18 Pentecost

The Feast of St. Francis

 

Matthew 21.33-46

 

October 4, 2020

 

+ I’m sure you’ve noticed, but there is a lot of zealous people out there, especially in this election year.

 

There is very little middle ground in this election year.

 

There is no end of people giving very impassioned opinions.

 

Just take a quick perusal of Facebook. Or the News. Or outside your window.

 

And, for the most part, being zealous for something is not a bad thing by any means.

 

I would rather have someone zealous for an opinion with which I might not agree than know someone lackluster.

 

At least the discussion will be interesting.

 

In fact, today is the feast day of one of the truly great zealots for Christ in the Church, none other than the great St. Francis of Assisi.

 

Francis was a fascinating man, and truly one of the most favorite saints in the Church.

 

He is known as an animal lover, which is why we are blessing our pets on this day.

 

He was known as a lover of peace.

 

He has the reputation of a kind and gentle person.

 

But, Francis was a zealot in his heart of hearts.

 

He was passionate in his love for God, in this following of Jesus, in his care for the poor.

 

Some—including his own family—thought he was a fanatic.

 

And maybe he was.

 

He heard the voice of Jesus tell him:
“Rebuild my Church!”

 

Which he did.

 

But that passionate love he had for God and for others is something we still are celebrating in the Church 794 years after his death.

 

So, this morning, I am going to ask you a very important question:

 

What are you zealous for?

 

For what do you have real zeal?

 

Will anyone be talking about your zeal 794 years from now?

 

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

 

And certainly, here at St. Stephen’s, I know there is a lot of zealousness for political opinion and causes.

 

As do I.

 

I am very zealous politically, and theologically, and spiritually, and poetically.

 

You all know that.

 

If I have an opinion on something, you’ll probably know it in no time at all, even if you might not agree with it.

 

Trust me, I am full of zeal!!

 

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.

 

Zeal equals emotion—or should e say over-emotion—for us.

 

And certainly zeal involves an emotional attachment to something.

 

Now, as I said, it is not a bad thing by any means to be zealous.

 

It’s good to be challenged occasionally (respectfully, of course).

 

It keeps us on our toes.

 

And it humbles us.

 

Well, 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 tell 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 are 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 real and positive  change 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.

 

There are plenty of good examples of fanatics in this world right now, from the far right Evangelicals to those poor people in North Korea who are held hostage to a brain-washed ideology.   

 

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—and we all should be that kind of a Christian—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 clear  way.

 

Our zeal for the kingdom of God should drive us.

 

It should move us 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 it does 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 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 is doing; it is amazing in our eyes.”

 

Let us pray.

 

Holy God, give us true zeal for your Kingdom. Instill in us a fire that will burn brightly to lighten our path so that we may do what we must do as we follow your Son, Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.

 

 

17 Pentecost

 

September 27, 2020

 

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

 

+ Occasionally, in our scriptures readings on Sunday morning, we hear not the words of comfort that we would like to hear, especially in a time of pandemic.

 

Instead, we sometimes hear words that disturb us or shake us up.

 

Well, this morning is no exception.

 

In our Gospel reading for today, we hear some very uncomfortable words from Jesus:

 

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

 

What?!? That’s not what we want to hear!

 

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 Jesus to make.

 

Partly it does because, things haven’t changed all that much.

 

OK. Yes, maybe we don’t view tax collectors and prostitutes in the same way people in Jesus’ day did.

 

Jesus uses these two examples as prime examples of the “unclean” in our midst—those who are ritually unclean according the Judaic law.

 

We, of course, have our own versions of “unclean” in our own society.

 

They are the ones in our society that we tend to forget about and purposely ignore.

 

But we really should give them concern.

 

And I don’t meant from a judgmental point of view.

 

I mean, we should actually look and see all those marginalized people we ourselves may consider “unclean” by our own standards our compassion.

 

We should be praying for them often.

 

Because to be viewed as “unclean” in any society—even now— is a death knell.

 

It is a life of isolation and rebuke.

 

It is a life of being ostracized.

 

The unclean 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.

 

The “unclean” of our own society often live desperate, secret lives.

 

And much of what they’ve have to go through in their lives is known only to God.

 

And they need us and our prayers.

 

They need our compassion.

 

They definitely don’t need our judgment.

 

As uncomfortable as it is for us to confront them and think about them—or to BE 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 presence, our prayers, our ministries.

 

 And rather than shunning them, 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.

 

Because some of them ARE us.

 

Some of us here have been shunned and excluded and turned away.

 

By us. By our Church. By our government. By our society.

 

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 not some exclusive country club in the sky.

