Betting on the Kingdom (Matthew 25:14-30)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on November 19, 2017, Proper 28)

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The Gamble of Parenthood

Many of my friends are young parents.  When they speak about their children, their speech, I’ve noticed, enters a special register.  It’s as though all of the sudden their words wear halos—even if they’re talking about dirty diapers or sleepless nights or walls now covered in a toddler’s graffiti art.  Everything about their children is sacred. 

There are few certainties about raising a child.  One thing that is certain, is the great cost.  Sleep and time and money and social life and energy and personal ambition—all are sacrificed for the sake of the child.  What is also certain is the great risk.  Will the child be born healthy?  How will she develop socially and emotionally?  Will she make friends? 

As far as I know, all my friends planned beforehand to have children.  And as far as I can tell, all of them wouldn’t change their decision for the world.  Even though the cost is inevitably greater than they expected.  Even though sometimes the risk has cut the wrong way and left them with unanticipated troubles.

It’s surprising enough to me that my friends are resolved in their decision.  But what surprises even more, is when I read the stories of parents of children with severe disabilities or children whose life was cut short.  I read recently about Peter and Barbara in Rhode Island.  Peter and Barbara had a daughter named Lauren.  Her first breath was meconium.  For a day, she lived on the respirator.  Peter still remembers that day.  How he reached clumsily toward Lauren and how she squeezed his little finger and looked into his eyes.  That day, Peter says, he saw beauty and love.  The next day, Lauren died.  Years later, Peter defiantly declares: “I miss Lauren, but I wouldn’t, if [we conceived again] and I knew this was going to happen [again], I wouldn’t wish Barbara not to be pregnant just because this was going to happen.”[1] 

I do not share Peter’s words to suggest that tragedy can be wiped away with defiant hope.  I share his words because I can hardly believe them.  Peter paid a cost far greater than any of my friends.  He risked and lost so much.  And yet he declares that he would do it all again.  Why?

That word “risk” keeps coming up.  It’s almost as though we’re talking about a gamble, a wager, as though every parent who plans for a child is nevertheless embarking on an unplannable adventure.  Every parent who plans for a child is rolling the dice. 

And with few exceptions, even when they lose, they win.  Even when they’re dealt a difficult hand, they declare it a gift.  They declare themselves grateful.

Another Kingdom Story

In today’s scripture, Jesus continues his storytelling.  Last week, remember, he told the story of a delayed wedding celebration.  He urged his disciples, “Stay awake!”  Faith is not about calculating the day or the hour when the kingdom will arrive.  Faith is about making the kingdom possible, about being ready for the kingdom whenever it arrives.  And the kingdom is near, already among us, Jesus proclaims; it could be here any minute!  It could come when we’re least expecting it: in a moment of conflict, where forgiveness could bring the kingdom; in an unwanted interruption, where hospitality could bear unexpected kingdom fruit; in the drudgery of routine, where love could help the kingdom to grow against all odds, like a flower in the cracks of the pavement. 

Today Jesus continues to talk about the kingdom.  His story is simple.  Three slaves are entrusted with their master’s money.  A lot of money.  A single talent is around twenty years’ wages: the earnings of half a lifetime.[2]  Two of the slaves are gutsy.  They make some high-risk trades and double their money.  The other slave is cautious and careful.  He keeps his talent hidden, so that there’s no danger of it being lost.

The message of the story is unquestionable.  Be like the two servants.  Not the one.

An All-Too-Human Tale

Beyond that point, though, I have a lot of questions.  The master in the story resembles a ruthless tycoon who cares more for profit than people.  Thus he casts off the careful slave, calling him “wicked” and “lazy” and “worthless.”  Is this a picture of God, the same God who we have been told again and again is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love?[3]  Is this the same God who blesses the poor in spirit?  And the world of today’s story resembles a heartless meritocracy, where people are judged on their performance and receive rewards or punishment accordingly.  Is this a picture of the kingdom of God, the same kingdom of God that brings down the powerful and lifts up the lowly?

Like last week’s parable, this is another story that begs for careful attention.  If we take it too literally, then we end up with a God who looks more like a merciless Wall Street investor than a merciful father, and a kingdom that looks more like a competition of the fittest than a gathering of the broken.

My hunch is that this is another case of Jesus telling stories with relatable, all-too-human characters.  In other words, his audience would have been familiar with absentee landowners expecting big returns from their underpaid servants.  The story itself that Jesus tells is nothing new.  What is new, is what Jesus is suggesting about faith.

