The feast of the marriage of God and humanity is a joy and a filling and forgiveness and an abundance of life: why would we refuse the invitation?

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 28, year A
Texts: Matthew 22:1-14; Psalm 23; Isaiah 25:1-9

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

This doesn’t make any sense.

Why would anybody reject an invitation to a royal wedding? It comes in the mail, heavy paper, elegant embossing, and you’re in, invited to a wonderful event. Even here in the States, where we rejected royalty centuries ago, we’re fascinated by royal weddings. But not just one person turns it down. The entire guest list makes fun of the invitation, and some do horrible things to the messengers.

Jesus likes starting parables with ridiculous scenarios like this. It’s his thing. No father would sell his house, empty his savings and give half to a younger son, then watch him head into the sunset. No shepherd in the world would abandon 99 sheep to wolves and injury and cold to go looking for one lost sheep. It’d be hard to find a farmer or vineyard owner who’d pay a full day’s wage to workers who only put in an hour’s labor.

But Jesus has deeper truths, greater wisdom, we can only get to by breaking down all we think is true. We can’t imagine rejecting a royal invitation. So, Jesus says, what do you reject? If this is like God’s realm, what invitation are you tossing into the recycling bin?

To crack this open, we need to know what the invitation is. What feast are we talking about?

Jesus tells a story of a wedding of a king’s son. It’s Holy Week when he tells this parable, along with others that use the image of an important father and his son. Obviously Jesus is talking about himself, the Son of God, and his relationship to the One he called Father.

But that it’s a wedding is also important. Whenever wedding imagery is used in the New Testament, pay attention. It’s not accidental. The Church has understood it to mean that we, the Church, are the bride of Christ. That in Christ’s death and resurrection the Triune God and humanity are joined in a new covenant, a new testament, a marriage. In this covenant we are married into to the life of the Triune God, restored, forgiven, and transformed.

This parable’s wedding feast is the wedding feast of humanity to God. It’s a joyful celebration of God’s love and forgiveness, God’s eternal marriage promises of faithfulness and care. It’s a celebration that we know now and that continues into the life to come. When we come to this Table in this liturgy, we eat of this marriage feast, taking in God’s food for life and wholeness and salvation. Why would we ever reject this?

We might not be terribly fond of the rest of the guest list.

Anxiety around seating charts at receptions seems to haunt many wedding planners; apparently whom we sit next to at a wedding matters. Maybe we don’t want God’s invitation because of who’s at our table.

David sings of a feast prepared in his enemies’ presence. The way the Hebrew Scriptures speak of the feast of God, including Isaiah today, suggests that David’s feast is a reconciliation meal. The feast is spread amongst enemies, so they’re also at the table.

Isaiah proclaims the great feast in the life to come, when death is destroyed, but it’s the same inclusive vision. All peoples, all nations, will come to this feast on God’s mountain, and all will be fed. This marriage of humanity to the Triune God that Christ creates will join all people to God. We’ll be cheek and jowl with everyone.

Now, this congregation lives with the belief of full inclusion in God. We experience it repeatedly: here all are welcome, all are seen as loved by God, no matter who they are, what they look like, what quirks they have. Still, most of us wouldn’t need much time to make a list of individuals or groups that we don’t want next to us at God’s wedding feast, either in the life to come, or at the marriage feast in which we live in this life.

We also might not really want to be married.

Marriage joins for life, so you’re together. A lot. If it’s the Triune God making this covenant with us, then God’s planning on taking up residence with us. Living in our lives. There, all the time. Maybe we reject God’s invitation because we’re not ready for that marriage.

As beloved as the 23rd Psalm is, there’s an uncomfortable intensity of relationship there. The Shepherd anoints us with oil at baptism, brings us through those waters, provides all in abundance. The Shepherd leads us on the paths of God, not our paths. The Shepherd restores our soul, walks with us through dangers, feeds us at the Table, accompanies us all the days of our life.

That’s a lot of closeness with God. When the path winds through valleys of shadow and fear, we certainly want our Shepherd. No one wants to face wolves alone.

