Sermon: Extreme Stewardship?

First Presbyterian Church

October 15, 2023 (Stewardship)

Proverbs 11:23-28; Matthew 19:16-26

 

Extreme Stewardship?

 

 

This handful of verses from the book of Proverbs, clustered together as it is, provides an interesting look into how so many people assume "morality" or "goodness" or "blessing" works; good people get good things, and bad people...don't. 

Honestly, it must feel nice to be able to believe such things. 

We live in a world that proves, over and over again, that such things simply aren't true. Some of the richest people in the world are also some of the worst people in the world. Meanwhile, too many hard-working and gentle people end up in homeless shelters. (I've never served a meal at a homeless shelter that didn't ask us to set aside at least one, usually two or three, meals for folks who hadn't yet gotten off from their job, or one of their two jobs.)

To be honest, though, the issue isn't to say that "all rich people are evil" or something like that, but it becomes necessary to point out that greater concentrations of wealth do damage, not only to those who end up poor because of it, but also to those with whom that wealth is concentrated. 

In his collection Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary, the novelist and Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner says of today's reading from Matthew's gospel that "Jesus says that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Maybe the reason is not that the rich are so wicked they're kept out of the place, but that they're so out of touch with reality they can't see it's a place worth getting into." It is perhaps for a similar reason that the oft-quoted and oft-misquoted 1 Timothy 6:10 says not that "money is the root of all evil," but that "the love of moneyis a root of all kinds of evil."

Perhaps most telling is a statement from Jesus in Matthew 6:21; "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Or, to put it in a modern vernacular rendering, "What we own, owns us." This seems to be the best way to understand Jesus's questioner in this reading; we are told that after Jesus's final answer to his persistent questions, "he went away sad, because he had great wealth." 

Here's the thing: most of us do not have "great wealth," by the standards of the Jeff Bezoses and Elon Musks and Warren Buffetts of the world. This does not, however, mean we are free from the potential peril that "what we own, owns us." Sometimes that peril becomes greatest for poorer people, even if they are able to come out of poverty. It is a potential hazard for anyone with possessions of any sort. It's the kind of trap that requires us, in dealing with wealth or possessions, to observe an instruction that Jesus gave the disciples earlier in this gospel (10:16): we have to be "wise as serpents" even while we are called to be "innocent as doves."

Now it's worth noticing of today's reading that this is not a commonplace event in the life of Jesus. This same story, with slight variations, is also told in Mark 10:17-31 and Luke 18:18-30. The instruction that Jesus gives here is not repeated again. It's not a commonplace event that Jesus tells someone to give everything away; it's a one-off, only issued in the face of this one rich man who, even as he says he has kept all the commandments, sees and knows himself to be lacking something, despite his great wealth. 

For us, this instruction doesn't necessarily compel us to give it all away; if anything, the stories of too many unscrupulous televangelists wheedling widows out of their last dime is not an example this church or this pastor wants to follow. Nonetheless, we are challenged here. What are we holding on to that we don't need to hold on to? What of our finances or possessions are we at risk of being owned by? Or what really does own us? This may even be a question that the church, as a whole, needs to ask itself as well, but that starts with members asking the question of themselves.

Here's what it comes down to: if we really believe we are God's own, if we truly even want to be one of God's people, what we do with our possessions, perhaps especially how we provide for and support the church - the "body of Christ" in the world, after all - is going to reflect that. Providing for the work of the church is a necessary part of any member's own stewardship. 

Not that this is the only worthy church, or that there aren't other church-based or charitable organizations worthy of support, but the church - again, this particular unit of the body of Christ - is a needful starting place, one that is particularly needed as a voice and witness in this community. Even if we haven't figured out what it is yet, we have something to offer this community that no other church does. But we can't do that without the support of the people who make up this church. 

It's as simple as that. And if we allow ourselves to be owned by our possessions, we won't be able to live up to that.

Tune in for part two next week.

For the call to be good stewards of our possessions and the church, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #708, We Give Thee but Thine Own; #712, As Those Of Old Their Firstfruits Brought; #697, Take My Life

How some modern folk might respond to that one line...

Sermon: The World at God's Table

First Presbyterian Church

October 1, 2023, World Communion

Isaiah 25:6-9; Revelation 7:9-17

 

The World at God's Table

 

 

It doesn't take much to remind ourselves that, whatever of God's promises we might seek out or read about or remember, or whatever vision of future glory we subscribe to, we don't live in that world yet. Clearly this is not a world that is unified in its devotion to God. Your average front page of a newspaper (whether in print or online) can usually make that clear pretty quickly.

What we might do well to remember sometimes is that the same is true of the world in which these scriptures were first written and disseminated. The Israel in which Isaiah wrote was a land at various times under siege or carried off into exile by one empire or another, and frankly beset by the inept or crooked leadership of one king after another. As to the time of the writing of the book of Revelation, most likely some time near the end of the first century, the Roman Empire held sway. As if that wasn't enough, the far-flung but still emerging body of followers of Christ was having to face the reality that there would be no home in the Judaism in which many had been born or raised before coming to follow the way of Christ. Even those who had held out the longest could no longer deny that the two, no matter what common roots they may have had, were simply separate faiths at this point. 

