Two Tales and a Prediction (Mark 12:38-13:2)

 

The Tale of the Scribe

As I climb the steps of Temple Mount, my heart is filled with a song of ascents: “I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come?  My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”  And as I climb to the Temple platform, where the holiest of holies awaits, I thank the Lord that I am part of God’s order, part of God’s apparatus, enshrined in the sacred place to which I ascend, where the will of the Lord is interpreted and implemented here on earth.  I am truly humbled before God that I have been chosen, even among a chosen people, to interpret God’s holy law and oversee its implementation.  Although I know that it is a gift, I am nevertheless proud that it has been given to me.

I feel the Law, the Torah, coursing through my body.  It is a song of hope, a song of order, a song given by the divine, by that which we do not even name, that which we call ha-shem, the Name, or simply Lord, Adonai.  And the Law has been spoken by the breath of God, by the ruach of God, and the words burned into our lives by that Spirit’s living flame.  And as I climb, other songs of David come to me . . . “O Lord, how I love your law!  It is my meditation all day long” and “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.”  And I am humbled and grateful and proud, at one and the same time, to be your vessel, O Adonai, and as I proudly walk through the marketplace, it shows in my countenance, it shines out through every pore and I know that I am aglow.

But the Law is often easier in the saying, more beautiful in its form, than it is in application.  Often, it is not easily seen how it applies in everyday life, as it surely must be for pious Jews everywhere.  And that is part of my job as Scribe: not only am I keeper of the Law as given, in all its symmetry and beauty, but I am its interpreter as well, I take a stricture and determine how it applies, I spin it out to its logical extent, showing its beauty in every situation.  What does the Law say about touching the unclean?  How long of a touch does it take?  Can the clean eat with the unclean?  Should they?  I and my fellow scribes do the hard and, frankly, thankless work of bringing the Law to the people, in the everyday.

So as I ascend to the Temple Mount, the abode of the Lord, I thank God for who I am, who God has made me, and I reflect on the governor’s feast just the night before, and think with pride of the honor given me to sit at the right hand of the host, the place of honor . . . It shows to me that even our Roman overlords fear the Lord, and respect those who labor in God’s vineyard, for the greater glory of Adonai . . .

And when I get to the platform, and stand outside the women’s court, I cannot help but break aloud into glorious, spontaneous prayer, my fine robes – as befit a servant of the Lord –shining in the morning sun.  And as my prayer rings out it expresses all the beauty, all the theological depth that my training in the Law has afforded me, and I cannot help but notice how it impresses not only the simple women who are about, but their menfolk as well, as they go in and out on temple business.

Which, of course, is what I have on this beautiful morning, after last night’s rain has washed the stink of the burnt offerings out of the air.  Indeed, it is the same business I have every morning at the Roman hour of Terce—and what a fine order the Romans have brought to Jerusalem, oppressors though they are . . . Anyway, my business this morning is to sit in judgment in the Temple gate, to hear the pleas of the people, and to interpret the Law of Moses, which is perfect and our delight, to insure that God’s justice is done for God’s people.  And the first to appear is a landlord and his tenant, a woman who has recently lost her husband, and cannot work the fields and thus cannot pay the percentage due the landlord.  And as much as it pains me to do so, as much as I am personally sympathetic to the plight of the widow—who has three young children—I have to side with the landowner who does own the land . . . after all, the Law is perfect, it is our delight.

 

The Tale of the Widow

I am not an old woman, having seen barely twenty five years, yet I have been a widow nearly half of them.  Married at twelve to a Temple carpenter, a year later he died when a scaffold collapsed on the Western Wall.  And although he left no brother to take my hand, and thus fulfill the Levirate duties of the dead, I was fortunate that my father still lived, and was able to take in my child and me.  Still, it was hard:  my father had little enough to live on, and two more mouths stretched it to the breaking point.  But though we were often hungry, we did not lack a warm, dry place to live.

Until, of course, my father passed in turn, and the landlord had no choice but to turn us out.  He had been generous enough toward the end—as my father’s health sank toward death, he was prevented from working, and could not pay his portion.  The landlord nevertheless let us stay, for which I am grateful, and of course the Lord, but when father died, he had no choice.  He had a living to make, he had mouths to feed himself, and I understood when he turned us out.  What could he do?

With no other male relative to take us in, we went into the streets, where I was to beg for our daily bread.  That first winter, my child died of a terrible, rattling cough.  She had been sick for weeks, hacking through the cold, winter nights, until finally, her body just gave out.  I suppose it is a mercy, because living on the Jerusalem streets is not easy, even within a stone’s throw of the Temple, where people tend to be more generous with their alms.  Still, I managed to survive these past years on the small amount that I was able to beg, a few pennies here, a few there.  Some days, I received several, some days none at all, the begging was as variable as the Palestine climate: beneficial the one day, and the next . . . not.

On this day, I come to the women’s court of the temple to make an offering to the Lord, through God’s priests and scribes and other learned men who bring God to the people, without whom we would surely be at our enemies’ mercy . . . the priests who intercede for us with burnt offerings and the scribes who apply God’s Holy Law equally, and though their judgments are sometimes harsh, they are invariably fair.  And as I throw into the jar the morning's take of two pennies—praise be to God I have the afternoon still to beg—I see the man Jesus, who we on the street all know, and he’s gesticulating toward me and speaking to his followers, though I cannot hear the words.  Then he turns away, trailing his disciples behind.

 

A Prediction

We disciples have a hard time understanding exactly what Jesus means by his words, or at least I do.  “Truly I tell you,” he says, “this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.”  Which, of course, is patently false: she’s put in a grand total of a penny, and there are those we’ve seen, just in the few minutes we’ve been here, who’ve put in many times more.  There’s no way she’s contributed more than all of them put together . . . And his explanation is not much better, that they’ve contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had . . . and to that I say . . . so??  They’ve still put in a far greater amount than the widow, intentions or not.

