Abundant grace

Proper 20 Year A

September 24, 2017

    We have heard several parables over the last weeks that point to God’s less than perfect farming skills.  Seeds are scattered with little or no regard to what kind of soil they are scattered on;  or letting weeds grow with the good wheat, letting the weeds be weeds, and even letting the weeds take nourishment meant for the wheat.  None of these are particularly wise farming skills.  Today, it seems that God is also a foolish boss as well.

    Who in their right mind pays the day wage for the last only  hour of work?  The laborers who have endured the heat of the day are furious, and who can blame them?  It doesn’t seem fair or just… it doesn’t make sense… not to mention, it’s not good business sense.  

    But obviously the parable, like the story of Jonah from the Old Testament is trying to tell us that God doesn’t think about these things the way that the rest of us do.  We should view these stories as good news… but sometimes that’s hard to do…

    One of the lessons we get to learn today is that God’s sense of justice isn’t quite what we would have in mind… we tend to think about justice in terms of equal resources and getting paid for our work in ways that make sense…. in today’s parable, the wealthy land owner seems more concerned with the day laborers earning enough rather than how long they have worked… a pretty good deal if you came in later in the day…

    The thing is, our God is always extending a pretty good deal.  There is always enough love to spare no matter when we arrive; always more than enough for us and for anyone else who shows up… always… and so the anger that the laborer feel while it seems justified by our standards, isn’t justified by God’s standards…Grace is God’s gift to scatter as God sees fit… parables of grace are hard to hear and to understand because we don’t usually love and extend grace the same way that God does.  and we may never understand just how loving and incredible an action it really is, until WE are the ones arriving at the last minutes of the work day and are surprised to find that our share equals everyone else’s.

    The question that strikes me here, is why do the laborers act the way they do?  Perhaps a more important question, is why do WE act the way we do in the face such love and generosity?  

    We certainly see this theme repeated over and over again in scripture… from the story of Adam and Eve, to our own stories, it seems that we are always trying to get more, trying to get God to give us even more than God already has…  It seems to be part of our nature to be overly concerned with what others are given rather than doing the best we can with what we’ve been given…  What God does with God’s grace and love is really God’s business, not ours.  Whomever God decides to lavish grace upon, does not affect our share, not ever.  Why do we care so much?

    One of the best definitions I have heard of what the church is, is that the church is the place and the people, who bring hope to the hopeless…  What if, in response to God’s blessings and love, we turned around and gave hope to the hopeless?  

    The only response to what we have been given by God, is to give to others.  It’s the only way to really love God in return.  God has not just given enough; God has given more than enough… to quote a much overused phrase, our cup runneth over, and in response, we must reach toward others and give them the hope that life in the kingdom offers…not just in the next world but in this one as well.

    What stood out for me as I read the story this time, is that the land owner tells the laborers to go into the vineyard and he will pay them whatever is right…  and of course, by the end of the story, whatever is right, is much different than we or the workers expect…no matter who the worker is, not matter when they get to the vineyard, they get what they need…

    Abundance is the status quo in God’s kingdom.  There is enough for everyone… it seems that no one has more than anyone else, and no one has to want for anything… it’s a radical equality based on kingdom values, rather than on human values.

    The hope for us and for others, is that God always has more than enough grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness…. for all of us, no matter who we are; even when we live our lives as non believers, or live our lives without giving God a thought; over and over again, grace is offered, whether we accept it or not…

    So… hope, mercy, love,  are all gifts that we can give, because there’s plenty of them to go around… doesn’t always seem like it when we look around, but we are the church, the people responsible for bringing hope… in God’s kingdom, hope multiplies; grace, mercy and love, all multiply… and the more we give, the more there is… isn’t that part of the miracle of living in the kingdom?

    As workers in the vineyard, workers in God’s kingdom of abundance, we need to get the message of God’s unimaginable generosity out there… and part of getting the message out there, is living as though we know the message is true.

    I pray that we can live in the overwhelming joy that God’s grace brings into our lives; I pray that we can each treat our fellow children of God in ways that aren’t based in the fear and jealousy that lives inside us when we live in a culture of scarcity.  The kingdom has no scarcity; only abundance.  It’s an abundance that knows no limits or boundaries.  May we all be the kind of vineyard keepers that God is.

Jesus forgives...so should we

Proper 19 Year A

September 17, 2017

    Today’s readings all point to one of those ideals of the spiritual life that makes at least some of us squirm in discomfort at the mere mention of it… of course, I am talking about forgiveness.

    Forgiving another is really, really hard work.  Sometimes, the act of forgiving takes our whole life to accomplish, if we are lucky… sometimes there are things that we carry that are so painful, we might never get there…

    I have told you this story from my own spiritual life before, but I am going to tell it again, because for me, what happened was a lesson, and an experience that has helped me in know something about Jesus that I hadn’t realized before… That knowledge has helped me many times since the experience happened.

