23 Pentecost

Stewardship Sunday
November 16, 2014

The Baptism of Remy Haugen

Matthew 25.14-30

+ OK. I am really dating myself here. But, every time stewardship season rolls around, I am reminded of when pledge season would come to Public Television as a kid. I watched a lot of public television as a child. Whether it was Sesame Street, the Electric Company, Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood, 3-2-1 Contact, or any of the other shows on in the 1970s, it was by far my favorite station. Of course, back then, we only had, like, four stations .

But when Pledge Season rolled around and these shows were constantly interrupted by announcers asking for money, I often groaned aloud. The good thing about pledge season on Public Television was they oftentimes showed films and documentaries they didn’t show at other times of the year. Now I know I’ve preached about this before, but it’s worth preaching about multiple times.

One of the films I always looked forward to seeing again and again during Pledge Season was that wonderful cinematic classic, Auntie Mame.  I always loved watching Rosalind Russell in all her 1958 Technicolor glory. We, in the church, on this, our Stewardship Sunday, don’t get anything even close to Rosalind Russell or even Technicolor today. I could try, but I don’t think it’s gonna work.

Instead, we get the parable of the talents, of money lent and the reward awaiting those who were entrusted with the money, complete with its not-so-subtle wag of the finger at us.  Trust me, I did not purposely pick this scripture for today; it just happened to come up in the lectionary today.  

Actually, we got a lot more than that today. We have something more special than Rosalind Russell today. We get the baptism of Remy Haugen today. And we get a fine brunch served by our vestry today. So, all of that’s even better than Auntie Mame.

But our parable from the Gospel today is a good story for us.  Most of us can relate to it.  We understood how good it is to have people invest money for us and to receive more in return.  It certainly speaks in a very special way to us in this strange, scary and unstable financial environment in which we are living at this moment.

Of course, this parable isn’t really about money at all, as we probably have guessed.  The parable is about taking what we have—and in the case of today’s reading Jesus is talking about the Gospel—and working to expand it and return it back to God with interest.

We, as Christians, are called to just this: we are called to work, to do something with what we’ve been given. And the worse thing we can imagine is being called by that ugly word we discover in today’s Gospel: “lazy.”

Lazy is a word I hate.  None of us want to hear that word directed at us. It’s one the greatest insults I can think of directing at someone.

What is it we ultimately want to hear?  Is it that shaming admonition: “You wicked and lazy slave!”  Or do we want to hear: “Well done, good and trustworthy servant; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.”

Over and over again in Scripture, we find this one truth: God is not really ever concerned with what we have; but God is always concerned with what we do with what we have.  And we should always remind ourselves that it is not always an issue of money that we’re dealing with when we talk about what we have.   The rewards of this life include many other things other than money—an issue we sometimes forget about in our western capitalist society.

The fact is, God is not always concerned about who we are and what we do.  God is always concerned with what we do with who we are and what we do.  And when we’re lazy, we purposely forget this fact.  When we’re lazy, we think we can just coast.  We think we can just “get by.”  We think we can just give lip service to our gratitude and that is enough.  But it isn’t enough.

To be a "good and trustworthy” servant is take what we have and do something meaningful with it.  By doing something good, we are showing our gratitude for it.

In these weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, we might find ourselves thinking about all the things in our lives we are thankful for.  And we might be expressing our thanks to God for those things.  But what God seems to want from us more than anything else is to let that thankfulness be lived out in our lives.

Today, at the baptism of Remy Haugen, we get to be reminded that, essentially, from that first moment when we became Christians in those waters of baptism, we are called to live out our thankfulness to God in our very lives.

Our thankfulness should not simply be the words coming from our mouths, but also the actions we do as Christians.  Our thankfulness should be in our stewardship—in the fact that we are thankful by sharing what we have been given.  And in that sharing, we find the true meaning of what it means to be gracious.

In that sharing, we find purpose and meaning in our lives.  In that sharing, we find contentment.

So, maybe in the end, we DO, on this Stewardship Sunday, get something somewhat like Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame.  Auntie Mame teaches us all a wonderful lesson—a lesson that, let’s face it, was radical even in that 1950s Technicolor world.  Mame, the radical, eccentric, outspoken, wealthy, party-loving matriarch of the story, learns a wonderful and powerful lesson by the end of the film.  Even after she loses her money in the Depression, after she loses her husband (Forrest Tucker) to an unfortunate mountain climbing accident in the Alps, even after facing her bigoted potential future in-laws—even

despite all the hardships life threw at her, she emerged from it all, glowing and self-assured and strong.  She emerged from it knowing that it wasn’t what she had, but what she did with what she had that made all the difference.  She emerged from it all with a gratitude that glows, in all its Technicolor wonder, on her face at the end of the film. What Mame had was integrity and love and compassion and, by sharing those things—love and integrity and compassion—she found herself.  She found in her life what truly mattered.