But maybe that’s the point . . . maybe Jesus can see that her intentions are better than all the others.  Maybe her heart is purer or something, cleaner, though I can’t believe it could be any more so than those of the Temple scribes . . . Or maybe it’s a relative thing, that what she has given is greater than all the others because she has given a greater percentage of what she has.  After all, 100% is certainly more than 10%, or 50%, and he did say they gave out of their abundance . . . It seems kind of a trivial point to make, but so be it.  I’m sure we’ll come to understand it one day, just as I’m sure we’ll understand all those predictions of his own death . . . How is it that the Messiah, born to lead us back to glory, could die?  Perhaps he meant that metaphorically, or symbolically, too.

Well.  As we leave the Temple, Peter—irritating, distractible Peter—says “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” and I’m thinking, sure they are, but a pretty skin hides a rotten core . . . Haven’t the minions of that place persecuted us since the beginning?  Hadn’t we just heard a vivid description of that rot, in the tale of the scribes’ overweening pride and hypocrisy?

And as if to put a seal on it all, Jesus tells us one more thing: “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”  And we don’t have to guess by whom it will be thrown: it is God who decides what lives or dies, what persists or is destroyed, and it is obvious that the Temple has outlived its usefulness, that it is so degenerate, so rotten, so riddled with corruption and vice, that it will be destroyed.

And doesn’t this shed a new light upon the widow’s mite?  Doesn’t it offer a different perspective on the act of sacrifice we just saw?  The widow gives all she has, her whole life for something that is worthless, corrupt . . . Does Jesus really mean to commend that act to us, does he mean to glorify it?  This poor widow, duped into giving her all to an institution riddled with sin, she must not be aware that what she has just given her life to does not deserve it.  After all, who in their right mind would do that willingly? 

 

Amen.

Faithful in Little (John 6:1-15)

So.  The Session of First Calvin Covenant Presbyterian Church is gathered in the fellowship hall for its monthly meeting, which they call whether they need it or not, and Pastor Roy is droning on about whether or not they should pay their head-tax, which he’s against, because the Presbytery has done something he doesn’t like.  Suddenly, there’s a blinding flash of light and a huge puff of smoke, and when it clears, there’s Jesus himself, standing beside the pastor, who proceeds to faint dead away.  Jesus is brushing something off his Brooks Brothers suit, saying “Angel dust . . . it gets into everything.” And he looks down at the pastor, gestures and suddenly Pastor Roy is in his chair, staring blearily around.

And there is dead silence as the elders stare at Jesus with mouths agape, and Jesus looks back at them and says “What?  Is it the suit?  You don’t expect me to wear a robe and sandals in this weather, do you?”  Doug, noting that Pastor Roy was still out of it, and feeling that his position as clerk demanded that he take the initiative, speaks up: “Uh, no . . . that’s not it . . . we’re just wondering, well . . . what are you doing here?” and Jesus says “Didn’t you believe me when I said ‘Lo, I will be with you, even unto the ends of he Earth?”  And he shakes his head, saying “Never mind.  Listen . . . I’ve got a job for you.  See those people out there?”  And they look out the window and there’s a huge crowd of people of all races and genders and socio-economic classes, and Jesus says “There’s five thousand of them.  Where are we going to buy them something to eat?  Is there a Costco open this late, or how about a deli?  Hard to get good pastrami at the right hand of God . . .”

And the members of the Session of First Calvin Covenant Church look uncomfortably at one another, and the finance committee chair says “Uh, Lord . . . we don’t have the budget for that . . . we have to pay the minister”—at which Pastor Roy perks up—“and the secretary and the choir director, and our building needs a new roof, and what about the Little Sisters of Perpetual Anxiety?  They depend on the little bit we give them every year.”  And the head of Missions nods her head, saying “We only have a tiny bit of our budget allocated to emergency needs,” and the Trustee representative chimes in with “and besides . . where are we going to put ‘em all?”

And they shuffle their feet, and look increasingly hang-dog, and Jesus just stares at them, until the Deacon rep says “Well my son over there” and she points to a sullen teenager in the corner  “my son has 5 Big Macs and a couple of super-sized fries, but that wouldn’t be nearly enough . . .”  But Jesus says “Go outside and sit ‘em down” and Lo!  The crowd sits in the parking lot, and it sits in the street.  It sits in the highways and hedges and all over the church lawn (the grounds chair mutters about how it’ll never recover).  And Jesus says “Bring me the burgers and fries” and he takes them and give thanks to God, and begins to hand them out the to the people in the crowd, saying “take, eat all you want.”  And the disciples—oops, I mean elders—begin to move back, behind their savior, and their eyes dart nervously around, because you never know what a hungry crowd’s gonna do, especially when you run out of food.

But you know what?  They don’t run out of food.  Jesus just keeps handing it out, and handing it out, and somehow it doesn’t run out.  And they don’t quite see how it happens, there’s no special-effects flash and bang . . .the food just keeps on coming, quietly, steadily.  It just keeps on coming.

And when everybody has been fed—when they’d all had seconds, and even thirds—Jesus tells the elders to go out and gather up the leavings, and they don’t even roll their eyes at the thought of anything left, they’d seen enough to convince them anything was possible, and sure enough, they gather up twelve of those reusable Kroger shopping bags full of Big Mac and french fry leavings, all mooshed together in a gooey mass of meat, pickles and potatoes, along with those little seeds that get caught in your teeth.

And after Pastor Roy is cited by the police for not having a crowd permit, and after they file back into the fellowship hall, Jesus stands in front of them and shakes his head “I can’t believe you were skeptical, that you didn’t think it could happen.”  Pastor Roy speaks up: “Well, you can hardly blame us, we’ve never actually seen a miracle . . .”  But Jesus says:  “Don’t you get all those stories in your Scripture?  Haven’t you read about all the signs I performed, all demons I cast out . . . Why I even raised old Lazarus from the grave, for heaven’s sake.  And you know this bears at least a slight resemblance to another sign I did beside the Sea of Galilee.”  And he smiles.

The elders look at one another uneasily, while Jesus continues: “That should be a big, fat hint: what was the point of those signs, which you call miracles?”  The Deacon representative timidly raises her hand, and feeling like he was back in the synagogue, Jesus calls on her: “Susan?”  “That you’re the Son of God?” she says.  “Well, yes . . . but all the signs point to that . . . look: I’ll give you a hint.  Think mustard seeds, water into wine, and leaven.”  Then he disappears.  Poof!