The Risk of Faith

When our back is up against the wall, as were the backs of Jesus and his Jewish audience, and as are the backs of many churches today, the impulse is self-preservation.  Faith becomes about survival: in our case, about sustaining the brick-and-mortar church or the programs that have traditionally run inside it or the people that fill its pews.  But Jesus seems to have a very different sort of faith in mind.

For me, the key to the story is the wild amount of money that the servants are entrusted with and their response.  If you were entrusted with half a million dollars belonging to someone else, would you then invest it in high-risk trades?  Or would you hide it, to ensure a full return?

To be sure, Jesus isn’t giving an economics lecture on investment.  Elsewhere he has very little good to say about the practices of saving up and seeking profit.[4]  He’s talking here about the kingdom.  He’s telling a story about faith.  And apparently faith is filled with risk.  It’s not something we hide and hang on to, something that we save in hopes that it will later save us.  Faith is a venture into abundant life now.  It’s always calling for more—more love, more forgiveness, more hospitality.  It’s a gamble, a wager, a bet.  Which means that it might not come off the way we hope.  Just looks at Jesus’ life.  Most of the world would consider the cross a great loss, a heavy cost, regardless of what comes after.

And Yet…

If Jesus’ story today is any indication, the kingdom of God will not result from safe, well-calculated investments.  Jesus certainly didn’t make a safe bet himself.  The kingdom of God, according to Christ, will come in the wild wagers that we make in love and forgiveness, generosity and hospitality.  We may lose these bets, as Jesus did.  And yet….

It strikes me that the risky faith Jesus proclaims, looks quite similar to the gamble of parenthood.  The point is not winning.  The point is the risk itself, that even when you lose, you win, because the risk itself exposes you to a life-giving love.  I think of Peter who had his daughter Lauren for only one day, whose grief is deeper than any I have ever known.  He paid a great cost.  He risked and lost.  And yet….

Prayer

Loving God,

In Jesus Christ

We see

The risk of life

And the hope of your kingdom:

Stir us to make daily

The holy bet of faith,

To take our chances

On love and forgiveness

As you have done.

Amen.

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[1] Christopher De Vinck, The Power of the Powerless (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 56.

[2] R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 703.

[3] Cf. Ex. 34:6; Num 14:18; Neh 9:17; Ps 86:5, 15; 103:8; 145:8; Jonah 4:2.

[4] E.g., Luke 12:13-21; 14:33; 18:18-24.

Practice Makes Possible (Matthew 25:1-13)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on November 12, 2017, Proper 27)

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The Practice of Introductions,

The Possibility of Friendship

Growing up, ice cream was a treat.  Normally my bedtime snack would be a simpler affair.  Toast and jam, maybe.  Or a cookie and milk.

I still remember the day that my mom made a deal with my brother and me.  Instructing us on the importance of making introductions, of looking people in the eye and offering our hand and saying, “It’s nice to meet you,” she agreed to reward us with ice cream every time we made an introduction.  Now, my brother’s the extrovert, so I feel like this deal favored him a bit more.  But that’s beside the point.  With ice cream on the other end, even I could find it in me to make a proper introduction.

I am grateful for all the practice that resulted from this delicious dairy experiment.  As it turns out, looking people in the eye or offering your hand or saying something nice is often what turns strangers into friends.  Sometimes I wonder if I would have the friends that I have today, if my mom had not first instructed me in this practice.

They say, “Practice makes perfect.”  In my experience, that’s not true.  I can still be quite clumsy in my introductions.  In my experience, practice makes possible.  All that practice—and ice cream!—from my childhood is what has made possible some amazing friendships.

The Practice of Faith,

The Possibility of the Kingdom

In today’s scripture, Jesus tells a parable about the kingdom of God.  “Keep awake,” he urges at the end of the parable, “for you know neither the day nor the hour” (25:13).  Throughout the centuries, Christians have speculated on the “when” of Christ’s return.  But here Jesus makes his point pretty clear.  Don’t worry about the day or the hour.  Stay awake!  The coming of God’s kingdom is “not a ‘when’ to be calculated, but a ‘how’ to be lived.”[1]

In other words, practice makes possible.  Just as the practice of eye contact and handshaking and introducing made me ready for the sudden arrival of a new friend, so the practice of faith makes us ready for the kingdom.  If we are practicing hospitality to strangers, forgiving our enemies, loving others for no good reason—if we are practicing all these things that make up the way of Christ—then when the kingdom comes, we will be ready for it. 

