September 2005 Archives

First, here is a handy link to The Lectionary Page. You can scroll down to any date and click on "RCL" to see all of the Revised Common Lectionary texts for the day on one page. Here are the the texts for 10/2, the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost.

The Parable of the Wicked Tenants has very obvious and specific meaning within the historical context of its day--Jesus' hearers recognize that and are naturally offended. Which puts us in the story as the "other tenants," for which we have to recognize our responsibilities. As the other tenants, we become the cultivators and stewards of the fruit (which can be equated with righteousness or with the mystery of salvation or with...). We can choose to respond similarly to the original tenants or we can choose to be conscious of and obedient to our responsibilities.

What would responding like the original tenants look like in our current context? Speaking in the metaphor of the parable, the implication is that we would think that by killing the owner's messenger son again (and again and again), we can hoard the fruits of the vineyard for ourselves because the return of the vineyard owner is so distant and remote that it doesn't present any real threat; we can therefore live out our days acting as though we own our own plots of land. Speaking more literally, we may think we can wrest the mystery of salvation from God and sell it for whatever price we choose--for the price of good behavior, for the price of following whatever set of rules excludes the undesirables and only allows in the most moral, the most trusted, the most deserving...the most like ourselves.

Fortunately, the action of the vineyard owner in choosing "other tenants" is ongoing and those who corrupt the fruit with a hefty price tag are not in possession of the mystery of salvation at all! They blindly underestimate the closeness of the owner and the degree to which he cares about the proper cultivation of his vineyard. But what does our obedient response look like? Paul gives us an example: humble confidence, gratitude, a peace that is deep and true even while it is still seeking, a willingness to share in the sufferings of Christ with the knowledge that Christ shows us the way through suffering to the resurrection of the body. What pure faith! Indeed, we are acceptable as tenants only in our acceptance of the Son as the messenger of God. And who is the Son? The Son is an

...ineffective messianic pretender whose idea of saving action is aggravating God's representatives into exterminating him--which, of course, is exactly what Jesus' paradoxical arrival on their scene looks like to them [the Pharisees, teachers of the law, etc.]. And because they will not trust him in such a mild arrival, because they can conceive only of their own vindictive version of the coming in judgment, for that very reason, the real, vindicating judgment--the judgment that will inquire only if they have trusted, not how well or badly they managed--will fall on them anyway, condemning their unfaith (Robert Farrar Capon 451).

More convicted and convicting words from Capon:

Mark and Luke add the detail...that 'they perceived that he had told this parable against them'--a perception that any five-year-old could have come up with, but that still deserves the final word. For Jesus was against them. And he is against the world, too. He stands in judgment against anyone who will not accept his acceptance of the world by faith alone; but he brings down his gavel only on the folly that will not see that he judges nothing else--not goodness, not badness, not anything. And that is such a strange kind of againstness, such a blessed resistance of the world's insistence on judgment by works, that you'd think it would make us all laugh out loud. But the self-justifying world (including an alarmingly large number of Christians who think that being well behaved is more important to God than just trusting his forgiveness) can see it--and him--only as a threat. As any preacher who seriously preaches the Gospel of grace can tell you, the troops are not amused by the prospect of absolutely free salvation. The first instinct of most Christians, after they have smiled indulgently at the preacher's charmingly easygoing concept of salvation, is to nail him to the wall for knocking the props out from under divine retribution for nasty deeds. They do not want grace, they want law. Like the stupid tenants in the parable, they try to stop the coming of the paradoxical Power that alone can keep them in business, and they take their refuge in a lot of prudential nonsense that only insures their going out of it.

They don't stop the Power, of course. Jesus died for the sins of those who killed him--even for the sins of unbelief by which we kill him all over again. In the end, though, it is just sad. How unhappy to put ourselves on the losing end of a deal that even our messing up can't really sour! How melancholy not to believe that all he ever wanted was for us to believe!

How just plain dumb!