Well, that gets ‘em looking for Bibles—“there’s gotta be one around here somewhere,” the clerk mutters, “after all we are a church”—and finally they find some in the library and after they dust them off and pass them out, they first look up the water into wine, and Joyce reads it aloud.  When she gets to the end, they all begin to talk at once, and remembering his role as moderator, Pastor Roy says “one at a time, one at a time” and looks at the chair of Christian Ed.

“Well,” she says, “What jumps out at me is that the jars were filled to the brim, and I got the feeling that there was plenty to go around.  After all, those wedding parties went on for seven days, and there was a lot of wine drunk.”  There are snickers at that, and the pastor says “Ok, ok . . . so how is that like our miracle?”  “The abundance,” someone says, and another says: “it’s grace . . . grace is abundant, there's always more than enough to go around.”

“Aha!” says Pastor Roy.  “Grace is abundant.  In fact, it seems to me it’s super-abundant, there’s more than enough.  Now.  What about the mustard seed, and the leaven?”  Which sends them scrambling once again to their bibles, looking up the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven, which are, conveniently, back-to-back.  And again they all begin to talk at once, and again the pastor has to restore order, and this time he looks to the chair of building and grounds, the one so worried about his lawn.  “Fred?”

“Uh . . . the mustard seed is so little, and the tree it produces is so big, and it’s got room for birds and bees and everything.  And the leaven’s the same way, it just takes a little bit, a little tiny bit, and the whole loaf is changed, it’s transformed.”

“And so?” prompts Pastor Roy, proud of himself that for once that he has resisted the urge to preach.  “What does that say for us?”  And one of them pipes up:  “Maybe we’re called to step out in faith, use the little we have.”  And another:  “Maybe we’re to be confident that the little we have, the little we give, is enough—in the hands of God—to transform the whole world, to bring about God’s just reign on earth.”

Pastor Roy smiled and says “Bingo!” as if he’d thought the whole thing up.  But inwardly, he is praying and thanking God for the life and witness and forgiving grace of the man from Galilee.  Amen.

A Taxing Situation (Matthew 22:15-22)

 

Both St. Paul and St. Francis remind us that we are created beings, for Paul we stand alongside, but for Francis, we are part and parcel: we are sisters to the Sun, brothers to the Moon – but does the moon use money? Do the stars? How about a jellyfish, adrift in blue-green depths? If we are part of creation . . . if God created us just like the rocks and the trees and those obnoxious little gnats that gnaw on our arms, we’re also different, because I don’t know anything else that uses money. I don’t know anything else that loves it, hoards it, covets it like many do  . . . now I don’t mean any of us, mind you . . . we’re all the model of sober Presbyterian upstanding-ness. But those Methodists, or Baptists . . . now they’re a greedy bunch.

And it’s no wonder! Everywhere we look, everywhere we turn, we’re reminded of it – money, money, money, money. Our media is saturated by it . . . car ads blare it out . . . If you own a Mercedes, it shows you’ve got money, it shows you’ve arrived, but if you drive a Jag . . . well! You’re the Emperor of the World! On TV, everybody’s young and has money, and if you’re not young, all it takes is money and a knife, and voilá! You’re young, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof  . . . And politics . . . oy vey! does the candidate with the best answers win the day? The one with the best grasp of the issues? Of course not! It's the one with the most money, money, money, money . . .

And now, with the economy still shaky, with politicians slinging mud and each saying the other’s at fault, it’s hard to think of anything these days but money, it saturates the news cycle like absinthe, bathing the talking heads in a green, crinkly glow . . . what’s going to happen to our money, money, money, money . . .

 But for all our fascination with it, all our yearning for it, all our worrying and fretting and fussing and fighting over it, why are we so reluctant to talk about it in church? It makes us nervous, it makes us angry, congregations hate to hear about it and preachers hate to preach about it, and that's strange, because Jesus had no problem with it. His teachings were mostly about money . . . the rich young ruler, who could give up everything but his money to follow Jesus . . . the needle’s eye, the rich folks, and the camel squeezing through . . . the widow’s last coin . . . and then there's today's story – “Give unto Caesar’s that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s.” It’s gotten to be a catch-phrase, whenever somebody wants to justify the inevitability of government – like death and taxes! – it’s like “Oh well . . . Give unto Caesar . . .” And especially here in the U.S., it’s come to support the separation of Church and State, like it’s dividing assets up between players in a game . . . give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God’s . . . and little by little, step by step, that which is God’s has been shrunk into a little pile over here in the corner, into the privacy of our own homes or into a little altar in some quiet room. Or maybe what’s God’s is just what’s here Sunday morning – including an hour on Thursdays for choir and the occasional committee meeting – and the rest is Caesar’s. Pretty good deal for Caesar, wouldn’t you say?

But that's not what this passage is about, Jesus isn't talking about some abstract doctrine of church and state, or even stewardship . . . what he’s doing is neatly sidestepping a trap – and a very dangerous one at that. Because it’s not just any old tax they’re talking about, it’s the “head tax” that Rome instituted in 6 A.D., when Judea became a Roman province, and it was the hottest topic of the day. The tax had to be paid in Roman coins, which were inscribed with Caesar’s head and an inscription which read “Tiberius Caesar, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest,” and to devout Jews, this was incredibly sacrilegious – only God was divine, and the only high priest was right there in Jerusalem in the Temple. So to even pay the tax you had to handle these idolatrous coins, and the issue was so hot that it eventually led to the disastrous Jewish rebellion 35 years after Jesus’ death, and to Jerusalem's destruction five years after that. And for Matthew, the story is clear-cut evidence that Jesus was who he said he was – he’s so smart, so holy, so full of Godly wisdom, that he handily outsmarted the best Hebrew intellectuals, like those young hot-shot Pharisees sent out to ask the question. The authorities had already decided to get him, you understand, and now they were looking around for an excuse. And so they made what they thought was a no-win situation for Jesus. They sent some Herodians, who were for the tax, and if he came out against it, they would surely report him to the Romans, At the same time, the crowd was just full of lurking Jewish nationalists, revolutionary types who hated the tax, were itching for a fight, and if he came out for it, things might get out of hand, and before the authorities could do anything, he might have been lynched right there on the spot.