    I was in my early 20’s, and I was a part time college student at San Diego State.  I was involved in the college and young adult ministry of the diocese, and was a relatively new Episcopalian.  I’m sure I must have been in therapy, and if I wasn’t, I probably should have been.  I was working through some difficult stuff that was both spiritually and emotionally difficult, and it had a lot to do with my anger at my parents for a whole variety of things, none of which is terribly important right now, but it was serious business that day.  The young adult ministry was at worship together, and we were at a point in the service where we were in quiet prayer.  I remember being quite upset, and in my prayers, said something like, “Jesus, how can you forgive me, when I can’t forgive them? “  I heard the answer as if Jesus was sitting there right next to me…  “because” he said, “My forgiveness comes first.”

    I cannot tell you the times I have thought about that moment, and prayed that moment over in my heart and mind… “My forgiveness comes first…”  Now, mind you, this amazing declaration of love did not let me off the hook in any way, but it did help me to not rush into something I wasn’t ready for.  In my experience, forgiving before we are ready, is kind of like cheap grace; it doesn’t go very deep, and it doesn’t mean very much.  Anything that has worth in the spiritual life is going to take some work; not that Jesus loves us any more or less, but like any relationship, our relationship with Jesus takes time, energy and work… and, like other relationships, it isn’t always pleasant or fun…

    In our gospel, Jesus tells Peter that he is to forgive not as many as seven times, but seventy seven times.  And as Tex reminded us last week, it’s not like we stop forgiving on time 78… Jesus is using a large number, a number with mystical significance to a Jewish audience to say that forgiving another is a holy task, and one that overflows with God’s mercy and love, so much so that its value cannot be measured.

    No question, forgiving another can be really hard work; harder certainly than offending, don’t you think?  And before I say anything else, I want to say 2 things; the first is, if you have been wronged by another in a death dealing kind of way, please know that you don’t have to forgive until you are ready; the other piece of that, is that forgiving is about us, the ones who are doing the forgiving, not the offender.  We forgive because is sets us free, not because it helps the offender.  When we hold on to our anger, or to our desire for revenge, we are damaging our own souls.  I think that was part of what happened in my answer to my prayer that day; the kind of anger I was holding inside of me, was likely going to hurt me in some way; I was newly sober, and having unresolved anger is not a good way to stay sober.  Having said that, all of those feelings, all of the anger and sadness had to have it’s time to be expressed; all of us, no matter who we are, have a deep desire to be heard, especially when it comes to the really deep stuff.  The good news, is that Jesus does hear us.  All of those prayers that come unbidden in dark and lonely places, or the ones that come as tears…. Jesus hears those, even if we don’t speak them.  Jesus’ love for us is deeply connected to his ability to have mercy on us…  His love, his mercy has no limits; we all know that ours does have limits most days.  I believe that is at least part of the point of the parable that Jesus tells about the slave and the king.  Let’s remember, that the amount of money that the slave owed the king was an astronomical amount of money; so much so, that no king in their right mind would loan a slave that much money.    What the slave was owed by his fellow slaves, was no where near that amount that he owed;.  The king forgave the overwhelming debt… so, in a sense the king showed mercy twice; by loaning the money in the first place and then by forgiving the debt.  The one who was now free from his debt, would not extend the same mercy to his fellow slaves.  His own greed, his own self centeredness, got him in a heap of trouble.  How on earth, was he going to repay the king, who because of his awful behavior, now demanded his money?  He was in prison; and wasn’t going to be allowed out of prison until he paid.  He was now in a situation that he could not possibly get out of alive.  He would die in prison, not really because of the money he owed, but because he withheld mercy from those who genuinely needed it, even though he himself was afforded the gift of even more mercy.

    How much does our own inability to forgive others keep us in prison?  There is so much going on today in our society that would have us be selfish with our mercy, our forgiveness and our love.  The empire is only interested in its own well being; and if we fight among ourselves and refuse to see Jesus in everyone else, then we can be used for the empire’s advantage… our anger, our hurt, our fear… all of it becomes weapons against another; and we know that when we are divided, we cannot help each other… all we can see are our own needs and no one else’s matter.  That, my friends, sounds like a prison to me; a prison that it is going to be very difficult to be released from if we don’t start to love and forgive as Jesus has forgiven every one of us.  There is more than enough to go around.  Our soul’s freedom depends on our ability to let go of the chains that we sometimes let bind us.  

    I know that day at worship with my friends was life changing for me.  I began to see the depth of Jesus’ love for me, and the depth of his love for those who had harmed me.  LIke the king in the parable,  Jesus let me know that I was loved enough to be forgiven.   I can’t say that I have gotten it right, even now, but that day I became willing to believe in the possibility of my own transformation, from someone who was frozen in their anger, to someone who could at least believe I wouldn’t be angry forever.  

    Sometimes the first step is to pray for the willingness to be open to the possibility.  It’s not easy… it doesn’t come without risk; but we can live in the certainty that Jesus has already forgiven us and THEM.  We can grow into that place and take as long as we need to, so long as we don’t get lazy and use it as an excuse.  We love because Jesus has first loved… We forgive, because Jesus has first forgiven.  I pray that we can all be set free, knowing that his forgiveness comes first.