Shepherd-King (Matthew 25:31 - 26:2)

     Next week is the first week in Advent, and it has kind of a double vision, looking both forward and backward, forward to what we call the second coming, and backward to the first.  This week, we’ve jumped forward to the kingdom’s arrival, and it’s a well-known passage: Jesus says “just as you did it to one of the least of these . . .  you did it to me.” And we often stop right there, and interpret it as exhortation to do good, to be all around good people, to do social justice in Christ’s name. And that’s not a bad way to see it, of course . . . how many of us, when we see somebody in rags, or obviously homeless or stranded, how many of us have passed on by? No need to raise your hands . . . I bet most of us have done that . . . I know I have . . . but how many of us, if we saw it was Jesus trudging along Highway 4, would keep on truckin’? None of us, I imagine. And that’s what this passage says, at least in part – refusing to help people in need is the same as passing by Jesus. Helping people in need is the same thing as helping Jesus.

But if we see this passage as just a call to visit the jail once in awhile, or haul some clothes down to Goodwill, we miss the overall thrust of the passage. It isn’t about the righteous sheep, or the accursed goats, or even about the needy themselves. It’s about Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, and that’s appropriate – it is, after all, Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the Church year. Next week, it all starts up again – the lighting of the Advent candles, the singing of “O Come O Come, Emmanuel,” the count-down to Christmas and then Easter . . . but this week we take a look at the person of Jesus, whom we call the Christ.

Jesus calls himself the “Son of Man,” and it’s the most disputed of all his titles. Just what it meant is obscure to us two thousand years after the fact . . . but for Matthew and his readers, it probably implies an apocalyptic rescuer who will come as a judge at the end of time, and sure enough, our passage is about judgment at the end of time, it’s about judgment day – the Son of Man will come in glory, Jesus says, and “all the angels with him,” and “he will sit on the throne of his glory.” And it is glorious, this image of the final times . . . all the nations will be gathered there, all the peoples from the ends of the earth, and he will rule over them all from his throne of glory.

But our image of the future comes crashing back down to the present reality, or at least to the reality at the time Jesus spoke . . . in the last lines of his speech, as the disciples wonder at the sheep and goats, and the Shepard-King who separates them, in the last line of his speech Jesus brings them right back down to earth – “after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.” The Son of Man! The king and judge and jury, all rolled into one – handed over like a slave to a horrible death.

And our tale of sheep and goats and clothing and feeding is embraced within diametrically opposed images of the Son of Man – sovereign Lord, Son of God, sitting on the judgment-throne versus humiliated slave, spiked to a tree, gasping out his last breaths in the gloom . . . and the identity of Christ spans these two extremes, because as Christians we confess that he has been crucified, dead and buried and yet will return in glory, thus, as we say, “to judge the quick and the dead.”

But in the meantime . . . haven’t we been assured that Jesus is here? Doesn’t he say, in the last line of Matthew’s Gospel “Lo, I am with you, even to the end of the age”? How can he be with us, and yet return to us?  Most often we say – he’s with us in spirit now, but will return in flesh at the second coming, and although it’s a workable answer, it’s not very satisfying, because it doesn’t really say anything . . . it sounds like what we say at funerals – “Uncle Bob will always be with us in our hearts . . .” but you’d hope it’d mean a little more than that.

Our passage gives us a clue . . . sandwiched in between contrasting images of the Son of Man is the story of the separation of the flock. He sits on his throne and separates the sheep from the goats, and tells the sheep:  “Come . . . inherit the kingdom prepared for you.” But he tells the goats: “depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels!” These goats, he says, “will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.”

Eternal punishment. Consuming fire. Pretty serious stuff . . . but the kicker, the really surprising thing is the reasoning: the righteous and accursed aren’t separated according to those who have faith, and those who don’t; or who is chosen by God and who isn’t. There’s not a lot of grace here, that I can see – those who inherit the kingdom are those that give food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, who welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick and visit the prisoners. Those that are consigned to the fires with the devil and his minions are those that don’t do those things. It’s as simple as that.

Now this may be surprising to those of us brought up on God’s grace, and it surprises the sheep, too, so they ask him about it, they ask when they did this stuff for him, when did they feed him, and clothe him and comfort him and visit him in jail? And his answer is simple “when you did it to the least of these.” But the goats are just as shocked: “when was it we did not take care of you?” Jesus answers them the same way: “When you did not do it to the least of these, you did not do it to me.”