Traditionally we think of the kingdom coming as a once-and-for-all event, the endpoint of all time.  But I wonder if Jesus has something simpler in mind here.  Elsewhere, he says that the kingdom is near, that it is in fact already among us, within us (cf. Luke 17:21, 31).  It’s almost as though he’s saying that the kingdom is always a possibility, just as friendship is always a possibility.  What matters—what determines whether a stranger becomes a friend, or whether the world is transformed into the kingdom—is whether we are practicing or not.  Practice makes possible.  Welcoming strangers and forgiving old grudges and loving people who give us no good reason to: these are not things we only do once we’re in the kingdom.  They’re what we do in order to make the kingdom possible, in order to be ready for it when it arrives.

And I wonder if the kingdom isn’t arriving when we least expect it: in conflicts and interruptions and the daily drone of our lives.  For it’s precisely in these moments that forgiveness and hospitality and love make a difference.  Remember the parable of the prodigal son, where the wasteful and ungrateful son comes to ruin and then returns to his father?  Is it only the son who returns?  Is it not also the kingdom that arrives that day?  And the father is ready.  The father forgives his son, and for a brief moment, we catch a glimpse of the kingdom.  The father made it possible.

Readiness Cannot Be Shared

I’ll have to admit, though, that today’s parable does not wrap up neatly.  If the point is that we must practice our faith to make the kingdom possible, then why is today’s story full of characters who have such bad practice, whose behavior is the very opposite of the way of Christ?  Jesus said, “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you” (Matt 5:42; cf. Luke 6:35).  So why do the “wise” bridesmaids refuse to share their oil?  And Jesus preached forgiveness and urged his followers, “Don’t judge” and “Don’t condemn” (Luke 6:37).  So why does the groom in the story respond so resentfully toward the unprepared bridesmaids, refusing them entry to the wedding?  If people actually modeled their behavior on the wise bridesmaids and the groom, it’s hard to imagine how the kingdom of love and forgiveness that Jesus proclaims would ever arrive. 

To me, today’s parable illustrates the danger of reading too literally.  If you’ll recall, there are other parables with troubling characters too, kings who return violence with violence (e.g., Matt 22:1-14) and rulers who slaughter their citizens with little cause (e.g., Luke 19:11-27).  My guess is that Jesus is telling flesh-and-blood sorts of tales, perhaps stories of events that actually happened—certainly stories that people could relate to.  In today’s case, it would be all-too-human, all-too-understandable, for a handful of bridesmaids to secure their own ticket to the party at the exclusion of others.  Likewise, it would all-too-human for a resentful groom to exclude guests because they didn’t care enough to prepare for a change in plans.

The point, then, is not necessarily to model our behavior on the characters’.  We’ve already seen how much their conduct deviates from the way of Christ.  The point, I think, has to do with Jesus’ conclusion: “Stay awake therefore.”  If Jesus is proclaiming that practice makes us ready, makes a new world possible, then the bridesmaids’ refusal to share and the groom’s refusal to open the door makes a lot more sense.  These refusals are an illustration, a metaphor, for what it means to be out of practice.  If you are out of practice, there’s nothing that can be shared to help you, there’s no last-minute adjustment that can be made to make your ready.  Readiness cannot be shared.  It must be cultivated through patient practice.

An Alternate Ending

Jesus was always playing with old stories, giving them new twists.  So I trust he’ll understand if I do the same.  I wonder what today’s story would look like if its characters were not all-too-human, if they actually practiced the way of Christ.

Imagine with me for a moment that the wise bridesmaids share their oil with the foolish bridesmaids.  And then, no one has enough oil.  But the bridegroom welcomes them all anyway because in the kingdom of God, that’s what you do.[2]  That’s the practice.  In the kingdom of God, grudges are dropped, the needful are lifted up, and outsiders are welcomed.

The kingdom of God turns no one away.  The question is not, Will we have enough of this or that, or, Will we look presentable enough to the host?  The question is simpler: Will we see the kingdom?  Will we appreciate it?  My mom taught me how to see a friend in a stranger, how to practice eye contact and offering my hand in order to open up that possibility.  In the same way, the kingdom is always coming, but we’ll never see it and appreciate it if we’re not already practicing its ways.  “Keep awake therefore”—keep giving and forgiving, welcoming and loving, for in this way we make the kingdom and its abundant life possible.  In this way we are ready when it arrives.

Prayer

Loving Lord,

Friend of sinners—

May the holy chance

Of your kingdom

Captivate our hearts

And inspire our bodies

To practice the ways

That make it possible.

Amen.

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[1] John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 140.

[2] I am indebted to Lauren F. Winner for this imagined alternative ending.  See Winner, “The Parable of Five Catty, Hard-Hearted, Virgins,” http://thq.wearesparkhouse.org/yeara/ordinary32gospel/, accessed November 7, 2017.

