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Asbab al-Nazul

Posted on November 15, 2011 by megancastellan

I have heard this parable maybe a hundred times, and never really been bothered by it.  The meaning seemed pretty self-evident and uncontroversial.  Talents are meant to be used, we should use them, and not be scared.  Yay Master, boo Third Slave.  (I generally don’t have a problem getting behind a message of “Fear Not!”)

But occasionally, the cold fish of context slaps you right in your face.  As it did this week.

Because I read the parable, and thought “No way am I standing up in a pulpit and preaching verse 29.  I will not countenance Jesus’ about-face in church.  Nope, nope, nope.”  I had a complete and total Bartelby-the-Scrivener moment.  This is not the time to preach around economic issues, or to cover up the fact of slavery in a parable.  Suddenly, I really, really hated this parable.

And I wasn’t the only one.  Twitter and Facebook erupted with fellow clergy questioning what on earth to do with this parable, which posed such a problem in our newly economic-conscious time.

Here’s what I came up with.

 

November 13, 2011

Proper 28, Ordinary Time

Matthew 25:14-30

In the movie “Doubt”, the young nun Sr. James, a teacher at a Catholic

parish school in the 1960s Bronx, begins to wonder about the local parish

priest, and his relationship with one of the boys at her school. She takes

her suspicions to her superior, Sr. Aloysius (Meryl Streep!), who

immediately tries to investigate.

 

But, this is the early 1960s, and this is the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic

Church, in the Bronx, and everything is more complicated than it would

seem. As the movie unfolds, it becomes clearer and clearer just who holds

the power at every moment and who does not– the older, conservative, Sr.

Aloysuis who chastises the naive Sr James for being too upbeat and

enthusiastic about teaching history (gives the children ideas!), and then Fr

Flynn, the suspected priest, threatening Sr. Aloysius with excommunication

for daring to check up at his last parish. In their scene together, he rails at

Sr. Aloysuis– you had no right to act on your own…you have taken vows,

obedience being one. You answer to us! You have no right to step outside

the Church!” he says.

 

The nun shoots back, “I will step outside the church if that’s what needs to

be done, though the door should shut behind me. I will do what needs to

be done, Father, if it means I’m damned to Hell.”

 

Throw me out into the outer darkness, but I know that I’m right. I’m not

going to tell you what happens in the end– the movie’s on Netflix, and is

totally worth it. But it’s that last scene, between Sr Aloysuis and Fr Flynn

that has stuck with me.

 

This parable in the gospel for today is a doozy. If any of you were awaiting

a cautionary tale about allegorizing the parables to find meaning, this would

be the one. That’s a good strategy most of the time, but sometimes, the

wheels come right off the wagon.

 

Because there are some problems with this parable, if we want to make

God (or Jesus) the master.

 

Let’s first set aside the unfortunate bit where the master is owning slaves,

and proceed right to the bit where the absentee master is doling out this

money. Because talents are money. Not a newly-discovered ability to sing

arias or soft shoe. (in fact, the English word Talent, meaning special ability,

came into use because of this transliteration in the KJV but the word for

ability is different.) A single talent would amount to about 15 years’ wages

for a day laborer– he’s handing them a fortune each, several fortunes

each. Actually. based on his assessment of their worth. With no

instructions! Just, “here’s tons of money, I’m leaving, have fun.”

 

So what do the slaves do? The first two slaves head off to the market and

“invest” the money, and make a profit. That may not sound strange to us,

but as a reminder: this parable was written in an agrarian subsistence

economy. There was no stock market.

 

In fact, lending money at interest was forbidden under Jewish law. It’s

usury. It’s exploitative of the poor. Everyone’s working on a farm to feed

themselves- they can’t come up with additional payment to repay a loan.

They’ll starve. Jewish law says a lot of things, but one of the things it’s

really clear on is that you take care of the poor, and the widow and the

orphan.

 

So the third slave’s complaint that the master is harsh? That he reaps

where he doesn’t sow, all that? That part where he hides the talent in the

ground? He’s not being overly cautious– he’s being moral. He’s right. The

only way you get 6 talents worth of money in those days was a lot of illegal

lending at interest. A lot of exploitation. And he wasn’t going to do it.

