Sermon 9/17/17 Matthew 18:20-35

Luther Seminary professor and theologian Rolf Jacobson has this to say about what’s happening in the entirety of Matthew chapter 18, which Pastor Mark reminded us last week has to do with discipleship. Jacobson says this:

In Matthew 18, Jacobson said, “Jesus is painting a picture of a community that is so frightening, that I don’t think I want to be a part of it.”

And that community is the church.

Now, hopefully Jacobson is speaking with his tongue at least a little bit in cheek, but if you look at all of chapter 18 here’s where he’s coming from:

·      To be the greatest you have to be humble more like a child and less like an oh-so-certain-you are right adult.

·      And boy oh boy, woe to you if you trip someone else up in their belief in Christ.

·      Also rejoice more over the person that was lost and then found, than the 99 who stayed and did what they were supposed to, you know, cleaning up after the church picnic, serving on committees, visiting the homebound, singing in the choir...

·      If you have a conflict with someone in the church, go work it out with them face to face, first one to one, and then if necessary, with others. You don’t get to just ignore them – and not listen to them - and think the problem will go away.

·      If you can’t make peace with someone, there is a way to put someone outside of the boundaries of the community.

·      And today, forgive over and over again. Because since you’ve been forgiven, your forgiveness of others is expected.

And that, says Rolf Jacobson, is frightening when you really think about it. Because really…we all know we aren’t really good at following all of these discipleship rules from Jesus. If we were, we wouldn’t have had all the temple talks on conflict here in the past several weeks.

Or there wouldn’t be arguments between sisters and brothers in Christ about what kind of worship is best…or whether politics has a place in church or whether to add on to the church building or not. Or the many other myriad of things church folk have gotten into arguments over in the past 2000 years.

So if we aren’t a little bit anxious when faced with Jesus’ idea of a community of disciples, then maybe we should be.

Or at the very least, it should give us pause.

If we approach Matthew 18 as a series of rules Jesus is giving us to be the right kind of disciples, then put me firmly in Rolf Jacobson’s camp. It scares the daylights out of me because I know I don’t always do it right.

But there is another way to look at this. In Matthew 18 why is Jesus giving all these rules about discipleship? What is it he’s aiming for?

Somewhere the answer is in that idea that where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name, community is formed.

What if Matthew 18 isn’t so much about the rules of discipleship, but instead about the kind of relationship God is offering through discipleship? About the kind of community that can form in Jesus’ name?

Now admittedly we all know that relationship is also hard – just as hard maybe as following rules can be.

And one of the things that can trip relationship up more than anything is lack of forgiveness. Can any relationship survive without it?

But, oh, yeah…forgiveness…that’s hard too.

So while it gives some hope that maybe Matthew 18 is more about relationship than rules, it sure doesn’t make it all that much easier since relationships and forgiveness are still really difficult.

And just in case we forget this, Jesus provides this parable about forgiveness that just seems kinda terrifying.

Matthew has a few parables that don’t appear in the other gospels, and this is one of them. Now here it might be a good idea to take a step back to remember just what parables are and what they are not.

They are not a clear-cut line by line representation or allegory where every character has a direct counterpoint to someone in our life.

So, just lining up God as the king and the ungrateful servant as that person who we are arguing with in our life right now, isn’t really what Jesus is going for.

Instead, parables – especially parables like this one – are meant to disrupt our oh-so-very-certain adult way of knowing we are right to teach us a little humility. Parables introduce us to – shock us into seeing - an alternate world-view or way of living.

They throw us off balance. They jar us out of our egos. They show us a world that is frankly so unbelievable that we can’t help but be left wondering how we manage to get things right even some of the time!

This parable is shocking us to get a glimpse of what an entirely different way of forgiving looks like. It is saying “what would a world or community or church or family look like where forgiveness was as important and as natural as breathing?”

As natural as it is for this king.

One of the things you need to know about this generosity of forgiveness the king here you can’t grasp unless you know exactly what 10,000 talents is.