To see it from this perspective means to know full well that the things this life throws at us don’t defeat us.  We go through this life prepared when it gives us something extra.  Of course, we can take it and we can sit on it.  We can store it away and not let it gain interest.  And in the end, all we have is a moldering treasure—which really isn’t a treasure at all.

Or we can take a chance, we can invest it and, in investing it, we can spread it and share it. During this stewardship season, we are saying to ourselves, be grateful.  These are the things we have—our talents, our God-given abilities, the material blessings—and to be truly thankful for those things, we need to be grateful for them and to share them.  We can’t hoard them, we can’t hug them close and be afraid they will be taken from us.  And we can’t go through life with a complacent attitude—expecting that others are going to take of these things for us.

We must share what we have. And we must share what we have with dignity and self-assurance and with a graceful and grateful attitude.  We must not be the lazy slave who hoards what is given him, afraid to invest what he has.  We must instead be like the wise servant, the one is alert and prepared, the one who is truly gracious.  And if we are, we too will hear those words spoken to us—those words we all long to hear—“Well done, good and faithful one…enter into the joy of your master.”

All Saints Sunday

November 2, 2014

1 John 3.1-3

+ Our confirmation class on Thursday nights have been, I have to say, a lot of fun.  Well, this past week, in our Confirmation class, we talked about saints. Actually, we talked about saints’ relics.  Relics are the bits and pieces of saints that are left behind them.

We talked about first-class relics. First class relics are actual pieces of saints. Like bones or pieces of bones. Second-class relics are things that came into contact with first class relics, like pieces of cloth or clothes the saint wore.

I was going to show the confirmation some of my first-class relics.  Then, I forgot. But, I didn’t forget this morning. I actually brought a first class relic this morning.

This is a relic of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. She was an American. She was raised an Episcopalian, but later converted to the Roman Catholic Church after the death of her husband and joined a convent and later founded her religious order, the Sisters of Charity. If you saw the play or the film, Doubt, that religious of nuns was the Sister of Charity, founded by St. Elizabeth.  She died in 1821.

And this is St. Elizabeth Anne Seton. Or a little piece of her, anyway.  This is a little piece of her bone.

I also posted a photo of my first-class relics on Facebook this week. And I mentioned that because I forgot about the relics at confirmation, we ended talked about saints whose relics were incorruptible—saints who never decomposed.  Well, a priest in the diocese asked, “Do you have an incorruptible saint on your property?”

I responded, “I am the incorruptible saint on our property.”

Well, today, in case you didn’t guess it, we are celebrating all the saints, corruptible or incorruptible.   We are celebrating all those saints that we know of, like the Virgin Mary and our own St. Stephen and St. Elizabeth. We celebrate those saints because they are held up to us as examples of how to live this sometimes difficult life we live as Christians.

And, let’s face it,  it is hard to be a Christian sometimes.  It is hard, as we all know, to follow Jesus, and to do what Jesus tells us to do—to love.  It is hard to be, as John says in our reading for today, the children of God, as Jesus himself is a Child of God.  The saints have shown this fact to us.  They have shown us how to be these very children of God.

We are also celebrating the saints we have personally known. We are celebrating the saints we have known who have come into our own lives—those people who have taught us about God and shown us that love does win out, again and again.  The saints in our own lives are those who have done it, who have shown us that we can be successful in following Jesus, even if they weren’t always successful at times in their own lives.

My favorite saints—both those celebrated by the larger church and those I have known in my own personal life—are the ones who were not, by any means, perfect, who failed, who messed up occasionally.  I like them because I’m like them.  I too have messed up.  I too have failed.  I too have failed in following Jesus and loving others.  See, I really am NOT the incorruptible saint at St. Stephen’s.  I, like all us, am corruptible.  

But what those saints show us is that it’s all right.  When we fail, we just get up again, brush ourselves off and keep going.  And what they show us more than anything else is that when we fail to love, we need to love even more and somehow, it is made right.

