Muffled Voices

 Matthew 21:23-32

You know those moments when you can’t say anything right, so you don’t say anything at all?

When a friend is angry, or grieving, and I can’t tell them that I understand – because I don’t! – but anything else I can think of to say would just make it worse.

When you see something going wrong at work, or in a family member’s life, but you know how much trouble you’ll be in if you suggest that the boss is making a really stupid decision, or that the “love of my life” is untrustworthy. 

This week – in an online discussion among friends – I created and deleted the same comment four times, because I couldn’t find a way to say what I thought that wouldn’t upset people I basically agree with.  

Sometimes you just opt out of conversations, because it feels risky to speak your mind. Sometimes I worry that sharing a truth I’ve learned, or a belief I deeply hold, will be dismissed as “political.”

I don’t know if you’ve felt that, too, but I’m pretty sure the Temple leaders were feeling it in the story Matthew tells us today.

The chief priests and the elders have come to talk with the radical rabbi who was throwing tables around in the Temple yesterday. He’s become something of a celebrity, and he seems to be teaching people that they can ignore and challenge a lot of customs and rules and carefully-constructed plans that keep religious life going smoothly in an occupied country.

“By what authority are you disrupting things?” they ask Jesus. “Who told you to do all this?”

It’s a reasonable question, but it’s also an attempt at a trap, and Jesus turns that right back around. He asks the leaders where they think John the Baptist got his authority, and they flounder. 

John’s got wide acceptance now as a prophet – a man “from heaven”, who speaks on God’s authority. The people aren’t going to stand for it if you say he was just a kook. But John claimed that Jesus had that same divine authority – actually even more divine authority – and the leaders are going to get in trouble with everybody – the Roman government, other rabbis, and lots of people – if they call John, and therefore Jesus, a heavenly prophet now.

There’s nothing right to say, so they don’t say anything at all.

Which, of course, undermines their public authority and doesn’t satisfy anyone, including themselves.

They’ve been caught in the trap of “politics in church”, and it’s a lose-lose situation for them.

So Jesus tells them a story.

Two sons are sent by their father to work in the family business. One says no, the other yes; both do the opposite of what they said. It’s entirely obvious to everyone in the Temple that day, like it is to us, that actions matter more than words.
It’s easy to read that as Jesus condemning the priests and elders as hypocrites for saying one thing and doing another.  But I think it’s possible that Jesus was actually telling them a story of hope.

He recognizes that they are trapped in silence by the politics – the everyday power dynamics – of the Temple. No matter what they actually believe, they can’t speak their minds, or tell their truth. No matter what they say, they are at risk; they have too much to lose. 

But Jesus’ story reminds us that there’s more to who we are than what we say – or what we don’t say. That our relationship with God, our salvation, the wholeness of our faith is not based on saying the right thing, or on staying out of trouble. Our relationship with God, the faith that sustains our life, our part in salvation, is about what we do with our hearts and hands. The opportunity to recognize the work of God in Jesus, to learn from him, imitate him, follow him is still open to every one of the chief priests and elders, even as they deny him right now with their words and their silence.

That’s true for you and me, too. 

For any of us who feel like there’s no safe place or way for us to speak our faith, our trust in God and commitment to Jesus.
It’s very often risky – to our relationships, our sense of security, our sense of place – to say out loud a truth our faith teaches about what justice means, or peace. Risky to say out loud that our allegiance is to God, rather than any human leader; risky to say that we hear God’s truth in the words and actions of someone who isn’t popular with our friends.

Jesus hears that.  I believe Jesus would prefer if we could claim those truths out loud and without hedging. But Jesus still tells a story that offers hope when we’re trapped in uncomfortable silence.

We might not speak the truth of God, but there’s still space to act it. 

You don’t have to win an argument about how God’s justice should be done in our world – you can buckle down and spend your time, talents, and treasure to make God’s justice happen, one person or a whole system at a time.  

When any and every single word you might say will upset a family member or get you in trouble with a friend – you can use your hands and heart and physical presence to love beyond measure. 

When you can’t speak without losing your authority, you can use your authority to protect others, or free someone else to speak and act the truth.

This story Jesus tells does not mean that nothing we say actually matters. Words are actions, sometimes. Any time you have the power to make your words true; when you have the ability to decide who belongs, or what is acceptable; when a listener can’t tune you out or ignore what you say, then your words are actions. 

It also doesn’t mean that doing our faith, doing God’s work, is ever easier than saying we believe, or speaking the truth.