A talent was apparently equivalent to 130 lbs. of silver. And a first century laborer would need to work for roughly 15 years to be able to earn that much, so 10,000 talents would take 150,000 years to pay back!

150,000 years! Not sure about you, but I’m fairly certain I don’t have that much employment time in me. So in essence, what the king was forgiving was impossible for anyone to pay back.

That example was helpful for me to know because honestly, when you think of forgiving in purely economic terms – as in this parable seems to – for me it is a bit easier to understand forgiveness. I mean, forgiveness of debt is pretty straightforward.

But forgiveness is much more difficult when it comes in other terms: in terms of violence or hurt that we do to each other.  There are things in this life that quite frankly, we collectively term “unforgivable.”

But that is exactly what this king does. He forgives something that is after all, unforgiveable. Who can possibly pay back 150,000 years of labor?

And that is the point that I believe is meant to shake us out of our way of seeing things more than anything.

We could simply judge the first slave in his own inability to forgive a much smaller debt and stop there. And certainly he does fail in that area – as we all have done.

But I think what Jesus wants us to be shocked by is this: how does someone who is treated to an unbelievable, undeserved, monumental, completely life-altering gift of mercy and grace remain utterly oblivious to it? How does it not make him run from his master in amazement and wonder and gratitude that he can’t help but share that gift with others?

Martin Luther wondered about that very idea and in that wondering we are now 500 years later celebrating everything that came out of it.

I love what Pastor and theologian David Lose says about that. He says:

Luther realized “that righteousness was not God’s expectation, but instead God’s gift. And once he realized that some of God’s favorite things to do are to forgive those who seem unforgivable, love those who feel unlovable, and make right those things that seem so persistently in the wrong, Luther was freed not only from his fear of punishment, but also freed to love and forgive and care for those around him.”

Forgiveness is still hard. Relationship is still hard. Community is still hard, whether that community is made up of two or three or of over a hundred.

Some things will still seem or feel unforgivable, where we can’t imagine forgiving them once, let alone 77 times.

But here’s the thing, fortunately we don’t have the last word on forgiveness.

Fortunately, God’s inconceivable, utterly undeserved, amazing grace does. God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness comes even when we can’t seem to muster it up individually or communally.

And that mercy continues to call us out of our own egos into relationship with people we might not otherwise have anything to do with, and into community where we keep struggling along to try to work out what this alternative way of living looks like.

And even when we keep messing up, which clearly we do, God keeps calling us back to try again. And then when we mess up yet again, still God calls us and loves us and feeds us to strengthen us for another try, wanting always to show us how forgiveness is a reality for the whole community.

During communion, Lyndsey will sing “Please Come” by Nichole Nordeman which puts God’s mercy for ALL into perspective.  I want to share some of the lyrics with you as I close.

Oh, the days when I drew lines around my faith

To keep you out, to keep me in, to keep it safe

Oh, the sense of my own self entitlement

To say who’s wrong or won’t belong or cannot stay.

‘Cause somebody somewhere decided we’d be better off divided

And somehow despite the damage done, He says “come…”

There is room enough for all of us, please come.

And the arms are opened wide enough, please come

And our parts are never greater than the sum.*”

I close with her words and hope that as you come today to this table they will strengthen you, wherever you are in terms of conflict or forgiveness, so that you can see, taste, hear, smell and feel that mercy when it comes your way, no…OUR way, as we are gathered in Christ’s name.

Amen.

*From Nichole Nordeman "The Mystery" (2000)

A little more: Matthew 18:15-20

Matthew 18:15-20 (NRSV)

“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

What would a community look like if all anyone ever did was ignore those they were angry with? Or talk behind their back? Or in the parlance of today, "ghost" them?

Would relationship really work then? Would community?

Jesus gives some pretty clear and logical steps for handling conflict. And he gives the reason for it as well.

