Sermon delivered Sunday, March 6, 2016 (4th Sunday in Lent, Year C) at St. Cuthbert’s Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, where I am serving as long-term supply priest. Audio only (not video) available below.
(2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32)
Jesus is at it again in today’s Gospel reading: answering those self-righteous Pharisees with a parable that gets ‘em right in the gut. “So you’re worried about the fact that I’m eating with ‘sinners,’ are you? Well chew on THIS one for a while!” – and out comes the Prodigal Son, a story that has spoken deeply to the human soul throughout the centuries.
At face value, the message of the parable of the Prodigal Son seems simple, and completely appropriate for the season of Lent: The son repents, the father forgives him. Voila! The God-human relationship illustrated. As the son has sinned and left the father, so we have sinned and left God. As the son realizes the error of his ways and returns to his father, so should we repent and return to God in order to be forgiven of our sins.
But wait just a minute. If we look carefully at the story, it’s not actually that simple. Does the son actually repent? The story tells us that the son “came to himself.” But it’s not entirely clear what that means; whether he actually had a change of heart, or whether the “coming to himself” was him having an “ah ha” moment realizing another way he could continue to continue to make sure he was taken care of at his father’s expense. “How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!” he thinks. “I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’” Is this expression of humility genuine, or is he just trying to figure out a way to get himself back in the door in a place where he assumes he will be unwelcome? It’s not like he becomes successful and wealthy and goes home to share the bounty with his father – as is so often the case with children and their parents (and with human beings and God!), he only turns back to the father when he needs something, when he seeks to gain from reestablishing the relationship.
So, we’ve got the problem of whether the son’s repentance is genuine or not, and then the story gets further complicated when the son returns home. The parable tells us that “while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” The father runs to him while he was still far off. The son doesn’t even have a chance to make his confession, to grovel before his father and ask for forgiveness, before the father sweeps him into his arms with hugs and kisses. The son hasn’t said a word yet that would indicate that he is repentant, that he is sorry for what he’s done. For all the father knows, the son could be returning home to ask for more money – which, in fact, is sort of what he is doing, since he’s asking for his father to again provide for his needs in the form of food and shelter. But the father still runs toward him and embraces him. He doesn’t stand back, eyeing his son skeptically and asking him a bunch of questions about what he’s done and where he’s been and what has happened to all the money he gave him. He doesn’t lecture him on respect for one’s elders or demand an apology before he extends his hand in peace. His love for his son overtakes any feelings of resentment or being wronged. His love is unconditional, offered without any action required on the part of the son outside of just showing up.
“Now hold on there,” our inner sense of justice cries out. “That’s now how the story’s supposed to go! The sinner is supposed to show sufficient remorse and contrition before forgiveness is granted! God forgives the repentant, but the unrepentant he will burn with unquenchable fire… or something like that, right? I mean, there has to be some consequences for this guy’s actions! How can the father throw a party for this guy after what he’s done? Isn’t that like condoning his actions?”
Conventional religious thinking, in the Judaism of Jesus’s time and in many other religions in various times and contexts, tends to think of God as a just judge, concerned with impartially enforcing the law. In this way of thinking, God is ultimately concerned with “fairness,” with making sure that each person gets what they “deserve.” If they are good, they deserve a reward. If they are bad, they deserve punishment. Our relationship with God becomes some kind of balancing scale where we hope that, at the end, our good deeds outweigh our bad and we get in to heaven by virtue of how the accounting works out in some kind of divine judgment book. The elder son in the parable represents this kind of conventional religious thinking, as do the Pharisees who are so concerned about who Jesus is eating with and spending time with.
But Jesus constantly challenged the notion of God as an impartial calculator, crunching the numbers to determine our fate. Jesus emphasized the image of God as a loving parent, like the father in today’s parable, who is overcome with love for his or her children. That love guides his response to them, that love colors and influences her judgment, that love makes allowances for her children’s shortcomings.
