Not Fair

Pentecost 15A, 9/21/14

Jonah 3:10-4:11; Psalm 145:1-8; Matthew 20:1-16

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

There’s one thing that most of us know about Jonah. Anyone?

Right, he was swallowed by a whale, or technically, a “big fish.”

         We forget sometimes how he ended up in that situation in the first place.

God told Jonah to go to the biggest, most immoral city in the area, and tell the people there to repent, or they would be destroyed.

Like any rational person, Jonah is intimidated by this prospect, and so he tries to run away from God. He gets on a ship, but they haven’t gone far before they get caught in a terrible storm. The only way to keep from capsizing is to throw Jonah overboard. So, Jonah gets tossed into the sea, and God sends the fish to swallow up Jonah and keep him safe until he gets spit out onto the shore.

We can debate how “safe” Jonah might have actually felt in the smelly belly of a giant fish…

Anyway, the fish spits the prophet of God out on the shore, and Jonah does finally go to Nineveh. He gives them a half-hearted order to repent or God will destroy them, and then he figures his work is done.

But then God does something unexpected.

God shows mercy to the people of Nineveh.

God chooses not to destroy the city after all, because once they heard Jonah’s warning, they repented and tried to live better lives.

And Jonah is ticked off!

“Seriously, God?” Jonah says. “This is why I didn’t want to go on this fool’s errand in the first place! If you’re going to send me somewhere to warn people of their impending destruction… well, I expect you to destroy them!

But no.

You have to be all merciful and compassionate, like you always are, and you don’t punish the city full of sinful people like you said you would.

If you weren’t going to follow through on your threat, God, why did you send me there in the first place?!”

And God says,

Why are you mad, Jonah?

Have I done anything to hurt you?

Or are you envious because I am generous?

OK, actually, that last quote is from the Gospel reading today.

But the two stories are making the same point.

They’re teaching us about the nature of God.

And the nature of God is, God is not fair.

God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

We sang that description in the Psalm today.

If you were here last week, we sang the description then, too.

It shows up all over the Bible.

We certainly don’t know everything about God, but we do know that God is gracious and merciful. We do know that God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. We can be sure at least of those few things.

And because that is who God is, we can also be sure that God isn’t fair.

God does not always give people what they deserve.

Thank God, right?

Imagine if God was so fair that every time you stretched the truth a bit, you were punished for lying. Or if you had to answer for every time you’ve ever used God’s name in vain. Or when you work on the Sabbath, fire rains down from heaven upon you.

Thank God for grace, for compassion and mercy – for the ability to mess up occasionally and ignore God’s laws a few times before God really gets serious about punishing us.

Because we all make mistakes, don’t we? And it’s wonderful to know that we won’t be held accountable for every tiny error we’ve ever made in our lives. God is willing to forgive us, just like God forgave the people of Nineveh.

The first thing we can learn from Jonah and the Psalm and the Gospel lesson today is a little bit about who God is – God isn’t fair, but God is merciful and gracious.

Today’s Bible readings bring up another point, also.

We tend to judge God’s fairness – or lack thereof – based on the way we are treated in comparison to others.

But that’s not an accurate judge. God doesn’t want us to compare ourselves to each other. God doesn’t bless us in comparison to others – we only receive blessings according to our own needs.

So the question that today’s stories raise is, “You have enough. Why are you not satisfied?”

It’s not our place to compare our lives to other people’s.

We’ll never measure up, there will always be something more that we want.

When we use other people as our gauge for what life should be, we will never be satisfied. We’ll be jealous of something they have – and for what?

God doesn’t want us to waste our energy that way.

We gain nothing by comparing ourselves to others.

In fact, it’s a waste of our God-given talents to spend all our time wishing for things that other people have.

One post that I read this past week summarized the Gospel lesson this way: the only reason you should ever look into your neighbor’s bowl is to see whether they have enough.

If your neighbor has enough, how wonderful for both of you! Life is good. Even if what your neighbor has is more than what you have, that is still a reason to rejoice – it means that you both have what you need to get through this life.

If your neighbor doesn’t have enough, then you have an opportunity to share out of your own blessings.

