Matthew 21:23-32; Exodus 17:1-7; Philippians 2:1-13
Like me, some of you are old enough to remember that great Green Bay Packer coach, Vince Lombardi. The Packers won the first Super Bowl in 1967 and the Super Bowl trophy is dedicated to him. He was a no nonsense coach and his motivational skills were legendary. He had a saying about giving up: “Winners never quit and quitters never win.”
Stirring words, for sure. But, more often than not, wrong.
All through history, winners have quit one thing and moved on to another. Matthew tells us that Jesus “left Nazareth and settled in Capernaum, which lies alongside the sea,” where he began his ministry (4:13). Simon Peter and Andrew quit fishing and followed Jesus (4:20). Saul quit “spewing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples” and became an apostle (Acts 9).
And the quitting has continued, right up to the present day. Evan Harris authored a book a decade ago entitled, The Art of Quitting. He says that quitting has always been cool. “Our country was founded by quitters. They left England and said, ‘Forget this. We are so out of here. We are not putting up with this anymore.’ ” The colonists quit paying the tea and stamp taxes and stopped letting the British army commandeer their homes.
Abraham Lincoln quit being an owner of a general store and entered politics. Julia Child quit being a CIA intelligence officer and became a world-famous cook. Harrison Ford quit being a professional carpenter when he was offered a part in a little movie called Star Wars. “Grandma” Moses quit selling potato chips and began to paint ... at age 80.
Clearly, quitting is not always what it is put down as. Quitting may be the best thing that could be done by a person.
I’m sure that you have heard the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again exactly the same way and expecting different results. Someone doesn’t know when to quit.
Jesus told a parable about quitting. The context was a question intended to trap him. It was asked by a group of leading priests and elders intent on catching Jesus in some heretical claim of being God. Not to be outmaneuvered, Jesus offered to answer their question if they would answer one of his own. “Where did John get his authority to baptize? Did he get it from heaven or from humans?”
Even though the religious leaders did not openly speak to the matter of John, their authority went south as soon as they started discussing among themselves the pros and cons of the answers. The question put them in a bad light whether they answered heaven or human about John. Did you notice that their fear of the crowd in the temple had a major impact on their thinking? The most learned people in the land decided to play dumb and feigned ignorance about Jesus’ question – “We don’t know.” Their failure to give Jesus a confident and decisive answer clearly showed that they were backed into a corner. Their credibility was severely eroded.
Jesus pushed the leaders’ discomfiture by telling a parable about man who had two sons whom he expected to go work in the family’s vineyard. The father approached the first son and told him to go work in the vineyard. We don’t know if this was the older son or just the first one he came upon. This young man had a full schedule and didn’t want to have to change his plans, so he said that he couldn’t go. Later he changed his mind, cleared his calendar, and went to the vineyard to work.
The father came to the other son and told him to go work in the vineyard. This son enthusiastically said “Yes,” but he never showed up at the vineyard.
Jesus asked, “Which one of these two did the father’s will?” The religious leaders couldn’t avoid the obvious conclusion. The first son, even though he had at first refused to go and then had a change of heart, was the one who obeyed the father.
“Well, guess what?” said Jesus tells the religious folk. “Tax collectors and prostitutes, crooks and whores are beating a path to God’s kingdom and will get there long before you will.”
As they all gasped and gaped at him, he said, “Pay attention! John came pointing out the righteous road – the repentance route – and you all thumbed your noses at him. But the sinners believed him. They saw the truth of what John said and they did exactly what they needed to do.” As Jesus saw it, the religious leaders were totally oblivious to the change that took place in the sinners. They thought that the sinners were losers and that they were winners. They saw no need to quit what they were doing, no necessity to change their minds and believe John’s message. And if they didn’t believe John’s message, they certainly were not going to be affected by anything that Jesus would say to them.
So, the quitters, the ones willing to change, will lead the way into the kingdom of God.