When there is a group of us gathered in Jesus name, he is there. A community is formed around that. But if we don't communicate with each other - even in the hard times - then the relationships will fail.

Unfortunately in a day of social media and email being the primary sources of communication, it has become far too easy to let go of this idea of working through difference through open communication. Far easier to write an angry Facebook post or drop a lengthy email that can lack context or give the reader a chance to respond or even understand the "tone" that sits behind the email.

We have moved away from directly communicating our problems, our conflicts - and even our joys and hopes - one to one, face to face.

And it has had broad ranges of impact on our communities: our home communities, our church communities, and even our larger community and world.

Who is someone you are struggling with today that you could go to, talk to, listen to as a fellow human being so that relationship would be healed?

Lord, give me courage to meet face to face with those I am in conflict with and help us to hear each other. Amen.

A little more: Ezekiel 33:10-11

Ezekiel 33:10-11(NRSV)

Now you, mortal, say to the house of Israel, Thus you have said: “Our transgressions and our sins weigh upon us, and we waste away because of them; how then can we live?” Say to them, As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel?

If there is anything I can think of that comforts me in Scripture more than anything else, it is this: that God wants me to live.

That for God, nothing is better than when someone turns back from sin or from wrong-doing or from evil or from anger, and turns instead to life. To love. To hope. To forgiveness. To repentance.

That when I feel completely broken, or have messed up, or am feeling alone or slighted or have done the slighting, that God's ultimate hope for me is that I return to living.

If you have been in deep conflict or stress, as I have found myself in recently, then you know how cut off from truly living you feel when being in one of those states. Sin means to be apart or separate from God, or turned into ourselves. 

Conflict and stress can often leave us feeling isolated, because sometimes the pain becomes so great we cut ourselves off from those who would heal us or help us.

That isn't living.

And what God wants for us is living.

The hardest thing in conflict for many people is to meet face to face and hash it out; to resist the notion to sit and stew in our anger or grief.

But life comes when we face the challenge of turning back from that isolation: when we seek out the one who has hurt us or who we have hurt and together we choose life.

God wants us to live! So, why would we choose otherwise?

Teach me to turn toward life! Amen

A little more: Romans 13:8-14

Romans 13:9-10 (NRSV)

The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

I don't preach every week. And clearly I don't remember to blog every week either! 😉

But as a new program year has begun in the non-liturgical calendar of the church, it seems as good a time as any to make new year's resolutions. So...resolving to write...well, at least more often than I have been.

And since I don't get to preach every week, and so don't often get to follow a lectionary thread through weeks in a row, it seems that looking at the previous Sunday's lessons might be good practice for me. And maybe even helpful for someone who feels like there was one more word they wanted to hear in the sermon on Sunday that they didn't get.

This word from Paul on love is one that expands a little bit on Jesus' two great commandments to love God and love neighbor. And the law here gives us some ways that we can do it. Love is after all not simply an emotion, but it is also a verb. 

An action.

An activity.

One where you don't harm your neighbor. Where you don't take what is theirs or cheat them (or cheat on them)!

Where you treat them as yourself. (so, I am really hoping you treat yourself with love and compassion as well!)

We live in an age where many both inside and outside the church rightfully point fingers at those of us inside the church and say: "Yeah, you don't really seem to treat each other so well."

Fair enough. And true often.

But is that really so surprising?

Is church a place we come to because once we walk in the door we get it right; where we do exactly what God wants; where perfection reigns?

Or is church more like a lab or studio where we get to practice working out just what this Kingdom (or Kin-dom) of God looks like.

Martin Luther called the church "the Holy Spirit's workshop." I like that. We get to come and let the Spirit work on us.

We come because we need the practice. And we need the community. And we need the love.

We don't always show that love. We hurt each other and we fight and we argue.

But if we keep showing up, the work continues and sometimes we get a glimpse of just what it is that love is really all about.

Lord, keep working on me. And keep me working it out too. Amen.