But all that guidance, directing of our paths, walking with us all day, being with us while we sleep, maybe that’s more than we’re ready for. We like our own paths, seeking out satisfaction that we want, even dangerous things. At our core, we resist walking with God daily because we can never get away, or run wherever we want.

We also might not want to come to the marriage feast on God’s terms.

We love the idea of receiving God’s grace, God’s eternal love, without earning it. But at the same time we often hope that somehow we’re probably doing well enough to earn some of it. Better than others we could mention, we think.

But the final wedding guest list in the parable is populated by “both good and bad,” whoever could come. All are worthy because the king said so, not because of what they did. As people are brought in from the streets, the pickpocket and the one whose pocket got picked are both guests. We’re worthy because God says we are, not because of us. We don’t always like that very much.

And we resist what it means to be brought into God’s grace. The Scriptures say that when we’re loved by God through grace we are transformed into Christ. Whatever we are, good or bad, is utterly changed. We’re made worthy by the Spirit’s transformation.

That’s the problem of the wedding garment. In a culture where poor people didn’t have two sets of clothes, Jesus imagines that the king provided clothing for all guests. A rack of tuxedos and evening gowns were inside the entrance hallway, in all sizes.

In Colossians, Paul says our transformation into Christ is like being dressed in Christ’s clothing, putting on love, forgiveness, patience, as a garment. (Colossians 3) Being dressed to be someone we aren’t yet. And like the guest in the parable, we’re not always ready for that. Why do I need to be made to look like Christ? Don’t I get to be myself?

But none of these reasons actually make any sense, do they?

After all this, we’re still back at our principal objection: why would anyone ever turn down God’s invitation? Even with such reasons, once we see God’s feast spreading in this world now and forever, once we learn what God plans marriage with us to be, there’s nothing we want more.

We want communion and grace with God, even if it means God in our lives all the time, every day. Because it means God in our lives all the time, every day.

We want the joy of feasting in God’s love and forgiveness, even if it means having enemies or those we don’t like feasting alongside us. Because it means reconciliation with enemies and those we don’t like.

We want the blessing of being clothed in God’s love and grace, covered with the garments of salvation, even if it means letting go of our clothing, our ways. Because there is nothing we want more than to look like Christ, to love like Christ, to live like Christ.

The invitations are out, and you’re invited to the wedding feast of God. So is everyone. It’s time to RSVP, and start living in this new life, at this feast, in the marriage love of God now and forever.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

God’s grace and goodness is hard to see with our bad eyesight both to the truth of God’s love and the truth of our brokenness; but God can heal eyes.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 25, year A
Texts: Matthew 20:1-15; Jonah 3:10 – 4:11

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Does my being good make your eyes sick?

That’s what the vineyard owner really asks. Jesus uses a common expression, and the translation, “Are you envious because I am generous?” is a fair interpretation. In that world, to have a diseased eye, an evil eye, a sick eye, was to be jealous or envious.

But stick with the colloquialism: it cuts to the heart of our problem with God. We simply don’t see as God sees. Maybe we don’t want to. Maybe we can’t. But our eyesight is diseased, clouded, and we don’t see God’s astonishing grace. We don’t see the truth about ourselves. We don’t see that God’s way is better than our way.

And so we don’t see a world that looks like the world God intends.

So what’s wrong with our eyesight, anyway?

Well, we can’t see this parable clearly.

First, we always reduce it to a moral tale about heaven after we die. How many times does this parable inspire the question, “You mean you could live your whole life however you wanted, and if on your deathbed you asked forgiveness, God would forgive?” The answer is, yes, of course. But that question itself exposes our eye disease.

Second, we’re pretty sure we’re the early workers in the day. We don’t often hear this with a sigh of relief, saying, “I feel like I got to this whole Christian life thing really late; I’m so grateful God’s love is fully for me.” We don’t see ourselves as latecomers to God’s work.

Third, whenever we hear this parable, we immediately criticize God’s economic sense. The first thing we think is, “fine – but what’s going to happen tomorrow? This guy’s not going to get anyone to work at six a.m., that’s for sure.” We can see all the problems such a way of doing things would have in the “real” world.

