St. Peter's By The Sea
The Episcopal Church in Narragansett, RI
September 28, 2008
20th Sunday after Pentecost
Shortly before Jesus began his public ministry, another person was garnering crowds and getting a lot of attention. A man named John had taken up residence on the shores of the Jordan River and was preaching a radically new message. John went way out to the desert to practice this ministry because he was trying to make a point. He could have gone to Jerusalem, where the Temple was and where all the religious elite of his day lived. But John was not interested in lumping himself together with the religious leaders of the day. So instead he got himself as far from them as he could go, miles away from the city.
And there he baptized people—earning the name “The Baptist”—in the water of the Jordan, and there he preached. It is a testament to his charisma and magnetism that he was followed by such massive crowds, and not because the message he was sharing with them was not particularly sunny. Nowadays you see packed churches where preachers are making promises of riches and blessings if people will simply believe that God wants us all to have a three-car garage and wear Italian suits. But John the Baptist’s message was harsh: he bluntly told people they were living sinful lives. He told them that God was angry and frustrated by the people’s lack of righteousness, by all the corruption and inequality in the world. And he told them—and this is the reason why he wanted to get so far from Jerusalem—that their proper religious upbringing and beliefs wouldn’t save them from God’s wrath.
Only repentance would make any difference. Repent, he said, for God is near.
When we think of repentance, we usually think of feeling sorry for something we’ve done. We “repent” when we make our confession of sin. But a more appropriate definition of repentance is to change your mind, or your course of conduct, on account of regret or dissatisfaction. Repentance literally means to change directions, to turn away from something, to go in the opposite direction.
So repent, John said; change the direction of your life. Do things differently.
And he was specific: if you have clothes you’re not wearing, give them to people who don’t have enough clothes. He told tax collectors and soldiers—two occupations that the Jewish people in Jesus’ day despised because both of them were in cahoots with the oppressive Roman government—not to exploit, extort or falsely accuse people. Repentance for John wasn’t some pie-in-the-sky theological construct; it was the stuff of real life, the rubber meeting the road, when people started putting their ordinary lives in line with the will of God.
In today’s gospel, Jesus reminds the religious leaders of his day about John’s preaching, and then tells a parable to sum it up. There are two brothers: one who says yes when his father asks him to go to the fields and work, but then doesn’t go. Meanwhile, the second brother tells his father he won’t go work in the fields, but then does. Which son did what his father had asked? Well, based on the way he frames the parable, we know the correct answer is the second son, right? But how? What is he getting at? Jesus is, in essence, asking the religious authorities, and asking us, a question:
What’s better, a respectable religious person who always says “yes” to God—pays God lip-service—but doesn’t do what God asks in his or her daily life. . .
. . .or a non-religious person who says “no” to God—rebels against God’s authority or even questions his existence—but then behaves in such a way, in their daily life, that is consistent with God’s will?
It’s a question that hits close to home for the religious leaders of Jesus’ time. The chief priests had been hammering Jesus for hanging out with the dregs of society—prostitutes and tax collectors. They followed Jesus around and harangued him about the sort of people that he surrounded himself with. They believed that Jesus’ friends and acquaintances were a sort of spiritual contamination, just by their very existence. But there was nothing Jesus despised more than this holier-than-thou worldview. He couldn’t stand it when the ones on the “inside” did everything they could to keep those they didn’t like on the “outside.” These insiders were all talk, the original “yes” men. They had lots to say about all sorts of things, but when it came down to it, they had very little action to back it up their tough words. Their lives, in practice, were empty of God.
