Preaching Peace

Year A, Pentecost 18, Proper 23
October 16^th, 2011
Based on Matthew 22:15-22 and 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
The Rev. Dr. Thomas Truby and the Rev. Laura C. Truby
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Whose Image Drives Us?

Events have been tumbling over themselves these last few weeks as we have followed Jesus into the capital city. Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey and goes straight to the temple. At the temple, in an act of political theater, he disrupts the place and we think this was his way of saying the era of the temple is over, with its blood sacrifices and purity codes, and he himself will be the new temple—the new way to achieve peace and connection to God. The temple authorities are not happy with what he has done and they want to know by what authority he acted and who gave him that authority. In response he tells them three parables. After hearing these stories they decide they must get rid of Jesus.

We begin, “Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.” Being afraid of the crowd they can’t just arrest him in broad daylight and besides, they are smart, political people. If they can trap him within the jaws of their own tense political realities he will make a mistake and will cause others to get rid of him for them.

They send their cleverest thinkers and they carefully structure their opening statement. “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” The trap is laced with flowers and flattery but Jesus sees it. “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?”

He shows them he knows what they are up to and then accepts their challenge to say something that does not tumble him into their trap. “Show me the coin used for the tax.” he commands. To pay this particular tax to Rome they couldn’t use just any coin. It had to be a special coin issued by the government. Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t have one, and so they bring one to him. “Whose image is this and whose title,” He asks? They answer, “The emperor’s.” Then, Jesus says, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Jesus has his questioners get out some money and says: “Caesar made this; give it back to Caesar. But God made you; give yourself back to God.” This is a great focus for this stewardship season. We don’t just give our money, we give all of ourselves.

In doing this, he also avoids saying anything that will get him into trouble with either the Roman occupation force or the Jewish nationalists and instead redirects everyone to a higher question. They are amazed and go away.

For the remainder of our time today I want to explore this higher question and the passage from 1 Thessalonians will be helpful. Here is the deeper question. Whose image drives us?Who are we imitating really in the living our lives? When Jesus said, “give to the emperor what is the emperor’s” he knew that all of us are made in the image of God. If we give to God what is God’s, we give all of ourselves. Really then, there is nothing left for Caesar! Caesar makes claims on our money and we must comply, but Caesar cannot have our hearts. Our hearts have already been given to another. The first commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and we are moving in that direction. In fact, loving God becomes easier with each passing day as we come to know the character of God revealed in Jesus. If it weren’t for Jesus we might think God is mean and vindictive, power hungry and abusive, capricious and demanding—a lot like Caesar but supersized! But God is not. God is like Jesus. Jesus can say “give to the emperor what is the emperor’s” with confidence because he knows that Jews and Gentiles all, belong to God at a deeper level than the paying of taxes can ever touch. We are God’s children and made in his image.

This is the reality Paul is lifting up in his opening words to the people of Thessalonica. “For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you.” We have already been chosen and are not available to Caesar. We have given our hearts to another when we received the message of the gospel–and “not just in words but with power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” Dear people, this is happening to us and to me, your pastor. We are in the process of getting it.

And then Paul goes on, “You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecutionyou received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example.” Are we persecuted for believing in the gospel? I think so. Not necessarily in a physical way like early Christians, at least at this point, but certainly in other ways. There is a growing cultural disdain for openly embracing Jesus as Lord. We will explore this more on another Sunday.

I was also struck by the phrase, “imitators of us and of the Lord.” I believe all of us are imitators and we really can’t help it. It is what we humans do. We imitate others and wouldn’t be human if we didn’t.

In 1992 Scientists in Parma, Italy stumbled on an important discovery. They noticed that when a monkey saw a human grab a peanut, the monkey’s brain fired as though it were grabbing the peanut. There was no difference whether the monkey did it or someone it watched did. As far as the brain was concerned, “monkey see and monkey do” even when the monkey did nothing! They labeled the special cells that did this, “mirror neurons” and later discovered that human’s have way more of these than any other creature. This explains why I cannot remain motionless when watching sports. In my mind I am doing what I see the athlete on the screen doing and of course with the same precision and grace. This is also why I find it fascinating to watch my grandchildren watch a TV show though I cannot see the screen myself. I see what is happening mirrored in their bodies and facial expressions. Most scientists now think these mirror neurons make it possible for us to learn and feel with other humans. If that is true, then they are very important for the transmission of culture. Who we watch becomes critically important, for it determines who we become. There is an icon that shows St. Peter pointing to Jesus, and Jesus pointing upward to God. If we imitate Jesus we will move in a different direction than if we imitate Caesar. But we will imitate. Humans are elaborate and wonderful copy machines.

