To whom do we belong?

Proper 24 Year A

October 22, 2017

There are so many ways that we identify ourselves, aren’t there?  I can remember as a kid being really impressed with labels.  You could always tell whose family was wealthy and whose family was not based on the clothing they wore.  Labels told us who was in and who was out.  I remember when Gloria Vanderbuilt  and Jordache jeans were popular.  There were not my father’s work clothes… and if you weren’t wearing them, at least where I lived, you certainly heard about it.  Junior high and high school were often places where a kid was either in or out; I spent most, if not all of my time, “out”.  Bet you couldn’t tell that… my taste in clothes hasn’t changed much either.  I can remember wanting to fit in, wanting desperately to belong and to wear the symbols and signs of other kids my age, but it wasn’t going to happen.  We were a blue collar family, and once my dad died, money was even tighter.  So, no fancy, in crowd jeans for me…

But even as adults, we like to have symbols that identify us in some way.  Tattoos have become quite mainstream in the last several years; if you’ve never had a chance to look at Bill’s arms, he has quite a few, and they are beautifully done, all by the same artist.  You can tell by his tattoos that he is a religious man who listens to punk rock, at least if you get the reference of one of his… I have one, and am contemplating 2 more; the reason I had this one done first was because it was simple; the other 2 are going to require some thinking; but this symbol, a monogram for the Virgin Mary means a great deal to me; it means, “Auspice Maria”, that is, “under the protection of Mary”.  As someone who has had difficult relationship with their own mother, and who has had a love and devotion to the Mother of Jesus, it seemed like a natural thing to do.  

We are inundated with symbols every day of our lives.  Even my son can recognize the Braums logo when we are driving and pipes up about his favorite dairy treat from there when he sees it.

Symbols are incredibly powerful, and in our gospel today, Jesus is well aware of their power.  The Pharasees are trying to trap him once again so that they can turn him in for insurrection or some other crime against the emperor.  And so, they ask him about paying taxes to the emperor.  They knew that Jesus was no fan of the emperor Tiberius, or of the Roman empire, not to mention not a huge fan of laws that kept people poor under the thumbs of those in power.  And so, they ask him about paying taxes.   Once again, he outsmarts them by asking them whose face and title was on the coin used for taxes, and of course, they respond, “the emperor’s” .  Then Jesus answers them, rather brilliantly, I think, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”   Basically, if it has his face on it, it belongs to him… who cares?  The coin they show Jesus will become worthless when there’s a new emperor… so it’s worth is temporary.  Jesus is hoping to claim God’s people, not the emperor’s money.  The branding of God’s people is not something that loses value or goes away…. It’s permanent.  In Jesus, God has made the ultimate covenant with God’s people; only those in power don’t quite understand that yet, if they ever do.

You and I have a marking, don’t we?  When we are baptized, we are “Sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked as Christ’s own, forever”.  When the priest says those words, we are marked with a cross on our forehead, a cross of oil that symbolizes the grace that we receive in baptism; a grace that says, above all things, we belong to Jesus… no matter what else may happen in our lives, that can never change because we are “marked as Christ’s own forever”.  That, dear ones, is how much “God so loved the world”.  God loves the world so much that we can never be separated from the love that is ours through the Holy Trinity.  And here’s something else… no matter where we have never belonged before, we belong to God… we belong here in God’s church and in God’s kingdom.  That cross of oil is the most important mark we have… more important than expensive jeans, more enduring even than tattoos, as cool as those are.  Our cross of oil is a cross that cannot be seen… and yet it is the most important mark we wear... it is a mark, a branding, that identifies who we are and to whom we belong; we might even say, it is a mark of Jesus’ likeness on us, so that like the coin that bears the emperor’s likeness, we might bear Jesus likeness, and so, if it is his likeness that we bear, it is to him we belong.

The more I tried to belong when I was a teenager, the worse my sense of not belonging  got… it was only through the mark of baptism that I was able to find the sense of belonging that my heart and my soul desired.  “Marked as Christ’s own forever” have been words that have been the most amazing words ever said to me,  as well as the most frightening words in my life; when I needed a community, a place to belong, it was the church that showed me that I could be loved no matter what I was wearing, or  what job I held or didn’t hold at some points; but the church has been for me more than just a place to feel good and belong; the church has been the place where I have learned what it means to be a disciple; and I will say, being a disciple is not something I do very well; it requires me to act; it requires me to risk; it requires me to be confronted by my own complacency and by others who are much better at this whole disciple thing than I am; being marked as Christ’s own forever might also mean that even though people might not see the cross of oil on my head, they might know to whom I belong; at least I hope that I bear Jesus’  likeness enough that others may know to whom I belong…

    The church is where we learn to be more like Jesus; it is the place where we come to bear his likeness by embracing the stories that others have told about him and by realizing where our own stories begin to look like his story; church is supposed to be the place where we experience our own transformation as we take Jesus into ourselves in the Eucharist; it is the place where we see him in each other…

    My hope for all of us, is that we are for each other, a community that bears a resemblance to Jesus whom we profess to follow; I pray that our actions are the actions of disciples; I pray that when others look at us, they might begin to know something about Jesus; I pray, that we all find ourselves being comforted and being accepted for who we really are…Beloved… here is where we belong, no matter where we have been excluded from before.   When we are marked as Christ’s own forever, that love and acceptance flows from us to others who need to belong somewhere, because all people, everywhere, belong in God’s kingdom…

    So… what are the marks that we bear?  Whose likeness is in our minds and hearts?  Can others really see to whom we belong?

