Confronted to account for his authority, Jesus refused – but he also told a story that made clear that it is what people do, not what people say they can do, that makes the difference.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the twenty-first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 21:23-32).
The setting for this passage is one of conflict. Jesus had just entered the city of Jerusalem to the shouts of a cheering crowd acclaiming him as the Son of David. When he arrived at the temple, the priest there wanted to know by what authority he did such things.
It was a pointed and vital question. Did Jesus, indeed, claim the role and title and authority of Messiah, Anointed One, royal figure, son of David? Or was there some other authority that Jesus claimed that might not have been the same but would have explained how he could do such things and expect not to be held accountable for them?
Jesus turned the question on its head. He asked about the baptism of John, was that of divine or human origin? The priests refused to answer because either answer they would give would put them in difficulties with someone: either the people or the Roman authorities. Jesus then said, “Well then, I will not tell you by what authority I do these things.”
He followed up with a story about a father and two sons, and the father asked the sons to go out and work in the field. One said, “Yes,” and didn’t go. One said, “No,” but did. Which one did what he was asked? The answer, of course, was the one who said, “No,” but did the work.
Jesus’ point was as obvious as any of Jesus’ stories ever are: Talk is cheap. Words are cheap. Obvious authority is cheap. What counts is what you do.
And that was true for Jesus just as it was for the priests who no doubt recognized themselves in the one who said, “Yes,” and didn’t go. At least they know Jesus was accusing them of that. Jesus himself, by the end of that week, would be placed in a situation where he not only said, “Yes,” he went and followed the path that led to the cross. Jesus said, “Yes,” and went.
So for us, if we are to be followers of Jesus, what we say is important, but not nearly as important as what we do. Will we follow the example, will we follow the call, will we follow the one who said, “Yes,” and did the hardest thing for our sake and for the sake of the world?
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Jesus’ story about every worker getting the same wage makes no sense in the business world – but it does make sense in the love world.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the twentieth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 20:1-16) Jesus’ story that we usually give the title, “The Laborers in the Vineyard.”
On its surface, an easy, if somewhat puzzling, story. Jesus described a vineyard owner who went out to find workers for the day. He went to the marketplace early, found some folks who were available. They went to work in the vineyard and were promised a denarius, which was the usual daily wage for a laborer.
But this landowner went out several times. He even went as late as about five o’clock in the afternoon, not long before the work had to end because of darkness. And each time he found people and sent them off to work.
When the sun had gone down, he gathered everybody up and had those who had arrived the latest receive their wages first. They received a denarius. Those at the end of the line who had worked the whole day, they also received a denarius, and were angry. Because they had worked much longer, why should they receive exactly the same wage?
The landowner replied, “My money is mine to do with it as I like. Are you upset because I am generous?”
As a story of business and economics, I suspect that anybody who taught in a business school would say this is not the way to do it. Among other things, it means that you’re paying expenses that you probably shouldn’t. It also means that some of your workers are angry with you about the way you treat other workers. It isn’t fair.
As is common in Jesus’ stories, it’s the place that somebody departs from the ordinary and the expected that we typically find the point that Jesus was trying to make. And in this case, it is that unexpected and extravagant generosity: that each person who worked in the vineyard, no matter how long, received the same amount. They received what they needed to live on.
Is it a model for business? Probably not. Is it a model for salvation? I think so. In the end, what can God give us that is more than salvation? If we arrive in the vineyard — that is, if we make the effort to participate in the community of God — what more can God give us than membership in that community? There isn’t anything more.
I think also, however, this is a model for relationships. It’s also something that we know.
We labor to try and treat our children fairly, but we do not treat them equally. Because one has skills and talents the other does not. That same one has needs that the other does not. And so we spend our time focusing on the things that they need or spend our time focusing on the things that they accomplish and that time will be different from one child to the next. We are perhaps not fair, not absolutely even-handed in our love for our own children, because it would be wrong to treat all human beings as if they were exactly the same.
Love can’t be absolutely fair. Love has to respond to what is. Love has to reveal what might be.
