Tag: season after pentecost

A Sermon for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings here

I recently saw a post on social media that said, “If your preacher always makes himself the hero of the story, stop going to that church.” 

In that case, after I tell you this story, I hope you’ll realize that you can definitely stay at this church…

Last week, I was leaving Meyerland Plaza and heading back over to Grace with the altar flowers. As I’m sure some of you know,  they have been doing construction on West Loop South for what feels like forever. 

To get back through town, I needed to continue straight through the intersection,  so I dutifully took my place in the middle lane: (pregnant pause) the CORRECT lane.  

But I noticed that whenever the light turned green, the lane was inching forward at a glacial pace. After sitting through two stop lights and getting nowhere, I started to become agitated. That’s when I realized that people were getting into the left turn only lane and the right turn only lane, then cutting people off IN THE INTERSECTION, in order to proceed straight through the intersection. 

Let me say that again: THESE TERRIBLE, HATEFUL PEOPLE WERE CUTTING OFF GOOD PEOPLE LIKE ME, FOR THEIR OWN SELFISH CONVENIENCE!! 

When I finally got to the intersection, I adopted a defensive posture.  No one was going to cut me off!! 

Unfortunately, I am not actually an aggressive driver. So, the car in the left lane, and the car in the right lane BOTH managed to cut me off,  then proceeded to cut each other off while I watched. 

At that moment, I did the only thing I could do: I LAID ON MY HORN.  

I yelled at them and called them names. I insulted their intelligence and wished for their suffering! 

And then, I congratulated myself for being the only righteous person on the road in Houston. 

— 

Why are these kinds of situations so infuriating? 

It’s because the whole thing is deeply unfair! Why should I be penalized for doing the right thing? Why should they be able to do something illegal, and even dangerous, and just…get away with it? 

Actions are supposed to have consequences, but no one seems to care about that anymore. 

— 

See, this is why I love Jonah. Jonah gets it. 

At the beginning of his story, God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and warn them that the city is going to be destroyed because of its wickedness.  

Jonah feels good about this message.  

He is being asked to tell this to the capital city of Assyria, the most powerful and cruel empire in the region. 

And this isn’t just ancient gossip. 

By the time the Book of Jonah is written, Assyria has destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel and exiled thousands of Israelites, who will never get home again.  

For Jonah and his readers, it is obvious that Nineveh deserves to be destroyed. And Jonah, a man with a strong sense of fairness, is the perfect man for the job. 

The only problem is, Jonah knows God too well.  

He knows God is “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” So, he knows that once he gets to Nineveh, God will let them get away with it, at the teenist, tiniest sign of self-awareness. 

So, Jonah runs away.  

But, by God’s grace,  a big fish swallows him to save his life, and spits him out on dry land. 

Jonah gets to Nineveh, he says his piece, and God spares the whole city. 

— 

In light of Israel’s suffering, God’s pardon of the Ninevites is so unfair it makes my stomach turn.  

I’d like to get back in my car, lay on the horn, and never let up. 

Jonah himself is so upset that he throws up his hands and asks God to kill him.  

Jonah is having a real existential crisis. One commentary says that “the prophet prefers death to living in a world with no recognizable order of justice.”1

— 

(Sigh.) That’s it. 

It is difficult to live in a world with no recognizable order of justice. Where bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. Where the ones who are RIGHT don’t get any recognition, and the ones who are WRONG seem to flourish.  

Where innocent people are let down, pushed down, and shot down. Where we are collectively burdened by pain, addiction, and trauma.  

And still, God seems to keep pardoning the perpetrators! 

“Yes, God, sometimes we are angry enough to die.” 

— 

But, God is begging us to stay! God keeps calling us back to Nineveh. God keeps calling us back to the vineyard. We have a vital role to play! 

— 

At the end of Jonah, God asks the question:  

“And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”  

Near the end of the Gospel reading, Jesus poses some questions, too:  

“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’” 

It’s true. Life isn’t fair, and that fact is infuriating at times. 

But, across the scriptures, God reminds us, gently but firmly, that we are not the arbiters of justice in this world that God has made. 