That point is simply that texts like those we have heard today sounded as farfetched and fantastical to their first readers and hearers as they do to us today, perhaps even more so. Remember from last week's reading from the book of Jonah, how ragingly angry Jonah was at the repentence of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria? If you take Isaiah's prophetic writing at its word, that this "feast of rich food" that the Lord prepares is to be "for all peoples," then you have to assume that the people of Assyria (and Nineveh) are included among "all peoples." And to put it bluntly, there were plenty of other menacing empires that had harmed Israel, either through attack or exile, or who threatened to harm Israel, that the idea of a feast "for all peoples" might well have sounded more like threat than promise to Isaiah's hearers and readers. 

It's also worth noting the nature of this feast. The wines are not only well-aged but "strained clear" - wine-making in this period often produced wines, particularly of the less-expensive variety, that were cloudy or needed to have some excess matter strained away to be palatable. And while describing food as "rich" nowadays might suggest health risk more than anything, the opposite was closer to the truth in this time, with a "rich" meat not lacking in texture and quality and frankly edibility, which was too often the case with the meats that most could obtain. 

The remainder of this brief passage describes how the Lord takes away those barriers that have kept the peoples of the earth at one another's throats. The "shroud that is cast over all peoples," the shroud of violence and death, is lifted away; the tears of the peoples are dried; the disgraces that weigh down all peoples (for indeed all people are "his people") are wiped away. None of these can stand in the presence of the Lord presiding over the feast.

Our second reading also takes us away to a time yet to be, in the seemingly fantastical writings of the writer who goes by the name of John, recording a series of visions each seemingly more "out there" than the previous one. In this case, though, this particular vision is an interruption; in chapter 6 six "seals" have been broken and great terrors set loose in the land, but before the seventh seal is broken we get a glimpse of large numbers of those who have in some way remained faithful despite the tribulations visited upon them. First to be presented is a vision of thousands out of the twelve tribes of Israel. Then, however, a much greater multitude appears, "a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language," standing before God. They are described in verses 14-16 as "those who have come out of the great tribulation"; they serve before the Lord's throne day and night, and "never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst," and the Lord will "lead them to springs of living water."

In short, no matter which testament you prefer, you get a vision of a great gathered multitude, one in which all of the peoples of the earth are represented. Whether they are put before a "feast of rich food" or being led to "springs of living water," this great multitude is being provided nourishment and even more, well beyond sustenance, by the one Lord.

This is the ultimate vision of the people of God, one way or another. When one compares that vision to the current state of the church, it's not hard to see that we have some ways to go to live into that vision of multitudes from all the peoples of the earth.

Except, not really, but yes, sort of. The church is truly spread across the nations, with all peoples or really darn close to it found in its number among the countries and tribes and languages of the earth. It can be difficult to tell that in visiting any one particular congregation of the church at worship time, when the old saw about the church at worship being one of the most segregated entities around still holds too close to true. 

In some ways the whole point of a World Communion Sunday such as we celebrate today is to remind ourselves that God's table is not only found in the United States nor alone in any other nation. That Sunday morning separation, willful or otherwise, cannot obscure the truth that God truly gathers followers and disciples from all the peoples of the earth. Some of the practices of those peoples might look wildly different from even the church next door, but God is gathering. What remains for us, really, is in some ways to get out of God's way and see all nations as part of the people of God. Even more, though, we are called to join, to serve together, to make welcome and hospitality for all those peoples God gathers in.

For the great multitude, from all the peoples of the earth, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #311, Here, O Lord, Your Servants Gather; #695, Change My Heart, O God; #292, As the Wind Song

Sermon: Unfair!

First Presbyterian Church

September 24, 2023, Pentecost 16A

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

 

Unfair!

 

 

On the surface, it might seem odd to put these two scriptural accounts together. Obviously, the makers of the Revised Common Lectionary felt otherwise, but you can be forgiven if you don't see what these two stories have in common, Jonah's final great sulk and a story of day laborers hired to work a vineyard. To see what makes these two stories complement one another, we might need to adjust our perspective; who are the important characters in each story, and why do they do the things they do?

We come to the book of Jonah after the famous part. The "great fish" has already done its work, gathering up Jonah after his attempt to run from God's call and depositing him in such a place that Nineveh, the city Jonah was trying to avoid, was about the only place he could go. Jonah gave up fleeing and made the pronouncement God had commanded. We are not told how much energy or effort he put into that announcement, but whatever he did it took effect in a way very few prophetic warnings ever have. The king himself took up the public role of chief mourner and commanded that all of Nineveh join in repenting. Our reading begins with God's response, in the last verse of chapter 3: "God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it."

At this Jonah "loses it." Maybe part of his anger was at losing his record as a prophet - what he proclaimed did not come to pass. Nineveh was not overthrown after forty days. It also seems likely that Jonah was upset precisely because his prophetic proclamation, so to speak, "worked." Nineveh and its king repented, and God relented. 

And this, it seemed, was what made Jonah angry. This is probably hard to stomach for most of us, wishing for that kind of destruction on anybody. I suspect, though, if you asked a citizen of Ukraine right now if they'd want to see Moscow destroyed, at least some would say "yes." We need to remember that this wasn't a random, unprovoked reaction; Nineveh and the kingdom of Assyria over which it ruled had wreaked havoc over Israel and Judah (and a lot of other nations) multiple times, with horrific levels of violence and destruction. Jonah's anger may have been over-the-top, but it wasn't without foundation.

