17th Sunday after Pentecost - Year A (Matt 22:1-14)

This is a hard one.  A man, dragged into a party from the street is then summarily thrown out for not being dressed appropriately.  So to what does the “wedding garment” refer:  Faith, good works, baptism?  It may seem a copout but I suggest that we leave this question up to God.  The text has already, in fact, made the point that it is not up to the slaves to make judgments, but to include everyone, “good and bad”.  While I am saddened at the loss of the one, I rejoice in the inclusion of the many.   The mystery of God’s judgment is beyond us but we live everyday in the mystery of God’s love and mercy.  As servants of King we are challenged to go out into the streets to invite everyone we find to the wedding banquet.   Not one of us is called to play the bouncer.

16th Sunday after Pentecost - Year A (Matt 21:33-46

In our time we often hear the phrase “don’t shoot the messenger.” As this coming Sunday’s parable indicates, killing the messenger is nothing new. The Christian messenger that we immediately think of is, of course the preacher. While the number of preachers killed by their congregations each year is, thankfully, very low. But preachers do find themselves alienated from members of their church and civic communities and, depending on polity, without a job. Beyond the professional preachers however, are all Christians, called by baptism, to be preachers of the good news. We are reminded by Frederick Buechner that before it is good news, the gospel is bad news. It is bad news in that is upsets the status quo. It is bad news in that it holds us accountable not only for our own sins but for systemic injustice. It is bad news because Jesus, the vineyard owners own son, was seized and killed. The messenger of Christ can expect nothing different.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the vindication of the Vineyard owner and his Son. It is only in the resurrection that the bad news becomes good news. The stone rejected by the builders has indeed become the corner stone.

15th Sunday After Pentecost - Year A (Matthew 21:23-32)

Jesus never does directly answer the question about his authority but, by the end of the short parable he tells, it is clear for whom he is speaking.  In announcing who will enter first into the kingdom of God, Jesus clearly speaks for God.  Furthermore, the message Jesus speaks is good news for everyone; tax collectors, prostitutes, chief priests and elders.    Notice that it is not a matter of who is inside and who is outside the scope of God’s reign.  Jesus simply says that, contrary to expectations, it is the tax collectors and prostitutes who have been first to respond in faith to the call to repentance.  The chief priests and elders have not been excluded from the kingdom but they have been replaced as leaders and teachers of God’s people by tax collectors and prostitutes.  We are challenged to be open to the faith of those who seem most unlikely and to listen to the teaching of those whom the world deems unworthy to teach.  It is no wonder then that Jesus refuses to directly answer questions about authority.  In human terms, authority is always about hierarchy. Jesus continues to shatter all of our hierarchies in his announcement of God's reign.

14th Sunday after Pentecost - Year A (Matthew 20:1-16)

In essence, this parable is identical to the Prodigal Son parable, minus the heightened drama of family relationships.  In both parables, justice is replaced by generosity.  Some, those who have labored all day and the elder son, see this generosity as injustice.  The landowner and father, however, see no injustice at all.  The idea that the long suffering elder son and diligent workers have somehow earned their inheritance/wage is shown for the sham that it is.  As Martin Luther supposedly wrote as he lay dying, “we are all beggars.”  The divine economy of love and grace is based on abundance rather than scarcity.  In the end there is no payment or repayment but only gift.

13th Sunday after Pentecost - Year A (Matt. 18, 21-35)

In any context, Matt. 18:21-35 is a “hard saying”.  In the context of the 10^th anniversary of “9/11” it becomes even a bigger challenge for the preacher.  Although the text seems specific to disputes between church members, to allow that to limit the impact of this teaching of would be, I think, to miss the point.  We are all debtors.  We all stand in need of forgiveness.  While most of us have never committed acts of evil and violence as great as those perpetrated on “9/11” we are part of political and economic systems that take the lives of many more innocent people than we generally want to know about.  When such deaths happen to us it is terrorism, when it happens far away, it is collateral damage.  I certainly do not mean to suggest that our role in these systems is comparable to that of those who hijacked those planes ten years ago.  But to suggest that any of us have blood free hands is also untrue.  We like to speak of people like the 9/11 attackers as inhuman, not like us.  The important truth of our Christian faith is, however, that they are just as human as we are.  That acknowledgement is the beginning of forgiveness and also the beginning of our transformation by grace into heralds of a new creation and a redeemed humanity.