And, it seems, that question hits close to home for us as well. There are many people out there who pay God lip-service. It comes so easily. I’m sure you’ve seen it done, and maybe you’ve done it more than once yourself. These people talk about God easily and freely. They know all the right code words, all the Biblical phrases and every word of the liturgy. They seem to have a direct connection to the Almighty, a Bat-phone of sorts that enables them to know God’s every command. Yet that same person is the one who just bought a new boat but considered a $50 bill in the offering plate at Christmas good for the year. Their talk is empty. It’s really all about them, not God. It’s a lot like that old parenting adage: Do as I say and not as I do. Parents say that in moment of frustration, and also in moments of embarrassment, when their actions and their words are shown to contradict one another. But, both Jesus and the religious leaders acknowledge, the one who says the right things but doesn’t do them isn’t on the right path.
And then, on the other hand, there are so many people out there who struggle to articulate just who or what God is. Talking about God is hard to do, whether it’s because they came from a religiously repressive family or they just lost a loved one from disease or tragedy. And maybe they even said no to God on more than one occasion. Maybe they left church as a teenager and never looked back. But there they are, in the middle of the serving line at the Soup Kitchen every month. You can always count on them to generously donate to worthy causes. Maybe they became a foster parent. Or maybe they are the ones you can always count on to selflessly show love and compassion. They may not ever refer to God, or speak like a churchgoer, but their life is a pure reflection of God’s will. Their life is gospel.
So much of Jesus’ time was spent ministering to those people living on the periphery of society—the diseased, the sinners, the hated—and trying to draw them back in. They may not have always said “yes” to God at first, but they were included because they allowed their lives to be changed, their images of themselves to be rearranged by Jesus’ merciful touch. Whether they knew the right thing to say, whether they understood all the religious garble-de-gook that sometimes just gets in the way, whether they had the proper background, Jesus didn’t care. Because they allowed their lives to be changed, and their actions reflected that difference. It was just like John the Baptist: what matters is the authenticity of repentance. What matters is the decision to choose a different direction and head out into it. What matters is allowing God to pick you up from the path you’re on, dust you off a bit, and set you back down on a holy path.
So where are you in this parable? Are you the one who says the right things, but doesn’t follow it up with action? Or maybe you are the one who doesn’t always know the right thing to say, the perfect words or the best phrase, but you’re living your life in the way of God’s call. It may be an inevitable tactic used by well-meaning parents, but for Jesus, “Do as I say and not as I do” runs completely counter to what God expects from us. Saying the right thing and not doing it is just not good enough, Jesus tells us. What matters is what you do.
So if you’re someone who’s already living the gospel life, well, congratulations. You are truly blessed. And you are rare. But if you’re like me, and like just about everyone I’ve ever met, and occasionally your words are worth more than your actions, there is still hope. We can go back to the shores of the Jordan River and listen to John the Baptist calling for us to repent, to change course, to head in a new direction. It is the direction that will demand us to match our lives with our words, to boldly live out the commands of our Lord when it would be so much easier to just say the right thing and move on. We can leave behind our hollow words, and lay claim to the fullness and grace of lives given to God, that we would all proclaim by our lives the greatness of God’s holy kingdom.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2008 7:48 am
Category: Sermons
September 21, 2008
19th Sunday after Pentecost
Can you remember the first dollar you ever earned, or your very first job? I’m not necessarily talking about a “real job” that includes W-2s and all that. I’m talking about being a kid and having somebody hand you money—not for your birthday or Christmas or losing a tooth—but for something you have done. Maybe you were a babysitter, or helped out with chores, or delivered newspapers. You could have been extremely young, long before you actually knew what you wanted to “do” with your life and were just happy to have something to do that someone was willing to pay you a few bucks for. I was. I was eight and my family was living in Temple, Texas, where we had just moved the year before. We had a kind neighbor who was recently widowed. She couldn’t have been older than 50, I don’t think. She had this beautiful dog, an Akita, named Joji. The woman worked late most days and so she asked me to come by each day after school and check on Joji. I would feed her and play a little with her. She was a trained guard dog, so I had to follow strict instructions on how to interact with her, so as to not trigger any defensive instincts. I took this work very seriously and never missed a day.