When this kind of love expresses itself, it may not look “fair” to those who are keeping the great accounting sheet of rights and wrongs. It may mean that some people get celebrations and parties and forgiveness and acceptance that they don’t seem to deserve. But Jesus’s message is that God’s love and mercy is not something we can earn by doing or saying or believing the right things. None of us “deserve” God’s love or forgiveness based on our actions, however “good” we might think we have been! God’s acceptance and forgiveness of us is a gift freely given – out of a relationship based in unconditional love, a love that will not leave us if we screw up or disappoint or “squander our inheritance in dissolute living.”
This kind of love is more concerned with transformation than with fairness. This kind of love is willing to break all the rules if it means helping one soul to know they are loved and valued.
Can this kind of love be taken advantage of? Could the forgiven and loved prodigal son, after enjoying the fatted calf at his reunion party, have ripped his father off, stolen his valuables, and pawned them for money? Of course he could have. This kind of love is risky. It makes us vulnerable. It opens us to the possibility of being deeply wronged, or even physically harmed, in certain circumstances. But it also has the power to transform.
The main character of Les Misérables, that great novel by Victor Hugo that has been cinematized numerous times and made into a stage musical, is an example of a kind of “prodigal son” who is transformed by this kind of love.
Jean Valjean is released from prison after serving 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family. He has become cynical, hardened, and trusts no one. He has nothing to his name and is let out on the streets with no resources and nowhere to turn for help. As he goes door to door begging, he happens to knock on the local bishop’s door. The bishop takes him in and feeds him and gives him a place to stay. That night, Valjean sneaks out in the middle of the night, stealing the silver place settings from the table. When he is caught and the police drag him to the bishop’s door, they tell the bishop that Valjean has told them that the bishop gave him the silver. The bishop surprises everyone, Valjean most of all, when he confirms Valjean’s story. “That is right,” he tells the police. In the poetic wording of the stage play, he responds, “But my friend, you left so early / surely something slipped your mind / You forgot I gave these also / Would you leave the best behind?” – and proceeds to give Valjean the two silver candlesticks from his fireplace mantle.
According to the law, the right and “fair” thing for the bishop to do would have been to press charges, and for Valjean to go back to prison. But the bishop was more concerned with the transformative power of love than the fair application of the law.
The bishop took a risk by following Jesus’s teachings in Matthew 5:39-40: “Do not resist an evildoer… if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.” Valjean could have betrayed his trust once again after this incident, or gone on to do harm to others as well. The bishop had no way of knowing what the outcome would be, but he chose trust over fear. He chose forgiveness over retribution. And it changed a man’s life. This risky act of generosity and forgiveness by the bishop transforms Valjean. His hardened shell falls away and reveals a kind, tender man with a heart of compassion, who goes about doing good for the rest of the story. The bishop responded to Valjean’s behavior not by “giving him what he deserved,” but by giving him a second chance.
As much as Lent gets a bad rep as a depressing season where we are told how bad we are, Lent is actually the season of second chances. It’s the season where we are reminded not just of our sins, but of God’s mercy. The joy of the father in the parable of the prodigal son at seeing his son return home is a metaphor for the joy God feels every time we return to him, no matter what we’ve done and no matter what is in our hearts when we do. God welcomes us home not for a stern scolding, but for a great celebration.
And we are called to do the same. If we are truly transformed by the love and forgiveness God has shown to us, we will offer forgiveness as freely as the father in the parable and the bishop in Les Misérables. As Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians, God has “entrusted the message of reconciliation to us. We are ambassadors for Christ.” We are the ones carrying God’s message to the world, the message that God is ready to throw you a party if you would but show up: no questions asked, no explanations needed. Just come, join us, and feast at that banquet prepared before the foundation of the world. If we are doing our job as Christians, it will also be said of us, “Those folks welcome sinners and eat with them!” Amen.
Showing posts with label fairness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fairness. Show all posts
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Complaining: a sign of lack of trust in God
Sermon delivered Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014 (15th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A, Proper 20), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
(Exodus 16:2-15, Matthew 20:1-16)
There’s a lot of complaining going on in today’s readings. The Israelites complain to Moses, saying that it would have been better to have stayed in slavery in Egypt than to come out into the desert to die of hunger. The workers in the parable complain against the landowner for paying the same wage to those who have worked all day as to those who have worked only an hour. In both cases the people complain because they feel that something that has happened is not right, that things are not as they should be.