The other part of this morning that we are celebrating are the future saints in our midst.  The future saints?  Who could those possibly be?  Well, we are. We are those future saints.  Together, with the saints who have gone before us, we strive to follow Jesus, to love God and each other and to serve those we encounter.  We are the  future saints.  That’s how we should see ourselves. That is why we celebrate the saints with the different commemorations we have of them at our Wednesday night Eucharists throughout the year.  And that is why we celebrate them especially on Sundays like today.

We celebrate the saints because they lead the way for us.  They show us how to live this sometimes difficult life as Christians.  They show us in their successes and they show us in their failures.  

And we celebrate the saints as well because we too are the saints.  We are the future saints, who will one day be gathered around the altar of the Lamb, where we will partake of that glory without end.

You have heard me mention on countless occasions my very strong belief that the  “veil” that separates us from those who have gone on before us is a very thin one.  Even though it often seems like a very thick curtain at times.  But there are moments when that veil is sort of lifted and we can see that very little actually separates us from those saints who have gone on. This morning, we are actually able to see that veil lifted.  We will see it lifted in a few moments when we gather at the altar to celebrate the Eucharist.

What we do this morning is not an isolated act we do, here in St. Stephen’s Church in north Fargo on a cold morning in November of 2014.  Every time we do this, we do it with every Christian on this earth who also celebrates these mysteries.  And when we celebrate the Eucharist, all we are doing is joining, for this limited time, the worship that is going on in heaven for all eternity.

And in that moment, we know what our destiny is. Our destiny is sainthood. Our destiny is to be saints.  

Today is about those saints who have gone before. But it is also about us, here and now.  It is about their sainthood and our sainthood too.  And that is something to be thankful and to celebrate.

So, let us—the future saints of God—truly celebrate today.  Let us celebrate the saints who have gone on and who are still with us in various ways.  And let us, who remain, strive on. Let us continue on in our journey toward sainthood strengthened and certain of our destiny.

John Berryman's 100th Birthday

The poet John Berryman would have been 100 years old this Saturday. Here’s a poem I wrote about visiting the site of his suicide. 

Washington Avenue Bridge

“to tilt out, with the knife in my right hand
to slash me knocked or fainting till I’d fall
unable to keep my skull down but fearless”

—John Berryman

Here, we stand

facing north

and leaning forward—

the railing halving us

and preventing us

from tilting out

as Berryman did,

shocked and fainting

falling through

that January cold

to the bank below

frozen hard as stone

that early into the new year.

Now, it’s June

and we have made our way

from Arthur Avenue—

from the house he left that morning,

from that last meal,

that last drink,

that last written word

on that last X’ed-out sheet of paper—

to this place,

following his short via crucis,

keeping and pausing at each station

where he stumbled

or wavered

or looked back the way he came

to this two-tiered goal,

to this place

where whatever martyrdom

he planned for himself awaited him—

a throat not cut after all,

no gush of blood

to bring on the final resolve to tip out

into the air

and attempt flight.

Here are the foot spaces,

where he last touched ground

before the fall,

where he grasped the rail,

swaying out.

We kneel and touch the pavement

and grasp what he grasped

and gaze at what he gazed at last

through those frosted-over lenses.

We do it the way pilgrims do

in Chimayó or Široki Brijeg,

touching whatever has been made holy

by the violent witness

the saint made in blood.

We are pilgrims

because he was who he was

to us and to all that we

have carried with us all this way—

to this ledge, to this railing,

to this sweep of earth and river

beneath us

that makes us dizzy

and faint and unwilling

to attempt

like him

to fly.

From Crow, copyright (c) 2012 by Jamie Parsley.

John Berryman (1914-1972) was an American poet who, on January 7, 1972, jumped to his death from the Washington Avenue Bridge on the campus of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. At the time of his death, he was living at 33 Arthur Avenue in southeast Minneapolis. Chimayó is a popular pilgrimage site in northern New Mexico. Šokori Brijeg is the site in the former Yugoslavia where forty-three Roman Catholic Franciscan priests and brothers were murdered by Communist Partisans on February 18, 1945. 

19 Pentecost

October 19, 2014

Matthew 22.15-22

+ Last week, in our Gospel reading, I was blunt—and honest—with you. I told you then that I did not like the parable we were told by Jesus.

It was a difficult story that, by today’s standards, would’ve been torn to  pieces by critics.

But if we’re patient in our faithful listening to these Gospel stories, we can almost bet that for every one story we might not like—like last week’s story—there will be one that we really get.

Today, is one of those Gospel readings. I like this Gospel reading.  In it we find Jesus being confronted by the Herodians and the Pharisees, both whom are enemies of each other, but for this brief moment, they are ganging up on Jesus.