We like to think we are the original and hate it when we are accused of copying. Remember the shame of being called a copy-cat by our eleven year old peers? But we do copy, we have to. The issue is who we copy. When we copy people, who are themselves copying people, it gets very confusing, messy and conflictual as we all scramble for the same thing. But what happens when we deliberately copy someone who is in no way copying anyone else? Instead this One is totally dedicated to copying God and has a direct line making that possible. If we copy this One, we find ourselves pulled out of copying each other and freed from the tyranny of rivalry and envy. This is what Paul is talking about when he says, “You became imitators of us and of the Lord.” Since Paul is imitating Jesus, when you imitate Paul, you imitate Jesus. Now Paul wants us to carry this on by being an example for others. This is positive imitation and very healthy and quite different from negative imitation that always leads to conflict and exclusion.

If we think of ourselves as imitating Jesus, whose image orients us? Can the image of an emperor on a coin and all it represents, orient us, and conform or contort us into its image? Yes, it can, but when it does we are not imitating Jesus. We have allowed the image of a human to shape us, with all the consequences that evolve from that.

Paul commends the people in Thessalonica for not going that direction. No! He says, “You turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.”

Lest we think the coming wrath is from God, I must explain one more thing. For Paul, the wrath that is coming is human wrath. We see it every where and it is breaking out all over and always has. It is the wrath that happens when humans make other humans into their gods and cease serving the God in whose image we are made. This is the wrath we live in the midst of (I am thinking here of the death of Cody Myers, the nineteen year old, Clackamas Community College student killed by two white supremacists as collateral damage in their rage-full war (wrath-full) to preserve the white race.). And it is in the midst of this that we “wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming, both in the sense of coming in the future and in the sense of constantly coming.” Thanks be to God. Amen.

Year A, Pentecost 17, Proper 23
October 9^th, 2011
By Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby
Matthew 22:1-14
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The Authority of the Lowest Place

How many of you have given a wedding reception for a son or daughter or had one at your own marriage? Did you send out invitations with an RSVP? In Jesus’ story no one wants to come to the wedding banquet in honor of the king’s son!

Maybe they don’t like the menu. The king sweetens the pot by describing the banquet in more alluring detail. The smell of roast beef and hot veal makes my mouth water but it doesn’t have that effect on them. They dismiss his offer and even make fun of it. They turn their backs and walk away. One goes to his farm, another to his business, and the rest of them seize his slaves, rough them up and kill them. What kind of RSVP is that?

We know Jesus tells the story in response to the question the temple leaders ask when Jesus causes the problem in the temple. Their question: “What gives you the right to cause the trouble in the temple and who do you think gave you that right?” Let’s allow Jesus to continue his story.

When the first people refused to come to his party, the king was enraged. He sent his troops and wiped them all out. He killed them all just like in the Old Testament. He burned their city to the ground, erasing any trace of them. For him, they no longer existed. Up until now I thought the king represented God but now I am not so sure. If this king represents God than I have been very wrong in everything I have thought, taught and preached these last few years.

I do know that when someone slights me like they slighted him, it makes me mad. When someone disregards me, scorns me or hurts that which represents me, especially when I reach out in love, service and friendship to them, it makes me want to write them out of existence. I want to say “You are no longer my friend; for me, you no longer exist.” This happens all the time in families, communities and among nations. But I had thought and hoped that God was different from me on that. I want God to set a higher standard.

In his anger the king declares all those he has invited unworthy of being at the banquet and instructs his slaves to go into the main streets; not the exclusive parts of town, but the main streets inhabited by everyone alike, and invite everyone they find to the wedding banquet. My opinion again shifts and I decide maybe I do like this king. His anger is a little excessive but I like his inclusive values. If the king in Jesus’ story is a human, he is a complex man whose behavior is a little erratic. If the king represents God than God is both very vindictive and yet includes all, both the good and the bad. How do we make sense of that?

Jesus continues his story. “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.” Shocking! I would like the story to be over at this point. This would fit with my belief in God’s radical inclusivity but to make that work I would have to ignore the king’s bad behavior in wiping out all those ungrateful wretches who refused to come to the banquet. And, to boot, the story doesn’t end here! Jesus adds another part. Apparently this new kingdom that Jesus brings is not a revolution where the folks at the top get switched out and the folks at the bottom plugged in, making them the new folks at the top. Something more is going on.

In this next part, the scene shifts to the banquet and the king, who upon entering the banquet hall notices a man not wearing a wedding robe. Wedding robes were issued to all guests who came to banquets and they covered people’s street clothes. You remember the Spiritual—“I’ve got a robe, you’ve got a robe, all God’s children got robes?” The king addresses the robe-less stranger by saying, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” And then the surprise. The text reads, “And he was speechless.” The robe-less man was speechless and this speechlessness seems to be the problem that leads to what happens next.