And so here come the young-Turk Pharisees with the Herodians hot on their heels—maybe trying to look casual, like they just happen to have gotten there at the same time, “Uh, hi, Dick, Harry … what are you doing here?”—and they try to disarm him with flattery: “Teacher,” they say, “we know you are truthful, and you teach God’s way in truth, and you don’t just say the things people want to hear, you're a straight-shooter, and you love your mama, so we know you’ll give it to us straight . . . is it lawful to pay tax” – and here the Greek is census, that’s how we know it’s the head tax, not just any tax – “is it lawful to pay a head-tax to Caesar or not?” And although he's supposed to be flattered, he knows where they're coming from, he knows their malice – literally, their evil:  – “Why do you test me,” he says, and he’s comparing the religious authorities to Satan, who also tested him in the wilderness, you'll recall. “Why do you test me? Show me the coin of the census,” he says, and hmmm . . . here's this supposedly hyper-devout Jew, pulling an idolatrous coin out of his pocket—what a picture that was—and sure-enough, there’s the hated likeness of Caesar right there on the front, stamped there just like honest Abe on a penny, and Jesus asks them: “Whose head is this, and whose inscription?” And right here, where it’s crucial, our translation fails us, because the Greek translated in the NRSV as “head” is eikon, and a much better translation is likeness, or better yet, image as in the King James Version – he asks them “whose image is this on the coin?” And they have to say that it’s Caesar's, that it’s the emperor’s image right there on the coin, and of course that’s when Jesus says it, the punch line of the whole story  – “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

And Matthew says they left amazed, no doubt at the thoroughness with which they'd been had.  Jesus had neatly slipped the noose – nobody could deny that Caesar’s likeness was on that coin, that his foundries had minted it in Rome, way over across the Mediterranean – And the Herodians could have had no problem with that answer, and so had no excuse to report him, and he'd made them all look like idiots, and worse, idolaters to those lurking revolutionaries – they’d been caught red-handed, with a idolatrous coin, participating in the hated Roman economic system. They had the coins, those sacrilegious, unclean coins right on their persons and I wonder – did they get them from the Temple coffers?

I’ll bet they left in fear as well as amazement. Because finally, he'd one-upped them theologically as well, he'd taken the question to a higher plane, and that’s where that word eikon comes in, because it’s the same word used for image in the Septuagint, in the Greek version of Genesis, which all the religious authorities of the time would’ve used. It says “God created human beings in the eikon – in the image – of God,” we are stamped with God’s image, just as surely as the census coin was with the emperor's, and as surely as that coin belongs to him, we belong to God . . . and this statement is breathtakingly theological, and at the same time deeply subversive. Far from separating church and state, it does exactly the opposite, it plants Christianity right at the heart of politics. Because if we are God’s, we can’t be the emperor’s, if our lives are the Lord's, everything we do belongs to him. And being subjects of God’s, we can’t be the subjects of any state. And that applies just as surely today as it did in Jesus’ time.

I think it's clear Jesus doesn't forbid the head tax, and that doubtless applies to taxes today. But with its veiled revolutionary reference, and its reminder of just who we belong to, he invites us to think about what we give to earthly powers – like the Roman empire or the United States of America or Costco or Ford Motor Company – and what we give to the Lord.

Of course, there is an ultimate answer, and though it’s threaded throughout scripture, it’s summed up in Psalm 24: “The earth is the LORD's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it . . .” and I like this solution, especially for those who glibly repeat the “give unto Caesar’s” verse. Because if we do that, if we give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s, we’ll give nothing to the state ‘cause everything belongs to God. And there are Christian groups who stick to this hard line as much as they can . . . the Quakers, for example, are one of the few denominations our government regularly excludes from the draft, and you can see their point – we have God’s image stamped on us, not that of the U. S. of A.

But for the rest of us, perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle after all, the state does do things we think God desires. Things like . . . keeping the streets safe, providing basic services to the poor, educating our children, etcetera, etcetera . . . the problem is, what do we do when the state does things that clearly God would not want? What about when the state oppresses, when it passes unjust laws? What then? What then is the Christian responsibility to give unto Caesar what is ultimately God’s? These are tough questions, for thinking Christians, as I know everybody here is, and they get tougher every day, as this old world becomes more and more dangerous, as our economy wobbles like a badly spun top . . . we should all ask ourselves: just what does it mean to say “Jesus is Lord?”  Amen.

A Tale of Two Readings (Matthew 22:1-14)

As she put the liturgy together for today’s service, Pam commented that I’d chosen a grim passage to preach on, and that in fact, all of the lectionary choices this morning were kind of on the bleak side.  I protested: “Hey,” I said “it’s the wedding banquet . . . How grim can it be?”  It was then I noticed that this is Matthew’s version of the parable, not the one from Luke, the version Karen read, with the host going out into the highways and hedges, but the one where the host—elevated to King—(a) responds with retributive violence to the killing of his emissaries and (b) invites people off the streets, but when he sees one of them without the proper clothing—who just found out he was invited, and thus would’ve had no opportunity to change—he condemns him to a place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (and, presumably, inadequate dental care).

“Oops,” I thought, “wrong parable,” and prepared to choose another, but then I thought “Hey, it’s the passage you were given, so buck up and preach it.”  (My inner voice often says stuff like “buck up.”). And what I discovered was that the interpretation of this parable depends, as so many of them do, on how it is read.

First, however, we need to acknowledge the thing that first led me to choose it—no, not my inclination to preach the easier version, or that I’m easily confused, but that there are indeed two versions of this parable.  It seems that Matthew and Luke had access to written sources that neither Mark or John had, and this parable was one of them.  A lot of scholars think that the one in Luke is the earlier version, maybe a little closer to the original, but both have been edited to fit the theological agendas of their authors.

Luke’s is a hands-across-the-water version that is in line with the inclusive, world-stance of that gospel.  Matthew’s rendition is, as you can see, a completely different kettle of fish, tailored, we think, for his audience of upper-class Jewish Christians.  We also think that they might have been smarting from being ostracized, shunned by their fellow Jews for following this upstart guy named Jesus.  It might be that Matthew’s editing of the episode reflects these facts.

