Worship

It feels strangely appropriate that we have the lectionary texts we do for this week as we sit within screaming distance of election day. Yeah, screaming distance. I’ll admit it, I am one-more-piece-of-election-junk-mail away from just letting a gigantic scream-into-the-void rip, probably in front of my mailbox, which is on a semi-busy street. I am one mean-spirited campaign ad interrupting my TV shows away from like, gnashing my teeth. Political advertising during election season is always irritating, but this year it is so intense and inescapable that Tuesday cannot get here soon enough.

And yet, there is also dread. Because we are in such a polarized, highly emotional, stakes-are-high state, the build up to Tuesday is almost unbearable, but the fear of what might happen after Tuesday is also emotionally all-encompassing. My friends, we are about to go through some stuff. Again.

I know, and it’s not like I need to even tell you any of this. You’ve been also checking your mailbox and watching TV and hearing radio ads written to persuasively scare the listener into voting for a candidate, proposition, or measure. You’ve also grown weary of nasty ads singling out faults in leadership and lapses in judgment. It’s hard to keep a beacon of love lit when negativity is literally permeating the airwaves around us.

And yet, as Christians, that’s the task we have before us. Wouldn’t it be great if, at baptism, we were also endowed with negativity deflectors and love amplifiers? Unfortunately, that’s not how it works, and the work of following Christ is a lot of work. Fortunately, it’s not work that is impossible, we have an entire book that teaches us to love more expansively and to care for one another more radically.

And so, with this to preface the rest of our time together, let’s boldly go into the readings for the day and see what wisdom they hold for us at this tense and historic time.

Each of the readings today focuses on leadership in some way. Though we may brush it off and say “no, not me!”, in one way or another, we each are leaders. We set examples, we interact with others in ways that can either help or harm, we lead in our homes for our families and housemates, or we lead in our communities in the choices we make when it comes to supporting local and ethical businesses, we lead when we attend a meeting or sign up for a fundraiser walk-a-thon, we lead when we extend kindness unexpectedly, and we lead when we vote. And because this church is especially involved in the community, many of us are leaders in the local fight against food scarcity, we lead when we make the decision to open the thrift shop and we lead when we enforce rules to require masks upon entry. We lead when we open our doors for worship (whenever we will be able to do that again!) and give a genuine warm welcome to any person who comes through our door, no matter who they are or where they are on life’s journey. We lead at cabinet meetings and we lead in fellowship when we draw others into our conversations. And we lead as Christ followers, which is important to keep in mind. Even though we are led by the teachings found within the Bible, there is a certain amount of implied leadership responsibility when it comes to living our lives in a way that cares deeply for others. These readings speak directly to us to ensure that we not abuse our power or behave hypocritically. So even though we will be discussing leadership and looking at the circles of leadership that are accountable to us (that’s right, our leaders must be held accountable, they serve us, we do not serve them!) we should also be reading this with a mirror in front of ourselves to make sure we don’t turn any discussion like this into a finger-pointing party while ignoring our own shortcomings.

When I first read the text from Micah this week I reacted strongly. Right out of the gate I was like “YAAAAAAASSSS MICAHHHHH!” because no one calls out injustice like the prophets, right? Micah is not just speaking to leaders, but he’s speaking specifically to other prophets, his colleagues, his peers. He is speaking to people who are in positions of power who can then misuse that power and authority. He’s calling out those who will say that everything is fine, we are fine, nothing is wrong. We have plenty of resources, plenty of food to eat, plenty of clean drinking water, so everything is fine, all is well, while others are hungry. Micah is condemning this “self-first” approach to living. Note the words “abhor justice and pervert equity.” Now, you cannot abhor justice if you aren’t aware of what is just and what is unjust. To abhor something, to actively hate something, one has to know what it is and actively work against it. Perverting equity is the same. Micah is calling out all of the truly bad leaders who know better but refuse act better, whether it’s because they will lose support, lose privileges and comforts, or because they may lose popularity. And bad leaders will use the heartache, blood, sweat, and toil of others to achieve their goals—we see that when he says, “who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong!” When rulers and leaders knowingly use others with intent of using them up in order to realize a dream that is not their and they will not benefit from.

These bad leaders utilize bribery and deceit, they’ll scam money out of people, and they’ll favor those with more money. And then they’ll do the most dangerous thing a person can do—they’ll do all these things while claiming God is on their side! People become so afraid to go against what has been said to be of God that  they’ll follow these prophets, these leaders.

As we continue to examine leadership, let us remember to turn the looking glass on ourselves frequently. We cannot simply point the finger without genuinely, honestly asking ourselves how we stack up against these qualities of dangerous and toxic leadership.

In Paul’s letter, we are given a view into the way leadership should behave. Paul explains that the way that he and he colleagues serve while they’re ministering to these fledgling christ following communities. He explains that they work hard the entire time as to not impose or burden the folks that are in their care. They strive to be blameless and not to create more problems than they solve so that their message and their mission is not thrown off track by their actions. They are grateful and thank the people they are serving—an important thing to remember as we lead and as we care for others so that we do not develop savior complexes or find ourselves serving others just for the praise or the pat on the back, instead of serving others because in doing so we are serving God. Humility goes a long way. The act of being among the people who Paul is ministering to is also and important way for Paul to know he is serving actual needs, and hearing what the real concerns of the people are instead of assuming he knows. As we look at our leaders and as we examine our own ways of being in the world, we should take note of who they are listening to, and who they are claiming to serve. Do they spend time with that demographic—real time to get to know the needs, desires, dreams, fears, and heartaches? How can we hold our leadership accountable to listening to the people they serve? What are our responsibilities to all people to be served with justice and equity?

And then there is our reading in Matthew. I added a few extra verses to the lection today because, 1) we are gonna skip right past them next week and I think these are powerful statements and 2) I wanted to give our reader this morning a chance to read a few of the WOE TO THE HYPOCRITES verses to read. Chris is very dramatic. I knew he could really do these verses justice. But in all seriousness, there may not be a better pericope for us to ponder and meditate on before a gigantic election.

This selection from Matthew gives us a caution issued by Jesus against making big, fancy, bold declarations of what is right while at the same time doing things to the exact opposite effect. It asks us what we are doing for show, or to be performative, and what we are doing—really doing—to follow the path of righteousness. It asks us to ask our leadership what it is they are telling others to do that they themselves will not follow. What heavy burdens are in the packs of expectations that they are setting upon the people’s backs that they themselves have no intention of carrying? What is more important to our leaders—is it a place of honor or is it equity and justice? Is it the best and most stylish garb or is it upholding the dignity of all humankind? What are our own priorities?

And in those WOE TO YOU HYPOCRITES verses, Jesus says that the corrupt leaders lock people out of Heaven, they deny entry. They go to great lengths, at great expense to convert someone, but if that person has come to the faith through corrupted pathways, then that person has not been brought into a life-affirming, loving faith, but the woe to you verses will then apply to that newly minted convert as well. I know. In what ways are we guilty of this? In what ways can we hold our leaders accountable so that they are not spreading deceit and manipulation for gain?

Whatever the outcome of Tuesday is, it is essential that we do not become complacent, that we do not become hardened, that we do not become hypocritical even when those around us are, that our hearts continue to love even though it hurts, that we continue to speak truth to power—even when, and especially when—our “people” are the ones in power. We must hold those in leadership accountable.

To close, I offer this Franciscan prayer from Common Prayer: A liturgy for ordinary radicals.

