiveness.  And so Peter (in true Peter fashion,) wanted to know just how much of this work they were supposed to do. “What are the limits on all of this forgiveness stuff?” was essentially the question we heard him ask in the follow up today. “Just how many times do I have to forgive?” Peter wanted to know. And so Jesus, (in true Jesus fashion,) responded with a parable.  Here’s how it went:

There was a king who wanted to settle his accounts with all his slaves so he called these slaves in to make good on their debts.  And one of the slaves who owed 10,000 talents which was A LOT of money, millions – couldn’t repay him.  And so one of the lords, a manager who had been appointed by the King, ordered this slave to be sold along with his wife and children and all his possessions and for payment to be made.  But that slave upon hearing that he was to be sold, begged for patience, promising that he would repay the debt, although the amount was so outrageous that both the slave and the manager knew it was impossible to actually meet the debt.  Nevertheless, “out of pity for him,” the parable says, in a show of mercy, “the slave was released and the debt forgiven.”

OK – this is a nice parable so far.  Forgiveness asked for.  Forgiveness received.  This would have been a good place to end it. But in good parable fashion, there’s more. . .

After that forgiven slave was released, he came upon a fellow slave who owed him 100 denarii (about 1/600,000 by the way, of what the first slave had owed the king.) And the forgiven slave in a very unmerciful like manner, grabbed the other slave by the throat and basically told him to pay up.  And when the slave asked him for patience the first slave refused and threw that slave in prison until he could repay his debt.

You’re tracking right? Nice parable just took a turn for the dark.  The person who had been forgiven refused to pass it on.  But it’s not over yet. . .

Word spread fast about what the forgiven slave (now known as “very obnoxious slave”) had done and word got back to the king’s manager.  And so the manager yelled at the obnoxious slave, “You wicked slave,” he said. (Which is far worse than obnoxious.)  “You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.  Should you not have shown your fellow slave that same mercy?”  And then he handed that slave over to be tortured until he could repay his debt.

So it’s really not such a nice parable after all!  I thought if we kept going maybe there’d be some sort of redemption or something. Is a happy ending too much to expect?  Instead, the highlights of the not so nice parable read like this:

Forgiveness asked for.

Forgiveness received.

Forgiveness asked of the forgiven one.

Forgiveness denied by him.

Formerly forgiven one handed over to be tortured, presumably for a very, very long time.

The end.

“The gospel of the Lord.”

With this take home we’re given in the very last line in case it wasn’t yet clear enough: “So my heavenly Father will do to each and every one of you unless you forgive your brother and sister from your heart.”

And so perhaps some parables are just meant to scare us into shape?  One of my thoughts this week was that this was Jesus being as extreme and overly exaggerated as he could be simply in order to get people’s attention.  He made the amounts of debt very, very huge and very, very small and he used language of threat and torture just to make them open their eyes.  Sort of like you do with kids (minus the torture part, just for the record.)  But think about it, if a child is on the edge of doing something dangerous, something harmful to themselves or someone else you use extreme examples and you shout, LOUDLY.  Even the most non-violent of parents will toss out a threat in order to stop a child from hurting themselves.  And maybe that’s what Jesus was doing here.

He was saying (using a bit of exaggeration in order to prove his point) that the most harmful thing we can do in this world is withhold forgiveness.  And so he said that we’d be tortured if we failed to show mercy to one another simply hoping that the threat would result in us changing our ways.  Slightly ironic but that’s one possible interpretation.

But then again, maybe it wasn’t an exaggeration at all.  Maybe there is truth more than threat at the heart of this uncomfortable parable.  Maybe we are tortured when we refuse to offer forgiveness.  Maybe Jesus was simply, profoundly stating that reality.  When we refuse to participate in the offering of forgiveness, we are tortured by our own withholding.  Period.  It eats us up.  It hardens us.  It actually hurts us – right along with the sin done to us, it hurts us.  What if that’s what Jesus wanted us to know?  Maybe he wasn’t actually trying to threaten people in to forgiving one another.  Maybe he was trying to protect everyone from the torture that results from withholding mercy in this world.

And I actually think that’s something to think about and sit with more than it is something to explain.  Releasing others actually results in showing a mercy on ourselves too.  And as hard as it is to acknowledge, there are some debts that we can never repay and some debts that will never be repaid us. And letting those debts linger only eats away at everyone involved, sort of like torture. Regardless of their size, debts are hard to carry by both parties involved, and I think that’s the point Jesus might have been trying to get across in this parable.

Which doesn’t mean to oversimplify the work that is forgiveness and some debts, some sins are bigger than others.  But the parable tells us very clearly that forgiveness is the context in which God is working in this world and it should be our context too.  The good news is that redemption has already been set in motion.  It’s not something we are moving toward; it’s something we’ve been invited to be embraced by and to live within now.  And so the ending isn’t a happy one that is yet to be; it’s a surprisingly holy one that is present today.

