If Only We Were Ready

Matthew 25:1-13

November 9, 2014

William G. Carter

Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ 

Well, what were they thinking? They did not prepare and they were out of luck.

It’s a common human problem.  Yesterday morning, I poured myself a cup of coffee, opened the refrigerator, and discovered we were out of milk. Oh right, I was going to pick up some…

Or I remember the billboard in the southwestern desert: LAST GAS STOP FOR 100 MILES. We have a quarter tank left. Think we can make it? I wonder if we can speed our way through and get to the other side?

Years ago on a backpacking trip in the high peaks of the Adirondacks. We were descending Gothics Mountain. There is a slanted cliff of sheer granite. You go down by hanging on to a cable. Halfway down, we overheard a father shout to his young son, “Not now, Jimmy. Why didn’t you think of that before we left base camp?” I’m not sure what he was referring too, although I have a few ideas.

Planning ahead – some people can do it ease. They project what they are going to need and calculate what will be required. Others find that difficult.

Of all the curious details that have come to light about Eric Frein, the accused shooter who hid in the woods for forty-eight days, we have now heard the inventory of the supplies he stashed for his hideout. He had a laptop computer and a solar power device for keeping it charged. There was a shortwave radio, toilet paper, two shaving kits, a stack of DVDs, a pile of food, silverware, soy sauce, dental supplies, laundry detergent – and a copy of the New Testament. Obviously he planned ahead.

So we don’t need to speculate a long time about the meaning of Matthew’s parable. There were ten bridesmaids, he reports. Five were wise and five were foolish. The wise ones planned ahead. They kept some oil just in case. It wasn’t enough for them to live by simple faith. They hedged their bets and packed some supplies. They wanted to be ready, even if it took a while for the bridegroom to lead the wedding procession to the house.

By contrast, the five foolish ones weren’t expecting the wedding to start late. Apparently they have never been to any of the weddings that I’ve attended. There’s always a delay. Even the 50-year-old bachelor who finally got hitched a few years ago. He insisted his wedding would start on time; his bride pointed out she had been chasing him for ten years.

Delays are part of life. Every day something goes slower than we think it should. Friday morning, I drove down my hill, expecting the road construction was done in Chinchilla. Silly me. If we order a Christmas gift and pay for expedited shipping, that simply means it might arrive on time. Maybe. Perhaps.

In the ancient world, news traveled by foot or horseback. Even the fastest traveler in a hurry was subject to slippery roads and bad weather. I think of the Apostle Paul, writing to the Christians in Rome that he had never met: “I have hoped for years to see you, on my way to Spain” (Romans 15:23-24). We don’t ever know if he ever got actually there, since he was subject to delays.

And when he wrote to the church in Thessalonica, he knew they were starting to wonder about the Really Big Delay that every Christian wonders about: the Christ who came to earth promised to come back. Where is he? When is he going to arrive? In Thessalonica, it is 51 AD. The church cemetery is starting to fill up. Jesus said he was coming, but he is twenty years late. What should we do? And our first lesson addresses this. “The Lord will descend and we will all go up to meet him.” (4:13-18). “Encourage one another,” says Paul. Chill out.

But now it’s thirty years after that, as Matthew writes his Gospel about Jesus. It is fifty years after the resurrection. Jesus preached of the dominion of God, coming in power among us. And where is he? So Matthew addressed this as he retells three parables that Jesus told. In each parable, the main character is delayed.[1] He is hung up somewhere. He isn’t here yet. He’s taking a while.

In the middle of the three parables, the one for today, the bridegroom is so late that all ten bridesmaids have fallen asleep. Both the wise and the foolish have nodded off. The Lord said a few verses before, “Stay awake,” but how long were they supposed to stay awake?

When my daughters were little and we went for a drive at night, I’d say, “Stay awake, you’re getting too big for me to carry you into the house.” It never worked, especially with the older one. She would roll off Slumber Cliff and become dead weight. And I couldn’t blame her for that. It was late.

The wise and the foolish both fall asleep. There’s no judgment for that. No, the trouble comes when half of them were not ready to greet the bridegroom. As Ken Bailey says, in a Palestinian village, the weddings take place in the long, hot summer. When young, unmarried women move around after dark, it is unthinkable that they would not have an oil lamp lit and carried in front of their faces.[2] It is a matter of personal safety as well as a sign of character. A reputable young woman does not lurk around in the dark.

So the moment comes. It’s late at night. The bridegroom suddenly appears at the door. There’s a shout of joy. All ten bridesmaids wake from their sleep. They reach for their lamps, and half of them have run out of oil. What are they going to do? The wise ones say, “We don’t have enough oil for you and us.” It was like lifeboats on the Titanic: they only had enough for half the passengers!

So the fools go scrambling out, trying to buy some lamp oil after midnight, getting locked out of the party because they hadn’t prepared … for the delay.

A lot of people think that’s not fair. If the wise ones are so wise, couldn’t they share a little bit? I mean, how much oil do you need to go from the house to the party? In a Palestinian village, it’s not going to be far. Not only that, what’s the deal with the bridegroom? He knows who they are, yet he says, “I don’t know you.” Isn’t he supposed to be kind and gracious and in a good mood for his wedding night?

Well, sorry, this is the Gospel of Matthew. And Matthew often says to a lazy church, “Tough tarts!” The five foolish maidens say, “Lord, lord, open to us!” And in an exact quote from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declares, “Not everybody who says to me, ‘Lord, lord’ will get into the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father in heaven (7:21).”

