16th Sunday after Pentecost

In the gospel today we hear Jesus tell Peter and the other disciples another parable, a story that used ordinary settings and objects that were familiar to his audience to teach them something about God.

Parables sometimes feel like riddles or folktales like Br’er Rabbit stories or Aesop’s fables. We read them and try to figure out what Jesus meant.

But theologian and Presbyterian pastor Frederick Buechner offers this advice about reading Scripture: “Don’t start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks.”

When we listen to the parables, listening for the questions is fruitful.

First, Why is the vineyard owner doing the hiring? Wouldn’t the manager be in charge of finding workers?

Second, why doesn’t the landowner hire everyone he needs the first time? Instead, the parable tells us he goes out every three hours all through the day and finds new workers.

Third, who were the workers who were still there at the end of the day, the ones who told the landowner no one had hired them?

And fourth, why does the landowner tell the manager to reverse the order? Was he making a point or was he simply sympathetic to those like the Turners or the Valentines who know that always being at the end of the line gets old?

But the question I hear most clearly is the one the text explicitly asks. When a grumbling worker confronts the landowner after everyone received the same pay, the landowner asks,

“Are you envious because I am generous?”

The parable isn’t about the workers at all. It doesn’t matter how much effort or discipline they demonstrated, and it doesn’t matter when they showed up.

What matters is that the landowner in the parable, who we can now understand as God, generously disperses an abundant grace that exceeds any measure we can devise.

Our relationship to the God who created us,

who calls us into the world as God’s children,

who equips us with gifts for every vocation we pursue,

who sends us into the world to share God’s love and mercy —

that relationship has nothing to do with human effort,

or goodness, or work,

and everything to do with who God is

and what God has already done.

Too often we look at the person next to us and ask whether they deserve what they have, or whether they are being good stewards of their belongings.

Division and resentment, envy and suspicion infect our relationships, and instead of participating in a kingdom where all are fed or housed, welcomed and belonging, we turn inward and become self-centered.  Like the workers in the parable, we become so preoccupied with others that we forget the richness of the grace that we ourselves have experienced.

In the parable, Jesus says that the right response to great generosity isn’t to see if we all got what we deserved, but to respond with gratitude and thanksgiving, recognizing that all we have is given to us by a generous God who provides for us and wants us all to be fed and nourished, whole and healed.

I, for one, am really grateful that God’s grace breaks any scale or measure, any accounting system or logic. Every day I do something that falls short of the grace I’ve been given — in thought, word or deed, or in what I’ve done or failed to do — but God’s love for me is abounding and steadfast. That’s the promise we’re given, when we are brought to the foot of the cross by the recognition of our sin and our utter inability to do anything about it; God is there with us, loves us, forgives us, and adopts us as sons and daughters. It doesn’t matter how often or how loudly we tell God he’s doing it wrong, God still insists on loving each one of us immeasurably.

The question we hear from the landowner prompts other questions, too, like “What are the places in our lives that are places of abundance?” and “What are the places where we’ve been blessed and we didn’t deserve it or earn it?” These questions prompt us to recognize God’s generosity in our everyday lives.

As part of my story of call, I often tell people how every congregation where we have worshiped since Casey was two years old had female pastors; time and time again, wherever I was, I witnessed ordained women leading ministry and sharing the Gospel. I didn’t know until seminary how unusual that still was.

Another story I tell is the memory of a quilt we received when Casey was born. Lots of babies are given quilts, but this one stands out in my memory because Casey was born just a few weeks into a new school year and it was Jamie’s first year teaching there, so the woman who sewed the quilt hardly knew him. The quilt was pretty but it was the gift of her time that was a precious blessing to us.

As we follow Jesus together and listen for the questions that we hear in God’s Word, may we remember to watch for all the ways that God’s grace defies all of our human systems of rank and merit and counts each of us beloved and forgiven.

Let us pray…

Good and gracious God,

Thank you for your gift of grace, unearned and without measure, that you give each of us;

Teach us to respond to your generous mercy with thanksgiving and rest in the promise of your steadfast love for us.

Help us recognize your abundance and not be captive to fear or envy.

By your Spirit, strengthen us to share your love and mercy with the world.

In the name of your Son Jesus,

Amen.

15th Sunday after Pentecost

In the gospel this morning, Peter asks Jesus how often he should forgive his neighbor. After all, he’s heard Jesus teaching what we hear in the Lord’s prayer from Matthew 6:

if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Mt. 6:14-15)

In his head, he knows forgiveness is important. So when he asks Jesus his question, Peter makes what he thinks is a generous offer, asking if he is to forgive seven times. But Jesus tells him not seven, but seventy-seven.