For going by each day and looking after the dog, I got paid the princely sum of $20/week. Think about that. In the mid-1980s, an eight year old getting paid $20/week! That was a well-paying job. And I saved almost every penny. I don’t think I possessed enough imagination at that age to spend that kind of sum. So I served as sort of a bank to my family. Anytime my father needed cash for business trips, he would come to me and borrow the money. I remember having a tight little roll of $20 bills tucked in my sock drawer.
So what did I learn from my first job? Well, at the time, the only thing I learned was that money grows on trees, and great jobs are right next-door. (Yeah, great lesson.) I can still remember thinking that with this job, I would always be flush. I completely and totally took it for granted, assuming that jobs like this were easy to come by. But inevitably, a year or so later, the woman—or as my parents used to call her, my “benefactor”—moved away, taking my free ride to college with her. It took years to unlearn what I had learned, to truly understand how incredibly blessed I had been for a time. With the gift of time and distance, I can now see what an uncommon blessing that job had been. I had no special talents or skills; I was eight years old, after all. I didn’t really earn the money I was paid, not in any real sense. That woman gave me a gift when she invited me to take care of her dog. The whole thing, as I look back on it today, was the picture of grace.
What did your first job teach you? Did it give you your image of money and work, or did you get it from somewhere else? Can you even remember learning what you believe about money and work, or have you always just thought that way?
Well, in this country, we hold in common a belief, or set of beliefs about money. They are the base of many of our views on work and wealth, and I would guess that no matter where you come from, or when you grew up, you have been taught to believe them. The first is that you if you work hard you get what you deserve. It’s the reason that ¾ of Americans think the statement “God helps those who help themselves” comes from the Bible, when in fact it was first uttered by Ben Franklin. It’s the belief that hard workers succeed, and those who struggle to get by must be deficient in some way, and are most likely just plain lazy. This belief stands at the root of our cultural addiction to work—and for many it is an addiction—making us one of the most overworked, stressed societies in the history of civilization. We have a deep seeded idea that we get what we earn, and we only earn what we work hard for.
And then what we earn is ours. That’s the second belief, which is reinforced by brokerage firms and investment banks who tell us to “Let your money work for you.” You earned it, so now put it to work, too. This is the very American belief that serves as the seed for the way we spend our money. I worked hard for this, we say to ourselves, so I have earned the right to buy this car, or house or whatever the thing is I feel the need to justify. This belief has gotten mixed up in our very western understanding of rights; that is, we have the right to do with our money what we want, because it is ours. After all, we worked hard for it. We earned it.
Today we heard a parable from Jesus that initially seems to be a story about fairness, and it flies in the face of what we might hope to hear from Jesus. A bunch of laborers are hired early in the morning by a landowner to work his fields. After a few hours, the landowner goes back to the same place and hires several more. Two more times the landowner goes and hires laborers to work in his fields, right up to the late afternoon. At the end of the day, when it is time to pay out the workers, he calls the ones who have worked the least over first and gives them a full day wage. Quite understandably, the workers who’ve been out in the sun all day long are upset by this apparent injustice. What are you doing? That’s not fair! They didn’t deserve that much money!
According to everything we know today, everything we have learned from our society, they were justified in their complaint. Those latecomers absolutely didn’t earn that wage. It wasn’t fair. They hadn’t worked nearly as hard, for nearly as long. When we put ourselves in the story and use our belief system that we’ve inherited from society, we would most likely be right there with them, complaining about fair business practices and wondering who we could sue.
And maybe that’s the reason the landowner pays the ones who arrived latest first. Because the lesson is not for them; they take their generous wage—surprised and delighted, I’m sure—and leave. If he had paid them last, like we all probably would have, no one would have realized that there was anything amiss in the wage scale. No, the lesson is for the ones who have worked all day, who showed up early and feel like they have truly earned what they get. Put another way, they feel entitled to something more because of what they’ve done. But Jesus is not out to reaffirm our mixed up notions about money. To them—and to all of us, by implication—Jesus says, “Are you envious because I am generous?”