So what do we have here? We have a warning. Keep your lamps trimmed and burning. Rejoice, rejoice, believers and let your lights appear. The warning is for those who have already been included, but through their own actions – or lack of actions – will be shut out.

Is it their own stupidity? Perhaps, although Matthew is not talking about intelligence when he regards five of them as “fools.” Biblically speaking, there are a lot of smart people who act as fools. They are short-sighted, living only for today and not for tomorrow. They refuse to see the disconnection between their actions and the consequences. They avoid the hard work of staying faithful in their hearts and nimble on their feet. And when the decisive moment comes, they miss it. They run out of the time they have been borrowing.

Matthew wants the church to be ready for the long haul, to be faithful across the coming generations. What would that mean? I suppose I could tell you, “Put this church in your will,” and that would be good advice. But I should also say, “Pray that the church doesn’t get lazy after you leave us two million dollars.” You see, that’s the deeper issue: checking out before you’re done. Matthew calls it “running out of oil.”

So how do we keep the lamps lit? A good start is simply to ask that question. A lot of people never ask. They simply show up and expect the lights to be on, because they’ve always been on. Maybe they are just dropping by when they feel like it, without any investment or commitment, merely coming to consume – before moving on like locusts to eat another crop.

But the life in Christ is so much more than that. It’s keeping the lamps lit. It’s expecting the same Jesus who is now hidden among us, the One who says “I am with you to the end,” will suddenly appear, will suddenly show himself from time to time, will suddenly come with great clarity to confirm what we have been trusting to be true all along.

·         It really does matter that we come together to sing praises to God.

·         It matters deeply to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.

·         It matters that we take care of an earth entrusted to us.

·         It matters that we pray for our needs, and that we turn those prayers into deeds.

·         It matters that we protect the weak and love each child.

·         It matters that all of us do our part to keep this slice of Christian community strong –

·         looking in on one another, offering a listening ear and a hot casserole.

·         It matters that we offer a strong shoulder to lift up those that life has trampled down.

·         It matters that we tell the truth to one another in love, and that we offer each other the same second chances that God gives us through Jesus Christ.

Beloved of God, let those lights appear. Keep at it. This is the will of our Father in heaven. Pack a big lunch because we are in this for the long haul. And should Christ suddenly come, share that lunch with somebody who hasn’t had something to eat. Do these things, and you will never run out of oil.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Matthew 24:45-51, 25:1-13, 25:14-30

[2] Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009) 272.

I Want to Be One Too

1 John 3:1-3

All Saints Day

November 2, 2014

William G. Carter

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

This is a pleasant little text, often used around here at baptisms. We hold up the beautiful child, brow still wet, and announce, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” I don’t know how many times I have heard those words spoken when they were followed by the collective sound of the word, “Ahh…” As in, “Ahh, isn’t she cute.” Or “Ahh, doesn’t he have his grandfather’s forehead?”

The text is so pleasant that we don’t even notice what comes before. An early church leader named John has just finished wagging his finger. Right before this pleasant text is a warning about sin. Apparently the cute little children of God are prone to corruption. The first letter of John is constantly warning about this:

• If anyone says, “I have no sin,” they are deceiving themselves (1:8).
• If anyone says, “I have come to love the Lord,” but does not keep God’s commandments is a liar (2:4).
• Do not love the things of the world, for all that is in the world – the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches – comes not from the Father, but the world. And the world and its desire are passing away (2:15-17).
• We know we have passed from death to love because we love one another.  Whoever does not love abides in death (3:14).
• Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love (4:9).
• Little children, keep yourselves from idols (5:21).

It’s just so striking. John speaks to the congregation around him and refers to them as little children. Perhaps he is late in his life offering a final speech, perhaps he is in the great Roman city of Ephesus surrounded by wealth and opulence. John knows the world out there can be a dangerous place, a tempting place. And he knows that little children, despite their innocence, can go off the rails and be twisted out of shape.

Last Friday, there was a steady stream of little children coming to our door. We had a big bag of candy, and sometime between 6:00 and 8:30, they traipsed up our driveway and knocked on the door. “Trick or treat!” I took the first shift, handing out the candy, beginning with the candy I was never going to eat. When my daughter Katie got home from work, she took over for a while.

At one point she comes back to where my wife and I are sitting, and grumbles, “Some of those kids are awfully greedy!” Apparently every blue princess jammed her hand in our candy bowl and grabbed as much as she could. I said, “The goblins and ghosts have been fairly polite.” Katie replied, “Well, these suburban princesses think they are entitled to a lot more.”

I thought about that. I thought a lot about that. In a land of plenty, there seems to be a great deal of corruption, even in our little kids.

My colleague Tina recently recommended a book for me to read. I am chewing on it slowly because it is a hard book. The title is The Price of Privilege,[1] and the subtitle: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids. It is a wonderful book – and it is a difficult book – for the same reason: because it’s honest.

Apparently a lot of psychologists are discovering what they already know, what first-century John already knew, that the world is toxic. More stuff doesn’t make anybody happy. Working longer hours to get more stuff is no good for family life. Pushing your kids to get into a Triple A college can nudge them toward greatness or push them over a cliff. That’s frightening. On the first page, psychologist Madeline Levine tells of a kid who has been given everything by her parents and then she takes a blade to carve the word EMPTY on her left forearm.