Nonetheless Jonah has no answers for God, so he goes off and sulks like most people who know they've lost an argument, perhaps waiting to see if anyone in Nineveh might screw up and God might overthrow the city after all. God "appointed" a bush (what an interesting word choice, "appointed") that brought shade for Jonah, which gave him at least some pleasure. But then God "appointed" (that word again) a worm to kill the bush, and Jonah wilted as the hot, dry wind began to blow. For the umpteenth time he ordered God to let him die. That's when God settled the argument for good. Jonah could get all upset over a bush he had done nothing to grow or nourish, but God was not allowed to care about "Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?"

At first, it's hard to see what this story has to do with the parable from Matthew. A vineyard owner keeps going back to the marketplace and calling forth more day workers to go out into the field and work for him for the day. That's okay, as far as it goes, but when day's end came and the owner paid the latecomers the same wage as those who started at first light, things get testy. 

The answers given by the vineyard owner don't necessarily look great, do they? "You got what you agreed to." Well, yes, but one of the workers might note that doesn't answer their complaint. "Take your wages and go; it's my choice how to pay." Also true, but it's not going to silence many cries of "unfair!" "You're telling me I can't do what I choose with what's mine?" And finally, the kicker: "Or are you envious because I am generous?"

We need to take note of that last answer. "Envious" is not an uncommon translation for the word used here, but it's not very literal. What is recorded here is an idiom. A literal translation of that question would be "Are your eyes evil because I am jealous? If nothing else, that will hopefully give us pause before we dismiss envy as some kind of lesser transgression. It is one of the seven deadly sins, after all.

Back to the story: our tendency is to latch on to those first laborers as the "main characters" in the story, much as we tend to assume that, well, Jonah is the main character in the book of Jonah. Doing that, though, probably hinders us from seeing what God - the real "main character" in most anything from the Bible - is doing. God moves heaven and earth (and even the sea) to get a prophet to Nineveh to warn that city into repentance, and then hears their repentance and relents from destroying it. Clear enough, I suppose.

But to get a grip on the vineyard parable, let's try a different perspective. Instead of the first group sent into the field, take a look at those left waiting; some finally get sent out to work at about 9:00 a.m. (adapted for our daily patterns), another batch at noon, still more at about 3:00 p.m., and finally one more group, somehow overlooked all day, gets sent with maybe an hour left.

From not getting any work for the day, these laborers go to getting "the usual daily wage." Some translations might use the word denarius here, but perhaps it's useful to take that out of the equation and get to the core of the matter. While this is still a subject of some discussion in biblical scholarship, one of the more strongly held positions is that "the usual daily wage" would typically enough to feed a family for three or four days. That doesn't necessarily sound like much to our ears, but it's not nothing, and being able to feed your family for a few days can be a major blessing if there's no work to be found the next day. 

The point of the story is the generosity of the vineyard owner (and let's just acknowledge that this is probably the answer to the perennial parable question "where is God in this story?"). This is where God is revealed; this is what the kingdom of heaven is like; as God was unwilling to give up even the people of Nineveh to destruction in the Jonah story, so God (in the person of the vineyard owner) is unwilling to give up any of the laborers to go without. 

God's economy is not our economy, nor will it ever be limited by our economy. Our standards are (whether we admit it or not) all about bringing is those who are deserving, or have some special merit, or something that (in our eyes) sets them above others. God, on the other hand, wants everybody. 

God doesn't care how late they come to the work. God doesn't care how horrifying they have been, as long as repentance is real and followed through upon with God. God brings in all, no matter what we say. 

This is an interesting thing to ponder in a time when churches of many different kinds are struggling to stay afloat, having declined precipitously from the pinnacles of size, wealth, and influence they knew many decades ago. At that point a church could get away with being quite selective about who they would welcome in - not that anyone would be turned away, mind you, but there's a difference between letting folks come to worship services and welcoming them into the church. Nowadays, you have to wonder if some of those churches can remember how to be welcoming to "all" of those whom God seeks, even when their institutional lives might well depend on it. 

Maybe it should be called The Parable of the Generous Vineyard Owner? It is at the last a story of a God who seeks to draw in and save and redeem and justify all of us, even those who seemingly get passed over again and again. Really, the only thing for us to do is get on board with God.

For a generous God, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #31, Let Us With a Gladsome Mind; #435, There's a Wideness in God's Mercy; #36, For the Fruit of All Creation

Sermon: Who Are These People?

First Presbyterian Church

September 10, 2023, Pentecost 15A

Romans 16:1-16

 

Who Are These People?

 

 

I don’t know how it was for you, but when I was growing up we children were given “illustrated” Bibles – that is, Bibles with pictures in them. Usually the pictures were reserved for the “big stories” – Noah and the ark, the Exodus, maybe Jonah, maybe a prophet being all fiery. In the New Testament you’d get something from the birth of Jesus, one or more of the miracles like the feeding five thousand or walking on water, the crucifixion and the resurrection. In Acts, you might get something for Pentecost. As I remember it, though, the pictures tended to become a lot less prolific after that. 

There are obvious reasons for that, of course. The remaining books in the New Testament don’t necessarily suggest obvious pictures. For example, would you really want to illustrate anything we've read from Romans these last weeks?