But Jesus does offer this second way, and he offers a model to follow. The tax collectors and prostitutes – the folks of his day with the least religious and moral authority and acceptance – are way ahead of the religious leaders in the kingdom of God.
The ones without authority are already acting on God’s truth revealed in Jesus, while the authorities in the Temple have too much to lose to say God’s truth or their own beliefs out loud.

It’s a hint that we may be more free to speak and act when we let go of all we have to lose. And a nudge that we, too, may hear God’s truth in the voices and actions of those without authority. A caution that looking to authority – our own, or others – for answers may block our view of God at work. 

Whoever we are, whatever fear or hope makes us speak or keeps us silent, the story Jesus tells reminds us there is still and always room to draw closer to God. 

The story Matthew tells us today contains a challenge – a challenge to act God’s truth in our lives, now and always. 

And it also contains a promise – that whatever is muffling our voices – yours and mine, the Temple leaders or the tax collectors – God hears our truth in our hearts and hands, our actions and our love. And God responds to it all.

The Marketplace

 Matthew 20:1-16

Every time I read or hear this story, I get an itch in my fingers or the back of my neck at the unfairness of it all. I love to know that God is excessively generous to people who don’t earn it, but why not be crazy generous to people who put in the time, also?

Then in this story, Jesus reminds me I don’t get to choose God’s generosity to fit my preferences, and I don’t get to be indignant about the distribution of grace. I want to love what Jesus is up to, but it still feels… itchy. My shoulders twitch. And I have to learn to embrace my discomfort – to love not just God’s overwhelming generosity, but also the fact that divine generosity doesn’t follow my rules or expectations.

But the nice thing (and the frustrating thing!) about parables is that they are never about just one idea, one truth.

Every time I have read this story in a group, while I’m wrestling with my sense of unfairness about the pay scale, someone else asks “Why are there all these laborers who weren’t working all day?” “Why does that landowner keep going out and hiring more people?”

There’s another unsolved God-mystery in this story, a mystery in the marketplace.

And that mystery is part of our God story – yours and mine – too.

We don’t really know why that landowner keeps going out to the marketplace. Matthew and Jesus explain other things in this story, but not that. Biblical scholars and historians say it doesn’t make any more sense in the practices of the time than it does now. We don’t know – can’t know – but we can speculate.

If you had a vineyard – a business or some other asset – that could feed everyone who walked through the gates, regardless of how much anyone works, would you go out and invite people in? Would you go out just once, or over and over? Why?

It’s a question many of us have probably never considered, or thought we needed to consider. 

But asking it may change something about the way we see the world, or ourselves.  

Many of us do have assets – financial or physical, or skills and talents – that can benefit more people than we need to make those assets work. All of us share one thing like that: the church and the gospel, which spiritually feed more people than the folks who volunteer or are paid to tend them.

What would motivate you to keep inviting more people in, to share the spiritual food, or the physical benefits of what we have, with people whose work we don’t really need in order to experience those benefits ourselves?

Why does that landowner keep going out? We don’t know, but it’s a good question to ask ourselves. It’s a God question to ask.

So is the question of why there are people in the marketplace waiting to be hired at noon, three, or even five p.m.

The five o’clock laborers in Jesus’ story actually give us part of the answer to that question. When the landowner asks “why are you standing here all day?”  they say “because no one has hired us.”

Not because they didn’t want to work. Not because they’re bad workers. Plainly and simply “Because no one has hired us.”

We need to hear that that also means “Because you did not hire us.”  

That landowner has been hiring people all day, and still didn’t hire this group, who have waited and waited until the end of the day.

I don’t know – we can’t exactly know – what the labor market was like in first century Palestine. But it might be worth asking ourselves who doesn’t get hired today, or who gets hired last.

We generally don’t hire the people who don’t seem to fit the job. Sometimes that means, very practically, that you don’t hire a priest to do brain surgery, or a veterinarian to re-wire your house.

But we also know – because the news keeps turning up studies that demonstrate this – that two identical resumes get different results depending on whether the name at the top of the page sounds male or female, Asian or African-American or ‘white’ or Native or immigrant.  That a job offer or salary offer or invitation to leadership often depends unconsciously on whether the person in question is tall, or attractive, or “looks gay”, has lighter or darker skin, or is visibly disabled.  All these are things that unconsciously play into who we think “belongs” or “fits”.