 

(Give thanks to God that it is NOT some exclusive country club in the sky!)

 

And it is certainly not made up of a bunch of  Christians who have done all the right things and condemned all the “correct” sins and sinners.

 

It is, in fact, going to be made up people who maybe never go 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.

 

As I said, in our society today we have our own tax collectors, our own “unclean.”.

 

They are the welfare cases.

 

They are the homeless.

 

They are alcoholics and the drug or opioid 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 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 the ones who are on the outside looking in.

 

And it is they who are the 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.

 

Jesus is wherever the inheritors of his kingdom are.

 

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 truly 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.”

 

Let us pray.

 

Holy God, help us to not with the eyes of the world, but with the eyes of those who are destined for your Kingdom. In looking, may we truly see those whom you love and cherish. And let us reach out and save them as your Son, Jesus, has commanded us to do; it is in his Name that we pray. Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

16 Pentecost

 

September 20, 2020

Matthew 20. 1-16

 

+ Unless you have been living under a rock—which may be a very real possibility in this time of pandemic—it is   *sigh*  an election year.

 

And an election year like no other than I can remember, anyway.

 

No matter where you may stand on the issues, no matter who you may be voting for, it has been a contentious, bitter and very, very divisive election already.

 

Friends refuse to talk to friends.

 

Family members are being broken up by it.

 

And so much blatantly false information is floating around.

 

And we still have a way to go before November.

 

People on both sides of the issues are feeling real anxiety right now, real frustration and very real fear.

 

And as the debates begin between candidates we will be hearing a lot of crazy, insane things, no doubt.

 

But the one thing that I guarantee we will hear, in one form or another, either from the candidates or from the candidates’ supporters will be this.

 

“This is all so unfair!”

 

Whoever doesn’t win will definitely be saying this year,

 

“This is unfair!”

 

Now, I know: that’s not a very adult thing to say.

 

Any of us who have made it to adulthood have learned, by now, that none of it is fair.

 

One of the biggest things we learn as adults is that life is not fair.

 

And no one promised us that it would be.

 

Still, we do still cling to that belief.

 

Things should be fair.

 

A perfect world would be a fair world.

 

And when it comes to our relationship with God, fairness takes on even more of a meaning.

 

God should be fair, we think.

 

And it seems that when God is not fair, what do we do?

 

We rage.

 

We get angry.

 

God should be on our side on this one.

 

Right?

 

But, it seems, not always is God on our side on some things.

 

The scale of fairness is not always tipped on our side.

 

To put it in the context of our Gospel reading today, I often feel like one of the workers who has been working from the beginning of the work day.

 

The parable Jesus tells us this morning is, of course, not just a story about vineyard workers.

 

The story really, for us anyway, is all about that sense of unfairness.

 

 If you’re anything like me, when you hear today’s Gospel—and you’re honest with yourself—you probably think: “I agree with the workers who have been working all day: It just isn’t fair that these workers hired later should get the same wages.”

 

It’s not fair that the worker who only works a few hours makes the same wages as one who has worked all day.

 

Few of us, in our own jobs, would stand for it.

 

We too would whine and complain.

 

We would strike out. 

 

But the fact is, as we all know by this time, life is not fair.

 

Each of here this morning has been dealt raw deals in our lives at one point or another.

 

We have all known what it’s like to not get the fair deal.

 

We all have felt a sense of unfairness over the raw deals of this life.

 

But, as much as we complain about it, as much as make a big deal of it, we are going to find unfairness in this life.

 

Of course, our personal lives are one thing.

 

The Church—that’s a different thing.

 

What we find in today’s parable is exactly what many of us have had to deal with in the Church.

 

The story of the parable is that everyone—no matter how long they’ve been laboring—gets an equal share.

 

And in Jesus’ ministry, that’s exactly what happens as well.

 

As one of my personal theological heroes, the great Reginald Fuller, once said of this parable: “[This] is what God is doing in Jesus’ ministry—giving the tax collectors and prostitutes an equal share with the righteous in the kingdom.”

 

The marginalized, the maligned, the social outcast—the least of these—all of them are granted an equal share.

 

To me, that sounds like the ministry we are all called to do as followers of Jesus.

 

To be a follower of Jesus is to strive to make sure that everyone gets a fair deal, even when we ourselves might not be getting the fair deal.

 

And there’s the rub.

 

There’s the key.

 

Being a follower of Jesus means striving to make sure that all of us on this side of the “veil” get an equal share of the Kingdom of God, even if we ourselves might not sometimes.

 

That is what we do as followers of Jesus and that is what we need to strive to continue to do.