So here’s one way Jesus is “with us always”  he’s with the hungry, he’s with the naked, the stranger and the prisoner . . . but it’s more than just being with them, it’s a stunning, intimate closeness . . . in some sense he is them, because whatever we do – or don’t do – to the naked and the stranger, the hungry and the sick, we do – or don’t do – to Jesus. It’s more than just he is with them, it’s an identification with them, they represent Christ to us on this earth, in this age, until the fulfillment of the kingdom, until he comes again.

So here we have a triple-lensed image of Christ, a three-fold rendering of the Lord’s presence. First, he is Son of Man who comes in glory, trailing angels like stars, sitting in judgment on a brilliant throne. Second, he is the despised and rejected of the world, the hungry and the naked, the sick and the stranger. Finally, he is the Son of God, who suffers and is handed over to be crucified, to be hung up on a cross. The three views are inextricable one from another, you can’t untangle them, or talk about one apart from the others. He is the judge who will come like the morning, to separate the sheep from the goats, but who is himself judged, who dies to “save his people from their sins.” A different kind of judge, to say the least, and a different kind of judgment.  He is the king of the universe, ruler of the cosmos, ensconced on a throne of glory, who is at the same time suffering and hungry and naked, at one with the sick and the outcast and the marginal. A different kind of king, to say the least, and a different kind of kingdom.

In Jesus Christ, these three roles, these three images are held in tension, they are compatible only in him . . . he is at their center, and if we reject any one of them, we reject him . . . if we reject the Shepherd king, we reject the outcasts. And if we reject the outcasts, the hungry and the unclothed, we reject the savior of us all.

And that was the lesson for Jesus’ disciples, and it’s the same for us today . . . caring for the outcasts, the naked and the stranger, the poor and the prisoner is the same as caring for Jesus; accepting them is accepting Jesus. If feeding the hungry is feeding Jesus, if giving caring for the sick is caring for Jesus, the relationship between them is far more than casual . . . it is one of equivalence, of intimacy . . . Jesus’ identity is somehow bound up in the weakest, most despised members of society. But the taking care of the outcast –  which is taking care of Jesus – places us in a similar, vulnerable position. It’s not just carrying a turkey down to the shelter on Thanksgiving, or working the food bank on Christmas eve, although these things are surely important. Caring as Jesus did means intimate involvement, it means identifying with those we care for, just as he did. When we clothe the naked, we are with them in their shame, in their unclean-ness, we guide them to the healing love of Jesus Christ. When we feed the hungry, we do it no matter how they got that way, like we would a sister, or a brother, or our savior . . . do we judge them? Do we means-test them? And when we welcome the stranger, we welcome the one who’s strange, who’s different, whose thoughts are different, whose desires are different. We welcome her into our family, into our lives, we make room for her at the table.

These are dangerous acts, sometimes for dangerous people . . . if we associate with them, if we welcome them into our fellowship and into our hearts, like Jesus we become identified with them, suddenly we become like them, and that can be risky in polite society. Instead of people like everybody else, who just happen to spend Sunday mornings in church, we become suspect to the rest of society. Neighborhood coalitions start to form, people write editorials maligning our credentials, and the Pharisees –  I mean the police – start to make routine visits, ask probing questions. And the next thing you know, we’re run out of town, or brought before the regional governor on trumped up charges, or maybe sentenced to rot in a Roman prison . . .

Identifying with the weakest, most despised members of society is hazardous – just look what happened to Jesus. But it’s the essence of Christian discipleship, I think. After all, Jesus is there, in solidarity with the outcasts of the world, with the dregs of society . . .  and isn’t that where we’re called to be as well? Aren’t we called to be Christ-like, to follow his example in this age as well as the next? Because after all, the conditions of this world are not ultimate, the misery and suffering and despising and casting-out are only pen-ultimate, only temporary and provisional. For Jesus is present to us as more than just the weak, more than just the despised, he’s present as the crucified savior who dies for our sake, so that at the end of the age, when the last trumpet sounds and the lion lies down with the lamb, when the Son of Man comes in majesty and sits on his throne of glory, he will say to us: “Welcome, blessed of God: come into the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the universe.”  Amen.