It’s easy to relate to that sentiment, isn’t it? For many of us, complaining is not exactly a foreign concept. There is plenty in the world to complain about, plenty of things that don’t seem to be as they should be, whether big or small. As a child, one of the first phrases we learn to protest the way things are is the age-old complaint, “That’s not FAIR!” Whether it’s the fact that our sister or brother got to do something we weren’t allowed to do, or the fact that our piece of cake wasn’t quite as big as everyone else’s, our innate sense of justice cries out in protest, “That’s not FAIR!”
And in some ways, that’s what we keep saying throughout our lives. Although the complaints may be over larger and more complex issues, ultimately what we continue to express is that same visceral pushback that we feel when something just isn’t right. Whether it’s the fact that some people in the world grow up with far more access to education, clean water, and healthcare than others, or the fact that some of us, not just in parables but in real life, are paid less than our colleagues for the same or more work, all our work for social justice in the world is in some sense an expression of that earliest protest: “That’s not FAIR!”
You can hear it in both of these stories from today’s readings, that age-old protest and complaint. It’s not FAIR that we’re now hungry in the desert while the Egyptians are still eating their fill around the fleshpots. It’s not FAIR that those who were hired last and worked only one hour were paid the same as those who were hired first and worked all day. That’s not right. It’s not FAIR!
But in both cases, the message of the passage is that things actually are as they should be, even if people do not realize it, because God is in control. We are asked to trust that God will provide and that God is just, even when all the evidence around us seems to suggest the contrary.
The Israelites are asked to trust that God will provide food, even when they see no way that they will be able to find food in the desert. God does indeed provide food, in the form of manna, the “bread from heaven” that falls upon the camp each night. God specifically instructs them only to collect what they can eat for one day – asking them to go against every instinct for self-preservation and not to store up extra for the future, but trust that God will provide them each day with their “daily bread,” with enough to sustain them until the next day. This part of the story is not in our passage for today, but I’m sure it’s no surprise that the Israelites don’t do very well following the instructions. They do attempt to collect more than they can eat so they can guarantee that they will have enough for the next day – but all the extra they gather spoils and rots overnight. The experience of receiving the manna was designed to teach them that they were utterly dependent on God for their sustenance, that they could not guarantee their survival by “taking matters into their own hands,” but only by leaving them in God’s.
That’s a hard enough lesson to learn, but we have yet another lesson about trust in the Gospel reading. The workers are asked to trust God’s wisdom and judgment in paying those hired last the same as those hired first. But it’s important to remember that this parable is not really about workers in a field and the wages they are paid. Jesus says this story is a metaphor for the “kingdom of heaven” – so this is not a story about fairness in wages on earth, but about fairness in God’s judgment about who will be rewarded in heaven. According to this parable, all who have worked in God’s vineyard will receive the same reward, no matter what amount of “good work” we have done in this life. Despite our initial protests at this story being “not fair,” this parable is actually the ultimate expression of fairness, in that everyone receives exactly the same thing.
This is a common theme in Jesus’s parables about what the kingdom of heaven will be like – there will be an equality among all people that we do not see in our earthly interactions with one another. In order to achieve that equality, in many cases there will need to be a reversal of the earthly circumstances, so that “the last will be first and the first will be last” – to level the playing field, so to speak. The very fact that this upsets us, that we are worried about being cheated out of what is “owed” to us shows that we haven’t yet understood the meaning of God’s grace. None of us is “owed” anything; it is all purely a gift of grace. And God doesn’t play favorites in heaven. Jesus did not say, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms – but some of you will get bigger and better rooms than the others!” No, he simply said that there are many rooms, and he goes to prepare a place for us – for each one of us – no preferential treatment for anyone. It is said that death is the great equalizer, and according to Jesus, so is the kingdom of heaven.
In both these stories, the people’s complaining is evidence of their inability to trust God’s sovereignty, to trust that maybe, just maybe, God knows how to run the world better than they do. As Moses tells the people, “Your complaining is not against us, but against the Lord.”