The Blessing of the Least: Or, Who Is Saving Whom? (Matthew 5:1-12)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on November 5, 2017, All Saints' Sunday)

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“Help Yourself First”

D. L. Mayfield grew up wanting to be a missionary.  She wanted to travel overseas to strange and wonderful lands, to save all the innocent souls who had never heard the name of Jesus.

She tells the story of a mission trip she took to India when she was seventeen.  Her group visited a tiny village to perform a play.  It was a drama, she says, “about the temptations of money and women and alcohol, and how Jesus has the power to overcome them.”  Never mind that this village was dirt poor.

She remembers eating dinner in the village before the play.  Sitting on a swept dirt floor, she and her traveling companions ate the rice and curry that had been carefully prepared by a scrawny old woman with only a few teeth left intact. The curry was “hot-as-hell,” she recalls, and seemed to be composed of little more than okra.  Having heard that spice is often used to disguise rotting vegetables, she was thankful for the fire in her mouth.  She cooled it as best she could with the tall metal cup of water, which must have been drawn from a well outside the village.

Later in the evening, after she and the team had performed their play and no one had come forward at the altar call, they climbed into their SUV and rolled out of the dusty village back to their flat in the city.  On the way home, their guide and interpreter remarked in his singsong voice: “That was their one meal of the day, and they shared it with you.”  Mayfield recalls how bitter those words tasted: “This was normal for [our guide],” she says, “this display of generosity. But for me, it was my first meal given to me by someone who would then do without; it was the first time I ate rice that was destined for another stomach….I remembered the children milling around while we ate, the way their eyes watched our faces. It was their dinner we ate, pretending to be missionaries. The shame I felt tasted like bile.”[1]

Mayfield doesn’t explain why she felt shame, but she doesn’t need to.  We all can identify with her feeling.  If she had known what this family was doing, she would have protested.  She would have refused their one meal of the day.  And if she and her team had been in the little village longer, perhaps they would have gone a step further and taught the families how to save what they had, perhaps even how to invest it and multiply it, so that instead of living from day to day they could secure their future. 

After all, that is the way of our world.  All of us who are privileged enough to have flown on an airplane have heard it put this way: “In the case of emergency, secure your own oxygen mask first before helping others.”  If you don’t help yourself first, you may not be there to help someone else.

Who Really Needs Saving?

But something strange happened to Mayfield.  At first, she had thought she was the one doing the saving.  So she felt shame.  What kind of missionary would steal a meal from a dirt-poor family?  But the more she reflected on her time in India, the more she realized that she wasn’t the one saving.  She was the one being saved.  “Everyone,” she reflects, “[was] poor as far as my eyes could see. And yet, the generosity in which seemingly everyone moved changed me: how they adored bright colors and dramatic movies and soaring operatic songs and spicy food. Although it was deemed little by the world I had grown up in, it seemed to me that all of India was willing to share what they had.”[2]

In other words, her dirt-poor hosts already seemed to be living in the kingdom.  Faith, hope, love—these were not just things they read about or practiced in their free time, or on Sundays, after they had secured their own lives.  These were the very things their lives depended on.  How else do you give away your only meal for the day, if not in faith that your own needs will be met, if not in hopeful joy for the life your gift will bring, if not in love for the other.

A Conversion Story:

From Saviors to Saved

“The least of these” can sound patronizing and condescending.  The least don’t have as much we do.  They don’t know as much.  They don’t achieve as much. 

When Jesus promised last week that he dwelled among “the least of these,” and that whatever we did unto them, we did unto him—we may have left thinking: “Easy enough.  Jesus is calling us to charity.  Jesus is calling us to help the least of these.”  In other words, we may have left feeling big-hearted and better off, thinking it was our duty to pull up those below us.

But is this way of thinking anything special?  Is it even Christian?  Many people advocate for charity and helping others.  And many of them are the same people “obsessed with staying safe and securing a good life for themselves, protecting their borders and procuring a retirement account.”[3]  I count myself among this crowd, and I’m not proud of it.  Because I’m not so sure it’s Christian simply to take care of ourselves first and then help others.  I’m not so sure it’s Christian simply to help the least of these—when helping them means making them more like us.  Making sure that they don’t give away their only meal for the day, that they know how to save or invest.

What Jesus says today points in the opposite direction.  The least don’t need our saving so much as we need theirs.  Blessed are they, Jesus says.  They might not have as much, “know” as much, or accomplish as much.  But in their life is a faith and hope and love that the secure and self-satisfied will never know.  Who can appreciate the promise of a feast more than the hungry?  Who knows what it is to trust, to have faith, better than someone unable to provide for himself?  Who can truly love another person for who they are, other than the meek who surrender their own interests to others?