That’s basically what’s going on in the Jonah story today, and in the parable from the Gospel of Matthew.

Jonah has enough, God has provided everything he needs.

The workers in the vineyard have a day’s pay for a day’s labor – they have what they have earned.

And yet these people complain to God about the unfairness of the world.

And God’s answer is, those other people’s lives are none of your business.

I have given you all that you need, God says.

I am gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

So what are you complaining about?

It’s human nature to behave like those laborers in the parable, or like Jonah after God fails to destroy Nineveh.

But that doesn’t mean it’s how God wants us to respond.

Are we envious because God is generous?

Or can we find a better path?

The gracious, merciful, God-like response to our neighbors being blessed, is to rejoice with them in their blessing.

Don’t compare ourselves to others with measurements that don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Simply find ways to recognize God’s blessing, in the life of other people even when you can’t find it in our own life, and give thanks for the generosity of God.

Amen.

Keeping Score

Pentecost 14A, 9/14/14
Matthew 18:21-35; Romans 14:10-12; Psalm 103:1-13

Gracious and compassionate God, give us your slowness of anger and your abundance of love in our relationships with one another. Amen.

If we were to hold a vote for “the one thing I wish Jesus had never said,” this passage would certainly be in the running for top place.

The God we know and love and worship and pray to is the God of Psalm 103, who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

The God of Christianity is a God of grace and forgiveness, or so we have been led to believe.

But the God in Jesus’ parable today is one who does deal with us according to our sins, who does repay us according to our iniquities.

Like the king in the parable, Jesus says, God will hold us accountable for every debt, and maybe even torture us until we can pay, unless we forgive our sister or brother from our heart.

Yikes. That sounds an awful lot like God’s forgiveness is based on our own action.

And I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been taught that God’s forgiveness comes through grace, as a gift, that there’s nothing I can do to earn it and also nothing that I can do to invalidate it.

Does that sound familiar to you?

But this parable seems to suggest that if I don’t forgive other people, God will not forgive me when I mess up.

And that’s a scary thought.

It’s hard for us to reflect on the God who judges people, especially when there’s a chance that God’s judgment will be directed at us.

How can the God of judgment be the same as the God of compassion?
How is the God represented by the king in this parable also the God who the Psalmist describes as slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love?

God’s judgment is a difficult topic to discuss, so we’ll keep that topic on the back burner for now.

Let’s move first to the condition that God puts on forgiveness – the condition that makes it sound like God’s grace is conditional.

According to Jesus in Matthew 18, God requires us to forgive our sister or brother from the heart, if we want to be forgiven.

But what is it that we are supposed to forgive, anyway?

A few months ago I got an email from a friend of mine, asking if we were OK. She thought that she had offended me.

I had no idea what she was talking about. Finally I realized that she had disagreed with something I posted online a few days earlier, and she thought that I might still be upset about it.

I assured her that we were fine.

But that interaction brings up a good point.

If we don’t recognize when we’ve been wronged, hurt, insulted, or sinned against in some way, we won’t ever be able to forgive our sister or brother from the heart.

Right? We have to acknowledge that a wrong has been done before we can say, “Don’t worry about it, I’m over it, it doesn’t matter any more.”

So let’s do a little exercise here. The ushers are going to pass out cards to everyone. There should be pencils in the pews in front of you, but the ushers have a few extra if you need them.

This project is going to be confidential, so no peeking at someone else’s paper. It won’t work unless people feel like they can write without being watched.

Does everyone have a card?

What I want you to do is write out every wrong that has been done to you so far this weekend.

Really. That’s the first step towards forgiveness – having something to forgive. It can be big or small – maybe you got into a fight with your sibling or your spouse. Maybe a friend stood you up for coffee yesterday or the neighbor neglected (again) to pick up the present his dog left in your yard. Maybe someone cut you off while you were drying into church this morning. 

If you can’t think of a way that someone sinned against you this weekend, you can go back a couple more days, and think of some of the ways you were wronged last week. I’m guessing that you won’t have to go further back than that to remember something that rubbed you the wrong way.

Some of us will have more to write than others. That’s OK.