But this parable is about God’s realm now, about God’s justice today.

The parables envision life in God’s realm which exists here, now, wherever people follow God’s way. Heaven, where God’s realm also exists, can literally wait. Jesus has more important things for us to consider.

So we can’t dismiss this parable’s economic system. Maybe this is exactly how God means the world to work. What is right for this vineyard owner is that every worker gets a full day’s wage, every one of his workers’ tables gets food that night. Regardless of work hours. But, we protest, that just wouldn’t work.

Oh, yes? God says. Tell me, how well is your system working? Is everybody fed in your economic system? Everybody have a roof over their heads? Everyone have a job? Our system works well for those of us who, to borrow an old political barb, were born on third base and think we hit a triple. We were born in the richest country in the world, with an economy that’s pretty good for the middle class, even if we have worries. We’re pretty hard workers. But in the world economy, we’re definitely the folks that show up at 5 p.m and get all we want. Most of us have no comprehension of what it means to work harder than humanly possible to feed our family, to watch children suffer and die because we can’t provide. To work three shifts a day and still not have enough.

If we had healthy eyes, we’d see that for God, justice is when everybody eats tonight. When no child goes to bed aching with hunger. When all are satisfied by the world’s abundance. If we don’t see this as viable, that’s how diseased our eyes are.

We can’t see Jonah’s story clearly, either.

So here’s some context. Nineveh is the capital of Assyria. Assyria was no worse than other ancient world empires, but it was plenty wicked. It destroyed Israel, the northern kingdom, and subjugated Judah. Lots of innocent people were killed in Assyria’s wars, and Jonah’s people rightly hated them. So God asks Jonah to go into the heart of the beast, the capital city, and declare to them their sins.

You know what’s wrong with our eyesight? We don’t see that we’re Nineveh in this story, not Jonah.

Modern day Mosul, in Iraq, actually sits just across the river from where Jonah sat under his bush. After 9-11, in retaliation for the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people in our country, we went to war with Iraq. There was and is no evidence they were responsible for 9-11. But because, like Assyria, we have serious military power, we killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Even if Iraq had planned 9-11, hundreds of thousands for 3,000 is hardly just retaliation. This region continues to be unstable, and many in the Middle East would say we are the great enemy of their people.

Imagine God found a Jonah in Iraq today, and said, “go into the heart of the beast.”

“Go to Washington, D.C., and declare to that wicked people that God is judging them for their sin. Call them to repent.” If Jonah could even get through immigration here, how do you think he’d be received? Would we Americans do what the Ninevites do, admit our sin, repent in dust and ashes, ask God’s forgiveness? What do you think?

Now we can understand ancient Jonah’s desire for God to crush Nineveh. Imagine modern Jonah coming here, remembering his burned out village, the dead children in the streets. The destroyed hospital. How would today’s Jonah react if God said, “You know, I’m going to forgive these people”?

The harsh truth that we are Nineveh is even harsher when we realize how blind we’ve been, you and I. For the past 16 years we’ve gone about our lives, doing our things, trying to be good, helping where we could, and never really owning up to what our country did. We are good people. But we go about our days as if none of this really happened, as if we’re not individually to blame. And Iraq is only one of our great sins.

But here’s our hope: If we are Nineveh, God’s words to Jonah about Nineveh are God’s words about us.

“Should I not be concerned about America, that great country, in which there are more than 324 million persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

Our blindly ignoring our participating in what we have done to so many other peoples is like not knowing our right hand from our left. And, thank God, there are lots of animals here. And, thank God, God won’t give us up. Much to Jonah’s rightful dismay, God can’t stop loving.

But it is worth remembering that Nineveh repented. They sought new eyes to see the truth, and new lives to live the truth. The cross tells us that God’s love comes first, even before we repent. But how can we live with ourselves once we start to see the truth, if we don’t also turn back to God?

We need God to heal our eyes, so our lives can also be healed.

Heal our eyes to see that God’s love is for all people, all animals, all creation, and it has nothing to do with who deserves what.