To be clear, I don’t think Jesus is saying that the least don’t need help—food when they’re hungry or care when they’re sick.  I think what he’s saying today is that the least are calling for more than our help: they’re calling for our hearts, for us to be converted to their life of blessing, for us to walk alongside them and discover their salvation. 

Saved by the Saints, Saved by the Least

On All Saints’ Sunday, we remember and celebrate the Christ-followers who have gone before us.  Their lives shine like candles, like stars in the night guiding us on the way (cf. Phil 2:15).  The powers and principalities of our world—the media, business executives, government leaders—proclaim a rational way of living: fill yourself first, then others.  Save and save and save, until you’ve got some extra to give.

But the saints we celebrate—parents and grandparents, teachers and mentors, friends and strangers—remind us of a different way.  What we remember today is their Christ-likeness: how they lived selflessly, perhaps giving us their only meal one day, or perhaps simply putting down the paper to look full in our eyes.  What we remember, oddly enough, are not their great accomplishments but their “leastness.”  Maybe we remember the poverty of spirit with which they laid their own interests aside.[4]  Maybe we remember their mercy and meekness, by which they loved others lavishly and for no good reason.  Or maybe we remember how they hungered and thirsted to see others living well, how they would not rest until others did.

Whatever exactly we remember, we give thanks for having shared in their blessing.  And we give thanks for our salvation, which comes not from on high but from on low, from the least of these, who lead us in the way of faith.

Prayer

Little Christ,

Who lives in the least

Not so much to be saved

As to save:

May the memory

Of our saints

And their poverty

Convert us

From selfishness

To the way of faith.  Amen.

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[1] D. L. Mayfield, Assimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2016), 173.

[2] Mayfield, Assimilate, 174

[3] Mayfield, Assimilate, 185-186.

[4] Oscar Romero, a saint of El Salvador whom I remember today, once remarked that “dialogue is characterized by poverty”; it is “becoming poor to seek with another the truth.”  Perhaps what we remember of our saints is simply their words, which did not dethrone us but treated us as equals, as companions.

The King and the Kingdom: The Least of These and Love (Matthew 25:31-46)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on October 29, 2017, Proper 25)

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A Parable Retold

Once upon a time, there lived a great king whose kingdom spread all over the world.  He boasted the largest army history had known.  He triumphed in battle after battle, conquering many lands and peoples.  Ruling his growing kingdom with an iron fist, he left no challenge unpunished.  It was said that he had eyes and ears in every corner of his kingdom.  Not only was he all-powerful.  He was also all-knowing.  Some people had begun to whisper that perhaps he was even divine. 

One night, the king had a disturbing dream.  He was making a great tour through his kingdom.  But no one paid him any attention.  They did not cheer for him, bow down to him, or offer any gifts of tribute.  Then the king heard a small, weak voice, although he could not see who was speaking.  The voice said: “They live for another king now.”  The king looked frantically around him but saw no rival.  Who was this other king?

The next morning, the king woke in an anxious sweat.  Immediately he gathered his advisors—his eyes and ears—and instructed them to be on the lookout for any rivals.  Month after month they looked but had nothing to report.  There were no castles as big as his, no armies that could challenge his, no lords who would not pay tribute.  There was no rival king.

Far away from all this royal commotion, a foreign peasant, gaunt and ragged, crossed the border and entered the kingdom.  She knocked at the first house she saw.  The occupants of the home were frightened.  They knew the law against immigrants.  But they also saw that this stranger was in need.  So they took her in for the night.  The next day, the farmers next door stopped by and met the woman.  Their hearts too were moved by her need, so they shared from their harvest and had a great feast.  Soon enough, the authorities heard about this breach of the law, and they imprisoned the stranger.  But even then, her hosts and their neighbors visited her daily, doing all they could to ensure her needs were met.

All of this, of course, was not even a blip on the king’s radar.  He and his advisors were keeping their eyes peeled for the power of the hand.  Not the power of the heart.  Little did they know, that day by day this incident was being replayed all across the kingdom.  People were no longer living simply by the rule of law.  They were living according to a deeper call.  A knock on the door.  A hungry mouth.  A ragged body.  A helpless stranger.  The lack of others ruled their hearts more than the law of the king did.

The king never detected the revolution that would one day overturn his kingdom.  He never saw coming his new rival.  He was looking for Power.  But what was coming, was Love.

A Revolution

I’ve taken great liberties with today’s scripture.  So before I say any more, let me invite you to revisit it later: Matthew 25:31-46.  Perhaps your interpretation will render the story very different from the one I’ve shared.