Anyway, as best as I remember them, all the stories were illustrated with bunches and bunches of … dudes. Men. Obviously, there were some exceptions – you can’t do a Nativity picture without Mary, for sure – but between ancient armies and twelve disciples and crowds of Pharisees, there were a lot of guys in those picture Bibles.

Here’s the thing; I was pretty impressionable at that age, and when the denomination in which I was raised was not (and still is not) friendly towards women in leadership roles except for children’s Sunday school classes, it was pretty easy for me to come away from those pictures with the distinct if subconscious impression that church was “men’s work.” The pastor and all the deacons and even the music director were men. The girls didn’t get to preach on Youth Sunday, even. Men’s work.

Clearly, Romans 16 wasn’t a text that informed such decisions.

As has been noted earlier in this series, Paul had not yet been to Rome when he wrote this letter, but that didn’t mean he was unfamiliar with the church or churches there, and these greetings (typical of all of Paul’s letters) are much longer and more elaborate than usual, both to extend genuine greetings to his friends and comrades among the Roman Christians and to make clear to the others reading or hearing the letter that he knew more than they thought. 

The first name in this extensive list, though, is not one of the Roman Christians; rather, Phoebe was one of Paul’s fellow laborers in the faith, and probably the one who was delivering and reading the letter to the Romans personally. Paul also calls Phoebe (who is mentioned nowhere else in scripture) by two distinct Greek nouns: διακονος(diakonos) and προστασις (prostasis). The former is indeed the root of the modern English word deacon, as it is translated in the New Revised Standard Version.[i] The term διακονος represents an official title or office in the early church, unlike other possible translations such as “minister” or “servant,” although those are valid translations in some contexts. At any rate the term denotes leadership by service. The term prostasis also connotes a leadership role, in this case one involving patronage and official representation. For example, if a member of the community at Cenchreae were called to appear before the local court or government, Phoebe could appear as that person’s representative or advocate.

Now those whom Paul greets among the Romans are also an interesting mix. The only ones we know appear elsewhere in the scriptures are the first ones mentioned, Prisca and Aquila, Paul’s fellow evangelists. They first appear in Acts 18 (Prisca is called “Priscilla” there), as among those who minister both to Paul and to Apollos, an eloquent and passionate, but ill-educated, young evangelist who becomes their student, learning the Way of the Lord more accurately from them. Greetings go out to Prisca and Aqulia in 2 Timothy, and they are with Paul extending greetings in 1 Corinthians. Paul indicates that he even owes his life to them, and that’s not a metaphor in this case.

Another interesting greeting goes to Andronicus and Junia, whom Paul calls “prominent among the apostles” and “in Christ before I was.” At minimum this suggests that these two (possibly husband and wife like Prisca and Aquila) had been converts before Paul, and possibly eyewitnesses to the resurrected Christ. The title “apostle” also denoted a form of authority as well. These two, like Paul, were apparently traveling evangelists or what we might call “church planters” today, and had apparently been in prison with Paul at least once.

Later in the list, three women are singled out by Paul as “those workers in the Lord”: Tryphaena, Trypohsa, and Persis, who Paul says “worked hard in the Lord.” While no specific title is applied to those women, their work has been enough to be singled out by Paul along with the work of Urbanus, “our co-worker in Christ,” although it is possible from their position in the list that Paul is not as well acquainted with them as with those named earlier.

One other interesting name is that of Rufus. Back in Mark 15:21 we are introduced to Simon of Cyrene, the man compelled by Roman soldiers to carry the cross of Jesus when Jesus had collapsed. For reasons known only to Mark, the gospel identifies Simon as “the father of Alexander and Rufus.” While it is impossible to know if the son of Simon is the same Rufus greeted by Paul, there is some logic to the possibility, not least that both Mark and Paul feel compelled to single him out: Mark as an identifier (if his readers didn’t know Simon’s name they’d know his son’s), and Paul as one “chosen in the Lord.”

One more note on names, some of which suggest a particular role in life for their bearers. The names Ampliatus (which means “ample”), Narcissus (a name taken from mythology), the aforementioned Tryphaena (“dainty”), Trypohsa (“luscious”), and Persis, and possibly Hermes and Hermas (more names from mythology) were all common names for persons enslaved in the Roman Empire. This does not mean that all of them were actually held in slavery at the time Paul writes, but it is quite possible – even likely – that some or all of these persons were either enslaved, formerly enslaved who had been granted or able to buy their freedom, or children of persons enslaved or formerly enslaved (whether freed somehow or even born free). 

I don’t know how I’d have reacted, with those illustrated-Bible pictures in my head, had someone taught me this chapter in my childhood. The deacon/minister Phoebe, the evangelist Prisca, and the apostle Junia would have caused much cognitive dissonance in my young mind up against the pictures presented to me every Sunday in church. Over the centuries some have experienced that cognitive dissonance, to the point that some translators over the centuries have tried to take away Phoebe’s office, calling her only “servant,” or to suggest that “Junia” must really have been a male, “Junias,” because obviously a woman can’t be an apostle – even though in all the records of that era, the name “Junias” does not, technically, exist.[ii] The degree to which Paul made no accounting for class – enslaved or formerly enslaved persons jostling right up next to the wealthy or even nobility wouldn’t have fit very well into my brain either.

