Sermon Notes for 10.30.11

Scriptures for today are Here

It’s Halloween weekend, and once again, if we’re lucky, we will see lots of small people dressed as princesses, pirates, Jedi knights, Giant M&Ms, witches, goblins, mermaids. It’s one of my favorite things, to distribute candy to small children (and let their parents worry about hiding it later).

A few years ago, I was at Party City shopping with my daughter for her Halloween costume. I happened to be wearing my clergy collar, and I saw a woman looking at me, puzzled. She finally asked me, are you dressing up as a priest for Halloween? I said no, I am a priest. She said (because it always helps to point out the obvious when advancing an argument), but you’re a woman. I said, yes, that’s why it wouldn’t be a good costume for me, no one would believe it!

Many people are puzzled by my clergy costume, not sure what to think when they see me wearing it. But I also find myself behaving slightly differently when I am wearing it in public. I tend not to drive in a way that might irritate other drivers; I am less likely to complain about poor service in a restaurant; I feel more obligated to smile. Maybe you’ve found yourself doing the same thing wearing a cross – behaving slightly better, knowing that people will expect you to act like a Christian. And we have to ask ourselves, why should the costume we wear make a difference in how we act; if we think Christians act a certain way, shouldn’t we act that way all the time?

Wearing a costume and acting like religious people is exactly the critique Jesus gives of the Pharisees in the gospel today. The word “hypocrite” that Jesus often applies to the Pharisees actually means “actor.” The Pharisees wear phylacteries – small boxes with scripture inside, to remind themselves and others of God’s law – and long fringes, so people can see that they are wearing a prayer shawl under their normal clothes. Now there’s nothing wrong with wearing these things – Jesus probably did too.

The problem comes if these things are only a costume and don’t reflect the reality of the person wearing them. What Jesus critiques is acting religious in order to gain status and approval. Pharisees were people who obeyed law to the nth degree. For instance, written law said not to work on the Sabbath; Pharisees added interpretations such as, a tailor shouldn’t carry a needle around the day before Sabbath – he might get caught out on the Sabbath with the needle in his pocket, and carrying it back home would be “work.”

And even more difficult, Pharisees took the extensive purity and hand-washing regulations that were meant to apply to priests worshiping in the Temple, and tried to apply the same rules to ordinary people on everyday basis, which would make it impossible for them to earn a living. Poor people were unable to meet the Pharisees’ standards, so they were considered less holy; Pharisees were considered teachers, leaders, authorities, better than everyone else. Which Jesus criticizes as hypocrisy – it’s one big act, a costume that fools no one. Making life difficult for other people is not what God’s law is about. God’s law is about leading a new life, living according to the law of love, expressed clearly in Torah (which Jesus respected), letting our inward selves reflect the truth that is expressed by whatever costume we wear. God’s law is about living life with integrity.

In any Bible reading, we can interpret it on three levels:

• · What was going on in the original story, at the time it happened?
• · What was going on when it was written down, what did it mean then?
• · What does it mean for us now?

It’s pretty clear what is going on in the original story: it’s Tuesday of Holy Week, Jesus is in Jerusalem, he has made some powerful people really angry, and they are about to conspire to bring him to the cross. Jesus knows this, and he doesn’t back down – he keeps pushing them. Jesus actually seems to be carefully stage-managing this entire confrontation in order to give up his life on the cross. What he tells the disciples today – those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted – isn’t just a saying. He is going to demonstrate it decisively on the cross in a few days, as he dies in utter humiliation – yet two millennia later, we will see that cross as a throne – the throne of God’s love, poured out for us. There is no costume here, no act: Jesus will show us, not tell us, what love is.

Well enough – what’s going on at the next level, when this story was written down? Matthew wrote his gospel around 80-90 AD, wrote to a community of mostly Jewish Christians near, but not in, Israel – possibly in Antioch in Syria. This is a time of revolutionary change in Judaism. In 70 AD, Romans had destroyed the Jerusalem Temple, Jews had dispersed all over the world, and Judaism changed forever.