What captures my imagination in today’s parable, is the imagery that Jesus uses of a king and a kingdom.  Because when I think of a king, I think of castles and armies and great power.  When I think of a kingdom, I think of a dominion that has borders and grows by conquest.

But Jesus overturns these images of kings and kingdoms.  His parable paints a revolution: the king is not prominent and powerful but poor and powerless; the kingdom comes not by way of battles but by way of beggars.  It is not a story of strength but rather a story of weakness.

And that’s just the point.  Christ reigns not through greatness but through the least of these, who are calling us to love.

Our King Needs Us

As our Visioning Team has shared, and as our youth have illustrated so well, Gayton Road feels called to share the life of faith around tables, in small groups, and with the needful.  Over the last four weeks, we’ve explored our calling toward tables and small groups.  Today, we reflect on our calling toward the needful.  If tables suggest where we often find God’s love, and small groups how we often share God’s love, then the needful suggest with whom love often happens.

In today’s parable, Jesus portrays a king whose kingdom is not established in power but is rather born in the care that we share for others.  It’s a picture much like the story that we will celebrate in a month’s time, in Advent and Christmas, when Christ the king comes not in conquest but in a lowly birth.  Our king rules not by hand but by the heart.  Our king does not stand strong and sovereign over us.  Our king needs us.

I’ve invited a couple of folks today to share their experience of encountering Christ in the needful, or as Jesus puts it, “the least of these.”  As they share, I’d invite you to continue reflecting on the revolution of the kingdom.  Do you believe in a kingdom that comes by power or by love?  Does your king come conquering or calling out in need?  In whom have you met our king?  Where have you seen our king’s kingdom? 

Prayer

Powerless Christ,

Our king so often unseen—

Overturn our world

Through your lack and your need.

Call us and invite us,

Disturb us and draw us

To love,

That your kingdom would be

On earth as it is in heaven.  Amen.

Sharing the Mundane (Acts 2:42-47)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on October 22, 2017, Proper 24)

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A Meal—And So Much More

Some of you may have already heard or read this story.  Over a month ago, Jeff and Rebecca helped Lu move a few things from her house to the church for the yard sale.  Then, just a couple Sundays ago, Lu found herself in the position to return the help.  After we had broken bread and shared a meal at Deep Run Park, Jeff needed a ride home.  He and Rebecca had come together, but she had to leave the park early to go to work, leaving Jeff without a car.

Lu offered to give Jeff a ride.  The way she tells it, this was just to return the favor.  But I know better.  I know that the ride that Lu offered was not part of some exchange.  It was a gift.  Just as Jeff and Rebecca had done a month before, Lu was simply sharing what she could share in a moment of need.  She would have done what she did whether or not there was a favor to return.

In any case, Jeff got in Lu’s Prius and they turned onto Ridgefield, headed home.  Almost immediately, though, the car had what Lu called “a bout of hiccups”: “the right rear tire was bouncing and veering off.”  Now, if you know Lu, you know she’s a fighter and not to be deterred by a little bump here or there.  It’s my understanding that she had planned to keep driving.  Lucky for her that Jeff was in the car, because his mechanical sixth-sense told him that the tire was about to blow.  I don’t know how Jeff convinced Lu of this, but somehow he did, and just after they crossed Pump Road, they turned into a parking lot.

Jeff immediately got to work.  He found the little temporary tire and began to install it.  Just then, a truck pulled into the parking lot.  Lu was fearing the worst—that it would be someone telling them they could not park here—but in fact it was a stranger who had worked for AAA for years and wanted to offer his help.  He could tell that the temporary tire was low on air, so he ran it down to the nearest station to refill it.  Some time later the faulty tire was replaced, and Lu and Jeff completed their journey down Ridgefield to Jeff’s home. 

What a Sunday for Jeff and Lu!  Little did they know what they were getting into when they came to church.  A meal, yes—but so much more.

Pentecost: The Modern Church Poster Child?

In the verses that precede today’s scripture, we have the roar and the rumble of Pentecost, when the Spirit of God rushes upon the crowd of Christ-followers and they make quite a scene, speaking in all sorts of languages and declaring the glory of God.  Peter then raises his voice and gives a rousing, revival-worthy sermon, and three thousand people are baptized, committing their lives to the way of Christ.

I’ll be honest.  Hearing about Pentecost Sunday when the church was born, reminds me a little bit of the glitz and glam of the contemporary religious scene, of mega-churches and feel-good conferences, where the volume is turned up and everyone leaves on a high.  In our modern world, where many churches promise spectacle and self-gain, Pentecost can be distorted into the perfect piece of propaganda.  Here’s what church is.  Here’s what Sunday is: a great, spirited performance and everyone leaves happy.

