Month: October 2005

Proper 25, Year A, 2005

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Have you ever been in love?

I don’t mean the kind of sensible love of matched personalities and long marriages. I mean the can’t-catch-your-breath adolescent love of terrible poetry and teenage heartbreak.  When you’re in this be-still-my-beating-heart kind of love, your mind can think of nothing else.  It doesn’t matter if the object of your love is entirely inappropriate or unattainable, your devotion is complete. 

When I was in early high school, back when a text message was the newspaper, my girlfriends and I would write long notes to each other in intricate code describing every detail of the interaction we had with the boy we had code named “Samoa” or “River”.  Passing these notes was risky, but there was always the thrilling potential for the object of our love to actually intercept a note, decipher our code even the NSA couldn’t crack, and admit he returned our passion. 

Now, some were slightly more developed romantically than I was at fifteen, and actually had relationships in which both parties felt this love.  These lucky couples expressed their love through scrawling their initials on desks, or writing graffiti in the bathroom, or the most romantic of all, carving their initials in a tree in a local park.

When you’re in love, you want the world to know. 

When the Pharisees asked Jesus his opinion of the greatest commandment, they were hoping to paint him into a legal corner.  You see, if he chose ONE of the 619 religious laws on the books, it would mean he was degrading the rest of the laws.  Well, instead of choosing one of these laws, Jesus sings the Pharisees a love song.

Well, not exactly a love song.  You see, what Jesus says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” he is quoting part of the Schema, a sung Hebrew prayer.  Waaaaay back in Jewish history, when God and Moses spent a lot of time talking, Moses told the Jewish people that God told him to tell the Israelites, “The Lord your God is one God.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might.”  Moses went on to tell the Israelites they should keep this commandment on their doorposts.  He might have been using a metaphor, but we religious folks can be pretty literal, and so even today in many Jewish homes, you find a Mezuzah on the door frame, a small box or tube that contains the text of the Schema–this prayer.  Think of it as a form of carving initials in a tree trunk—Lord God hearts human kind.

The relationship between the Israelites and God may seem like a strange love affair since God tells the Israelites they should love him with all their heart.  In my experience, I find it rarely works to tell someone, “Love me!  Choose me!”  However, when God passes on this commandment, he does it during a special time in Israel’s history.

The Israelites have recently been liberated from Egypt and are wandering around in the wilderness, waiting to get to the Promised Land.  For most of the trip, they’ve been pretty grumpy, not at all sure they really wanted to be liberated in the first place.  They are fairly disorganized and not sure how to behave.

God will soon give them a LONG list of rules to help them organize themselves, but first he wants to remind them of who he is and what their relationship will be like.  Just like a new lover, eager to be known, God self-discloses, describes to the Israelites what he is like.

Our Lord is ONE God, not a confusing mass of petty Gods.  He is a God who reaches out to us.  He does not make us guess which of his manifestations he will be today.  We take this for granted, after four thousand years of worshiping one God, but imagine what it must have been like to worship a pantheon of smaller gods who fought with each other for power, for pride.  You would never be safe, never comfortable.  In that kind of system, you have to offer gods constant sacrifice, constant manipulation.  By declaring himself one God, our Lord let us know he was straightforward, trustworthy.

When God tells the Israelites that they should love the Lord their God, he is not being a bully.  God is telling the Israelites good news—the relationship between God and people is based on love, not on what humans can do to appease the gods.  All the other commandments and laws are really a subset of this one.

Jesus takes this a step further and adds, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  The Love between God and people leads naturally to love between people. 

Let me give you an illustration of this phenomenon.  Next weekend, I have the honor of performing the marriage ceremony for two people whose lives completely exemplify this principle. 

They love God and have this very sweet, holistic, supportive love for each other, but their love does not stop there.  Because of this amazing energy and goodness that flows between them, they have ended up as the emotional center of their group of friends.  They bring chicken and biscuits to friends who are sick, take late night phone calls from friends in distress, and their dining room table is the center for many an abundant celebration of love and friendship.

This couple understands that love, even romantic love, is not something to be hoarded and parceled out carefully.  Love is designed to push ourselves beyond our natural borders, to reach out to those around us—to hear their stories, celebrate life’s joys and mourn life’s tragedies with them. 

As Christians, we don’t have the tradition of the Mezuzah to proclaim our love for God.  Instead Jesus asks us to show our love for God, by loving our neighbor.  Loving one another is our way of carving our initials in a tree.  People of Emmanuel heart God.

Amen.

Proper 21, Year A, 2005

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

My best friend in college was a woman named Carissa. She was raised in Houston and Singapore in a family in the oil business. I was raised overseas, too, but by two teachers. While my family cleaned up okay, elegance was never our greatest strength.