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may wish for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Love, Love, Love, Love
Christians—this is your call
Love your neighbor as yourself
For God loves all.

Today’s readings in Matthew and Leviticus always bring me back to this song—one I must have learned at camp because I can’t seem to find it any of the 27 hymnals on the bottom shelf in my office. I’ve never forgotten it, though. We would sing it in a round, which I can’t replicate for you today since I’m all by myself, but I invite you to picture a bunch of dirty, stinky, booger-nosed kids circled around the campfire up at Tamarack, arm in arm. It’s dusk, and the trees are silhouettes against a sky that is fading from the pink of dusk into the grays and the eventual deep, velvety purple-black of nighttime, the stars beginning to shine their brilliant display on us as we transitioned from the more raucous “YOU CANT RIDE IN MY RED WAGON, THE WHEELS ARE BROKEN AND THE AXEL’S SAGGIN” of the early evening, to the slower songs signaling that we would be headed to our tents soon. And this song would begin, and swaying, everyone would sing in their best camp voice (which is less worried about how it sounds than say, our church voices, but more restrained than singing in the shower) and this somber tune of love would go one for five or six rounds, sometimes more if the group is really feeling it.

And it’s that sad quality, the mysterious shifts into sharps and flats that stick with me. It’s a hauntingly beautiful, simple song. And it’s about love, which has some dissonance when I stop to think about what love really is, what this song is saying. Is love somber? Is the kind of love we exhibit as Christians haltingly, hauntingly beautiful?

I’m prepared to say that yes, yes it is.

Love is a loaded gun. Love is a topic with potential to break open old wounds. Love is ambivalent. Love, like so many other things, does not exist in a binary of only one possible expression, and a binary where the opposite of love is hate. Love has a spectrum. It has as many healthy ways of manifesting itself as it has unhealthy.

When we hear “Love your neighbor as yourself” we project onto it a healthy kind of love. I mean, duh. We’re not reading this text and picturing a narcissistic or a co-dependent love.

But, just like the song, there’s something that tugs at me a bit when I read “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There’s more to it, more to explore. Something hidden in the shadows, and not necessarily in the shadows of the text itself, but in the way we, as adherents of Biblical wisdom, live out “love” in the world.

There is a chapter in the book The Cultural Politics of Emotion by Sara Ahmed titled “In the Name of Love” that explores the ambivalence of love, the mutability of the word when it is applied as a way of protecting something. The chapter begins with an excerpt from the “wake up or die love watch” website, a website that is dedicated to listing white nationalist organizations. This comes on the heels of a Hatewatch website which also lists the same white supremacist, nationalist organizations, however, lovewatch took the concept and spun it around. Using the language of love, it is explained that this site is born out of a steadfast devotion to their—and I get a lump of barf in my throat as I say it—White Racial Family and their nation. It is an act of love, as this website would have us believe, to uphold a white supremacist, aryan nationalist way of life, and on the contrary, Hatewatch is the one who is being divisive and terrible. As Ahmed says, “these groups come to be defined as positive in the sense of fighting for others, and in the name of others.” (pg. 123).

We can see that love isn’t always helping people cross the street and rescuing kittens from trees. Acting to protect something can be seen an act of love, misguided and harmful as it may be. It is with this lens that I turn to our readings today. In Matthew, which—a few weeks ago I misspoke when I said Matthew was written a hundred years after Jesus—I rounded up a bit too much. In around 70 CE is when it is generally agreed on that Matthew was written.

In our reading, the pharasees have heard that Jesus completely shut down the sadducees, just utterly silenced them. Matthew lays out that they sent one of their folks—a lawyer—to test him.

I know. I know. It’s like, the lawyer trope was already in existence back then. This could be the set up to a joke. But it isn’t, this is a battle of wits. It’s like in the movie the Princess Bride when the man in black bests Inigo the swordsman, beats Fezzik the strongman, and so he comes to Vizzini, the Sicilian who challenges him to a battle of the wits. It’s like, an ancient rap battle. It’s like…well, I could go on with what it’s like. But basically, they are trying to outsmart him, to catch Jesus stumbling, slipping up. They’ve been doing this over the last several weeks of readings, but in reality, all of this is taking place during Holy Week, during the week preceding jesus’s death.

So this lawyer asks Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the Greatest?” to which jesus responds, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and wth all your soul and with all your mind.” And then he follows up with “ and the second is “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

This is a no-brainer. In the reading from Leviticus 19, we hear this same thing. This is something that anyone with any understanding of the law would know. It is essential. I think as Christians we tend to assume Jesus made the “love your neighbor as yourself” bit up on the fly, but there is a deep tradition preceeding this interaction.

The pharisees and priests and sadducees are portrayed as kind of awful in Matthew, they get a little more grace in the other gospels, but they are really grilling jesus for answers in Matthew. Are they actually terrible? They are protecting something they love—a tradition that is threatened by Jesus’ existence. Is it as bad as, say, lovewatch? Probably not, which makes things even more murky when it comes to the notion of love. It cannot be viewed as all one way or another. It lands in different middle spaces.

So when we are instructed, then to love our neighbor as ourselves—and let’s not even get started on the dilemma of “what if we don’t love ourselves enough or if we love ourselves too much”—that’s a whole other sermon!—how do we know that our love is the kind that is life-giving, that magnifies, amplifies God’s booming, loving voice? How are we certain that the love we are giving our neighbor, that we are giving God, isn’t a one-sided, divisive kind of love?

I think a good yardstick for measurement can be found in our Leviticus reading—You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.

This grounds our love a bit. It keeps us from going overzealously in one direction or the other. Yes, we must care for the poor—Jesus modeled this all the time!!—but we also must consider the “great” those wealthy and powerful as people as well. As our neighbors. Equally, we mustn’t put all our eggs in the “powerful and charismatic” basket, deferring to those who have money or whatever it may be that we think gives a person more standing than the average joe, while ignoring the cries of the poor. This little preface a few verses ahead of “you shall love your neighbor as yourself, I am the Lord” in Leviticus tempers our tendency to go all in, choosing one over the other.

This message of love is powerful now, as we enter the weeks before our presidential election. Loving our neighbor isn’t going to be easy, because we must fight for justice, but we must still look at the “other” whether that other is the poor, the wealthy, the republicans, the democrats, the people who like pepsi, the coke drinkers, whoever they might be to us, we must look at them not only as other HUMANS, but as our neighbors, whom we are commanded to love just as much as we love ourselves. That’s how God’s light is shone in the world.

This week, Christians, as we hear our call to love, love, love, love, I pray that God will help us to be sure that our love is not oppressive. That our love isn’t merely a manifestation of our fears, that it loves both the poor and the rich and judges both with fairness. That we have a love that mirrors the kind of love we are given by God, For God loves all. Amen.

Many are called, but few are chosen.

Harsh words on a Sunday morning. When we talk about a loving God, a God who has endless stores of grace, a God who forgives, who loves, who includes rather than excludes, that sort of talk seems to come easy. But today we have an unsettling parable dropped in our laps, and we have to wrestle with it. I mean, I suppose we don’t haaaave to. Our epistle is really nice. Like, extra nice. So nice it was really tempting to crawl into a blanket fort with this beautifully comforting and, to be honest, kind of edifying blurb from Paul’s letter to the Phillippians and avoid the Gospel text for the day. I mean, wouldn’t you agree? To do a poor job of paraphrasing this chunk from Philippians, Rejoice in the lord, do the good things, keep doing the good things, God’s got you and will give you such Peace, don’t worry, be happy. :::hum bobby mcferrin tune::: I mean, after the last several months, this is a really sweet happy place to go to. Go ahead, try it.