 

And in repayment for his noble stand, he gets stripped of his money, and

thrown into the outer darkness, destitute, alone, and defenseless. To the

one who has much, more will be given, and the one who has nothing, will

lose everything.

 

The heck kind of parable is Jesus telling here?

 

This story falls in kind of a strange place. We’re in the middle of Holy Week–

Jesus has been talking about the second coming, and how to recognize it–

the parable before this one is the one with the 10 bridesmaids–5 with oil

and 5 without. Everyone has to be ready! Everyone has to be prepared,

and waiting! Then he launches right into this. For it is like…

 

For it is like. For this is like what our world is like. This one right now. Not

the fulfilled Kingdom of God, mind you, but this weird, in between thing that

we currently live in. Those who have lots get more, frequently, and those

who have less, lose it. Have we not seen this over and over again in the recession?

 

And while this whole situation might strike us as unfair, might strike us as

not quite right, we also see that choosing to voice this concern has

drawbacks. In the here and now Sometimes, you get thrown into the outer

darkness. Sometimes, you lose all that nice economic security that you

liked so much you buried it for safekeeping.

 

But the very next verse– the VERY next verse that we don’t see in our blip

of a lectionary today, is the dawn of God’s realized kingdom. “Now, when

the Son of Man comes, in all his glory, he will gather the nations before him

and he will separate the sheep from the goats.”. And when that happens, it

won’t be based on ability, or worthiness, or how much money you made in

the market. It’s based on precisely the inverse of the talents. It’s based on

how well you took care of those who had nothing. On how well you took in

those cast into the outer darkness.

 

We just aren’t there yet. We’re in between. Somewhere in between the

world of the harsh and scary master who wants us to join him in exploiting

people and keeping quiet about it, and the new world of God’s justice,

where that’s just not an option.

 

And so what do we do? Which do we pick?

 

As people of faith, we are called to point the way to God’s future, to the

reign of God where the the first shall be last, the last shall be first, the lame

leap for joy, the sick are healed, and the poor have good news preached to

them. We’re called to live now like that’s a future that makes sense!

There’s no promise that this will work the way we want it to, that it will save

the world, or create paradise on earth. The third slave got booted out, all

worst suspicions confirmed. But it’s not our job to save the world.

 

Thank God. We’d totally botch it. That job is done. Our job is to bear living

witness to that fact, and to watch for the completion of God’s world-saving

final touches.

Because when the Son of Man comes, in all his glory, we know how the

story ends. Time to live like we do.

 

*** Blog post title is Arabic, meaning “Context of revelation”.  It’s a phrase from Islamic legal thought and theology, basically referring to the idea that the text of scripture is well and good, but equal attention must be paid to the context in which it was received, (and the context in which it is being read, currently)  in order for  proper interpretation to occur.   The More You Know!

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I Love You; Now Change

Posted on November 3, 2011 by megancastellan

This is a good week to be an Episcopalian.  In one exciting week, we get All Saint’s Day, All Soul’s Day, and the Feast Day of Richard Hooker, our first proper Anglican theologian.  We get to loudly sing about the ‘one [who] was a teacher, and one was a priest, and one was slain by a fierce wild beast.’  We sing our Alleluias to the stirring Sine Nomine by Vaughn  Williams.  All in all, it’s a good week to shake off whatever complacency has crept into the heart over the plodding Ordinary Time of the summer.

(Also, we have Halloween, which I believe in celebrating.  What better way to emphasize unconditional divine love and grace than to freely distribute unearned candy to children you don’t know, who have dressed up in ugly and unappealing ways?)

As Episcopalians, also, we do not have Reformation Day.  This is a thing that Protestants*** have on or around October 31.  (Know how we have this liturgical time rule wherein feasts cannot move backwards, only forwards, and only certain feasts may eclipse a Sunday?  The ELCA, bless their late-blooming-liturgical-renewal hearts, have not such a rule.)  So my ELCA brothers and sisters celebrated Reformation Day this past Sunday, and since I was preaching at the church in Williams, a combo ELCA/Episcopal parish, I was asked to preach on the Reformation.

Here is what I said.