And yet this is the church. 

Where all are called to use their gifts to the glory of God, no matter their gender or class or anything else, where there is “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free,” this is the church. This is the body of Christ, and everyone members of it.

What probably looked like a strange and motley crew to the Romans around such a church was something glorious for Paul to see, and indeed a collection of followers of Christ with much to teach us even if we know almost nothing about them. Let’s face it, folks: without women to serve as elders we’d have a severely difficult time comprising a session around here, just to name one example. 

And yet even today there are churches and pastors out there today that would utterly dis-fellowship that Roman church if they came upon it today for all the ways they violate "what scripture says" about the church. This would be pretty ironic, since if we take scripture seriously Romans 16 is what scripture says about the church, or at least part of it.

The church at Rome is kinda all over the place, and yet the body of Christ. Maybe that sounds or looks familiar to us, or maybe it doesn't. Anyway, like the church at Rome that Paul so commends, our job is to welcome those who seek, no matter how different from us they may be, and to do the work of the church, no matter what anybody else has to say about it.

For our mothers (and fathers) in the faith, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #299, Ye Servants of God, Your Master Proclaim; #510, We Gather Here in Jesus' Name; #300, We Are One in the Spirit

 

---

[i] Some of the pew versions of the NIV in the sanctuary use "servant" instead of "deacon," while newer ones use "deacon". 

[ii] As earlier, some of the pew NIV Bibles refer to "Junias" while newer ones refer to "Junia."

Sermon: Food Fight?

First Presbyterian Church

September 3, 2023, Pentecost 14A

Romans 14:1-12

 

Food Fight?

 

 

I'm going to begin today by introducing you to one of our cats, Felicity. She is one of the cats that came into our household seven years ago, after the death of one of the members of the church of my previous call. None of their children could take them in, and well, we’re suckers for cute kitties. So Felicity and her sister Phoebe came to our place, doubling the cat population at the time.

It turned out that Felicity was, and I’m trying to be gentle about this, two things: terrified, and crazy.

She was terrified of basically everything. She hid under beds, she hid under blankets, she hid under books (or between them as in the second picture), she hid under her sister (and this was before they were even introduced to the cats already in the household). If anyone (besides her sister) got near her she turned, if not quite vicious, definitely hostile. When Mickey and Pluto came into the picture things only got worse, with Pluto in particular becoming the focal point for a lot of hostility. It was enough to have us wondering if we'd be able to keep all four cats after all. She was, so to speak, the weak link.

At one point the two got into such a fight that one of Felicity’s claws was damaged, and she had to go to the vet for treatment. When she returned home, she had to be kept in isolation from all of the other cats and given a litterbox with shredded paper, because exposure to cat litter could have caused a much worse infection in the wound. So Felicity took up residence in our bathroom.

It was this period of isolation that allowed a non-fearful personality to show in Felicity. She hated the wound treatment Julia had to give her, but otherwise during this isolation she actually started to respond to the world around her with something other than hostility and fear. She actually accepted attention and affection at times, and even started to give it sometimes. Figuring that maybe it was better to go with it, we kept our bathroom set up for Felicity and have continued to do so since moving here. There were bumps in the road, to be sure, and she and Pluto still don’t get along, but now Felicity is a much beloved part of the fur family, no less loved than any other of the cats, and even ventures out into the hall and the living room on occasion. (Not to mention she's the one cat that will actually snuggle up next to me.)

Okay, it’s not a direct path from Felicity to today’s reading from Romans, but Paul might recognize in her (to the degree he wasn’t freaked out by us moderns keeping cats in our homes) one of the “weak” of which he speaks, within the dynamic of our home. And the point of Paul’s instruction here, or at least part of the point, is that the “weak” are called of God, chosen of God, forgiven by God, and loved of God every bit as much as the “strong” - and the strong don't need to act otherwise.

Of course, Paul doesn’t really help his case here by using words like “weak” and “strong” (and you’ll notice if you read on to verse 14 that Paul counts himself among the “strong” on this particular subject, having no problems eating meat). While it might be surprising that food is the thing that apparently trips up the Romans to whom Paul is writing, a very similar problem also prompted Paul to spill a lot of ink in his letters to the Corinthians. On the other hand, if you’ve come together for a big family meal only to discover that one of the grandkids is a newly-minted vegetarian, maybe you do understand how food can become a flashpoint.

To explain as briefly as possible, people living in Rome didn’t exactly have access to herds of cattle from which to obtain meat to eat. Therefore, one would have to go to a market to purchase some to eat.

Where that market differs from the local G & W is that in some cases, the meat offered for sale might have had an interesting history. Rome, not unlike Athens of its time, harbored quite a few shrines to numerous deities, and in some cases those shrines practiced sacrificial offerings, in which the meat had been offered on or over an open flame – in other words, roasted or broiled. Since the stone or wooden idol never was going to consume that offering literally, these shrines had an awful lot of perfectly good meat on their hands, and sometimes that meat ended up at the local market. 

This could be a problem to the discerning Christian shopper in two ways: (1) for some, the very idea of eating meat offered to an idol, i.e. a false god, was itself problematic (this particular question is what Paul addresses in his first letter to the Corinthians); and (2) meat offered in such fashion was very unlikely to be prepared according to Jewish dietary law; in other words, it wasn’t kosher. The latter seems to have been the root of the issue in Rome, whether among Jewish-born members of the churches at Rome or among Gentiles who had converted to Judaism before following Christ.