A Talented Bunch (Matthew 25:14 - 30)

     One of the things we must consider whenever we interpret one of Jesus’ parables is their nature as mashal . . . remember?   We talked about it before, it means “dark saying.”  As in difficult to interpret, hidden, not-straightforward.  And the thing to remember is that they were just as dark to the first-century Christians, as they are to us.  Even more so:  they didn’t have 2 millennia of interpretive tradition to fix an interpretation in their minds.  Even if it isn’t what Jesus originally had in mind.

The thing is, Jesus must have used mashal for a reason, right?  Otherwise, why do it?   Why didn’t Jesus just say: ok, here’s what I mean, and just blatt it out?  Ok, ok . . . he did do that a couple of times, like in the parable of the seed scattered on the sidewalk, but normally, no.  Even though he could have made them obvious, he could have spelled out what he meant, I am convinced that he wanted us to struggle, to wrestle with his words.  Contrary to popular belief, this Christianity stuff is not easy, even though becoming Christians is . . . but living into our faiths isn’t easy, it isn’t easy figuring out what Jesus meant, much less how we’re supposed to apply it.

And here’s a radical thought: maybe its meaning isn’t fixed.  Maybe there is no one meaning, maybe it depends on the context of those who are listening.  The classic example of this is over in Luke, where he says “I come to bring good news to the poor,” and some folks, folks with money, perhaps, who might be less inclined than others to give “their” money to poor people, tend to spiritualize it, saying it means the good news of salvation, but the poor—who tend to be more concrete, maybe because they’re too busy scrambling for food—the poor tend to say “Hallelujah!  That’s really good news!  We’re gonna get something to eat . . .”

But what if it’s both?  Or neither?  Or some other interpretation we haven’t thought about?  What if that is one of the reasons Jesus spoke so often in mashal form: not only is it good for us to figure out their meanings for ourselves, but they leave wiggle room for interpretation, for being adapted to a time and place.  We Presbyterians profess to believe in “Reformed and always being reformed by the Spirit of God.”  To my mind, this is one way of giving room to the Spirit: admitting of more than one interpretation of any given passage . . .

And the way this parable has traditionally been interpreted by us sober-sided, financially responsible, mainline protestants is through the lens of fiscal responsibility, being good stewards of what God has given us.  God gets mad if we fritter it away, this interpretation goes, but God gets furious when we don’t make something of it, when we don’t multiply it to do mission, to further the Kingdom of God on Earth.  And a related interpretation—more closely related than many of us like to admit—is the prosperity doctrine version, which emphasizes the part where the master says—notice it’s not Jesus saying this as an interpretation, but the master in the parable—“So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents.  For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”   And we think “quite right, quite right . . . it’s like wise investment in a growing business, or in blue chip stocks . . . we as stewards of God’s bounty must be sober and sound, investing it into solid missions where the return in souls is assured.  If a mission doesn’t carry its weight, if numbers served or brought into the church don’t increase, cut it out!  Be done with it! Look what happens to people—and churches!—who accumulate money and don’t do anything with it, don’t use it for the mission of God.  They get thrown into outer darkness, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Gnash, gnash, gnash.”

Note that this assumes a certain kind of reading, an allegorical one where we assign people or things in real life to things in the story, in the allegory, and that means the “master” must be assigned as God for a good-steward reading to make sense.  But there are problems with that kind of reading: the servant says “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed” and is that a fair assessment of God as we understand it? Does God—whom we define, after all, as love—does God take other peoples’ stuff? Does he reap where he hasn’t sewn?  Is that a loving thing to do?  And the “master” doesn’t contradict him!  He doesn’t say: that is not how I operate, you know . . . that may be the way of the world, but it’s not mine . . . no.  The master admits it: “You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.”  And here’s another thing that doesn’t ring true: charging interest was against the Torah, against the laws of Moses, where it is was considered usery no matter how much is charged.  And in this most Jewish of gospels, can you imagine God asking someone to go to a userer?

I have an idea: why don’t we read it exactly as written?  Why don’t we read it straight?  The master is  a wealthy landowner, nothing more nothing less.  Likewise, the slaves are slaves, probably stewards, household slaves charged with managing the affairs of the master.  This was a common enough scenario in the first century, that masters entrusted their stuff to trusted servants.