The Jewish world had been absolutely centered in the Temple. Worship occurred only there – this is where all the sacrifices mandated by the law occurred. Judaism since that time has been missing one huge aspect of what God commanded the Jews to do: sacrifice in Temple to atone for sins. We should not underestimate the heartbreak and sheer urgent revolutionary re-thinking necessary for all Jewish people at the time Matthew wrote.

Since the Temple had been destroyed, Judaism had to change – and it could have simply disappeared. But how it survived was under the leadership of the Pharisees. Their careful rule-keeping became the hallmark of Jews down to this day; it became the way the Jews, dispersed all over the world, kept themselves distinct from other people. Their view of how to live became a big controversy for Matthew’s community, who had also grown out of Judaism, and which had to decide, in this time of revolutionary change, whether people had to become Jews and keep all the commandments in order to become Christians.

Matthew’s answer, like the answer that eventually prevailed for all Christians, was no – it is not the keeping of rules that makes us Christian. We do not have to keep all of the Jewish law; we only need to obey the primary rules of the Jewish law: to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Because the early church made this decision, Christianity was able to grow and spread throughout the world, and we are Christians because of it. The Pharisaic version of Judaism, focused on Torah and keeping all the commandments, has come down to the present – and we need to be careful not to judge it negatively. Clearly, Christian judgment of Jews has led to horrible abuses in history. But even more, remember that what Jesus is judging is not following the law itself, or wearing phylacteries & prayer shawls. Jesus himself probably did these things, and Jesus says the law is good. The Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do what they say, he tells the disciples. What Jesus is judging is doing these things while imposing them unjustly on others: changing one’s costume without changing one’s heart.

Which brings us to the third level of interpretation: what does this mean for us? I think all of us can point to times when the Christian church has been more interested in Pharisaic rules and regulations than in changed hearts. Almost 500 years ago tomorrow, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of the cathedral in Wittenburg, protesting abuses of power and corruption in the church, things that led ordinary poor people to become victims. One abuse was the church’s decision to rebuild the cathedral of St. Peter in Rome using the sale of “indulgences” to ordinary people, which purported to offer them early release from Purgatory. One enterprising seller of indulgences went around Germany singing this catchy little rhyme: “When the coin into the plate pings, the soul from Purgatory springs!”

Modern churches can likewise become fixated on outer things, like ceremonies and costumes (like these nice fringes and phylacteries – err, stole and chasuble – that I’m wearing). And we can easily forget about the change of heart that Jesus calls us to, when he says those who exalt themselves will be humbled, while those who humble themselves will be exalted. Which is another way of saying: the basic law is to love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love neighbor as yourself.

So how do we modern/postmodern Christians follow Jesus’ law of love? I believe that the church, for all its tendency to become a bit Pharisaical in its observance of rules, is still the best way for us to keep ourselves renewed and reminded of the law of love. Being part of a church community helps us keep growing on a personal level – adopting spiritual disciplines like prayer, worship, Bible study, repentance, and serving others, that keep us close to God, and open to hear God’s call to us.

Having a community of other Christians, to nourish our own spirits, to demonstrate God’s law of love, to serve alongside, to work together to pour love into our world, is the best way to keep growing spiritually through life. A church community can bring people together to do amazing things, like the 18 members of Nativity who are away this weekend on a mission trip to Navajoland – they are rebuilding houses, repairing a church, worshiping with our Navajo Episcopal brothers and sisters. And I imagine that the people who go on this mission trip, like anyone who goes on a mission, will find themselves changed even more than the people they serve – because loving our neighbors as we love ourselves changes your heart from the inside out.

It’s not an easy thing, to let God change our hearts – it’s a discipline that sometimes calls you to do things you would prefer not to do: as G.K. Chesterton said, Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried. Being a Christian in more ways than just wearing a Christian costume takes courage and openness, willingness to let God call us to new adventures.

