Last Sunday after Pentecost: Justice, Kindness and Humility

Ezekiel 34.11-16, 20-24
Psalm 95.1-7a
Ephesians 1.15-23
Matthew 25.31-46

I mentioned last week that we are coming to the end of things. Today is the last Sunday of the Church’s year. The twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of Matthew’s Gospel are full of Jesus’ stories of warning, his parables about readiness, his reminder to his followers to stay awake and be prepared. Each of the parables or discourses in these two chapters ends with the same admonition: “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming….Therefore you…must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” (Matthew 24:42, 44) “Keep awake…for you know neither the day nor the hour.” (Matthew 25:13) But, what will happen when he comes? That is the tale for today. That the author of Matthew’s culmination of all the parables of those two chapters. Now, all the synoptic gospels – Mark, Matthew and Luke – have in them some description of the end time, and all of them are fairly similar. For example, the Gospel of Mark (as representative) says: “But in those days…the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory.” (Mark 13:24-27) The writer of Matthew, using Mark as a source, relates this “little apocalypse”, as it has been called, in a very similar way. Yet, Matthew’s author goes further then simply a fantastic description of the end; and it is only in the Gospel of Matthew that we have today’s all too familiar story. It is a story which, notwithstanding its uniqueness among the Gospel stories, has impressed itself deeply on the western consciousness, both spiritually and culturally. Any metaphorical reference to sheep and goats can be traced back directly to this story. Yet, more importantly for us today, it is the only story we have which offers us any description of the last judgement.

It is no accident that this story appears in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew’s overriding theme is that of Jesus, not as starting something new apart from Judaism, but rather casts him as one who interprets the Law and traditions of Judaism authoritatively and authentically. Perhaps one of the most important verses in Matthew (which appears only in Matthew) is the one in which Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil.” (Matthew 5:17) Therefore, in the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus argues with his opponents, he consistently argues from the Scriptures, from the Law and the Prophets. In the face of his opponents’ challenges and their interpretation of the Torah, Jesus makes his own. It can hardly be contested that much of institutionalised Judaism had become mired and fossilised in legalism and the Temple cult. It had lost the dynamic vision of the prophets with their concern that “justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5.24) It had also compromised on the overriding theme of compassion and hospitality which marks the Torah, the Jewish law.

For Matthew, Jesus is the one who, as a child of Israel, reminds the children of Israel of their authentic traditions and who speaks with an authoritative voice. When Jesus is accused of breaking table ethics and eating with sinners and tax collectors, he rebukes his accusers by referencing the prophets, more specifically, Hosea 6.6: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ ” (Matthew 9.13) When Jesus’ disciples are criticised by the Jewish teachers for on the Sabbath plucking heads of grain to eat (since this was considered to be work), Jesus defends them by again referencing Scripture, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests?” (Matthew 12.3-4) On being questioned whether it was lawful to cure on the Sabbath (cf Matthew 9.10), Jesus responds “Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out?” (Matthew 9.11) Now, the Pharisees in their interpretation of the Law permitted the rescue of an animal on the Sabbath. Jesus goes on to say, “How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.” (Matthew 12.12) For Jesus, the law is fulfilled in right and righteous actions, manifested particularly in deeds of solidarity and compassion.

In light of all this, one commentator says that this story of the judgement “is a fitting climax to the patterns of thought which can be traced all through [the] gospel [of Matthew]” The writer of the Gospel of Matthew wants to convey that for Jesus, and therefore his followers, loyalty to the Law must surpass that of merely an observance of minutiae and detail, and that that same covenant-loyalty must be manifest in deeds: “Thus you will know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:20) In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is keen to stress that it is in acts of compassion and solidarity that the Law is most authentically fulfilled. It is only the Gospel of Matthew in which we find “the Golden Rule”: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Matthew 7:12a) And then Jesus adds, “for this is the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 1:12b) Here, the entire Torah is interpreted into one commandment of righteous action. While of course Matthew, along with all the synoptics, has the passage about loving God and loving one’s neighbour as one’s self, the injunction to do to others as you would have them to do you appears only in Matthew. It is therefore this emphasis on righteous deeds which informs the picture of the last judgement with which we are presented today.