The people who worked all day think that because they worked all day, they earned more. But the reality is that everything they get comes from the generosity of the landowner. They are so focused on the idea of making money, they can’t see that the very fact that they have a job all day is a gift from God, the fact that they make a fair day’s wage is a gift from God, that everything about their day has epitomized blessing. It has all been a gift. And yet they complain about others and what they have received.
Jesus is trying to tell the people who worked all day that didn’t “earn” anything. God’s system of economics isn’t like ours. We don’t have the things in our lives because we earn them. We have the things in our lives because God gives them to us. God doesn’t help those who help themselves, to contradict good Ben Franklin. God gives us what we have because God is generous.
We have this illusion that what we have is ours, that the money we earn is ours. It’s sort of like when I was a kid, when I had the illusion that I would always have that job feeding my neighbor’s dog, and I deserved the money she paid me. The reality was that the lady gave me a gift, the gift of feeling like I accomplished something and a generous gift of money. God is like this generous benefactor. God has graciously given us the ability to do these things—whatever it is that you do, be it fisherman or investment banker—as well as everything that comes from them. They are gifts, pure and simple, and not something we’ve earned. They’re Gods, not something that is ours.
When you finally understand this, it’s like a revolution in your soul. The envy and frustration that typically plagues our hearts melts away. You are filled with gratitude instead of jealousy, generosity instead of fear.
This change in perspective is not easy. It may take a long time to truly embrace and be the work of a lifetime. But when we can finally see that all that we have comes from the outstretched hand of the Almighty, we come a little closer to establishing that glorious kingdom of his right here on earth.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:44 pm
Category: Sermons
September 14, 2008
19th Sunday after Pentecost
It is perhaps one of the most famous of all Biblical images, made all the more famous because of Cecil B. DeMille and Charlton Heston: tens of thousands of Israelites gathered at the edge of a vast Red Sea. There they stand, the wide expanse of water starring them in the face and not a boat in sight. Behind them is the desert that they just walked through, as they fled their captivity in Egypt. Somewhere in that desert are hundreds of chariots racing toward them, thundering across the sandy plain with the destructive capability of a column of tanks. It won’t be long before they crash down upon the people and utterly destroy them.
The people start to look at one another, terror filling their faces. It’s at this point that many turn toward Moses, to see what he’s going to do in the face of this looming catastrophe. But even as they look to him for help, their panic leaks out: “What, there weren’t enough graves in Egypt that you brought us all the way out here to die, Moses?” They’d gotten just a taste of freedom, but now hopelessness crashes back onto them as they gaze out over the deep blue waters of the wide Red Sea.
And then, just when they’ve given up all hope for salvation, something happens. A fierce wind begins to blow and the waters move. Unbelievably, the sea divides into two massive sections, a column of dry land unfolding before their eyes. There, through this miraculous passageway, the people walk into freedom.
I’m not here today to ask whether or not this is the stuff of legend or the stuff of history. I’ll let the Biblical archeologists and historians fight over that one. The important question that the story leaves for me, the question I think we can ask ourselves is “How?” How did Moses roll back the sea that day, part the waters and deliver the people? How did the Red Sea roll back from his raised arm and submit to his will?
If you’ve ever caught yourself imagining this scene and wondering how it all might have happened, you’re in good company. For centuries (and millennia) students of the Bible have wondered about these great stories and what’s not said about the events they describe. In the ancient traditions of Judaism, there is something called Midrash. Midrash is an attempt to creatively fill in some of the details of the stories and give additional flesh to the narrative, and by doing so, convey some truth about God or our relationship with God.
Well, one ancient Midrash retells the story of the Red Sea crossing with an extra flourish that you may have never heard before, and it includes an unexpected new character: Nachshon. Just like before, we’re back at the edge of the Red Sea, waiting as Pharaoh’s army sweeps across the desert toward the trapped Israelites. Moses, seeing the pending disaster and hearing the cries of the terrified people turns to God. But God rebukes him, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the children of Israel to journey forth!” “Journey forth,” Moses thinks. “How?” There is an ocean before them!