All too often we fall into the mistaken view that we can and should run the world ourselves – that we know what is best for us and for those around us. But the scriptures are constantly reminding us that we are actually not great judges of what is best for us, and we’re not the best at running the world, either. We’re too focused on measuring and assessing who is “deserving” of a reward or punishment, too focused on our own sense of entitlement and pride to be able to see what Jesus is trying to show us about God’s mercy and grace. In Jesus’s parables, it is often those we think are the least likely to make it into the kingdom who are there – showing us what poor judges we can be about who’s in and who’s out. There is a saying that “you know you have made God in your own image when God hates all the same people you do.” Jesus’s teachings on the kingdom of heaven challenge our assumptions and push us to acknowledge that God’s mercy is often wider than we’d like. “Are you jealous because I am generous?” the landowner asks the workers in the parable, and we must constantly ask ourselves that question as we consider God’s generosity toward others.
Of course, we can hope that once we actually make it to the kingdom of heaven, we won’t be concerned about earthly things like who “deserves” to be there and who really “earned” it and who didn’t, but instead will be overcome with love in the presence of God. Hopefully, the kingdom of heaven will take us to an entirely different plane of existence, where those things that once mattered to us in the earthly realm will fall away.
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be concerned with fairness and justice here on this earth. But given what a large and seemingly insurmountable task it is to pursue those goals in this broken world, it is important to remember where our hope lies – not in the promises of justice or fairness in this world, but in the promise of God’s grace and love for us, both in this world and in the next.
Our collect for today reminds us “not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly,” and to “hold fast to those things that shall endure.” If we can let go of “earthly things” like our constant measuring and comparing ourselves to each other, if we can let go of the earthly concern with “getting what we deserve,” or even helping others get what they deserve, we can open ourselves to see the things that will endure: like the eternal love of God that is equally available to each one of us. When we place our focus there, the anxiety about earthly things begins to fade away and we are more at peace – more able to trust God’s guidance, and less likely to complain.
(Exodus 16:2-15, Matthew 20:1-16)
There’s a lot of complaining going on in today’s readings. The Israelites complain to Moses, saying that it would have been better to have stayed in slavery in Egypt than to come out into the desert to die of hunger. The workers in the parable complain against the landowner for paying the same wage to those who have worked all day as to those who have worked only an hour. In both cases the people complain because they feel that something that has happened is not right, that things are not as they should be.
It’s easy to relate to that sentiment, isn’t it? For many of us, complaining is not exactly a foreign concept. There is plenty in the world to complain about, plenty of things that don’t seem to be as they should be, whether big or small. As a child, one of the first phrases we learn to protest the way things are is the age-old complaint, “That’s not FAIR!” Whether it’s the fact that our sister or brother got to do something we weren’t allowed to do, or the fact that our piece of cake wasn’t quite as big as everyone else’s, our innate sense of justice cries out in protest, “That’s not FAIR!”
And in some ways, that’s what we keep saying throughout our lives. Although the complaints may be over larger and more complex issues, ultimately what we continue to express is that same visceral pushback that we feel when something just isn’t right. Whether it’s the fact that some people in the world grow up with far more access to education, clean water, and healthcare than others, or the fact that some of us, not just in parables but in real life, are paid less than our colleagues for the same or more work, all our work for social justice in the world is in some sense an expression of that earliest protest: “That’s not FAIR!”
You can hear it in both of these stories from today’s readings, that age-old protest and complaint. It’s not FAIR that we’re now hungry in the desert while the Egyptians are still eating their fill around the fleshpots. It’s not FAIR that those who were hired last and worked only one hour were paid the same as those who were hired first and worked all day. That’s not right. It’s not FAIR!
But in both cases, the message of the passage is that things actually are as they should be, even if people do not realize it, because God is in control. We are asked to trust that God will provide and that God is just, even when all the evidence around us seems to suggest the contrary.
