A Subversive Vision

Matthew 20:1-16
A Subversive Vision
James Sledge                                                                            September 24, 2023 

Many years ago, I saw a news report about a local fellow who had filed a lawsuit against some of his coworkers over a lottery ticket that had won 99 million dollars. It seems that there was a group of workers who went in together to buy tickets on a regular basis, agreeing to split the winnings should they ever win.

The fellow who filed the lawsuit was a member of this group, and he claimed that there was an unwritten agreement that they covered for each other when someone was out sick as he had been when the winning ticket was purchased. The person from the group they interviewed for the news contradicted that, insisting that it was purely a put up your money and you’re in, don’t and you’re not.

The lawsuit was a hot topic for local conversation, and the TV reporter interviewed a number of people about their thoughts on the case. Nearly all of them thought the suit had no merit. He didn’t put any money in, so he doesn’t deserve any of the winnings. “Fair is fair,” one of them said.

Most of us have a pretty strong sense about what is and isn’t fair. It starts when we are very young. Small children will object when a friend or sibling gets a bigger slice of cake than them, complaining that it’s not fair.

The people interviewed by that news reporter seemed to assume that the man who filed suit was trying to get something he didn’t deserve, but if it could have been proven that there was indeed an agreement to cover for coworkers out sick, then opinions likely would have changed. Then the coworkers would be the unfair ones, greedily trying to hold onto the money that had been promised to another.

I never did hear the outcome of the lawsuit, but I assume that any jurors would have done what they thought was fair.

Jesus’ parable today seems to raise issues of fairness. Is it fair that people who barely broke a sweat get paid as much as people who worked hard all day? Surely not, but then again, Jesus is not suggesting how to handle payroll at the workplace. Jesus is telling a parable that he knows offends our sensibilities in order to get us to think differently about the world and God’s kingdom.

It may help to realize what prompts Jesus to tell this parable. In the verses prior to our reading, a wealthy young man has gone away grieving after Jesus tells him to sell all he has, give the money to the poor, and come with Jesus. As he goes away, Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

This astounds the disciples who, like many of us, think of wealth as a blessing. But Jesus speaks of it as a curse.

Peter then reminds Jesus that the disciples have left everything to follow him, asking what sort of reward they will receive. Jesus assures him that they will be well rewarded, but then he adds, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” And then Jesus tells the parable we heard today.

No doubt Matthew has Jesus address this parable to his mostly Jewish audience. Matthew’s community is made up of good, law-abiding Jews who have embraced Jesus as their Jewish Messiah, but Gentiles are beginning to be drawn to the Jesus movement, people who’ve never followed the Jewish law like most of the members have all their lives. The parable is in part a call for Jewish Christian to welcome Gentiles as equals.

But I think there is more to the parable, although hearing that may require us to expand our understanding of parables. There’s a tendency to think of Jesus’ parables as a kind of Christian fables, catchy stories with clear morals or lessons, but they are much more. Unlike fables, Jesus’ parables often turn the world on its head.

 Walter Brueggemann writes that Jesus’ parables are “revolutionary activities.” They are “subversive reimaginings of reality.”^[1] In the “realities” created by human societies, there is not enough for everyone. Scarcity is the norm, and so we must strive and be diligent, lest we find ourselves without. This reality is so dominant, so unquestioned, that toddlers have already picked it up and incorporated it into their worldview. And so young children in homes overflowing with food of every sort, at no risk of ever going hungry, are troubled when their slice of cake doesn’t measure up to their sibling’s or friend’s.

Have you ever noticed that questions of fairness often deal with winners and losers? We are upset if an athletic competition isn’t fair because all the contestants deserve an equal opportunity to win. When someone gets the job because they know the right person or because of nepotism, it seems unfair because other people lost out as a result. When men are paid more than women for the same work, it is patently unfair because the women lose income they should have had. And Jesus’ parable about the workers in the field seems unfair because those who worked all day didn’t come out ahead of the latecomers. Their extra effort should have put them ahead, should have made them the winners.

All of this assumes that life is a competition with winners and losers, and in our culture, money and possessions are the trophies that go to the winners. Our consumerist society teaches that fulfillment comes from having more, and this requires relentless striving and competition. There’s not enough for everyone, and so there will be winners and losers. And if something games the outcome of this competition, well that’s just not fair.

But Jesus imagines a world completely at odds with ours. His term for this new world is the kingdom of God, a phrase that probably doesn’t work as well in our day as it did in his. Numerous updates have been suggested, the commonwealth of God, the dream of God, the God movement, the revolution of God. But whatever you call it, Jesus says it has come near, and he calls his followers to begin living by its ways now.