Now, that’s a lot of forgiveness when someone has angered you or betrayed you, let alone if they have caused pain to you or someone you love.

Pastor Delmer Chilton, a Lutheran pastor who’s served congregations in Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina, tells a story about something he’s seen take place in churches in the hollars of Appalachia, a tradition that’s known as “a flower service”.

What happens is that everyone brings bouquets of flowers and places them on a table in front of the pulpit. These aren’t formal arrangements like we order from Mike’s or Holly’s, but large fistfuls of flowers from the garden and wildflowers from the fields.

Then the minister preaches a sermon, reminding people of Our Lord’s admonition to make peace with our neighbor before kneeling at the altar to pray to God.

After the sermon, everyone in the congregation comes and retrieves their flowers, and begins to go to every other person in the church to apologize for any hurt feelings or harsh words or misunderstandings.

Every person. From the oldest to the youngest, everyone talks to everyone else, not caring how long it takes.

And after the words of forgiveness have been spoken and heard, people exchange their flowers, sealing the restoration of their relationship and then they move on to another sister or brother in Christ.[i]

With his answer, basically, Jesus tells Peter, “Go on forgiving, as long it takes.”

Where true forgiveness demands a merciful and generous spirit, Peter’s question revealed only how miserly our human understanding of forgiveness can be.

First, forgiveness doesn’t mean “forgive and forget.”

“Forgive and forget” is one of those sayings that has worked its way into our culture, but has no basis in Scripture. And, forgiving and forgetting are not the same.

In the parable Jesus tells, the king doesn’t say the slave’s debt is forgotten; in fact, when the slave fails to respond mercifully to the man who is indebted to him, the king holds the slave accountable for the full cost of the debt he had owed. Importantly, forgiving doesn’t mean tolerating unacceptable behavior and it doesn’t mean remaining vulnerable to additional pain.

Second, forgiveness isn’t earned.

Too often, we cast ourselves as the king in the parable because we want to be judge of whether another person is worthy of forgiveness. Calling them to account, we insist on witnessing repentance, reform or, at the very least, an apology. And while we are called to repentance in Scripture, it is not a condition of God’s forgiveness.

Look at the story of the prodigal son whose father races to meet him and welcomes him home, before any words have been shared. (Luke 15) The model of forgiveness that we have is God’s unmerited, unmeasurable, and unrestrained forgiveness.

Look at the cross. Jesus was crucified, knowing his disciples had fled in fear and Peter had denied him; and yet, God does not withhold forgiveness, waiting for us to respond appropriately, or at all.

To illustrate what divine forgiveness is, Jesus tells this parable where a slave owes a debt at the largest magnitude known, a sum equivalent to two hundred thousand years of wages.

An impossible debt.

And instead of being cast as the king, suddenly, we realize we are the slaves, who have received an unexpected, extravagant and transformative gift from God. And, even when we have heard about God’s grace and we think we know what it means, we are surprised again by its magnitude.

Throughout his teachings in the catechisms, Martin Luther shows that “[God declares] that all people are forgiven, loved and blessed simply because God says so. God’s love of the ungodly is what changes the world, not human efforts to try and be like God.”[ii]

Importantly, the torture the one slave returns to is not being shackled and paraded down the street, beaten and flayed, or executed on a cross, but “the torment of refusing forgiveness.”[iii]

When we refuse to offer forgiveness, and instead hold onto hurts and resentments, we suffer. Seeds of bitterness are sown and wounds fester. We are completely and wholly changed by God’s grace but instead of letting go of pain, we wallow in it because it’s so well known to us.

When we refuse to receive the forgiveness we’ve been given, when we hold onto our sin, our shame and see ourselves as lacking worth or value, we are defying God and refusing to let go of the ‘old Adam,’ the person who has been put to death on the cross. Like the unforgiving slave, we are refusing the new life we are given in faith in Christ.

Remember, when Jesus told his followers, “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”? (Mt. 16:24-26) Well, this is how we lose our life:

by living, forgiven and forgiving.

We let the old self die, remembering God’s promise that “in baptism, we are clothed once and for all, with a forgiveness woven for us by Jesus’ death and resurrection.”[iv]

Answering Peter, Jesus reminds him, and us, that our life in the gathered community of his followers depends on the wholeness of our relationships with God and with each other, and forgiveness sustains our life together.