So how do we let God change our hearts? I suggest this: try going around pretending that you are wearing a great big cross emblazoned across your forehead. It’s just like wearing a clergy collar – I think if you believe that cross is there like a costume for all to see, if you believe that people will see what you do as a reflection of what Jesus would do, then you will find that you start acting more like a Christian – loving God and loving your neighbor.

Because the truth is, it’s not a costume. We all do wear a big cross right here across the middle of our foreheads. We received this cross at our baptism, when we were marked with it, with the words, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” It’s not a costume. It’s the real thing. And that cross is what gives us the power to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Address to the Living Stones Banquet, 10.22.11

If you’re like me, you grew up saying things like, “What church do you go to?” And answering something like, “I go to the Episcopal Church of the Nativity.” Or maybe, "I don't go to church." Which makes perfect sense if a church is a building, a place you go once a week to worship.

But I want to challenge all of us to start thinking of our church differently. Because a church is not a building; a church is a community of faith, built of living stones like you and me, on the one foundation that will never crumble: the sure, solid, unshakeable foundation of Jesus Christ. A church is a center for life transformation. It is a community that empowers you, that nourishes your spirit, that inspires you to go out into the world and do what God is calling you to do.

So a church is not a place you go; it is a place you come from.

I dream of a Church of the Nativity where all of us come out, empowered and nourished to be God’s ministers, God’s holy priesthood in the world. You and I are the Living Stones that God uses to form that church. You and I are God’s church.

So why are we building a new home for Church of the Nativity? There are some good solid practical reasons:

• · Our lease on our current facility, provided to us by the generosity of a member of our congregation for a five-year period, expires at the end of next year – and we won’t have a place to worship after that, unless we build.
• The space we're in now is hard to find; from the outside you can't even see our sign because it's covered by landscaping. I've had people tell me that they had to drive around for three Sundays before they could find us, even though they knew we were here.
• · Our three tiny classrooms are not big enough for the number of kids we have; we don’t have a place for adult education at all, and our adults meet on Sundays in an alcove in the upstairs office building hallway.
• · We spill out into the office building lobby for hospitality and fellowship.
• · Our sanctuary seats about 125-140. We average about 165 on Sundays with two services – the only reason we can fit all our folks is that we have two services during the prime 9 a.m.-noon Sunday morning slot – but there’s no time during that time slot to add another service.
• · Even though we now have two services, our 9:30 service now is almost as full as our 10:00 service was back in 2008, when we decided to go to two Sunday morning services.
• · Studies show churches stop growing when the sanctuary gets 70 – 80% full.
• · At about 90 on average at 9:30, our sanctuary is about 70% full at that service already.
• · There’s a little more room to grow in the 11:00 service, with an average of 72 in that service – but we’re growing – our attendance this year is up 15% from last year, which means we’re on pace to top out in both services by this time next year.
• · And we don’t want to grow to the point where there’s no room for new folks – we want to welcome all.
• And there are great things to say about our new location - it's in a neighborhood near where many of our folks live, on a main street, close to a school, a library, a retirement home, a hospital, etc.
• But those good reasons aren't enough - we want to share what we have with more people.
• · Because we have something good to welcome them to, at Nativity.

So let me tell you about that – let me tell you how I see God working here. In the Gospel of Matthew, there is a story: John the Baptist is in prison, he knows that the end of his life and his ministry is coming, and he wonders if it has all been worth it; he wonders if his cousin Jesus is truly the Messiah he has been pointing to all this time. So he sends some of his followers to ask Jesus: are you the one we’ve been waiting for, or should we keep on waiting? Jesus doesn’t do what I would do and just say clearly, yes, I’m the Messiah. He tells John’s followers, Go and tell John what you see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

When the Messiah is present, you can see it. So I’m going to draw you pictures, with words, so you can see what I see.

The first picture is this: last Sunday evening, I came to youth group to help Klayton teach teen Confirmation class (we have 12 teenagers being confirmed in 3 weeks, in addition to the 11 we had confirmed last May). And here’s what I saw. In our tiny youth room, roughly 15 x 13, the one right off the narthex with a couch in it, I saw 27 teenagers, 3 youth leaders and a puppy.