What has God been asking, even telling, you to do? That would be a great question to break into twos and threes and discuss. Except that very few of us would be willing to admit publicly, let alone personally come to terms with, a direct request from God. It’s more than a matter of grapes not getting picked. And our refusal, probably doesn’t result in a life-threatening storm like the one that Jonah brought on the unsuspecting sailors of his getaway ship. Nevertheless, God calls us to quit and to start anew.
Most of the time God’s commands are not short and sweet. The father said to the sons, “Go work in the vineyard.” God’s commands are often broader and more general, like “Love your neighbor.” That allows us a lot of wiggle room for finding ways around them, ways of demonizing the other person so that we can hold our righteous heads high by calling them losers and sinners not worth our care, and thinking that God shouldn’t care about them either.
Unfortunately, that was the attitude of the religious leaders who pooh-poohed the Baptizer and were bent on discrediting Jesus’ message.
If we get off our holier-than-thou pedestals, there are ways to discern God’s will for us which faithful sisters and brothers have developed across the centuries since Pentecost.
A 16th-century spiritual director, Ignatius Loyola, asks us first to clarify the goal of our life: To have a loving relationship with God. We can make a number of choices about how we will achieve this goal, and every choice should move us a little closer to God. We might start a business, go back to school, get married, change jobs, even retire. The important thing is to begin with the goal in mind: to follow Christ into an ever deeper and more loving relationship with God.
With a clear goal we can tackle the hard work of decision-making. That includes figuring out how to stop avoiding what God wants us to do, and how to start working in God's vineyard. What are the pros and cons? What do truth-telling friends think? Spend time in prayer, talk to God about your decision, and see if you are given greater clarity about your choice. Ignatius believed that “we can discern the right choice by attending to the inner movements of our spirit.”
It’s not always a quick process. Sometimes, we have to live with a sense of restlessness as God pushes us in a new direction. At other times, we might feel peaceful about a decision but then discover that our serenity is really laziness in disguise. Ignatius wants us to continue examining our decisions and make choices that increase the feelings of faith, hope and love within ourselves.
When we quit doing what holds us back and what keeps us from God, we are in a position to start doing God’s intended work, and to change our lives for the better. If we feel that we're avoiding what God wants us to do, it’s time to stop what we're doing, examine our goals, define anew what it means to have a loving relationship with God, and make changes which will better use our time and talents as workers in God's vineyard.
When we quit keeping God out of our lives, we might become true winners, followers of Jesus and participants in a more loving relationship with God.
But you can’t start unless you quit.
Let us pray.
God of new beginnings, challenge us to examine our lives for the activities and attitudes we need to quit so that we may start the new things which will bring us into a deeper relationship with your Son Jesus, whose call, “Follow me,” is the most worthy goal for us. Infuse us with your Spirit, we humbly pray. Amen.
General Resource: Homiletics, September 2014, pp. 35-39.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Who Are the Weak?
Romans 14:1-12; Exodus 14:19-31; Matthew 18:21-35
Violence. It’s everywhere. We’ve just gone through a week of discussion about the video of Ray Rice punching his fiancee. In the weeks before that it was the violence allegedly begun by the shooting of an unarmed African American by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. A meme going around Facebook says that more American children have died from gun violence than American soldiers died in the Iraqi and Afghan war zones during the last ten years. On the international side of things, we have had two videoed beheadings by ISIS, rocket and mortar assaults on Gaza City and the West Bank, and fighting in eastern Ukraine. And who knows what other violence didn’t make the headlines.
Secretary of State John Kerry is shuttling among capitals trying to resolve international conflicts. Former FBI director Robert Mueller will investigate the NFL’s response to the Ray Rice video. It is not just instantaneous media. People seem to have quicker tempers that they used to. We need ways in which to address conflict between individuals, between social groups, between ideologies, between cultures, between nations.
The church is not exempt from conflict. Across the centuries Christians have flared up about important things and things hardly important in the larger scope of faith. We Presbyterians are in the season of peacemaking. The original Commitment to Peacemaking began thirty years ago. It sought to address peacemaking skills and needs between individuals, in families, in communities, and in the global arena. A number of years ago, another emphasis was added, peacemaking with the earth.