The fact that I wanted to escape the Gospel, however, is usually a pretty telling sign that I need to spend some more time with the Gospel. A good way to guard ourselves against taking the Bible and bending it to our will is to sit with the stuff that we would rather not. So here we are, you, me, and the Holy Spirit jumping into another challenging sermon. :::sigh:::

We pick up in today’s reading from Matthew with the third of these parable-allegories that Jesus is sharing with the Chief Priests and Pharisees. Maybe sharing is too gentle a word. Jesus is issuing these as a warning, as a condemnation for their behavior and actions, and as an opportunity to straighten up or face the consequences. These are the folks in power, and they have not been using their power responsibly. You can go back to the last few weeks of sermons and relive all the power plays and disgruntled grumbling amongst themselves that those in power have been having around Jesus’ first few parables for this crowd. We are also still in the time warp of reading Holy Week scripture in October, so keep the tension of this moment in Jesus’ life in the back of your mind as we go through this.

Today’s parable is similar to last week’s. I was tempted to go in and recycle the sermon from last week, making situational changes, but that would be disingenuous. And that lack of transparency and genuine action is kind of the whole point of today’s reading.

Last week we had the owner of a vineyard whose tenants killed the owners servants and his son in order to take not just the harvest, but also to take the son’s birthright. This week we have a king who is giving a wedding banquet for his son that no one attends.

If this story sounds familiar but you remember it differently, it’s because there’s a MUCH easier to preach on version of it in Luke. In Luke’s gospel, when no one comes to the party, the king goes out and brings the poor and hungry into the banquet hall. It’s a very Luke telling of this parable. Matthew’s parable takes it’s own turn, in an equally Matthew telling. We run into this a lot in the Bible, where two stories don’t match up. This is often used as a means of disproving the Bible’s relevance, but unless you pick up your bible and assume it’s a straight historical transcript, this doesn’t disprove a thing. The parable is true for Luke’s audience and it is true for Matthew’s audience. As both texts were written nearly a century after Jesus’ death based on oral histories that were shared in many different communities, and the writers of the Gospels had their own social locations that these stories are filtered through, we have to look at the same stories as separate narratives of what was true and relevant for the communities they came from.

So this king has a wedding feast for his son. He has pulled out all the stops. The dinner is prepared, oxen and fat calves have been slaughtered, it is ready for everyone to come and celebrate.

But no one wanted to come. It’s hard to imagine no one sending back their RSVP for a wedding, but that was the case. So the king sent a second wave of servants to all of those on the guest list. All of those on the list laughed, the joked about this banquet. Some of them went to his farm, another to his business. We’ll circle back around to this in a moment. This “business as usual” piece.

The others were pretty horrible. I mean, there have been some weddings I’ve dreaded attending, but I’ve never been to the point where I roughed up the postal worker who delivered the invitation. These folks though, they killed the servants sent by the king. Remember last week, how the tenants roughed up and killed the servants of the landowner? Same story. Last week, the servants were the prophets. You can draw the conclusions from here.

Obviously, the king was mad. He sent troops in and destroyed the murderers and burned their city.

Whoa.

But, when we look at Jewish tradition in the Hebrew scriptures, we see destruction of cities because those inhabiting them have lost their way. If we jump ahead, after Jesus’ time, but before the Gospels were written, we also see the destruction of the Jewish Temple. Are your supercessionist alarms going off? We need to be careful with this part of the text to make sure we aren’t taking it to an anti-Semitic level, or elevating Christianity above Judaism. Matthew writes a VERY Jewish-informed Gospel. This is written for the Jewish community. We must remember that.

So, after pausing the party for citywide destruction, the King is back at it again, trying to fill the seats at his Son’s wedding banquet. If it seems a little over the top, it is. Allegory tends to make that leap so that you read it as something that is highlighting a bigger truth rather than merely as a story being told.

He send the servants out again into the streets to invite everyone that can be found. Good and bad.

Good and bad. Good and bad according to whom? It’s pretty broad, but they’re all invited, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. The clinking of champagne flutes, the awkward conversations of total strangers celebrating a wedding they weren’t initially invited to, but then, there, someone isn’t wearing proper wedding attire.

Dang.

Based on just how Jewish Matthew’s texts are, we can read that this third invitation is that Gentiles are invited to the wedding now too. Again, this can and has been misused as antisemitic text, so just don’t go there.

But that guy who came in flip flops and a tank top, he’s sticking out like a sore thumb in a crowd of tuxedoes and ball gowns.

The king approaches him, calls him friend, but also asks how he snuck in past the dress code. The guy is speechless. He came in, knowing it was a black tie affair, but figured he could get in, get away with casual attire, and he was caught.

And here’s where it gets uncomfortable. The guards don’t just 86 him, they bind him hand and foot and throw him, not just into the street but into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

For many are called and few are chosen.

This isn’t here to open up an argument about whether he had a wedding robe. This isn’t Luke’s Gospel, where inequitable conditions could be raised to question this action. This narrative assumed everyone has their wedding robe. Everyone is on the same footing to enter this banquet. What this is saying is that this person did not put in the work to pick their robe from the dry cleaners from last week’s banquet, but instead he assumed he was welcome to the party anyway.

This is a calling out of those who behave in a way that is abhorrent to God, but still try to fake it like they’re doing things right. This is pointing out disingenuous behavior and drawing a line, saying that there is absolutely no way one can act one way, but pretend they aren’t committing those actions in front of God.

How does this apply to us, as we sit here, possibly as the wedding guests, but I encourage us to be open to the ways in which we also sometimes embody the priests and pharisees? This parable, this allegory warns us against just being easy-saved. It warns us that if we go the cheap grace route, we’ve not just missed the party, but we’ve behaved so badly that we’re not wanted there.

Not fun to preach, believe me, but it’s the truth. As we examine the life and teachings of Christ, we need to sift through what actually came out of Christ’s mouth, what traditions were directly taught through his actions, and then we have to live them. We have to critically read them so we can separate what we think we know that Jesus said and what was really preserved in these traditions.

And you know what, that also means that when we’re invited to the banquet our garments to get in and stay in are going to look an awful lot like the ways we were strong allies to marginalized communities, how we used any scrap of privilege we had to amplify the voices of those who can’t seem to be heard by those with power no matter how loud they shout. That means…here it comes, we’re circling back, even if we are in the first wave of invitees, we cannot just go back home, back to our fields or our businesses when we are invited to this party. We cannot simply go about our lives as our culture would prescribe us to do, we must make sure that the threads holding out wedding robes together are threads of justice, threads of compassion, threads of honoring diversity and threads of caring for our neighbor.

As we go into this week, let us examine what the stitch work on our garments looks like, what the threads that weave through it would tell God if we were to wear it to the best banquet of all, eternal union with the divine. Many are called, but few choose to do this divinely inspired embroidery. May each stitch in our garments be made in the Glory of God. Blessings on you this week, friends.