The people hesitate; they can’t bring themselves to go where they know they need to. No one moves.
Just at that moment, a single man, Nachshon, splashes into the sea. He wades through the rising tide and into the deeper water. All eyes are on him as he walks forward until the waters reach his waist, but nothing happens. He continues, and the water rises to reach his chest and nothing happens. He keeps going, and the water is up to his shoulders, then up to his chin. Still, nothing happens. Finally, just the last bit of his head is above the surface as the water reaches his nostrils. He is almost entirely submerged. And at that moment, the Red Sea thunders apart, creating a lane for the Children of Israel to cross to safety.
I first heard this story a few months ago and it instantly resonated for me. Something about Nachshon’s brave and almost naïve faith gave me pause. What a dramatic scene. I can just imagine the top of his persistent little head bobbing above the ways, trusting that God would indeed deliver the people with a mighty hand if someone would boldly follow his direction.
Often in the face of great challenges, challenges that may seem insurmountable, we simply despair. We look at them and wonder how, how is it going to be possible to do this? How am I going to get over or around or through this obstacle? Our fear and confusion and blame blinds us to the opportunity that lays before us, the path God has laid out for us, if we would only have the confidence and faith to move forward. That was the key to Nachshon’s leadership. He was willing to slog his way into the midst of a challenge that he knew was not insurmountable. He got into the water and didn’t stop, even when that water was at his chin!
I heard a rabbi say recently that faith is a quality of the soul. It exists within us at all times. Even when we deny our faith, our soul within continues to believe. But God is not satisfied with concealed inner faith. God challenges us to fan the flames of our smoldering but silent faith and bring it forth. Silent faith is dormant. It cannot impact the physical world unless it is physically expressed. That is why the waters waited to part that day until Nachshon waded in. When Nachshon sallied forth and expressed the faith that the people carried within themselves, the waters quickly parted.
This past week I met with several of the leaders of the new Journey to Adulthood program that St. Peter’s is beginning this fall. J2A (as it is called) aims to provide youth in grades 6-12 with intensive discipleship training. It involves a serious commitment by our young men and women as well as numerous adult mentors who will journey with these youth for several years as they grow into spiritually mature Christians. During the meeting it was obvious that several of the volunteers were unsure of what they are getting themselves into. The program is excellent, though more than a little demanding. It would be easy for those people—and by extension, all of us as a church—to admit defeat to this expansive sea stretching out before us. I can’t say I would blame anyone for abandoning this ministry.
But the challenge of establishing a transformational youth program is a challenge put before us by God. This is a holy responsibility. It is one of the many seas that God occasionally marches us up to and wants to see us cross. Thanks be to God, Nachshon is present in this church as well, embodied in the commitment of ten true saints who will pledge themselves to our youth and walk alongside them in the coming months and years. They have waded into the water, and are willing to carry on, even as the water splashes them in the face, knowing that God will richly bless this work and part this sea.
Where is the sea in your life of faith? Where have you been led, only to find a seemingly insurmountable obstacle staring you in the face? Even a life that prayerfully tries to follow where God leads still winds up at the shores of the Red Sea sometimes. Jesus talks a little about faith meeting action in today’s gospel when he tells his disciples how hard forgiveness is; these places where God calls us to are often difficult, challenges that require our deepest commitment and patience, challenges that are the work of a lifetime. After all, 70 x 7 doesn’t happen overnight. But that is where God wants us. God beckons us to move our belief into action and wade out with confidence into the water.
Ask yourself this day whether you are being called out from the crowd and into the water. Pray for the courage and strength to rise to the challenges laid before you, for the boldness you need to follow the path where Christ is leading. And then trust. Trust that just when the water is about to climb over your head, our risen Lord will deliver you yet again and set you back firmly on dry land.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 9:52 am
Category: Sermons