Proper 26, Ordinary Time

Matthew 23: 1-12

Reformation Sunday (ELCA recognized)

 

In seminary, I had a renowned Church History prof who used to refer to the Reformation as ‘The Great mistake’.  This drove the lone Lutheran in my class up the wall, every time he did it.   Fr. Wright would stand there, sort of looking all Mr. Burns-ish, and poor Mark would sit there, with steam visibly emerging from his ears, until finally, he flatly refused to study church history after about the middle ages with this guy.    This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

 

I was thinking about that this week.  Reformation, reform is in the air right now.  No matter where you look, people are calling for change, calling for something to give.  We can’t go on as we have been going, something has to change, something must be different, and here is what it is…..  People everywhere nailing their theses to the doors.  The GOP candidates have their ideas of what needs to change.  The Tea Party has their ideas of what needs to change, Occupy Wall Street–which has now spread to the streets of every major city in the country, they have their ideas of what needs to change too.  And certainly, if you put all of those people in a room together, their ideas will not line up.

 

And within the church too, three weeks ago, at diocesan convention, we passed a resolution, evidently the first in the whole church, asking for a special convention to be called, so that we could begin to reform the entire structure of the Episcopal Church as a whole.  I spent a lot of that weekend talking about committees, and constitutions, and canons, all those church-y c-words.  All that really boring-sounding stuff that is also pretty important because it is the foundation of how we live in community with each other.

 

All of that stuff, all of it, is changing.  Inside of the church, outside of the church, it’s all changing.  We are beginning to discuss things that we have not discussed in generations.  We are beginning to talk about things that we have not discussed maybe in the span of our lifetimes.

 

The theses have gone up on the door, whether we are ready for it or not.

 

Everything is being called into question.  Everything is being challenged.  Everything is being reformed.

 

Which poses the question–how then, do we live?

 

When we feel called to nail those theses to the doors of the cathedrals of the world, of the churches of our world, how does God want us to act?  When people come to us, posing questions that we hadn’t considered, that make us uncomfortable, wanting to reform the things that we hold so dear and unshakeable, how does Jesus call us to respond?

 

The early church started out as something of a reform movement.  Jesus and the disciples were Jewish, in a Jewish society.  From most of what Jesus taught, he sounded like the other reforming rabbis of his time– preaching the best of the tradition, of what was already there, and trying to draw the people back to faithfulness, and what they already knew.  Not trying to start something new.

 

But in times of crisis, people polarize pretty quickly.  It was one thing to offer critique and questions during a relatively safe period in Jewish history– it’s another thing to do it during a period when Rome has wiped out Jerusalem, and sent the survivors into exile.  And so eventually, what starts off as a reform movement within faithful Judaism, ended up as a different religion altogether.  And the past two thousand years have been marred by some pretty excruciating history between the two.

 

So the gospel reading stands as a stark reminder of that history.  It was Written by a community that was at war with itself and being attacked all the time by Rome, and that frustration, the hurt and betrayal seeps into the text.  We’re getting that part of Matthew where it’s the clearest.  There is name calling!  There are insults. And standing at this end of the past two thousand years, it’s hard not to cringe, a bit.

 

But, like I said, let it be a reminder.  A reminder of the choice that any sort of reformation poses.  The choice that was there, two thousand years ago, and the choices we have again today.

 

Because whenever anything, is faced with questions, with protests about what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it, whenever anyone  is faced with those challenges on the door, we have to make a choice. Either open our arms to it, take it in and work through it in some way, or close it out, ignore it, and shut down.  That’s the choice.

 

The reason my old professor called the Protestant Reformation the “Great Mistake” was not that he was in favor of the pope, or in favor of selling church offices.

 

He lamented that the Roman Catholic Church split.  He was upset that the pope couldn’t listen to Luther’s critique until well after it was too late, and instead, punished him for challenging the church’s authority.  And in the ensuing years, the rift between Catholic and Protestant spread to include hundreds, if not thousands of offshoot little Protestant denominations, all because no one could sit down and talk through their problems in church.

 

That was the mistake.  The church couldn’t listen.  It made the wrong choice.

 

And like the frustration we see in the gospel, it helped fuel bitterness and conflict for generations.

 

Even though it can feel threatening at times, reform comes from love.  It comes from loyalty.  No one wants to fix something they don’t care about.  And so our choice, in our day, cannot be one of fear. We can’t be so self- protective, so crouched over in a corner that we miss where the Spirit is trying to lead us.