There is this great movie that came out last year, and because we are the busy people that we are, my husband and I missed it in theaters, even though the trailers looked absolutely hilarious. I mean, it looked Mel Brooks level funny. When it came out for home viewing, we rented it and started the emotional rollercoaster that was hidden beneath the title and trailers for “Jojo Rabbit.” Did you see that one? It’s the story of a german child in Nazi Germany, and it looked pretty outlandish from the trailers, the kid’s imaginary friend is no one but an amiable, goofy Adolf Hitler, and as this young boy goes through all the trials and tribulations of a youth being indoctrinated into Nazi culture, his imaginary friend accompanies him, giving helpful advice along the way, no matter how badly he messes things up. And It’s completely over the top weird and irreverent in it’s comedy for the first quarter of the film, until suddenly, out of nowhere, it becomes the most heart-wrenchingly tragic movie you’ll ever watch. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the underlying plotline of germans hiding Jews in their homes, and the very real fear of being discovered, the layers of lies and mistrust that exist, the unlikely friendship and alliances that take place under extreme fascist rule, and the heartbreaking scenes where beloved characters are killed by a government they could not openly oppose—well, it’s safe to say that once the film was over, Chris and I were emotionally emptied out. I think I cried off and on for a week thinking about it. And this, from a movie I thought would just be a bizarre riff on nazi Germany and a bunch of truth-telling through jokes about the dangers of fascism. I tried to keep all the major spoilers out in case you plan on watching this movie, but you get the gist. It was a bait and switch.

I give this review of Jojo Rabbit, not just to fill space, but because that’s kind of what this morning’s reading from Isaiah does. Did you catch that? It starts out like a love song. We’re lured into this reading by the ways that it perfectly imitates those intimate love poems found within Song of Solomon. Just imagine this in Isaiah’s time. The prophet starts off by saying, “Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard:” Boom! Hooked! The crowd, recognizing that there’ about to be something good, leans in, prepared for something as steamy as, “Your hair is like a flock of goats/descending from the hills of Gilead./Your teeth are like a flock of sheep just shorn, coming up from the washing.” This is the teaser trailer, this is what draws them in, and then ready to hear all the details of a love song, Isaiah hits them with…wild grapes.

This is not the “Neck is like the tower of David” love song they expected, but, just like with “Jojo Rabbit,” the twist is unexpected but it has something deeper and more important behind it than first expected.

I love this tactic for grabbing attention, imagine if the prophet just led with “Look, you’ve all severely disappointed God, and now you’re gonna have to face the music. DOooooOOOOooooom” Instead, he started with a familiar tone, and even the image of the vineyard is one that was used in Hebrew love poetry to represent one’s beloved. All of this is intentional. God’s beloved is God’s creation. But in this brief passage, God is upset. God is fed up. God planted a vineyard and was hoping for some sweet, juicy grapes. Instead, the grapes were wild. I’ve not tasted wild grapes but I have eaten a gooseberry up at camp tam once or twice. Last week’s reading from Ezekiel brought up sour grapes and teeth being set on edge, and yeah, that’s what I’m assuming is happening here with these wild grapes. God’s people, who God tended and loved and nurtured were turning sour.

Many among us are gardeners. A lot of work goes into a bell pepper or a tomato or a squash. We spend months tending our gardens, watering, pulling weeds, and inspecting our plants for problem spots. When those plants we have put so much care into do not yield, it is disheartening. I’ve heard echoed many times as I’ve been talking with you all about how the two weeks of evacuation wreaked havoc on the previously loved and well tended gardens. It’s hard to come home to wilted plants and dropped blossoms—even though I’ve heard that many of you have been able to bring some of them back! This illustration, though doesn’t evoke quite the same kind of love song for us as it did in Isaiah’s time, is an easy one for us to understand. We may not sing love songs about our partner where we compare their features to a cluster of grapes, but we know well that it takes a lot of love and care to produce a fruitful and abundant garden.

A theme that occurs over and over again in the Hebrew scriptures is one of God’s people disappointing God by acting unjustly. Our reading ends with “…he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!” At the end of this, it is clear to those listening to this song that the people of Judah are the vineyard that has failed to produce a harvest. Isaiah is relaying a sad love song from a faithful, yet jilted lover. Israel is no longer a pleasant planting, but has instead failed to do justly. This isn’t just a few individuals. Our western way of thinking wants us to jump to the “individual failing” way of hearing this text, but I issue a caution against this. The injustices committed here are widespread, systemic. They are caused by those with economic power and privilege taking advantage of the weak. Friends, as a society, a nation, we too are guilty of this. The sins committed here are not unique to this group of people in this time in history. In fact, this reoccurs throughout the bible, and throughout secular history. It is our charge as the Church to remember that God has higher standards of justice than what we can usually get away with in our day to day. When we are tempted to think that OUR way of life, OUR worldview, and yes even our religion, are the best medicine for everyone, worldwide, Isaiah’s warning is directed toward us.

I know, what a plot twist.

With this background, we set foot into the reading from Matthew. As you were listening, you probably noticed that there was a theme between our Isaiah text and our Matthew text. This reading is the next controversial encounter between Jesus and the ruling elites, continuing from where we left off last week. Last week, The high priests and elders questioned Jesus’ authority, and Jesus turned it back on them with a question they were unable to answer without revealing themselves. After this point, Jesus is on the offensive as he moves through his final week. This is the second of three of these clashes with those in positions of power. In this week’s reading, the Pharisees are added to the mix. These are all learned men of elite religious stature. When they hear Jesus talking about a vineyard, they know what he’s talking about. Jesus’ words echo the same way that the beloved’s vineyard was set up. The watch tower, the fence around it, a wine press, each of these elements is a throwback to the prophet Isaiah, words each of these men would know by heart. Instead of this being a love song, however, Jesus sets this up as a parable, God as the Beloved becomes God the Landowner.

As we read this parable, we are left to draw the parallels, just as the chief priests and the Pharisees were. Luckily, we have thousands of years of exegesis and commentary to rely on. We can read this as an allegory rather than a parable because we have the future events to take into consideration that the Pharisees did not. The writer of Matthew also had a good chunk of time after the death of Jesus to tell of this encounter, which also appears in the other two synoptic gospels, Mark and Luke, and to give context and commentary.

The landowner (God) has planted a vineyard, and then leased it to tenants. This is a spin on the wild grapes. The wild grapes were..well…God’s people. So who are the tenants?

When harvest time came, the landowner sent his servants to collect the produce. Who can you imagine the slaves are, those sent by God repeatedly, and who are beaten, discredited, killed? The prophets. The prophets who have been rejected time and time again as God mediated through them for more justice, less :::gestures wildly at everything:::: all of this.

Finally, the landowner sent his own son, thinking surely they’ll behave better with him. Alas, no. The son is killed so that they can reap his inheritance.

If you’re tracking, the son is allegory for Jesus. Just wanted to make clear on that. The Pharisees et al, are not quite making that jump yet. When Jesus asks “What do you think the owner of the vineyard is gonna do with those tenants?” they reply, “Well obviously he’s gonna put them to a miserable death and then lease it out to better tenants. Duh.”

That’s when Jesus does his own version of the Comedy/Tragedy Love Story/Desolation and Destruction plot twist. He points out to the pharisees that they’re the…dun dun dun… tenants. And God is not going to take kindly to their ways of handling things. Someone else will be put in charge of the vineyard.

This doesn’t sit well with them. It’s not supposed to. They were just put into the role of the villain in a story where they had seen themselves as the good guys.