Once everyone is finished writing, the ushers are going to hand out seven more cards, and I want you to take them home with you. At the end of each day, you need to write down every action that someone made against you during the day. It’s important to keep track of everything so that you know what to forgive!

And then next week, when you come back for worship, you’ll get a whole new set of cards to last you through the next week.

Oh, and did I mention that every single card that you write, you have to carry around with you, on your person, for the rest of your life?

OK, obviously those last things are exaggerations to prove my point. I don’t really want you to write down every sin that anyone ever commits against you.

But imagine what it would be like if you did.

Imagine what kind of lists you’d accumulate. How heavy the stack of cards would get after a few months.

Imagine how painful it would be every time you looked back at any of the previous cards.

And as we all know, the more we do something, the better we tend to get at it. So if you actually did take stock of all the sins that people had made against you every single day, you’d get pretty good at it. Your list would probably get longer and more detailed each day, and take more time to write, and consume more of your energy.

It would be torture.

Isn’t that what it’s like when we don’t forgive others?

Jesus says that God will torture us unless we forgive our brother or sister from our heart.

The question is, does God actually torture us? Or do we bring that torture on ourselves?

Keeping records of debts owed to us by other people can be exhausting. Trying to remember every wrong that has ever been done to us is virtually impossible.

        

Letting go of that scorecard, on the other hand, can be liberating.

That’s actually why I wanted you to write something on those cards this morning. Not so that you would know what it feels like to account for every sin ever made against you, but so that you would know what it feels like to let them go.

That’s the literal meaning of the word for “forgiveness,” by the way. The Greek word, aphiemi, means “to let go” or “to send away.”

Forgiveness is a way of taking a weight off your shoulders, of lightening the load, of un-burdening yourself of something that you’ve been carrying around, that’s getting in the way of you living life to the fullest.

So let’s let go of our scorecards.

Let’s forgive all those wrongs that other people have done to us.

One of the ushers is going to walk down the aisle again, this time with a box. Please put your card into the box. I don’t expect you to pass it off to your neighbor – you don’t want them to read it – but you should be able to reach over to the aisle to put your card in.

No one else is going to read these cards, I promise. They are all going to be shredded by someone I know, who’s not a member of this church, and who has promised to shred them without reading anything.

So go ahead, let go of those sins that people have made against you.

Until they can get shredded though – until our resentment can get completely destroyed – let’s make do with giving it to God. The box will sit on the altar once everyone has put their cards in.

And hopefully, this box can be a symbol for us of what it really means to forgive.

By getting rid of our scorecards, and by bringing them to the altar, we are offering up our complaints to God and also relinquishing any ownership of those complaints. God can deal with them from here on out. They don’t matter to us any more – we have let them go.

Forgiving our sister or brother from the heart means letting go of any wrong that they’ve done to us – not necessarily forgetting about it altogether, but finding a way to keep that previous negative action from interfering with any future positive interactions.

It’s like First Corinthians 13 says – love keeps no records of wrongs.

Or similarly, in today’s reading from Romans, Paul makes it clear that God can judge, but we shouldn’t.

We might not understand God’s judgment, but that’s not our job. Our only job is to withhold judgment from our brothers and sisters. We can be in charge of our own actions, and we can be accountable for our actions to God and God alone. We can toss those scorecards away from us and move forward assuming the best of one another.

Our job is not to pass judgment on one another, but to leave that work to God.

God is the judge.

We might not understand God's judgment, but we can at least understand that God is the one who has authority, and we don't.

Today’s parable sounds kind of harsh, especially when we get to the application part of it. But basically Jesus is saying what he says over and over again to his disciples.

You guys just don’t get it!

You’re asking the wrong questions.

You want to know how many times to forgive someone, Jesus says to Peter? Well I’ll tell you. If you count how many times you forgive someone, you’re doing it wrong.

Instead, just forgive. Always. And if punishment needs to happen, let God take care of it. Don’t let your judgment of other people color your relationship with them.

Let go of your anger and your bitterness. If you hold on to that, it will eat you up inside.

Let God take care of those ugly emotions. You? All you have to do is forgive. Let go. Move on with your life.