If we do this, it all falls into line, it all makes perfect sense.  The master is doing what masters often do, and more important, Jesus’ depiction of the master is historically accurate.  In the first century, you didn’t get to be a wealthy landowner by being nice.  You got that way by power tactics, by swindling and cheating and mistreating others.  You got that way by reaping where you did not sew, by taking the fruits of the labors of others.  It was like that Tennessee Ernie Ford song, I owe my soul to the company store:  small landowners were routinely charged outrageous prices, so that in lean years, they got into increasing debt with the big landowners, debt they couldn’t quite pay off in fat years, so that after a time, the only thing left to take was their land.  That’s how wealthy landowners got wealthier, on the backs of the poor—kind of like today, actually, with the income gap becoming ever larger and wider between those with a lot and those with . . . less.

And the last words of the master—remember, they aren’t Jesus’—ring true if the master isn’t supposed to be God, but just a wealthy landowner:  “ . . . to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”  This is a simple statement of historical fact: those with money will get more.  It takes money to make money, doesn’t it?  And second clause was true as well:  from those with nothing, even what they have will be taken away.  And this had, perhaps, literally happened to some of the disciples who were listening:  They would have no trouble understanding just who the master represents, they knew that for all too many just like them, as they began to owe more and more, and could pay less and less, even their land, their ancestral holdings, what little they had, was finally taken away.

And of course, that is what is happening today, isn’t it?  Since the early 1970s, real wages—i.e., wages adjusted for inflation—have decreased for those outside of that notorious top 1%, which have increased.  And as more and more people got further and further behind, consumer debt rose, people began to use credit cards for daily expenses.   In 1980, total CEO pay equaled 42% of the total blue collar pay, while last year, it had grown to 343% of the blue collar.  In the meantime, in the last 10 years alone, median household income fell $3,719.  To those who have, more is certainly being given.  And those who have relatively nothing began to lose what they do have—their homes, the basis of the American dream.

Well, now that we have a good idea what Jesus might have been talking about, why would he say it?  And why would Matthew place that parable right here?  Remember, its in the section of his gospel dealing with the second coming, and it follows a kingdom parable, the parable of the bridesmaids, which we looked at last week.  At the end of that, Jesus says “Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”  And ours begins “For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them.”  And the “it” it refers to is the second coming, which will happen we know not when.   And like the bridesmaids, the slaves don’t know when the master will return, and like the bridesmaids, some do one thing, and some another.

But here’s the difference: in the parable of the bridesmaids, nothing was said about the character of the bridegroom, just that he was coming.  But here, in the parable of the talents, it’s clear that the master is not a nice guy: even he agrees!   He reaps where he does not sew, gathers where he does not scatter.  He is a rapacious land owner, and the disciples to which this parable was told are all too familiar with the type.  And two of the slaves—the ones to whom more was given, not coincidentally—participate in his rapacious behavior, they go out and emulate the wicked master, and he praises them for it, he rewards them.  But the one to whom the least is given does nothing of the kind:  what he does is not waste the master’s cash, as did the prodigal son, but he buries it.  By doing this, he doesn’t do anything technically wrong, he just refuses to participate in the master’s greedy behavior.  He refuses to reap where he doesn’t sew.

Mahatma Gandhi was a fan of Jesus.  One of his most famous one-liners shows that: “I like your Christ,” he said “I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”   But less known is the fact that he modeled his famous techniques of non-violent resistance, techniques that ultimately drove the British colonialists out of India, on those of Christ.  We’ve talked about them before: turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, whose face is on the coin . . . placed in historical context, these stories can be seen as examples of resisting the Roman oppressors without the use of violence.   Pastor and biblical scholar David Ewart points out that the actions of the third slave are in that vein:  he breaks no law, does nothing violent—as in Colonial India, all the cards are in the hands of the powers that be anyway—yet he refuses to play the world’s game.  He refuses to participate in the master’s selfish ways.  He refuses to help him reap where he does not sew.

And he pays the price doesn’t he?  The same price paid by the early Christian martyrs: all he has is taken, and he is cast into the outer darkness, thrown out of his cushy job as household slave, his family left to starve out on their own.  Gnashing of teeth, indeed.  And in this case, Jesus’ use of mashal takes on a whole different dimension: if he had told it outright, if he’d condemned the master and praised the third slave, it might not have gone well for him.  In fact, in the end, it didn’t, did it?  He was hung up on a tree to die.

Brothers and sisters: last week we talked about the wedding banquet—where all eat their fill, rich as well as poor, servant as well as landowner—we talked about it as a powerful metaphor for the kingdom of God, radically opposed to the ways of the empire.  Radically opposed to the rapacious practices of the powerful, who reap what they have not sewn and gather where they did not scatter.  Where to those who already have, more is given, and from those who have nothing, even that is taken away.  As the Church, we are called to be pointers to a just reality, avatars of God’s just ways.  How will we respond?  Amen.

Lamplight (Matthew 25:1 - 13)

     Like all the other Kingdom parables, it sets us thinking: just how is the Kingdom of heaven like, in this case, ten bridesmaids?  And the first thing to notice is the “this,” in the first line.  “The kingdom of heaven will be like this,” he says, and it seems to refer to the entire story.  He doesn’t tell us what it is about the story the Kingdom of Heaven is like.  Not a hint, or a clue, or even a little suggestion.  We’re given no pointers, except what’s found in the story itself.  And to figure it out, we have to think first about its context.  To whom is it told, and when?

Well, Jesus tells the original parable to his disciples, and thus to insiders, in about 30 AD.  And he was talking about the parousia, the second coming of Christ, and though scholars debate how important a concept this was to Jesus, there is little doubt that it was of very great importance to early followers of Christ, like those for whom the gospel of Matthew was written fifty years or so after the crucifixion.   In the first century, the entire locus of Christian hope in the first century revolved around this event, which refers to the fulfillment, the establishment of God’s just rule on earth.  That’s the whole idea behind the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God as Jesus calls it in Mark and Luke: the kingdom of heaven is on earth.  It’s like the Lord’s Prayer says: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  Jesus is talking to people who have a world-view that sees heaven—where God lives—as the perfect place, the abode of the gods, where everybody gets along, where there’s no hunger or war and et cetera.  Further, people in Jesus’ day believed that earth is an imperfect approximation of heaven, that place where the gods rule, where in particular God sits on a throne.  New Testament Christian hope is that God’s just rule will come to earth, that’s the “on earth as it is in heaven” part, and there will be no more starvation or oppression or war.

Now, a banquet is a common image for that Kingdom because, after all, there is never any want at a banquet … there is always plenty to go around, plenty to eat and drink, and for all the people to whom Jesus preached the Good News—the poor, as it says over in Luke—a banquet is impossibly fine, they’d never be invited to a banquet in real life, only rich people went to banquets, this is good news to the poor indeed.  And on top of that, a wedding banquet . . . well.  Weddings went on for seven days . . .  seven days of eating and drinking, and, uh, other things, seven days of no worries and no trouble, and we know what the number seven represents, don’t we.  It’s the perfect number, it represents fulfillment, completeness, and so the kingdom of heaven is a lack of want and worry . . . perfected, completed.  And as kind of an aside, this illuminates the changing of the water into wine over in John, doesn’t it?  That’s a wedding banquet, and Jesus enables it to be brought to its completion, its fulfillment, by ensuring the abundance of a component critical to all Jewish banquets.

Anyway.  Here’s another feature that’s important to understanding this parable: unlike today, when we are so fixated on time, on events beginning and ending on time, in those days, things happened when they . . . happened.  Nobody said—“ok, the bridegroom is gonna arrive at 6 pm, and it’ll take 2 and a half minutes to march down the aisles, five minutes for the bad rendition of Pachelbel’s Canon and seven for do you Sarah take this man Abraham, yadda, yadda, yadda, so we oughta be at the banquet table by, oh . . . seven-ish.”  Events like weddings happened when they happened, when things were ready, and that wasn’t up to the guests or, in that day, the bride.  They happened when the bridegroom showed up, and him being late wasn’t all that uncommon.  Often times, a little last minute negotiation with the father of the bride would have to be done, a little last minute squabbling over the terms of her dowry which, unlike today, was of critical importance to the whole shebang..

And so although they had a general idea that the bridegroom would arrive there that evening, they weren’t sure when that would be.  That’s why we’re told the bridegroom was delayed, and in fact, the Greek word cronidzo we render as delayed might be more accurately translated as “taking time”, so you must get say the bridegroom was taking his own sweet time, but it’s not that he was late, because there was no deadline that he could be late from.  And of course, this is exactly the nature of the parousia, the second coming—whatever it’s going to be— isn’t it?  Paul says it will come like a thief in the night, Jesus himself warned of the futility of predicting the exact time and date . . . it will come when it comes, it will come when the bridegroom—and in this parable, that’s Jesus himself—is ready. 

But that hasn’t kept everybody from Jack Van Impe to Hal Lindsey to Jerry Falwell from trying to predict the time and days.  The latest I know of was Harold Camping, former head of Family Radio, who predicted the rapture on May 21, 2011 followed by the second coming and destruction of the world by God on October 21 of that year.  When the rapture didn’t happen, he said there’d been a “spiritual judgment,” and that the rapture and destruction of the world would happen on October 21.  When that didn’t happen, a major theological publication—The International Business Journal—labeled him a false prophet.  And to that I say “well, Duh.”

Putting aside the question of why these people would so clearly disregard the advice of Jesus and try to predict the unpredictable, it is this unpredictability that this parable hinges upon.  The first-century Christians had expected the second coming within their generation—mainly because Jesus said so at one point—and they were getting a little antsy.  And this story said something to their impatience . . . but what?  Let’s see . . . there are ten bridesmaids waiting where the wedding is to be held, and what they’re waiting for is to line the streets, to observe and perhaps ooh and ah, over the procession of the bridegroom and also of the bride.  Jewish weddings began this way, perhaps because after the wedding processing would be out of the question.  And remember that the bridegroom is taking a long time in coming, and the bridesmaids had fallen asleep, but that isn’t the problem.  It isn’t like with James and John and Peter in the Garden who couldn’t keep awake, the bridesmaids were human beings and they’d been waiting a long time.  No, the problem is that it’s dark by the time the bridegroom arrives, midnight, in fact, and so here’s the scene: ten bridesmaids snoozing away and suddenly there’s a shout:  the bridegroom!  The bridegroom is here!  And they all wake up with a start, and they start trimming their lamps, so as to light the way for the bridegroom, when the lamps of five of them—who hadn’t brought any extra oil—begin to sputter and go out.  They can’t relight them to light the bridegroom’s way because they have not anticipated that he might arrive after dark.  They had assumed he’d process when it was light, when he was supposed to, for Pete’s sake, and they are caught flat-footed, unable to honor the bridegroom when he arrives.

 By their lack of planning, of taking all contingencies into account, they’d made assumptions about when he was to come, they’d put him in a little box of their own making.  In a way, they’d dishonored his authority, his ability and right to come whenever he wanted to, whenever the time was right, when it was fulfilled, and not before.  They’d done the same thing as our latter day end-times predictors, the Tim LaHayes and Hal Lindsey’s, only the bridesmaids presumably didn’t make any money off of it.

And we in the church are always doing that, aren’t we?  I know I am . . . I’m always reading my own agenda into scripture, thinking “God, you can’t want that, can you?  After all, you’re not like that, are you?  You’re like this, or like that over there . . .”  We often mistake our own agendas for God’s, trying to get God to arrive in our own time, surely before it gets dark, or get God to behave the way we think God should.  We think God can’t really like that new-fangled style of worship—I just know God hates drums—when it’s really we ourselves can’t stand ‘em.  And like the foolish bridesmaids with the bridegroom, this dishonors God, it presumes that God doesn’t have the freedom to act in whatever way God wants.  It presumes that we know better than God, that our own tastes and preferences are to be followed rather than the Divine.

Well.  The bridesmaids without oil frantically try to borrow some from the ones who have it, but they say they don’t have enough, and they go into the wedding banquet and the door is shut, bang.  And it’s midnight, for Pete’s sake, yet the foolish bridesmaids go out looking for an oil seller.  What, is Achmed the oil-dealer open 24/7 these days?  Is the Ameristop keeping holiday hours?  And though we’re not told whether or they get any or not, I suspect they don’t, because they come back and bang on the door, saying “Lord, lord, open to us.”  But the bridegroom opens the door and says “Truly I say to you”—and you know it’s serious when he says that—“Truly I say to you, I do not know you.”  And though the Greek word we translate as “know” means literally “to see,” it has a deep range of meanings—to know about, to be intimately acquainted with, to understand—and the bridegroom doesn’t know the foolish bridesmaids.