As faith communities, we live into the guidance of this parable by guarding against any sort of new legalism that would claim to quantify salvation. In prayer and mutual sacrifice, we must embody the Spirit of God, who moves in a way no list of rules can explain or contain. We must, as a community, perceive what the Spirit is intimating through the Word, through song, through the sacraments, through silence, through story. We must be about right relationship with God and with others founded on the ridiculous faith that grace is sufficient for all.

Song Suggestions:

"Not What My Hands Have Done"

"In Christ There is No East or West"

"And Can It Be"

"We Walk by Faith" by Marty Haugen

"Amid the Thronging Worshipers"

A comment to my entry "It's not going to stop ..." asked if I assumed that the absence of war is peace. I had meant to reply at length, but my intention got lost in the shuffle of too many projects happening at once.

My short answer to the question is, quite simply, no. The long answer will take more time to formulate.

In the meantime, consider this excerpt from Desmond Tutu an introduction to my extended thoughts on the matter:

Stability and peace in our land will not come from the barrel of a gun, because peace without justice is an impossibility.

Many are beginning to think the only way forward is the way of armed struggle. But I am certain that if we were to say today the government is serious about dismantling apartheid most people would be glad. None of our people is really bloodthirsty. They just want their place under the sun, a place where they are acknowledged for what they are--human beings made in the image of God.

I am opposed to both the violence of those who maintain an unjust system and the violence of those who seek to overthrow it. The important point to make is that many people think violence is something that is going to be introduced from the outside by the so-called terrorists, the people of the liberation movements. The situation in South Africa is already a violent one. It is the institutional violence, the structural violence of apartheid, that has caused the answering violence of the liberation movements.

I am a lover of peace and I try to work for justice because only thus do I believe we can ever hope to establish durable peace. It is self-defeating to justify a truce based on unstable foundations of oppression. Such a truce can only be inherently unstable, requiring that it be maintained by institutional violence.

Desmond Tutu

retired Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa

from The Words of Desmond Tutu

More to come, I'm sure ...

Violence as a way of achieving justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nobel address, Oslo, December 11, 1964

We're continuing to discover all of the little things that were affected by our move to the new server and we don't always have the time to fix them right away. Some of our back issues have been adversely affected and we're working on going through all of them to ensure their continued usability.

But it's going to take a while. Although we began it with little fanfare, we are now into our fourth year of publishing catapult magazine. And while we're excited about the milestone, it means there are almost 70 back issues to go through.

Thank you for your patience and continued graciousness in this shared journey. We look forward to all of the things that come next, whatever they might be!

We just received word from Lutheran World Relief that they awarded us with a full scholarship to attend the upcoming Fair Trade Futures Conference in Chicago, IL. We would not have been able to attend without their financial assistance, so we are extremely grateful for their attentiveness to Fair Trade and for establishing a scholarship fund.

We are very much looking forward to the conference--learning more about Fair Trade, meeting others who are involved with Fair Trade in various capacities and discussing the future of Fair Trade. It should be quite an interesting experience ...

Texts for Sunday, September 18, the Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost

What stands out to me in these passages is the role of choice--we can choose to be willing servants reveling in the fact that God is abundantly good or we can choose to be bean-counting servants who continuously scrutinize whether God is being perfectly fair. It is those choosing the second path who will not be able to tolerate the wild joy of life in the Kingdom. The work we are called to is not equal, but our reward is and the reward is sufficient for all.

From Robert Farrar Capon's Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus:

The last may be first and the first last, but that's only for the fun of making the point: everybody is on the payout queue and everybody gets full pay.... The only way to solve the problem of evil is for God to do what in fact he did: to take it out of the world by taking it into himself--down into the forgettery of Jesus' dead human mind--and to close the books on it forever. That way, the kingdom of heaven is for everybody; hell is reserved only for the idiots who insist on keeping nonexistent records in their heads.