I was thinking about that on Friday night. I felt the need to take a stand. When it was my turn again to answer the front door with the candy dish, I gave everybody one piece of candy. When a blue princess reached into the bowl to snare a handful, I gently took her hand and said, “I’ll give you one piece.”

Why did I do that? Because of this scripture text. Yes, it affirms you are God’s children now; that is what you are. It is an affirmation of grace. God loves you and claims you. There is no way you could have earned that extraordinary love. It is a complete gift. But if you are ever going to see God, you’re going to have to grow up. That is going to take some discipline.

John’s word for discipline is “purify.” He uses it only once, in verse three of chapter three. He speaks of seeing God, finally, at the last human moment, when our lives are finished and glory is revealed. “All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as [God] is pure.” It sounds like something Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:12). That’s the destination; what John mentions is the process: the true children of God “purify themselves.” They know and trust they belong to God, and they continue to work at what that means.

So what does it mean to be pure? To move in the direction of purity?

A lot of people will tell you what they think that means and they are wrong. My great-grandmother was alive when I figured out that God was calling me to be a preacher. This was the mother of my grandmother who is now a hundred years old, and even all those years ago, my great-grandmother was ancient. I went with my parents to tell her the news. “Great-Grandma, I’m going to be a minister.” She looked at me, and then raised a bony finger at my father to say, “Glenn, you’re going to have to shape up.”

That’s what a lot of people think purity is: shaping up. Tending to the outward behaviors. Looking the part. When people say this, they mean well, but they’re wrong. John has already reminded us, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” We never outrun our capacity for sin. Sin is always with us. Some of the morally shaped-up people I know are absolutely obnoxious. They preen around and act superior, as if they are putting themselves on display. That’s not purity.

No, purity is a matter of the heart. Jesus was right about that; imagine that! In the context of this letter, purity is honesty; we tell the truth about we are and what we know, never distorting or bending it in our own direction. We know we cannot make it on our own, so we reach for God’s cleansing power every single day. That’s purity.

What’s more, in this letter, purity of the heart is a matter of love. As we love, we show ourselves as offspring of God. God’s character is complete love, self-giving love. When we love the brother and sister around us, our love is perfected in practice. John says, “How can anybody say they love, if they have the world’s goods but refuse to help somebody in need? Little children, love is in truth and action.” (3:17-18)

Purity is a matter of honesty, it’s a matter of generous love, and it’s also a matter of restraint. We don’t chase after everything the world offers. We restrain ourselves from that, as a way of chasing after God.

John’s example is Jesus himself. “The world doesn’t know him,” says John (3:2). Why is that? Because Jesus shows restraint. He doesn’t reveal it all. At least, not yet.

Recall the story of his life: for over thirty years, Jesus blended in. He spent plenty of time in the family carpenter show, cutting lumber to size, catching the occasional splinter. To the neighbors around him, there was no halo over his head; that was painted in hundreds of years later. Even after the day he gave himself to be baptized – and the heavens were torn open, and the big Voice spoke, and the Spirit fluttered down like a dove – a number of people missed who Jesus was, in the same way that many people still miss him – they are looking for the flash and the sparkle and the dazzling light, not for the obscure Carpenter who quietly heals, calmly teaches, and rarely reveals more than a quick glimpse of his glory.

The real Jesus is largely hidden from the world, and in the same way, he will seen only by those who have a hiddenness to their purity. Let’s call them “saints.” They know the truth of who they are, and they know the mercy they need from God, and they know the love they are called to show abundantly to others. But it’s never stated in an attempt to impress or be superior.

That’s why saints will never succeed as television evangelists. That’s why saints will never tell you that bigger is always better. That’s why saints may be really quirky but never flashy. They are too busy purifying their hearts with truth, mercy, and love. They encourage others to do the same.

I sing a song of the saints of God. I have known many. So have you.

·         There’s the school teacher who prays through the list of neighbors in her diary and the retired cop who tutors stuttering kids in math.

·         There’s the widow who wore a yellow dress to her husband’s funeral after nursing him for three years, and the thrift store volunteer who never misses his shift.

·         There’s the single mom who works hard when her kids are at school and does what she can to be with them when they are home.

·         There’s the recovering alcoholic who goes whenever somebody else falls off the wagon, sometimes staying late in the night.

·         There’s the teen who stands up for anybody who is being put down.

·         And there’s the princess in the blue dress who says to her little brother, “I know you were sick and couldn’t go trick or treating; would you like some of my candy?” And then she gives it all to him.

Truth, mercy, love, restraint – these are the real pursuits of purity. Biblically speaking, this is how saints are made. We keep purifying ourselves through truth, mercy, love, and restraint. And the clear promise of scripture is that when Christ is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Madeline Levine, Ph.D., The Price of Privilege (New York: Harper, 2006)

How Do You Know That I Love You?

Matthew 22:34-40

October 26, 2014

William G. Carter

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

With that, the Pharisees were silenced, just like the Sadducees before them. It is Finals Week for Jesus. The scholars have put him through a series of final exams. They wait for him to trip up but he passes every test. In terms of theology, Jesus is untouchable. Morally, he is innocent, and personally, beyond accusation. They will have to get rid of him another way. Yet for the moment, he scores a hundred on the exam.

“Which of the 613 Jewish commandments is the greatest?” That’s what they want to know. He does not answer foolishly, selecting for instance, the laws about dealing with mold on your walls (Leviticus 14:37) or touching a corpse (Lev. 22:4) or consulting a fortune-teller (Lev. 20:6). Indeed there are Jewish laws for those sorts of things. The commandments gave direction for all aspects of daily life. It declared what foods are filthy and which days are holy.