He makes no response. He is mute. He does not give an accounting for why he is there! He “never says a mumbling word.” Does this remind you of anyone?

“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.’” Can you think of a more frightening prospect—to be bound hand and foot and thrown into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth? The scene exceeds the horror of the worst Halloween movie. Why did Jesus add this to his story?

With the king’s frightening behavior, my faith in him has again fallen off the cliff. Do I like this king or not. My feelings keep shifting. If this king represents God this is not a god I want any part of. And then Jesus tops the story off with, “For many are called, but few are chosen.”

At this point I confess to being a quivering mass of uncertainty. In notes to myself on this text I wrote, “Don’t be to sure that you are in—being too sure is not good for your ego. It can puff you up and make you proud. Inflated egos don’t make it into the kingdom of heaven. In fact, with our inflated egos we throw ourselves out.”

But what if the man without the robe is Jesus? What if he is the one who stands mute, is seized, bound hand and foot and thrown out into the outer darkness? Does it not say that he descended into Hell for our sake? Did not John the Baptist say, “Behold the man who takes away the sin of the world?” If all the not worthy, both the good and the bad, where invited and assembled at the banquet, why does not having a robe make any difference? Why did the king react with such rage toward the one who stood out as different from the rest? Is Jesus talking about himself here?

What if we are the king and the king is us? We are the ones who become enraged and destroy whole villages, we are the ones who declare our brothers and sisters not worthy of inclusion in our family, we are the ones who throw each other into the outer darkness, bound hand and feet, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. The hell into which Jesus is thrown is the hell of our own making. Jesus stands mute because he knows we will never see who we are until we see what we have done to him and then experience his forgiveness. He could have spoken up and explained it all, but we would never have believed him. He had to allow himself to be drug through our hell. As Paul said, “Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

Jesus did stand out from all the others and the powers of this world immediately saw him and questioned his presence. He was the one without the robe, stripped of it, the one chosen to be the slain Lamb of God. He knew that crashing the party would lead to his expulsion but he did it anyway. He was the one bound hand and foot and caste out where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. And the irony here is that it was those who loved him who were weeping and the majority who did not, who were gnashing their teeth. Or you can take this another way. In being cast out, Jesus is sent to the place of suffering, the place we all know some of the time. Now, when we are there, we know we are not alone.

But it did not end there. After his death there comes the resurrection, and the resurrection is profoundly hopeful. And now for the point toward which we have been driving this whole time! The robe-less man in Jesus’ story is Jesus himself, the suffering servant. It is Jesus who receives his authority by taking onto himself the violence, the sins, and the suffering of others. Jesus allows himself to take the lowest place, the place of the scapegoat; the one cast out, the one despised by all, and occupy it as God’s son. Can you believe it! The one cast out is God’s Son! The place of being cast out is no longer a lonely place, for Jesus is there. It has been invaded by him. This is the place from which his authority comes and the answer to the religious leader’s question. His authority comes from his willingness to occupy the lowest place—the place all others avoid at any cost.

Jesus’ willingness to be the one-out redeemed that place so that now we know nothing can separate us from the love of God. We don’t need to be afraid of the lowest place, for it is the place where we find Jesus.He occupies that place, redeems it and transforms it for ever. He removes its sting and sets us free to live without fear of it. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Year A, Pentecost 16, Proper 22
October 2, 2011
By Thomas L. Truby
Matthew 21:33-46
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The Rejected Stone

In today’s gospel Jesus is still responding to the angry temple officials who met him the day after he upset their routine and defied their authority by creating an uproar in the temple. Jesus now asks them to “listen to another parable.”

It is a very earthy story involving a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. The infrastructure is all there for a profitable wine making business with processing facilities and security systems all in place. He then leases it to tenants and goes to another country.

When it is time to harvest his grapes he sends his slaves to the tenants to collect the produce and the tenants seize them; beat one up, kill another and stone yet another. They do not want to give this landowner what he is owed.

Our land owner is very determined. He sends even more slaves, more than before, and these get treated the same way.

Finally in an act of incredible bravery, naivety or stupidity our persistent landlord sends his son saying, “They will respect my son.” Apparently this landowner’s doctrine of humanity is very high. He must have thought they thought like he thought. He was quite wrong.