Jesus, I’m sure, in part spoke of the love of God here. The love of God is what it is and it is shared equally. And that may not seem fair, but that is what it is. And our love, we’re also called upon to respond to the needs and to rejoice in the successes of those we love, as they occur, but also in such a way that all know that they are loved.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Paul didn’t want people to judge one another. In particular, he didn’t want Christians to judge one another. He accurately foresaw that people who judge one another don’t live together very well. In a new community of a new faith, that could be catastrophic, resulting in resentments, conflicts, and fractures.
It turns out another famous early leader had much the same notion, a once obscure laborer from a small Galilean village named, as you’ve no doubt deduced, Jesus of Nazareth. “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged,” he said in the Sermon on Mount, found in the seventh chapter of Matthew. Paul’s teachings echoed Jesus’ teachings: The Church was supposed to be a non-judgmental community.
There’s only one problem. It is basically impossible for human beings to live life without making judgments. Most of them don’t have moral content – it doesn’t really matter much what I choose for breakfast – but others do. People ask me to do things and I make a judgment about whether I will or not. People ask me to tell them things I make a judgment about whether I can or not. People give me directions or even requirements and, yes, I make a judgment about whether I will do those or not – and face the consequences.
I’ve made countless judgments about the content of Christian faith. I judged the basic assertions of Christianity about the existence and priorities of God, about the nature and work of Jesus Christ, about the strength and presence of the Holy Spirit – and, oh, yes, the triune nature of God. I judged them to be true. I believed them. It’s a curious thing about Christianity that we’re asked to make a judgment – to believe in and trust the beneficence of God – and the very next thing we’re told is: “Do not judge.”
It gets more ridiculous when I consider how judgment is indispensable to learning. Teachers choose what to teach (yes, I know, curriculum gets set by administrators and legislators, but bear with me here). People decide what children should know and when, in their development, they should come to know it. It’s judgment that says children should learn to read. Plenty of places in the world choose not to teach some children to read. Famously, Malala Yousafzai was targeted for assassination for advocating education for girls and women in Pakistan when she was barely a teenager. She survived and her work survived. She remains the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – which is also a judgment.
We learned things that others judged we should learn. We didn’t learn things that others judged we should not learn. We learned things because others tested us to see what we knew and insisted we learn the things we hadn’t because they judged we should.
Without judgment, there simply isn’t learning.
So why can’t I judge?
Audrey West writes at Working Preacher, “It is tough to praise God if you are busy passing judgment on other people. At least that is what the apostle Paul seems to be saying in this passage from Romans, in which he exhorts the community of house-churches in Rome to avoid fighting over non-essential matters.”
Paul named two issues here. It’s not entirely clear whether he knew that these were subjects of debate in the Roman church – remember, he’d never been there – or whether these were handy examples that came from his experience with churches he knew more about. The issue of eating meat or eating vegetables: In First Corinthians, Paul gave a full and detailed consideration of whether to eat things that had been offered to idols. This was apparently a common practice around the Mediterranean cultures within the Roman Empire. Animals sacrificed before idols became meat sold in the marketplaces – that says something about how scale of it all, doesn’t it? If it was a concern in Corinth, it was probably a concern to other churches Paul worked with in Galatia, Ephesus, Thessalonica. It was probably a question in many churches, including Rome.
The other concern he mentioned was whether to observe “special days,” which probably means religious festivals. Which ones? Well, in Galatians 4, Paul wrote, “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods. Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental principles? How can you want to be enslaved to them again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted.” (Galatians 4:8-11)
It sounds very much as if the Galatians Paul criticized – rather harshly and judgmentally, I have to say – were participating in pagan seasons and festivals.
There would have been a lot of pressure to do so, both internally – this is what they knew to do – and externally – “I know you’re devoted to this Christ god now, but you can honor Demeter, too, because we really need a good harvest.” In the first century Roman world, very few people limited their devotion to a single deity, and they didn’t limit it to a single pantheon. The Egyptian goddess Isis had a temple in Rome next to the complex to which Roman citizens went to vote.