 

But…it’s more than just striving for an equal share for others.

 

It also means not doing some things as well.

 

What do we feel when we are treated unfairly?

 

Jealousy?

 

Bitterness?

 

Anger?

 

It means not letting jealousy and bitterness win out.

 

Because let me tell you: there is a LOT of anger and bitterness right now.

 

And that’s probably what we’re going to feel when others get a good deal and we don’t.

 

Jealousy and envy are horribly corrosive emotions.

 

They eat and eat away at us until they makes us bitter and angry.

 

And jealousy is simply not something followers of Jesus should be harboring in their hearts.

 

Because jealousy can also lead us into a place in which we are not striving for the Kingdom.

 

Those of us who are followers of Jesus are striving, always, again and again, to do the “right thing.”

 

But when we do, and when we realize that others are not and yet they are still reaping the rewards, we no doubt are going to feel a bit jealous.

 

We, although few of us would admit it, are often, let’s face it, the “righteous” ones.

 

We the ones following the rules, we are the ones striving to live our lives as “good” Christians.

 

We fast, we say our prayers faithfully, we tithe, we follow the rules, we do what we are supposed to do as good Christians.

 

Striving for the equal share for people, means not allowing ourselves to get frustrated over the fact that those people who do not do those things—especially those people whom we think don’t follow the rules at all, those people who aren’t “righteous” by our standards—also receive an equal share.

 

It means not obsessing over the fact that, “It’s not fair.”

 

Even when it is unfair.

 

Because when we do those things, we must ask ourselves a very important question (a question I ask a lot):

 

Why do we do what we do as Christians?

 

Do we do what we do so we can call ourselves “righteous?”

 

So we can feel morally superior to others?

 

Do we do what we do as Christians because we believe we’re going to get some reward in the next life?

 

Do we do what do because we think God is in heaven keeping track of all our good deeds like some celestial Santa Claus?

 

Do we do what do simply because we think we will get something in return?

 

Do we do what we do so we can feel good about ourselves at the end of the day?

 

Or do we do what we do because doing so makes this world a better place?

 

This is the real key to Jesus’ message to us.

 

Constantly, Jesus is pushing us and challenging us to be a conduit.

 

He is trying to convince us that being a Christian means being a conduit for the Kingdom of God and all the very good things that Kingdom represents.

 

In us, the Kingdom breaks through.

 

Without us, it simply will not.

 

We do what we do as Christians because whatever we do is a way in which the barriers that separate us here from God and God’s world is lifted for a brief moment when we do what Jesus tells us to do.

 

When we live out the Law of loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves, the “veil” is lifted and when it is lifted, the Kingdom comes flooding into our lives.

 

It does not matter in the least how long we labor in allowing this divine flood to happen.

 

The amount of time we put into it doesn’t matter in the least to God, because God’s time is not our time.

 

Rather, we simply must do what we are called to do when we are called to do it.

 

Jesus came to bring an equal share to a world that is often a horribly unfair place.

 

And his command to us is that we also must strive to bring an equal share to this unequal world.

 

And that is what we’re doing as followers of Jesus.

 

As we follow Jesus, we do so knowing that we are striving to bring about an equal share in a world that is often unfair.

 

We do so, knowing that we are sometimes swimming against the tide.

 

We do so, feeling at times, as though we’re set up to fail.

 

We do so feeling, at times, overwhelmed with the unfairness of it all.

 

And just when we think the unfairness of this world has won out—in that moment—that holy moment—the Kingdom of God always breaks through to us.

 

And in that moment, we are the ones who are able to be the conduit through which the God comes.

 

So, let us continue to do what we are doing as followers of Jesus.

 

Let us strive to do even better.

 

In everything we do, let us attempt to lift that veil in our lives and by doing so, let us be the conduit through which the Kingdom of God will flood into this unfair world.

 

And let us do together what Jesus is calling us to do in this world

 

Let us love—fully and completely.

 

Let us love our God, let us love our selves and let us neighbors as ourselves.

 

As we all know, it’s important to “come” here—personally or virtually—and share the Word and the Eucharist on Sundays.

 

But we also know that what we share here motivates us to go out into the world and actually “do” our faith.

 

As followers of Jesus, we are full of hope—a hope given to us by a God who knows our future and who wants only good for us—God who really is a fair God!

 

Let us go forth with that hope and with a true sense of joy that we are doing what we can to make that future glorious.

 

Let us pray.

 

Holy God, you call us in our following of your son to do the right thing and strive for fairness and equality in this world; help us to do just that, so that by doing so, we may be the conduits through which your love comes forth into this world; we ask this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.