Jesus said that he came bringing a sword which would divide. He meant that his words of truth would divide those who gratefully receive God’s grace from those who deny God and reject the love which God wishes to lavish on humanity. But Jesus’ sword is not to be used to bludgeon people into faith or destroy those who have not yet figured out that Christ’s glory is beneficial for them.
In today’s reading from the Roman letter, Paul offers spiritual guidance to prevent conflict. He knows that the root of conflict is not only differences of opinion but also differences in power. Paul encouraged the Romans, the people of the empire, not just to tolerate those who were weak in faith, but to show hospitality, to extend an extra measure of patience and to make the weak feel welcomed.
Who are the weak? And how can those who are weak and those who are strong live together in Christ? Who are the weak? Are the weak those who suffer from substance abuse? Are the weak those who suffer from mental illness? Are the weak those who are developmentally disabled? Are the weak those who are blown about by every fad and whim that comes along? Are the weak the vulnerable new immigrants not yet acclimated to our culture? Are the weak those who are educationally disadvantaged? Are the weak the youth who sometimes risk life and limb to scramble into the country, often illegally because the risk is less dangerous than staying home? Are the weak those who make $7.35 an hour (federal minimum wage) and have to pay half of that for substandard housing, and then are expected to pay utilities and put food on the table for and clothes on the backs of themselves and any dependents with what is left?
Who are the weak? Are the weak those who can run up billions of dollars in debts and get off scot-free? Or those who run up a few thousand in debts and get thrown into the poor house? That’s the upshot of the story that Jesus posed to the disciples.
Paul posits that the weak are more than those who are behind the economic eightball. Are the weak those who operate under a very narrow system of belief? Or are the strong those who seem to have a very broad approach to faith. Or is it the other way around?
In the Roman Christian community, there was conflict between Christians with a Jewish heritage and Christians who never were Jews. The Jewish Christians knew exactly how to behave. They followed the Jewish kosher laws and added Christ’s salvation to their faith. But what did it mean to be an observant Gentile Christian? The dietary laws and the rest of the Mosaic legal system was foreign to them. Did they have to give up meat? Could they have a glass of wine? Which day was the Sabbath – Saturday or Sunday?
Christians today have the same kind of differences. Does a Christian wear a cross or not? Must a Christian carry a Bible? And which Bible? Are only certain Bibles okay? Do we have to be born again? Do we only baptize adults or is it all right to baptize children?
We live in a world where these kinds of questions are roiling Christian communities. Similar questions are just as prevalent in Jewish and Islamic faith communities. Do all Jews have to be ultra-Zionists? Or are all Muslims jihadists?
There may be two thousand years of calendar pages intervening, but being a Christian today isn’t all that different from being a Christian in the Roman Empire in Paul’s day. The main difference is trajectory. In Paul’s day, being a Christian was a new thing. It called into question the prevailing beliefs and practices of the day, including the cult of the emperor which pervaded all the civil practices. Jesus Christ offered an alternative loyalty.
Faith in Christ today takes on a similar alternative because the emerging church today realizes that the two millennia of the ascendency of Christianity in the European-North American world has left the faith that Paul transmitted eviscerated and reduced in meaning. A watered-down Christianity is so ubiquitous that almost anyone can claim it. The struggle of the church is to reclaim Christ in the fullness of the gospel. And that causes the same kind of conflict as Paul faced with the Jewish and Gentile Christians.
Instead of arguing over meat and beverages, Christians argue over secondary and tertiary understandings and explanations of what the grace, forgiveness, and lordship of Jesus Christ means. Must Christians eschew anything but the simplest of understandings in reading the ageless texts? Or does God continue to reveal God’s self in new ways to succeeding generations? Or is God to be worshiped only with organs, preferably piped, and never with guitars and drums and tambourines, even though those instruments, not organs, are mentioned in scripture? And must joyful noises be only in four-part harmony rather than one-part unison? The conflicts go on and on. Christians are at each other’s theological throats.
Paul says that there is another way to deal with this. It’s the faith way. Paul acknowledges that people can hold radically different convictions and still be good and faithful people. Paul is helping persons in the early Christian community to resist demonizing each other. He teaches sincere, heart-felt, respectful disagreement.