Some of the Galatians had succumbed to the pressure. So, too, I’m sure, did church members in Corinth and Phillipi and, of course, Rome.
So why can’t I judge?
Paul asserted two things here: First, these practices involving food and festivals were not essential. It was an astonishing statement, given that devotional practice has been considered essential in nearly every religion in nearly every place. Paul was the person, however, who had concluded that if a law so old it preceded the Law of Moses – namely the requirement of circumcision for all males in the community of God – could be set aside if it became a barrier, a wall, a stumbling block for those who sought to enter that community.
Paul judged circumcision, food practices, and religious calendars to be non-essential. It was an astonishing thing to say, but he said it. You could eat, or not eat; you could celebrate, or not celebrate; you could circumcise or not circumcise; and either way you could do so out of devotion to God.
The second thing he said was, “It’s not your judgment to make, anyway. It’s up to God. That’s who judges. Not you.”
As Alyce McKenzie writes at her blog, “When we judge others we place our authority above God’s. We are all only servants of God in God’s household. We are to focus on God, not our supposed superiority to others. All conduct must take its reference from our service to Jesus whose claim to lordship over all comes from his death and resurrection. (Best, 156) We will not have to justify to God the conduct of others, but only our own.”
Israel Kamudzandu writes at Working Preacher, “The question to be addressed in today’s church is as follows: tolerance or love? Romans 14:1-12 is a call to introspection of individuals, groups, clergy, and faith pillars who have settled into a culture of tolerance instead of love, hospitality, and appreciation of others. The entire New Testament is about love, but many people operate with a mindset of tolerating others, rather than loving them.”
When we judge people, we tolerate them. At best. At worst, well, let’s not go there. When we love them, we may be disappointed by some of the things they do. I don’t think we’ll avoid that. Love’s foundation is trust. I trust that you do this thing out of love. I trust you do this thing out of your best wishes. I trust that you do this thing because you believe it will make things better for all of us. I trust you.
You might be wrong – you may not know what you need to know to make the decision you made – but I will trust you did the best you could with what you knew at the time.
Love is founded on trust.
So why can’t I judge? Because I can’t judge you and love you. I just can’t. I can love you and trust you. I can love you and ask, “Can we do this differently? Did you know this would happen? Had you heard what this other person had to say?” You can love me and ask, “What did you think would happen when you did this? Is there a better way to approach such things in the future?”
You can love me and insist that I learn the multiplication table.
What you can’t do is love me and decide that you’re a better Christian than I am. I can’t love you and act as if I’m the be-all and end-all of Christianity. That’s not me. That’s Jesus.
That’s why I can’t judge.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while he preaches, both accidentally and intentionally. The sermon as written does not precisely match the sermon as delivered.
In a community made up of people from different religious backgrounds, the temptation to judge was hard to resist. Paul urged them to resist.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the fourteenth chapter of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 14:1-12).
The Roman church was made up of people from quite startlingly different backgrounds. Some had been raised as Jews, others had been raised in the traditions and religions of Rome, Greece, Egypt, and for that matter, many other cultures around the Mediterranean world. They brought very different assumptions about what a faith life was supposed to be like.
Christianity, originating as it did as a reform movement within Judaism (and indeed continuing to attempt to be a reform movement within Judaism in Paul’s lifetime), nevertheless welcomed folks from these other traditions and expectations. And Christianity did not fully endorse or fully reject religions and religious ideas of Judaism or Greece or of Rome. There was a lot to learn and to adapt to and to reframe for both those coming from Judaism and those coming from other faiths.
As a result, they were feeling at their way through the expectations of this new religion that they were calling the Way of Jesus.
Also as a result, they were criticizing one another, and sometimes fairly harshly.
Paul’s advice was, “Do not judge one another.” Those who observe in one way, well, they observe these things in faithfulness to God. And those who do other things to observe, they do those things also in faithfulness to God. It is God who is going to judge in the end. It is not up to us to judge one another.