That’s 27 teenagers who come together on Sunday evenings to eat, talk, laugh, pray, share stories of their week, read the Bible, and talk about where God is in their lives. 27 teenagers who will grow up thinking deeply about God, experiencing Christ’s presence in worship, knowing that Jesus loves them. 27 teenagers who will have the support of a community of faith, and the love of their Savior, as they grow up into high school and college and young adulthood, and begin to make the most important decisions of their lives. This is life transformation; these young people come from Nativity each week strengthened with God’s love. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

Here’s the second picture I want to draw for you. At worship last Sunday, at both services we did the once-a-month prayers, laying on of hands and anointing for healing. At the 9:30 service, 22 people came up for healing; almost that many came forward at 11:00. You can’t see their faces as they come forward, but I can. I see the tears in many eyes. I see faces filled with hope. I see how through the ancient sacrament of anointing, people are filled with the Holy Spirit, and become conscious of Christ’s constant presence and strength in their struggles. They find themselves healed, not going to Nativity, but coming from Nativity. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

Here’s the third picture I want you to see in your mind’s eye. It’s a group of people heading off to Navajoland to rebuild houses, bring donations and build relationships with our Navajo Episcopal brothers and sisters. These are people who have labored hard all year to raise funds and physical donations for the Navajo, who have poured their hearts into improving the lives of other Americans, who are working in partnership and making new friends in Navajoland, as they are transforming lives. That’s not the only remarkable, life-transforming mission work I see going on at Nativity: I see a group of folks who are passionate about the work being done to educate children and lift them out of poverty in our sister church in Veracruz, Mexico; I see a parish that is the #1 contributor to the Episcopal Coalition for Habitat for Humanity here in the Valley; I see youth who do mission work each summer; I see a faith community that works to make sandwiches for homeless people, give Christmas presents to children who otherwise wouldn’t have any, and other outreach ministries too numerous to count. These are ministers, not who go to Nativity, but who come from Nativity to transform lives with the love of Jesus Christ. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

A fourth picture: a recent Wednesday evening at Nativity. At 4:30 p.m., if you came there, you would see two people in each of two classrooms – adults being mentored for Confirmation, two of our 7 adults who will be confirmed in a few weeks (in addition to all the teenagers). At 5:30 p.m., you would see a group of 12 or 15 people studying the Gospel of Matthew and coming to amazing insights about where Jesus is in their lives. At 7:00 p.m., the choir would arrive to practice to lead our beautiful worship, at the same time the Healing Ministries team arrives to talk about the many ministries of healing we have through Nativity. Standing there in the midst of all this, you would see your pastor, amazed, smiling at all the activity, giving thanks for the ministries that people are being empowered to lead and participate in, in this community of faith, marveling at how the Holy Spirit is working with our people. These people don’t just go to Nativity, they come from Nativity to transform lives. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

One last picture: a picture of people whose lives have been changed by being part of Nativity. People who never knew Christ before, or who have even spent their lives avoiding Jesus. You may not know their stories, but I know them. They are people who have made new decisions, who have become followers of Christ in this church. People whose lives have been transformed by this community of faith. Here is what one of them wrote to me recently – someone who has been through a lot of life transformation, and has become a part of Nativity and decided to become a follower of Christ through our ministries (I have this person’s permission to share this, anonymously). Here’s what he wrote: “I [have come to an] understanding that what I have gained in life is all a gift and that I should be extremely grateful. Every moment is an opportunity to realize Grace in the world - in my life, in others' lives, in the beauty of creation. I think we can even learn to see Grace in places where it seems entire[ly] missing at first glance.” People like him don’t just go to Nativity, they come from Nativity, transformed and emboldened and renewed as agents of God’s love in this world and the next. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

This is why we’re building a church. Not just because we’re running out of room, though we are. And not just because our lease is expiring, though it is. And not just because our leadership (the whole Bishop’s Committee and Tom and myself, also, and several other parish leaders) is 100% committed to this project, through verbal support and also through our own financial commitments, though we are. Not just because we need a holy and transformative space for our worship, education, prayer, healing, fellowship and evangelism – though we do. Not just because we need room for the people we believe God is calling us to touch and transform in the future – though we do.