The most noticeable difference is the violence—there is none on Luke’s version.  Matthew, on the other hand, has two instances: first, the King’s slaves are set upon and mistreated, and if that’s not enough, they’re killed by some of those who are invited.  Talk about an abrupt RSVP.  The second violent episode is the King’s retribution for the killings, when he sends in his troops, kills the killers, and burns the city to the ground.

Another big difference is the guy—one of the good and bad that the King’s slaves have gathered in from the streets--who the King consigns to the outer darkness for not being dressed appropriately.  It’s not even in Luke's version, it has been added by Matthew, apparently to bolster his interpretation of Jesus’ parable.

So.  Just what is that interpretation?  What is Jesus—in Matthew’s version, at least—trying to say?  Well, it’s likely that Matthew read it allegorically—that is, as having a one to one correspondence between elements in the story and elements in real life.  And in this reading, the King is God, his Son is Jesus, and the banquet is a representation of the new reality, called the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God.  And the King/God sends various prophets to the Jewish people—who, remember, are already God’s people—to come and partake of the riches of the new reality available through the King/God’s son.  But they refuse to come, saying they’re too busy with their homes and businesses, and some are downright hostile and kill the prophets.  This riles the King/God up, and he sends his troops, kills the offending Jews, and destroys their hometown which, of course, stands for Jerusalem.

And this last is thought to be a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, when the Roman army came in and savagely put down the Jewish revolt that had been brewing for decades.  And so Matthew’s version of this parable, in an allegorical reading, explains the destruction of Jerusalem as divine retribution, through God’s trusty instrument Rome, for God’s people killing God’s messengers and refusing to participate in the Kingdom of Heaven available through Jesus Christ.

So.  After killing all those people and burning all that real estate, the King/God worked up quite an appetite, and there was still that wedding feast, all ready to go, so he sends his slaves out to the main streets, as Matthew puts it, and they gather up the good and bad and bring them to the banquet.  So to get gathered up into this wedding feast—symbolizing, remember, the Kingdom of Heaven—you don’t have to be an angel, you just have to be there, you just have to have a pulse.  Or, in our allegorical reading, you don’t have to be a Jew, you don’t even follow the Law.

But wait . . . there’s more—in Matthew's version, anyway. God shows up at his son’s banquet to survey the guests, and sees one of them—are you sitting down?—without a wedding robe!  And the monarch is enraged, he’s flabbergasted. He can’t even speak he’s so mad, and he immediately banishes him to the outer darkness—which, in spite of everything you’ve heard, is probably not New Jersey, and where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

So there you have it.  An allegorical reading of the parable of the wedding feast, embellished in Matthew’s version to picture a violent deity who gets the Romans to do his dirty work, to punish a whole people—and destroy an entire city—for the deeds of a few.  A deity who is capricious enough to banish a guy to the outer darkness for not wearing a tux, even though he’d just been hauled in off the street and wouldn’t have had time to go home and change into one, which he probably didn’t have anyway.

And you know what?  That’s pretty much how interpreters over the succeeding centuries have read it, even though a lot of them have claimed not to like it.  But a surprising consensus is to kind of say “oh, well . . . that’s God for you.  Never can tell what that deity’s gonna do.  After all, our God is an awesome God, who reigns from heaven above, and that God is not bound by our puny mortal ideas of what is right.  Our God can be capricious if he wants, he can be arbitrary, and besides . . . the Jews did kill our savior, they did kill God’s only begotten son . . . And you know what?  Jesus said it, I believe it and that settles it.”

And it’s that last little bit, the thought that this refers to the consignment of a whole race to Hell—which is how most interpret outer darkness—that has been tremendously damaging over the years.  Wave after wave of Christian violence against Jews, from Crusade to pogrom to holocaust—has been fueled by passages like this.  And here’s the thing: Matthew and his congregation—smarting from being shunned by their own people—might have viewed it that way, too, given the way he edited the original.

But here’s the good news: the very fact that there is another reading of this parable, preserved in Luke's more grace-filled version, clues us in that Jesus probably didn't tell it that way . . . there’s a rule in literary criticism that says when faced with two versions of the same story, the simpler is likely the older.  And besides: is it not out of character for Jesus, who healed the centurion who came to arrest him, and wouldn’t use violence to save his own life?  Isn’t out of character for a God who we believe is the absolute embodiment of love?

Well.  As theologian and pastor Michael Hardin commented about this passage, if that’s what this passage is about—a violent and retributive God whose will will be done . . . or else, maybe we’d just better quietly move along.  I thought about doing that, I thought about making this a lesson in Biblical interpretation, and leave it at that.  But what if this parable can be redeemed?  After all, it is still, somehow, God’s Word, and it hurts my little pastor’s heart to think that we can’t learn at least something from it, and the key into that is the first thing out of Jesus’ mouth: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to,” he says, not the kingdom of heaven is like.  The latter “is like” implies similarity, but “may be compared to” is much more neutral, much more inviting of ambiguity.  What if Jesus is making a negative comparison?  What if he means to say you can compare the kingdom of heaven with this counter example, the way they all know things can be in the world, where kings are violent, vengeful and not a little capricious?

That way, the king would not be God, but almost the anti-God, perhaps the Emperor, who violently crushed the Jewish revolution by killing everybody and burning an entire city for the deeds of what were doubtless only a few.  Who demanded everybody eat and drink his way, who kept them oppressed with little room for free will, demanding that they regard himself—and his son—as divine.  And who singled out a scapegoat—Jesus Christ himself—who wouldn’t submit, who wouldn’t bow down, who wouldn’t wear the Emperor’s new clothes?

Well.  I guess I should have called this “a tale of three readings:” Matthew’s, Luke’s and, now, mine.  And the interesting thing is, two of those readings—Luke’s and Matthew’s—are both together, in the same Bible.  Two contradictory versions of the same parable, left in by the folks who determined the canon, that list of books that became our scripture.  In fact, the bible is full of contradictions: different versions of the same story, incompatible stories, and incompatible theologies, all put together to make our Bible.  And us moderns, we have to know which one is true, which one is right, even us liberal preachers, who tend to avoid Matthew’s reading like the plague.

