October 12, 2008 Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, Access
and
Open to All Celebration Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Matthew 22:1-14
The purpose of religion is to help us live. The purpose of the Christian
religion is to help us live transformed lives, to live in the way of Christ, to live as
agents of God’s light in everything we do. A benefit of accepting the Christian
religion’s help to live that way is that we find ripening in ourselves what Paul
calls the fruit of the Spirit, things like peace, joy and love, patience, kindness and
generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) To that
list the Rev. William Sloane Coffin would add two more with which Paul would
readily agree: hope even when things seem hopeless; and, above all, courage—
which Coffin called the first of the Christian virtues, because courage makes all
the others possible.
The other day someone said that they were sick of hearing about the stock
and credit markets, and yet they confessed they could not stop tuning into the
news. I am tired of the story, too, but I cannot help turning to it in this sermon,
and I think I would be doing you a disservice if I did not. But while it is the
context for what I say, the subject is how our Christian religion and specifically
this church can help us live with grace and courage in a time of great fear.
Today I have three sources of help in mind. One is the individual people
who make up this church. The second is this church acting as a body. And the
third is the sacred way of Christ that we learn in church.
A few weeks ago in our email newsletter, the BIG NEWS, I listed more
than a dozen things I was celebrating as I returned here from three and a half
months away. I was struck that almost every one of them turned out to be about
leadership. This church is blessed with extraordinary leaders among us. Two
that I mentioned were Robin Osborne and Charlie Buttrey, who just this week
sent out a stewardship letter that exemplified the kind of leadership we have. It
acknowledged the economic reality we are facing, but called upon us to respond
to it with courage and to take bold risks based on faith.
Given the fear the global economy is raising, it seems like a good time to
have a therapist as one of the co-chairs of the stewardship campaign! But Robin
is more than just a therapist, she has emerged from a terrible struggle with ill
health and personal loss as a wiser and stronger woman.
It is also a good time to have as a campaign co-chair a man who has
jumped out of an airplane—a man with his own courage and wisdom, however
questionable the wisdom of jumping out of an airplane for fun may seem to you.
Charlie brings a world-class sense of humor to the campaign, as well.
We can feel blessed to have their leadership because, as they said in their
letter this week, the times we face and what the times ask of us are scary. This is
a time that calls for wisdom, courage and faith, and if we can also maintain our
sense of humor it will go a long way toward getting us through.
Robin and Charlie are only two of many, many strong leaders who each
bring their own fruit of the Spirit to this church, their own sources of help to us
all. All we have to do is be open to receive.
The other day I was talking to another of our leaders, Deacon Scot Zens,
about getting through hard economic times. The Zens-Robinson family has a
beautiful small homestead where they raise much of their food. I was saying that
a homestead like theirs was a great thing to have in a time like this. Scot said
immediately and forcefully, “Community. If I had to choose one or the other, no
question I would take having a strong community over having a homestead.”
The individuals who make up this church are one source of help it can
provide us, but Scot is right, the community of this church is an invaluable asset
in a hard time. One of the greatest examples of why this is true is the
accomplishment we are celebrating today. Going into our Open to All campaign
to build the accessibility addition, we never thought we could have the success
we did. We thought we were too small and poor as a community. We discovered
as we went along that we had more resources than we thought. We had
outstanding individual leadership, true, but it was the way the entire church
community worked together and stretched beyond our former limits that made
the difference. It shows what we can do if we have the faith to try.
We do not know—no one knows—what challenges the coming years will
present as we enter an economic crisis unlike any other in history. But we know
how to work together, and we know that when we do, we can accomplish things
that seemed impossible when we first began. Together we can make this
community a great source of help not only to the individual members of this
church, but to the world around us that will be in dire need of exactly the kinds
of things we have to offer.
Here we return to where I started this sermon, with how the Christian
religion works to transform us, because this is the greatest source of help we
could possibly have in any hard time.
Today’s gospel passage is about a feast given by a king. The passage takes
many strange twists and turns that I will talk about in a minute, but we need to
keep in mind the fact that God invites us in to a never-ending feast, no matter
what kind of famine or terror may be raging in the world around us. The tables at
this feast are heaped with the fruit of the Spirit, with peace and joy and love, with
faith and hope and courage, with kindness and generosity and self-control.
Authors like C. S. Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle have written allegorical stories
in which characters feast on light. The church can help us hear the invitation to
come into God’s feast of light, it can help strengthen in us the resolve to accept
the invitation, and it can help us find the way through the distracting marketplace
of our lives to the narrow door of God’s realm.
The parable Jesus tells in Matthew he also tells in two other gospels. Both
Thomas and Luke tell today’s parable much more simply than Matthew. In them
a man offers a feast, but the guests make detailed excuses why they cannot come,
almost all about making money. The host is indignant, and sends his servants out
to bring in people from the street. In Luke, the poor, the crippled, the blind and
the lame are given prominent place at the feast—people who were at the very
bottom of Jesus’ society. The feast is open to all, but in Luke Jesus concludes,
“None of those who were invited will taste my dinner,” and in Thomas Jesus
concludes, “Businessmen and merchants will not enter the Places of my Father.”