Well, it is certainly true that a society without any kind of judgment or discernment rapidly draws into chaos as people do this, that, and the other thing. It is also true that the apostle Paul deeply disliked chaos and, as we noted from last Sunday’s reading, had some pretty firm notions on things that were to be done and things that were not to be done. But in matters of faithful observance, Paul was far more willing to let God be the judge of the heart, to let God be judge of the intent, to let God be judge of the devotion, than to permit Christians to run around willy-nilly judging one another.
Leave that to God, said Paul, and in such a way we can build a religious community together that is supportive rather than a religious community that drags one another down.
“Do not judge your brother or your sister,” wrote Paul. We will all be accountable to God, and that is more than enough.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking.Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
The circumstances of our lives do not match those of those who first read Paul’s Letter to the Romans. We, after all, are not a congregation containing both Jews who had embraced the new Way of Jesus, and Romans who had once worshiped such deities as Jupiter, Vesta, Mithras, or Isis.
Mind you, we are a congregation that contains people from a number of different national and cultural backgrounds, and from several different religious backgrounds, some of which weren’t Christian. So… it’s still not the same.
We do not live under the authority of the Roman Empire. I grant you that those who wrote the US Constitution were substantially guided by the Roman Republic, and used the Latin “senator” in creating one of the legislative bodies. So… it’s still not the same.
But it’s close enough that Paul’s advice to “not be conformed to this age,” meaning the first century around the Mediterranean, is still good advice in the twenty-first century in the Pacific Ocean. We just can’t assume that the cultural pressures of the first century Roman Christians he addressed are the same problems we face. We also can’t assume that the cultural pressures of the twenty-first century are entirely different from the pressures they faced.
For nearly two thousand years Christianity has worked very hard to create a society in which it was easy to follow Jesus. I’m not convinced that we’ve been as successful as we’d like. Europe’s history of wars between its acknowledged Christian nations – not to mention repeated persecution of non-Christians or not-acknowledged as Christians – has echoes in lots of other non-Christian nations in the course of human history.
What are our cultural pressures? First and foremost, I think, there’s pride. Hubris. Arrogance. The conviction that I and I alone am right. The conviction that me and mine are the center. The conviction that my chosen community is the greatest, and by rights should be in charge.
As Elizabeth Shively writes at Working Preacher, “Paul has exhorted his audience to be transformed by the renewal of their mind; now they are to use that new mind to think rightly about themselves and each other: ‘I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think but to think with sober judgment … ‘(verse 3). Paul calls for a new way of thinking that takes account of others.”
I think that Paul addressed that advice about not thinking to highly of yourself as much to himself as to his readers, then and now. Paul was on his best behavior writing to the people he hadn’t met in Rome. He wasn’t so restrained in his other letters. His arrogance took center stage in parts of Galatians, even daring to call Simon Peter a hypocrite. He was self-aware enough to call himself a fool in Second Corinthians, but only after he’d demonstrated the foolishness of his own ego in response to criticism he’d heard. Yes. It was hard for him. I resonate with that from the inside. I think I’ve mentioned that I share that temptation to arrogance. It’s one of the few things I can claim to share with a saint.
Let’s face it, arrogance is a characteristic of Christianity these days. It’s not just the Christian nationalists, although their manifestation of hubris is, I think, the most dangerous of our time. In the United Church of Christ, I applaud our advocacy for marginalized groups while noting at the same time our curious reluctance to move beyond certain points, and I note that when the marginalized come into positions of authority, they are just as subject to the temptation of “I know it better than you” as their predecessors had been. I’d dearly love it if we could solve the problem of arrogance by replacing all the male leaders with female, or the straight leaders with LGBTQ, or elder leaders with young ones, or… insert your own preferred group here. Regrettably, it seems like our favorite prayer is not the Lord’s Prayer, but what Pearls Before Swinecartoonist Stephan Pastis called “The Genius Prayer” in a 2014 strip:
“God grant me the courage to change the things I cannot accept, serenity to accept the things I’ve changed, and the wisdom to know I’m different.”