But you know what?  We don’t have to choose.  As Pam told me this morning, it’s not a contest.  Both readings are there, both are scripture, and both—as I hope I showed with my poor offering—have something to teach us.  I say these things in the name of God the Creator, God the Redeemer, and God the Comforter, Amen.

 

The Disciples' New Clothes (Galatians 3:23-29)

      I was in Cameroon, West Africa, the summer before I went to seminary. Presbyterians were early missionaries there, but over the years our presence has dwindled, so now it's a shadow of what it once was . . . there are buildings left, some crumbling, some whole, all kind of . . . ghostly, full of shades of the past, when our mission was full and rich and, sometimes, oppressive. We stayed across a dirt road from a huge brick church, an African cathedral, really, built by Presbyterians past, and used by Presbyterians present.  African Presbyterians, the fruits of our missionary efforts a century ago. Our hosts are of the Bulu tribe – all things in Cameroon are tribal – and they are a beautiful people, with finely-chiseled features and kind hearts.

      I remember in the absolute, pitch-black African nights, our bare-bulb lights would flicker and go out, and we knew that the church across the street was in use, sucking up all the precious current, and we’d see dim lights inside, and hear the ethereal music of the choir as it practiced in the night. A wild, African sound that we knew, because they were our hymns, translated and transformed and transmogrified . . . the sound floated in the moist night air they were ours and yet . . . not ours, made fully African, wholly their own, but ours as well.

      This was a decisive experience for me, it helped propel me into seminary, and every time I hear this beautiful passage – some of Paul’s best writing – I think of it . . . you may recall that in Galatians, Paul writes to condemn the teachings of what he considered false teachers, who were probably traveling evangelists preaching a different form of the gospel. It’s hard to say what it was, because we have nothing from the other side, but it apparently included following Jewish law in addition to Christ. To Paul, this was anathema – Christ died precisely so humankind could be justified—made righteous, made right with God—by faith, rather than the law. He thought it absurd that gentiles should have to follow the law, when God’s own son had paid the price for all. Our passage comes near the end of a long, sometimes tortuous, argument designed to show that Christians are inheritors of God’s promise, God’s covenant, where God said “I will be your God and you will be my people,” and that the promise supersedes the law.

      For Paul, the law was a temporary measure, designed to keep humanity out of  trouble until Christ came. And that’s how our passage begins . . . “before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.” And notice that here, faith is almost a stand-in for “Christ” –  you could almost read “before Christ came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until Christ would be revealed.”  For Paul, faith is all important, not obedience to the law, which nobody can do perfectly, anyway – and Paul should know.  After all, he spent years trying to follow it – he was a pretty good Pharisee, by his own account. But following the law was only necessary until Christ, until faith, came. As he says “the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith.”  The law was there to keep us in line until we could be justified by Christ, by faith. “But now that faith has come,” he says “we are no longer under that disciplinarian,” no longer subject to the law.  And why?  Because in Christ Jesus we are children of God through faith.  By virtue of Jesus, Christians are God’s offspring . . . and here’s where the stunning imagery comes in . . . we are God's children because “we were baptized into Christ” and thus we’ve “clothed ourselves with Christ.”

      Once a quarter, there’s a massive gathering at that huge church in Cameroon . . . members travel, sometimes for days, and elders hold court in session, and on that Sunday, they gather in the church for worship.  It’s an incredible sight – four thousand souls, packed to the rafters; we sat on the front row and watched, and

let me tell you, those folks know how to do church . . . hymns echoed joyously, scripture after scripture, they ordained – there must've been 30! – deacons, and that took an hour, and then even more elders –  another hour – and then it was time for the preaching, and fortunately, it was one of us Americans, so it took wenty minutes, not another hour.

      Finally, three hours into the service came the baptisms, and fully fifty babies were brought up, dressed just like every other baby in Cameroon, and presented to the congregation – and us honored guests – parents’ faces beaming, and all the aunts and uncles and cousins were up there, fussing, and it was riotous, chaotic, and the sponsors were asked the questions, and they answered, and they huddled around the babies, around the parents holding them, and all were hidden from view and then Behold! they were in clothed anew in dazzling white!  See! A new creation . . .  they were clothed in Christ.

      And that is what Paul is talking about here, the moment of transformation, of rebirth we witnessed on that African morning, on the other side of the world, we witnessed initiation into the communion of God's saints. And like the first Christians two thousand years ago, they symbolized it with clothing.  They took off the old, and put on the new. They were garbed in white, wrapped in the Lord . . . clothed in Christ, an image at the heart of today's passage.

      Now this is worth unpacking a little, because it makes what comes next just a bit easier to understand . . . notice that Paul says we were baptized into Christ . . . and that’s not just window-dressing, not just pretty speech.  For Paul, Christians had a mysterious, personal unity with Christ . . . over in Romans he says “do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” and further, “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will . . . be united with him in a resurrection like his.” So for Paul, this union is at the heart of Christian identity: we were baptized into Christ, literally, and have therefore clothed ourselves with Christ . . . we have put Christ on like a garment. When you put something on, when you clothe yourself in something, you take on its characteristics. And when we are baptized, we put on Christ like a new set of clothes.

      But . . . and this is crucial for understanding what comes next . . . Paul is talking to a community, to a church, not to individuals. The letter to Galatians is not a letter to the head elder, nor is it to the president of the women’s group, or its pastor. It's to the entire church . . . over in Corinthians, he says the church is the body of Christ . . . as individuals, we are baptized into that body, into Christ.

      And in the same way, when Paul says there’s no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, of course he’s not talking about individual characteristics . . . if a person was a Jew, she wasn’t a gentile, she wasn’t Greek.  If a person were a slave, he wasn’t free . . . and of course a person is (usually) either male or female, that’s a biological fact, the way we were made.  But in the body of Christ, in the Christian community, these distinctions no longer hold.  For Paul, the advent of Christ ushered in a whole new reality, he called it a “new creation” over in second Corinthians, and in this new creation, in this new reality, in this new community, ethnic differences do not matter – there is no longer Jew or Greek. Social differences do not matter – there is no longer slave or free. And biological differences, gender differences, do not matter; there is no longer male and female.