 

Because God, somewhat shockingly, does not give up on God’s people.  The same God who sent the prophets, and came down personally, still hasn’t given up on us, despite our continued attempts to be stubborn and sad.  God sends us reformers, and breathes the Spirit through our stale world, again and again.

 

The least we can do is listen.

 

Amen.

***  This would not include us.  ‘Protestant’ indicates a church that actually went and protested the Roman Catholic church, or some aspect thereof.  We, on the other hand, basically wandered away, in the dead of night, first in a huff, then slower and slower.  Finally, we sulked in our corner of England, when we realized that the pope had not chased after us, armies in tow, to win us back, in the manner of a romantic comedy ending.  It was traumatic for many.

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One of these mornings, you’re going to rise up singing

Posted on November 1, 2011 by megancastellan
 I’ve been following with interest the various church-based reactions to the #OWS movement around the world.
      St. Paul’s Cathedral, London has been a weird, ongoing train wreck of a reaction.  From the outside, it looks like they thought the protest would go away soon, so they didn’t try to engage systematically.  They just sort of tolerated the protesters’  presence, until they didn’t anymore.
        It’s difficult to tell what caused the problem–tourists were getting upset?  (and see, that just makes everyone look bad–the cathedral charges tourists, and that’s a source of income.  So let’s hope it’s not that, shall we?)
     So then St. Paul’s decried the protest as a ‘health and safety hazard.’ And closed.  And asked them to leave.
     At which point, one of the canons of St. Paul’s said he would quit if the protesters were made to leave.  At which point, in jump the media.  And then the dean of St. Paul’s said he would resign, and the church would reopen, and no one had to leave, and didn’t everyone just feel dumb now, what with the quitting and stuff?  And also, the Bishop of London was getting involved, and now they were announcing a special task force!  For ethics and financial systems!  Because we should talk about these things, yes, but in y’know, organized ways, in rooms with proper tea, and biscuits and whatnot.  This task force was to be spearheaded by the Church of England and wouldn’t that please make the protesters happy, and couldn’t they please, maybe, go home now?
Unsurprisingly, they were less than impressed.
Today, news broke that after the dean resigned, the Chapter (vestry of a cathedral) met, and decided to immediately drop legal action against the protesters, and essentially slink quietly away, looking foolish.
This whole thing has been playing out in the media on both sides of the ocean for the past week or so,  and Episcopal Cafe has done a bang-up job of covering it here.
I’d also direct you to what has been going on in NYC and our homegrown Episcopal communities.  Trinity, Wall Street (aka: The Church that Owns Wall Street, in a Fairly Literal Manner) released a statement at the beginning of the Occupy movement.  It is here.  Since then….no drama.  No standoffs.  Members of their staff have participated in the protests, have held Eucharists for the marchers. Other NYC area Episcopal churches have done likewise.  Similar scenes have played out in Boston, Philadelphia,  other cities.
It strikes me that this difference of reaction mirrors, in large part, the divide in the church.
     On the one hand, we have the old traditions, and the institutional memory of being In Charge.  We represented the bastions of our civilization, that Is Not to Be Questioned.  We were content in the knowledge that we were in charge, we had the power, and we got to call the shots.  We got to decide who shared power with us, how decisions were made, and how discussions were held (in comfortable rooms, with tea, sherry and cookies, thank you very much.)  We got to decide who was in those rooms, and even what was allowed to be on the table for discussion.  The buck stopped with us.  And who was anyone else coming in from the outside to question our benevolence and our wisdom?  Seriously, how dare they?  (These people shall get no sherry.)
     On the other hand, we have been slowly coming to the realization that the power we had has left us, in many ways. We aren’t the numerical majority any more, we don’t  attempt to select the leaders of countries (unless you’re Pat Robertson, in which case, I have a LOT more to say to you).
So what we preach rings hollow unless it is backed up with action.  No one will listen to us unless we live out what we preach, individually and corporately.  And we can’t get away with preaching a Christ who ‘came to set the captives free, to preach good news to the poor’ while we try to hold on to our own power and wealth, and protect it at the expense of others.  People, generally, don’t buy that.
The good news is, however, that this frees us up to do amazing things.  Trinity gets to open their doors in an authentic way to be a meeting space for conversations about what an ethical economy.  They get to be a prophetic voice without worrying so much about what part of their entrenched support they will be losing.  If you let someone else uphold the status quo for a while, you get to do a lot more heavy lifting in ministry.
The status quo upholding gets really boring after a while.