The Commonness of Church

But in scripture, the story does not end with Pentecost.  After the spectacle, the real life of the church begins.  That’s what we see in today’s passage.  Church is more than a single event.  Sunday is more than a show.  It’s no coincidence that the first followers of Christ were often called members of “the Way.”  They were identified not by a single event of salvation, but rather by their commitment to a way of life. 

What did that way look like?  Today’s scripture says that the early Christ-followers were committed to koinonia, a Greek work that our Bible translates as “fellowship.”  But koinonia is a much richer word than “fellowship” would suggest.  Some people propose the alternative translation “community” or “communion,” but I believe a better translation would be “commonness.”  The word koinonia comes from the Greek word, koinos, which means something like “common.”  It contains both senses of that word: “common” as something that is shared in common, and “common” as something that is mundane, or commonplace. 

So when the early Christ-followers committed themselves to koinonia, or commonness, they were committing themselves to sharing the mundane.  And that’s exactly what we see in today’s scripture.  We see them daily breaking bread together, gathering in their homes together, praying together, joining their resources together.  Come to think of it, this is the same stuff Jesus did.

Everyday, the early Christ-followers shared the mundane parts of their lives together: food, words, things, homes.  Church wasn’t a one-time event in the week.  It was a way of life.  Scholars speculate that at this stage in church history, Christ-followers would not have distinguished between the Lord’s Supper and “just a meal”: every meal together was eaten in remembrance and anticipation of the Lord.[1]  Likewise giving was not an offering enclosed in an envelope; it was what they did whenever someone was in need.

All this to say: long before the long robes arrived on the scene, installing their pulpits and ordaining their ministers and prescribing the elements of worship, the church was already alive and well.  Not in a spectacular way, but rather in a very common, everyday way—in the way of Jesus.  The church committed itself to koinonia, “commonness.”  The church shared the mundane.

When Does Church End?  Begin?

I think back to two weeks ago.  Like the early church, we broke bread together at Deep Run.  And a little bit later, we left.  Was that the end of church?  Was that the conclusion to Sunday?

It wasn’t for Lu and Jeff.  For Lu and Jeff, I’d dare say, church was just getting started.  They were about to share a rather mundane, headache-inducing experience together.  Lu would share her car.  Jeff would share his mechanical know-how.  A stranger would share his truck. 

Koinonia.  Commonness.  The church shares the mundane.  After the sound system is unplugged and the spectators leave satisfied, that’s when church really begins. 

Common and Sacred

A little bit later today, we will enter into this koinonia, this commonness, as we break bread together.  Traditionally we take communion all together.  This is a good and meaningful practice.  It represents our oneness as a church, our integrity with the body of Christ.  In my experience, though, there are occasionally side effects.  At some larger churches, communion has felt to me like a spectator sport, where I watch from my seat in the audience as the clergy perform.  Or sometimes it has felt like simply another shopping transaction in my week, a private little pick-me-up not unlike a Starbucks coffee.  Or sometimes it has felt like nothing at all.

As our Visioning Team learned this last year, Gayton Road feels called to share the life of faith in small groups, where two or three are gathered—and with good reason.  The blessing of small groups is that they encourage koinonia, commonness, sharing the mundane.

I remember the first time I took communion with only a handful of Christ-followers.  We sat in a small circle.  We read, prayed, and blessed the bread and cup together.  Our hands touched as we broke the bread for each other.  We looked into each other’s eyes as we served each other the cup.  These were the most common of elements and most common of human interactions.  And yet here, bread and cup and touch and gaze were more than throwaway gestures.  Here they became the body of Christ.  I trembled.  In that circle, I felt a holiness that I had not often felt in a sanctuary, as I received and shared the love of Christ in a very bodily, tangible, matter-of-fact way.  How common that experience was—and yet how sacred!

Today we sit in small groups of six or seven.  At communion, each small group will be invited to share the bread and the cup and the prayers together.  Like the early followers of Christ, we will share the mundane: bread, words, hands.  It may feel unremarkable.  I don’t know, it might even feel tedious—not unlike changing a tire!  That’s okay.  In fact, that may be a good thing.  The church is not a spectacle or a gathering for self-gain.  If today’s scripture is any indication, the church is much more profound than that—so profound, in fact, that it shares and sanctifies even the most mundane.

Prayer

Common God,

Shared among all

In the mundane parts of life:

Bread, prayers, tires, trucks—

Draw us out of our self-seeking

Into the sacred commonness

Of life together,

Where we are embraced

By your love.  Amen.

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[1] William H. Willimon, Acts (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 41.

