16th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 20A

16th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 20A September 20, 2020 When I was a baby priest, just a few years into my ordained ministry, when I would get in a bind, I would call my mentor, the now retired Canon to the Ordinary, and ask him for advice. This man, who has known me since I was three years old, would never tell me what to do, but he would give me helpful insight or perspective into my situation that allowed me to develop more as a priest and a person and to figure out a solution to the problem myself. I remember vividly one such conversation, about conflict in my parish of the time, when my mentor told me a lesson he learned from Bowen Family Systems Theory. He talked about how a leader needs to think of the church or system like a big ball in a hotel ballroom. The leader is called to be on the dance floor dancing with all the people and also, at the same time, standing on the balcony looking down from above to see a bigger picture. Since that phone call, I’ve done a little more investigating into family systems theory (and plan to pursue it as my continuing ed for this year in a virtual format), and I’ve learned that some of the teachings that come out of this analogy also illustrate key teachings about self-differentiation. This includes the ability to observe one’s self, recognizing that the only way we can improve relationships is to begin reflecting on our own behavior and to work to change that. It means understanding that the only thing we have power to change is ourselves. And it also helps us remember, when we get caught up in the dance on the dance floor, that there is always a bigger perspective, a bigger pattern to the dance, that we may need to climb up to the balcony out of the fray to observe. Our readings for today show us ways in which participants in the story have become myopic, nearsighted, aware only of their own needs, and the readings show us how God is inviting them to join with God in seeing the bigger perspective and participating in it. The book of Jonah is one of my favorite books of the bible. If you haven’t ever sat down and read it or haven’t encountered it since you were a child in Sunday School, you should really sit down and read it. It’s really short, only 4 few chapters, and it’s really funny. The story is this. God tells Jonah he needs to go to Ninevah to tell the people there to repent. But Jonah doesn’t want to go to Ninevah, so he gets on a boat and makes a run for it in the opposite direction of Ninevah. The Lord hurls a great storm upon the sea where Jonah’s ship is, and the sailors are afraid and tell Jonah to pray to his God. The sailors cast lots, and the lot falls on Jonah, so they demand to know from him why this is happening. Jonah tells the sailors that they should pick him up and throw him overboard and the storm will stop, so they do, and it does. And then God sends a giant fish to come and swallow Jonah up. Jonah prays to God for deliverance for three days and nights from the belly of the fish, and God makes the fish spit Jonah out on dry land. Then God tells Jonah again to go to Ninevah and call them to repent, and this time, Jonah does it. Jonah’s call to repentance is so effective that word gets to the king, and he decrees that all Ninevites are to put on sackcloth and ashes and to repent, and that even the animals are to wear the sackcloth to show how repentant all the Ninevites are so that God may change God’s mind and not smite them all. That’s when our reading for today picks up. Jonah has done exactly what God has told him to do, but get this. This repentance on the part of Ninevah makes Jonah really, really angry. Jonah prays to God and says, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” When God relents from smiting Ninevah because they have repented, Jonah has a temper tantrum. But God does not leave Jonah alone in his near-sightedness and anger. God invites Jonah to join God in seeing the bigger picture. God asks Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry?” and then God grows a bush to shade Jonah in his temper tantrum as he sits on a hilltop waiting and watching and hoping against hope that God is still going to smite Ninevah. And God sends a worm to eat the bush so it dies, and Jonah gets even angrier. And God asks him again, “Is it right for you to be angry?” God says, As much as you care for this one bush, can’t you understand the bigger picture-how much more I care for the whole city of Ninevah, “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?” And that’s the end of the book. We don’t know what happens to Jonah, what he chooses to do in the face of God’s invitation to join God in seeing a bigger picture, in the face of God’s invitation to examine “is it really right for you to be angry?” Our gospel reading for today also gives us a glimpse, through Jesus’s parable, into some of these questions. “Is it right for you to be angry” at how I pay other workers in my vineyard when I am paying you what we agreed upon? The workers of the vineyard are invited to join the landowner in the bigger picture of what justice, equity, generosity and economy look like in the kingdom of God, and Jesus invites us to do the same. Your invitation this week is to ponder some questions. What ways might you be called to come off the dance-floor of your life and go up to the balcony to see the bigger picture-of your life, your family, this church, your school, our country, the world? Or, if you are like me, finding yourself getting angry about all sorts of different things, perhaps we can use God’s question to Jonah—"Is it right for you to be angry?” to help us gain more self-awareness, self-control, and to participate in life on a bigger picture.