Dangerous hearts

Proper 21 Year A 2017

October 1, 2017

    A little bit of context for today’s reading from Matthew; Jesus has entered Jerusalem on a donkey to shouts of “hosanna to the son of David!”.. And after he entered Jerusalem, he went into the temple and turned over tables, and drove out the money changers.  To say that Jesus was making an entrance, would be understating it.  He was ready for a fight with the authorities, and they were angry enough for one.  Jesus was causing all sorts of chaos, and people were questioning what they had always done; they were questioning their leaders and they were questioning what it actually meant to be part of the kingdom of God.

    In that time and place, those who had power made the rules, and they were the ones who believed that they were closest to God.  They did everything right; they followed the purity codes and the law; they gave what they were supposed to to support the temple and their mission; they observed all the fasts, all the festivals… if they were questioned the could point to the law and claim themselves to be righteous.  And, typically, they weren’t questioned all that often, and there was some sort of peace that agreed on people’s status and where they fit into the grand scheme…

    That is, until Jesus showed up.  He was everything they were not;  he had relationships with prostitutes, beggars and thieves; he didn’t always follow the law, and if fact, sometimes downright disregarded it for what he believed was a greater good; he wasn’t wealthy; he didn’t care about aligning himself with the empire; he was always questioning authority; he was always telling people that they were loved by God, something that many of them had never heard before; he healed people and restored them to community;  in short, Jesus was trouble, and once he showed up in Jerusalem, with shouts of joy that might have alluded that he was the true king of Jerusalem, well, it was game on.

    And, Jesus only makes his own situation worse by continuing to take digs at the chief priests and elders.  They wanted to know who had given him authority to do and say these things, and Jesus knew he had them… John’s life was already given because he was the herald and prophet that paved the way… nothing that the elders could’ve said about John’s baptism would’ve helped them… either they were going to show themselves to be the hypocrites they truly were, or the crowd was going to be enraged by their disbelief in John’s baptism.  They were stuck; and they knew it, and Jesus certainly knew it.  And so, while they are weakened, he tells yet another parable about the kingdom of God that shows just how merciful God is; just like last week’s lesson about the vineyard and the workers who come at the last hour, God has more than enough mercy for everyone and, the added dig is of course, that those who believe themselves to be righteous in their own eyes, may not be in God’s eyes.  Ouch.  Nothing about Jesus’ message that day is subtle or soft peddled, and it made him dangerous, at least as far as the current leadership was concerned.  If this donkey riding rabble rouser wasn’t silenced, everything they had built, all of their power, would be gone.  So, now, not only was Jesus dangerous, but now he was in deep, deep danger, and he knew exactly what he was doing.  He didn’t really care about their power games; he wasn’t interested in serving the empire… he was interested in serving God… and some days Ceasar and God were confused in the eyes of some… and certainly in Rome, Ceasar was a god… Jesus had no such confusions, and he was more than willing to point out those who did.

    And, I am sure, that as certain as Jesus was of his need to point out the discrepancies he saw in what following God ought to look like, I bet there were moments of fear for him… but it wasn’t the fear that the elders had; their fear was about losing status; his was about his life and the life of the people he loved; he knew his actions were also putting them in danger.  Soon enough, he would learn just how afraid they were, and how their fear would cause them to deny him… but for now, Jesus was focused on bringing good news to prostitutes, tax collectors and all who lived on the outer margins of society… and the more he focused on good news the more dangerous he became.

    Beloved, Jesus didn’t die because he was a nice guy… he died because he was willing to confront injustice when he saw it, he was willing to love those no one else loves, no matter what the institutions around him said.  Often those confrontations meant that things didn’t look the way others had assumed… he meant all that last shall be first stuff… gold and fine robes and adherence to the purity codes were not what were going to get you a place in the kingdom; loving God and loving your neighbor, now that might be the golden ticket that got you in…   the elders didn’t really seem to care about their neighbors… they only cared about what was in it for them…

    Our calling as disciples is not primarily to be nice,,, that’s a good thing as far as it goes, but sometimes we have to overturn some tables and point out the grave injustices around us.  Christianity has lost its sense of danger… most of us have forgotten that we need to challenge the empire, and that living in the kingdom means that we might have to hang out with some folks that don’t look like we do.  Our society needs to be challenged now just as much as it did then.  Loving God by loving our neighbor is the mandate… loving even when we are afraid, loving those no one else loves, loving instead of grasping power… and all of us in this room have more power than the people who come here in search of a meal or a bus pass… how can we turn away from that power and extend a hand of love?  How deep is our discipleship, is it the kind where we attend church and do all the right things, or is it the kind that we live even when we aren’t here, so that our words and deeds are good news to the poor and hungry?

    I suspect for most of us it’s a little of both… May we love, and learn and grow to be the children who do God’s will, even if we haven’t done a great job of it so far.  There is always time… What danger might God be calling us into today?