In this new world, the competition is called off. The poor are lifted up and the rich are pulled down. Love rather than violence is what brings this new day, a day when all neighbors matter as much as I do, when people trust in God to provide and so do not need to hoard resources for themselves, when there is enough for all, and no one needs to get ahead.

Jesus’ reimagining of reality is beyond radical. There are no winners and losers, and fulfilment doesn’t come from having more and more. It comes from a life motivated by love, a life that is not full and complete if a neighbor, even an enemy, is hurting or in need.

Jesus’ vision of a new reality is so counter-cultural, so radical, that even the church has largely ignored it and made faith about personal salvation or private spirituality. We have seen Jesus’ vision as too impractical, too radical, and have made faith about other things. We have made faith fit easily into cultures of greed, domination, exploitation and violence.

But the vision is still there. Jesus’ “subversive reimaginings of reality” are still there, jarring in us in parables like the one we heard this morning, and Jesus invites us to let that vision reshape our lives. He invites us to be a community that lets his vision bubble up in our lives, both our individual lives and our life together as community.

Perhaps that feels like tilting at windmills and naïve foolishness. What impact can we possibly have in the face a world that looks nothing like Jesus’ vision and has little use for those who too aggressively challenge the status quo?

Then again, Jesus’ first disciples must have asked that same question in a world that was even crueler and more violent and less tolerant of dissent than ours. Yet their witness, their living out the way of Jesus’ drew in more and more people and began to transform the world.

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[1] Walter Brueggemann, “The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity,” an essay in The Christian Century, March 24-31, 1999. 

Absurd Community

 Matthew 18:21-35
Absurd Community
James Sledge                                                                            September 17, 2023

 

When I served a church in Columbus, OH, I was the chair of our presbytery’s Committee on Ministry or COM. The COM oversees the relationship between pastors and churches. This includes everything from searching for a new pastor to approving the call of a new pastor to dealing with conflict that sometimes arises between churches and their pastor.

As a part of my duties as chair, I was one of several people notified when the presbytery received an allegation about an inappropriate relationship between a pastor and a church member. Making matters worse, this adult member was someone with a significant developmental disability with limited capacity to enter into a consensual relationship. The mother still provided a significant level of care to this individual, and she was the one who had brought the allegation.

As things began to go forward, good communication with this individual proved difficult. Meanwhile the pastor was adamant that nothing inappropriate had occurred, but there was enough to warrant appointing an investigative committee. Per presbytery protocols, a lawyer was provided for the pastor in question at the denomination’s expense. At this point there was no involvement from police or the courts, and the investigation was strictly to see if there was grounds to remove this pastor, revoke his ordination, and so on.

The investigation went on for some time with the pastor regularly insisting on his innocence and expressing anger toward the presbytery for the way his good name was being damaged. In the meantime, COM had greatly overrun its budget for legal help.

Then, at the last possible moment, the pastor suddenly changed his tune and confessed. At this point I was not directly involved in process, so I don’t know details, but suffice to say there was a great deal of anger toward this pastor over how he had wasted so much energy, time, and money, not to mention the behavior that spurred the investigation. I shared in this anger and frustration, and I was glad this individual would no longer be allowed to pastor any church in our denomination.

This case popped into my mind as I read today’s passage from Matthew. When Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive a church member, suggesting seven times, Jesus responds, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” I should add that it’s also possible to translate Jesus’ response as seventy times seven. Either way it’s a whole lot.

So how does this apply to that pastor in Columbus? His sins were particularly bad ones and they were many. In addition to the abuse itself, he had lied over and over and cost the presbytery lots of money. But I don’t know that if you added them all up you’d get to seventy-seven and certainly not to seventy times seven. So we’re simply to forgive him. That seems almost absurd.

Of course Jesus tells a pretty absurd parable to illustrate his big numbers, although the absurdity of it may be lost on us because of a monetary amount that is totally foreign to us. According to some scholars, a talent was worth fifteen year’s wages for the typical worker in Jesus’ day, so let’s update that to our day.

The minimum wage in Virginia is $11.00 an hour which works out to $22,880 per year for someone who is full time. So we could say that a talent was worth $343,200, and the parable Jesus tells says the slave has somehow run up a debt of 10,000 talents or around 3.4 billion dollars. I can’t imagine how anyone could incur that level of debt, but I think the parable is supposed to contain an absurd, impossible level of debt. That makes the slave’s plea, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything,” beyond absurd. He would need to live 150,000 years to make that much. Yet the master forgives the debt.