I love it when Jesus and the Pharisees go head-to-head. Actually, I feel kind of sorry for the Pharisees. They think they’re really smart and clever, but they’re really not.  They begin with a compliment of course.  Yes, that’s the way to begin.  They know: a compliment will truly throw off the person you are about to trap.

But Jesus is too smart for them of course.  He turns their question back on them. Jesus turns to the crowd and asks about the coin. He asks about a coin he, if you notice, does not carry.  Nor does it seem he ever touches it.

As we know, Roman coins were ritually unclean in the Jewish culture.  The emperor Caesar was viewed as a god, and that made them unclean to good, pious Jews. Using the coin as his reference, he lets the Pharisees have it.

Give to God’s what is God’s, he says. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Simple enough.

It seems he is making a clear distinction between the religious and the secular to some extent, which is speaks loud and clear to us during this election time.  He seems to making that distinction between God and government.

But…not really. The real point he is making here can be found when we put it all in perspective.  Jesus and every good, loyal Jewish male there on that day was required to pray a prayer every day.  Jesus no doubt prayed that prayer that morning, as did every devout Jewish male (and no doubt many Jewish females) that day.

The prayer is a simple prayer. It’s called the Shema

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”

The Shema is, of course, the summary of the Law.  But it is a summary of all belief for a Jew. It essentially renders to God, what is God’s.  But if you listen closely to what the Shema says, you realize: Jesus’ statement really isn’t an either/or statement.  

He’s simply saying that once what is God’s is rendered to God, there is nothing else.  There are no other options for those of us who are God’s people.  For those who love God with all their heart, all their soul and all their might, there is nothing else.  Rendering anything to Caesar’s is simply not an option. For us, it is a matter of realizing we don’t have the option of turning our Christianity on and off.  We are always followers of Jesus, in everything we do.  Everything we do and say begins and ends in following Jesus.  We don’t have the option of being a Christian when it suits us and being secular when it doesn’t.  We are a follower of Jesus all the time—in everything we do and every aspect of our lives.  And it is important to remind ourselves of this.

On Friday, one of the great bishops of the Episcopal. Bishop Tom Shaw, former Bishop of

Massachusetts, died. Bishop Shaw was, in addition to being a Bishop, a member of an Episcopal religious order, The Society of St. John the Evangelist. Both James and I are members of the Fellowship of the Society of St. John the Evangelist.

In the Rule of the SSJE, there is a wonderful chapter on what they call “Eucharistic living.” It’s one of my favorite chapters in the Rule.  As laid out in the Rule of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Eucharistic living is, in a sense, living out the Eucharist we celebrate here on Sunday in everything we do.  It means we carry this Eucharist with us long after we have walked away from this altar.  It means that, in being fed, we too then go out and share and feed.

Being a follower of Jesus means that we live the Bread of Jesus and the wine of his blood. It is not easy to live Eucharistically. Because by doing so, we are rendering the things that are God’s to God.   And rendering the things that are God’s to God is not easy.

It is much, much easier to render the things to Caesar that are Caesar’s.  It is easy to let the establishment stay established. It is easy to be chameleons to some extent, to change ourselves to suit whatever situation may arise so that we can quietly fade into the background, or so we can hold on, for a moment, to the control we have worked to maintain.

But for us, who follow Jesus, doing so is a sell-out. It truly is a turning away from Jesus and all he stands for. It is, essentially, a way in which we turn our Christianity on and off like a switch to suit our own personal needs.  It is hard to be a Christian in every aspect of our lives.  It hard to love God in all things.  It is hard to love our neighbors in all things.  It is hard, very often to love even ourselves in all things.

But that is what it means to render to God the things that are God’s.  It means giving to God all that is God’s.  

And we belong to God.  We are the conduits of that all-loving, all-accepting God.  We are the bearers of that radical, all-powerful love of God.

So let us truly render to God what is God’s.  Let us live out our lives eucharistically.  Let us live fully the Bread we eat at this altar, sharing what we are nourished on here with everyone.  Let us fully share this wine we drink here at this altar, quenching the thirst of all those we encounter in our lives.  And with Christ dwelling within us in this way, let us be that radical Presence of love and acceptance to all those we encounter.

18 Pentecost

October 12, 2014

Isaiah 25.1-9; Matthew 22.1-14

+ I did a wedding last night. Now, weddings, for the most part, for me anyway, can be wonderful and great, or truly a cross to bear. Last night’s was one of the good ones.  The bride was a long-time friend of mine. The banquet afterward was probably the closest I’ll ever get to doing a big, Catholic, Stearns County German wedding. It was truly a party. With polka, even!