Well, I have spoken a lot about the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, how the writer’s depiction of the last judgement carries through themes in the work. I have spoken of the religious and social conditions under which Jesus carried out his ministry. I have even made some distinctions between Matthew and the other synoptic writers. But, does any of this have anything to say to us here and now? Well, I think that it does. Because, you see, we are not so very different from those who opposed Jesus. We too, both as individuals as communities, tend to keep all the rules, but break the promise. And perhaps the message we need to hear today is: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is and this alone is the gospel.” (cf Matthew 7.12a) The message which Matthew conveys in the depiction of the last judgement is a message that we still have not learned. We have not really taken in the reality of the questions asked on that awesome day “when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, [and] he will sit [himself] on the throne of his glory.” (Matthew 25.31) From the story which Matthew records we will none of us be asked how many times we went to Church. Neither will we be asked why or why not we decided to remarry after a divorce, or even why we lived with a partner before or instead of marrying. There will be no questions on the theology of ordination, whether of women or of men. No questions will be made of our sexuality. We will not be asked to which denomination or religion we adhered. We will not be asked whether we had any faith at all. Deanery, diocesan and even general conventions and all their legislations will fade in importance. No questions at all about the complex web of rules and regulations which we have created, guard so tenaciously and take oh so seriously. Instead, there we will be confronted with the real questions: “Did you feed the hungry? Did you show compassion to the destitute? Did you welcome the stranger? Did you stand in active solidarity with the oppressed? Did you visit the sick? Did you in everything do to others as you would have had them do to you?” This and this alone will be the criteria by which our fidelity to Jesus and to his Gospel will be judged. It is important to ask ourselves how we measure up.

Jesus did not preach anything new. God’s demand for righteous actions in compassion are more than evident throughout the Law and the Prophets. Jesus preached against the very human inclination to make religious rules and regulations more important than the divine injunctions of love, kindness, relationship. And we Christians too have been far too guilty of that. So we too need to listen afresh to the voice of God. In the Book of the prophet Micah, the prophet himself asks of God how he shall be righteous before the Lord: “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” (Micah 6.6-7) And the response he received was this: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6.8) All of it, all of it, it really is as simple as that: do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with God.

Pentecost 22: The Urgency of Risk

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18
Psalm 90:1-8, 12
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

We are coming to the end of things, and today’s parable presents us with a recurring theme in the Gospels, that of “the departing and returning master”; a theme which, as the members of the Jesus Seminar observed, “was dear to the early Christian community because it was analogous to Jesus’ departure and expected return.” A slightly different version of the parable appears also in Luke, and there are intimations of it in the Gospel of Mark also. Many of us may remember this parable as one of the first we felt we could really get a handle on, even as children. This is, in part, because of the double meaning of the word “talent” in English. In the New Testament world a “talent” was a unit of measurement, but also of money. The conservative estimate gives them the modern value of $6,000 each, and one lone talent would represent 20 years wages for a common laborer. It is in the Middle Ages that the word came into the meaning we usually associate with it today, namely a special, natural ability or aptitude. In fact, this arose out of the communal encounter with this text in Matthew. Talents came to be understood not as money, but as the unique gifts God gives to each person. As a child at parochial school, I remember reading this parable and being asked by the sisters whether I was making the best of my talents – that is, my abilities.

Now, while that may be a wonderful reading of the parable for children, it does not take into account the sense of utter urgency the parable seeks to convey, both in its words and its place in the Gospel of Matthew itself. It is grouped with several other parables centred round Jesus’ eventual return and the consummation of the present age. And it precedes directly the beginning of the passion narrative: one final prediction by Jesus of his crucifixion, Judas’ betrayal and it all begins to unravel from there. We are indeed coming to the end of things. We are coming to the crunch. The parable’s urgency is emphasised by the large amounts of money considered, but perhaps more so by Jesus’ harsh words and the sentence meted out to the slave who played it safe: “Take the talent from [this worthless slave] and give to the one with ten talents….[Then] throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 25:30) We can see, that what the parable attempts to highlight is something far more serious than simply, say a young woman who goes into banking instead of making a career of a natural talent for the piano. Rather, it presents us with the sobering, disturbing and even frightening thought, that “safety” is not a Gospel virtue.