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Block of a Writer

Posted on October 26, 2011 by megancastellan

Occasionally, I suffer writer’s block.  I do not enjoy this.

Since preaching is one of my favorite things***, every time this happens, it freaks me out.  I start having nightmares wherein I show up at church, and forget my sermon, or I discover my sermon has turned to gibberish, or WORSE YET, the congregation stands up, and starts walking away, en masse, like a herd of marauding cattle while I am frantically trying to preach at them, and I must chase after them.

Preaching anxiety dreams are the worst.

But no matter how anxious I get, staring at that foreboding blank screen, something always comes out, sooner or later, once I get over myself.

In my experience, writer’s block around sermons usually has to do with an inner fear about saying something that I’m afraid to say.  It’s about fear, that most original of failings.

What do others do about this?

The preachers I admire most have been those who, even at cost to themselves, remained true to themselves and what they knew of God and Christ in the pulpit.  It’s easy to name drop the people who did this, from a safe distance of history–Martin Luther King, Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, William Sloan Coffin, Archbp. Romero, and sort of gloss the fact that 3/4 of those guys were martyred.  (Also….they’re all guys.  Sigh.)  And really, it’s one thing to make one grand sermon, go off and do your thing.  It’s another to get up week after week, and, in the midst of a relationship with a congregation, continue to dare to bear witness to the Spirit moving in new and unexpected ways.  I daresay that one is more difficult.

***Other favorite things:  dark chocolate with sea salt, new shoes, ranting.

ANYWAY!  Enough of my philosophical ramblings.  Here’s what I ended up preaching.

 

October 23, 2011

Ordinary Time, Proper 25

Matthew 22:34-46

In high school, when I graduated, I gave each of my group of friends

a list of “Megan’s Rules of Life.”. These were not especially profound;

mainly they were one liner jokes that we had compiled amongst ourselves

over the years. Quotes we thought were funny, odd warnings off of

packaging that didn’t make sense, things like that. I had entirely forgotten

that I had done this, when about a year into seminary, a high school friend

that I had lost touch with, sent me a Facebook message telling me she had

found her copy, and laughed for about half an hour.

I can’t explain what drove the 17year old me to do this, except that high

school makes sense to very few people, and probably it was an attempt to

break down this confounding world into little, understandable, and

controllable parts. Don’t use Silly Putty as ear plugs! Do not use a hair

dryer while asleep!

This is generally what rules do. They build a structure in the world, something to hang onto.  Which is why they are loved by toddlers.

What sort of structure that turns out to be– whether stifling or enabling,

depends on the rules, and the spirit in which they are observed.

Object lesson: observe Jesus. We’ve finally come to the end of this

long argument between Jesus and the Pharisees, temple authorities and

scribes. They’ve argued about authority, they’ve argued about Jewish

Torah, the law, they’ve argued about the line of obedience to the Roman

emperor and God. And now, for the biggie: which of the law is the

greatest? In other words, summarize the whole law, Jesus, in 10 words or

less. Of all the 613 laws in Torah that count, pick the most important.

This actually was a hotly contested topic in the Jewish writing of the

day. Any rabbi worth his salt had an opinion. It would be like asking

someone who followed basketball who their picks for March Madness were.

Arguments went on for days, and records of what they said can be

googled, if you are interested.

What Jesus says is fairly mainstream. Love God! This is a popular

commandment, and no doubt. But he does something unexpected, and

that is add another commandment without pausing. When asked to pick

the one great commandment, he picks two. Love God and love your

neighbor.

He doesn’t exactly follow the directions, but it’s instructive. For

Jesus, the two are intertwined. To love God is to love your neighbor, to

love your neighbor is to properly love God. You cannot do one without the

other.

Just look at Leviticus. Look at Deuteronomy. Generally, these are

thought to be books unfit for stirring reading, and many of us avoid them at

all costs. But  listen to Leviticus. God says “you shall be holy as I am holy. I am the Lord.

You will not hate, you will not slander, because I am the Lord.”

In other words, your job, as the chosen people is to act as God acts.

God is kind to the poor and the widow and the orphan and the alien in your

midst? God upholds righteousness and justice? Therefore you will do

those things, as well. Your every action is a reflection on God.