In this, the one case in this letter in which Paul seems to be addressing a very specific concern in the church communities of Rome, his answer still points to the very universal teachings that have been laced throughout the letter. For example, only God can judge; it is not our place to presume to judge those who, by our standards, are “weak” (and remember, the non-meat eaters probably considered themselves "strong" and the meat-eaters "weak"). Sin is still always lurking, seeking any entry to create discord and hatred, and quarrels over food are as good an opportunity as any. Or, our freedom is not an absolute license to do whatever, whenever, however. Our freedom in God is freedom to build up the community, not to tear down one another over food, or the color of the cloth on the communion table, or any other matter great or small. 

Or perhaps most of all, we aren’t the gatekeepers of the church. 

In his systematic theological treatise Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin stressed as one of the most central tenets of Christian faith that God, and God alone, held all rule and dominion over everything – all created things, all people, everything. From this idea Calvin extrapolated that the ultimate fate of all people rests solely in the hands of God. 

It all sounds good and theologically proper to us, but we’re not always good at following through on it. We – speaking broadly of the Church Universal – have an incredibly persistent tendency to appoint ourselves gatekeepers. They can’t be in, because they don’t believe <insert favorite doctrine here>. <My favorite Bible verse> says this, so they have to be going to Hell. No. To be more theologically precise, Hell? No. The moment we find ourselves slipping into anything like that mindset we are usurping the sovereignty of God.

And with exclusive sovereignty comes exclusive judgment. That’s how Paul wraps up this segment of his letter, reminding the Romans that judgment is the work of God and God alone. As verses 10-12 put it, 

Why do you pass judgment on your brother and sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For all will stand before the judgment seat of God.

For it is written, ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.’

So then, each of us will be accountable to God.

 

We are not in a position to judge, and that holds true for issues far beyond eating or not eating meat. 

Just as in chapter 12 Paul had reminded the Romans that vengeance was solely the province of God, here too judgment is solely the province of God. And that remains true no matter how many Bible verses you summon up by which to judge others. Let's put it bluntly: the moment you set yourself up to judge who is or is not "in," you are setting yourself outside of the body of Christ, and nobody else.

The flip side of this point is that in all cases, the meat-eaters or the vegetarians, Sunday abstainers or Sunday indulgers, the honor goes to God. Again, it’s not about a checklist – it’s not “eat this, not that.” Whatever you eat, do so honoring God. Whatever you don’t eat, do so honoring God. 

And yes, this goes well beyond meat-eating or not meat-eating. Whichever we do, we do so in the Lord. We don’t do so only to ourselves – we aren’t islands; we are in the Lord. And as the body of Christ, we are in the Lord together, whatever we eat or don’t eat. 

Leave aside the judgment and gatekeeping; live in forgiveness, live in grace, live in the Lord. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #363, Rejoice, the Lord is King; #822, When We Are Living; #268, Crown Him with Many Crowns

 

 

Yes, Felicity really was trying to hide behind my books.

A little less terrified view of Felicity.

 

Sermon: The *Other* Romans 13

First Presbyterian Church

August 27, 2023, Pentecost 13A

Romans 13:8-14

 

The Other Romans 13

 

 

I suppose it might be a surprise to some that the reading from Romans 13 given as today's Revised Common Lectionary epistle reading includes the last half of this brief chapter, but not the far more infamous first seven verses. Certain religious leaders have, over the centuries, tended to interpret those verses as a mandate that all Christians are to obey whatever government is put in authority over them, no matter what they do, and that such authority can basically do whatever they want. 

Suffice to say that myriad problems lie in that interpretation. First of all, it's not at all a given that Paul is speaking here of governmental authorities; the Greek words Paul uses suggests he is referring to military leaders, not civilian. Others suggest Paul is referring to religious authorities - leaders of the synagogue, for example, for those Jewish converts among the church's number. Even more of a problem is that nowhere in this passage does Paul speak at all about what authority the leadership in question has; the passage contains no instruction to authority figures of any kind at all.

Furthermore, those religious types who do point to Romans 13 in such a manner are sometimes awfully selective about its usage - they aren't necessarily interested in enforcing that bit in verse 6 about paying taxes, or for that matter enforcing any of this if the government in power is one they don't like. An interesting very recent example of that latter phenomenon is the case of a Pennsylvania woman who was part of the mob that attacked the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021. Her interesting (to say the least) defense was that as an ambassador of Christ, she was immune to laws. The judge, apparently not ignorant about the Bible, apparently responded by citing - you guessed it - Romans 13:1, "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities...". At least she got famous by being featured on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.[1]

In the bigger picture, though, one of the biggest problems with such an obsession with Romans 13:1-7 is that it tends to drown out the hard-hitting teaching of Romans 13:8-14. Continuing with the theme expressed so vividly in chapter 12, Paul charges his hearers with a devastatingly simple command: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” 

There it is. All of Paul’s wrangling about the law and its insufficiency to save us; about the power of sin in our lives and the needfulness of God’s grace to overcome it; about presenting ourselves as living offerings and being transformed by the renewing of our minds; and in the end, it comes down to loving one another, which of course echoes what Jesus had already said. 