      In the old order, in the old creation, so to speak, there were hierarchies based on these things, hierarchies ordered around whether you were man or woman, Roman or Jew or Greek or Scythian, whether you were free or owned by someone else, all these things determined your status in whatever community you lived. For example, in the Jewish community, circumcision was an initiation rite, a sign of status. But it was only administered to males, so only males had status. But for Paul, circumcision was no longer a sign of status, neither were ethnic, social or biological differences. Through baptism – a rite administered the same way no matter who you are – these differences are abolished.

      Of course, it's questionable how much the church has lived into this new reality – even in Paul's writings, we see the already/not-yet quality of the kingdom. But there's evidence that the Christian churches of the first century had remarkably egalitarian means of government. In at least some early churches, leadership rotated through the membership, whether male or female, slave or free, Jew or Greek . . . but we know that it didn't last, and by 200 AD, women, at least, had been driven out of Christian leadership. And that’s not all . . . in 1860, the Presbyterian Church and other denominations split over slavery, and it wasn't until 1983 that we were reunited . . . And here in 2001, an overwhelming majority of the church does not recognize the equality of women with men in Christ's body.

      And yet Paul saw the truth, he knew it in his bones, he knew that God has made a new creation, a new community, and he summed it up in one last statement – why was did the old distinctions no longer hold?  Because all of us are one in Christ.  We are all Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. All of us are one in Christ.

      It's Christmas 1999, at the midnight mass at St. Phillips, the huge Episcopalian cathedral in Buckhead, Atlanta, Georgia. Outside in the parking lot is a fabulous array of metal-armored status symbols – Beemers, Jags and that ultimate Atlanta car, the Mercedes Benz.  Inside, the pomp and circumstance – which I admit, I kind of like – is in full swing – incense billows, pipe organ bellows . . .  the Bishop, paces up the aisle, golden mitred head afire in the television lights . . . and we wait in line for communion, all four thousand of us or so, and as I take the wafer from the Bishop himself, and dip it in the wine, my mind flashes back to that cool African afternoon. After the proud parents and wailing children and parading deacons of the morning, all clothed in Christ, we gather in the brick church for communion, all four thousand of us, and I am back there, sitting on the rock-hard pews waiting for the elements to be passed down the rows, by the elders all dressed in black . . . and Bulu hymns float on the breeze, and the earthy, loamy smells of the bush caress me, and smiling faces greet me, and I realize that . . .  I am in Africa, I am among the tribesmen and tribes-women and children in that brick church, and geckos scamper up the walls, and I'm there with the bishop and the hoi-polloi of Atlanta, too . . . and they are the same in that moment, in that communion, in that action . . . the same movements, the taking and breaking of bread and wine, and as four thousand people take communion together in Atlanta and Cameroon, separated by time and space, I know we are the same, we are one in Christ. And right now, all across the world, the body partakes of holy communion along side us, and we are one in Christ, and we are here and in Atlanta and in Cameroon, right here in this church on Winton Road.  And it doesn't make any difference if we're black or white, Asian or aborigine, English or American or woman or man . . . through our baptism into Christ, we are clothed in Christ, the body of Christ on this earth. We are one in Christ.

      I say these things in the name of God who shows us the way, the one in three and three in one, the unity of Creator, Redeemer and the Comforter, amen.

Self-Empty (Philippians 2:1 - 13)

There are many theories of Scriptural inspiration . . . all the way from strict inerrancy—the position that the Bible is accurate and totally free of error, that "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact,” to the neo-orthodox view of Karl Barth and Emil Brunner that the Bible is "the word of God" but not "the words of God" to the view of some modern biblical scholars that the Bible is a record of human interaction with the divine.

My own view lies somewhere in between the neo-orthodox and extreme modernist views, but that it is inspired I am more certain as I read the Bible; Paul’s writings are exhibit A in my mind.   He’s a Jew who may or may not have fallen off a donkey, who began planting Christian communities all over the Middle East.  And this guy who never ran a congregation before, who was a legal scholar, a Pharisee for St. Pete’s sake, is never short of incredibly acute when it comes to giving advice on how to live as communities of Christ.  Along the way, he managed to articulate a theology—probably wholly unintentionally—that today is the bed-rock of orthodox Christianity and, well: if that’s not inspiration, I don’t know what is.  Paul’s inspiration seems to have taken the form of being given divine knowledge, perhaps directly by the Holy Spirit, perhaps by his unique schooling and upbringing—and probably by both—that allowed him to speak with great authority and value to communities struggling to be, well  . . . Christian.

One of the central problems he seems to have confronted in the churches he planted is a lack of unity.  His communities were pulled first one way, and then another, by various teachers espousing various schools of thought, and this created division, which Paul firmly believed was injurious to the mission of God.  This problem, as you might imagine, was about basic doctrine in those days: there was no orthodoxy, and it is an abiding irony that Paul’s very attempts to deal with the divisions over theology became the basis for orthodox theology.

The problems of Paul’s congregations with disunity are very evident over in 1^st Corinthians—which we’re studying in Wednesday evening Bible study—where he says “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you . . .”  In Philippians, the focus is also on unity, and just as he does in Corinthians, he grounds his appeal in their common identity as Christians: “If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy,” he says, and he uses big, fat Christian buzzwords: encouragement, which can also be translated as exhortation, consolation, love, sharing—koinonia, otherwise known as fellowship—compassion, sympathy—all fruits of the Spirit—if there is any of this in you all, then “be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.”

And he clearly means to imply that if they have these Christ-like qualities, they will be unified, but I think we can draw another lesson from it as well: if Paul inevitably grounds unity in a common calling in Christ—“Consider your own call,” Paul tells the Corinthians—is it possible that it is a result of that call?  Further, does it follow that the kind of unity Paul is talking about is possible only in communities that are truly grounded in Christ?

One thing is certain: congregations had as much trouble being unified back then as they do today.  And for Paul, it isn’t an option: he uses the imperative voice in Greek, the command voice: be of the same mind he says, he is commanding them to be unified.  In his thinking, there is no choice.