— 

But let me make something clear. God isn’t saying it’s wrong to recognize injustice. 

We all know that this world is full of profound suffering. We have witnessed the oppression of our fellow human beings, and the degradation of the whole creation. We have felt the effects of carelessness and malice in our own lives. 

God agrees with Jonah that Ninevah’s behavior deserves punishment.  

Just as Jesus, in telling his parable, knows it’s not fair that all the laborers were paid the same wage. 

As disciples of Christ, we have a responsibility to carefully attune ourselves to injustice. We do the work of God when we protest, advocate, and respond.  

— 

But, the Book of Jonah makes it clear that we are called to name what is unfair, not so that God can destroy the bad people, but so God can redeem the whole creation! 

After all, we know that God is a creative and creating God. God is in the business of making all things new. 

A divine response to unfairness does not look like scorched earth. It looks like a vineyard in harvest. It looks like grace. And we have ALL been given undeserved and excessive grace. 

When we recognize grace in our own lives, we are humbled to understand that all of us have been unkind, unfair, and even unjust. 

Maybe we’re not always Jonah. Maybe, sometimes, we’re Nineveh. 

Maybe it’s time to repent. 

— 

In our quest for fairness, it is time for us to ask ourselves, honestly, if we want our enemies to be destroyed, or if we want the world to be transformed. 

Because we don’t get to have both. 

If our guiding ethic is for bad people to suffer, we will always be fleeing Nineveh. We will always be living in the dark and claustrophobic belly of the big fish. 

From that vantage point, we will never get to see the world transformed. We will never get to be a part of the beauty of the new creation. We will have settle for the lonely company of our own self-righteousness. 

The only way out of our darkness is to accept that life in God is deeply unfair… We may not understand it, but we know that God has called us to the work of transformation.

So, there’s only one question left to ask: Where is God calling you that you don’t want to go?  

Amen. 

A Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost 

This week’s lectionary is a treasure trove of stories and lessons.  

We have baby Moses being sent down the Nile in a basket after two midwives named Shiphrah and Puah lie to Pharaoh in protest of an unjust law.  

We have the Romans passage about being members of the Body of Christ, which has, probably, been the number one image that has informed my understanding of the church. 

And then we look again, and we get to the Gospel passage, which is basically the moment that Jesus founds the church, with Peter as its first minister! 

So much glorious theological content!  

— 

Paolo Emilio Besenzi: Saint Peter, Creative Commons License

And yet, this whole week, I have been fixated on the fact that Peter is a nickname. 

Maybe this has been obvious to you when you read your Bible. But for me, I think I have always kind of glossed over the fact that when “Simon, who is called Peter,” is labeled that way, this isn’t some ancient naming system that I simply don’t understand. 

This is just your normal nickname…Which is to say, it’s basically an insult cloaked in intimacy. Like my nickname growing up – Leah Whiner – it’s a name that describes your worst quality. 

And this is the reality: Peter is not a complimentary nickname. (My apologies to any Peters in the room.) 

In fact, it’s not really a name, strictly speaking. Peter comes from the Greek word for rock or stone: petros. And in other places, we’ll sometimes see it translated as Cephas, which is simply the Aramaic word for stone or rock.  

While today’s Gospel passage seems to suggest that being called “the rock” is a good thing – after all, Jesus says, “upon this rock I will build my church” – there seems to be near universal-consensus among biblical scholars that being called rock is more like being called rocky. Rough around the edges, unpolished, and difficult. 

I picture what a person must look and act like to be given this name by the Son of God, and I don’t see a man with nicely coiffed hair and smooth skin, wearing a tie and a Sport coat. 

To be honest, what I picture is my old friend in Charlottesville, who lived outside, and who hadn’t held down a job in at least a decade.  

This is a person who is disruptive to polite society. Someone who has sunbaked skin and dirty clothes, and doesn’t think too much before he acts. A person who always seems to be saying and doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. 

Someone nicknamed Peter would disturb those of us who want to live “respectable” lives.  

I have a hunch that he wouldn’t pass a background check. So why in the heck is Jesus giving him keys? 

In naming Peter as the first apostle and the foundation of the church, Jesus is making a rather bold statement, and I would argue that it hearkens back to the Beatitudes. 

“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah!” 

When Jesus calls this leather-skinned fisherman, uneducated, rough-and-tumble, Peter, “blessed,” and when he hands over the keys to the kingdom, he is proving that he was serious when he called the poor, the persecuted, and the grieving “blessed.” 

In naming Peter as the rock and the cornerstone of the church, we are to understand that the church that Christ is building is not a polite, genteel place where nice, middle-class people bless the huddled masses outside their door.  

No! The church IS the huddled masses! With rocky Peter holding the key. 

This means that the church is only the church because sloppy, unsophisticated, outsiders are named as the blessed ones of Christ! 

— 

Those first Christians were called to be proud of the fact that their lives and their bodies did not reflect the values of polite society. 

They were called to build a world where keys are about opening doors, not closing them. 

I think we get so hung up on slick branding and marketable programs that we forget that the church was never meant to be a sparkling diamond in Jesus’ heavenly crown. It is meant to be rocky and rough around the edges. 

And “Christian living” was never meant to make us more palatable or polite. It is meant to make us ungovernable. 

— 

In a society obsessed with decorum, with not rocking the boat, the church has too often become a willing partner.  

• We have cut off the hair of indigenous children and forced them to learn English.  We have moved our soup kitchens into church basements, hidden from the sight of stained glass and polished stone altars.  
• We have segregated our worship. 
• We have cooperated with the authorities.  
• We have allowed our siblings to suffer,  
• while we thank God we’re not like them. 

I mean, think about it:  

If a weirdo like Peter walked into churches across America today, how many Christians would call the police on him? 

It’s a sobering thought. 

— 

And yet, where the Holy Spirit moves, the church has also been sanctuary…. 

Here are the stories that give me hope: 

In Nashville in 1985, Catholic priest Charles Strobel noticed people sleeping in their cars in the church parking lot.  

He invited them into the church every night that winter. With other local churches, he founded a winter shelter called Room in the Inn. Today, there are dozens of similar programs across the country. 

In Martha’s Vineyard in 2022, an Episcopal church provided emergency shelter to migrants caught up in a cruel political stunt. The church had access to cots, because they participated in a program modeled after Room in the Inn. 

Across the country, churches are defying city ordinances and feeding their hungry neighbors, while absorbing thousands of dollars in fines. 

And in my former home of Charlottesville, VA, Maria Chavalan-Sut, an undocumented asylum-seeker fleeing violence in Guatemala, sought sanctuary in a Methodist church.  

Federal officials threatened her with over 200 thousand dollars in fines. But she, and the church, persisted. Maria lived inside the church for three years before Customs Enforcement granted her a temporary stay. 

After years of advocacy, in 2022, her children traveled like Moses on the Nile, as unaccompanied minors.  They were reunited with her there in the church. Maria and her kids now have their own home, and she sells tamales at the City Market. 

Here is the church, acknowledging blessedness. 

— 

How often have we considered the fact that we’re here, in church, today, because 2,000 years ago rocky Peter opened the door to let us in? 

By the same token, how often do we remember that you and I are not named as the keyholders of the Kingdom of God? That it is, in fact, not up to us to offer sanctuary?  

The doors have already been unlocked, and the people have already been called blessed. Christ has already invited everyone in.  

The question is: are we going to figure out how to see it through, or are we going to try to stop it? 

— 

Thanks to our friend, Peter, we know that the church is a place for outcasts, not insiders. It will always be messy in exactly the way humanity is messy. 

And this Body, with its many members, will always be caught up in the struggle of admitting that our good, respectable, “Christian names” don’t mean anything to a Savior who prefers nicknames. 

When we, really understand that, it becomes common sense to make room for anyone else who walks through these open doors. 

Through our baptismal vows, we have followed Peter through the unlocked doors of the Kingdom.  

We now claim to live according to the values of the Kingdom of God: to proclaim the Gospel, love our neighbors, and respect the dignity of every human being.  

To do life together. Even though it can get pretty rocky. Amen.