Remember Jesus’s words in Matthew 22:39 Paul rolls up instruction from the Ten Commandments into the mandate to “love your neighbor as yourself,” and caps the teaching with the powerful conclusion: “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” In fact Jesus spoke something similar in the gospels of Mark 12:28-34, and in Luke 10:25-28 the same concept is quoted as well, this time by a lawyer in response to Jesus, and leads to Jesus's Parable of the Good Samaritan as an exposition on just who that neighbor might be. In other words, Paul had plenty of support for making this claim on his hearers and readers. 

It still may catch us off-guard, though, after all the earlier parts of Paul's writing to the Romans about how the law can only show us our sinfulness, or about how the law "brings death," or about how the law "brings wrath" back in 4:15, or any number of other criticisms of it in the earlier chapters of this epistle. In fact, what is happening now in this discourse is that the law's benefit can be declared and received, now that love is understood to be "in charge," so to speak. To understand that "love is the fulfillment of the law" is to understand the law's place in the life of a follower of Christ at long last. The law, rather than being an instrument of wrath for the zealous enforcer, is an illustration of "what it looks like" to live in the grace of Jesus, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, to borrow that familiar blessing from Paul's earlier letter to the church at Corinth.

The portion that follows addresses something that hasn’t come up so much in Romans so far but is a consistent part of Paul’s thought. Among many other things, Paul’s faith is apocalyptic – not in the sense of unavoidable future disaster that tends to cling to the word these days but in the sense of expecting an imminent return of Christ. It didn’t work out that way for Paul, clearly, but his point still holds true: live like it could happen any time now. Live honorably, live in light, live in Christ. And of course, to live in such a way is inextricably bound in the love Paul has extolled in these chapters of this letter.

Now here's the really challenging thing about this love. It shows up everywhere, in everything we do. It shows up in our gathering for worship like this, yes, and one would hope it shows up in the mission or outreach we do in this community as well. But it also shows up in how we, say, conduct the business of the church, right down to writing the checks and paying the bills and all those mundane things that make my eyes glaze over. It shows up in how we do session meetings or committee meetings or any such thing, amongst ourselves or out in the community. If we're really living in this love that God so loved the world with, if we're really living in the love that animates so much of what Paul is writing about in this letter, it really does affect how we do anything we do. And it should be noted that while Paul is writing to the Roman church corporately, as one location of the body of Christ, it also filters down to how any individual member of that church, or any church, would or will conduct himself or herself. We'll see an example of that in the next chapter, in next week's reading, in which Paul needs to address one particular issue and how it changes how the people of the Roman churches conduct themselves towards one another It changes everything we do. 

That love for one another is part of why we gather together like this, why we gather around this table to share bread and cup, why we give of our time and resources for those served by the CUFF meal, or those ravaged by Hurricane Hilary out in California or the Maui wildfires, facing years of recovery. It’s why we’re there for funerals and the receptions that follow, for weddings or baptisms or confirmation or the addition of new members; it’s why we don’t cut ourselves off from the community in which we live. It's even why we take special care in examining ourselves as a church and also the town in which we live, preparing ourselves as a church to seek out and call the right pastor to help us all the more live in and live out that love within the body of Christ and in the community around us. 

“Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #203, Jesu, Jesu, Fill Us With Your Love; #451, Open My Eyes, That I May See; #729, Lord, I Want to Be a Christian

 

 

 

 

---

[1] Numerous sources, cited in Christoph Heilig, The Apostle and the Empire: Paul's Implicit and Explicit Criticism of Rome (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022), 114-15.

It doesn't quite work like that, Linus...

Sermon: Love Out Loud

First Presbyterian Church

August 20, 2023, Pentecost 12A

Romans 12:9-21

 

Love Out Loud

 

What does love look like?

It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men.

This is what love looks like.

 

This quote is attributed to Saint Augustine, one of the great ancestors of the church, who lived from 354-430. If nothing else it demonstrates that for a very long time, the Christian church has understood that any claim to live in the love of Christ will of necessity be visible, made known not in words but in deeds of compassion directed both at one another in the body of Christ and to any who suffer, whether “Christian” or not. Christlike love doesn’t get to be selective.

This reading from Paul’s writing to the Romans, continuing Paul’s encouragement to his Roman readers and hearers, moves even more directly in this direction, showing to his listeners “what it looks like” to live in the love of God that redeems the human body and renews the human mind. In many ways the most similar passage to this in Paul’s output is no less than the famous “love chapter,” 1 Corinthians 13, which captures Paul at his most poetic and even ecstatic as he unfolds the beauties of love. The present passage passes over similar ground; the principal difference is that in Romans, Paul narrows his focus to how this divine love looks specifically when it is lived out in the body of Christ. 

Unfortunately, most biblical translations don’t quite capture this powerful description because of a Greek grammatical choice. Certain verb forms in Koine Greek can be ambiguous when a verb is omitted, implied rather than made explicit. The beginning of verse 9 is such an example; were you to read it in a word-for-word translation it would simply say “love without pretense.” Most translations assume an imperative verb: “Let love be genuine,” says the NRSV, while the NIV uses "Love must be sincere." However, a reading as an indicative verb – “love is without pretense” – captures in some ways what Paul is encouraging on his hearers in a way more consistent with his ongoing teaching that all of the life they live in Christ, their very redemption as living offerings and transformation by the renewing of their minds, is itself dependent on the same love of God. Like that redemption and that transformation, this “love without pretense” is itself a gift of God, “not the result of works, so that no one may boast,” to borrow from the letter to the Ephesians.