But the parable is not done with absurdities. The one who has been forgiven a 3.4-billion-dollar debt then encounters a fellow slave who owes him 100 denarii, or around $6000. But even thought he has been forgiven an impossibly large debt, he won’t show the least bit of leniency to his fellow slave who would likely be able to repay him in time.

The parable seems to put the hearer in the position of the first slave. It reminds us that we have received love and grace and forgiveness in absurd, extravagant amounts, and so we are expected be extravagant in our own forgiveness of others. The Lord’s Prayer says as much. “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Or perhaps better translated, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”

But at this point I need to say that there is something missing from this sermon. It is missing from our scripture reading as well, and that is context. When Peter asks his question about how many times to forgive, he is responding to Jesus’ teachings on correcting members of the church.

Jesus has just explained that when a member sins against you, you are to go to that person privately and point out what they’ve done. If that doesn’t work, you are to take two or three other members with you to talk to the person. If that fails, you should bring the matter before the entire church, and if that doesn’t work, the church is to shun the person, presumably in the hope that the person will eventually repent and ask for forgiveness. Peter is responding to this teaching when he asks about how often to forgive.

Jesus’ words on absurd levels of forgiveness are connected to an expectation of accountability and repentance. When someone has been admonished and then asked for forgiveness, they are to receive it repeatedly. This is not blanket forgiveness that is simply offered no matter what. Instead Jesus is describing a community of believers where there is real accountability and correction, but endless grace as well.

I’m not sure we in the church do a very good job of this. Faith has become so privatized in the modern US that any notion of correction and accountability is largely absent. Even so, one of the responsibilities of the Session outlined in the Presbyterian Book of Order is “reviewing the roll of active members at least annually and counseling with those who have neglected the responsibilities of membership.”[1] (I imagine some elders are getting a little nervous.)

It was once common for churches to speak of themselves as a family. That metaphor has its liabilities, but to some degree, what Jesus describes looks like family when it functions as it should. Love and grace are always there. A child is never beyond the love of family. But there are expectations that a child behave in certain ways and consequences when they don’t. What if church looked more like that?

I wonder what it might take, and what it might look like, to become the sort of community Jesus envisions the church to be. What would it mean to be a congregation where all were welcome, where being a part of the community had nothing to do with being good enough or accomplished enough, but at the very same time there were clear expectations that everyone would engage in work and study and ministry that deepened their faith, that helped them become more committed disciples, and helped give the world a glimpse of the new day Jesus envisioned when he spoke of the Kingdom? And there was correction, even loving discipline, when people failed to do so.

Perhaps that seems an absurd fantasy, even more difficult than forgiving from the heart over and over and over, seventy times seven. But then again, the scriptures insist that the Holy Spirit can empower the church to do miraculous, even absurd, impossible things.

Come, Holy Spirit, come.

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[1] Book of Order, G-3.201c

Putting on Jesus

 Romans 13:8-14
Putting on Jesus
James Sledge                                                                            September 10, 2023

 

If you watch television at all, you likely have encountered advertisements for the supplement Prevagen. The ads typically feature someone talking about how they noticed they weren’t as sharp as they once were, but after they began taking Prevagen, they saw a marked improvement in their memory and mental acuity.

The ads also tout that such results are clinically proven. What they don’t tell you is that this clinical study was just 10 individuals, that the study was done by the company that owns Prevagen. They’ve also been sued by the FTC over the claims and agreed to put in a small disclaimer.

Numerous scientific and medical authorities have stated categorically that there is no way for Prevagen to work as it’s advertised. Apparently the active ingredient has to make it into the brain intact to have any effect, but this ingredient is easily digested and broken down by the body and so never reaches the brain.

I’ve noticed in some of the more recent commercials that they’ve added the phrase, “available without a prescription.” This clearly implies some sort of significant medical value to the product, despite the fact that this disclaimer is on the package. “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”

The advertising for Prevagen borders on deceptive, and no doubt the company has an army of lawyers who research just how far the company can go without actually breaking the law.

I have little doubt that some of these lawyers, and certainly some of the people who work for the company, are church goers who think of themselves as good and faithful people. If anyone were to challenge them on that they would surely say they weren’t doing anything illegal, and besides, faith is a private thing between them and God.

Donald Trump used this last defense when Pope Francis publicly stated that some of Trump’s inklings were not Christian. Said Trump, “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful. I am proud to be a Christian. No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith,”^[1]

I have a feeling that both the Apostle Paul, as well as Jesus, would disagree with that statement. In our gospel reading today Jesus speaks of the church correcting members who sin, and Paul is clear that his understanding of the faith calls for people to love one another. He even says that love is the fulfillment of the law because Love does no wrong to a neighbor.