Sit with that for a moment; that the hope of joy and fulfilment promised by the Good News can rarely be realised – if at all – when we hedge our bets, play it safe, when our decisions are based merely on fear of loss, when we act out of desperation in order to preserve a particular status quo or self-image. The entire sweep of salvation history seems to be grounded in this deep, deep truth. Even in the beginning, God could have merrily gone on with a literally divine existence, but instead risked the creation and risked the making of human beings in God’s own image and with free will. In just a few weeks we will again be celebrating Christmas, that great event of divine risk-taking when God goes so far as to empty God’s own self and take “the form of slave”, (cf. Philippians 26-8) as Paul writes to the Philippians. And for those first Christians, and for many still today, to become a Christian was an act fraught with risk. At the very least it could mean being ostracised from one’s family and accustomed social circle; for many it meant death. But they had internalized the reality that any profit that can come without risk is no profit at all: “For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?” (Matthew 16:26) And Jesus’ enigmatic words in today's parable, words which disturb our sense of fairness and justice – “to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away” (Matthew 25:29) – these words speak to the truth that those who risk nothing, end up with less than they bargained for, even less than they started with.

All this talk of risk, yet we mustn’t confuse risk with recklessness, neither with impetuous actions or a cavalier attitude. Instead the sort of risk enjoined is one which dislodges fear and disturbs complacency. Indeed, no enterprise loses its luster more quickly than when it is governed by fear – fear of loss, fear of disappointment, always with an eye to an unimaginative bottom line; no enterprise loses its energy more quickly than when it becomes complacent – complacent with a limited vision, complacent with good enough, complacent with safe fellowship, complacent – as the prophet Zephaniah alludes – with merely the dregs (cf. Zephaniah 1:2) Genuine risk is at that the heart of anything really worth having, it is at the heart of all creative enterprises and of all change for the good, as uncomfortable or scary as that may be. It’s not that the first two slaves made a return on their master’s money that earns for them the accolade of “trustworthy”, it is that they thought creatively about the possibilities and they took a risk; while their fellow did the least creative thing he could have done. He put his master’s talent in a hole. His fear prevented him from taking even the most minimal of actions, as the master subsequently pointed out: “You ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.” (Matthew 25:27) The slave acted out of fear and desperation, and whenever we do that we blind ourselves to possibility and always sell ourselves short.

When the crunch-times come in our lives, the response should never really be safety, but risk. And in one sense, as Paul reminds the Thessalonians, it is always crunch-time: “Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” (1 Thessalonians 2:1-2) The crunch-time is the ever present reality and we live always in its shadow. It is ever distant, yet ever nigh. And therefore, there should be an urgency to our lives, an urgency that asks some serious questions: What am I risking today, right now? Has my faith, my Christianity, my life become a mere exercise in measured complacency? When the master comes to settle accounts what will I offer as evidence of joyful, faithful risk? Or will he find me safely and fearfully tucked in, my talent in hole?

All Saints' Sunday: Community and Relationship Forged in Love

Ecclessiasticus 2:1-11
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:27-36

We gather today to celebrate a great mystery, and like so much of Christian mystery and theology we come to grips with it by means of symbols and story, and by discerning the ways the mystery’s truth plays itself out in our lives and experiences. Today we celebrate what we mean when we say, “We believe in the communion of saints.” At the same time, we celebrate the truth of the resurrection in a particular and distinctive way, as well as the truth of God’s providential care. In so doing, we touch on a crucial aspect of what it means to be authentically human. The language and symbols, the inherited traditions of this feast, have a kind of depth which can be almost endlessly explored.

Along with Easter, the early Church saw the feast of All Saints as a very appropriate time for baptisms. Baptism, which marks a person’s becoming a Christian and member of the body of Christ, also points to the reality that in being joined to Christ in his life, death and resurrection, we are also joined to each other. We are brought into full communion with Christ and with his saints, that is, the holy people of God. For the early Church the title saint was not reserved for only those who had died and only afterward been canonised, indeed no such concept existed. For the early Church, as we find witnessed in the letters of the New Testament, “saints” meant all those who were Christians; those who had been called to be a holy people by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. As the author of the first letter of Peter writes: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” (1 Peter 2.9) So Paul writes his letters to “the saints” in a particular place; he sends the greeting of “the saints” in one place to “the saints” in another; and he talks about collections for ‘the saints’ in less prosperous communities. As “the saints”, the holy people of God and members of the body of Christ, they were connected one to another; and nothing, certainly not death, could sever that connection. In baptism we have a share in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we have a share in his victory over death, and through that we are joined to each other. Therefore, as Christ’s people we cannot ultimately be separated one from another, we are all joined together in him; and because of his victory over death, not even death can sever that connection. That is what we are talking about when we say “I believe in the communion of saints.”