The Israelites were keenly aware that they were living as a minority

population among powerful people who didn’t worship their God– they got

invaded and conquered about once every two weeks. Judah is worse than

Belgium in this respect.

And as a minority, they understood the law as a way to show the rest of the

world the character of the God they knew. God was just: so would they be:

the law would teach them how. God was pure: so they would be: and they

would have ways to make sure of that. God was loving, and they would

make sure of that too.

And for us, the same principle holds true. Jesus tells us, love God, love

your neighbor. Now, as Christians, we are not being invaded by anyone.

No matter what they tell you on the local news, no one is attacking us.

More people self identify as Christians in this country than with any other

religious group.

But we still have work to do. The reign of God has not yet arrived. I merely

point you to the world did not end on Friday for one. And also, I point out

that when the average person walking down the street in Flagstaff thinks of

Christian– chances are, they don’t think of unconditional love of neighbor,

or service, or even Jesus. Chances are they think of Westboro baptist

church, televangelists making millions scaring people, or whatever Harold Camping, the  Rapture preacher just said.

We have some work to do. Not to get everyone to come to our church,

though, hey, I wouldn’t mind, but because none of those things I just listed

have anything to do with what you or I know to be actually true of Christ.

And more importantly, we cannot expect people to believe us, when we talk

about a God of love when people kill in the name of that God. We cannot

expect people to believe in a God of justice when his name is invoked to

perpetrate injustice, and we cannot expect people to believe in a God of

compassion when his name is invoked in the cause of hate. People are not

that dumb, when it comes down to it.

And so the charge for you and I it turns out, is to live every day like our faith

in a loving God makes sense. We who have a relationship with Christ, that

gets us out of bed in the morning, that animates our lives, the only way to

convincingly share this with a world steeped in brokenness is to live out

what we know of God in Christ: love, justice, healing, welcome. So that

the world may see in our actions small glimmers of a divine love.

Because if the world is going to believe in anything, let it believe in what we

show it, let it believe in the reality of a God who loves it, of a God who

came to dwell with it, in the possibility of a creation redeemed that it sees in

us. If the world can believe in anything, let it believe in what it sees in us.

Amen.

 

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Have a Carrot.

Posted on October 11, 2011 by megancastellan

This week, in the morning, I was back in Holbrook.  They fed me chocolate cake and coffee, and told me stories about when their kids were younger, and lived in town, and went to church.  Now, they’ve all moved to Phoenix.  One is apparently dating a Cardinal!

In the afternoon, I did an “emergency animal blessing,” which is to say that I filled in at my friend’s church, since she had to fly back to the East Coast suddenly.  I was glad to do it–Animal blessings are common around St. Francis Day, in liturgically-minded churches,  and they are one of the perks of the priest-job.  Stand around outside on a pretty autumn day and pet dogs, cats, etc in the name of their Creator?  Yes, please.  And as this particular church has a healthy sense of fun about it, they had also provided ‘doggie snacks’ and animal games, complete with ‘doggie musical chairs.’  (God likes and endorses party games, including bowling, clearly.) Fun was had by everyone.

Clearly, I have an awesome job.

As a side note:  this parable from Matthew about drove me spare.  I appreciate this run of RESPECT MY AUTHORITY!!! parables we’ve been having between Jesus and the authorities in the Temple in their broader context, but come on, now.  Matthew’s supercessionist tendencies get old really quick, and short of taking a homiletic time out to disavow this, it’s difficult to deal with, week after week.

And here’s what I did end up saying.

October 9, 2011

Proper 23

Matthew 22:1-14

In the days since the death of Steve Jobs, there’s been a revival of

heaven jokes, heaven cartoons. And among them my favorite: A man dies,

and he goes to heaven. St. Peter says to him, “Hooray! We’re thrilled

you’re here, welcome to heaven, your eternal abode, let me show you

around so you can choose where you’d like to live.”

They first come to an elaborate banquet hall, filled with delicious

smells, and fine china, as cheerful people chatted happily and ate their fill.

“What’s this?” asked the man. “oh these are the Episcopalians,” said St.

Peter, “mind your manners, but they throw a good dinner party.”

Next they came to a raucous dance party. Even from a distance, they

could hear the music and the sound of people dancing and clapping.

“What on earth?!” asked the man. “Oh, these are the Baptists. They’re

happy they get to dance now. Takes a while for the thrill to wear off.”