Heal our eyes to see how quickly we assume we deserve God’s love and how easily we assume others don’t.

Heal our eyes to see that our economic system is unjust and wicked, and that we stay blind to this because as long as we benefit, we don’t have the energy to change it.

Heal our eyes to see the truth about our nation so we can work with each other to make this a nation that lives up to our ideals of justice for all.

Heal our eyes to see as God sees, unable to throw anyone away, not even us, always reaching out in love, even if it costs everything.

Heal our eyes to see the truth and repent, turn back, begin to live in God’s realm, God’s way.

It’s hard to argue that we see a better way.

Imagine a world where everyone earned a full day’s wage, no matter if they were male or female, no matter the color of their skin, no matter where on the planet they were born. Where no child ever went to bed crying for the pain in their stomach. Where all had homes to shelter in.

Imagine a world where there was no revenge, no retaliation, no destruction of enemies. Where the cycle of hatred and killing finally stopped, broken, no further steps. And reconciliation and love broke out between all peoples.

I’d really like to live in a world like that. I’d really like to see a world like that.

So would the Triune God. It’s what God’s realm on this earth is meant to be.

So, let us pray God give us eyes to see, and wills to do, that God’s realm would actually come among us.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Forgiveness is non-negotiable to God, and that’s our hope for ourselves. It’s also our challenge as we grow into Christ in our lives.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 24, year A
Texts: Matthew 18:21-35; Genesis 50:15-21

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Forgiveness is never about the math.

Forgiveness can’t be calculated or negotiated, measured or limited, written up in codicils. There are no loopholes. Forgiveness is all or nothing.

That’s what Jesus says.

We’re always negotiating forgiveness, framing it, setting boundaries. This parable shakes that all up and frightens us to the core. Just as the Lord’s Prayer makes us wince. “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us”? We have to pray that? Forgive from the heart as you have been forgiven, or you have no part in God? That’s what this parable says?

Virtually every conversation among Christians about forgiveness immediately moves to negotiation and compromise, rules and boundaries, seeking any options other than Jesus’ clarity.

Because Jesus is perfectly clear here: forgiven people forgive. Period.

We can negotiate all we want. We just won’t be talking about forgiveness then.

There’s no negotiating with Jesus about how often to forgive.

Peter seems reasonable. Seven times forgiving someone who repeatedly hurts you? Maybe James keeps making fun of him for that “Rocky” nickname. How many times does he have to forgive that nonsense? Who but a saint would forgive seven times?

No, seventy-seven times, Jesus says. And this isn’t a negotiation. But it is an insight into human nature. If you start counting to that kind of number, you’ll keep forgetting your forgiveness count.

So, unlimited forgiveness. No loopholes or opt-outs. No matter how often someone hurts us, if we are following Christ, if we are Christ, God asks us to forgive them.

There’s no negotiating with Jesus about forgiving but not forgetting.

Somehow this ridiculous phrase always comes up with us. But where does it ever say in Scripture that we’re asked to forget as well as forgive? The only one in the Scriptures who forgives and forgets is God. So we can’t dodge forgiving using this excuse.

This is another place for Jesus’ seventy-seven times. Every time we remember someone has hurt us, every time we see their face, we’re hurt all over again. We forgive, but then we think of it again. We forgive, but remember that we still hurt.

So, Jesus says, forgive it again. And again. And again. Seventy-seven times. As long as it takes for the hurt to be lost to you, unimportant, nothing. No keeping score or nursing past wrongs. If we are following Christ, if we are Christ, God asks us to forgive every time we remember the hurt.

There’s no negotiating with Jesus about commanding others to forgive.

The Church has long hurt people with this. People in power smugly tell someone who is abused that they have to forgive. People with no grasp of the pain involved glibly tell someone they’re sinful if they don’t forgive who hurt them. All in the name of Christ.

Listen: Jesus doesn’t permit this. Look at his story. Forgiveness is between the king and his slave, no one else. The king needs to deal with this man’s inability to forgive.