But I gotta say, I thought a lot about this Gospel reading for today, last night. It’s just such a pointless story isn’t it? I know, I shouldn’t be saying that about a parable. But, to be honest, I just don’t like it. The structure is so off.  If this was a short story in one of my writing workshops, it would’ve been torn apart and reassembled. There’s almost nothing, at face value, worth redeeming.

But, let’s not throw it out yet.  Let’s not completely abandon this story just because we find it unpleasant.

(If you find this unpleasant, wait until my book of short stories is published…)

First of all, it definitely seems that Matthew definitely has an agenda in this story. Obviously Matthew is directing this at the Jews. And when we see it from that perspective, it kind of starts making a bit of sense.

The first guests, as we discover, are the nation of Israel. The first slaves represent the prophets, who were also beaten up and killed for trying to tell them what God wanted.

The second slaves are the apostles. And, if you notice, the second group of people are very different than the first group. They’re the Church.

At this point, “everyone” has been invited. “Everyone” is an important clue to this story. “Everyone” means everyone.

So, what Matthew is trying to have Jesus tell us is that Israel ignored God’s message, and as a result, the Kingdom was given to others. That’s certainly what we’ve been hearing in our Gospel readings lately. The Kingdom can—and has been—given to others

So, we have these slaves going out and inviting everyone. The apostles were called by Jesus to do just that. They were called to invite everyone—not just the elite. Not just the best guests. Everyone.

That’s great. That’s wonderful.

What happens next is the real pivot here.  The second coming essentially happens. The King arrives. Now, that sounds great. We’re all looking forward to the Second Coming. We’re all looking forward to the King arriving.

But wait…. It’s not all pleasant and beautiful. Why? Because someone gets thrown out. This poor guy who isn’t wearing a wedding robe gets thrown out.

What? That’s not what we want for this story. If everyone gets invited, who cares if someone is wearing a robe or not? Now it sounds terrible to us.

But, but, but… Let’s keep it in the context of its time.  At that time, not wearing the wedding robe that was provided to the guests was an insult. It was essentially a way of saying that, Yes, I’m here at the wedding, yes I’m going to eat and drink, but I’m not really going to participate. I’m going to get what I need out of this, but when I do, I’m gone. I’m not really going to make a commitment to this feast. I’m going to be a bad guest.

And this is the real gist of this story.

Now, the good thing about this is that, it’s all about choice. We have a choice. We choose to go. We choose to be a good guest or a bad guest. God did not make us into mindless robots, after all.

But there are ramifications to what we choose.  My motto for life, as you know is: the chickens always come home to roost.

The fact is, by not wearing the robe, we’re not really present. We’re saying no to the King.  For us, it’s kind of the same here. We can be here. We can sit here in our pews. Or up there in the presider’s place. But we don’t have to be a part of it all. We can be obstinate. We can cross our arms and critique everything about the sermon or the liturgy or the music or the way the altar is set up, etc.  We can close our minds and hearts and be bitter and complain. We can nitpick or backbite or stomp our heels because we don’t like it.  We’ve all known those kind of people in the church.  I’ve done it myself.

Or we can be a part of it all. And not just here, in church on Sunday. As we know, it’s a lot more than just church on Sunday that makes us Christians—that makes us good or bad Christians. Ultimately, it is about what we do out there. If we are jerks to people, if we are close-minded, if we judgmental, if we’re sexists and homophobic and mean-spirited, then we’re not really doing a good job as Christians. If we refuse to love, we’re refusing the wedding robe.

The fact is, everyone is invited to the banquet. I say it again and again. We’re all invited. And it really isn’t that hard to get in. But sometimes it is really hard to be a good guest at the banquet. Sometimes, we really just don’t want to participate. Sometimes it’s just easier to cross our arms and pout in the corner.  Sometimes it’s easier to not love and respect others.  Because, we’ve so often not been loved and not respected by others.  And that’s our choice to react like that.

But it’s not what is expected of us. We’ve been invited to the banquet! We should be glad! We should be excited. We should don that wedding robe and do whatever else needs to be done to be a good guest. Because, it’s not fun being all by one’s self on the outside of the party, looking in at everyone who’s there.

And that’s where we put ourselves.  That’s where we often go to pout and feel bad about ourselves.