The question I ask this morning is, where do we fall into this story? Where do Christians fit in, who are we? What is the fruit of our actions? Are we producing wild grapes? Are we killing the servants who come to collect what we’ve harvested, keeping it for ourselves? My knee-jerk is to scream “No! We are clearly the prophets, the servants of God!” but my gut also looks at our church history, seeing the imperialism that has happened in the form of genocide and cultural erasure   disguised as missionary work, thinking about how many of my close friends and loved ones want nothing to do with religion because they have been so scarred by a weaponized view of sin. This parable is convicting, it is convicting of the ruling class in Isaiah’s time, in Jesus’ time, and we should assume that it is also important for us in our time.

Today’s readings are harsh, but they’re true. They echo a truth of a God that loves us so much, who is forgiving and full of grace, but who has never once backed down on God’s stance on justice. We are to interpret this as God’s continual push for us to seek justice when we see that there are imbalances of power, or that some communities flourish while other struggle. The plot twist within us, our internal struggle is between how intoxicating wealth and power can be and how God desires us to interact with, lift up, and stand in solidarity with all of God’s beloved creation. And that is the real challenge. May our understanding of the difficult messages bear good fruit instead of wild grapes, in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

What are some of the unanswerable questions in your life? They may have something to do with future events, or they may go down the theodicy rabbit trail of why does God allow suffering. Unanswerable questions are tough, we don’t like to admit when we don’t know everything. Even harder, are the unaskable questions. These are the ones that we won’t even pose to ourselves for fear that they might expose us as frauds, or they might reveal just in the asking that we have a lot of work to do, a lot of changes to make in order to even begin to fathom answering an unaskable question.

In today’s Gospel, the priests ask Jesus a question, and in typical Jesus style, he answers them with a question. Even though this is something we know Jesus did often, the Priests and Elders were thrown by this answering a question with a question bit. Jesus answered their question with an unanswerable question.

If this scripture feels a little out of place today, the last Sunday in September, which, by the way, HOW is it the last Sunday in September already—but if it feels off, that’s because this reading is one that takes place chronologically during Holy Week. We have spent 6 months apart now, and Holy Week feels like eons ago, and hearing a piece of scripture that takes place the day after Palm Sunday is even more disorienting as we’re in this mushy reality where time seems to have forgotten how to keep pace anyway. I invite us to lean into this discomfort and disorientation today, though. If this were truly Holy Week, we would be somber. We would be introspective. This is a time when we would examine the hardships that Jesus faced in his time with us, the cruelty of other people, the impossible binds that those who are in power find themselves in as they try to placate various people and their demands, while also wrestling with their own misgivings. It is a time when we would witness a crowd of people as they turn from supporters waving palm branchers to a mob demanding Jesus’s death because fear and powerlessness are powerful motivators. And we can use the imagery and feelings that are evoked during Holy Week right now as we sit in the middle of Ordinary Time, during a decidedly extra-ordinary time in our country’s history.

The question that is posed to Jesus is one that is intended to reveal him, it’s like the scooby doo trick where they take the mask off the ghoul and it’s really the guy who they thought was a good guy all along. The Priests and Elders are hoping he’ll slip up and give the wrong answer, or say something they can point at and say “Aha! We knew you were a fraud!” His simply being there and doing what he does was threatening to them because it threatened all the structures in place that granted their own authority. There were specific ways of behaving, certain ways to go about performing religious rites. This appeal to authority is way of reinforcing the legitimacy of the established way of doing things, and it is one that is useful for silencing anyone who does not benefit from the policies, practices and prescriptives that are well established. It’s a way of marking one’s territory, and it often works to silence people. Jesus wasn’t having it though. Jesus asked a question he knew they couldn’t answer. It was a question they would have preferred was completely unaskable. He wanted them to answer whether John’s baptisms were from heaven or whether they were human-made, a spectacle.

Cue the panic.  There was no way to answer this without either admitting that Jesus had the authority to do the things he was doing or making the crowd angry, the crowd who believed John was a prophet. They were stuck toeing the line between unmasking themselves as scooby doo villains or creating mass chaos in the streets—something they did not want during this time. As we remember, Jerusalem would have been teeming with pilgrims, with people who had come into town for Passover. The Chief Priests and Elders had power, but were not in power. Jerusalem was occupied by Rome, and so they had the delicate balance of keeping peace among their own people and not raising suspicion or militaristic action by the romans. I think of our modern day politicians who have many constituencies with conflicting interests, and the impossible task of keeping everyone at peace with watered down policy that is ineffective at changing a thing.

So the chief priests answer “we do not know.” Usually an “I don’t know” answer is the best one to give when you genuinely don’t have answers to questions, rather than leading someone down a wrong path. But in this case, they knew where John, and by extension Jesus, got their authority. Their admission of not knowing was less about a genuine lack of information and more about their inability to admit where they had gotten it wrong. Their lack of willingness to upset the system that Jesus was there to disrupt.

So Jesus threw a parable at them instead. He shared the lesser-talked about tale of two sons. In this one, two sons were asked to work in the vineyard by their father. One said “nahhhh, I’d rather watch YouTube and play on my Nintendo Switch” (the kids are still playing on that one, right?) But a few hours of ‘Yo, this is ya boyyyyy Gamer G, and you guys have been asking me to yeet a watermelon off a cliff in an inflateable shark costume…” and the son was like “yeah, no, I’ll go tend the vineyard. Youtubers are the worst.”   

When the father had asked the second son to go work in the vineyard, he was all about it. “Sure pops, Let me just put on my shoes.” But then the second son never went out, presumably on YouTube or learning one of those TikTok dances.

So Jesus asks, which of these two did the will of his father, the one who turned off the TV and finally went to work or the one who said he would go out there who ended up on the couch all day?

This questions is an easy one to answer, oh thank goodness! They all reply, possibly in unison, “The first.”

Then Jesus turned it around on them, saying that John came but they didn’t believe in his authority (Ah! The scooby doo mask has come off!) however the tax collectors and prostitutes believed, and even after they saw these acts were of God and not of human construction, they still refused to change their position based on newer, better information. The lowest of the low on the fringes of society would get into heaven first, ahead of the pious priests and elders.

Can you imagine how that felt? I’m going to do a scooby doo unmasking right now because it has to happen. In this story we are probably not Jesus, and many of us are likely not the prostitutes and tax collectors either. Not yet, anyway. We all have ways that we align with similar modes of thinking and acting that align more with the Chief Priests and Elders. And we don’t like being unmasked. It feels terrible. Jesus was daring, and he opposed established systems by interpreting and following the Torah in ways that challenged authority. Jesus was working toward justice and wholeness to the poor and the vulnerable. The people on the fringes. The ones who are targets. The ones who are labeled inconsequential. The people who, if a bullet from an officer of the established authority killed one of them, the officer in question would only be slapped on the wrist for the property damage of the neighbor’s house, but not for murder. You see where I’m going, and I promise you my heart is beating and my hands are shaking as I unmask this scooby doo villain part of us, because I too am part of this system. I benefit more by staying quiet. But not answering the questions that might reveal that I am part of a system that favors me over others.

But this is the work of Christ. Jesus, in that intense week before his death faced authorities who questioned his authority, and he did so bravely in order to save those who have been marginalized and ignored. As we ask ourselves “What Would Jesus Do” to do a fun callback to 1990s Christian teen bracelet trends, if we are not open to the unaskable questions of “how are we part of upholding oppression?” then we are not fully asking what Jesus would do and how Jesus would respond in our own time.