Carissa got married right after college and, as one of her readers, I was invited to the casual barbeque rehearsal dinner—I believe the dinner was actually described as a pig-pickin’. Since the dinner was casual, I dressed the part—a plain blue t-shirt and a pair of khaki pants. When I arrived at the party, all the other women were wearing silk dresses and pearls. You see, I had missed two important social clues. First, the party was thrown by Texans and Texas casual, it turns out, is not so casual. Secondly, the party was being held at the Virginia Country Club. Now, being southern, all the guests were very kind to me. . .even the ones who thought I must be on staff and kept asking me where the bathrooms were.

I was much luckier than the poor underdressed guest at the wedding in our gospel reading today. I was not cast into outer darkness and I did not once gnash my teeth. As you might imagine, however, I have a great deal of sympathy for this poor character. Why was he punished for wearing the wrong outfit?

The parable we read today about the wedding banquet is the last in three parables commonly known as the vineyard parables. These parables are Jesus’ response to the Pharisees challenging his authority—we heard the other two the last two Sundays. First, the parable about the owner of the vineyard asking his two sons to work, second, the parable about the tenants killing the landowners son, and now this parable about the wedding feast.

In our parable today, a King is giving a wedding banquet for his son. He invites the usual fancyguests, but all of them refuse to come. After punishing them thoroughly, he invites poor people off the streets.

So far, this parable makes a lot of sense. God has initiated a party for his son Jesus, the religious establishment of the day rejects the party, so God extends his invitation to prostitutes, tax collectors, and the like.

Now, however, we come to the poor unfortunate guest who is not wearing a wedding garment. The King does not show him an OUNCE of Southern hospitality, in fact he throws him out on his ear, to eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Phew!

Here’s my question. How many poor, off the street people do you know that own silk dresses or tuxedos.

Not too many, right? But in the world of this parable, no one else is getting berated for wearing the wrong clothes, but all the guests came off the street. So, where did the other guests get their wedding garments?I wonder if the King actually provided clothing for his guests.

And if the King DID provide clothes for his guest, and this particular guest insulted him by rejecting the gift, the King’s reaction makes a little more sense.

At the risk of piling metaphor upon parable and confusing us all mercilessly, imagine this garmentless guy as the kind of person who never really invests in anything, but always likes to hover around and see what is going on. He wanted to be at the wedding party, but he did not necessarily want to be associated with the King.

He’s the nosy neighborhood woman who takes a sharp intake of breath (tssss) when you give your kid a snack before dinner, but would stand idly by if your kid was running into traffic. He’s the guy not even assigned to your project at work who always has some negative comment to say about your ideas, but never offers to pitch in and help. He is, if I may be so bold, the kind of guy who comes to church to see and be seen, but is not particularly interested in God or his own spiritual journey.

Our friend is the kind of guy who is always detached, never passionate, never a “joiner”, but always has an opinion.

There’s a great scene in “O Brother Where Art Thou” in which one character has recently been baptized and another has sold his soul to the Devil. George Clooney’s character looks back and forth between the two and says, “I guess I’m the only one here that remains unaffiliated.”

Our parable today indicates that not affiliating with God is dangerous behavior. This kind of wishy washy behavior is the kind of behavior that gets a person tossed into outer darkness.Yikes!

You see, aligning ourselves to God is not a passive act, aligning ourselves to God—like William’s parents are choosing today—is a choice, a commitment for something.>

When Jesus told the Pharisees this parable, he was on the long, bloody road to the cross. Jesus knew the cost he was going to have to pay to be obedient to God and you can understand his impatience with people who would not commit to being on God’s team.

As the King offered to change the identity of this wedding guest with the wedding garment, God wants to change our identity. He wants us to wear outward and visible signs of our commitment to him, not in the form of crosses around our neck or Christian T-shirts, but in the form of our lives.

Our God is a passionate God, who is passionately jealous. He does not want us running around dating money or power or sex as our other Gods. He wants us to choose him, to align ourselves with him in worship, our prayer life, and the choices we make throughout the day.

There is no joy in a relationship in which one member is detached. No marriage is satisfying unless both partners are completely engaged. God is completely committed to us. He has shown that through Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection. Through our parable today, he reminds us that he wants our utter commitment to him. He longs for our energy, time, and love.

Being a half-way Christian is not enough. God can handle our doubts and questions and fears, what he does not want is for us to hold back. Better to engage, argue, even berate God, then to say, “Eh. I’ll pray tomorrow.” God offers us more than a wedding garment to accept, he offers himself.

Amen.