“You are forgiven,” the first slave was told. “Everything you’ve ever owed.  Everything you’ve ever done.”  You are forgiven. You are free.  Let that sink in to your heart. It needs to run that deep – because when that happens, hearts change.  Debts are released.  And we discover the graceful reality that neighbors, friends, leaders, even enemies can be forgiven too.

 

Who do you say that I am?

The Rev. Jennifer L. Adams – August 25, 2014 – Proper 16, Year A: Romans 12:1-8, Matthew 16:13-20

audio of sermon

 

“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks.

 

Son of Man.

Son of Mary.

Son of God.

 

King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Wonderful Counselor.

The Mighty God.

The Everlasting Father.

The Prince of Peace!

 

Lord of might.

Ancient of Days.

Root of Jesse.

Branch of David.

Dayspring. Desire.

God with us.  Emmanuel.

 

Very God from very God.

True light from true light.

Alpha and Omega.

Beloved.  Bridegroom.  Lamb.

 

Holy One of Israel.

Mighty One.  King of Glory.

 

Word.

Light of the world.

Bread of Life.

Living Water.

Shepherd. Vine. Brother. Friend.

The way, the truth and the life.

 

The one who fed thousands and calmed storms.

The one who tipped over tables in the temple and made people well with a touch.

The one who was anointed to bring good news to the poor, release the captives, sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free.
The one who knew the law by heart, all of it.

And who healed on the Sabbath, sought out the lost, ate with sinners and said that the poor were the ones who were blessed.

 

The one who healed that woman, raised that man, and helped that little girl breath again!

The one who spoke of peacemakers as blessed,

and said that you must be like a child to enter the kingdom of God.

 

The one who said “This is my Body, this is my blood,

love one another and do this in remembrance of Me.”

The one who was baptized by John,

crucified under Pilate,

suffered death, and was buried . . . and on the third day rose again

(in accordance with the Scriptures.)

 

So who do you say that I am?

 

I could keep going.

And you probably all have your own lists too.

We could all keep going and we could be here for a very, very long time.

Because there isn’t only one answer to that question and there never was.

 

Sure, Peter got us rolling,but since that day

there have been gospels, hymns, poems, essays, dissertations, covenants, and creeds!

All in response to this one question:  “Who do you say that I am?”

 

There have been communities formed,

wars fought, churches founded, doctrine established,

heresies defined, and reconciliation sought and found –

all in response to this question.

 

We could be here all day!

Because there isn’t only one answer to this question, and there never was.

And I think that’s part of the point.

 

There are a whole lot of us – people of God, that is.

There are a whole lot of us who bring

different experiences, different gifts, different insights,

different hurts and different healings to this question.

 

And our responses are the people of God working it out.

We are living in to this living God, always.

 

So, who do you say that I am?

 

Well, Jesus, we’re doing our very best, our most faithful best (at least on good days) to respond with our hearts and our minds and our souls – to this question. Through action and art and song, through academic Christology, conversation and prayer we are responding!

 

Here’s who we are:

 

We are three, and ten and thirteen and twenty six and forty-three and eighty-five years old.

We have been blessed and frightened and joy-filled and broken and lost and found and lost and found and lost and found over and over again!

 

We are preachers and teachers and exhorters and leaders – just like the letter to the Romans says.  We are parents and we are kids, and every now through some amazing grace, a prophet stands up among us and reveals you with surprising clarity.

 

In the broad scheme, we are rich – but we know that we have hungry places too.

And so we reach out and we reach in;

we read, we play we eat, we grow, we gather, we seek.

 

We are your Body.

And our life together is in many ways our response to this question.

This one question.

 

So who do we say that you are?

 

Well, today we say this –

You are the one who invites, who challenges, who welcomes and forgives.

You are the one who feeds and sends out and raises up.

The are the one who as God among us, calls us each by name.

 

You are the one who loves us. . .the Bible and these people tell us so.

You are the one who makes us one.

 

So, ask us again tomorrow, Jesus.

Please ask us again tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that too.

Because it is in our responding that we find you.

 

Amen.

 

The Rev. Jennifer L. Adams – Easter Vigil 2014

“Today we remember tomorrow.”  That’s the phrase that the author of the book we’re reading for our confirmation class uses to frame her approach to church history.  “Today we remember tomorrow” Jennifer Gamber says as she takes us back to the very beginnings of the early church while she’s also opening doors into the church today.  “Today we remember tomorrow.”  I’ve come to think of that as a wonderful way to talk about what we’re doing here tonight.