The words, “bravery, naivety or stupidity” remind me of a conversation I had at The Father’s Heart on Tuesday (The Father’s Heart is a ministry to the homeless in Clackamas, Oregon). I was talking with Rodger and Sarah who live under the bridge at the base of 12th street in Oregon City. We had gotten into conversation when Roger said that he was looking for a tarp and wondered if any church supplied them as part of their ministry. His girl friend and he had gotten up at 4 a.m. the night before because it had begun to rain and they didn’t have a tarp to sleep under. As Roger spoke, I was thinking about a conversation I had with a newly homeless women a couple of months ago who said she was too afraid to sleep in the open for fear of being attached. Thinking about this, I said, “It must feel quite vulnerable to sleep out in the open like that. Anybody with a desire to let off steam can just take it out on you.” “Yes”, he said, “a drunk comes along and they want to attack you while you are sleeping. Nobody who sees it is going to call the police. That’s why I always sleep with a heavy stick so that I can take care of my girlfriend and me if I have to. I would rather be the beater and than the beaten.” I wondered to myself what you do when the other guy has a gun. He then said people find his stuff that he has stashed in the bushes and they throw it all over just for the fun of it. They do it because they can. I thought about our human inclination to take our frustrations out on the vulnerable and how this couple would have no difficulty relating to that experience. I asked, “What do you do when you find your stuff gone?” He smiled, shrugged his shoulders and said “start over.”

Here was a man fully aware of the world’s cruelty and nearly helpless to prevent it. I don’t know how he came to be in that situation. I do know that he had committed himself to protecting his girl friend and so he was lucky, as there was someone in his life. He was quite unlike our landowner who didn’t seem to anticipate the depth of evil in the tenants who leased his land—somehow he had always expected them to honor and respect him more and seemed surprised when they didn’t. Maybe God, who the Landlord represents, has been surprised that we have turned out the way we have. Maybe when he sent his son into our world he really did believe that we would receive him, hear his message and change our ways. If so, he was quite wrong and with Jesus entering into Jerusalem for his final week we would soon see how wrong he was.

Back to the story. “When the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’” They recognize him for who he is and they plot to kill him. In this way they seem to think they can acquire the vineyard. Does that make sense to you? Do you think they can make the vineyard their own by killing the owner’s son? What if the vineyard in the story is a stand in for the Kingdom of God? Can you enter the Kingdom of God this way? Their thinking seems to be distorted by their desire to be their own authority, accountable to no one.

“So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.” For the second Sunday in a row Jesus’ story ends with a question, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” The temple authorities immediately answer and in the way I would were it not for the gospel. They say, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

Their language is strong and vindictive. “Put those wretches to a miserable death.” Don’t just kill them, make their dying miserable. Torture them. Make them pay. Put them to death and enjoy it. Doesn’t it make you feel good to talk like this? I can just see Clint Eastwood saying, “Go ahead; make my day.”

“And then after the bad guys are dead, lease the vineyard to tenants who will give the owner his due—that’s what the landowner should do,” they solemnly assert. But what if the temple is the vineyard in this story and they, its leaders, are in the process of throwing out the owner’s son? What if they are the ones refusing to hand over the fruit of this bountiful garden, leased to them for a time? What if the fruits are compassion, love and forgiveness rather than the grapes of wrath? What if their vineyard is to supply the world with this new wine and not be just their private label? This is World Communion Sunday.

Suddenly Jesus drops this line of thought and picks up another. “Have you never read in the scriptures:

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.”

It is a quote from Psalm 118; an ancient hymn of gratitude. It is an incredible quote that contains the heart of the gospel. “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone (the capstone in the NIV).” The capstone is the stone that makes the rest of the building hang together. It is at the top of the arch and locks the rest of the building in place. Without it, the building cannot long stand and will fall in, on itself.

I believe Jesus is the stone the builders rejected who has become the cornerstone; the capstone. And at that very moment the temple leaders are in the process of rejecting him. They are doing the very thing this ancient text says they will. Yet even the rejection seems to be part of the plan. Had he not been rejected he would not be suitable for capstone duty. This whole thing is the Lord’s doing and it is amazing in our eyes. It blows our minds and reorients our world.

Now the temple authorities are about to wake up. Listen to what Jesus says that wakes them! “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” Jesus says they are going to be thrown out and new people, people who actually do what God wants, installed in their place. Could that happen to us? Could that happen to the church today?

He then says, “The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” The power of this rejected stone that has become the cornerstone is unstoppable; it breaks to pieces those who fall on it and crushes those upon whom it falls. I struggle with the violent imagery but think it points to the invincible redemptive force the cross has set loose in the world (a topic for another day).

Suddenly they realize this has all been about them. They are the tenants who throw out and kill the landowner’s son and in so harshly condemning those who did it, they condemned themselves. They want to immediately arrest Jesus but can’t because they fear the crowds. Their time will come later in the week.

And now I have a question for you. Does God treat ungrateful, rebellious tenants the way the religious leaders say they should be treated? No! God does not act like a dishonored landowner in a fit of rage. Even the murder of his son did not provoke in him a reaction of vengeful retribution, but, instead he sent the risen one back with the message “Peace be with you!” Amen.