But the greatest commandment was known by everybody in Jesus’ day. You sift through bits and pieces of holy guidance and you find the governing center of them: you shall love God. Love the Lord your God. Love the Lord your God with all your human abilities: the heart at the center of your being, the soul at the center of your breath and your passion, the mind at the center of intellect and reason. Love God with everything you are.

Moses first declared it from the mountain of Deuteronomy. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One; and you shall love the Lord your God.” That has always been, and always shall be, the first and greatest commandment. Love God.

Yet it seems to be the most slippery of commandments to keep. How do you love the Lord your God whom you cannot see? It is far simpler to do all those other things that God’s Torah declares: drain the blood out of chickens before you eat them (Lev. 7:26), stone all the mediums who host séances (Lev. 20:27), and rest on the Sabbath (Lev. 2:23). Those rules are clear. But love God? How do we love God?

I think this is more awkward that religious people will acknowledge. Religious people will quickly insert a lot of obligations here. They will say things like, “If you love God, you’ll show up for committee meetings. If you love God, you will fill out a pledge card. If you love God, you will fold newsletters this Wednesday. If you love God, you will come to my Bible study.” If I might pipe in here, Bible studies, newsletters, pledge cards, and committee meetings can all be wonderful things. They make a congregation buzz with energy.

But what’s the Big Deal at the center of it all? Today let me tell you a few brief stories, and testify to what I think it’s all about.

First, the heart. Ever spend any time on the cardiac floor? Last year on my 53^rd birthday, I met my friend Virginia for lunch at Five Guys for a burger and fries. It was a great day. I had cleared the afternoon of appointments. I looked forward to some family time at night. I even had a preacher lined up for the weekend, so all I had to do on Sunday was show up and smile. But there was a persistent tightness in my chest. It wasn’t the cheeseburger; it had been there for a week or two. I could hear my mother in my imagination, telling me to slow down, advice she has always given but never taken. So after lunch with my friend, I dropped by the doctor’s office, got an instant EKG, and was sent to a local hospital in a high-priced room. Happy Birthday to me.

I wasn’t very happy about it, but I’m too old to argue. I ran through a stress test and everything was fine. But my chest still ached. On Friday afternoon, the cardiologist stopped in and said, “You know, we think it’s a viral inflammation in your lungs, but we want to be sure.” That was what it was: pleurisy. But you know what that means on a Friday afternoon? It means you have a weekend to wait it out before the catheterization on Monday morning. That was annoying, especially since Monday’s test would later prove there was absolutely nothing wrong with my heart, and hospital incompetence would keep me there until Tuesday noon.

But a couple of things happened. There was an endless stream of friends: the pastor of Covenant church stopped by to deal a few hands of poker, a stack of abusive birthday cards made me chuckle, my wife who never takes a sick day for herself took two sick days to look in on me, and the guest preacher that I had booked stopped by twice to see me and pray. In the evenings, after visitors were dismissed, I stretched out in the hospital bed, listened to the fairly regular announcements of doom down the hall, and I found myself giving thanks for my life.

“Thank you, God,” I prayed out loud with my eyes open. “Thank you for this good life which I did not earn. Thank you for the many people who love me. Thank you for a good heart still ticking. Thank you for the reasonable nurse who shows me compassion. And thank you for that chicken cheese steak with extra peppers that I’m going to order the second I get out of here.”

Ever face the point of extremity? With the prospect that everything else could be scraped away? And what do you have? You have God. You have the God who created you, the Christ who gave himself to take away your sins, the Spirit who comes to fill you. In that moment, I loved God. With my heart.

Second, with my soul. “Soul” is our translation of the Hebrew “nephesh.” It is the living being, the essence of you that is alive. It is the exhilaration you feel on a roller coaster, the gasp you exhale when you see a mountain vista, the joy that seizes you when you see a brand-new baby. That’s the “nephesh,” the soul, the part of you that sings. So my second brief story is to tell you how I spent a weekend of the last two summers: I went singing with Bobby McFerrin.

Many of you have heard the story, so I’ll keep short. At a retreat center in Rhinebeck, New York, the ten-time Grammy award winner Bobby McFerrin leads an annual singing workshop. It’s pretty expensive, so I go only for a couple of days. And I’ve never known anything like it. 180 people are circled up in four part harmony, as Bobby and his colleagues give us improvised parts and we build a non-verbal symphonies on our feet. We sing spontaneous songs lasting ten or twelve minutes.

The immediacy of God’s Spirit that fills that room is palpable. I’ve been to Pentecostal prayer meetings that couldn’t hold a candle to the power of that joyful singing, led by Bobby, a quiet Episcopalian. And then, Judy Cutler and I go over to the salad bar for lunch, and Bobby slips up, sits down, and wants to talk about the Bible with us because he knows we are Presbyterians.

Now, all the glitter and adulation of stardom aside, have you ever bubbled over with joy? Has it ever happened with singing? I tell you, God is real because God has gotten into my lungs. And I can’t keep him there, I have to let him out so my voice can blend with others who are experiencing the same thing. The soul of biblical faith is the powerful experience of God. God cleanses, God heals, God can bring us completely alive – mere descriptions of the experience are empty. I’m testifying to the Real Thing: you can love a God that not only gives you life but brings you alive. That’s the soul of saving faith.