It’s not the only struggle we have with our contemporary world, however. I think one of our strongest pressures is the temptation to put people into arbitrary categories and make assumptions about them based on those categories. I’m pretty confident that the first century members of the Roman church had a similar problem – Paul wrote powerfully that both Jews and Gentiles (whom he called “Greeks”) stood in the very same position with God, needing God’s mercy. In other letters he wrote of slaves and free people, of men and women, that God’s grace, love, and power were accessible to them one and all.
In the twenty-first century, we struggle with prejudices within ourselves, and we struggle with the systematic “isms” that enshrine prejudice in law, culture, and religious practice. We have made progress. In 2021 the Rev. Elizabeth Dilley, who supports authorization of ministers in the UCC, wrote, “…women now make up 52.5% of all ordained ministers in the UCC.” At the same time, I’m aware of Christian churches that have rolled back access to leadership positions for women, and others that have simply never opened them at all. On Thursday morning I read a social media post asking for Biblical support for the ordination of women.
People, as we understand ordination, there’s not that much Biblical support for the ordination of men.
In addition, we’ve got people openly calling for the repeal of the nineteenth amendment. That’s the one that enfranchises women in the United States of America, that allows them to vote. I thought that question had been settled for a century. I guess we’ll have to keep it settled.
More of a concern in the twenty-first century than the first is the temptation to individualism, to think that community is less important than the individual. It’s a heritage of the European Enlightenment, and one that was really important to undo the feudal systems of Europe and Asia, which were so arbitrary and oppressive. As with most things, it can be overdone, and it has been. Israel Kamudzandu writes at Working Preacher, “I think of Romans as a call to abandon the sin of individualism and to embrace the cross-cultural Christian life. The life to which Paul calls Christians in Rome, and consequently those in the 21st century, is a life that exhibits the essence of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.”
It’s one that embraces the notion that community is important. It’s not just about me; it’s about us. I don’t have all the skills, I don’t have all the gifts. Somebody else can better find the ‘ohelo; somebody else can fix the plumbing; somebody else can handle the bookkeeping. Look at that list of gifts of the Spirit Paul gave here (he wrote other longer lists in other letters): prophecy, ministry, teaching, encouragement, generosity, leadership, compassion. Any one of us might have some portion of each. Some of us will have deeper reservoirs of one of those gifts, and when we share them in community, everyone does better.
Amy Frykolm, writing at JourneyWithJesus.net, composed a reworked version of Paul’s advice here, and it’s stunning, so I share it with you:
“So then, I ask you, my dear family, in light of all the mercy, compassion, and kindness that God has shown us, place your whole selves in God’s hands — mind, heart, strength — this whole embodied being that is you. Make that offering full of life and vitality, as living as living water. The depth of your spiritual understanding and your willingness will fill the heart of God with joy.
“And do not let the ways of this world — its greed, ambition, empty fulfillments — mold and shape you, make you like itself. Instead be transformed through the renewal of your perceptions. Seek every opportunity to see with new eyes, hear with new ears, try out new paths, feel things for the first time and let them sink into your heart. From your heart, your mind, your senses, and your intuition, let yourself be continuously renewed. In this way, you will know what to do, how to act, how to choose the good, the true, the beautiful, the holy, and the whole.”
From the Apostle Paul, from Amy Frykolm, maybe even a little bit from me, there’s advice for this age or any other.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching – sometimes he intends to. The sermon as prepared does not precisely match the sermon as delivered.
Moses took an important step – quite literally – when he saw the burning bush. He turned aside to look closer, and that is how the conversation with God began.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the third chapter of the book of Exodus (Exodus 3:1-15), Moses’ encounter with God over a bush that was burning and not consumed.
It’s the very beginning of the story that strikes me at this time. Moses was out doing a very ordinary thing. He was keeping watch over a flock of sheep. He saw the burning bush. He observed that it was not burning up. He said, “I must turn aside and see this thing and find out more why isn’t the bush being consumed.” That was what began the conversation with God.
It strikes me that what Moses did was to get closer to look deeper, to go and learn more than he had known. And that, it strikes me, is an essential element of life and of faith. Learn more.