15th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 19A

15th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 19A September 13, 2020 This week, a friend of mine asked a question. She said she had been thinking about forgiveness, especially in light of this week’s gospel reading, and she couldn’t help but wonder what to do with anger? Is it possible to forgive someone and still be angry? Or do you have to give up the one to do the other? And if we do have to give up anger to forgive, how on earth do we do that? Let’s look for a minute at the context for today’s gospel reading. Our reading for today is nestled within some other passages in Matthew that might inform how we read this difficult parable. This chapter of Matthew’s gospel starts with the disciples arguing about greatness. Jesus teaches them that greatness can be found only through humility, and then he warns them about causing “a little one” to sin. Next he tells them the parable of the shepherd who has 99 sheep and leaves them to go find the one lost sheep. Immediately following that, we have last week’s reading which is Jesus’s teaching about how to deal with conflict in the church, which is immediately followed by this week’s passage-where Peter asks Jesus how often he must forgive someone who offends him, Jesus answers with a ridiculously large number and then tells the parable for today. In this parable, a slave begs the king to forgive his very large debt, and when the king does forgive this debt, the slave leaves and goes and demands payment for a much smaller debt from a fellow slave. The debt-forgiven slave has the other slave thrown into prison, and the parable tells us that the other slaves are greatly distressed when they see this, so they go report it to the king. The king calls up the forgiven slave and says to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?” Jesus concludes the parable by saying, “And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’” Here are my takeaways from this parable. First, we cannot maintain both anger and forgiveness. They are mutually exclusive. At first, it looked like the king had forgiven the first slave, but then at the end of the parable, we see the king’s anger, which must have been so close under the surface, as he revokes his forgiveness and hands the slave over to be tortured until he can pay his full debt that the king had just forgiven. Second, this parable holds up an unflattering mirror before us in that it shows that we are much quicker to beg forgiveness for ourselves than to offer it to our fellows. And finally, the key to forgiveness in this parable, the antidote to our anger when we have been wronged, is named in one simple, and almost archaic word: mercy. One of my colleagues told me about a previous boss she had in the church who would not let her use the word mercy as a response when she would write the Prayers of the People; he would never let her use the response, “Lord, have mercy.” When she finally asked him why, he responded, “Because people don’t understand mercy.” And in some ways, it’s true. We don’t understand mercy. And isn’t that really the point of Jesus’s whole parable today? Mercy is such a foreign concept to us, especially these days. What does it even mean to act mercifully, to ask for mercy from one another? How can we live more mercifully 6 months into a global pandemic, when we are all tired and just want things to “go back to normal”? What would it look like to employ mercy in our common life, in our public life? How might we even begin to go about demanding it? I think the first step in this is that we as people of faith have to recognize the mercy that has already been shown to us by God. That is the first step in discharging our own anger about perceived wrongs or injustices that have been done to us. We must confess our own faults and failings and then wholeheartedly receive the assurance of God’s pardon, God’s forgiveness, God’s mercy. There is a quote from Bryan Stephenson’s book Just Mercy that we read a couple of years ago that speaks to this. Stephenson writes, “There is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can't otherwise see; you hear things you can't otherwise hear.”i

Today, before we take communion, we are going to pray a litany of forgiveness, where we name our own brokenness, commending to God those ways that we have failed God and each other and also commending to God those who have hurt us. We will receive the assurance of God’s pardon, and then we will taste God’s mercy as we share communion, receiving the mercy of God that is incarnate and embodied in our Lord Jesus Christ into our very bodies, hearts, and souls. As we do this, Bernadette is going to play one of my favorite hymns “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy” and I’ll invite you to reflect on the ways you have tasted God’s mercy in your own life. The words for the hymn are set to a tune that rolls like the gentle waves of the ocean, and they are “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea; there’s a kindness in his justice, which is more than liberty. There is welcome for the sinner, and more graces for the good; there is mercy with the Savior; there is healing in his blood. There is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt than up in heaven; there is no place where earth’s failings have such kindly judgement given. There is plentiful redemption in the blood that has been shed; there is joy for all the members in the sorrows of the Head. For the love of God is broader than the measure of the mind; and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind. If our love were but more faithful, we should take him at his word; and our life would be thanksgiving for the goodness of the Lord.”ii This week, your invitation is to spend some time floating in the wide sea of God’s mercy for yourself and for those around you. Begin to look for ways that you might be called to act mercifully to others. Begin to think about what it would look like to employ mercy in our common life, in our public life, and how might we begin to go about demanding it? i. Stephenson. Bryan. Just Mercy. 2014. ii. Hymnal 1982. 469. Words: Frederick William Faber. Music: St. Helena, Calvin Hampton.