All those lessons we just heard about God’s people in ages past?  (And just for the record a little footnote here – for those of you who thought that was a lot – in an Easter Vigil that includes all the possible readings  – which is an event on my bucket list, so look out – there would be lots more!  In addition to what was read tonight we would also hear about Noah, Abraham and Isaac, with more from Isaiah and a couple of other prophets too. So either breathe a sigh of relief or go home from here and look up those stories too, depending on which way you lean.  End of footnote.)

Now there are so many readings in this service because this is the night, the one night when we remember the WHOLE STORY of what we call “Salvation History” – from the very beginning of Creation right up through the resurrection of Jesus.  And this remembering isn’t just for the sake of fondness.  It isn’t even really remembering primarily for the sake of teaching, although it has a formative dimension to it.  This isn’t remembering for the sake of building knowledge, or even purely for the sake of keeping the stories themselves alive.  In fact the act of remembering when done by God’s people gathered has never been just for the sake of communicating what happened yesterday, or two thousand years ago, or ten thousand years ago. Remembering has always been done for the sake of sustaining God’s people today, and orienting us in hope for what is yet to come.

Because what we’re remembering tonight are the actions of God in this world and the dreams that God has for humanity.  Did you hear what God has done, what it is that God desires? God created us male and female in the image of the divine and saw that it was good!  God liberated people from slavery.  God dreamt of abundance and feasts of rich food and good wine for all. God breathed new life into old bones and made them dance!  God incarnated God’s very self in Christ, embraced the extreme frailty, and failure and sin of our human reality through death on the cross.  And then God resurrected Christ – while completely freaking out (in a good way) anyone who had anything at all to do with the tomb.  And in that resurrection, God offered new life to all.

And part of the miracle of all of that is that in this active, holy remembering that we do – gathering in darkness, sparking the fire, listening to the stories, ringing bells, lighting up the place, and feasting – the limits of time are shattered – we actually stand among those created in the image of God, among those set free, among the dancers, and the dreamers, and the prophets.  And more than standing among – we are those people tonight.  And we will be those people tomorrow too.  And the day after and the day after. Because there is a holy sort of becoming that happens when we remember this way.

So last weekend Anne Lamott whom I would consider one of the literary saints of today – told us at Calvin’s Faith and Writing conference that all she has to offer to the world, through her writing, through her speaking is her past two weeks.  That’s all she’s got really, she told us and that may be true of us too, or at least it might feel that way. An eternal story is a big load after all, and to carry this whole thing around in our hearts and minds in a constant state of awareness might make it a little hard to keep walking. How could we possibly manage even a step if we had to go back to the very beginning every time?  Maybe that’s part of why we only do this once a year. The enormity of it is so, well, enormous.  But, following the wisdom of Lamott, we can pretty much always manage fourteen days. So bear with me for just a couple of more minutes because I want to try that and see what happens.

Let’s take fourteen days here at Grace . . .

Well, last Thursday we welcomed Leon Milliyon into the world, the newest of God’s creation here among our community of Grace.  And just a week before that, people from all corners of this city were given a feast of rich foods here in our undercroft and parking lot as you all, prophets and dreamers that you are, opened our doors and called out for anyone who was hungry to come.  And last weekend, a Grace member died suddenly and we met with his family at what they would all say was a place like the cross.  And then on Wednesday just over three days later, we gathered with them to remember, to mourn and to celebrate; and in that celebration an incredibly diverse gathering of distinct nations took place.  It was a Christian Reformed Church meets the Episcopal Church meets Wheatland sort of experience.  And the spirit was here with us; dry and tired bones of all ages, against all odds, managed to dance as even through our tears we made our cry, “Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!.”

Now admittedly there’s a little risk interpreting our own stories this way.  We can over interpret and quickly label this as creation, or that as an example of redemption, and that over there as resurrection. Or we might even disagree on what is what.  But the more I think about that risk, the more convinced I am that over-identifying, is probably not a sin that Episcopalians really need to be too worried about.  It’s just not in our nature to oversee the grace of salvation playing out in our every day and to name it as such, let alone out loud.   So we can let that concern go.  It’s also a little messier to do this kind of remembering with our own stories, because salvation doesn’t present in quite as linear a fashion as it does in Scripture.  But I’m pretty sure the point of the Bible isn’t that God cracked it all open in an exact order. The point is that God cracked it open at just about every turn, often in surprising ways and even when that seemingly final turn included a tomb, that wasn’t so final afterall.

So take the risk with me this Easter season.  See salvation unfolding in all of it, from the very beginning and starting two weeks ago.  And jump in with all you’ve got.  The good news is that God is creating, liberating, feeding, inspiring and most miraculously of all, God is raising us from the dead today.  May we remember together, and become together, and trust that no matter what happens today, with God’s help, we’ll be remembering tomorrow.

Amen.