Sunday, September 24, 2017

Is God fair?




A Sermon preached on 24th September 2017, Pentecost XVI at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Jonah 3:10 - 4:11, Philippians 1:21 – 30, Matthew 20:1-16


The book of Jonah is a story we tend to see as a Biblical fairy tale for children, something for Sunday School. It has comic elements, first God sends Jonah one way, but Jonah runs in the other direction. It contains scenes of great drama and excitement like the storm, magical creatures like the giant fish, and even a happy ending, well except for Jonah, he is never happy it seems. But we would be making a mistake if we restricted Jonah’s tale to children. 
Jesus certainly didn’t. Both in Matthew’s (12:38–41 and 16:4) and in Luke’s Gospel (11:29–32) Jesus makes a reference to Jonah when he is asked for a sign by some of the scribes and the Pharisees. “No sign will be given (…) except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was for three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:39-40). Jesus uses Jonah's restoration after three days inside the great fish to anticipate his own resurrection. But that is not the only reference that Jesus makes to Jonah, he also recalls how the people of Nineveh repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and compares them unfavorably to his own people who neither acknowledge their need for repentance nor recognize that in Jesus “something greater than Jonah is here.”  

Whether Jonah is a true story or not, does not matter. It contains some important truths about God and can be seen as a parable, at least as a living parable about God’s grace and forgiveness. Grace and forgiveness are not at the front of Jonah’s mind. On the contrary, when God changes God’s mind about destroying the city of Nineveh, because they had repented, “this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.” (Jonah 4:1) It would seem that the main reason Jonah ran away from his commission from God, was not because the thought he would fail, but because he was worried he would succeed: “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.” (4:2) 
Nineveh was not just any old city. It was once the capital of the Assyrian empire, that is the empire that invaded Israel and completely wiped out the Northern Kingdom. The book of the prophet Nahum is almost exclusively taken up with prophetic denunciations against this city. So, it is no surprise that Jonah cannot stand the idea of this city being forgiven, he cannot imagine that his God’s grace includes them too. The whole book of Jonah is written to teach the opposite, to show the people of Israel that God’s grace is infinite, that God is also the God of “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.” (4:11) The reference to many animals is a reminder that God’s saving purposes apply to all of creation. The book of Jonah ends with God’s question, “should I not be concerned about Nineveh?” There is no reply recorded from Jonah, and I think that is deliberate. It is an open question to everyone who reads the book.

Martin Luther, who we have been mentioning a lot this year, definitely read the book of Jonah. He saw parallels between its message and the message of the parable we heard this morning, of the laborers in the vineyard.  On the surface, they are very different. We have no whale, no enemy city, just a bunch of people, day laborers we would call them now, who wait at a corner to be picked up for work. The parallel is in the behavior of the landowner and the reaction of some of the laborers. Against all expectations, the owner of the vineyard gives everyone the same wage, regardless of whether they worked all day, or just an hour. He is extraordinarily generous and ignores all conventions about fairness.
Those who have “borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat” (Matthew 20:12) are not happy. They are envious and angry. Surely reward and effort must be equal? 
Well no, not in the kingdom of heaven. There is no privileged position there for the Jews. Gentiles who follow God and God’s Son will receive the same access as the people God chose through Abraham.  There is no privileged position there for the disciples who were the first to follow Jesus. Anyone who turns to and follows Jesus, whenever that may be in their lives, will be treated exactly the same. And that means there is also no privileged position for us either, except that is for the privilege that Paul mentions in his letter to the Philippians, the “privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering (or striving) for him as well.” (Philippians 1:29) 

Both passages tell us something about God in the questions that are posed at the end of each of them. “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh,” (Jonah 4:11) God asks …. And also about Pyongyang, Tehran, and Caracas. God is the God of everyone and everything – whether they know or believe that or not. “Are you envious because I am generous,” the landowner asks. (Mathew 20:16) Our God is a generous God. God’s grace and love are not something we earn, not something that one of us can have a lot of, and another only a little or none. God’s grace is not a reward or, despite the parable, a wage: it is a gift. God’s grace is based on our needs and God’s love. 