But we have to ask. And the lesson that the Chief religious folk didn’t learn was that, even though he implied that they were the second son, who was all talk, but then never actually did any of the work, they could also become the fist son if they would put their fragile pride aside and turn to the work of caring for all of God’s creation, starting with those whose lives seem to matter less. This week, I empower you to turn to Christ to ask for help in unmasking the ways that you are propping up systems that help you but are devastating for others. It’s not fun. It’s not comfortable. You might shake a little and get mad about it, and that’s okay. It is the holy work of being bold in order to ensure justice and wholeness for the poor, the oppressed, and those who the law does not keep safe. And I believe that, with the help of Jesus Christ, it is completely possible for us to create a world that is truly just for all it’s inhabitants. Blessings on this work. Amen.

I know I don’t have to explain to this crowd what a challenging couple of weeks it has been, on top of a challenging couple of months, nested with in a challenging year like one of those matryoshka dolls. The year 2020 in the US has become the punchline to one long, unfunny joke. Collectively, we’re all feeling it. Add that this is an intense election year, so intense people aren’t just passively putting political lawn signs out, but they’re tacking threats to the back of them in case someone tries to steal or deface them. And people are totally stealing and defacing them. Political apathy is at an all time low, but at the expense of relationship and community. There’s a sense that there is nothing that “the other side” could do to redeem themselves in our eyes—whichever side it is we’re on! And if they succeed… oh boy.

            Through the lens of our 2020 polarization, we approach our text from Jonah this morning. I know—going off-gospel this week! But It was this reading that jumped out at me as I was studying and praying the readings. And when’s the last time you really spent any time with Jonah? If you’re like me, it’s been a while. We all know about the whale, but there are so many outlandish things that happen in this short book that the giant fish is almost unsurprising when read in context. In a time when an asteroid on track to make contact with the earth the day before election day doesn’t even cause us to bat an eyelash, the exaggerated nature of the book of Jonah feels like home, and there are some lessons we can take from it.

            Today’s reading picks up when most of the fun stuff has already taken place. If you wanted to pause this and read the book of Jonah, you’re more than welcome to, it’s four chapters and can be read in ten minutes. Here’s the synopsis, though. Jonah is not your typical prophet. While it is common for most of the prophets we read about to resist God’s call a bit, none of them handle it quite the way that Jonah does. When God tasks Jonah with speaking out against the way the people of Ninevah are living, Jonah basically takes off and starts running from God. None of the “Oh, why me? I’m definitely not good enough for this job” stuff that we hear from other prophets before they reluctantly take up the call and pass God’s message along. Nope, Jonah just gets going so he can hop on a ship to Tarshish where God won’t find him.

Jonah’s view of God is fairly limited at first here, he thinks that God can only reach him if he’s at home, he doesn’t expect that God is beyond his own city walls. What Jonah is about to discover, is that God is everywhere. The ship sets sail and once they’re out of swimming distance from the shore, God sets a massive storm on them. Somehow, Jonah is asleep through this, as the rest of the ship is frantically bailing their cargo out over the sides of ship hoping to stabilize it on the choppy water. The sailors figure out that it was Jonah’s fault. You know how they figure it out? It says this, “For the men knew that he was fleeing from the Lord because he told them so.” Jonah was up front, basically saying “Look, im just trying to get away from this, but also my God is the one who made the sea and the dry land, so God isn’t too happy with me right now.” Jonah is thrown into the sea. Not because the sailors wanted to, but because Jonah was ready to get away from God in whatever way he could. Ocean depths should do the trick, right?

And it worked to calm the storm. All the sailors on the boat were completely stunned and scared. I mean, they just basically threw a man to death off the boat to save themselves…and it worked. That’s unsettling. (Un)luckily for Jonah, who discovered that he couldn’t escape God even in the ocean, a massive fish swallowed him up. This is the part we all remember from Sunday school. Jonah spends 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of a fish thanking God for being so good to him. What a strange setting for a prayer of thanksgiving, but what else is there to do in the fishy, damp dark? Jonah agrees he’s do what is asked of him, and the fish vomits him up on dry land.

The word of God comes to Jonah again, tasking him with bringing a message to Ninevah.

Ninevah is a big city—it would take three days to walk across it. He got a third of the way in, said “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” and people listened. Everyone, including the king, started to repent, they even got their animals repenting for their wickedness! They weren’t certain that God would forgive them, but they gave it a valiant effort in hope that they might not feel the wrath of an angry God.

Where we join in the story in today’s reading, we find Jonah sulking. Straight up sulking outside the city, all abuzz with repentance and getting into their sackcloth and ashes and preparing for a fast. He’s left the city, and is sitting up on a hill, moodily glaring at whatever might transpire. Jonah wasn’t mad because they hadn’t listened to him, to God, but he was made because they HAD. Jonah had been running from God because he had no desire to have any dealings with Ninevah. This was not a fun visit to beloved neighbors, but instead God was sending him to a city that represented a foreign power that threatened Israel. Jonah would rather die than to see this Assyrian city not be smashed to pieces by the wrath of God. Jonah also knew that God is full of mercy, and that the demise of a city he hated wouldn’t happen. Instead he’d have to be forever linked as the guy who helped them not to fall. So yeah, pouting and sulking on a hill, mad that Nice God extended grace and didn’t bring calamity down on Ninevah after all. He’s saved his worst enemy, and now he doesn’t want to have to live it down. God replies, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

This is a profound question. We are in the middle of a time where lots of groups of people potentially are like the people of Ninevah to us. We would rather die than watch them win in elections, we would rather sulk on a hillside than see them succeed, even if they do all the things we ask of them.

Jonah was successful as a prophet, wildly successful. While most prophets are ignored until it’s too late, thus proving that they are prophets in the first place because the doom that was predicted comes to pass, Jonah just kinda stumbled into town, said to whoever was nearby that they had 40 days til their city perished, and probably not with the most impassioned speech ever, and then he left to mope and watch from a distance.

Jonah was stubbornly mad. It was hot, and so God grew a large bush to protect Jonah from the elements, which helped Jonah soften a bit. He wasn’t as mad if he had nice shade to sit under. But the next day, God “appointed a worm” to attack the bush, causing it to wither and wilt. I love that image, a God-appointed worm. God further added to Jonah’s cranky misery by adding a sultry wind and an unrelenting sun. Jonah was not only mopey and angry, he probably wasn’t too far from heat stroke. Jonah, again, asks God for death.

God asks the question again, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Jonah, who was still thinking about how pleasant that bush was, and how hot it was without it responds. “Yes, angry enough to die.”

Angry enough to die, folks! Over a dead and withered plant! Jonah is so beyond upset about the course of events with Ninevah, that he’s latched onto the dead bush withered at his feet as his literal hill to die on.

This is where it gets good, and where we need to take a long hard look at the ways we are stubborn, dramatic Jonah in this story! God points out that the bush was there for like, 24 hours, and he didn’t do anything to create it, he had no hand in making it happen. And yet, while Jonah sits on that hill mad because the unearned privilege of a bush for shade was gone, he was still wishing that God would just lay crummy Ninevah to ruin. God, who created each and every person and animal in that city, and even though the people don’t know their right from their left, should God not care about this creation?