Let us pray…
Good and Gracious God,
Thank you for your overwhelming mercy to each one of us.
You call us to show forgiveness to one another as we have received forgiveness, living in response to the love and grace you have first given us, by faith in Your Son Jesus.
By your Holy Spirit, empower us to be merciful to the world around us.
Amen.

[i] Chilton, Delmer. The Gospel According to Aunt Mildred: Stories of Family and Faith (p. 103). Brasstown Publishing. Kindle Edition.
[ii] Martin Lohrmann. The Book of Harmony. 51.
[iii] Lectionary Lab.
[iv] Robert Capon. Parables of Kingdom, Grace, Judgment. 193. 

13th Sunday after Pentecost

In his letter to the Romans, Paul presents the gospel of Jesus Christ and explains God’s unmerited gift of forgiveness that we call grace. Remember how last week I said that Christian faith is not “if/then” but “because/therefore”? Well, Paul begins this twelfth chapter, “Therefore….”

Because of the grace, justification and faith that happens by God’s saving work for the whole world, therefore we are entrusted with a responsibility to live out of our faith and show God’s love to the world.

And beginning in this chapter, he describes what living by faith in Christ looks like in our daily lives:

It looks like a cross-shaped life and a cross-shaped church.[i]

It is a life, individually and as a congregation, that is shaped by love, following Jesus in loving both his followers and the crowds, without reservation, and, at the last, loving even his enemies, and praying for them, while he hung on the cross.

Paul sees the Church – the ekklesia – as the practice field for living out this covenant of love.[ii] Now, practice fields aren’t always pretty to look at; they can be muddy and sodden with rain, or sunbaked and hardened, but they are where people learn to work together and where you discover how your gifts complement one another.

Discipleship, and especially the church, is about how we come together and live out this new life that we have been given in faith. It is the life that we have promised to support Hudson and his parents in, a life shaped by our baptismal promises and affirmed again this morning.

In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther explained that the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies us – or makes us holy, preparing us for this life of faith in action. But it still takes practice.

Some of you know what sharing highs and lows means. It’s where you name a time where you saw God active in your life recently — a time of celebration, an accomplishment, a place where you encountered the Holy. And you name a time when things weren’t so great and maybe you wondered where God was in that moment —disappointment, illness or when trust was broken. Sharing highs and lows is a faith practice.

One of my highs last week was when a neighbor who I hadn’t yet met came over and finished mowing the grass when he saw I’d stopped because the belt on our mower broke; this week one of my highs was getting to celebrate my mom’s birthday with her and Curt.

But I’ve had lows too, like many of you, watching the havoc in Texas and Louisiana as the floodwaters rose, and then finding out my seminary classmate’s husband died on Wednesday in Wisconsin, two days before their son turned four.

Practicing finding God in our everyday lives, and not just on mountaintops and in Spirit-filled places like churches, teaches us to pay attention and to recognize God is with us during school and work, play and rest, joy and grief.

It also helps us reflect on how we have responded to the world around us, and whether we have embodied the love that Paul describes here. To measure whether we have served others, and persevered in prayer; whether we have overcome hate and evil with good.

Importantly, here, too, it’s not “if/then”: “if I got it right, then God will love me.” But “because/ therefore”: “Because God loves me, therefore I want to respond to others with love, with peace and with joy” and thankfully, “God loves me even when I mess it up.”

Paul knows what a life filled with evil, hatred and zeal against God looks like. He persecuted the church himself before his conversion. Here he is inviting “believers to live differently and to live out their calling both within the faith community and the wider society.”[iii]

It is the faith-filled lives that are on display when congregations from the northwest suburbs of Houston go into the city’s flooded sanctuaries to help them begin mucking out;

when interfaith leaders from California and Pennsylvania deploy on spiritual care response teams with the Red Cross to care for the people in Texas and Louisiana, and

when a teenager planning to go to next year’s Youth Gathering in Houston watches the footage from the floods and tells her dad, “We’ve got work to do.”

Truly, we all have work to do. The cross is a reminder of the suffering that God accompanies us in and a stronger reminder still of God’s victory over it. By our baptism in Christ, we are washed clean and given new life each day, to live cross-shaped lives and be a cross-shaped church.

Let us pray…
Holy God, Our Redeemer,
Thank you for the gifts of grace and faith that you have given us;
Help us follow Your Son Jesus and love our neighbors and community without restraint;
Empower us by your Holy Spirit to persevere and practice a living and loving faith in our actions and our words.
Amen.

[i] Bartlett, David L.; Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Feasting on the Word: Year A volume) (Kindle Location 822). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[ii] ibid Kindle Location 728.
[iii] ibid Kindle Locations 669-670.