It’s not our place to tell others they have to forgive. As Joseph says, we’re not in the place of God. Forgiveness is God’s call, and only God can draw any of us into a new heart able to forgive. If we are following Christ, if we are Christ, we don’t get to tell others how to forgive. Only God does.

There’s no negotiating with Jesus on a proper order for forgiveness to happen.

We love this tactic. We’d be glad to forgive, if and when the other repents. If and when the other apologizes. If and when we think they’re sincere. There’s an order to this. First, they repent. Then they ask forgiveness. Then, and only then, we forgive.

But that’s not Jesus’ command. Jesus says, “Forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” Period. We’re never told to wait for them to do something. Jesus says, “love one another as I have loved you.” Period. Jesus never gives preconditions for our self-giving love.

If we are following Christ, if we are Christ, God commands us to forgive, regardless of what the other one does.

And in fact, our whole life now and forever depends on this. Because the Triune God in Christ has utterly destroyed our neat little forgiveness plan, and saved our lives.

The cross overturns it all.

At the cross, the Son of God, carrying our lives in his body and filled with the life of the Triune God, forgives the entire cosmos. Without anyone asking or doing anything.

At the cross, God says, “first, I forgive you. First, I love you.” Jesus didn’t look out from the cross and say, “before I die for you all, have you all repented? Are you all sincerely sorry?”

This is God’s pattern of forgiveness, the 10,000 talent forgiveness of the parable: God loves us beyond comprehension and dies to prove that love. Dies to break our hearts. Dies to forgive and heal us.

Then, risen from the dead, the Son of God does what the Son of God always does: invites people to follow that love and repent, invites people to love, invites people to become Christ themselves.

If we follow Christ, if we are Christ, this is our pattern. Forgive first, because God does. Love first, because God does. If the other repents, asks forgiveness, tries to do better, or doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. The healing act that saves us is God flipping our negotiation on its head and forgiving us into life. The healing act that will save the world is when we do the same.

This is God’s truth that changes us forever.

This is what Christ wants us to see at the cross. That once we grasp the astonishing love of God for us, how beloved we are, how God forgives before we even figure out our mess, once that actually touches us, it will be impossible for us to act like this person in the story.

Our hearts of stone are thus replaced with hearts of love, just as we prayed at the start of this liturgy. We’ll have no interest in doing forgiveness math, negotiating limits or boundaries. Instead, we’ll find such joy in offering forgiveness that we’ll understand why it’s God’s way, too. It’s how relationships are healed, life between people is restored, and hope is brought into reality.

Replace our hearts, O God, with hearts of love, that we might become Christ’s forgiving love to others, and find our true joy.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

The way of Christ, the way of the cross, is the pattern, the blueprint for our truly human lives and the pattern, the blueprint for the life of the whole cosmos.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen 
Holy Cross Day
Texts: John 3:13-17; 1 Corinthians 1:18-24 (also with reference to John 1, other parts of John 3, and Philippians 2)

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

In the middle ages many important churches had an ornate, precious box with a splinter inside.

It was believed to be a piece of Jesus’ actual cross. In the 380s, the pilgrim Egeria saw the whole cross at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It was encased in silver to prevent pilgrims who came to venerate the cross from biting out pieces to carry away. Somehow churches in Europe still often ended up having tiny pieces of wood reverently coffined for pilgrim prayer and adoration. Some suggest that if every piece on display in those churches were brought together, you’d have enough wood for Noah’s Ark.

We might chuckle at such naiveté to trust the holy origins of one’s special toothpick. But we might have similar problems with our view of the cross.

Having a relic suggests a value in the past, that clinging to a physical piece of history connects one to that history. Is that different from a theology of the cross that focuses only on the past? Many of our hymns that speak of the cross could lead one to assume that our focus on Christ’s cross is that of a remembered history, a past event that secures our place in heaven. We might not cherish tiny bits of wood, but if the cross is only a history to us, confirming a promise of heaven when we die, we’re not very different from our medieval forebears.

But if we read John’s witness, we see the grace of a cosmic, present, eternal, and transformative view of the cross that shapes not just our lives but the life of the universe.