With this in mind, the series of maxims that follows becomes more clearly a description of the love of God lived out in the body of Christ, and “what it looks like.”

Before that chorus of the characteristics of love, Paul amplifies his initial statement. His language in doing so is strong: “hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good.” The word really is that strong; other possible translations include such vivid words or phrases as “abhor” or “utterly detest.” More than just “dislike” is at work here; the rejection of evil really is an active and emphatic and visceral thing, much as “holding fast” to the good implies an active and vigorous dynamic rather than merely passively “being good.” And this, Paul teaches, is characteristic of genuine, unpretentious, un-hypocritical love. 

What follows from here not only reflects Paul’s description of living in love, but also shows one of those two poles of such un-hypocritical love: hating evil and holding fast to what is good. Altogether, these maxims remind us that living in love, far from a quiet and passive private emotion, is active and vigorous, something that can only be done “out loud” - something churches struggle with both then and now.

Paul isn’t making it easy here, presumably because he knows from experience. Remember, this is a man who has seen the inside of a few prison cells in his career, and in at least a few cases it was because that prison cell was the only way to keep him from being harmed by those opponents of his mission who aimed to shut him up once and for all. He had, in short, known persecution. He had faced what any sane person would call evil, and he had faced it from his own people, because he had chosen to follow this call God had thrust upon him back on that road to Damascus.

So, alongside fairly easy instructions such as “do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord,” or “contribute to the needs of the saints, extend hospitality to strangers,” or “rejoice with those who rejoice,” there are the more challenging traits of living in the body. “Weep with those who weep” isn’t necessarily hard, but it is hard. “Live in harmony with one another” gets challenging at times. Sometimes we can get caught wanting to “claim to be wiser than you are,” even realizing we’ve already been warned against that earlier in the chapter.

But then things get really hard. There are those that prompt the accusation that the preacher has “done quit preachin’ and gone to meddlin’.”

Take this statement: “if it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.“ Sounds challenging enough as it is, but it’s still our tendency to weaken it, to reduce it to a “don’t make trouble” instruction that we can keep quietly and without anybody noticing. Trouble is, that’s not what it is to live transformed by that renewing of our minds. Like these other instructions, it’s not passive. It requires active doing. 

Maybe it’s captured best by Clarence Jordan, preacher and founder of Koinonia Farm, established as a deliberately interracial farm and community in south Georgia at peak of the Jim Crow era. Jordan’s unique contribution to biblical instruction was the “Cotton Patch Gospel,” a combination of scholarly translation of most of the New Testament with a striking re-contextualization; what if these events had happened and these letters had been written in the American South of his time? The “Cotton Patch” translation of this verse captures vividly the active sense of Paul’s instruction, perhaps because Jordan himself had experienced it vividly in his own life at Koinonia: “If it’s possible – that is, from your side – WAGE PEACE WITH ALL MANKIND.” (That last phrase, by the way, is in all caps.) 

WAGE PEACE. Not a passive, unobtrusive thing at all, living transformed by the renewing of our minds. It’s active. It gets in the way. It interferes with the established interests. It does not resign itself to the “peace” of a racially and economically stratified and walled-off nation or society. It doesn’t acquiesce to the powerful oppressing and exploiting the powerless. And that’s hard. 

And it only gets worse from here. “Bless those who persecute you”? “Do not repay anyone evil for evil”? “…never avenge yourselves”? “If your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them drink”?

And then the capper: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Seriously, God, how could you let Paul write anything so crazy as that? Here we go again with the active, “out loud” stuff. It’s one thing to talk like that in the safety and comfort of our own sanctuary; it’s quite another to do so when someone is glowering at you and brandishing a semiautomatic weapon. And yet this isn’t a passive life we’re called to live in the body of Christ; we live in this love among ourselves, yes, but we also welcome the sojourner and extend that good even to those who hate us. 

Seriously, this kind of thing makes a preacher reconsider his or her vocation.

Mind you, this set of instruction isn’t through yet; there's more in chapter 13. But mercy, it’s challenging enough just going this far. And it reminds us just how far that transformation has yet to go in each of us or in all of us. And yet this is what we are submitting to, this is the call we are accepting in our lives, if we claim to be any part of the body of Christ. 

To love actively; to be committed to Christ and to one another; to be always ready to reach out to those most in need and to defend those most persecuted; to be active in naming and calling out and utterly detesting and abhorring and hating evil, even when it rears its head right next to us, and yet to feed the hungry enemy; this is what it looks like when we truly submit ourselves as living offerings, and are transformed by the renewing of our minds instead of being conformed to the world.

And man, oh, man, is it hard. It’s hard to believe. It’s hard even to imagine. And it’s certainly hard to trust.

Nevertheless, Thanks be to God. Amen, anyway.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #14, For the Beauty of the Earth; #372, O For a World; #313, Lord, Make Us More Holy

 

 

Admittedly, it's sometimes easy to feel like Linus after reading this passage...