Sermon: 8/20/17: Nevertheless She Persisted

Sermon  8/20/17            Matthew 15:10-28

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus Christ.  Amen

Nevertheless she persisted.

For some in this room that’s a political hand grenade even to say out loud. It either feels like a rallying cry or an offense. It may either straighten your spine in affirmation or in irritation.

But persistence has been happening long before it became part of the cultural and political blogosphere or 24 hour news cycle.

SHE persisted because her daughter was suffering. Tormented by a demon. And as a mother, she was willing to go to any length to save her. I’ll bet we have a lot of persistent mothers in that way here today.

She was even willing to approach this teacher. This enemy teacher who had a reputation for healing and for mercy.

For that’s what he was for her. An enemy. Son of David. And she would have known that for him, she was an enemy too. His people had hated hers for centuries.

But somewhere along the line someone must have told her “He serves a God of Justice. Of mercy. He will help you.” So she took a chance.

At first anyway, he was unwilling to help. And not just unwilling. He was mean. He seemed cruel. Not like anything she’d heard about him. He gave in to his disciples’ shouts to send her away when she begged him for help. He called her a dog.

Maybe she was used to that. Maybe he wasn’t the first. Maybe she’d been called worse even. She let it just roll off her back as if she were used to it.

But she persisted, turning his own words and his canine image against him.

“Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

And it seems that was when he saw it. Maybe he’d just been distracted. Maybe he had focused too much on how his people had hated the Canaanites for centuries and held that against her. Maybe he’d simply been testing her or giving an example about the Pharisees he’d just condemned.

No one knows. We can’t crawl into Jesus’ mind and discover what it was he was thinking when he called her a dog.

But what we can see in that moment, what he shows us in that moment is that at least then he remembered the words from Isaiah:

Maintain justice and do what is right …For my house shall be called a house of prayer for ALL peoples.

For all peoples. Even foreigners. He remembered.

He remembered this reminder of who his people were called to be. He remembered God’s promise to Abram that his people were to be a blessing not simply to themselves but to the nations. To the world.

He remembered that the holy house of God is for everyone.

He remembered what the Kingdom of God was, just as his follower Paul would later remember and remind us that there is no longer Jew or Greek; slave or free… or I’m sure you can come up with a few others.

We are one.

A woman persisted and she reminded Jesus of that message. An ENEMY woman persisted and he remembered that message. She was audacious and tenacious; offensive and impudent; determined, and yes…dogged.

And Jesus heard her. Saw her. He saw a faith that he called great: the first and only time in this gospel of Matthew that he called a faith great.

A faith in a God of justice. A faith in a God of deliverance. A faith in a God of ALL.

Jesus saw this faith in this woman and his vision expanded. He remembered Isaiah. He remembered that justice is not just a vague vision meant for a select few. It isn’t just for our tribe or our religion or our skin color or political bent. But it is a specific vision meant to save even a woman who was the enemy: the outsider.

That’s the vision we as Christians have inherited. One that says that ALL are welcome to the house of prayer. All. All. ALL.

And when anyone in our Christian tradition says otherwise – when they say no to that vision of ALL, ALL, ALL, – well, there’s the rub.

What then?

Because I’m guessing I don’t need to tell you how wide and expansive the love of our God is. I’m guessing you know it. I don’t need to tell you that Jesus isn’t only like us. That God doesn’t simply share our views of the world here in Chester County Pennsylvania in the United States of America.

I believe we all know that already. But is knowing it enough?

Or must we persist in living it as if we know it as well. Showing the world we know as well.

So when someone claims a narrative counter to this inclusive justice of God, or Christianity, is it enough to know that it is wrong or do we also remember to denounce it as wrong.

To remind those who say otherwise that for God in Christ ALL means ALL.

To remind them that every single time we draw a line in the sand between who is in and who is out – who is brother and who is other – God in Christ will show up on the other side of that line and embody the very person we have named our enemy.