In affirming this belief, we also speak to a defining aspect of our humanity. To be an authentic human being means to be a being in relationship. It is relationship that we long for not only from the very start of life, but which we seem to need for our continuing survival. I am told that an infant, while it may receive all the physical nourishment it needs, will most probably still die if it does not receive human touch and affection, if it is not allowed to enter into relationship. The doctrine of the communion of saints highlights the essental truth that our humanity requires relationship; we need to love and be loved, we need to touch and be touched. We need to open ourselves up to others in vulnerability and allow our encounters together to mould and inform our own person. To be the people that we were created to be we need friendship and connection. The doctrine of the communion of saints refuses to believe that what is built up in that process is completely destroyed because those with whom we are in relationship are far away or have died. Were that to be true, then each separation would diminish us as human beings. And yet – the famous words of John Donne notwithstanding – it does not. Yes, we may miss the friend far away, we may mourn the friend who has died, but both those reactions call us more deeply into our humanity. Were we to do neither we would be less human, indeed some might even call us “inhuman.” The very fact that we do miss and mourn, speaks to the fact that we are still connected. We need the mystery of the communion of saints, with its sense of connection and relationship to be human.

If community and relationship are so essential to our authentic humanity, then God’s providential and saving power has to be understood within the context of community and relationship if that power is to be consistent with God’s abiding love for humanity. It seems that if we are to be saved at all, we are saved in community and for community. The kind of individualistic, Jesus-as-my-personal-Lord-and-Saviour theology is not the traditional Christian understanding of salvation. While better known and used for its apocalyptic elements, the Book of Revelation actually graphically portrays this truth of communal salvation: “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.” (Revelation 7.9) If to be human means to be in relationship and community, then if we are to be saved as humans we must be saved in relationship and community. To be saved alone is no salvation at all. The images which the writer of the Book of Revelation presents are the images of a people saved in communion with each other and with their God. But too, the promise of resurrection is a promise of new life into community. Note how in the post-resurrection accounts of Jesus, he does the very things which we would consider as central to building relationship and community: he spends time in conversation with his friends, he eats with them, he shares who he is with them, and he builds bridges repairing past hurts. In short, he continues to care for them. Not only in the Book of Revelation and in post-resurrection gospel accounts, in many other places in the scriptures and the tradition are used the language of symbol and story to shed light on the meaning of Christian wholeness, human wholeness and they do so by pointing to community.

At the bottom line what we celebrate today is the abiding mystery that nothing, nothing can break asunder community and relationship which has been forged in love; but also that our wholeness as human beings, our salvation if you will (it means the same thing), is dependent on the communion of saints, on that great mystery of community and relationship. Paul writes to the saints in Rome “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8.38-39) If we believe that in our baptism we have been incorporated into the body of Christ and that we are in fact the body of Christ, then Paul’s conviction of our unity with Christ is also about our unity with each other, with all the saints living and departed. God’s creative love which has forged us into a people, is the same power working in us to form deep and abiding bonds between each other, not only so that the power of love may be made manifest in the world, but that we may grow more fully into the genuine humanity for which we were created.

Pentecost 20: When There is No Peace

Micah 3:5-12
Psalm 43
1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
Matthew 23:1-12

The beginning of the book of the prophet Micah tells as he was from Moresheth and that the “word of the Lord” came to him in the days of Kings Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah (cf. Micah 1:1). Moresheth’s exact location is uncertain, except we know it was somewhere in southwestern Judah. We know rather more about the time in which Micah lived, and prophesied. The “days of Kings Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah” covered the years 740-687 BC. Historians of the period tell us these years were marked by Judah’s general decline, as the power of the neighboring Assyrian empire increased, conquering areas dangerously close: Damascus fell to it in 732 BC, Samaria in 722 and in 701 Jerusalem herself was besieged. For those in the area, it was a period of upheaval, crisis and insecuirty; and we all know what happens in such times, the average person looks after his or her own interests. Those who do not, stand out as exceptional; and this was no less true in the ancient world. About those perilous times one bibilical historian writes, “Danger was not only external. Prophets, priests, and judges accepted bribes; merchants cheated; Cannannite cults were used alongside Yahwistic ones”.