And just for fun, from the same book, this is Capon's dramatic account of the vineyard owner's last speech (who, incidentally, is played by Robert Mondavi):

'Look, Pal,' he says. (Incidentally, the Greek word in the parable is hetaire, which is a distinctly unfriendly word for 'friend.' In three of its four uses in the New Testament--here, and to the man without the wedding garment in the the King's Son's wedding, and to Judas at the betrayal--it comes off sounding approximately like 'Buster.') 'Look, Pal,' he tells the spokesman for all the bookkeepers who have gagged on this parable for two thousand years, 'Don't give me agita. You agreed to $120 a day, I gave you $120 a day. Take it and get out of here before I call the cops. If I want to give some pot-head in Gucci loafers the same pay as you, so what? You're telling me I can't do what I want with my own money? I'm supposed to be a stinker because you got your nose out of joint? All I did was have a fun idea. I decided to put the last first and the first last to show you there are no insiders or outsiders here: when I'm happy, everybody's happy, no matter what they did or didn't do. I'm not asking you to like me, Buster; I'm telling you to enjoy me. I you want to mope, that's your business. But since the only thing it'll get you is a lousy disposition, why don't you just shut up and go into the tasting room and have yourself a free glass of Chardonnay? The choice is up to you, Friend: drink up or get out; compliments of the house or go to hell. Take your pick.'

Possible songs:

• God is So Good


• Take My Life and Let it Be


• Let Us Break Bread Together

This seems like a good Sunday to remember all that we have been given that is good, regardless of the quantity in which we have received it. Perhaps reading/singing Psalms of praise would be appropriate? These are good passages for people like myself who complain too much...there's no room for whining in the Kingdom, because there will be nothing to whine about.

For some time now, I've been on our church's worship brainstorming e-mail list. I didn't have much time to respond before I quit my office manager job, but I've really enjoyed putting together a response for the lectionary Scripture texts for both September 18 and September 25. What follows is my response for September 25, which incorporates some things I've been wanting to blog about anyway. I'll try to post the responses here when I'm particularly excited about them.

Texts for Sunday, September 25, the Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

Philippians 2:1-13

Matthew 21:23-32

The Ezekiel passage connects immediately for me to the disaster resulting from Hurricane Katrina. From several statements I've heard, there is a mass misunderstanding of the concepts of judgment and prophecy. Prophets are not "fortune tellers" who possess magical powers to predict the future. Rather, they possess the gift of analyzing human behavior according to past patterns and according to the desires of God for God's people. Their statements are more "If [this], then [that]" statements meant to provoke change in their hearers.

Ezekiel's prophecies emerge from a time of exile, when the community of Israel has fallen apart because of its denial of its identity as people of God's law. That is, they have "prostituted" their power and their allegiances (see ch. 16 for an elaborate metaphor). Many Israelites during this time take up blaming their ancestors for their current suffering, but the particular passage of focus for this Sunday makes it clear that they have the choice as individuals AT ANY TIME to forego the ways of their ancestors and live righteously even in suffering. The judgment of the individual exists in relationship with the judgment of the community, but each type of judgment is distinct.

What then is judgment? Judgment, I believe, is not so much an act of God as it is the natural result of living outside of God's vision for us as human beings. That vision is articulated extensively in the law, but very concisely in the Philippians passage: love. Verses 4 & 5: "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others."

To see the results of NOT living by the rule of love, we can look at the current situation following the hurricane. I can hear Ezekiel saying, "Don't you worry about the sins of the individuals who had the ability to flee the city before its destruction--the sexual immorality, the gambling, the greed, the desecration of life. Worry about the role you play in the systemic injustices that have resulted in thousands of displaced people whose hidden pockets of poverty have been exposed. You knew that IF you ignored injustice being done against others, THEN there would come a day when your own excessive comfort would begin to deteriorate." In a way, we judge ourselves, we are the agents of our own judgment. We choose, as communities and as individuals, the paths we will take in full knowledge that our choices reflect our sense of who God is and have consequences beyond ourselves.