Treat others with the compassion that God shows to you.

And when you do so, you’ll be more fully able to understand the gift of forgiveness that God has already given to you.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Communicate

Pentecost 13A, 9/7/14
Matthew 18:15-20; Romans 13:8-14

Teach us, O Lord, the way of your statutes, give us your understanding, lead us in the path of your commandments, and in your righteousness give us life. Amen. 

Love is the fulfilling of the law.

Owe no one anything except to love one another.

You know that song, I love you just the way you are…

That’s a wonderful description of human love – of the kind of love that we are supposed to have for one another.

God’s love for us is different from that.

God loves us just as we were created to be.

That means that, when we stray from who we were created to be – when we make mistakes, or take wrong turns, or focus on the wrong priorities, God will come in and correct us.

“That’s not who I made you to be,” God says to us. “You’re better than that.”

You know what I’m talking about. We’ve got a lot of faithful people in the room today, and I know that many of you have felt the guidance of God as you make decisions in your lives… and some of you have probably felt the correction of God when you’ve made a mistake.

Jesus does this to people a lot.

“You’re making some pretty big mistakes,” Jesus says sometimes, “but I know you are better than this. So do better. Try to be the best you can possibly be, and then you’ll be getting close to the person who God created in God’s own image.”

Think of all the times when Jesus corrects his disciples, for example.

The disciples argue about who is the greatest, and Jesus rebukes them.

They fear death in the storm at sea – remember? the storm that Jesus sleeps through. They complain about expensive oil being wasted when the woman pours it on his feet. They fall asleep while Jesus is praying in the garden.

He chastises them each of these times and tries to show them a better way. O you of little faith! Why couldn’t you just believe in God’s love?

The disciples try over and over again throughout the Gospels to convince Jesus that the Messiah doesn’t actually need to suffer and die, like he says he will, and Jesus rebukes them every time.

Our very salvation is based on the fact that Jesus was able to rebuke – to correct – his closest friends and followers when they were wrong, and when they were trying to dissuade him from being the savior he came to earth to be.

Our church is also based on the fact that Jesus guides us and comes to correct us when we need correcting.

Out of love, Jesus shows his disciples a better way.

That’s what the Gospel reading is about today – a better way for us to live together as a church.

Let’s start at the end of the reading.

Jesus affirms that the church is the place where God is present.

Wherever two or three are gathered, Christ will be there.

If the Christian community agrees on anything, God will support that decision.

This is the real presence of Christ.

Different churches disagree pretty strongly about the real presence of Christ.

Real presence is a really church-nerd phrase, that usually refers to Communion. Is Christ really present in the bread and wine? Do the bread and wine actually become flesh and blood? What happens to Christ’s presence when the meal is concluded?

Denominations have been formed and have split over the different ways to answer these questions.

Today’s Gospel gives us a definitive answer regarding the real presence of Christ – not in Communion, but in our world.

God is truly present in the gathering of the Christian community.

That’s what the word “church” means in Greek, you know.

Ekklesia, which we translate “church” was a common word long before the church existed – it was a word meaning “assembly,” a gathering of people.

Our church    is a sacred gathering    in which God promises to be present.

And that is why Jesus starts off in “rebuking” mode today.

If someone in the sacred assembly sins against you – he could just as well say “when” someone sins against you, since that’s the nature of any community, right? People are bound to offend one another eventually – so, when you are hurt by someone else in this sacred assembly, go talk to them about it!

Don’t do what you’ve been doing, Jesus says.

Don’t go talk about this person behind their back. Don’t start spreading rumors. Don’t cut them off from all future communications based on one mistake. Don’t assume the worst of them.

Go talk to them about it. It’s entirely possible that your differences can be worked out very simply in just one face-to-face conversation.

Maybe they’ve been regretting their words or actions, and will be happy for the chance to apologize. Maybe you misunderstood what they said and you’ll realize the offense was just a misunderstanding. Maybe they had no idea that what they were doing could be interpreted in a negative way and will feel sorry once you tell them.

And if not? If you don’t get an apology, or some clarification, or something life-giving in your one-on-one conversation? Go see the person again, and bring someone else with you. A third party can help offer some perspective, and mediation if it’s needed.