Who are the weak? We are the weak. We are the those who are so deep in debt to God that we have no choice but to bow before our maker, admit our inability to pay up, and receive saving forgiveness. Unlike the mega-bankrupt servant who pitches a fit at the fellow servant who owes him a pittance, God looks at the life-debt which each of us has run up and forgives us, wipes the slate clean, and gives us a perfect 850 FICO score (not the bank version) but “Faith in Christ Overall.”
Who are the weak? We are. And in Christ there are neither weak nor strong. For all of us are God-imaged sisters and brothers, accountable to God for each other as well as ourselves. “Whether we live or die, we belong to God.” Thanks be to God.
Let us pray.
Forgiving God, you don’t ignore our debts. In our weakness, you tally them up and pay them off with your forgiving love. Grant us forgiving grace to forsake self-imposed notions of strength so that we may accept each other as you accept us, free and clear, and fully welcomed in your eternal realm. Amen.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Violence. It’s everywhere. We’ve just gone through a week of discussion about the video of Ray Rice punching his fiancee. In the weeks before that it was the violence allegedly begun by the shooting of an unarmed African American by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. A meme going around Facebook says that more American children have died from gun violence than American soldiers died in the Iraqi and Afghan war zones during the last ten years. On the international side of things, we have had two videoed beheadings by ISIS, rocket and mortar assaults on Gaza City and the West Bank, and fighting in eastern Ukraine. And who knows what other violence didn’t make the headlines.
Secretary of State John Kerry is shuttling among capitals trying to resolve international conflicts. Former FBI director Robert Mueller will investigate the NFL’s response to the Ray Rice video. It is not just instantaneous media. People seem to have quicker tempers that they used to. We need ways in which to address conflict between individuals, between social groups, between ideologies, between cultures, between nations.
The church is not exempt from conflict. Across the centuries Christians have flared up about important things and things hardly important in the larger scope of faith. We Presbyterians are in the season of peacemaking. The original Commitment to Peacemaking began thirty years ago. It sought to address peacemaking skills and needs between individuals, in families, in communities, and in the global arena. A number of years ago, another emphasis was added, peacemaking with the earth.
Jesus said that he came bringing a sword which would divide. He meant that his words of truth would divide those who gratefully receive God’s grace from those who deny God and reject the love which God wishes to lavish on humanity. But Jesus’ sword is not to be used to bludgeon people into faith or destroy those who have not yet figured out that Christ’s glory is beneficial for them.
In today’s reading from the Roman letter, Paul offers spiritual guidance to prevent conflict. He knows that the root of conflict is not only differences of opinion but also differences in power. Paul encouraged the Romans, the people of the empire, not just to tolerate those who were weak in faith, but to show hospitality, to extend an extra measure of patience and to make the weak feel welcomed.
Who are the weak? And how can those who are weak and those who are strong live together in Christ? Who are the weak? Are the weak those who suffer from substance abuse? Are the weak those who suffer from mental illness? Are the weak those who are developmentally disabled? Are the weak those who are blown about by every fad and whim that comes along? Are the weak the vulnerable new immigrants not yet acclimated to our culture? Are the weak those who are educationally disadvantaged? Are the weak the youth who sometimes risk life and limb to scramble into the country, often illegally because the risk is less dangerous than staying home? Are the weak those who make $7.35 an hour (federal minimum wage) and have to pay half of that for substandard housing, and then are expected to pay utilities and put food on the table for and clothes on the backs of themselves and any dependents with what is left?
Who are the weak? Are the weak those who can run up billions of dollars in debts and get off scot-free? Or those who run up a few thousand in debts and get thrown into the poor house? That’s the upshot of the story that Jesus posed to the disciples.
Paul posits that the weak are more than those who are behind the economic eightball. Are the weak those who operate under a very narrow system of belief? Or are the strong those who seem to have a very broad approach to faith. Or is it the other way around?