He offers a diagnosis as to why they might not be unified, and for him, it all  comes down to a lack of humility.  And I can sure feature that . . . we seminary trained pastors can  get the idea that we have the Word, implanted in us, directly from God, and this can help create a certain . . . ego . . .

Then too, every time I read these verses, I think of St. Benedict, and his Rule for living in community, written five centuries after Christ.  It’s the most successful guide for living in Christian community ever written: the majority of Christian monastics today live in some fashion according to the Rule.  And in the Rule, it’s clear that Benedict has read Paul, because he’s convinced that humility is essential to living in Christian community.  He devotes an entire chapter to it, Chapter 7—the perfect number, right?—and in it he uses the metaphor of a 12-step ladder to humility—get the other significant number?—and one rung on the ladder, one step to humility—the seventh—is that one should “not only claim to be beneath everyone else and worse than them, but also be convinced of this deep in his heart.”  Sounds a lot like Paul’s advice to “regard others as better than yourselves,” doesn’t it?

Before we overlay modern ideas of self-esteem and shame and etc. upon Paul and Benedict, remember that for them, this is very practical advice, for a very matter-of-fact purpose: the living out of our vocation as children of God through Jesus Christ.  It is not a psychological recommendation, but a practical one: like love, regarding everyone as better than ourselves is action embodied.  If one doesn’t insist on one’s own way of doing things being the way of the entire group, or on one’s own theology being the theology of the entire group, if one group doesn’t hold the entire community hostage to its way of thinking, or hold its own programs above those of other groups, that constitutes regarding everyone as better than one’s self.

But you might be thinking: wait a minute.  Hold the phone: isn’t that a call to regard the other as equal to oneself, to regard her or his desires as equal to one’s own, or another group’s place within the communities as equal to one’s own?  Why is it couched in terms of superiority?  Why is it understood as regarding the other as better than one’s self?  Well, there are two levels of answer to that question.  First Paul, and Benedict after him, understood that only by subsuming one’s own ego—and thus the collective ego of one’s particular faction or group—can true unity be achieved.  And why is that?  Because only in that way can one avoid the concept of “fairness” that ensnares so many within communities and indeed, any relationship system—marriages, partnerships, legislatures, you name it.  It’s the notion of “fairness”—and the coincident idea that to be fair means that nobody should get more than is fair, which is more than one’s own self is getting—that is at the root of conflict.  And conflict destroys communities and, in Christian communities, their mission and witness to Christ.

The standard definition of conflict—either between two people or between two factions—includes the idea that the there is (a) a limited resource and (b) that you are in competition with the “other side” for that resource. This  is central to the notion of conflict: the belief that the other side is in competition for a resource that is perceived to be limited. It’s so basic that a situation is only considered a conflict if it is present.  Let me repeat that: a relationship between two individuals or two groups of individuals is not considered a conflict unless the parties perceive that they are in competition for a limited resource.

So now do we get why Paul—and Benedict—considered the root of humility, and thus community unity, to be that we regard others as better than our own self?  Because only if one subsumes one’s own ego to that of the other does it negate this notion of what is “fair” and its consequential result of conflict.  It causes one to think of the needs of others in the community or in the relationship rather than one’s own self.

And I confess that I am sometimes not very good at this, I can think that everyone should view theology the same way that I do, and that the notion of what is “fair”—in other words, the notion that the other in a relationship can’t be allowed to get more than me, or do less than me (in that case, the limited resource is free time)—this notion has led to conflict more times than I am comfortable with.

And I also must note that the notion that one must submit one’s own ego to that of another is particularly toxic when it’s applied unevenly, to one group over another.  That has been the case for millennia when the notion is that women are the ones in a community—whether it’s the community called a family or the body of Christ—that must surrender their egos to those of the men.  In fact, this might be in part how the idea that considering other’s needs before one’s own got such a bad name.   If it is expected of one person or group of persons and not everyone, it leads to oppression, domination, and hierarchy.

Well.  I said that there were two levels of understanding, two lines of reasoning that led Paul to say “regard others as better than yourselves” and “let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”  It’s not just that it makes for smooth-running, unified communities—though it does—it’s not just for practical reasons—though it is.  It is because Christ is our example, our model, and he demonstrated it, he led the way.  And to articulate that, Paul wrote some of the most iconic prose in the New Testament, so important that it is one of the earliest creeds of the church, earlier than the Apostle’s Creed, certainly earlier than the Nicene Creed . . . we think the Christ hymn in verses five through eleven was one of the first liturgies of the church, and it can’t be a coincidence that it’s about humility.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, Paul says, “who, though he was in the form of God” though he had the power and strength and very form of the Creator of the Universe did not regard equality with that Creator as something to be exploited, but emptied himself—of what?  Of his power?  Of his wisdom?  Of his god-hood? –and took human form, the form of a slave, the most lowly thing that Paul’s first century audience could think of, and being in that form, he humbled himself—as if he were not humble enough already, being in the form of a slave—and became obedient to the point of death, even a death so degrading and demeaning as death on a cross.

And we’ve come full-circle, back to our discussion of inspiration, and where Paul got his overwhelming expertise in managing communities of Christ: he got this expertise at least in part by following the example of the Son of God, by using Christ as a model.  We often say being a Christian is being Christ-like, and Paul showed the way.

For millennia, Christian devotional traditions have advocated meditating on various aspects of Christ’s life, and especially the crucifixion . . . we speak of following the way of  the cross, during Holy Week many churches have the stations of the cross, all designed to focus our attention on Jesus’ death, where he valued our needs, our lives above his own.  And you’ll hear a lot of preachers sat that this is so we’ll be grateful for all he went through, but it’s for a very different reason as well.  We’re to contemplate the cross, think on it, meditate on it, pray on it, so that the second half of Benedict’s rule comes true, that we not only profess other peoples’ needs and wants superior to our own, but we come to believe it, deep down in our hearts, and we can no more create conflict in the church than we can hold our breaths forever.

So let’s stand and say what we believe by singing the Christ hymn, reciting it from the bulletin, contemplating the example of Christ, so that we might—someday, at least—empty our own selves of rancor and jealousy and assumed superiority over those with whom we are in community:

 

"We believe that Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross.  Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."