Finally, the man had seen everyone there was to see, all the

inhabitants of heaven, everyone you could think of– all joyful and

celebrating.

Then, off to one side, the man was surprised to notice a stone

house, all boarded up, with a wall around it, and a large sign that said

“Quiet! Keep Out! “. He wandered up to it. “Who lives here?” he asked.

“Shhhh!” said St. Peter. “that’s Jerry Falwell’s house. It’s been in there for

years. He thinks he’s the only one up here.”

It’s a funny story. Funnier, certainly, than the parable for today. This is the

third parable about the kingdom of heaven from Matthew that we’ve gotten

in as many weeks, each with some sort of twist, each preached by Jesus

as he’s in the Temple during the last eel of his life. Now, granted, parables

are supposed to be surprising. As one New Testament scholar put it, a

parable is a story that is drawn from normal, everyday events that shocks

you just enough to make you think.

Which is fine, but this one shocks you all over the place. First there’s

this king who wants to give a wedding banquet. But no one will come;

everyone blows him off for various reasons, so he gets so angry that he

invades the local town, kills the population and burns it to the ground.

A slight overreaction, perhaps.

Still desperate for this party, he then decides to do a sort of all out dragnet

operation, and sends his army to the streets of the capital and collects

everyone they can find– young, old, rich, poor, whoever, and force them to

come. Because come hell or high water, this king is having a party, gosh

darn it.

This being accomplished, the poor king is then most distressed to

discover that one of his forced guests has shown up without a proper outfit

on. It’s like the guy doesn’t even realize he’s at a party. So frustrated by

this is the king that he throws him out.

Who, after all, shows up to a party and doesn’t realize they are at

one?

And what sort of king is that desperate to throw a party?

Parables, like I said, are meant to shock. That’s how they work.

Frustratingly, they aren’t meant to answer questions– they are meant to

provoke them, which is probably why Jesus was so very fond of them.

And they aren’t literal. Which is to say that Jesus wasn’t recounting the tale

of an actual king with anger management and party-planning issues, or

giving advice on how to plan events, or rule an actual city-state.

He was trying to communicate something true about the nature of God, and

the nature of humans, and the nature of our relationship to God.

So, then, in this parable, what is striking is a king who really, really wants to

celebrate. To give good things to whoever he can, wherever he can find

them. He’ll drag them in off the street if necessary.

And a people who can’t seem to receive them.

Shhh. He thinks he’s the only one here.

What keeps us from receiving the grace of God? What keeps us from

showing up, ready for the party? What keeps us from realizing we’re at

God’s party?

Frequently, we blame it on stubbornness, pride, or arrogance. This mainly

happens when we are looking at other people, though. Other people are

the ones who should just get over themselves!

I have a hunch, though, that more often, what holds us back is not pride–

it’s guilt and confusion. It’s our conviction that we aren’t possibly good

enough to receive anything this gracious from God. Why should God be

kind to us? We are hopeless cases! We mess up, even when we know

right from wrong! This is so far from what we deserve– surely there’s a

catch. Surely there’s another shoe that will fall right on top of our heads.

Because that’s the way the world works.

So we end up like the man at the feast, confused and speechless before a

God who just wants to love us.

The good news for us is that God doesn’t give up. God chases after us,

time and time again, despite everything we do, and despite our persistent

denial of our own worth. Over and over again, God assures us that we are

loved beyond imagining, and there is not a thing we can do about it.

Whether we feel we are up to it or not, we are stuck in the unending love of

God.

Its like that old children’s book called the Runaway Bunny. In it, a baby

rabbit tells his mother that he is tired of being a rabbit, so he’s going to run

away. He tells her he will become a fish in the stream, so she replies that

she will become a fisherman to catch him. Annoyed, he says he will

become a trapeze artist in the circus, and she returns that she will be a

tightrope walker, and catch him. On and on it goes– he’ll be a sailboat, and

she’ll be the wind to blow him home, etc. Finally he gives up. Well, I guess

I’ll just be your little bunny, then, he says. Ok, she says. Have a carrot.

God’s love and grace aren’t going anywhere, and eventually, they will win

even over our stubborn guilt and unworthiness. So let’s open our eyes,

open our doors, and enjoy the banquet prepared for us.

Amen.

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