And then, the mind.  The noggin, the brain. It’s a different but complimentary way to love the Lord our God. The rabbis would say, “An hour of study is an hour of prayer.” We honor God, not by yammering on with religious clichés, but by engaging the intellect, by mentally stretching to understand a God who is greater than our understanding.

When my niece was little, we went for a walk by Grandpa’s oak trees. Enormous trees, and I said, “Laura, look how big they are!” She looked up, her eyes full of wonder. I bent down to pick up an acorn and said, “The next tree is hidden inside of this.” She touched the acorn in my hand and said, “How did God put it inside?” As far as I know, she never took a kindergarten botany class but she was asking the right kind of question.

This is a wonder-filled world and we can study what the ancients called, “the book of nature.” We can get outside and marvel at the arteries and veins of maple leaves, the ripples of Appalachian hills, the persistence of dandelions. Many of the proverbs of Scripture come from observations from nature. “Go to the ant, you lazybones, consider its ways and be wise” (Proverbs 6:6).

And beyond the book of nature is the larger book of Scripture, written for people like you and me, who trust God but want to grow in our understanding. We don’t study scripture as if it is some magic book, so we can manipulate the world to meet our needs. No, we go to scripture to hear the witness of how those before us have understood the mind of God.

The Bible can teach us what we might not otherwise know. The Bible points to a tribe of escaping slaves and says, “Freedom from unjust suffering.” The Bible points to an executed man on the cross and says, “He is your life and hope.” The Bible points to the horizon beyond what we can see and says, “It’s all going to turn out well for those who love God” (Romans 8:28). We wouldn’t know any of that, except as we study and learn about God. And we find ourselves loving God with the mind.

Heart, soul, mind. Do we have some sense of what it is to love God?

This is the core of it all. This is what must come first. We love our neighbors because of God, who gave the neighbors to us. We come together to sing and pray because of God at the center of our fellowship. We extend God’s compassion to those in need, because all of us are in need, and without God everything would collapse.

So this is how I want to talk about Stewardship Sunday – by inviting us to love God. That’s the center. That’s what comes before everything else.

·           If anybody ever talks to you about the church budget, ask them what that church budget is doing for God – because that’s the only thing that matters for a church of Christian people.

·           If anybody ever lays a guilt trip on you and says, “You ought to be doing more,” you remind them of how the scriptures say, “God loves a cheerful giver, not under obligation or compulsion.” (2 Cor. 9:7).

·           If anybody looks sad, grim, or anxious when it comes time to share what we have, speak gently to them of Jesus, who taught us to love God first, to love God completely – and then showed us sacrificially the extent of what that means.  He gave his all.

So that’s what I want to say about the Christian life. Not just about stewardship, but the whole Christian life. It’s about loving God with the heart, for God gives us this gift of life. It’s about loving God with the soul, for God can transform us inside and out. It’s about loving God with the mind, as we explore and pursue the things that God cares about. Heart, soul, mind – that’s the whole person.

And if we love God that completely, then loving God with the wallet is not so much of a stretch. In fact, generosity is the expression of our joy. 

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

The Money In Your Pocket

Matthew 22:15-22

October 19, 2014

William G. Carter

Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

I was reading somewhere about a woman who worked for the Internal Revenue Service. Her job for the IRS was to track down people who weren’t paying their taxes. Needless to say, it was a thankless job. She traveled through the hills of Appalachia, knocking on front doors and hearing people scramble out the back doors. If she actually found somebody, they often screamed, “You have no right to do this!” One old coot took a shot at her.

But she was persistent and rounded up a lot of tax evaders. She also heard a lot of excuses. The taxes are too high. The government does too little. The government does too much. The government is inefficient. The government didn’t make my money. The government didn’t use my money as I believe they should. The government didn’t send me a tax form so why should I fill one out? I didn’t vote for those people anyway, so why should I give them any taxes? And then there was her favorite excuse: we needed the money for something else – a house, a car, a flat screen TV.

I don’t know about you, but I pay my taxes. You never know if there is a hidden microphone, but it’s true. If I receive one of those computer-generated letters from the IRS, my heart beats a bit too fast. Once the tax people wrote and said that I had accidentally overpaid, and a larger refund was on the way; it took me three days to overcome the fear and open the letter. Even then, I read it over a few time to make sure that’s what it said.

So this Bible story about paying taxes has always struck me as a little odd. Back in chapter 17, some tax collectors wanted to know if Jesus paid his temple tax, to which Simon Peter piped up and said, “Sure, he does.” (17:24-25) The temple tax is what kept the temple going – it paid for the sacrificial animals that declared sins are forgiven. It was part of the tithe of every Jewish man.

But to pay tax to the emperor, to the Caesar in far-off Rome? That was a much different matter. And they wanted to know if Jesus believed they should pay it. And if you were listening to story, you know this is a freighted question. They are looking to trip him up. If he says, “Yes, we pay it,” he concedes to a pagan empire that occupies his country and taxes the people who live there to pay for the occupation. If he says, “No, don’t pay it,” he stands out as a rebel and they can hand him over to the empire. It’s a pretty slick question.

Add to the question the context: they ask this in Jerusalem, a heavily occupied city. It is Passover time, the city population swells, more soldiers are stationed, and tempers are already boiling. Jesus has already pulled a stunt by riding his Palm Sunday donkey into the Holy City, so everybody is watching him pretty carefully.

Not only that, he’s gone into the temple to toss over the tables of money-changers. Who were the money-changers? They translated the pagan Roman currency into Jewish temple money, often charging an exorbitant rate and plundering the people who really couldn’t afford it. Jesus turned over those tables in anger, so the religious leaders are really watching him.