In the Roman Christian community, there was conflict between Christians with a Jewish heritage and Christians who never were Jews. The Jewish Christians knew exactly how to behave. They followed the Jewish kosher laws and added Christ’s salvation to their faith. But what did it mean to be an observant Gentile Christian? The dietary laws and the rest of the Mosaic legal system was foreign to them. Did they have to give up meat? Could they have a glass of wine? Which day was the Sabbath – Saturday or Sunday?
Christians today have the same kind of differences. Does a Christian wear a cross or not? Must a Christian carry a Bible? And which Bible? Are only certain Bibles okay? Do we have to be born again? Do we only baptize adults or is it all right to baptize children?
We live in a world where these kinds of questions are roiling Christian communities. Similar questions are just as prevalent in Jewish and Islamic faith communities. Do all Jews have to be ultra-Zionists? Or are all Muslims jihadists?
There may be two thousand years of calendar pages intervening, but being a Christian today isn’t all that different from being a Christian in the Roman Empire in Paul’s day. The main difference is trajectory. In Paul’s day, being a Christian was a new thing. It called into question the prevailing beliefs and practices of the day, including the cult of the emperor which pervaded all the civil practices. Jesus Christ offered an alternative loyalty.
Faith in Christ today takes on a similar alternative because the emerging church today realizes that the two millennia of the ascendency of Christianity in the European-North American world has left the faith that Paul transmitted eviscerated and reduced in meaning. A watered-down Christianity is so ubiquitous that almost anyone can claim it. The struggle of the church is to reclaim Christ in the fullness of the gospel. And that causes the same kind of conflict as Paul faced with the Jewish and Gentile Christians.
Instead of arguing over meat and beverages, Christians argue over secondary and tertiary understandings and explanations of what the grace, forgiveness, and lordship of Jesus Christ means. Must Christians eschew anything but the simplest of understandings in reading the ageless texts? Or does God continue to reveal God’s self in new ways to succeeding generations? Or is God to be worshiped only with organs, preferably piped, and never with guitars and drums and tambourines, even though those instruments, not organs, are mentioned in scripture? And must joyful noises be only in four-part harmony rather than one-part unison? The conflicts go on and on. Christians are at each other’s theological throats.
Paul says that there is another way to deal with this. It’s the faith way. Paul acknowledges that people can hold radically different convictions and still be good and faithful people. Paul is helping persons in the early Christian community to resist demonizing each other. He teaches sincere, heart-felt, respectful disagreement.
We don’t live for ourselves and we don’t die for ourselves. If we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we belong to God. This is why Christ died and lived: so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.Just as there is no “I” in team, there is no place for self-centeredness in Christ, because as Christians our entire life is ultimately centered on Christ.
Who are the weak? We are the weak. We are the those who are so deep in debt to God that we have no choice but to bow before our maker, admit our inability to pay up, and receive saving forgiveness. Unlike the mega-bankrupt servant who pitches a fit at the fellow servant who owes him a pittance, God looks at the life-debt which each of us has run up and forgives us, wipes the slate clean, and gives us a perfect 850 FICO score (not the bank version) but “Faith in Christ Overall.”
Who are the weak? We are. And in Christ there are neither weak nor strong. For all of us are God-imaged sisters and brothers, accountable to God for each other as well as ourselves. “Whether we live or die, we belong to God.” Thanks be to God.
Let us pray.
Forgiving God, you don’t ignore our debts. In our weakness, you tally them up and pay them off with your forgiving love. Grant us forgiving grace to forsake self-imposed notions of strength so that we may accept each other as you accept us, free and clear, and fully welcomed in your eternal realm. Amen.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Gyroscopic Grace
Matthew 18:12-22; Romans 13:8-14
No matter how you twist and turn your tablet or smartphone, the image manages to move right with you. Thanks to a nifty little thing called a gyroscope, everything stays “right-side up.” Don’t you wish lots of things in life had a gyroscope? Wouldn’t it be nice, if, no matter how turned around things got, there was always a way to get right-side up?
It’s like magic, isn’t it? No matter how many times you flip or turn your smartphone or tablet, the screen turns right along with you, keeping whatever it is you’re looking at right-side-up.