Those are all good reasons, but they’re not why we’re building a church.

We’re building a church because a church is not a place you go. A church is a place you come from.

A church is a place where we are healed and transformed, where we grow into our vocation to be followers of Christ in all we say and do. I hope that as all of us grow in our faith, as all of us live into God’s vision for our church, as all of us fulfill the ministries God has called us to do, that we will always remember to say: NOT, I go to Church of the Nativity. But, I come from Church of the Nativity.

Because as we let God build us into Living Stones in this holy community of faith, we find: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

Sermon for October 16, 2011

Scriptures for today are Here

Back in the mid-90s, a railway pension fund in Britain, by some odd chain of events, found itself the owner of a small jeweled casket that was said to contain the earthly remains of St. Thomas a Becket.

In case you’re a bit rusty on your medieval church history, I’ll refresh your memory by telling you that Thomas a Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury in the late 12^th century. In a dispute with King Henry II over whether the church should be subordinate to the state, or vice versa, Thomas a Becket refused to budge. King Henry exclaimed in the presence of four knights something along the lines of “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Whereupon the four loyal souls rode off, caught Thomas on his way to evening prayer at Canterbury Cathedral, and assassinated him.

Which would have been the end, except that Thomas’ cause survived him. He became the object of veneration among the common people of England. And Henry II finally had to do penance: he walked to Canterbury Cathedral in sackcloth and ashes and allowed himself to be flogged by the monks. As for Thomas a Becket, he became a saint 3 years after his death; his tomb at Canterbury became one of the most-visited and venerated pilgrimage sites in Europe; and his relics were rumored to be the agent of miraculous healings. The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer’s classic collection of short stories, was about a group of pilgrims on their way to pray at the shrine of Thomas’ relics.

So imagine, 800 years later, being a railway pension fund and finding yourself in possession of these venerated relics, this casket that was at one time the center of piety in all England, these bones that could cure the sick and raise the dead. What would you do?

Well, in 1996, the pension fund did the obvious, for the 20^th century if not the 12^th: it put the jeweled casket on the auction block at Sotheby’s, where it was in the process of being sold to a Canadian who thought it would grace his country home nicely. A national uproar ensued: if no one any longer believed that the casket had miraculous powers, at least it was a treasure of history that didn’t belong in Canada – and the sale was stopped at the last minute, and the casket is still in Britain.

I bring this up because it is an example of what an eminent theologian, Harvey Cox from Harvard Divinity School, called a “reverse sacrament.” If a true sacrament is where God takes ordinary elements such as bread and wine and blesses them to make them holy signs of God’s grace, a reverse sacrament, says Cox, is where ordinary people take a sacred and revered object and transubstantiate it into nothing more than a commodity. A process that is all too common these days, he says.

He wrote this thought out in detail in a 1999 essay in The Atlantic called “The Market as God” in which, somewhat light-heartedly, he opined that the market these days functions as a sort of god in our society. A god with qualities we impute to it such as:

• · Omnipresence – being everywhere, something we can’t argue – the power of economics, our use of money, rules a lot of things in our world, our lives
• · Omnipotence – don’t we somehow have the idea that money can buy anything – even happiness – there is a recent study that correlates optimal happiness with having income of $75,000 or more
• · And even omniscience (knowing all things): in the mid-80s in B-school I had to study the efficient markets hypothesis, which says the market already knows and reflects all publicly available information. The “strong” version even says it also reflects even non-public, secret information – we could say that this strong version says that to the market all hearts are open, all desires known, and from it no secrets are hid.