The hurricane was not an act of a coldly calculating, retributive God for God has "no pleasure in the death of anyone" and those who died were not those responsible for the core injustices that are being exposed. Rather, we are being judged as a nation (see above definition) in the sense that our selfish ambition has been laid bare and we now must reconcile ourselves not only to rising fuel prices, but also to our corporate responsibility for refugees of this storm and potential refugees of any future disaster as a result of immobilizing poverty.

If the goal of selfless love is what is articulated in Philippians, then what are our obstacles to achieving that goal? I think some of the obstacles are exposed in Philippians, as well as the Gospel text: self centeredness, ego, fear of reprisal, cowardice, destructive "groupthink," and our horrific ability to do lip service to what we know ought to be done. This is what the parable addresses directly, and I'll turn to Robert Farrar Capon for some interpretation:

If you then expand upon the parable, you get an instant application of it to the life of the church in all ages. For no matter how much we give lip service to the notion of free grace and dying love, we do not like it. It is just too...indiscriminate. It lets rotten sons and crooked tax farmers and common tarts into the kingdom, and it thumbs its nose at really good people. And it does that, gallingly, for no more reason than the Gospel's shabby exaltation of dumb trust over worthy works. Such nonsense, we mutter in our hearts; such heartless, immoral folly. We'll teach God, we say. We will continue to sing 'Amazing Grace' in church, but we will jolly well be judicious when it comes to explaining to the riffraff what it actually means. We will assure them, of course, that God loves them and forgives them, but we will make it clear that we expect them to clean up their act before we clasp them seriously to our bosom. We do not want whores and chiselers and practicing gays (even if they are suffering with AIDS) thinking they can just barge in here and fraternize. Above all, we do not want drunk priests, or ministers who cheat on their wives with church organists, standing up there in the pulpit telling us that God forgives such effrontery. We never did such things. Why we can hardly even bear to think...

Are we true agents of God's grace when we offer conditional justice to the poor, even as we hoard (sometimes wrongly referred to as "stewarding') the fruits of our own unearned privilege? Have we, as a nation, prostituted our global status to preserve our reputation as the richest and most secure, even as our foreign and domestic policies leave the most disadvantaged members of the human race struggling for daily survival? Are we individually making excuses for not taking the difficult road because the current burden of judgment is on the community's shoulders?

We need to come to a place where we are so desirous of being transformed by God that we can pray for judgment: for the clarity of our sin, collectively and individually, that will allow us to move forward knowing what we must do to love better and to "work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling."

Today is my second official day of work after having quit my office manager job at our church.

I started working at St. John's in March of 2003, about 4 months after Rob and I ran out of money and energy and moved to Michigan, supposedly for a 6-month sabbatical. The job opened up at a particularly fortuitous time, which is a vague way of saying we were flat broke, subsisting on 10/$1 Ramen and free cable TV. Encouraged by our families (who, at the same time they were affirming our desire to take risks in living faithfully, were no doubt having visions of our teeth falling out as we scraped together enough change to buy a second hand blender for our Ramen), we decided that the office manager job would be a good bridge to a more stable income through our non-profit organization, *culture is not optional.

As no pharmaceutical company has yet patented a form of organizational birth control, we discovered ourselves proud founders of a new organization (World Fare) later that year. We were glad to be changing little corners of the world in such practical ways, but our schedule, especially after Rob returned to school full time, started eating away like a jackhammer at one of our most deeply held values: Sabbath. Our path of discipleship also became less clear as we had fewer discretionary hours for study and work-related travel.

And so, with no sure promise of extra income through *cino or World Fare to replace my church wage, I quit. This is a sad decision on one hand--I enjoyed the opportunity to get to know folks in our faith community, I liked being able to challenge the congregation through various church publications to serve in new ways and I appreciated working with our pastor, who balances his sincere goodness with a righteous anger over injustice.

However, I will also enjoy having my mornings to study and attend morning prayer once a week at a local retreat center. I will enjoy worshipping as a congregant, rather than a staff person (no more "Kirstin, would you mind making copies of this for me real quick?"). And I look forward to seeing how the newest adventure in counterintuition will turn out.