Chances are, the first time this screen flip happened to you, you were a bit unnerved. Now the feature is standard on just about every piece of mobile technology. We’re not used to things righting themselves. Typically, if something’s out of whack in life, we notice it and try to make it right. How many times have we straightened the picture over the sofa? Perhaps that’s what makes the screen on your smartphone so endearing. It does the fixing itself.
It isn’t magic that keeps our little screens in sync with us. It’s science. Inside your favorite device is a gyroscope, which – when coupled with an accelerometer – senses precise motion along six axes: up/down, left/right, forward/backward. It even keeps tabs on the speed with which you move. The result is a phone that not only keeps your pictures facing the right direction, but a phone that can track the number of steps you take while power-walking the indoor track at the Activity Center. The gyroscope also helps in playing some neat video games.
In today’s gospel reading, we hear Jesus urging us to keep our relationships right-side up. The only problem is that, unlike our smartphones and iPads, we don’t have built-in gyroscopes making it automatic and easy. At least that’s the assumption. But God has given us a grace that can be a gyroscope for our lives. This “gyroscopic grace” will unfailingly, and without any merit of our own, get us right-side-up with God.
Normally we do not start today’s reading with the story of the shepherd seeking out the 100th sheep which has wandered off. Yet the story is an exquisite lead-in to the core of the discussion about forgiveness. Verse 14 summarizes the teaching in this section: not a single person should be lost; no one is expendable; each one is worthy of being pursued to the point of risking everything.
Besides passing on the words and actions of Jesus, Matthew was also speaking words of support and admonishment to the community of believers who would be the first to get his gospel account.
Jewish believers in Christ were being barred from the synagogues because the Jewish leaders deemed that they were breaking the covenant. The synagogue leaders where trying to maintain the delicate balance of toleration with which the Roman authorities viewed them. The behavior of the Christ-followers could bring Roman approbation down on them.
Jesus’ teaching set the will of God in opposition to the will of the Emperor. It was the will of God that was to rule the faith community. God’s will is that all are to be saved; no one is to be lost. Christ’s followers don’t forget the believer who goes off by herself. Nor to they ignore the follower who has wandered mistakenly in his application of Jesus’ teaching.
The community of faith is a family. We all know that family members get off-kilter with each other. In the church family sometimes, it’s over trivial things. Snarky comments made at board meetings and people disagree about simple things, like where to put the tables and who will be in charge of the cups. Sometimes we get sideways with one another over truly sinful and downright evil things.
The picture is turned upside down and, no matter how vigorously we shake the relationship, it doesn’t fix itself. We have to take action.
Only there isn’t a shining knight to come riding into town on a large white horse. Nor does Jesus magically materialize to scold, teach, and reconcile disagreeing parties. All we have is each other, imperfect as we are, hurtful and hurting, arrogant and abashed, adamant and apologetic.
The individual and then the community is charged to go. They must never give up, just as the shepherd never gave up on the 100th sheep. He would either bring it back alive or know that it had been the victim of a predator. If the community’s attitude is reconciliation, and if the community has tried diligently to reconcile the offender, then if the person refuses to be brought back into the fold, their exclusion is their own doing. They have been devoured by sin. They are, to use Matthew’s terms, like a Gentile or a tax collector. Yet Jesus ate with Gentiles, tax collectors and sinners. This was not casual shoulder rubbing. Eating was the most intimate of public relationships. The community must never give up.
South Africa’s Anglican Archbishop, Desmond Tutu, was a driving force behind that country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As the Afrikaner regime handed power over to leaders elected by all the people, there arose a need for special tribunals to heal the wounds caused by decades of racial discrimination. Tutu later confessed his astonishment at the ability of South Africans to achieve reconciliation. Tutu said this in a 1997 interview:
We all need Jesus Christ between us. That is how we can forgive seventy-seven times.
Jubal Early, a key Confederate general in the Battles of Bull Run (Manassas), after the war became a very angry, bitter and vindictive man, feeding a hatred for people of the North. Robert E. Lee invested a lot of time in seeking and securing forgiveness for both sides. He once asked General Early, “Do you still hold to that harsh, unforgiving spirit?”