John teaches us that the way of the cross, the way of Christ, is also the way of all things.

The Son whose death on the cross is the heart of John 3 is also the Logos, the Word of God present at creation in John 1, now enfleshed as one of us. As John uses Logos, it carries the meaning of pattern or blueprint. So God’s Blueprint present at the creation, God’s Blueprint who is also God, is now Jesus, the Christ, the human. So the way of Christ, what we see in Jesus, must also be the pattern, the blueprint for the Creation.

That means the blueprint of the universe is that power is only found in weakness, in letting go. The blueprint of the universe is that beauty is found in what is broken. The blueprint of the universe is that wisdom is found in what looks foolish. The blueprint of the universe is that life is found in dying.

Had Jesus lived another time, the symbol of this pattern might not have been a cross. But John claims that the deeper pattern is always God’s sacrificial love for creation. This is God’s heart John says the Son of God reveals for us, so this self-giving, dying, powerless, broken love is also the way the world is meant to work.

And who are we to deny this?

Every evil done since time began has been done by power, violence, domination. By people seeking their own good above others, forcing others into their way. And every good ever done since time began arose out of love, and true love is always self-giving. Everything holy and good has come from people offering themselves to others for hope and life.

Paul agrees that this pattern is not only God’s way. In Philippians he explicitly says it is our blueprint, too. To have the same mind and heart as Christ Jesus and empty ourselves out of love for the other, love for the world. This is how God means the world to work.

We can’t say God’s wrong until we start to live this path ourselves. Allow our world view of might makes right, be in control, take charge, all that pattern, to fall away, and open ourselves to the pattern of losing to win, dying to live. The Son of God went to the cross to prove this is God’s path and our path for the life of all things.

And it is all things John is talking about. Everything is part of this pattern. So everything is part of God’s love.

John’s Gospel claims that the cross is the sign of the heart of God for the whole universe.

Much like our theology of the cross is often too narrow, so often is our view of John 3:16. Painted on signs at sports venues, plastered on car bumpers, this verse has become an invitation to a personal view of salvation. “God so loved you,” not “God so loved the world.”

But John actually says “God so loved the cosmos” here. It means what you think. John 3:16 is about God’s love for all the universe. John declares that in the cross of Christ we see God’s love for the whole of creation, all galaxies and stars, all cells and mitochondria, all things. The cross proves God’s love for everything God has made.

So not only is God’s self-giving love the pattern for how the universe works, it’s the heart of God for all things. Any view of the cross and resurrection that doesn’t account for God redeeming the entire creation in all its breadth and depth is just not big enough. It’s like having a piece of wood in a fancy box, instead of living in a healed creation, now and forever.

Paul figured this out. And he knew it would meet resistance.

The world’s ways of power and exclusion and control can’t cope with an all-powerful God who gives up power, a God of life who offers to die to show the universe its pattern and hope.

Some will call it foolishness, Paul says. Others will trip over this, and won’t accept it.

But we are gathered tonight to remember that the Triune God who made all things took on our bodies and carried such self-giving, foolish love to death on the cross. We celebrate a meal based on that death, certain that this same Son of God is risen, thus proving that this pattern of the cross brings eternal and present life.

We might fear it’s foolish. We might stumble over it. But we’re here. Because we know it’s true.

And so tonight, we ask only to be shaped to this pattern.

We seek the Spirit’s new birth, also promised in John 3, to make us new beings formed to God’s blueprint of self-giving love.

Because when we’re lined up to God’s pattern, we’re in harmony with the pattern of the universe. And our lives begin to vibrate and sing the song of the undying sacrificial love of the Creator who turns every worldly expectation upside down because we’ve actually been upside down all along and want to be turned back to God’s way.

So we remember our Lord’s death tonight, as we do each Eucharist. We make the sign of the cross tonight, as we do each Eucharist. We do it to remember God’s blueprint, the pattern of the Christ, the pattern of the universe, the pattern of abundant life that God wants all to know.

And that’s a pretty good reason to celebrate the feast day of the Holy Cross, come to think of it.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen