Stretch Goals

Matthew 24:34-46

Do you remember the “WWJD” fad of the 1990s when those four letters suddenly appeared on everything? There were t-shirts, hats, socks, pens, teddy bears…. and mostly bracelets.  Sports stars and celebrities wore WWJD bracelets, and so did teens all over the country.

Committed Christians and vague theists alike wore – and asked – the question: “What Would Jesus Do?”

And today, we hear the answer, because the Pharisees also want to know: Jesus, what’s the most important commandment to do?

Jesus doesn’t hesitate: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself. Everything else depends on this.

What Jesus would do, it seems – what Jesus would have us do, too – is to love God. Which we cannot do without loving those whom God loves. Our neighbors – all God’s people. 

And Jesus isn’t talking about love as a feeling, but love as concrete, practical action. 

Like showing up and being fully present. That matters in marriage and in church and in kids’ soccer games. 

Speaking up for who you love, or what you love. Or staying silent to make space for who and what you love. That matters in friendships and faith and “water-cooler” conversations and official meetings. 

Putting muscle and time and investment into what matters – that’s love in gardens and the messy details of surgical recovery and in buildings that house family and create community.

We know that’s love, because we can feel the lack of love when someone doesn’t show up for, speak up for, or invest in us.

And we know it’s love because when we show up and speak up and invest in our spouses, children, siblings, parents, friends, it not only expresses, but increases our love for one another.

And Jesus describes love as behavior that comes with benchmarks, just like all those business consultants tell you about making your goals practical. Love God with all of your heart, your soul, and your mind. It’s a 100% benchmark.  And love your neighbor as yourself. That’s a measurement we carry everywhere we go: our selves.

Jesus’s great commandments are practical, measurable, and simple.

But not always easy.

To love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind; to love our neighbors as ourselves – these are stretch goals even for the saints. Many of the figures of faith that we look up to – from Paul to Mother Teresa and hundreds in between – have documented their sense of how far they still have to go in the love of God and neighbor.  So it’s reasonable for you and me to expect ourselves to have to stretch and grow, all our lives long.

The life of faith is not what happens when we have achieved 100% love of God and neighbor, it’s what happens as we practice, as we stretch, toward those goals. The life of faith, the keeping of the commandments, is always the stretching toward that all-encompassing love. 

That’s the whole story of spiritual growth that we’ve been talking about since we began the Renewal Works process nearly two years ago – an ongoing story of steps and exercises and reaching out a little further: small actions, things we do that shape us into the love of God, given and received and shared.

The Consecration Sunday approach to stewardship that we have been following for a few years is one of those exercises that helps us grow toward loving God with all we are, and experiencing God’s all-encompassing love for us. It’s about always taking one more step in our relationship with God, not standing still. Some of us will be stretched, each year, at the same amount of giving we chose before; some of us need to choose a new number – higher or sometimes lower – that reflects what it means to stretch toward God’s love among the changes in our world and selves. In every case, it’s a matter of making our giving decisions be about what will help us show up, speak up, and invest in the love of God. 

The same thing applies to all the other things we do, the other actions that help us grow in the love of God and neighbor. For some of us, donating money or canned goods to a feeding program is a stretch that helps us learn to love our neighbors. Others – or the same us, at a different time – will need to stretch into cooking for a feeding program or helping write new laws that make it harder for folks working full time to go hungry, putting muscle and time into practicing God-love.  For others – or at other times – we need to stretch by sitting down at the table for the soup kitchen meal as equals, loving our neighbors by the kind of showing up and listening that help us experience our neighbors as ourselves, with no distinction between us. 

Those same patterns of practicing and stretching, of love showing up, speaking up, and digging in apply to our prayer life, too. Is it a stretch to show up for a little more Bible reading every day? To speak up and ask someone else about their faith; to step back and listen carefully? Or is your stretch toward the all-encompassing love of God about putting muscle into what you’ve been praying for?

And the great commandments don’t stop there. They apply to our lives in things that may seem to have little to do with our faith.

The direction to love God one hundred percent and our neighbors as ourselves can be applied practically to help us make decisions about questions as different as whether to travel for Thanksgiving or to open a new business. 

The standards of love of God and neighbor can help us untangle knots as tight and messy as the partisan divisions of our country. When we’re focused on the love of God there’s a lot of common ground on which to love the neighbors whose votes and voices challenge our own. 
Applied one challenge at a time, the all-encompassing love of God and all God’s people can manage the frustrations and fears of this ongoing pandemic.

To love God and neighbor with all of our selves will always stretch us. 

It is not easy, but it is essential.

And we do not do it alone. 

By chance or by design, when we pray the Collect for this Sunday – the prayer of the day for the Episcopal Church – we ask God to make us love these commandments. We turn to God to fill us with the love, desire and longing to do as God directs; we rely on God to create in us the love of God’s commandments which brings us to the fulfillment of all God’s promises. 

The love we are commanded to share is not something we create ourselves. It is rooted in and grown from God’s love and care for us.

Love God. Love God’s people. Everything else depends on this.
Simple and stretching. Practical and essential.

We live our way into the love of God and God’s people, action by action, day by day, because first and always, we have been loved by God.

Currency

 Matthew 22:15-22

How often do you look at your money?

Not the balance in your bank account, but the currency you carry.

I pretty much never look at it, myself. These days, with credit cards and electronic payments, we don’t handle cash as often as we used to. But today Jesus is asking us to stop and take a look at it.

Specifically, the Roman denarius, the common coin of the Empire which ruled Israel in Jesus’ time; the pay of the day laborer, and the physical manifestation of the imperial tax system.

This coin contains the trap that the Pharisees were setting for Jesus, when they asked him if it was “lawful” – if it is in accordance with God’s will – to pay imperial taxes.

The denarius was stamped with a picture of the emperor, and the words, “Emperor Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus” – making the claim that the emperor Augustus was a god (so Tiberias is a son of god). The coin itself was an idol of the imperial religion; blasphemy, for anyone who follows the commandment “You shall have no other gods before me.”

But that same blasphemous image is the way Jesus slips out of the trap. “Well, if it’s got the emperor’s image and title, obviously it belongs to the emperor; give it back.”

And give back to God what is God’s. That’s the will of God that you’re asking about.

It’s a smooth move: if you’re worried about blasphemy on the coins, if you’re worried the currency argues with the center of your faith, then give it back to the empire; don’t hold on to the idol and let it hang on to you.

But when Jesus adds “and give back to God what is God’s”, it becomes much more than a clever tactic. It’s a declaration of what really matters. The emperor’s claim on currency doesn’t interfere with the will of God because what matters is the whole will of God, not specific rules.

I believe Jesus is trying to point out to us that if we commit to putting God above everything else, all the other questions – about the emperor’s claim to divinity, the emperor’s claim on our life and our wallets, any other claim on our life and our wallets – become unimportant and easy to set aside.  Those things won’t trouble us when the focus of our lives is on God: God’s will and God’s relationship with us.

Jesus tells the crowd in the Temple that you can tell the coin belongs to the emperor because it’s got the image of the emperor on it. Which implies, of course, that what belongs to God is whatever bears God’s image. And the Pharisees and the Herodians and the Temple crowds listening in knew just as well as Jesus, just as well as you or I, that the image of God is all of humanity. We don’t see any image of the face of God other than the faces, souls, and lives of God’s people: ourselves, our neighbors, our human family.

In fact, the image of God is stamped on the face of Tiberius Caesar, just as much all the other faces around us. So the face of God is, in a way, stamped on that denarius, too. That would get us in trouble again, with whether that coin should be given back to the emperor in tax or given back to God, except that Jesus is telling us that’s not a conflict. 

Jesus is not setting up a parallel, with one territory for Caesar and a separate territory for God, and we switch between the two of them. Jesus is telling us that what belongs to Caesar is just a tiny part of what belongs to God.

What belongs to your employer, or your bank, or the US government, or a friend or family member – whatever we owe to one another – all of that is just a tiny part of what belongs to God.  

Because everything human is stamped with the image of God, keeping our obligations to one another in community is a part of the will of God, not a distraction from our obligations to God.

At least, that’s true when we embrace the whole will of God: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. When we embrace that whole will of God as the center of our being, when we focus on the image of God alive in one another, all the questions about the details of the will of God become clearer and less anxious. 

Questions about tax paying, marriage rights and wedding cakes, prayer in school or ten commandments in the courthouse, how the Supreme Court should act – any of the things where we wonder about a conflict between God’s will and the demands of empire – all of these details of God’s will become simpler, less divisive and less expensive, when we focus on the whole will of God. When we give back to God what is God’s: our whole lives and selves.

Even decisions about our money become clearer and less troublesome when we put the love of God and will of God above everything else. In fact, when we seek to give back to God what is God’s – to offer our selves and our community to God – our currency can be a powerful tool.

Because money often stands in for freedom, choice, control, security and other things we value, it’s a powerful tool for directing our hearts and minds and souls.

And this is where we need to actually look at our currency.

If you’ve got cash on you, take it out, and look at it closely.

You’ll see images on it – mostly presidents or Treasury secretaries, plus Ben Franklin – and the prominent title of The United States.  But there’s something else on every piece of US currency in circulation right now.  The motto “In God We Trust.”

Our currency may “belong” to the US Treasury, by the “image and title” standards Jesus applies, but US currency also makes a claim on our behavior – our attitudes and our actions; a claim on those of us who use that currency.

 

With “In God We Trust,” our cash actually claims that we already do what Jesus teaches: put our whole trust in God. 

The cash in our wallets actually asks us: How can we use this currency – how can I use it, you use it – to put our trust in God, to increase our trust in God?

We’re starting our preparation for Consecration Sunday today – starting a four-week journey as a congregation where we consider how God is inviting us to give so that we grow in God’s love. And today, Jesus invites us to look at our currency and consider how we can use our money to grow in our trust of God.

Jesus invites us to use our currency to act on that trust – to continually, proactively, give back to God what is God’s: our whole selves. To love God with heart, body and spirit, a love of God which also loves one another.

And as we do that, the other questions that trouble us will fall away: our obligations to one another and our community can be honored as a part of our trust in God, our love of our neighbors. 

It’s no trouble at all to give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, if we know with all the love of our heart, mind, and soul, that we, and Caesar, and everything that belongs to any of us always, and first of all, belongs to God. 

Sharing the Vineyard

Matthew 21:33--46 (Philippians 3:4b-14; Exodus 20:1-20)

If I had ever wanted to own a vineyard, these last couple of Jesus stories – what we’ve heard these last couple of Sundays – would have convinced me to re-think it. From the vineyard stories Jesus tells, I’ve gathered that labor practices are highly complicated, your family dynamics are your business dynamics, and now… well, apparently vineyard rent disputes are rough and full of violence.

Today Jesus tells a story of unprovoked, repeated abuse and murder. And the Temple elders and chief priests he tells this story to have no doubt it’s going to lead to an equally violent eviction. This is not a morality tale for kids.

But there’s no doubt that the Temple elders and chief priests get the point Jesus is making: If you leaders are hoarding what God has entrusted to you, and rejecting God’s messengers of accountability, it’s going to go very badly for you when you’re replaced.

Nobody has to explain to the Temple leaders that Jesus is talking about God, not grapes. The vineyard’s been a scriptural metaphor for God’s people, God’s kingdom, for centuries.

Jesus assumes you and I will also understand that, and that we’ll hear how this story applies to us, too, as we listen in. That we’ll know that being greedy or selfish with what God has entrusted to us – refusing when it’s time to share the benefits of our gifts and labor – will have dreadful consequences. 

But that warning is not the only thing Jesus is saying to us as we listen to his conversation with the Temple leaders. Jesus is also pointing out to the crowds in the Temple that no one can keep God’s kingdom and God’s blessings all to themselves, and away from others, no matter how hard or violently they try.

No doubt those imaginary tenants feel that they’ve worked hard for the produce of the vineyard; that they’ve earned the right to keep the fruit of their labor – even the vineyard itself. After all, that landlord is never around while they’ve been working.
(They have to discount the fact that the landlord made all the initial investments, and the infrastructure, but that’s easy enough to do when you feel the work in your own muscles and sweat and don’t see someone else working.)

But no matter what they think, or what we do, God is absolutely, positively not going to let anyone keep God’s gifts to themselves, or claim ownership of God’s abundance – even if they are the people God has chosen to be in charge, to lead. God is going to offer plenty of chances to do the right thing, but ultimately God will not let anyone keep God’s gifts to themselves.

That’s good news for the crowds in the Temple, and it’s news Jesus wants us to hear, too. The gifts God intends for all to share cannot and will not be kept from us by anyone else.

Grapes or grace, food or faith, money, skills and talents, time, place, salvation, life itself – no gift of God can belong to one person, or one group, alone. No matter how much time and effort we ourselves put in, we can’t keep it for ourselves alone. And no matter how strong or smart or selfish or violent they may be, no one else can keep God’s gifts away from us, either.

This is great news. But it can get a bit uncomfortable in practice.

Sometimes we don’t really want ALL that God wants to give us. The people of Israel actually asked Moses to keep the gift of God’s immensely powerful presence away from them. We heard them today: You keep all that God-glory, Moses. We don’t want that much awe.
There are times when what God wants to give you or me can feel like too much, too.

But I suspect it’s more often uncomfortable when God demands the sharing of our (metaphorical) vineyards.

Think, for a minute, of all the things you’ve earned in your lifetime.  Income, a comfortable home, success at work or school, in athletics or arts? Maybe your reputation feels well-earned, or a treat you give yourself to reward hard work. 

Think about whatever it is, big or small, that you’ve earned the right to enjoy and resent having taken away from you.

I know I’m telling myself I’ve “earned” my good night’s sleep when I find myself resenting a family celebration or a major league baseball game scheduled to run past my chosen bedtime. Or that I’ve gotten the idea that time, work, and rest is mine to control, when I get cranky about the time the sun comes up or goes down. 

Imagine what that is for you. Then imagine God inviting you to hand over half your home or a big chunk of your income to strangers; let someone else present your work without credit; give up your place on the team so someone else with less experience and success can try it. To give away the comfort or success or rest or reputation that you’ve earned, to someone who doesn’t seem to have worked for it.

When we get into that place in our hearts and lives, we’ve become the tenants in the vineyard. Every time you want to hold on to what you’ve earned; every time I say no or ignore the summons to share, we’re – on purpose or by accident – rejecting the accounting for God’s gifts and God’s abundance that God regularly invites.

It’s very easy to become the tenants in this story, even when we don’t want to. We live in a world where we’re constantly taught to value our own efforts, to earn, keep, and hold all that we can. The alternative way of life is an overwhelming, risky leap of faith: to claim and hold the conviction that nothing at all is ours, and all that matters is that we are God’s.

That’s the story Paul tells today: of his own justifiable pride in the righteousness he worked so hard to practice before Jesus found him, and the way that God’s claim on him means that now none of that matters. All he longs for now is God’s gift of faith, that keeps bringing him closer to Christ, “because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

And it’s the story of God’s people, gathered at Mount Sinai, being claimed by God with the thundering words, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt…you shall have no other gods before me.”

Those stories of God’s claim on us – those leaps of faith into the conviction that we are entirely God’s, and that is all that matters – that’s how the story of the vineyard becomes a story of tenants who send out the fruits of the harvest – to God, and to others – before ever being asked. A story where the violence disappears as God’s messengers of accountability are welcomed as friends, and the summons to share is seen as good news.

Those leaps of faith, leaps into belonging to God and not ourselves, are what create a world where we know without doubt that no one can keep God’s gifts from us.
A world where we take great joy in knowing that nothing is ours to hold and defend and hoard, so we are free to share every bit of comfort or success, every bit of achievement and privilege, without fear or loss. 

A world where every grape and grain and breath is a gift, and every bit of hope, love, and peace is shared freely with all.