“I certainly do. I will never forgive.”
To which Lee responded, “Then, my friend, I hope you never need forgiveness yourself, for the one who refuses to forgive destroys the bridge over which he himself must pass.”(3)
The reading ends up where it began. It doesn’t focus on the offender but on the behavior of the offended community. The community is always called to be the good shepherd, living with Jesus between itself and the offender. Jesus – the Word made flesh – is the gyroscope that sets things right.
May the gyroscopic grace of Christ be with this and every Christ community.
(1) Bishop Desmond Tutu, interview in Commonweal, September 12, 1997.
(2) Shared by John Shearman, “Opening Comments for Sunday September 7 2014 which is the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 18. Year A,” midrash@joinhands.com; Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 10:14 PM.
(3) Shared by Rev. Dan Francis, Latonia Baptist Church, Covington, Kentucky, in the September 2014 issue of Homiletics.
General Resources:
“Gyroscopic Grace,” Homiletics, September 2014
Ada María Isasi Díaz, “Theological Perspective: Matthew 18:12-22,” Feasting on the Gospels - Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013) vol 2, pp. 92-96.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
No matter how you twist and turn your tablet or smartphone, the image manages to move right with you. Thanks to a nifty little thing called a gyroscope, everything stays “right-side up.” Don’t you wish lots of things in life had a gyroscope? Wouldn’t it be nice, if, no matter how turned around things got, there was always a way to get right-side up?
It’s like magic, isn’t it? No matter how many times you flip or turn your smartphone or tablet, the screen turns right along with you, keeping whatever it is you’re looking at right-side-up.
Chances are, the first time this screen flip happened to you, you were a bit unnerved. Now the feature is standard on just about every piece of mobile technology. We’re not used to things righting themselves. Typically, if something’s out of whack in life, we notice it and try to make it right. How many times have we straightened the picture over the sofa? Perhaps that’s what makes the screen on your smartphone so endearing. It does the fixing itself.
It isn’t magic that keeps our little screens in sync with us. It’s science. Inside your favorite device is a gyroscope, which – when coupled with an accelerometer – senses precise motion along six axes: up/down, left/right, forward/backward. It even keeps tabs on the speed with which you move. The result is a phone that not only keeps your pictures facing the right direction, but a phone that can track the number of steps you take while power-walking the indoor track at the Activity Center. The gyroscope also helps in playing some neat video games.
In today’s gospel reading, we hear Jesus urging us to keep our relationships right-side up. The only problem is that, unlike our smartphones and iPads, we don’t have built-in gyroscopes making it automatic and easy. At least that’s the assumption. But God has given us a grace that can be a gyroscope for our lives. This “gyroscopic grace” will unfailingly, and without any merit of our own, get us right-side-up with God.
Normally we do not start today’s reading with the story of the shepherd seeking out the 100th sheep which has wandered off. Yet the story is an exquisite lead-in to the core of the discussion about forgiveness. Verse 14 summarizes the teaching in this section: not a single person should be lost; no one is expendable; each one is worthy of being pursued to the point of risking everything.
Besides passing on the words and actions of Jesus, Matthew was also speaking words of support and admonishment to the community of believers who would be the first to get his gospel account.
Jewish believers in Christ were being barred from the synagogues because the Jewish leaders deemed that they were breaking the covenant. The synagogue leaders where trying to maintain the delicate balance of toleration with which the Roman authorities viewed them. The behavior of the Christ-followers could bring Roman approbation down on them.
Jesus’ teaching set the will of God in opposition to the will of the Emperor. It was the will of God that was to rule the faith community. God’s will is that all are to be saved; no one is to be lost. Christ’s followers don’t forget the believer who goes off by herself. Nor to they ignore the follower who has wandered mistakenly in his application of Jesus’ teaching.
The community of faith is a family. We all know that family members get off-kilter with each other. In the church family sometimes, it’s over trivial things. Snarky comments made at board meetings and people disagree about simple things, like where to put the tables and who will be in charge of the cups. Sometimes we get sideways with one another over truly sinful and downright evil things.
- Lies get told.