Those are hiring trends of the early twenty-first century United States, not of first-century Palestine, but they make me remember who is telling this story.

Jesus, who tells us this story, broke every barrier and taboo there was in his day about who is worthy, who fits the job, and who belongs. Jesus brought “unclean” lepers into the community of the righteous. Jesus sought out “sinners” and helped them see themselves as God’s beloved; sought out “unqualified” people like tax collectors and fishermen, and made them religious leaders. Jesus numbered women – hardly considered real persons – among his friends and disciples, and put the news of resurrection in the mouths of those most likely to be doubted, ignored, and overlooked.

It helps me to remember that this story was not primarily told to the powerful leaders of Jesus’ day.  It was told first to a messy bunch of the marginalized and average; to a group of the oppressed mixed with some comfortable people who were willing to step out of their comfort zone for love of Jesus, and be ridiculed or punished for it by their peers.  

It may help to remember, too, that the latecomers in the community that handed the story on to us may have been people who’d heard the gospel many times, but just weren’t ready to accept God’s grace until late in their own day, and want to extend the same invitation to you and me.

We don’t know – can’t know for sure – why there were still laborers to be hired in that marketplace at noon, at three, or at five in the evening.  Maybe it’s because we – you or I – did not invite them to share our vineyard. Maybe it’s because they were well-qualified, but everyone believed they wouldn’t “fit” the job; maybe it’s because they wanted to work but did not know how until the right person came with the right invitation. 

We don’t know, but these are good questions to ask ourselves. These are God questions to ask. 

These are questions God might ask of us:
Why are there people left out of the kingdom at this late hour, my friends?

or
Why are you still standing out here, outside the kingdom, at this late hour, dear friends?

God doesn’t answer all the questions we have – about this story, or about anything else.

Jesus consistently raises questions we can’t quite solve.

But God and Jesus give us answers, too, to the questions we don’t know how to ask, or might not dare to ask. To the questions in this story, and in our own stories.

Yes, God will keep looking for you, coming back again and again until you, too, are brought into the vineyard, the kingdom of heaven.

Yes, God sends us out, with Jesus, over and over, to seek out those who have not been hired, to bring more people in, until all the barriers that keep people out are erased, and we have shared God’s work and grace with everyone.

Yes, God delights in giving us more than we can earn or deserve. And, yes, we are called share that generosity ourselves, not be tied down by anyone’s rules or feelings about fairness, including our own.

Yes, early or late, righteous or sinner, oppressed or privileged, uncertain or convinced, happy or sad, we all belong – equally and without merit – in the love and grace of the kingdom of Go

Because We Belong

Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35

Why are you here?

 

Assuming you didn’t just fall into worship by accident – which is not impossible for the livestream - why did you make your way to the church website or the phone conference for this service? Why did you register ahead, put on your mask, and carefully enter the church this morning?

 

The answer that comes into your mind might have to do with people or music, communion or scripture, or things you’ve agreed to do to help make this service happen. But Paul and Matthew are unanimous in asserting today that there is only one right answer.

 

You’re here, I’m here – together, electronically and physically – we are here because we belong to the one Lord.

We do not live for ourselves, we do not die for ourselves,

says Paul.

We live to the Lord, we die to the Lord, we are the Lord’s possession.

We are not supposed to be here for our own reasons. We are church, we are here, only and above all because we belong to Christ, to God, heart, soul, mind and body - completely.

 

The act of faith in Christ is about yielding ourselves entirely to God, rejoicing and thriving in God’s direction and control of our lives.

I know that can sound kind of creepy to many of us – we know the evil of the lie that one human being can be owned by another; and we’re taught to value independence, to belong to ourselves, thank you very much.

But our Christian faith, our spiritual growth, is always a journey toward the kind of union with Christ that “puts God in the driver’s seat.” Belonging to God is a deep commitment of love and trust that transforms our selves and lives. Belonging entirely to God frees us from all other claims – the claims of the anxieties and hurts that fill our everyday life.

 

Both Paul and Matthew appeal to that core truth today as they consider how we respond to differences, divisions, and injuries within our Christian community.

 

“How much am I supposed to forgive my sister or brother?” Peter asks Jesus.

“More than you can count,” Jesus answers. “There’s no “enough” with forgiveness among those who belong to God. There’s only more than enough.”

 

Then Jesus tells a story about someone who owed more than any of us can conveniently imagine. When you hear “ten thousand talents”, think “the US national debt” (a number with twelve zeroes after it – before you even get to the decimal place! Compare that with your credit card, or home cost, or income.)