Both passages challenge our understanding of fairness. Why should Israel's sworn enemies be saved from destruction? Why should the laborers who only worked an hour, be paid as much as those who worked the whole day? Surely that isn't fair ... is it? It is in God’s terms - justice is served, but mercy is added. Both passages are illustrations of God’s commands to love not only our neighbor, but even our enemy, and look after those who cannot look after themselves, the widow, orphan, stranger, the unemployed, and the homeless. These are patterns of behavior not reserved for some distant, future, other worldly, kingdom of heaven, but for the one that we as its citizens are called to live out in the here and now when we follow Paul’s call to “live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” (Philippians 1:27) 

Both passages are about attitude. In the end, the question we should be asking is not why have they been forgiven, but why have I? Not why did they receive so much, but why have I? How do I react to this gift? Today in the Episcopal Church, we remember and giving thanks for the Julia Chester Emery, founder of the United Thank Offering. In the early 1900s, Julia helped organize the women of the church to participate in a daily spiritual discipline of gratitude. She asked that everyone remember that when something good happens in his or her day, that this is a gift from God, and to make a thank offering in remembrance that all good things come from God. The simple thank offering she started in her local church grew into the United Thank Offering we also support. 

Unlike Jonah, and the early laborers who sulk, mutter, murmur and mumble, our reaction to God’s gift of love, whether we see it given to others or to ourselves is joy and gratitude. We are not envious because God is generous, we are thankful and jubilant, and we should make his generosity and our gratefulness the pattern of our lives.
Amen.

Sunday, September 17, 2017

Things indifferent




A Sermon preached on 17th September 2017, Pentecost XV at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Genesis 50:15-21, Romans 14:1-12, Matthew 18:21-35


This morning I want to introduce you to a new Greek word: adiaphora. I know it sounds like somebody's name, but in fact it is a word that theologians use to describe or distinguish between what is core to Christian faith and practice, and what can be considered to be a matter of indifference or spiritually neutral: something we can do but do not have to do.

Let me give you some easy examples. When I look around the church and watch you, I see lots of different practices. Some of you kneel and some stand for prayers. Some of you make the sign of the cross during the blessing, some don't. Some of you drink out of the cup at Communion and some of you intinct or dip your wafers into the wine. These are just some examples of adiaphora. Both practices are good and acceptable, and should never be a reason for division or conflict, although sadly in the history of Christianity they very often were.

This is what Paul is talking about in today’s extract from his letter to the church in Rome. In Rome, there seem to be two camps with very different attitudes about certain practices: “Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables,” (Romans 14:2) he writes. And “some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike.” (14:5) What does he mean? The first issue is not just about being a vegetarian in the modern sense. The so-called “weak” – that appears to be the nickname given to them by those who consider themselves strong or stronger in faith – will not eat meat because they do not know where it comes from. Some will have been Jewish Christians, still keeping to their dietary laws, and worried whether the meat is kosher or not. Others may be concerned, as were some Christians in Corinth too, that the meat had previously been offered as a sacrifice to a pagan god. And so, to avoid contamination, they avoid eating meat completely. For Paul, this is just as acceptable as belonging to the other camp who are willing to eat meat, either because they believe that the dietary rules are not necessary to be a Christian or because they are sure that a non-existent deity can have no power.  What is not acceptable, Paul makes very clear, is for one group to pass judgement on the other or to look down on them. If both practices are OK, and a matter of personal taste and devotion, i.e. adiaphora, then both must be tolerated and neither judged by the other.

The same applies to the issue of special days. This could also be about whether Jewish festivals were still to be observed, or perhaps whether certain days of the week be reserved for fasting. It is not just a laughing matter, many centuries later, during the Commonwealth period in England when the Puritans where in power and, on the one hand, all the traditional festivals had been abolished, and on the other, special fasting days introduced, you could be brutally punished for celebrating the one, and not acknowledging the other! All wrong, Paul says. These are matters of personal piety. “Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also, those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God.” (14:6) What matters is the motivation – is it to the glory of God? Or just to make yourself look good in front of your fellows? Is it an act of praise and thanksgiving or an excuse for excessive eating and drinking?