For Paul, to be in Christ transforms one from conforming to the ways of the world, what Paul typically labels “the flesh,” to the way of Jesus. This is above all the way of love. The person who has put on the Lord Jesus Christ, as Paul exhorts his readers to do, will no longer measure their actions by whether or not they can say they are legal. Instead they will only do what does no wrong to a neighbor.

It is most unfortunate that Paul’s words on being saved by grace through faith have been distorted to mean that it only matters what you believe, not what you do. Despite his insistence that we are saved by God’s grace and not our works, Paul nonetheless, in all of his letters, exhorts people to very specific sorts of behavior, just as he does in our reading today.

To be in Christ is to become a new creation who acts out the grace and love received from God. I think Paul would agree with Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that says, “Thus you will know them by their fruits.”

There has been a quote bouncing around on Facebook of late which I also shared on my page. It’s from Kurt Struckmeyer’s book A Conspiracy of Love, and it says this.

At the heart of Christianity is a powerful ethic. It is what the first followers of Jesus call The Way – a way of living based on love and compassion, reconciliation and forgiveness, inclusion and acceptance, generosity and justice. This ethic is what makes Christianity good. Without it, Christians can become rigid and intolerant, self-righteous and condemning, hate filled and violent, selfish and unjust. In other words, without the ethic of Jesus, Christians can represent the worst humanity has to offer.[2]

That’s a rather stunning statement. Christians can represent the worst humanity has to offer if they are not guided by the way of Jesus. Believing in Jesus does not necessitate following the way of Jesus. Even having a relationship with Jesus does not necessarily mean walking in the way of Jesus, and I think Paul is speaking of the way of Jesus when he calls his readers to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

To be honest, I do not understand why so many people who are adamant in their declarations of Christian faith seem to have missed the part about putting on Christ. To put on Jesus, to wear Jesus like clothing, is to manifest Jesus with one’s life. Wearing Jesus means that other people will see Jesus when they look at you, and that means they will see love. They will see a pattern of behavior that does no wrong to a neighbor.

I wonder what would happen if those working at the advertising agency creating commercials for Prevagen put on Christ and so asked themselves whether or not what they were doing did any wrong to a neighbor. I wonder the same about all sorts of companies that make their money off a tricking people into signing up for paid membership that they thought was free. I wonder about legal advice that helps a company skirt the law. What would happen if all these people cared and asked, does this injure my neighbor?

It seems to me that there are occupations that would be off limits for those who are in Christ, who put on Christ. But the question of whether something harms my neighbor is bigger than just jobs. Does how I spend or invest my money harm my neighbor? Does how I vote harm my neighbor? Does how I live my life harm my neighbor. Paul says that for the Christian, the answer needs to be, ‘No,” for Love does no wrong to a neighbor.

Of course it’s a pipe dream to think that people who run deceptive businesses, who worry about profits above all else, who care only for themselves, will suddenly start to worry about whether their actions harm their neighbor. And when the Apostle Paul writes to the church in Rome, he has no expectation that the world will suddenly be motivated and guided primarily by love, but he does fully expect that to be the way things are in the church.

In the Presbyterian Book of Order there is a hundred-year-old statement labeled “The Great Ends of the Church.” Ends here refers to the church’s primary reasons for existing. The last in the list of six reads, “the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.”[3] In other words, it is our job as the church to show the world what things look like when we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, when we wear Jesus and so are guided by love of God and neighbor.

But Paul doesn’t expect this to happen just because we are trying hard to please God. Rather Paul expects this to flow naturally from encountering the incredible love, the amazing grace, the unexpected embrace of God in Jesus that would go so far as a cross to reach out to us.

A famous theologian, when asked to sum up his life’s work in a single sentence, supposedly replied with the words of a song he learned as a child. “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”[4] To know that fully, to realize that God’s love in Christ is there for us with no ifs, ands, or buts, is to be held securely in something that frees us to live differently, to live out the way of Jesus. And oh, how the world needs more people, and especially needs more Christians, whose lives show Christ to the world.

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[1] “Pope Francis Questions Donald Trump’s Christianity,” BBC.com, February 16, 2016

[2] Kurt Struckmeyer, A Conspiracy of Love: Following Jesus in a Postmodern World (p. 202). (Eugene OR: Resource Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2016), Kindle Edition, p. 202

[3] Book of Order, F-1.0304

[4] Attributed to Karl Barth, see www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/01/did-karl-barth-really-say-jesus-loves-me-this-i-know/