Engaging just one more member of the sacred community can be a way of protecting the existence of the entire community, protecting the church from the fallout of your personal conflict.

When someone else sins against you – when you feel offended – when you think you’re being mistreated – these are the steps you’ve got to take first.

Because the ekklesia, the sacred community, is so important    that it’s not worth putting at risk through unhealthy means of conflict resolution – or the lack thereof.

That’s really what Jesus’ instructions today are all about, the importance of living together in community.

The community – this community! – is where God chooses to live.

Where two or three are gathered, God is present with them.

So when one of those two or three sins against another, it is critical that the situation be handled well, with maturity, with clear communication, and with grace, so that the place where God lives will remain safe.

What’s at stake if you don’t follow Jesus’ instructions?

Nothing less than the tearing apart of God’s house, shattering the image of God and creating a place in which God can no longer dwell.

Those are high stakes.

God is with the church community, and God honors the decisions made by the church community. Any time we do something to pull that community apart, we’re playing tug-of-war with God.

So don’t do it! Don’t engage in gossip, don’t hold grudges, and don’t be afraid to speak directly with another sister or brother in Christ.

Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in quarreling and jealousy.

Owe no one anything except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

Love each other… just the way they are.

You know, everyone loves the Jesus who welcomes the children and heals the lepers and feeds five thousand people miraculously.

But remember… that same Jesus also scolds his disciples, he corrects them when they make mistakes, and he tries to show them how to become the people they were made to be – how to grow closer to the image of the God in whom they were created.

As Jesus’ disciples, we have to accept both sides of the equation.

We don’t get the feeding of the 5000 without Jesus calling Peter “Satan.”

We don’t get the Resurrection without the rebuke at the Garden of Gethsemane.

Our church communities are sacred ground, which is precisely why conflict needs to be addressed and precisely why divisive sisters or brothers cannot be allowed to tear God’s people apart.

How we relate to one another in Christian community is of great concern to God.

 (Eric Barreto, WorkingPreacher.org, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2164)

Churches are places where God is present! That’s the good news from today’s Gospel reading! But that good news comes with great responsibility.

Because churches are places where God is present, we cannot allow disagreements and dissent, quarreling and jealousy, to tear God to pieces.

Instead, we must work hard to find the image of God in other people, to speak with them directly, to search for resolutions for our conflicts.

We know that conflicts will arise. That’s just what happens when people live together in community.

But our response to those conflicts must be based in love for one another.

Those of you who are married – when you have an argument, do you complain about your spouse to your father or your sister or your child? Of course not!

Or you might, but eventually you’d need to talk to your spouse directly.

Your marriage is never going to last unless you love the other person enough to address your conflicts directly, to admit when you’re wrong, and to work hard to make things right.

It is the same in the church. Our very existence as a community depends on our ability to resolve conflict.

If we agree to disagree with one another – then we have agreed on something, and God will bless that agreement!

Our goal as a sacred community must always be reconciliation – or if not reconciliation, at least compassion for one another.

That’s what today’s rebuke from Jesus reminds us.

If both parties seek reconciliation and compassion – if we agree to put our own self-interests aside for the sake of the community – if we honestly believe that we have the potential to reach the image of God in which we were created – if all those things are true, then we have agreed on something, even in the midst of conflict.

And God will bless that agreement.

Today’s Gospel lesson isn’t about how to expel people from the church community, though sometimes folks interpret it this way.

Removing someone from the church community is the last possible option, when all other options have been exhausted and they refuse to listen to the other members of the sacred community.

         No, today’s Gospel lesson is about inclusion and reconciliation.

It is about how to be good disciples. It’s about how to live well with one another. It’s about grace and forgiveness and love.

And that’s what the Christian community is all about, also.

Following Jesus means loving the God who came to earth as a baby, who welcomed the outcast and who gave sight to the blind – and following Jesus also means listening to his instructions even when they’re hard to hear.

So let us love one another. And prioritize the community. And seek to speak directly to one another when conflicts arise.

God help us become the image of God that we were created to be.

Amen.