When the disciples brought his mother and sister, Jesus would not see them, saying instead that his brothers and sisters and mother are those that do the will of God.  Those he knows, those he understands, those he has intimate familial acquaintance with are those who do God’s will, not their own.  Therefore, sisters and brothers, let us be prepared . . . let us do what the bridegroom wants us to do, not what we think he does.  Let us honor the bridegroom by letting him  determine the course of his ministry: it is not up to us.  Let us be ready for his coming by doing what is expected of us, by working in peace and harmony and loving cooperation, joyfully doing the will of God, lest the time of the bridegroom’s coming takes us unaware.  Amen.

Happiness (Matthew 5:1 - 12)

The Beatitudes are the first words of the sermon on the mount, And I think it’s important to understand a little about what they are—and are not—before we look at what they say. First of all, the scenes from Hollywood movies aside, they are not preached to a crowd. We picture Jesus standing on a hill, eyes of Hollywood-blue, proclaiming to a vast crowd . . . Well, there is a crowd: Jesus had been running around Galilee, healing the sick, curing the lame, driving out demons—you know, all those Jesus things—and as you can imagine, he attracted quite a bunch of people. Some of them were looking for someone to follow, others had ailments that needed healing, and some were what my real-estate queen mother would call looky-lous, people who just wanted to see a good show. (Police officers know these last folks well . . . They’re the kind who slow down at accident scenes to gawk at the mayhem, clogging up the works, making it difficult for emergency personnel to do their jobs.)

Though they had differing motives, all of them had something in common: they would get on Jesus’ every last nerve, and he’d have to take a break, usually, like this time, up on a mountain. But this time, he doesn’t go by himself just to pray, he takes his disciples along with him. So the first thing to understand about the Blesseds, as I like to call them, is that they aren’t preached to a crowd, just to his followers. They—like the rest of the sermon on the mount—are words spoken to insiders, those whom Jesus had called to be his followers. In fact, the entire sermon in the mount would perhaps be better called the Teaching on the Mount, which is especially interesting because the Greek word we translate for some inexplicable reason as disciple means literally “student.”

So. The Blesseds are private teachings of a teacher to his students, a fact that warms the hearts of Gnostic types everywhere, who believe that salvation is based on secret wisdom imparted at the dark of the moon by a sage named Jesus using lots of code words and secret handshakes and stuff. Which is partially true, of course: Jesus was, among other things, a sage and the Beatitudes are wisdom sayings, but they’re hardly secret: the verses here in Matthew are among the most famous in any Scripture, Christian or otherwise, and there’s another version for everyone to read over in Luke.

And there are a couple of other things to notice about the Blesseds: they are not performative. In other words, when Jesus says “Blessed are the poor in spirit” that does not confer blessings on the poor in spirit. It does not, as Captain Picard of Star Trek might say, make it so. But more important, is that the sayings are not prescriptive. That is, they don’t prescribe behavior, they’re not telling us what to do. Of course, they’re often used that way, as a kind of a carrot for good behavior: “you’d better be pure in heart if you want to see God!” Or “you won’t be filled if you don’t hunger and thirst for righteousness . . .” But notice that he doesn’t say that, he doesn’t say that people who aren’t  pure in heart won’t see God, just that those who are will.

Well. If the Blesseds don’t do anything, if they don’t actively bless the meek, the pure in heart, etc., and if they aren’t a set of rules we have to follow to get to heaven, then what are they? And perhaps more important, what good do they do? Well, what they are are the opposite of prescriptive, they are descriptive: Jesus is describing how stuff is to his students, he’s telling them how it is.

That’s why I prefer other translations of the Greek adjective macarios: for example, in the Scholar’s Version it uses “congratulations,” as in “Congratulations to the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” but that seems to me just a little too much like a game-show prize to me—congratulations on your new car!! —and I prefer the more traditional, and perfectly acceptable, “happy,” as in “happy are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” . . . It’s a statement of fact: they’re happy, Jesus says, because the kingdom of heaven (Matthew’s version of the kingdom of God) is theirs. And poor in spirit means exactly what it says—they are poor in terms of spirit. They don’t have much spirit . . . Contrast them to those who are rich in spirit: the supremely confident, those who think they’re the be all and the end all of the known universe, who think they’re the ones in charge, instead of God, as the poor in spirit know. So much for the take-charge kind of guy . . .