And they pose the question, “Does the law of Moses permit us to pay money to Rome for these soldiers? Does the Torah teach that we should pay a foreign empire for invading our city?” They are looking for an interpretation of the Bible, and they are watching what he is going to say.

So what does he say? He says, “Anybody have a quarter?” There’s a pause and somebody has a quarter. Now, wait, I thought they were supposed to change the money and not bring it into the temple. They’ve had a couple of days to reset the moneychangers’ tables, and one of them is walking around with Roman money in his pocket?!? That’s idolatry. It has the image of Caesar and declares him a false god. And it’s really bad form; Jesus calls it “hypocrisy.” They want to pounce on him for the very thing that they have conceded to do.

Then we get the really famous line from the Lord: “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, give to God what belongs to God.” Their jaws drop and they walk away. Matthew says they had the same stunned look as did the women outside the Easter tomb: they were amazed.

It was a stunning, amazing, slippery way to get through a sticky situation. Jesus says, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, give to God what belongs to God.” But did you notice? He never specifies who gets what.

That’s the most frustrating part of the story. In good Jewish fashion, he answers their question with a question: should we pay that tax? Who has a coin for that tax? And then again, whose face is on this coin?  Jesus never pins down what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. He does not provide a checklist. The burden is on the people who hear him to figure it out for themselves and hope they get it right.

What belongs to Caesar? Well, every year I fill out a pile of papers and send in whatever I owe. It’s a thick pile and I have to pay somebody to help me figure it out. And on top of it, I’m considered self-employed (since I don’t have a bishop), so I have to subtract another 15.3% from my compensation and send that in, too. The church doesn’t pay my social security, I have to do that. My accountant says, “That’s what belongs to Caesar.” Pay it now or he will find you later.

Everybody wishes they could pay lower taxes. But I am glad to pay what I owe. I know what it covers: the drainage system in Chinchilla, the agencies searching for the cure for Ebola, the state police looking for that gunman in the woods. Taxes pay for clean water, fair trade, safe highways, good education, and countless ways for our lives to flourish and grow in a fairly open society. I’m OK with that.

I also know the taxes go to protect the free speech of people I’d rather not listen to, a gaggle of politicians who refuse to work together and don’t get enough done, and endless controversies about the issues du jour. Some of that bothers me, but I figure that’s the rent to pay for living in a representative democracy. I’d rather live here than in Ancient Rome or Occupied Jerusalem. How about you? Jesus said, “Give Caesar what belongs to Caesar.”

And then he said, “Give to God what belongs to God.” So what belongs to God?

One answer comes from a Psalm that Jesus and anyone else in that Temple would have known. Psalm 24:1 – “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who live in it.” To put it another way, everything belongs to God. The soil, the seas, the creatures, the people – nothing is excluded from God’s possession. That is the vision of scripture. Everything comes from God, everything belongs to God. According to the Psalm, God doesn’t draw boundaries as we draw boundaries. God doesn’t get the leftovers; God gets the whole thing.

So that’s one answer. It’s pretty general.

What belongs to God? Here’s another answer that Jesus and everyone else in that Temple would know. From Exodus 19, on the night before God gave the Ten Commandments, God said, “If you listen to my voice and keep my covenant, you will be my treasured possession out of all the peoples.” That is, the people who listen to the living voice of God, and keep the commitment to God that God has to them, they shall be God’s treasured possession.

Well, I’ve spent a lifetime around church people, so I prefer the King James Version of that verse: “Ye shall be a peculiar treasure.” (Exodus 19:5). That’s the truth. Peculiar, all right. There is something distinctive about the people who listen to God and keep the Holy Relationship alive among themselves. They worship together, pray together, study the Bible together, serve together, care for one another, sing together. They are God’s peculiar treasure. They belong to God.

What belongs to God? A whole world, to be sure. A distinctive faith community within that world. Again, Jesus does not parcel this out. He puts the burden to figure out where we put our energy, where we put our time, where we put the money that’s in our pockets. We have to give to God what belongs to God.

A woman named Judy was speaking to one of the parents in her church. The mother had insisted her children be baptized, but she said they were too busy to come to church. “I’m afraid we don’t have time for worship,” she said, “not with soccer and cheerleading on Sunday mornings. We have a full plate. Maybe in a few years. We will show up once in a while, when nothing else is going on.” Well, for her, what belongs to God? Only the leftovers, I’m afraid. She’s either letting her kids call all the shots, or she’s too busy keeping her kids busy.

It is a struggle to give God what belongs to God. I know that. My kids can tell you stories of what it was like to grow up in our house. Church came first, because God came first, because I was the parent. And if they grumbled because we didn’t do Saturday night sleepovers, I reminded them that my parents never gave me a choice on where I would be on Sunday morning, because they were good parents. They committed to shaping my life in the hearing of God’s Word and the keeping of God’s covenant. I knew I was a child of God, claimed by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even if I didn’t know what the words of the hymns meant, we were still going to sing them together until the words made sense.

I know it’s a struggle. These days there is so much calling for our attention, so many distractions to tug us this way or that. We live in a culture obsessed with entertainment, telling us something is only worthy if it is fun. We also live in a sea of competition, telling us we are valuable only if we win. And then somebody lies to us and gives us a trophy even if we come in last place. Why? Because that makes it fun. It’s so confusing.