The book of Jonah ends on a question. The question is there to make us think about it. To make us consider the times when we’ve cared more about personal comfort than we did about people—even the ones who don’t know up from down. It’s easy to care for those we love, or those that advance our personal agendas. It’s less easy to look a person in the eye who we know has views that are counter to ours and see in them a person created by God and in the image of God. God’s mercy is wider and greater than we can imagine.

Whatever the remaining months of 2020 bring our way, however polarizing the political election becomes, whatever the next iteration of murder hornets may be, we must keep in our minds, “is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” Are we hoping for demise and destruction of the other side while wishing God would withhold from them the same mercy that is promised to us? Would we be able to forgive as God does if our enemies were to repent successfully? How can we accept the challenge to not dehumanize the Nenevites in our lives, even when we’re emotionally and mentally depleted and heartbroken? May God bless our pondering and understanding of this wild, outlandish, and all too familiar in 2020 story.

I’m setting out to keep this morning’s message short and concise: I know we have plenty of other things on our minds today, so I’m going to try to honor that reality without preaching a 25 minute sermon.

            How have you been handling discord? I ask this assuming that you, like most Americans, have strong feelings about the political and social climate we’re living in at this moment in time. Strong feelings may not even begin to cover it, no matter which side of the political aisle you are coming from there is one thing that we all have noticed: things are very, very broken. So how are you handling those conflicts as they arise with your friends, family, acquaintances, facebook strangers in a comment thread…?

            I ask this because this morning’s readings deal with conflict, and give us some direction regarding how we should deal with conflict. While #cancelculture is big, there are a lot of temptations to simply shut out the voices we disagree with and cut off those who make us mad. And yes, there are sometimes good reason for creating those boundaries, especially when a person has become belligerent or abusive and one’s health and wellbeing are directly affected by their continued presence. However, the decision to #cancel someone or something should not be something that is taken lightly. But ugh, it’s SO MUCH EASIER just to mute the voices we don’t want to hear, right?

            We come to our Matthew reading this week needing to keep our minds open to the fact that this teaching likely did not come from Jesus’ ministry while he was alive, but it instead is Risen Christ wisdom that grew out of the community which this book of Matthew was written. Confusing? Maybe, but just imagine being in Jesus’ cohort where capital C Church was not yet a thing, and having these instructions given. Just a few chapter ago, Peter was called the Rock, the church had it’s foundation, so how within just a few short pages, is the foundation already cracking? Rather, knowing that the Gospels were written out of oral traditions by communities who were documenting the experience of both the historical Jesus and the resurrected Christ gives us an important reminder that Jesus was not a one-time thing, but is continually working in our lives and providing guidance and insight.

            There are a few approaches to this reading, one that reads it as the discipline section of an employee handbook and another that reads it as reconciliatory in nature. One reading can be hurtful and exclusionary, the other is filled with redemption, love, and inclusion. I think you can probably guess which direction we’re going to take.

            “If a member goes against you…” this is how it starts. Member is sometimes swapped with the word “brother” in other translations, both words are important considerations. Aside from being gender-neutral, member is open to any in a group, however, having the word brother, or “sibling” reminds us how connected we are to one another as children of God, and that connection isn’t just because we have matching bowling shirts or membership cards. The connection is deeper than sending in your annual pledge card or wearing name tags. I can throw my church name tag in the trash if I get mad enough, but I cannot escape the fact that in beloved community such as this you and I are linked together by the fact that our salvation is in Christ. This sets up the way we are to deal with one another when we disagree. It places emphasis on relationship.

            So in relationship, when another member goes against you, it is advised to handle the grievance when it is just the two of you. This is not an easy task. One on ones are notoriously avoided, it’s so much easier to submit anonymous feedback or to talk to everyone else about it, hoping that it’ll get back to the person eventually. We like to shield ourselves from the way the person will take the news, from potential backlash, from the embarrassment of realizing one’s missteps. We also aren’t always up for the discussion that is likely to follow, and the potential for being told how our own actions have been harmful. However, to maintain relationship, a one-on-one is best because it avoids gossip and give the other person an chance to clear up where there may have been a misunderstanding. As explained in the commentary on Saltproject.org, “This approach implicitly says: I respect you enough to give you space to rectify this, without embarrassing you in front of others; and I’m humble enough to realize I may have misunderstood something, or may have something to learn.” When we think about one-on-ones, sometimes I think we are worried we have to be confrontational about it, that there’s a certain “get in their face”-yness about it that we have to have. It is liberating to come at it from the angle of “I just want to understand more clearly” rather than “I’m mad and that’s it and you’re a bad person!” This approach distinctly avoids that kind of confrontation. No one wants to listen to a lecture about their moral failings. People are much more open to a heart-to-heart that listens as much as it explains. This is the first suggestion because, as we read in Matthew, “If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.” It’s the most direct approach to reconciliation.

But if they don’t listen, if the conversation doesn’t open the door to healing and reconciliation, there are other avenues. Remember, we can only control the way we respond, we have no control over how others react. There can be so many factors that lead to why reconciliation is not possible yet with just a one-on-one. There are layers of trauma or hurt to consider, there can be biases that they or we are clinging to that prevent moving forward, there are so many environmental and personal factors that could come into play that there may need to be other angles to approach the issue from. That’s where the next part of this advice comes in. Take a few members with you to act as witnesses. Not like, five people. Not a whole committee. Just one or two people who can either hear both sides without bias or who can act as mediator. A third-party can bring more insight and perspective and help to find common ground. Relationship is still priority.

            This next step is where I worry that a lot of churches can do a lot of damage. It screams public humiliation to then take a grievance to the whole church. I mean, I just picture the stocks and pillory out in the public square. Or every teen movie ever where one character prints a zillion flyers exposing another character and lines the school hallways with them. That’s not what is intended here. Exposing someone’s shortcomings so that everyone can be warned not to trust them or to embarrass them back into submission is not the point of this. Instead, it is to avoid airing grievances with just those who will agree with us. If I take my two BFFs and approach someone, there will still be some bias, it’ll be an echo chamber. However, once an issue is out there for everyone to weigh in on the likelihood of everyone siding only with me goes down, and the ability for someone else to connect with the other person goes up. This kind of conflict resolution has to be done with great care so that it doesn’t ostracize the other, but instead invites in accountability all around. This isn’t just blasting someone on social media. This is about coming together as a collective to find a way forward together.

            So we come to the most fascinating part of this pericope in my opinion, “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.” By tradition, Matthew was a tax collector. As we’ve noted over the last few weeks, Jesus’ ministry had made the dramatic shift from being directed towards Jewish people only to ministering to gentiles, as we saw in the story of the Canaanite women who challenged him to help her daughter. Jesus’ ministry has gentiles and tax collectors seated at the table with him. When we read this without considering that shift, it is easy to read some #cancelculture into it. Even if they don’t listen, there still has to be room for reconciliation. There can be boundaries made, especially if someone is relentlessly destructive, however there should always be a path back into the fold. The message should be to step away from this community until this destructive behavior has stopped. But we also know that forgiveness is an important part of what we are asked to do as a community of Christ followers. Spoiler alert: forgiveness will come up again in next week’s reading.