In Heaven as It Is on Earth (Matthew 18:18-20)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on October 15, 2017, Proper 23)

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Whatever You Do on Earth Will Be Done in Heaven

Every week we pray with Jesus: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  We are praying, effectively, for heaven on earth.

In today’s short passage, there’s a curious reversal in Jesus’ words.  Rather than talking about the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, Jesus talks about life in heaven as it is on earth.  “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”  Basically, whatever you do on earth will be done in heaven.  In other words, Jesus isn’t talking about heaven coming to earth.  He’s suggesting the opposite here: that life on earth will somehow become life in heaven. 

This is a striking counterpoint, then, to the Lord’s prayer.  If the Lord’s prayer had misled us into thinking that God would be heaven’s chauffeur and drive heaven down to our doorstep, Jesus’ words here remind us that we have a radical responsibility.  Heaven can come to earth, but not without our willing hearts.  Not without us binding or holding onto what is good, and not without us loosing or letting go of what is hurtful.

The Little Things Live On

Jesus’ words in today’s passage emerge from a conversation about personal relationships.  So when he says, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and likewise whatever you loose,” I think what he’s really saying is that heaven, if it is ever to happen, will begin in our personal relationships.  The kingdom of God will not come as a great spectacle.  It will come in the little things.  For the little things live on—in heaven as they were on earth.

If you’ve read or seen A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, perhaps you remember the ghost of Jacob Marley, who bears a heavy chain and warns Scrooge: “I wear the chain I forged in life.  I made it link by link…and of my own free will I wore it.”  Marley is bound beyond as he was bound on earth.

But we can bind and be bound by other things too.  My memories of living in Sheffield visit me most frequently at breakfast time.  In the little terraced house where I lived, our home full of graduate students was always abuzz in the morning.  There would be a common pot of coffee brewing, started by whoever got up the earliest.  If I’d made biscuits, they’d be in the oven, filling the kitchen with the smell of warm butter.  My housemate Adriana often began her day with a smoke; sometimes I’d take a cup of coffee out on the back steps and accompany her, and we’d share our hopes for the day or our speculations on life…or simply our silence.

This is all to say, those mornings in Sheffield have an afterlife.  The little deeds we’ve done are gone, but they also live on.  Our terraced house was not always the scene of peace and harmony; there were differences and arguments from time to time.  But for the most part, we let those go.  Our forgiveness “loosed” those things on earth, and now, I trust, they have no hold on us in heaven.  But the love that bound and held us together here on earth—still binds and holds us together now, as we move toward heaven.

An Infinitely Charged and Sacred Space

In telling that story, I’ve played it safe.  You and I both have histories that are not so peaceful and easy.  We have histories that still hurt, in which we are still “bound,” which we still hold onto.

Those hurtful histories prove Jesus’ point as much as the harmonious ones do.  Namely, that our relationships are an infinitely charged and sacred space.  They have the capacity to bless us with heaven, but also to harm us indefinitely.  What we hold onto and let go of now, is what will hold onto us or not for longer than we can know.

As our Visioning Team met this last year, we shared stories of our most meaningful experiences at Gayton Road.  We’ve already heard about how significant the table has been—as the place where we encounter our Lord in feasting and friendship, in sharing and self-giving, as the place where we receive and participate in God’s love, which is stronger even than death.  Another story shared frequently in the Visioning Team’s meetings, was the memory of small group gatherings.  These memories were good ones.  Having heard Jesus’ words today, I would even go so far as to say that these small groups are where the kingdom happened, where life on earth became in fact life in heaven.  As we hear some of these stories now, I would invite us all to reflect on our own experience of small gatherings, both here at church and elsewhere.  Where have we experienced small groups as sacred, as charged with holy possibility? 

In the Face of Another

As we’ve just heard from Amanda and John, in the small gatherings here at Gayton Road, there is a sacred potential and holy responsibility.  It goes far beyond the content of these groups—whether that’s songs or Bible study.  It has to do, rather, with a way of life, a way of relating to each other, a way of forgiving bad notes and being bound in love and care.  When at these gatherings we hold onto what is good and let go of what is hurtful, we welcome the kingdom.  Or as Jesus puts it, where two or three gather in his name—which is to say, in the spirit of his binding love and his loosing forgiveness—Jesus himself is there. 

Our small groups are saturated with holy possibility.  In the face of another, we receive an invitation to love and forgive, a call to bind our hearts together and to let go of hurt.  So that one day it will be in heaven as it is on earth. 

Prayer

Living Christ,

Who entrusts us

With the kingdom responsibility

Of love and forgiveness,

Binding and loosing:

Gather with us

In our small groups,

And inspire us

To the little deeds

That live on

In heaven.  Amen.