When anyone in our Christian tradition says “no” to that vision of God’s inclusive love and justice and deliverance, we are called to resist that claim. We are called to persist in our view of God’s expansive love, and be vigilant to help those who are being excluded from it.

Sometimes the voice that reminds us is from a mother crying out for justice for a suffering daughter: pleading for healing for her child, persisting and moving mountains to get the enemy teacher to see her. To hear her. To help her.

Sometimes it's a Charlottesville mother crying out for righteous action after her daughter was slain while protesting the white supremacist rally that brought violence and hatred to that city.

Susan Bro likely didn’t expect to wake up one morning and be a voice crying for justice in the wilderness.

It was her 32-year-old daughter Heather Heyer who was the activist. And unlike the Canaanite woman, there was nothing Susan could do to save her daughter.

Yet her daughter’s passion would move her to cry out.

“They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well guess what?” she said at Heather’s memorial. “You just magnified her. I’d rather have my child, but by golly if I’ve got to give her up, we’re going to make it count.”

She persisted.

Any preacher will tell you that there comes a moment at some point in their preaching life where they have to face a choice. Where something so big has happened in our shared experience and we face the fear of ruffling feathers if we speak out about it.

Where the blue and the red, or the white, black, or brown blend and meet and bump up against each other and you realize that you can either generalize and be vague, or you can be intentional and specific, remembering that the Gospel, with its proclamation of unmerited grace, IS offensive by its very nature to the way the world works.

And then you get this Canaanite woman. And you get Isaiah, and you get the aftermath of Charlotteville all showing up on the same Sunday and you realize that generalizations just aren’t going to hack it.

This Canaanite woman is a model for what it means to not be afraid to ruffle feathers.

She changed the mind of our Lord. She persisted and made him remember the expansive inclusiveness of God’s dream for the world.

She persisted and reminded him that the table is wide and open for all.

Maybe it’s scary or off-putting to imagine that Jesus wasn’t already in control of this situation: that this Canaanite woman needed to remind him. Maybe it is more comforting to think that Jesus was testing her or that he was using her to show what blind guides the Pharisees were.

Or that by calling her a dog he was giving an example of how what comes out of the mouth is what defiles a person.

Or maybe, we can remember what the writer of Luke told us: that Jesus – that God in the flesh who walked among us – grew in wisdom and stature. He learned. Just like we do.

We can remember, as religious writer and speaker Adam Ericksen says about this text that: “Matthew wants us to see that ALL humans, even Jesus, need to have our cultural prejudices challenged and uprooted.”

There’s that word again. All.

For the disciples, for the Pharisees this woman was a walking defilement. And yet, through her, Jesus grew in wisdom.

Can we?

Can we remember through this woman’s persistence that knowing God is a God of all is not enough? That knowing God loves even those who are different from us is not enough?

That when groups who claim a Christian heritage march and assert racial superiority – when they hold Nazi flags, the symbol of the deaths of six million people, or Confederate flags, the symbol of slavery of millions, and chant against any one else who is other – that it is not enough simply to know that is wrong?

We have to denounce it as wrong. We have to say it is wrong. We have to live as if it is wrong. As if it is sin.

This year marks the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation, and there isn’t a better time to remind ourselves that our Lutheran heritage wasn’t always on the right side of history with White Supremacy. Not with some of Martin Luther's own writings, and not in Nazi Germany certainly.

That cannot be our witness in this year that marks a half a millennia of Reforming.

And so today we hear from this one woman who persisted. Who cried out for her daughter. A woman who was the other. A woman who wanted to be part of Isaiah’s vision.

A woman Jesus first ignored, then called a dog, and then, as his vision opened up, he helped. And he learned from. And he called her faith great.

From there he would go on and expansively heal, and feed and offer the gift of his body and blood.

And he would offer it to all. Not some. All.

So we today receive that body and blood and we will go out. Called to persist in spreading this wide, generous love of a God for all of creation, resisting any claim to the contrary and being vigilant to the cries of those who get left out and called “other.”