Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

A Fair Wage: The End of the Line

What is fair?  Recall the words of Isaiah from the first reading: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.” Is God really that inscrutable? Some would use this as an excuse to simply abandon all reason, which usually means embracing whimsy and self-interest. Considering the passage in the context of Isaiah 55, however, we can see that the prophet is suggesting it is God’s great mercy that is inscrutable; for indeed, it is God’s mercy that touches humanity, not God’s wrath, in the person of Jesus.

     Jesus, in today’s gospel, is addressing his disciples on the heels of Peter’s declaration, “Look we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Like so many of Peter’s declarations, we might cringe, but we can easily see ourselves in such questioning. Peter’s question brings us an important issue for those who “have left everything”. Clearly, Peter regards the disciples as being the leaders of the Kingdom, most deserving of salvation; however, Jesus’ parable, when applied to that attitude clearly seems to indicate a position at the end of the line (“…the last will be first, and the first shall be last”). The ordering of first and last in the sentence, placing last first, suggests a reordering of Peter’s sense of entitlement. “Scramble for the back of the line” seems to be Jesus’ advice to the disciples, but the ambition to be last so that one may be first seems to bring us back to the same problem: “I am entitled to compensation”. We can hear Peter’s petulance at the end of the line: “Okay, now I’m at the end, let me be first!”

      What we need to do is abandon our “line mentality”. The Kingdom isn’t about where we are, it’s about who is there with us. Like the master of the vineyard in today’s parable, God does not regard time as an indication of virtue. In eternity, time is meaningless. Like the refrain from Amazing Grace “"When we've been here ten thousand years/Bright shining as the sun./We've no less days to sing God's praise/Than when we've first begun." Our reward for our relationship with God is the relationship itself, not an enhanced environment.

      There is the story of the man recently arrived in heaven being disappointed at the plain furnishings and amazed to see the utter joy on the faces of the people who are enjoying themselves in blissful communion. He approaches one of these folks as asks them if this is heaven. “Yes, it is!” the man replies. “How can this be heaven; it is so plain and unattractive?” “Oh, that,” the man replies. “Heaven isn’t out there”, gesturing at his surroundings, “heaven is in here” gesturing to his heart. Our reward of faith isn’t something we get, it is someone we become: the image of the One who made us.

Hell for those expecting more.

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

“Love does no evil to the neighbor;
hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.”

Although both Old Testament and gospel readings this morning speak of sin and the duty of confronting the sinner, it is easy to go no further than separating from the sinner and going about one’s business, content that the community is a better place without them. This rather myopic reading of Scripture “misses the mark” if we take it no further.

Ezekiel was a prophet in exile, well over a thousand miles from his home in what today is Iraq. As a priest, he no longer could perform his priestly function, and so God appointed him to explain why they are in exile (faithlessness in practice) as well as a vision of a new Israel restored and closer to God.

Likewise, in the gospel, while it can seem that Jesus is simply preaching what to do with unrepentant sinners (treat them as you would tax collectors and Gentiles: separation), perhaps one could also consider the more important lesson of forgiveness than communal purity.

With whom did Jesus seek communion? He sought out those not included in traditional Jewish society: tax collectors and Gentiles, to name two outcast groups. Likewise, while today’s text discusses the seriousness of sin within the Christian community, its focus is on the extraordinary lengths a community should go to re-evangelize those whose actions separate them from the community. While we need to clearly identify sin, we should focus on forgiveness because sin can destroy communion and community.  The sins in today’s gospel seem to be the failure to reconcile, the great pride of self-righteousness, anger, and despair.

Jesus begins by announcing what to do “if your brother sins against you.” This isn’t some sin against the Law or a laundry list of do’s and don’ts; this sin is personal. If we had to approach everyone using this method for even serious sins, we would be spending most of our time confronting one another and very little time for anything else. This sin here is when we feel personally offended by someone in our community, our brother (or sister!).

 Personal grudges and long-simmering unresolved feelings of ill will are a much greater poison to a faith community than failure to live up to high moral standards. Taking personal offense at someone for living up to a moral code is not helpful. We should refuse to tolerate unresolved conflict, things that destroy communion.

One who refuses to forgive is living in greater sin than the action that occasioned the offense. Such stubbornness involves at least three serious sins: pride, anger, and despair. Our community of brothers and sisters, to follow Jesus’ model, should be a community whose personal conflicts should be resolved through mutual forgiveness and reconciliation. To read this story as simply one confronting another about sin—-though there is a place for this in the community—the real culprit here is latent anger, pride, and despair brought about by those who have been offended.

St. Paul, in today’s lesson, reminds us of the true hierarchy of righteousness:

“Love does no evil to the neighbor;
hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.”

We fulfill the law in loving our neighbor; forgiveness is the single greatest act that “loosens” sin; pride, anger, and despair keep sin “bound” and lead to death.

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

     The words of passion from Jeremiah in his love affair with God remind me of the “burning” of Pablo Neruda’s poem “Ode to a Naked Beauty”: “As if you were on fire from within./The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”  Jeremiah complains that loving God puts him at odds with the world and causes him to suffer; he is not a willing sufferer but has been seduced by God. The usual translation is “duped,” but a mystical tradition within the Church that renders patah as “seduced,” and I think it is appropriate, especially for this passage.  Jeremiah’s love for God is all-encompassing. He is in love with a being, caught up in a passion that will not be denied.  Indeed, these lines could have been taken from the lover’s complaint of a Shakespearean sonnet.

“I say to myself, I will not mention him,
I will speak in his name no more.
But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart,
imprisoned in my bones;
I grow weary holding it in; I cannot endure.”

            This intensity finds its resonance in today’s gospel reading from Matthew, where God’s love for humanity is likewise intense and “foolish” in the person of Jesus, who realizes that he will soon suffer and die because of this passionate love for humanity.  That is why he sharply rebukes Peter, whom he had praised just moments before, and suggests that seeking to avoid suffering is an inclination from Satan. Clearly, Peter loves Jesus and wants Jesus to avoid suffering and death. Peter wants the Triumphant King, not the Suffering Servant, but clearly, Jesus is the Suffering Servant, and many who followed him equated him with Jeremiah, for whom the Suffering Servant was likely penned (some thought Jesus as the resurrected Jeremiah).

            Of course, in word and action, Peter was perhaps the most passionate of all the disciples. I think Jesus realized that what is essential for the continuation of the mission was passion, not administrative acumen (though we need not find them as opposing qualities). Peter’s passion needed to be directed toward God’s mission of embracing humanity. Our purest expression of love for God is our love for those whom God has created.  Jesus makes falling in love with God less of a mystical affair and one of flesh and blood reality. Jesus’ Great Commission (John 15:12) isn’t about loving God directly but loving one’s neighbor. It is in loving one’s neighbor, then, that the love of God becomes flesh and blood. Like God, our love will be often rejected, and we will indeed pay a high price for having been “seduced” to love the God we can see in each other because our love of Christ compels us beyond the love of family, or nation, or tribe, and seeks the love of God in all, not just among the "lovable."