So take the money out of your pocket and give it a good look. It is a symbol of your time and labor, but it is a symbol also of the life you have been given. That breath you just took, that conscious thought, that twitch of the muscle – it all originates from God. Caesar didn’t give that to you; maybe he thinks he did, but all things come from God. You can take that quarter and spend it on something, spend it on anything, although it’s not going to purchase as much as it once did. Maybe it will buy an hour in a Clarks Summit traffic meter, or a gumball from a machine.

But what if we gave it to God? What if we gave it to God first, to declare that Caesar doesn’t own me, that the Empire doesn’t own me, that my work doesn’t own me, that my distractions don’t own me, that my friends don’t own me, that my ceaseless  schedule doesn’t own me? Only God is worthy of my complete attention and my wholehearted commitment. What belongs to God is . . . me . . . and you . . . and all of the daily gifts that we take for granted. It matters what we do with what we have received. God delivers what Caesar cannot. God is worthy of it all.

So I was thinking about how to wrap this up, seeking some kind of inspirational quote, when I bumped into my bookshelf and a book fell down. It was a book by the Quaker Thomas Kelly, and here are the words that opened for us:

We are trying to be several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single mastering Life within us.  Each of us tends to be, not a single self, but a whole committee of selves. There is the civic self, the parental self, the financial self, the religious self, the society self, the professional self… and each of our selves is in turn a rank individualist, not cooperative but shouting out his vote loudly for himself when the voting time comes… We feel honestly the pull of many obligations and try to fulfill them all. And we are unhappy, uneasy … and fearful we shall be shallow. For over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by… Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center. Most of us have not surrendered all else, in order to attend to the Holy Within.[1]

Ah, it’s God who is at the Center, God who can ground us from the Center, inviting us to offer only what He has first given to us.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Thomas R. Kelly, A Testament of Devotion (New York: 1941) pp. 114-15.

But I Thought I Was Invited

Matthew 22:1-14

October 12, 2014

William G. Carter

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, 'Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.' But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, `The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.' Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

"But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, `Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, `Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen."

Maybe it is an occupational hazard, but I have seen a lot of crazy things that happen at a wedding. Perhaps it is the monogrammed nature of the event, with most couples wanting to add their own personal stamp to a day that is pretty much identical to everybody else’s. We have all seen the bubbles, the balloons, the birdseed, and the best man who gives an inappropriate toast. A lot of weddings feature a drunken uncle or the cousin who suddenly overcomes a fear of dancing.

I have given the benediction to two lovebirds who roared off on matching motorcycles. Or there was that day when I yelled at a photographer who climbed over these pews to get a good shot. My very first wedding featured a few ushers who stood out in the narthex and handed out bottles of Budweiser to the guests as they arrived. And I know about the bridesmaids who hid a goat in the bridal suite on their best friend’s big day.

But only once have I encountered a bouncer posted at the door of the reception. He was 6’5,” shaved bald like Mr. Clean, with an ominous scar on his upper lip. It was a shock to see him. “I’m here to keep the ex-husband out,” he announced. And it worked.

That picture comes to mind when I return to this strange parable in the Gospel of Matthew. There is a bouncer at the party to which everybody has been invited. The host is a king who has gone to extraordinary lengths to fill up the banquet hall. He invited the people on his A List, but they would not come. He invited them again, saying, “Look at all the food, everything is ready – I want you to come!” But they refused, ignored him, turned abusive and murderous. So the king, in his rage, blasted them away. Let me remind us: this is the Gospel of Matthew, which specializes in over-the-top parables.

Then, like the owner of the vineyard in chapter 20 who hired workers all day, like the landowner in chapter 21 who persisted in chasing after his rent, the king of chapter 22 sent more servants to invite more people to his party. The A List had refused, so he invited the B List, the C List, anybody who would come. He wants a full banquet hall. He insists on every chair filled.

Yet when he appears at the door to work the crowd, he sees some poor sap who shouldn’t be there, so he motions to the bouncers and they toss him out of the room. The lesson is “Everybody is invited, but that doesn’t mean you can stay.”

Earlier in the week, I surveyed some of my preacher friends and asked, “What are you going to do with this one?” My friend Susan was probably the clearest in stating, “It’s a hundred times easier to talk about idolatry and the golden calf.” Indeed it is. Anybody can wag a finger at the manufactured deities that otherwise Christian people worship and devote their money. It’s a lot harder to hear that God’s Kingdom is like a big party where everybody is welcome but some get tossed out.

It helps a little bit to remember this parable is in Matthew’s collection. Matthew snarls a good bit, hurling verbal thunderbolts to scare people out of hell. He hovers over those stories Jesus told where an unfaithful investor is thrown into outer darkness, or the story about the slave who has been forgiven but cannot forgive somebody else and thus is tossed in the dungeon. Jesus told other kinds of stories, too, but Matthew prefers stories where people get punished. I wonder what kind of people were showing up in his church.

It is Matthew, only Matthew, where Jesus is quoted as saying, “Not everybody who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ is going to enter my kingdom, but only those who do the will of my Father” (7:21-22). It’s Matthew who can’t stop wagging his finger at the hypocrites, at the people who put on a good face when their hearts are ugly. In other words, they are faking it. “Play acting” is the literal meaning of “hypocrite.” They put on the outward show, they say all the right holy jargon – but that’s not who they are at all.

Like this poor sap who shows up at the wedding banquet: he’s in the right place, but he doesn’t look right at all. There is an inconsistency between how he looks and where he is. And when he is called on it, he can’t even find the words to explain. No, sadly no. He is a fake.

