God's Economy: A Sermon for 18 September 2011

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La.

We really don’t like this story, do we?

I mean, listen to this! Here’s Jesus once again teaching his disciples using his favorite method: a parable (Matthew 20:1-16, NRSV). The characters in the parable are easily recognized by us. The Master of the Vineyard is, of course, God.

Because Jesus is speaking, I’m guessing many of us immediately think “God the Father.” But the Master of the Vineyard could also be Jesus the Christ, who was, after all, frequently called “Master” by his disciples, and did, after all, sometimes refer to himself in the third person.

Either way, the Master of the Vineyard is clearly a personification of the one and only God we worship.

The workers are, of course, us. And we recognize each type. Being good church people, we are probably the ones ready and eager to go into the vineyard at the break of day, and stay at it all day.

We do it, at least in part, because we are good church people. We’re loyal and committed. We believe in our work, that it is a good thing to do. We have a strong work ethic. We’re not slackers!

We look with disdain on those we perceive to be slackers. And we are pretty sure those who show up to be hired late in the day, and who therefore put in only an hour of work, are slackers. 

Parable of the Workers of the Vineyard, by Rembrandt

                                       
It goes without saying that we expect to be rewarded for our hard work, and we expect those we have judged to be slackers to at least earn less, if not be outright penalized for their lesser effort.

Sound familiar? It should, because it is a system devised by humans for the purpose of regulating human behavior. It’s called the merit system, and we are quite devoted to it. 

And I will certainly grant you that it makes a certain kind of sense and accomplishes certain things in the world of human endeavor. One of the hats I wear is that of a member of the Board of Control of the Ouachita Parish Public Library system. Just this past week, we decided, in these days of economic constraint, that the only raises the library system will give this year will be merit raises.

Last year we gave an across-the-board, cost-of-living raise to everyone. But we agreed that we could only do that occasionally. We agreed that merit raises hold people accountable and are an incentive to work harder and better.

So, yes, the merit system has value in the quid pro quo world of human endeavor.

But we get confused. As with so many things that seem necessary to make human societies function, we imbue the merit system with moral virtue. We even come to think it so wonderful that we are quite sure God must have invented it.

The story of creation in Genesis says that God made us in his image. But we humans put the cart in front of the horse all the time. We think that because we are made in God’s image, therefore God must think like us.

We would be wrong.

And as people of the Good News, who purport to not only believe in but follow Jesus, we really should know better.

Jesus tells us and shows us, over and over again, in myriad ways, that the human economy of merit falls short. He teaches it through his criticism of the scribes and Pharisees—the good church people of his day—who believe they are earning their way to heaven by following the letter of the law.

He teaches it with parables like the one about the treasures accumulated on earth through our economy of merit, treasures that will rot and rust and be stolen by thieves.

He shows it by insisting upon associating with, even eating with, all those people who don’t measure up according to the economy of merit: prostitutes, poor people, even tax collectors.

He preaches it in the Sermon on the Mount with its series of inversions: The meek shall inherit the earth! Really, now? Not in the economy of merit, they won’t!

He teaches it in today’s lesson: The last shall be first and the first shall be last. And who are any of you, you good church people, to say I can’t do what I want with what belongs to me?

Fr. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan monk and Roman Catholic priest. He writes prolifically and publishes both books and an online daily meditation. He is another of my favorite spiritual mentors.

Fr. Richard says that the gospel—the good news taught by Jesus—won’t make much sense to those who are committed to worthiness, competition and rewards—in other words, to the economy of merit.

That’s because the very heart of the Gospel is that God’s economy is one of grace, radical grace, offered to us as unconditional love—a wedding feast of God’s love.

Sounds fabulous, right? So why do we have such a hard time accepting it? Why do we cling so tightly to our economy of merit?

Well, for one thing, we really aren’t sure we want to rub elbows with all the folks who are invited to God’s feast of unconditional love. The economy of merit feeds our pride in accomplishment, our pride in being the ones who show up for work at the break of day. The economy of merit allows us to think we are better than the ones who show up at noon, or late afternoon, for heaven’s sake.

But Paul, in the passage read today from his letter to the Philippians (1:21-30, NRSV), gives us a glimpse of what happens when we accept God’s unconditional love and embrace God’s economy of grace. Remember that Paul wrote this letter from a Roman jail under threat of execution. Yet he is free, free even from fear of death. Living is Christ and dying is gain, he rejoices, and I do not know which I prefer.

Then Paul admonishes us to live a life worthy of the Gospel of Christ. But note that the purpose is not to merit God’s love. Rather, following Jesus the Christ serves as evidence of our salvation in the face of a hurting and sometimes evil world.

Or, as Fr. Richard puts it, God does not love us because we are good. We are good because God loves us.

AMEN

                  

Practice Blessing: A Sermon for 28 August 2011

Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, La.

In today’s lessons, people who are trying to serve God engage in intense struggles with the world. First is Moses, called by God from the burning bush that is not consumed to lead the Hebrew people out of bondage in Egypt (Exodus 3:1-15, NRSV). 