Happy as well are those who mourn, for they’ll be comforted, and we—or at least I—always think of those who’ve lost loved ones, and that’s appropriate on this All Saints Sunday, as we remember those we’ve lost, but when you think about it, there are many things we grieve . . . Our lost innocence, our lost sense of the rightness of the world . . . The desolation we have wrought on our once edenic world . . . Our cities, where it’s not safe for a woman to walk alone, not to mention be in the same room with Harvey Weinstein. Happy are those who grieve these things, Jesus tells us, for they shall be comforted.

And I have to wonder . . . how are the grieving going to be comforted? Those who have lost loved ones can be comforted—somewhat, at least—by the thought of their being in a better place, but what about those who grieve our loss of safety? What about those who mourn the terrible destruction of the environment, the galling loss of civility, or the continuing inequity in the world? Seems to me that the only thing that will help these folks are safe cities, environmental renewal, the abolishment of Twitter (just kidding . . . I guess) and a sudden and equitable redistribution of resources in the world.

Anyway, happy are the meek, Jesus teaches, for they shall inherit the earth. Well, it doesn’t seem like it’ll be worth a whole lot, after the exhaustion of all its resources—scientists say it’ll probably be sooner than later—and the conversion of the biosphere into a garbage dump, but ok: the meek are going to inherit it, whatever’s left of it. The meek—gentle, unassuming people, kind and considerate—they’re going to inherit it all, and another question is, from whom? Who’s owns it all now? Well, God, of course, God, ultimately owns it—the earth is the lord’s all all that is in it, says the psalm after all . . .

Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled . . . satiated by righteousness, overflowing with it like the jars at the Cana wedding were of wine . . . happy are the merciful, for they’re going to get mercy in return, they’re going to get what they give out—kinda karmic, isn’t it?—and happy are the pure in heart ‘cause they’re gonna see God. And it’s important to note that pure in heart doesn’t mean pure overall, as in sinless . . . It means undivided, that their heart—their will, their intention—is not divided between God and anything else, that like the old hymn says, their eyes are always turned upon Jesus, they’re always looking full on his wonderful face.

Finally, happy are the peacemakers, because they’ll be called children of God—doubtless through their association with the Prince of Peace himself—and happy are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first characteristic in the list—happy are the poor in spirit—and this one have the exact same consequent, the exact same “because”: theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Because it’s the kingdom of heaven—the kingdom of God, as it’s called over in Luke—that we’re talking about here. And though to Jesus’ students, it likely meant something yet to be fulfilled, maybe we know that the kingdom is right here, within us, and all around us.

In a way, Jesus is describing an alternate reality, it’s a reality that is present within us, that infuses us, perfuses us, and yet, in a way, is still unfolding. And when Jesus talks about the poor in spirit having the kingdom, is he speaking about being closer to realizing it, to actuating it in their lives? After all, of your own spirit keeps getting the way, it’s heard to hear that still, small voice within. And persecution, and the suffering that goes with it, has a way of stripping away the trappings of ego and self-regard that block access to the spirit, or at least that’s what Paul thought . . .

And now, after happy are those persecuted for righteousness sake, the Beatitudes, the “happies,” are in a sense over, the rhythm and patterns of the preceding verses end. And suddenly, Jesus gets personal—instead of speaking in the third person—for they shall see God—he he’s talking in the second, directly to and about his students.

“Blessed are you,” he says, “when people revile you and persecute you on my account”—And he is looking into their eyes, suddenly gentle, suddenly serious, and they think they could fall into those eyes . . . and were members of Matthew’s congregation, fifty years after Jesus spoke these words, were they feeling persecuted, were they being reviled by their fellow Jews? Did that resonate especially strongly with them? Did that comfort them in their travails?

What resonates with you about the Blesseds? What comforts you?. Because that is what the Beatitudes are there for, one of the things, anyway . . . Comfort, comfort ye my people, said the prophet Isaiah, and that that is what the Beatitudes delivers. Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. And we all mourn, don’t we? We mourn our lives the way we imagined them to be, our image of ourselves, carefully nurtured fed over the years, which sometimes—not always, but sometimes—comes crashing down around us. We mourn what might have been and what never will be, we mourn the past, and our regrets sometimes seem to flow like water, like a never-ending stream. We mourn the church, both individual congregations and the Church in the world, as it and they change beyond recognition, as they aren’t the way they used to be. And most of all, perhaps, most of all we mourn those who have gone before, and those whom we know will be here but a little time more. So join us in a few minutes as we acknowledge and remember the saints who have come before. Amen.