            When we come up against these times where someone’s behavior seems to grind against the Church, it is an important time to reflect on why exactly that behavior made us so gosh darned mad. This is an opportunity to examine whether we are living out God’s love to the fullest extent possible. This is an opportunity for the binding and loosing. God’s love is a living thing, the scriptures are not just dried ink on paper, but give us guidance to face complex issues that come up in our time, and the provision for binding and loosing allows us to continually keep love at the center of our ministry. It allows us to look at a modern problem though a modern lens instead of holding the Holy Spirit hostage in the first century. Binding and Loosing is what helps us to choose a path that is love-affirming even if we have scriptural backing to commit atrocities. Binding and loosing is what overcame the assertion that slaves should obey their masters in Ephesians, because you cannot love fully while holding that others have less humanity than you. It is what allows me, a woman, to stand at the pulpit. Binding and loosing doesn’t dilute the bible, it instead discerns the movement of the Spirit in each new age, abandoning the things that have become harmful and deadly as time marches on. Binding and loosing cannot be done by just one person alone, it must be done in community so as to not be arbitrary or more hurtful.

            In the UCC, we take covenant seriously, and part of covenantal living is honoring relationship, emphasis on reconciliation, and above all else leaving a door open rather than excommunicating or #cancelling. This work is done in community. And if, as a community, we ever wonder which direction to take, we can turn to today’s reading from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, which clearly spells out our most important consideration in handling conflict: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” So how do we deal with discord and conflict? Is it a loving approach? Does it leave room for reconciliation? Is it humble enough to know when it’s our problem? If so, then we’re the right path. May God bless our understanding of these sacred guidelines for maintaining relationships.

There’s something I’ve heard a lot of families really love to do. It’s something that brings them closer, that creates the cherished memories that they’ll carry with them throughout the years. It strengthens bonds, leads to howling laughter, and I’m sure it probably teaches a few lessons in cooperation, humility, and grace. Except it’s something I’m better off not doing, and I’m really bad at.

What is this wonderful activity? Family game nights.

They seem like a great idea, I’ll pull the scrabble board out with the best of intentions. And then someone else manages to get a triple word score using the letter Q somehow, and I become enraged, a creature from my own worst nightmares: I become a very, very sore loser. I love to win. I even struggle with tic-tac-toe as I’m playing with my first grader, and I have to remind myself that there is no trophy for moms who mercilessly win every round against their small child.

I’d love to think that this is just my own personal issue, however, as I look around it becomes pretty clear that this desire to win is a product of the culture I come from. As Americans, victory and dominance are deeply embedded into our value system. Don’t believe me? Think about whichever presidential candidate you’re planning on voting for. Now, imagine that the candidate you do not want wins by a landslide. How are you feeling? If you’re like many of the folks I’ve been talking to representing both of the major political parties, you’re probably feeling sick and a little ragey. We don’t like defeat. Our sports teams can even give us similar responses. When I found out that my husband liked…I can’t even say it out loud, well, I’m a Giants fan, so…, anyway, I was shocked, befuddled, and immediately forbade any talk of *that* team winning if it also meant that my team is losing. We hear of fights breaking out, violence happening at events when the fans of rival teams get a little too wrapped up in this cultural value of victory. Even those of us who don’t get disproportionately attached to board game wins can fall into the trap of pursuing success above all else.

Peter, who we remember in last week’s text was given kudos for his faithful confession that Jesus is the messiah, has just had his humility checked in this week’s reading. I feel like I could have made a series of the last few weeks of sermons entitled, “Oh, Peter.” We are given another fascinating look into the complex person Simon called Peter was as we read that just as quickly as Peter had declared Jesus is the Messiah, he has also blurted out that Jesus should probably avoid that whole suffering and death piece. Peter, who was juuuuust the star student, is now responded to with “get behind me, Satan!”

See, Peter, even though he knows Jesus is the Messiah, he’s also a product of his culture. He was ready for some sort of great victory, a triumph over the oppressors. He was ready for Jesus to take down Rome, and anything counter to that imagery was unfathomable to him. For Jesus to begin to reveal to the disciples that there would be great suffering, and then death, this was completely against what had been formed in Peter’s mind by the cultural expectation that the messiah would be a victorious king. Hearing suffering and death, it’s easy to understand how the next part, “and on the third day be raised,” maybe wasn’t the most shocking part of Jesus’ revelation about the times to come. Peter was so focused on what he thought a win would look like, that he couldn’t comprehend beyond death to the different kind of triumph that was to come with the resurrection.

So he pulled Jesus aside and tried to reason with him. Jesus, you can’t. How about you don’t just give up, don’t admit defeat, and don’t let the Romans kill you? Instead, let’s, you know, win. This can’t happen.

The way Jesus responds to this is with a swift reminder that Peter’s idea of success is pretty darned…human. Jesus is human, too, so it comes with a warning—do not tempt him to take the easy, worldly-stuff focused way out.

The words “Get behind me, Satan!” cause us to bristle as we encounter them, it seems like an extra harsh response to the person who just a few verses ago was called the foundation of the church. However, remembering that Jesus is human and divine, we can understand the urgency of Jesus’ response, the need to keep all temptation away. Get behind me is a way of asserting that Peter needs to remember that he is following Jesus’ lead, and it is essential for him to follow lest he become a stumbling block. Focusing too much on this human view of victory, the standard for success set by the dominant culture, could complicate and mess up the whole thing.

The values set by the dominant culture can be dangerous if we allow ourselves to elevate them higher than God. Winning at scrabble at any cost is just a symptom of a larger cultural value that is placed on dominance, however, we her over and over again from jesus that the last will be first. That power as defined by people has no bearing on how God defines power and success. Rather, we know that practicing some of the harder forms of love are what it takes to truly follow Christ. In Matthew, we hear “if they want to become my followers, let them deny themselves ad take up their cross and follow me.” This is a martyr-complex-inducing piece of scripture, however, what is being asked of us is to drop the idea that victory can be won by domination. What good is it to be the most highly decorated scrabbler ever to place a wooden tile on a board game if one did not show love, but instead became overcome with evil in order to achieve that title? I’m sure you can take the metaphor further while thinking of corporate greed, political power-grabs, and literally any other way that we put victory before God.

Our text from Romans, luckily, outlines many ways to flip the script on winning from our cultural compulsion to personally get ahead, and instead we are able to see how we are to move humanity along by looking out for the best interests of our neighbor as well. Success looks different when we realize we should all succeed. This list of ways to love is as counter-cultural today as it was when Paul wrote it. We can keep God as our focus when we follow this love list, and we help move others closer to God as we show them love, even and especially the harder ways of loving other. You know what I mean. There are the easy kinds of love. I can shower my kids with hugs and kisses and “well, alright, another 20 minutes of YouTube” love all day long, that’s easy. They’re cute. Outdoing one another in showing honor is not as easy, especially when I don’t necessarily like the other person. Like, at all. Blessing and not cursing those who persecute me, yeah, not so easy. Especially on game night.

Right now, this message of not worshiping at the altar of the victory cup is an important one for us, as we risk not extending the kind of love that brings others closer to God by clinging to the ways we personally want to win, whether it’s in an online argument that we’re too proud to back down from or an affinity toward the people we like, who think like us, and cursing at those who don’t. We can practice shedding our culturally-prescribed love of victory by asking ourselves if this thing we’re really fired up about fits the description of love offered in Romans 12. If it doesn’t, it might mean that we are placing too much value on something that can act as a stumbling block for our own spiritual progress and for the spiritual progress of those around us. Let’s not be taken in by he allure of a human standard for success, but instead be open to the way of the cross, a way that, even though challenges and trial opens up new ways of learning, living, and yes, loving together. May our understanding of these sacred texts be blessed, and may our actions follow—get behind—Jesus, trusting his divine lead. Amen.