At the same time – as in all periods of crisis and upheaval – the thought on everyone’s mind, the word on every politician’s lips was “peace”. Peace. Peace, however, is a slippery thing and its pursuit is rarely unsullied by self-interest. In many cases, all that peace means is that my life, or the life of my family, or the life of my community, or the life of my country continues undisturbed regardless of the consequences on others outside those narrow spheres. For most of us, peace means our bellies are full. As Micah himself records: “Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry ‘Peace’ when they have something to eat.” (Micah 3:5). At best, for most of us, peace is the cessation of obvious conflict even if the parties in the conflict are not exacly reconciled, even if there is no friendship between them. This kind of peace is usually purchased at a high cost: the complete and utter subjugation – even humilation – of an enemy, the silencing of internal opponents, the costly and constant watch for potential eruptions of violence or retribution, without and within the state. This is the kind of peace which was the norm for the great empires of the ancient world (and of the modern world, as well); and is best exemplified in the Pax Romana, the peace so highy vaunted by the Roman Empire. The Romans controlled all the known world and for many years did so effectively, but ruthlessly. Jesus was one of the casualties of the Pax Romana, as were many of the early Christians: Alban, Cecilia, Peter, Agnes among them, and many others unknown by name. But also casualties were ten of thousands of people captured and enslaved, the many hundreds of thousands who lived in abject poverty and at the whim of social superiors, the scores of tribes and nations conquered and kept in check by occupying forces of Roman troops. Yes, what passed for peace – and what still may pass for peace today – looks very different from the bottom of the pile.

The prophetic tradition of Judaism presents a very different image of peace, the foundation of which is right relations between peoples, and between people and God. Peace in this tradition – shalom – has many resonances and can mean something as simple as a curteous greeting (as it is still used today in modern Hebrew), but it also has profound social dimensions and is associated “with righteousness, law, judgement, and the actions of public officials.” At the same time, in the tradition of ancient Judaism, God and God alone is the creator and source of this kind of peace and it is God and God alone who gives shalom.* To work for peace – shalom – in one’s life and in the world is to align one’s self with God and what God wills and desires in creation. To work against peace is more than just perpetuating hostility or making war, it is to live in darkness, “without vision…without revelation”. (Micah 3:6) Shalom is more than peace in the narrow way in which we usually have come to understand and experience it, it is rather an entire framework and pattern for God’s world. It is not something which exists merely by our creation, purely between human beings or even between nations, but it is a reality meant to encompas the entire cosmos; a pattern that ideally should dictate all our dealings with creation, with others, with ourselves. The source of its disruption is most usually not the outside forces which menace and threaten, but the internal forces which undermine and corrupt human society and relationships. In speaking about the the lack of peace, Micah does not speak about the hostility of the Assyrians or the threat it poses. He speaks of the internal decay of rightousness and of basic human decency in Judah: “Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob…who abhor justice
and pervert all equity, [you]…give judgment for a bribe, [your] priests teach for a price, [your] prophets give oracles for money.” (Micah 5:9, 11) And so, often the prophets still speak up for shalom in periods where there is no apparent hostility, sometimes most especially in periods of prosperity; for example as when the prophet Amos writes in the name of the Lord, “I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:21, 23-24). God’s vision of peace – of shalom – is not about making nice, but about making justice; and the latter is in many ways far tougher and more nuanced than the former because it calls for serious self-examination both of individuals, communities and nations. Shalom challenges us by unmasking the very causes of the hostility between peoples and nations which lead to violence – injustice, prejudice, greed, pride. These can not easily be overcome with a simple, concordat, agreement or summit. They can only be overcome with conversion of spirit, conversion life, both personal and communal. They can only be overcome by genuinely aligning ourselves to God and God’s gracious plan for creation.

God’s plan, God’s vision of peace is costly. And its price must be our dying to privilege and facile stability, it must never be the suffering or subjugation of another. Shalom creates no casualties. Even should a nation not be at war, if hundreds of thousands within its cities and towns live in poverty there is no peace. Even if a people can congratulate itself by proclaiming how free are its citizens, if a section of that citizenry cannot participate in the fruits of that freedom due to poor educational provision or lack of dignified employment, then there is no peace. Even when a nation can take due pride in its scientific and medical advances, if large sections of its population have little to no access to those advances then there is no peace. When people’s sense of justice is still an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, then there is no peace. Living shalom means we take the risk to envision the world as God might see it, and to unmask injustice and its subtle violence, even when the powers that be tell us everything is alright, that things are peaceful, because as Christians we know that peace – real peace – is much, much more, and that ultimately no earthly power can provide it. All that we as people and as a nation can do is speak up for it and accept no cheap substitutes, no matter how comfortable they may make us feel. All we can do align ourselves to it by allowing justice to roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Then and only then can we truly come to call ourselves followers of the Prince of Peace.