Luckily our God, who truly does love us, who truly does want us at the banquet, never lets us stay out there—outside the party—for long. The invitation from our God keeps coming. And we have many opportunities to put on that wedding robe and rejoin the banquet.  That’s all the bad guests had to do to rejoin the party.

So, let us put on the wedding robe. Let us not cast ourselves off into the exterior.  Let us not alienate ourselves with our bitterness and anger.  But let us join the banquet in love. Let us heed the invitation. Let us celebrate, and be joyful and be glad. That’s what our Host wants from us.  

And when we do, we can truly echo those words we hear today from Isaiah:

“This is our God, the one for we have waited…Let us be glad and rejoice in our salvation.”

17 Pentecost

Matthew 21.33-46

October 5, 2014

+ This is not a question you are asked very often. Or probably EVER. But…what are you zealous for? No, not jealous. Zealous. For what do you have zeal?

I know. Yes, some of us have real zeal for sports. Or for political causes.

I, as some of you know, have real zeal for music—for alternative from the 1990s, especially. Oh, and for poetry. Oh, and God, of course.

But zeal is a word we don’t use too often anymore. And, at least in this part of the country, we are, for the most part, uncomfortable with zeal. 

Now to be fair, being zealous, of course, is not a bad thing by any means.  

This morning we definitely have one of those parables that challenges us, that keeps us on our toes.  It may even make us a bit angry and that definitely forces us to look more closely at ourselves.  Let’s face it, it’s a violent story we hear Jesus tells us today.  These bad tenants are so devious they are willing to kill to get what they want.  And in the end, their violence is turned back upon them.  It’s not a warm, fuzzy story that we can take with us and hold close to our hearts. The Church over the years has certainly struggled with this parable because it can be so challenging.

At face value, the story can probably be pretty easily interpreted in this way: The Vineyard owner of course symbolic of God.  The Vineyard owner’s son of Jesus.  The Vineyard is symbolic of the Kingdom.  And the workers in the vineyard who kill the son are symbolic of the religious leaders who will kill Jesus.  From this view, we can see the story as a prediction of Jesus’ murder.

But there is another interpretation of this story that isn’t so neat and clean and finely put-together.  It is in fact an uncomfortable interpretation of this parable.  As we hear it, we do find ourselves shaken a bit.  It isn’t a story that we want to emulate.  I HOPE none of us want to emulate it. But again, Jesus DOES twist this story around for us.

The ones we no doubt find ourselves relating to are not the Vineyard owner or the Vineyard owner’s son, but, in fact, the vineyard workers.  We relate to them not because we have murderous intentions in our heart. Not because we inherently bad.  But because we sometimes can be just as resolute.  We can sometimes be just that zealous. We sometimes will stop at nothing to get what we want.

We are sometimes so full of zeal for something that we might occasionally ride roughshod over others.  And when we do so, we find that we are not bringing the Kingdom of God about in our midst.

Zeal can be a good thing.  We should be full of zeal for God and God’s Kingdom.  We too should stop at nothing to gain the Kingdom of God.  But zeal taken too far undoes the good we hoped to bring about.

The most frightening aspect of our Gospel story is the fact that Jesus tells us that the kingdom can be taken away from us.  It can be given to others.  Our zeal for the kingdom has a lot to do with what we gain and what we lose.  Our zeal to make this kingdom a reality in our world is what makes the changes in this world.

At the same time, zeal can be a very slippery slope.  It can also make us zealots.  It can make us fanatics.  And this world is too full of fanatics.  ISIS is a good example of fanatics in this world.

This world is too full of people who have taken their religion so seriously that they have actually lost touch with it.

This story we hear Jesus today tell us teaches us a lesson about taking our zeal too far.  If we become violent in our zeal, we need to expect violence in return.  And certainly this is probably the most difficult part of this parable for most of us.

For those of us who consider ourselves peace-loving, nonviolent Christians, we cringe when we hear stories of violence in the scriptures.  But violence like the kind we hear in today’s parable, or anywhere else in scriptures should not just be thrown out because we find it uncomfortable.  It should not be discarded as useless just because we are made uncomfortable by it.

As I have said, again and again, it is not just about any ONE of us, as individuals.  It is about us as a whole. If we look at the kind of violence we find in the Scriptures and use it metaphorically, it could actually be quite useful for us.

If we take some of those stories metaphorically, they actually speak to us on a deeper level.  If we take the parable of the vineyard workers and apply it honestly to ourselves, we find it does speak to us in a very hard way.

Our zeal for the kingdom of God should drive us.  It should move and motivate us.  We should be empowered to bring the Kingdom into our midst.  But it should not make us into the bad vineyard workers.  It should not make into the chief priests and Pharisees who knew, full well, that they were the bad vineyard workers.