It just isn’t enough to see that there is a bush on fire in the wilderness. It’s just not enough to make the further observation that it’s not burning quite as one would expect. It takes another step. It takes turning aside. It takes drawing closer to find out what is going on.
It’s a skill that is sort of unevenly taught in our educational system. At the very youngest levels, of course, you don’t teach that so much, because it is important to teach young children the very basics of what makes up a world and how people should live together in community.
But as we go on in education, it should be and it can be (in some places it is) stressed that we need to look further. We need to go deeper. We need to learn more.
So don’t accept the first thing that anybody tells you. It might be right. Quite possibly is right. But you won’t know and you won’t know more until you look closer, go deeper, learn more.
Do that in faith, do that in life, do that in family, do that in relationships. Go closer, look deeper.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
The apostle advised his readers to do the will of God as best they could – but also to be aware that they did not, could not know everything.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the twelfth chapter of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 12:1-8).
Paul wrote that we should present ourselves in our bodies as a sacrifice to the living God, by which I’m fairly certain that he meant that all our deeds, our actions, and our words ought to be done with some notion of fulfilling the will of God, at least as best we understand it. Paul followed that with a caution, not to think too well of ourselves, which is very much a temptation if we see ourselves as following and enacting the will of God.
It is, I think, some of the most honest advice that the Apostle Paul ever wrote in his letters. I’m pretty sure that his besetting temptation was, in fact, arrogance. The temptations to think that he knew more than he did, to proclaim more than he knew. You can see it in a number of places in the letters, both where the Apostle Paul recognized it and drew back from it, and the places where he didn’t recognize it and did it anyway.
That’s advice that is good for Paul’s time, for Paul. It’s advice that is good for our time, for us, for me.
First of all, to be cautious about what we claim to know, to be careful about the things that we say, to make certain that we identify our opinions as opinions, our faith as faith, and to maybe not declare it quite so firmly as established fact. By all means, bring out that which supports your opinions, but know also that there is far more to know than any of us can know.
And of course, that first point still remains an excellent challenge for all of us, to strive to do that which God has called us to do, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to love God with all our heart and soul and mind.
Romans twelve. Romans eight is, by far, my favorite in this letter, but there are good words here to guide us in each day of our lives.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you are thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Who’s in? Who’s out? Who’s us? Who’s them? Who gets the benefit of the doubt? Who gets doubted without benefits?
These are not new questions in the United States, as you well know. The history of Americans’ opinions of people from different national and ethnic backgrounds has some real ugliness in it, and some real bright points. We live far more companionably with people of different sexual orientations than I ever expected – I never thought I’d see legal marriage for LGBTQ relationships, and for now, at least, they’re both legal and generally accepted in many places.
It was once illegal for people of different races to marry in some US states; those prohibitions have crumbled. American immigration law is, I’m sorry to say, a horror show from its origins with the Chinese Exclusion Act, relentlessly racist and, in these days, enforced with cruelty that’s been encouraged at the highest level.
These questions are older than the Hawaiian Kingdom or the United States or any government of the world. The Book of Ezra describes the rebuilding of Jerusalem when the Persian Empire permitted Jewish exiles to return around five hundred years before Jesus’ birth. The exile lasted around seventy years – nearly three generations – so the people had learned to think of at least some of those around them as neighbors. As the children grew into young adults, they began to marry among these neighbors, even though intermarriage was discouraged. Ezra, a priest, announced that the non-Jewish wives would have to go back to their families’ homes in Persia.
If you want to read something heartbreaking, read the tenth chapter of Ezra. It not only says that those families were broken up. It lists them. By name.
Curiously enough, at near the same time another prophet took up the pen. His work ended up as part of the Book of Isaiah, which is a composite work of at least three different authors writing at different times, and also includes a few chapters of Second Kings. Chapter 56 is considered by scholars as the place where this post-exile writing starts. And how did this writer begin?