This isn’t a personal debt. It’s a world-eating, unimaginable debt – a debt that owns the person who owes it.

 

We can feel the astonishment in Jesus’ story as that impossible debt is canceled. We can share a sense of overwhelming freedom at the gift of a life – more than a life, a whole world of release and renewal. And then we’ll feel the shock when the newly-freed person holds tight and brutally to another debt, rejecting that gift of freedom; choosing to belong – still or again – to the constricting world of power and anger, anxiety and need.

 

Modern psychology is happy to tell you that forgiving others means letting go of our hurts, and that’s good for us. But that’s not what Peter and Jesus are talking about today. When Jesus tells us to forgive without limits, it’s not advice to let an abuser off the hook, or to ignore someone who keeps stealing from you.
Matthew does not imagine that we can ignore one another’s hurts in the Christian community and expect to be forgiven, or that forgiveness is an act of will. 

Matthew is talking about belonging to a community where all forgiveness is the unrelenting, more-than-enough forgiveness of God. This whole conversation about forgiveness is set in the context of the accountability process Jesus has just set out – we heard it last Sunday.

 

If your sibling sins against you – if your fellow committed Christian hurts you – you take it up directly with them. If that doesn’t resolve it, get others of the Body, others who belong heart soul and body to Christ, to address it with you. If that doesn’t work, get the whole community of God’s own engaged. 

 

If that process doesn’t work, that means that the offender isn’t actually one of those who belong to God.  They’re people God wants to welcome, yes. They just are not currently part of the community of overwhelming, unlimited forgiveness.

 

This seventy times, more-than-enough forgiveness isn’t about choosing to ignore an injury or forcing ourselves to forget. It’s a result of that process Jesus lays out – a process of rooting ourselves together in our shared experience of absolute trust in Christ, making ourselves a community committed to belonging to God: heart, body, mind, and soul.

 

Paul tells us the same thing: that the divisions and differences that scare us, that feel like they could tear the church apart, are meaningless against the reality that we belong to God, not to ourselves. That we together belong to God completely.

 

The vegetables and festivals, the eating and not eating, that Paul talks about are the first-century Roman equivalent of the ways we – intentionally or not – separate our righteousness from one another’s today.

It’s like the question of whether the marriage, ordination, and full inclusion of gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgender, and otherwise “queer” folk are a sin that offends God and destroys communities, or faithful love and service taken directly from the teaching of Christ which makes us all stronger. 
Meat and vegetables, festivals and fasts were to the Romans what conversations about race and racism may be to the church today.  Active anti-racism work is love, repentance, and spiritual growth to some of us; to others of us, it’s the dangerously offensive territory of “politics in church.”

In generations past, it was the difference between “slavery is in the Bible, ordained by God,” and “it’s a sin and a crime to claim to own another human being; Christ makes us all free.”  It’s been the differences over the work of women in the church, or who receives communion, and how and when.

For some of us, these days, it’s wearing masks in church or gathering for worship at all. Both may feel to some of us like a sinful disregard for others.

 

These are some (but hardly all!) of the ways we cause hurt, loss, fear, and grief to one another.  Those things dig deep into our spiritual selves when they make us feel excluded from community and separated from God.

What holds us together in the face of those injuries – what has allowed us to find a way forward together, to recognize a sin we all share and renounce it, or learn to love our differences – is that we belong, together, to God, who is the only judge of our righteousness and faith.

 

Paul tells you and me, here and now, the same thing he tells the Christian community growing in Rome in the first generation after Jesus’ death and resurrection. “It is before God, not you, that your sisters and brothers stand or fall. And the Lord is able to make them righteous….” Yes, even those who you know are absolutely getting it wrong.  

 

Paul tells us this so we can stop believing that a faithful practice different from mine is a sin, or designed to hurt me. Instead, Paul tells us to look only at the truth that God is in charge. Paul tells us to remember that we owe ourselves, heart, mind, soul and body, to God. And that God’s claim on us stands between us and the judgement or insults of others, and between our judgement and those same others.

 

There’s only one right answer to why we are here – why we gather in Christian community. It’s because we belong to God: heart, body, mind and soul. Because we each and together belong to God so completely that we can be free of every other claim. And when injury and anxiety, human pain and sin cannot hold us, we are free to forgive our siblings beyond all measure, and be forgiven ourselves, free to be loved entirely and without limit.