A story like this helps us to keep our zeal centered perfectly on God, and not on all the little nitpicky, peripheral stuff.  A story like this prevents us, hopefully, from becoming mindless zealots.  What does it allow and commend is passion.  What it does tell us is that we should be excited for the Kingdom. True zeal makes us uncomfortable, yes.

It makes us restless.  It frustrates us.  True zeal also energizes us and makes us want to work until we catch a glimpse of that Kingdom in our midst.  

This is what Jesus is telling us again and again.  He is telling us in these parables that make us uncomfortable that the Kingdom of God isn’t just some sweet, cloud-filled place in the next world.  He is telling is, very clearly, that is it not just about any ONE of us.  It is not about our own personal agendas.

The Kingdom of God is right here, in our midst.  And the foundation of that kingdom, the gateway of that Kingdom, the conduit of that Kingdom is always love.  Love of God, love of neighbor, healthy love of self.

This is what Jesus preached. That is the path Jesus is leading us on.  This is the path we walk as we follow after him.  And it is a path on which we should be overjoyed to be walking.

So, let us follow this path of Jesus with true and holy zeal.  Let us set out to do the work we have to do as workers in the vineyard with love in our heart and love in our actions.  And as we do, we will echo the words we heard in today’s Gospel:

“This is what the Lord’s doing; it is amazing in our eyes.”

16 Pentecost

September 28, 2014

Ezekiel 18.1-4;25-32; Matthew 21.23-32

+ This past week, of course, the plaque for the memorial garden we dedicated in

May was finally finished. It will hang on the wall near the circular window on the stairs leading down to the Undercroft. I am proud of our memorial garden and what it will, hopefully, one day be. A resting place.

But I am especially proud of our memorial garden because of something that we, at St. Stephen’s, make sure will happen with it. In our policies for the memorial garden, we make no disctinction about who can be buried there. Some churches state that only members and their families can be buried in their resting places. Nowhere does it say that only St. Stephen’s members can be buried in our memorial garden. And, a clear policy is this one:

 Under no circumstance will anyone be denied burial in the memorial garden due to financial reasons.

This, of course, ties in perfectly to the ministry we have been doing here at St. Stephen’s for years. Something as simple as this policy really does hit home for us.  There are not many places in the Fargo-Moorhead area that allow such an open policy regarding burial.  

Now what few of us know is that, just a few blocks north of this church, there are two cemeteries.  Unless you actually get out of your car and walk into the actual cemeteries you wouldn’t even know they’re there.  And I do invite you to go and visit theses cemeteries.  If you do, you’ll see, in each, a large boulder.

In one cemetery the boulder is inscribed COUNTY CEMETERY #1.  This one is located at the end of Elm Street.  Where the road forks, one to the Country Club and the other to the former Trollwood, right there, on the left fork toward Trollwood, is the cemetery.  You’ve probably driven by it countless times and never had a clue.

County Cemetery #2 is located on the other side of the old Trollwood, just within sight of where the old main stage stood.  Back along the bend in the Red River, there is a stretch of grass and another boulder. This one says COUNTY CEMETERY #2.

A third County Cemetery was located on north Broadway.  In 1984, those graves were moved to Springvale Cemetery, over by Holy Cross Cemetery, near the airport, because they were falling into the Red River through erosion. One of my great-uncles, who died in 1948, is actually buried in that cemetery.

For the most part, many of the graves in Springvale are marked.  But in the first two cemeteries, there are no markers at all.  No individual gravestones mark the graves of the people buried in the first two cemeteries. In fact, if you walked into them, you would have to force your mind to even accept the fact that it is a cemetery.  But there are hundreds of people buried in those graveyards. Hundreds.

These are the forgotten.  These were Fargo’s hidden shame.  Beginning 1899 and going through the 1940s, this where the prostitutes, the gamblers, the robbers were buried.  This is also where all the unwanted babies were buried.  There are lots of stories of unwanted babies being fished out of the Red River in those days.  This is where the bodies of those unnamed babies were buried.

And when one walks in those pauper cemeteries, one must remind themselves of those words we hear from Jesus this morning in our Gospel reading.

“Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the Kingdom of God ahead of you.”

There, in those cemeteries, lie the true inheritors of the Kingdom of God.  Last week in my sermon I quoted the great Reginald Fuller, who said:

“[This] is what God is doing in Jesus’ ministry—giving the tax collectors and prostitutes an equal share with the righteous in the kingdom.”