The Israelites are asked to trust that God will provide food, even when they see no way that they will be able to find food in the desert. God does indeed provide food, in the form of manna, the “bread from heaven” that falls upon the camp each night. God specifically instructs them only to collect what they can eat for one day – asking them to go against every instinct for self-preservation and not to store up extra for the future, but trust that God will provide them each day with their “daily bread,” with enough to sustain them until the next day. This part of the story is not in our passage for today, but I’m sure it’s no surprise that the Israelites don’t do very well following the instructions. They do attempt to collect more than they can eat so they can guarantee that they will have enough for the next day – but all the extra they gather spoils and rots overnight. The experience of receiving the manna was designed to teach them that they were utterly dependent on God for their sustenance, that they could not guarantee their survival by “taking matters into their own hands,” but only by leaving them in God’s.
That’s a hard enough lesson to learn, but we have yet another lesson about trust in the Gospel reading. The workers are asked to trust God’s wisdom and judgment in paying those hired last the same as those hired first. But it’s important to remember that this parable is not really about workers in a field and the wages they are paid. Jesus says this story is a metaphor for the “kingdom of heaven” – so this is not a story about fairness in wages on earth, but about fairness in God’s judgment about who will be rewarded in heaven. According to this parable, all who have worked in God’s vineyard will receive the same reward, no matter what amount of “good work” we have done in this life. Despite our initial protests at this story being “not fair,” this parable is actually the ultimate expression of fairness, in that everyone receives exactly the same thing.
This is a common theme in Jesus’s parables about what the kingdom of heaven will be like – there will be an equality among all people that we do not see in our earthly interactions with one another. In order to achieve that equality, in many cases there will need to be a reversal of the earthly circumstances, so that “the last will be first and the first will be last” – to level the playing field, so to speak. The very fact that this upsets us, that we are worried about being cheated out of what is “owed” to us shows that we haven’t yet understood the meaning of God’s grace. None of us is “owed” anything; it is all purely a gift of grace. And God doesn’t play favorites in heaven. Jesus did not say, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms – but some of you will get bigger and better rooms than the others!” No, he simply said that there are many rooms, and he goes to prepare a place for us – for each one of us – no preferential treatment for anyone. It is said that death is the great equalizer, and according to Jesus, so is the kingdom of heaven.
In both these stories, the people’s complaining is evidence of their inability to trust God’s sovereignty, to trust that maybe, just maybe, God knows how to run the world better than they do. As Moses tells the people, “Your complaining is not against us, but against the Lord.”
All too often we fall into the mistaken view that we can and should run the world ourselves – that we know what is best for us and for those around us. But the scriptures are constantly reminding us that we are actually not great judges of what is best for us, and we’re not the best at running the world, either. We’re too focused on measuring and assessing who is “deserving” of a reward or punishment, too focused on our own sense of entitlement and pride to be able to see what Jesus is trying to show us about God’s mercy and grace. In Jesus’s parables, it is often those we think are the least likely to make it into the kingdom who are there – showing us what poor judges we can be about who’s in and who’s out. There is a saying that “you know you have made God in your own image when God hates all the same people you do.” Jesus’s teachings on the kingdom of heaven challenge our assumptions and push us to acknowledge that God’s mercy is often wider than we’d like. “Are you jealous because I am generous?” the landowner asks the workers in the parable, and we must constantly ask ourselves that question as we consider God’s generosity toward others.
Of course, we can hope that once we actually make it to the kingdom of heaven, we won’t be concerned about earthly things like who “deserves” to be there and who really “earned” it and who didn’t, but instead will be overcome with love in the presence of God. Hopefully, the kingdom of heaven will take us to an entirely different plane of existence, where those things that once mattered to us in the earthly realm will fall away.
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be concerned with fairness and justice here on this earth. But given what a large and seemingly insurmountable task it is to pursue those goals in this broken world, it is important to remember where our hope lies – not in the promises of justice or fairness in this world, but in the promise of God’s grace and love for us, both in this world and in the next.
Our collect for today reminds us “not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly,” and to “hold fast to those things that shall endure.” If we can let go of “earthly things” like our constant measuring and comparing ourselves to each other, if we can let go of the earthly concern with “getting what we deserve,” or even helping others get what they deserve, we can open ourselves to see the things that will endure: like the eternal love of God that is equally available to each one of us. When we place our focus there, the anxiety about earthly things begins to fade away and we are more at peace – more able to trust God’s guidance, and less likely to complain.
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