Moses struggles throughout this story with his fears. First he fears God and hides his face. Then he fears Pharaoh. After all, he is in the wilderness precisely because he is a fugitive from Pharaoh’s justice, having slain an Egyptian who had been beating a Hebrew slave.

Moses and the Burning Bush

When God reassures him on that point, Moses struggles further with his fears, this time in relationship to the Isrealites themselves. He needs a credential, and God provides it: Say that “I AM,” the God of your ancestors, has sent you.

This is a “good news, bad news” story. The good news, or "gospel" message, is that the Lord God has seen the affliction of God's people and has come to deliver them from slavery and oppression. The bad news, for Moses, is that responding to the good news requires him to go way out of his comfort zone.

The story from Matthew’s Gospel (16: 21-28, NRSV) is a prediction of the suffering and death of Jesus. We know, of course, that it was written well after those events had taken place. Thus the vantage point is post-resurrection and the writer believes that Jesus’ death and resurrection had been necessary to his salvation, just as we believe today they were necessary to our salvation.

In that light, Peter seems rather clueless, if not an outright obstacle to what Jesus needed to accomplish. At the same time, who among us, not yet comprehending God’s plan for our salvation, would not have acted as Peter did? Would we not also have said, No, Lord, that can’t be. That you should suffer so is unacceptable.

Jesus rebukes Peter sharply. Wasn’t it just last Sunday and a couple of chapters ago that he was saying to Peter, You are the rock on which I will build my church? Yet today he says to Peter, Get thee behind me Satan.
                           

The sharpness of Jesus’ rebuke suggests two things: First, he did have a clue to what was coming, and, second, he was struggling with that awareness. How could he go through with such a horrendous reality if his own closest friends and followers were going to try to talk him out of it? Indeed, were not prepared to go through it with him?

In other words, the story both suggests what God was to accomplish with that cruel death—namely our ultimate deliverance from death—even as it makes clear that the price of deliverance is affliction and suffering. If any want to become my followers, Jesus says, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

In today’s Epistle, the Apostle Paul provides guidelines for how we should live in response to the gospel proclaimed by these stories (Romans 12:9-21). And just as Jesus’ statement suggest, Paul’s guidelines reveal that it will be a struggle and it will take us out of our comfort zone.

Much has been made over the centuries of the supposed conflict between a good, omnipotent God and the persistence of evil in the world. Underlying that debate is the notion that it’s God’s responsibility to fix evil in the world.

But Paul makes it perfectly clear that countering evil is our job, and in the passage from Romans just read, Paul focuses on how we are to counter evil. He provides us with an impressive list, the bottom line being quite simple and succinct: We are to overcome evil with good.

Our human tendency is to think that we must overcome evil with much more aggressive strategies than those listed here. I suppose that is, at least in part, because we fear evil and when we are afraid, a peaceful counter to the threat is about the last thing that occurs to us. We want to “fight fire with fire.” We believe that “the best defense is a good offense,” and so forth.

But that is hardly what Paul commands and that is precisely why his instructions take us out of our comfort zone. We are to hate evil but respond to it with love and nobility and leave vengeance to God.

One of the strategies Paul suggests for countering evil in this familiar passage strikes me today in a way it never has before. It comes about a third of the way in: Bless those who persecute you, Paul says, bless and do not curse them.

Wow. What a thought. And it strikes me today because I just finished reading a book that I think I mentioned to you a few weeks ago. The book is An Altar in the World by Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor.

The book is about how to draw closer to God through the demands, struggles and pleasures of everyday life. Spirituality is not just for formal worship experiences, Taylor argues. Rather, we can turn many aspects of our daily life into spiritual practices.

She begins with a chapter called “The Practice of Waking Up to God,” followed by chapters called “The Practice of Paying Attention,” “The Practice of Getting Lost,” and more. The last chapter of the book is “The Practice of Pronouncing Blessings.”

Bar Mitzvah Blessing

                                  
Now we Episcopalians are very big on blessing things, but we have rules about who can bless what and when. Bishops must always bless churches, communion vessels and those who are being ordained deacon or priest. Priests can bless many things: bread, wine, marriages, babies just baptized, houses, vestments, jewelry, and all of us at the end of every worship service.

But as Taylor notes, that leaves lots and lots of things that all of us can bless: Our food before we eat. Our children when putting them to bed at night. A perfect stranger who happens to sneeze in a public place.

Blessing is everyone’s job and surely the world would be a better place if we all spent more time pronouncing blessings and less blaming, criticizing and cursing!

Like Paul, Taylor says we need especially to bless that which at first repels us or seems unworthy of blessing: the fat man spilling into your space from the airplane seat next to you, the sullen cashier, the neighbor who has already put the wrong political sign in his front yard, even the mosquito intent on supper at your expense. God made these beings, Taylor says, they share in God’s…holiness, whether or not they meet your minimum requirements for a blessing. And to bless is to recognize that holiness. It is to defer judgment, and to see God in every aspect of life.

And watch what happens inside when you do this. The recipient of the blessing might never know or notice. Transformation of the blessee is not required, but the heart and mind of the pronouncer of blessings will be changed.

Let us pray: Blessed are you, Lord of the Universe, and blessed is your creation now and forever,

AMEN.