What matters most, Paul says, is what and who we put at the center of our lives. “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord.” I know that sounds a bit morbid, but all Paul is saying is that if not even death can separate us from Christ and from one another in Christ, then all the other little differences in practice, behavior, piety, and elements of faith certainly cannot and should not divide and separate us. What is important is not what we do, not our practices, but what Christ has already done for us: “For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” (14:9) That makes us the same in the only way that matters: We are all God’s beloved, for whom Christ died so that we might be free to live for him, now and forever.

Of course, there are differences that matter. I am not saying that every variety of practice or belief is indifferent. Any longing for unity and harmony must be balanced by a desire for truth. How do we decide what is core and what is not essential?

One source is Scripture. For Anglicans, and I’m quoting from our short list of four fundamentals, “the Holy Scriptures contain all things necessary to salvation.”[1] This is where we find our essentials. Please note however that we use the word contain ….  We do not say that everything in the Bible is necessary for salvation. And looking for the essentials is not just a matter of trying to find an appropriate individual proof text: what did Jesus say about this or what did Paul write. Sometimes they didn’t say or write anything at all. Or what we find is not clear, or was obviously written in the context of their time. Then we have to interpret, to look for messages that are often repeated, or identify the underlying narrative. In other words, we must use our God-given reason to find meaning.

Secondly, as Anglicans, we have the tradition of the historic creeds as “the sufficient statement of Christian faith.” We have no other binding summary of faith of our own, no Anglican Confession, just the Apostles’ and Nicene Creed that we share either with the Western Church or with most of the organized Christian denominations in East and West.

Today’s Gospel theme, forgiveness, for example is clearly a core element of salvation. The need to forgive and be forgiven, and the gift of forgiveness is scriptural. We have Jesus’ command as we just head to forgive not just seven times, but 77 times (which means without limit). We have the parable we heard today about forgiveness. It is really an extended illustration of the petition in the Lord’s Prayer “to forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” and a dramatic description of what happens if we do not forgive as we are forgiven. We condemn ourselves to live lives that are like hell.

Forgiveness is also creedal: “I believe in the forgiveness of sins” is part of the Apostle’s Creed. In the Nicene Creed it is connected with Sacrament of Baptism, another essential of our faith and practice, along with the Eucharist by the way. Last and not least, being willing to forgive and accept forgiveness is key to unity and vital in overcoming whatever differences may have arisen around non-essentials.

The Cross, the unifying common symbol of Christianity stands for forgiveness. I have just come back from meeting of the ACK in Trier, which included an ecumenical celebration of Holy Cross Day. I was a bit skeptical about this as Holy Cross is not celebrated in every tradition, the German Lutherans do not have it in their calendar, and certainly not the Baptists and other Free Churches. But at our meeting we first listened to and discussed presentations from different traditions on the cross – its meaning and theology. And we found that beneath and behind the different – and as it turns out indifferent practices – we had lots in common. We may venerate the cross in different ways – with or without a physical cross, or even a relic of the true cross, as a symbol. We may worship standing, sitting, or kneeling. We may worship in the context of an elaborate liturgy, or just with Biblical texts. All these ways and means are equally acceptable and valid, as long as our motivation and intention is not to venerate a piece of wood, or a picture of a cross, or a text about the cross. 
Instead we venerate and worship the crucified one. In Paul’s words, we are the Lord’s.

How we worship is secondary or adiaphora, who we worship and what we allow that worship to do with us is primary. What is important, is the effect the cross and the crucified one have on us. Are we moved to love God as God loves us? Are we changed and transformed by the Lord? Are we inspired to change and transform the whole world? That is what we will be accountable to God for, not our particular traditions, rituals, and practices. 
Amen.




[1] Lambeth Quadrilateral