And yes, the market god includes high priests, saints and holy places of devotion, and reverse sacraments, in which sacred things, like the relics of St. Thomas a Becket, become nothing more than commodities to be sold at auction. I’ve read Cox’s essay, and I’m not entirely sure just how serious he is. I think he is speaking at least half tongue in cheek. But we who live in 21^st century America have to admit that money is certainly a kind of god, a god we spend a lot of time revering and serving, if not worshiping.

Which sets today’s gospel in a new light. The famous saying, Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s, is read by many to be a vindication of the principle of separation of church and state. Believe me, I believe in separation of church and state, since I think separating the two is a blessing to both church and state. When religious power is allied with state power, it can easily turn into an unholy alliance, like the alliance that conspired to kill Jesus in today’s gospel. But it is a concept that would have been utterly foreign to Jesus or to anyone in his time: the concept of state religion was as universally accepted in Jesus’ time as Thomas’, when the only question was whether church or state was going to end up on top.

Separation of church and state is not what Jesus is talking about here. What he is talking about is giving our devotion to God, instead of whatever other god we might be tempted to serve. To understand what Jesus is saying, let’s set the scene. It is Tuesday of Holy Week, Jesus has infuriated the temple officials by overturning the tables of the money changers, now he is teaching in the temple, when insincere enemies come to him with a question intended to entrap him.

Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?, they ask him. Of course, if he says no, Rome will have a reason to arrest him – imagine the Herodians hanging on his words, waiting for him to make a mistake. But if he says yes, he will become very unpopular: religious Jews were chagrined at being a conquered country and paying taxes to Rome was unpopular. But even worse, the coin used to pay the tax had an image of Caesar on the front, violating the second Commandment, you shall make no graven images.

And it had the inscriptions: "Tiberius Caesar, August Son of the Divine Augustus" (i.e., Son of God) and "Pontifex Maximus" (high priest) - violating the first commandment: you shall have no other gods but me. Jesus’ disciples, beginning to suspect that Jesus was the Son of God, by saying this out loud were committing treason against Caesar – you couldn’t serve them both, you had to serve one or the other.

It was unlawful for observant Jews to use such a coin; it was unlawful for them to carry it into God’s temple (which is why there were money-changers there, to change the unholy Roman coins into coins that Jews could use in the Temple). And so the minute that Jesus asks them to show him the coin, and they produce it, he has them – they have admitted to idolatry in the Temple.

His answer is masterful – give to Caesar this bit of metal with his image on it. And, listen carefully: Give to God what has God’s image on it. And what has God’s image on it? We do. In the beginning, God created us male and female in God’s image. This is what separates us from all other creatures – the Bible tells us that we bear the image of God.

Those paltry coins, those dollar bills that carry images of Caesar, George Washington, Ben Franklin or whoever – those are small things, not gods at all, though they may lay claim to our loyalty, our reverence, our worship in all kinds of obvious and not-so-obvious ways, we can get trapped into serving them. But what bears the image of God is us – all of us – every part of us.

Which means that Jesus isn’t saying what we think he is saying. Jesus is not telling us to compartmentalize our lives. He is not saying, carve out this 10% for God, and the other 90% can go to whatever Caesar we happen to be serving. He is not saying, allocate 1 hour a week to God, and the other 167 to Caesar. He is clearly and simply saying, it is all God’s.

All we have, all we do, all the time.

It all came from God and it all belongs to God – because we bear God’s image.

Every hour of the 24 that we are given each day, the 168 we are given each week, came from God – this gift of time is to be used in every part of our lives for God. Every dollar we possess came from the gifts God has given us – the talents we are able to employ for our livelihoods – and every dollar is to be used for God. Every relationship – with those who love us and whom we love, with those who trouble us and those we trouble, with those we agree with and those we disagree with – every relationship, every act of service, every interaction with every person is a gift from God.

Jesus is standing in the Temple in today’s gospel, saying that what goes to Caesar is insignificant; what goes to God is no less than everything.

There is no Temple in the 21^st century, Jesus is the new Temple, and we are the Body of Christ – every part of this Temple, the temple of our selves, belongs to God.