14th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 18A

14th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 18A September 6, 2020 Last summer, you might recall that I took a one-week intensive course on conflict meditation training at the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center near Chicago. Our trainer, a man named Richard Blackburn, started the training with us by talking about conflict in the bible. If you think about it, the bible is full of diversity and conflict. And I remember Richard saying that conflict (in the bible and elsewhere) is often an opportunity to learn something new about God. Richard Blackburn also spent a fair amount of time with us on our gospel passage for today—Jesus’s own prescription for conflict mediation and resolution in the church. Richard told us that this particular passage of scripture reminds us that “1. God intends for us to live in peace…[and] Peacemaking starts with our sisters and brothers. 2. Conflict is inevitable and normal. 3. [Jesus makes it clear that] the question is not if we have conflict but how we respond to it. 4. Direct communication is better than triangling. 5. [It is important during times of conflict] to draw on the gifts of others. 6. Conflict between individuals concerns the whole church. And 7. God is present for the purpose of helping people resolve their differences.” Healing and reconciliation are gifts that come from God. i At one point in the course, Richard also recommended that every church should create a covenant based on Matthew 18:15-20 that all church members would agree to be in relationship and handle conflict in these specific ways that Jesus outlines. While all this is a very positive, life-giving way to look at conflict in community, I read a commentary this week that invites us to look at what Jesus is saying not to do in this passage in how to deal with conflict that I also found enlightening, because much of what Jesus is telling us not to do in this passage is how we normally try to handle conflict in our lives, our families, the church. This commentary writes, “As we enter the doorway of this passage, it’s helpful to bear in mind the classic, counterproductive, even death-dealing ways we’re often tempted to engage in conflict. First, we’re tempted to avoid it. Second, we’re tempted to gossip: to tell other people about the person or behavior that’s offended us, rather than to address our concerns directly to the person or people involved. Third, we’re tempted to gang up on each other, to recruit like-minded people to our side and create echo chambers of grievance. Fourth, we’re tempted to air our grievance only in such echo-chambers, or in front of overwhelmingly friendly audiences where accountability is minimal. And fifth, we’re tempted to regard our opponents as if they are unwelcome or better off elsewhere, outside our community entirely. In this week’s reading, Jesus takes on these five temptations, one at a time.”ii Let’s look at these wrong ways to deal with conflict in light of what Jesus is saying in the gospel passage. 1. “Against avoidance: Right out of the gates, Jesus is clear that in cases of significant offense, avoidance and evasion aren’t good options; go directly to source of the issue, he says, and share your concerns.” 2. “Against gossip: If you feel offended or critical, Jesus insists, begin not by telling someone else, but rather by directly communicating with the person (or people) by whom you’ve been offended - and do so, if possible, one-on-one, “when the two of you are alone” (Matthew 18:15). This respectfully allows the person to clear up any misunderstanding, or to apologize and make amends - and all the while, to save face. This approach implicitly says: I respect you enough to give you space to rectify this, without embarrassing you in front of others; and I’m humble enough to recognize that I may have misunderstood something, or may have something to learn. And it wisely avoids the ‘triangulation’ so corrosive to human communities.” 3. “Against ganging up in an echo chamber of grievance: only after this first step has proven impossible or ineffective, Jesus says, should a second step be taken - though here again, direct communication is the strategy, not echo-chamber-meetings held in secret, apart from the alleged offender. Go directly to him or her, not with a gang of five or ten, but with ‘one or two’ as witnesses (Matthew 18:16). This communicates the same respect and humility of the “one-on-one” approach, while at the same time adding the wisdom and experience one or two others might provide. In some situations, a third-party perspective can help two parties in conflict find common ground and a way forward.” 4. “Against airing grievances only with friendly audiences: If steps one and two don’t prove fruitful and the issue persists, Jesus says, step three is to share your grievance with the whole community (Matthew 18:17). Not the part of the community that will likely agree with you, or the part that will likely agree with the person who’s offended you; but the whole community (or, by the same principle, a cross-section thereof, like a church council)--including the person who’s offended you! This keeps you accountable, since with diverse listeners, you’ll be less likely to exaggerate, omit key details, or deny either how you’ve contributed to the problem or how you can help rectify it. And likewise… the alleged offender will be similarly accountable. This step…can act as a kind of “sunlight” strategy: things can fester and multiply in the dark, and in certain cases, letting sunlight in can help - and keep all of us on our best behavior.” 5) Against excommunication: Wait a minute - doesn’t Jesus actually agree with excluding an unrepentant offender from the community, saying, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matthew 18:17)? On the one hand, yes: unabashed offenders who insist on destructive or dysfunctional behavior should, in the end, be given a clear message: “stop this behavior, or step away from the community.” The church is a mission, after all, and the mission needs to be carried out. But on the other hand, Jesus qualifies this recommendation: by preceding and following this teaching with two parables of mercy and inclusion (the latter of which, on forgiveness, we’ll read next week); by clearly positioning exclusion as a last resort, to be taken only after three other intentional, constructive steps; and [by the way that Jesus, himself, treats Gentiles and tax collectors]. In surprising, graceful ways, these supposed outsiders are ultimately included in both Jesus’ mission and the beloved community.”iii This week, I offer us all the invitation to think about a time when you learned something new about God during conflict. Think about and look for ways you might be called to put these ideas from Matthew 18 into practice—in the life of your family, in the life of this church, or in the life of our greater society/community. i.Mediation Skills Training Institute Manual. Sponsored by Lombard Mennonite Peace Center . 2016. p A-9 Some of this was also reconstructed from personal notes that I took in the class. ii.https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2020/8/30/life-together-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-fourteenth-week-after-pentecost iii.Ibid.