Thus says the Lord: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come and my deliverance be revealed. 2 Happy is the mortal who does this, the one who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and refrains from doing any evil. 3 Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people,” and do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” 4 For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, 5 I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. 6 And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath and do not profane it and hold fast my covenant— 7 these I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
I read there some sections our lectionary editors omitted. The Torah did place limits on who could enter the religious assembly – a worship service, basically – which included men with injuries to their genitals. I really don’t understand why that should be relevant to anything, but then I don’t understand why a lot of things were considered relevant. Leviticus 21 bans someone who is blind from serving in religious leadership. Well, I’m rather pleased that we’ve discerned that that wasn’t a meaningful issue, given that my daughter Rebekah is blind and was ordained as UCC minister this year.
Human history around disability isn’t that good.
As Samuel Giere writes at Working Preacher, “Isaiah 56-66 returns to a basic question: With the diagnosis and the renewed promise both in view, what now? The first movement in this ‘what now?’ is Isaiah 56.1-8. It addresses the reality that God’s blessing spills over the boundaries assumed by God’s people — the insiders.”
At much the same time Ezra was breaking up families – which was not, in fact, required by the Law of the Torah – someone we’ll call Isaiah spoke another vision. He proclaimed God’s welcome not just in the city, not just in the community, but in the place of worship. He proclaimed God’s welcome not just for those foreigners who hadn’t been banned in the Law, he proclaimed it for eunuchs who had been banned in the Law. Isaiah envisioned a realm of God that was greater than the precincts of a Temple, that was wider than the walls of a city, that was more extensive than the boundaries of a nation.
Let it be a great gathering.
The great gathering did have qualifications. “Maintain justice, and do what is right.” This had been the refrain of Israel’s prophets for generations. As Joel B. Kemp writes at Working Preacher, “For the writers of Isaiah 56, admission into God’s community is contingent upon a few ethical (rather than ethnic) requirements.”
Here I invite you to a choice. The Bible was written by many people over hundreds, even over a thousand years. They didn’t believe the same things about the world as we do, and they didn’t believe the same things about the world as each other. They didn’t believe the same things about God as one another. As we’ve heard today from Ezra and from Isaiah, they could and did believe radically opposite things about what God considered right and good and proper at the very same time.
So we have a choice.
We can go with Ezra. We can choose an ethnic group or national heritage and hold that as the highest allegiance and the source of what is good and right. We can be Swedish or Norwegian or English (to start with my own background) or Japanese or Hawaiian or Chinese or Okinawan or American (whatever that means) or Micronesian or one of a host of identities. We can say, “I’m in, you’re out, and there’s nothing you can do about it as long as we hold the power to keep you outside.”
Ezra 10 says we can do that.
We can also choose to form a community made up of people of many ethnicities, many heritages, many backgrounds. We can choose to form a community made up of people we’d previously chosen to ignore or dismiss, like those with disabilities or like those with a sexuality different from our own. We can choose that, knowing that it’s the more difficult way. It requires discussion and debate and discernment about what is good, and right, and fit.
Isaiah 56 says we can do that.
Which will we choose?
So what did Jesus do?
He did… both. Which is awkward.
He refused to aid this Canaanite woman’s request to heal her daughter, and he did it with an insult that wounds us even in translation. He called her and her daughter dogs, and that was exactly as insulting as it sounds. And then, she turned the insult back on itself brilliantly: even the dogs eat the crumbs from the children’s table.
Jesus told her that his community would be Ezra’s community. Her reply reflected Isaiah’s community. She seems to have changed his mind. Suddenly the blessings he was bringing could be shared with those outside of Israel. Suddenly a new world had opened.
Expanding into that world became one of the most noteworthy features of the new Christian Church following his death and resurrection. New life for Jesus became new life for Jews and new life for Gentiles as well. Apostles like Philip and Paul began working with Gentiles to create new Christian communities around the Mediterranean. The foreigners were warmly invited into the Way of Jesus.
As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Right now, we are living through times so fraught and so tenuous, everything depends on exactly how good the Good News really is. It’s not good enough if it’s good just for me, or for the people who look and think like me, or for the people I already happen to like and love. Is it Good News yet for those dying of Covid? Is it Good News yet for the starving and the incarcerated and the unemployed and the homeless? Is it Good News yet for the people across the border? Is it Good News yet for the people you’ve been conditioned all your life to ignore?