So this is an opportunity for prayer, and I urge you to pray about it this week: God, how would you have me use the gifts you have given me? How can I use the gift of time, the gift of money, the gift of relationship? How can I use the gift of who I am, this self that is stamped with God’s image? God, help me to use the gift of your holy image stamped on me.

All I have. All I am. All the time.

Sermon for Oct. 9, 2011

Scriptures for this week are here

Steve Jobs died this week at age 56 – the brilliant, visionary founder of Apple, the design genius who brought us the Mac and the iPod and the iPad – all products I use and delight in – and the iPhone, the one I hope to buy when my current contract runs out. I am a fan of Apple, and therefore I have deep appreciation for Steve Jobs.

In so many ways, he revolutionized the way we use technology, vaulting us out of a world of blinking green cursors and incomprehensible code into neat little pictures, icons that we could click on to open up new worlds of meaning. The Mac revolution was quickly copied by Microsoft, so that now every computer operates with Steve Jobs-designed simplicity – point and click.

Over the past 10 years, an age of deep anxiety in America, Steve Jobs has been in a way an icon himself, an icon of a kind of hope. While Americans grew ever more anxious about the things of the outside world, in our inner worlds of technology and entertainment, our lives grew easier, neater, more beautiful, full of elegant simplicity.

I admire Steve Jobs’ business ability, his design sense, and I am a wholehearted fan of the products he created. And I didn’t know him personally, so I can’t speak to what kind of man he was – but he was a passionate articulator of a certain view of what human hope is, a very common view in our society, beautifully described in his famous 2005 commencement address at Stanford, when he said:

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose…. No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it….Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life…. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

In speaking these words, Jobs described a view of our human life that I agree with – to a point – which is: if you are not doing what you are gifted and called to do, then find a way to change your life so you are doing it. Many people in our world agree wholeheartedly with this wisdom. Any number of self-help gurus will tell you to follow your heart in order to realize true happiness – a very attractive goal. But we have to be realistic – doing what we love doesn’t always pay the rent, and ordinary people have to pay the rent. And there’s more to life than what we do: relationships, service to others.

Steve Jobs didn’t claim to be preaching any kind of Christian gospel, but there are plenty of Christian preachers who will take what he said and go a step further with it. Joel Osteen comes to mind – Your Best Life Now – saying that yes, life is all about pursuit of personal happiness, and, if God is truly blessing you, accumulating personal wealth into the bargain.

What’s missing in this idea of doing what we love, and hopefully amassing lots of money doing it, is any hope beyond the personal, any idea of transcendence, a faith in a greater purpose for your life, a trust in something that lies beyond the simple boundaries of this world. So what if we could find a meaning to life that lies beyond this, that fulfills our innermost yearnings while still leading us to greater meaning and purpose? And still telling us that our lives encompass something greater than their physical life spans, that in fact our lives have deep and eternal significance?

Enter today’s gospel – a very strange parable of celebration and judgment. It is a parable that begins to describe God’s dream for us that is greater than all human dreams – because it is a parable of the kingdom of Heaven. But what a strange parable it is – with an angry king disinviting one set of guests from the wedding banquet, dragging in another set off the street, yet flinging someone into the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth, for a dress code violation – what’s going on here?

Like any gospel, you have to understand what is going on in context. In today’s gospel, Jesus is standing in Jerusalem, knowing that his death is around the corner, and will come at the hands of the very temple leaders he is talking to – scribes, Pharisees, temple authorities. And he begins to tell parables of the kingdom of heaven.

Today’s parable is the third in a row of stories that pointedly tell the religious authorities in Jerusalem that they have lost sight of God’s dream for them. They are the first ones invited to the wedding banquet, yet they have other priorities, dreams of their own to fulfill, and they can’t make time for God’s invitation. So riffraff like you and me are invited to the banquet instead. Latecomers to God’s covenant, we are not Jews, we haven’t done anything to deserve this invitation, no achievements could earn us this ticket – yet here we are.