That—and those words of Jesus we heard in this morning’s Gospel reading—are shocking statements for most of us.  And they should be.  It should shock us and shake us to our core.  It’s a huge statement for him to make. Partly it does because, things haven’t changed all that much: we can grasp the understanding about prostitutes—after all, prostitutes are still looked down upon by our society in our day.

After all, we do still view prostitutes with contempt.  They are another segment of our society that we tend to forget about.  But we really should give them concern.  And I don’t meant from a judgmental point of view.  I mean, we should give them our compassion.  We should be praying for them often.  Because we often hear the horrible stories of what people have to deal with on the streets, not to mention what drove them to the streets.

. But the stories of what keeps them on the streets are just as bad.  And the dangers they face—day and night—are more mind-boggling than anything we can even imagine in our safe, comfortable lives.

Truly prostitutes throughout history have been the real exploited ones.  They are the ones who have lived on the fringes of society.  They are the ones who have lived in the shadows of our respectable societies.  They have lived dangerous, secret lives.  And much of what they’ve had to go through in their lives is known only to God.  They need our prayers.  They need our compassion. They definitely don’t need our exploitation.  They certainly don’t need our judgment.

As uncomfortable as it is for us to confront them and think about them, that is exactly what Jesus is telling us we must do.  Because by going there in our thoughts, in our prayers, in our ministries, we are going where Jesus went.  We are coming alongside people who need our thoughts, our prayers, our ministries.  And rather than using them, rather than continuing the exploitation they have lived with their lives, we need to see them as God sees them.  We see them as children of God, as fellow humans on this haphazard, uncertain journey we are all on together.

And, more importantly, we see in them ourselves. There, but for the grace of God go us.  Had we been born in different circumstances, had life gone wrong for us in certain areas, who are we to say we wouldn’t have been there?  Or who we are to say we wouldn’t be the exploiters?

So we can understand why prostitutes (and tax collectors, who were just as ritually unclean as prostitutes in Jesus’ day) were viewed with such contempt in Jesus’ day.

The point of this morning’s Gospel is this: the Kingdom of God is not what we think it is.  It is not made up of just people like us.  It is, in fact, going to be made up people who maybe never go to church, who may never have gone to church.  It will be made up of those people we might not even notice. It will be made up of those people who are invisible to us. It will be made up of the people we don’t give a second thought to. In our society today we have our own tax collectors.  They are the welfare cases.  They are the homeless.  They are alcoholics and the drug addicts and the drug dealers. They are the lost among us, they are the ones who are trapped in their own sadness and their own loneliness.  They are the gang leaders, they are the rebels.  They are the transgendered.  They are the cross dressers.  They are the ones we call pagan, or non-believer or heretic.  They are the ones we, good Christians that we are, have worked all our lives not to be.

This is what the Kingdom of heaven is going to be like.  It will filled with the people who look up at us from their marginalized place in this society.  It is the ones who today are peeking out at us from the curtains of their isolation and their loneliness.  They are the ones who, in their quiet agony, watch as we drive out of sight from them. They are they inheritors of the kingdom of God and if we think they are not, then we are not listening to what Jesus is saying to us.

When we think about those county cemeteries just a few blocks north of here, we need to realize that had Jesus lived in Fargo, had he lived 1900 years later and had died the disgraceful death he died, that is where he would’ve ended up.  He would have ended up in an unmarked grave in a back field, on the very physical fringes of our city. In fact, he is there.  And in our policy for the memorial garden, we are guaranteeing he will be here among us as well in our memorial garden.  He is wherever the inheritors of his kingdom are.

Those cemeteries and that policy in our memorial garden for me are potent reminders of who inherits.  They are potent reminders to me of who receives true glory in the end. It is these—the forgotten ones, the ones whom only God knows—who are in glory at this moment.   They are the ones that, had life turned out just a bit different for us, would be us.

Of course, we too are the inheritors of the Kingdom, especially when we love fully and completely.  We too are the inheritors when we follow those words of Jesus and strive to live out and do what he commands.  We too are the inheritors when we open our eyes and our minds and our hearts to those around us, whom no one else sees or loves.

So, let us also be inheritors of the Kingdom of God.  Let us love fully and completely as Jesus commands. Let us love our God.  Let us love all those people who come into our lives. Let us look around at those people who share this world with us.  And let us never cast a blind eye on anyone. Let us do as God speaks to us this morning through the prophet Ezekiel: Let us “turn, then, and live.”