I think I know this man. I have seen him in my own bad dreams. Know what I mean?

Back in my last year of college, I was required to take a class that I did not want to take. I knew I didn’t want to take it, because I tried to take it two times and backed out quickly. Once with a tough professor, once with an easy professor. I hated the class, so I dropped it like a hot potato and took something else. The academic department disagreed, and stated if I was going to get my diploma, I had to take the class.

So I bought the textbook ahead of time, read it, and said, “This is easy.” I signed up for the class the third time, and then I did what every immature student does when his parents are spending a lot of money on his education: I skipped all the classes. I didn’t go. But I show up to take the midterm, and I knew the material cold. I went in, I took the test, I aced all the answers, and with a triumphant grin, I walked forward to hand my winning exam to the professor. And then he said it, “Who are you?” Uh… uh… I had no words. He did give me the A, but I was exposed. He knew I was a fake.

I have never forgotten the feeling, the fog of inconsistency, the sense of disconnection. I was in the wrong place, pretending to do the right thing. Ever have that feeling yourself? It’s like a bad dream

I have the dream sometimes. It’s a funeral of somebody well loved, and it’s going to be well attended. That day, the church is already full, the parking spaces are taken, and I wake up late. There’s no time to shave, I didn’t have time to iron my shirt, and they are waiting for me. I rush in to pull on my black robe, but it doesn’t fit. So I yank it and it rips, but it’s time for the service to begin. So I rush into the sanctuary, I don’t know where I left my sermon, and they are all waiting for me to speak –and I look down, and I don’t know these people at all. I’m in the wrong church. And unanimously they look up at me and say, “Who are you?”

It’s a bad dream. Nobody wants to be exposed as an imposter. Nobody wants to be seen for how inadequate they really are. Try as you might to hide it, try as you might they will learn the truth about you – that you don’t know what you’re doing, that you don’t know which fork to use, that you have forgotten your hostess’ name, that you have no business being there. And you don’t even have the proper wedding gown to pull over your head.

Matthew’s parable is pretty extreme at points, but this part is dead-on accurate. Everybody else got the memo on how to dress. Everybody else knew where they were and how they needed to act. The king had no trouble spotting the one who didn’t fit in, the one who did not belong. With perfect clarity, the king says, “Buddy, how did you get in here?” He’s busted. It’s one of those bad dreams.

Why do I call it a dream? Because of what somebody points out about this parable:

“Real people don’t turn down a king’s dinner invitation, much less torture and kill the messengers who came to fetch them. Because once you have a whole ox and several fatted calves on serving platters, they won’t keep while you wage war on a whole city, kill its inhabitants, and torch the place. Because who really expects someone napped in the middle of [daily chores] to have a clean wedding garment in the back of the truck?”[1]

Jesus tells this fantasy story as a way of getting to a real issue. He calls it a parable, which is like a fantasy or a dream. It’s a big spacious story where we can walk around, smell the banquet, hear the dance, see the variety of faces, and then spot that one hapless imposter who is truly in the wrong place. And that’s when it reveals its message.

All of us know the problems of being a hypocrite. It takes a lot of energy to maintain an extra persona. You say one thing but you do another. You say, “Have a great day” to the person at the check-out line and blast your horn at the slowpoke in the parking lot. You tell everybody how worried you are about the homeless, the hungry, the young people – but then you never lift a finger to help. You announce how important it is for people to be generous, but you yourself never write the check. You tell your family you love them, but all they see are the evaporated words going into the air. It takes such energy to construct a false face.

As Matthew reports it, nowhere is this more obvious than in the realm of religion. In his day, religious people had an endless capacity to make up lies about how good they are – they talk a good talk about living righteously while they plunder the poverty of widows, they use the privileges of their institution to put a burden on the backs of other people. They preach the prophets of Israel, calling out the idolatries of their land, while ignoring the man who needs a cup of cold water and warm place to stay the night.

Meanwhile there’s another kind of hypocrisy, too, a fear that, maybe if I am exposed, I will not be included. That if they really knew how inadequate I feel, they wouldn’t want me around. Some of you know what I mean. You can hold the hymnal right-side up and sing all the words, but you aren’t confident that they apply to you. You try so hard but you’ve never excelled. People pat you on the back and say “great job!” but you have a hard time believing it. You see the obviously unworthy man bounced from the king’s wedding banquet, and you live in terror that maybe you are next.

So here’s the thing – we walk around in the parable, smell the banquet, see the dance, and if there is any way that it confronts us, then we have the opportunity to be healed. To have the false self expelled and the true self revealed. To welcome the truth that exposes before it welcomes. It is, as one old theologian said, “To accept the fact that we are acceptable to God,” just as we are, not merely as we wish others to see, but as we are: broken, needy, hungry to be loved – and welcomed to a generous banquet that we could never manufacture ourselves.

This is the Gospel’s invitation for us. The place cards have our names handwritten. The King will do anything to get us to come, all in the hope that we will want it enough that we will stay. The invitation is for all who come as they are in the grace of Jesus Christ, and not merely as they discount themselves or want others to imagine them to be.

So we come . . . We come in the simplicity of our baptismal gowns, we come in the integration of our words with our deeds, we come in the great truth that God’s Rule over us is a festive celebration, after all, a wedding of heaven and earth where the will of God is done and the love of Christ is made real.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, unpublished sermon on this parable