- Money goes missing.
- Power gets protected or foisted.
- Promises get broken.
- People behave badly and inappropriately.
- Factions form and people take sides.
The picture is turned upside down and, no matter how vigorously we shake the relationship, it doesn’t fix itself. We have to take action.
Only there isn’t a shining knight to come riding into town on a large white horse. Nor does Jesus magically materialize to scold, teach, and reconcile disagreeing parties. All we have is each other, imperfect as we are, hurtful and hurting, arrogant and abashed, adamant and apologetic.
The individual and then the community is charged to go. They must never give up, just as the shepherd never gave up on the 100th sheep. He would either bring it back alive or know that it had been the victim of a predator. If the community’s attitude is reconciliation, and if the community has tried diligently to reconcile the offender, then if the person refuses to be brought back into the fold, their exclusion is their own doing. They have been devoured by sin. They are, to use Matthew’s terms, like a Gentile or a tax collector. Yet Jesus ate with Gentiles, tax collectors and sinners. This was not casual shoulder rubbing. Eating was the most intimate of public relationships. The community must never give up.
South Africa’s Anglican Archbishop, Desmond Tutu, was a driving force behind that country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As the Afrikaner regime handed power over to leaders elected by all the people, there arose a need for special tribunals to heal the wounds caused by decades of racial discrimination. Tutu later confessed his astonishment at the ability of South Africans to achieve reconciliation. Tutu said this in a 1997 interview:
“I have found breathtaking and, in fact, exhilarating, the magnanimity of people, the incredible nobility of spirit of people who have suffered as much as they have suffered. So many of them are ready to forgive, which sometimes makes you feel as though you should take your shoes off because you are stepping on holy ground.”In the interview Tutu makes it clear how difficult it is to achieve true reconciliation:
“[People] think that reconciliation is patting each other on the back and saying it’s all right. Reconciliation is costly, and it involves confrontation. Otherwise, Jesus Christ would not have died on the cross. He came and achieved for us reconciliation. But he confronted people and caused division.”(1)Resolution – reconciliation – can only happen after conflict. If believers are never to give up, then the strongest outcome is expressed in verses 19 and 20:
“I assure you that if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, then my Father who is in heaven will do it for you. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I’m there with them.”This tradition spoken by Jesus may have originally come from an earlier Jewish saying which found its way into the Mishnah of the 2nd century CE as a commentary on Psalm 1:1. That saying defined the “seat of the scoffers” (or “disrespectful”) as two Jews together without the words of Torah between them, whereas having the Torah between them, they had the Shekinah of Yahweh’s presence.(2)
We all need Jesus Christ between us. That is how we can forgive seventy-seven times.
Jubal Early, a key Confederate general in the Battles of Bull Run (Manassas), after the war became a very angry, bitter and vindictive man, feeding a hatred for people of the North. Robert E. Lee invested a lot of time in seeking and securing forgiveness for both sides. He once asked General Early, “Do you still hold to that harsh, unforgiving spirit?”
“I certainly do. I will never forgive.”
To which Lee responded, “Then, my friend, I hope you never need forgiveness yourself, for the one who refuses to forgive destroys the bridge over which he himself must pass.”(3)
The reading ends up where it began. It doesn’t focus on the offender but on the behavior of the offended community. The community is always called to be the good shepherd, living with Jesus between itself and the offender. Jesus – the Word made flesh – is the gyroscope that sets things right.
May the gyroscopic grace of Christ be with this and every Christ community.
(1) Bishop Desmond Tutu, interview in Commonweal, September 12, 1997.
(2) Shared by John Shearman, “Opening Comments for Sunday September 7 2014 which is the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 18. Year A,” midrash@joinhands.com; Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 10:14 PM.
(3) Shared by Rev. Dan Francis, Latonia Baptist Church, Covington, Kentucky, in the September 2014 issue of Homiletics.
General Resources:
“Gyroscopic Grace,” Homiletics, September 2014
Ada María Isasi Díaz, “Theological Perspective: Matthew 18:12-22,” Feasting on the Gospels - Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013) vol 2, pp. 92-96.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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