“If the answer is no, then we have work to do. Remember, Jesus himself has gone ahead of us, widening the gates and throwing open the doors to welcome the voice of a despised foreigner.”
So there’s your options. A community which accepts some and denies many, or a community that welcomes as many as we can.
You can have either one and claim the Bible justifies it. It does.
I know which one I’d rather live in. Give me Isaiah, not Ezra. Give me Jesus – at least after he’d heard the wisdom of the Canaanite woman.
I’d like the Great Gathering, please.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric writes sermons in full, but he tends to make changes while preaching, some of which are intentional.
Who is included in God’s vision of community? More people than we tend to think.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the fifty-sixth chapter of the book of Isaiah (Isaiah 56:1, 6-8).
Isaiah appears to have been an assembled work. There’s a lengthy section that is primarily the work of a prophet named Isaiah, who lived in Jerusalem in the 700s before Jesus. There’s also a lengthy insertion, which is literally copied from the book of Second Kings. And then beginning about chapter 40, we get another writer.
Isaiah scholars believe that this one appears to have been an exile in Babylon, so hundreds of years after the initial Isaiah. He brought different concerns, and he brought a different sense of God’s promises. This part of chapter 56 is concerned with the restoration of the nation, which had been conquered by the Babylonians in 587. And here in chapter 56, it’s very clear that Isaiah expressed God’s promise that the exile people would at some time be able to come home.
But would there be anyone with them?
This portion of chapter 56 is very clearly answering the question, “Could others then Jews become a faithful part of the restored nation?” God’s answer was a clear, unequivocal, “Yes.” Those who wanted to be a part of the community and who would act according to its rules and its standards and its laws: they would be welcome. They could come and sacrifice in the rebuilt temple of God, and their prayers would be heard.
I don’t need to tell anybody that these are fractious days, days in which division and separation is very much the way of things. If you look through the Scriptures, you will find plenty of support for the notion that we should be separating people into little bits and bobs of communities. But Isaiah heard from God that that was not how it had to be, and many years later, along came Jesus, who in a conversation with a foreigner initially rejected her plea for healing, for her daughter, but was persuaded, was persuaded, and let his power find its way to a sick little girl.
Which will we choose? Will we choose the fractures of division and embrace the ways of dissension, even hatred, or will we be persuaded as Jesus was, as Isaiah was, to welcome the stranger and celebrate with them, and all of us together be faithful to God?
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
When Jesus met a woman at a well in Samaria, it turned out that they both had something to offer to one another: Refreshment.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel (John 4:5-42): the conversation between Jesus and a woman he met at a well in Samaria.
The conversation started with Jesus’ simple request that she share some of the water she was drawing so that he could have a drink. It went from there to matters much deeper — deeper even than the well, if you like. It went to spiritual matters. It went even to the identity of the Messiah, the Deliverer, the one who was coming.
Unlike lots of other conversations, Jesus actually acknowledged to the woman that he was the Messiah.
The conversation was persuasive enough that she went back to the town and invited her neighbors to meet him. She said, “Come and meet a man who told me everything I’ve ever done. He couldn’t be the Messiah — or could he? Come and see.”
It occurs to me that this story is about refreshment. It started with Jesus asking to be refreshed with the literal water to be drawn from the well. It continued with the refreshment that Jesus offered to this woman and to her neighbors: refreshment of the spirit.
He offered and delivered not just an acceptance, but also real valuing for her and for those around her, despite the fact that she was a Samaritan, despite the fact that she was a woman, despite the fact that there were a number of things that should have kept them distant from one another.
Yet they refreshed one another.
I think refreshment is a central activity, a central calling, a central obligation, if you like, of the life of faith. We are not simply here to be ourselves. We are here to support one another, to be a community, to be a family, if you like. In that family we refresh one another. We provide refreshment such as water, food, shelter. We provide refreshment emotionally and relationally. And when and how we can, we offer refreshment for the spirit: that living water of which Jesus spoke that flows through our very souls and renews our lives.
Refreshment.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