We need to be very careful in this parable not to read it as anti-Jewish rhetoric. Remember that Jesus and all of his followers were Jews. Jesus is very specifically directing this parable against temple leaders who know God’s hope for them very well, yet can’t make time for God’s priorities. These are people who have put their own desires, their own pursuit of happiness in front of God’s dream for them. They may love what they’re doing, and many of them are accumulating great wealth doing it, but they use the temple that should be dedicated to God’s worship for heir own gain. They grasp onto their own power so hard that they don’t recognize God’s invitation when it comes – so they choose to avoid it.

So Jesus makes them angry by saying that others, less worthy of an invitation perhaps, good and bad alike, will have their places at God’s banquet. It is a parable of judgment, and judgment makes many of us uncomfortable – but notice, it is the temple leaders’ choice to say no to the invitation. Everyone was invited. We can exclude ourselves from God’s kingdom by our own choice, our decision to say no – but God invites everyone.

But then what’s going on with this poor fellow without a wedding robe? Some people say that great hosts, when they gave a banquet, would provide a rack of wedding robes at the door for those who didn’t have one – so refusing to wear the robe provided was just disrespectful to the host. This guest wants to eat the food provided, but not celebrate the occasion – he refuses to accept the clean new clothing the host offers.

What Jesus seems to be telling us here is in accordance with a theme that runs throughout Matthew’s gospel – the church is a mixed lot of folks. Some are good, some are bad, some will ultimately show that their heart belongs to God’s kingdom and some will show that it doesn’t. During this age, the age of the church, it is not for us to judge other people. On judgment day, God will separate the good from the bad.

In the meantime, that is to say, the time in between Jesus’ resurrection and the final judgment – so, our entire lifespan – Matthew tells us that we have some accountability for our actions. Yes, we have been invited to the banquet, yes, we have accepted the invitation – but while we wait for that day when the king arrives, we are accountable to God for the way we use the gifts he has given us. God provides the party, God brings us in to enjoy it, God even gives us the robe, the clothes of salvation to wear – but it is up to live in a way that honors what God has done for us

And how to honor God’s gifts is a choice we all must make. Steve Jobs believes that our greatest happiness lies in doing what we love; some Christian preachers believe that amassing personal wealth will bring us happiness. I believe that our greatest joy lies in loving God and loving each other. Yes, God will empower us to do what he has created us to do –what we love is what we do best. But God will also empower us to use the good gifts he has give us to build up the kingdom of God – which is hope beyond any transitory human happiness, lasting longer than any human lifetime. Which will bring us something far deeper than happiness: it will bring true joy in our abiding relationship with God, no matter our external circumstances. The kind of joy that Paul describes, writing from prison, when he says, rejoice in the Lord always.

Anthony Bloom, Russian Orthodox metropolitan bishop of Britain till his death in 2003, talking about Nazi occupation of Paris when he very nearly was caught by the Gestapo for his work with the French Resistance, wrote in Beginning to Pray:

During the German occupation of France I was in the resistance movement and, coming down into the Underground, I was caught by the police.... What took place at that moment was this: I had a past, I had a future, and I was moving out of one into the other by walking briskly down the steps. At a certain moment someone put a hand on my shoulder and said 'Stop, give me your papers.' At that moment . .. I realized that I had no past, because the real past I had was the thing for which I should be shot.... I found myself standing there like the lizard who had been caught by the tail and had run away leaving the tail somewhere behind, so that the lizard ended where the tail had been."

For the Christian, the place where we stand, walking briskly from past to future, is always the place of the cross – it is the place of decision, the decisive break between what we were without Christ and what we become as we accept his invitation and then enter fully into the joy of the kingdom. We are no longer to find our identity in our past, our accomplishments, our history. In future we find our identity in Christ – and our story becomes Christ’s story.

Jesus Christ IS the threshold where our past and our future meet. Jesus Christ is the one who extends the invitation. And Jesus Christ is the one who gives us all we need to enter the kingdom. His is the invitation that will bring us far more than simple happiness. It will bring us true, deep, eternal and abiding joy.