The message is clear in those gospels, and it echoes Jesus’ Sermon on the
Mount. There he talks about building up treasures in heaven, not treasures on
earth. He says we cannot serve both God and mammon, God and material things.
To paraphrase the poet Wendell Berry, the gate is narrow because you cannot
come through it carrying your worldly concerns with you. You have to leave
them behind if you want all the fruit available at this feast.
When Jesus tells this same parable in Matthew, it gets much more
complicated. The servants the king sends out to invite guests get abused and
killed. Then the king turns on his invited guests and kills them and destroys their
entire city. Then one poor guest pulled in off the street gets bound and thrown
into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth—just for
being poorly dressed! What is going on here?
What is going on is allegory, many Biblical scholars think. Allegory is a
story where there is one to one correlation between its characters and historic or
Biblical characters. God is the king holding the feast; the first rejected servants
are the ancient prophets; the second set of servants that get killed are the
Christian Apostles; and the invited guests are the children of Israel who turn
from God and Christ. The city that gets destroyed is Jerusalem, which in fact was
destroyed by the Roman army not long before Matthew’s gospel was written.
At first we may think that Matthew’s version has less to say to us than
Luke’s and Thomas’s. But there are details in it that are insightful, even though
on the surface they are so exaggerated as to seem absurd. The price for not
accepting the invitation to the feast in Matthew is the destruction of the city and
great suffering. Well, look at the price that Wall Street and the world around it
are paying for not accepting God’s invitation away from greed into the feast of
generosity and self-control. Matthew’s version of the parable contributes this
truth, a truth that is akin to Buddhist teaching, that suffering is the result of
attachment to our worldly desires.
The strangest part of Matthew’s version is also the most profound. The
other two versions have nothing remotely like the last part of the story where the
king comes into the feast and finds a guest who is not wearing a wedding robe.
On the surface, it is ridiculous to expect a man pulled off the street to be dressed
appropriately, and the punishment is equally ridiculous in its extreme harshness.
The parable offers this moral at the end: “For many are called, but few are
chosen.” But today I suggest another moral, which is that we have to be worthy
of a place that is open to all.
It is not enough to come into the feast, despite what some fundamentalist
churches say, and despite what even Martin Luther might argue. It is not enough
to be part of God’s realm that is open to all, it is not enough to be saved, it is not
enough to have the faith to accept God’s invitation and walk through the open,
narrow door. At the feast of light, we need to put on the garment of light. We
need to be transformed.
How? By being open. The way to be worthy of a place that is open to all
is for us ourselves to become as open as God’s realm.
We are living in a time when our impulse naturally is to become closed
and guarded, holding on for dear life to what we have. How can we be generous
when we are watching our savings shrivel to nothing? How can we give to others
when we are terrified of having too little ourselves? If we are going to come into
this feast and enjoy all the comfort and security and good fruit God is inviting us
to have, we need to be transformed so that we can be open hearted and open
handed like God, even as our world enters a time of famine and fear.
The other day I was talking to my brother George. Just a little over a year
ago he visited us talking about money and the spiritual life. As many of you
know, George is famous in the financial world for putting spirit and money
together in what he calls “Life Planning.” Next Sunday I will share some of the
advice George is offering on how to get through these economic times. Today,
though, I want to share a ghost story he told me.
This week George was leading a retreat, getting up from his home early in
the morning and driving to the inn where the retreat was taking place. One
morning he went out around six-thirty and found that his glove compartment was
wide open. Nothing was missing—it was just open. He thought it odd, but let it
pass. Then the next morning he went out again at six-thirty and this time every
window in the car was wide open, including the sun roof. Even stranger, it had
rained in the night, but the car was perfectly dry inside. George and I speculated
on what computer malfunctions could have caused this, or who could have stolen
his key, but nothing made sense. He concluded it was a ghost. I said, “Or it
could be a sign, a message from God.” George is a Buddhist and was skeptical,
but he said, “Well, then what does it mean?” I said, “It means, ‘Be open.’”
Maybe that is God’s message for this fearful time. Be open. Stay open.
That is what it takes to be worthy of a place that is open to all. Be open yourself
to all people equally, ready to greet them with compassionate care. But even
more, be open to whatever happens, whatever comes—whether miracles or
mysteries or terrors or even the most terrible thing we fear, the economic crash,
the cancer, the death. Be open to them all, but not because, as some say, God
may be behind them. No one can know for sure what God may be behind. But be
open to them because God can be found within them. We know that through all
things, the good, the mystery and the terrible alike, the way of Christ and the
Holy Spirit flow and lead beyond fear or pain to love, to new life, to the light.
Only those who keep their hearts open to all that comes, open to God’s
transforming presence in all circumstances, open to love, only those who put on
the garment of the open feast will find their way through to grace and peace.
Jesus taught us not to look around for the realm of God, for the realm of
God is within us. God is within you right now inviting you in to the feast. The
peace, the comfort, the courage, the love, the wisdom, the power—all those fruits
that you seek are waiting within you now. The feast is open to all who are open
to receive and open to being transformed and open to sharing what they receive
with a hungry world. Let us pray in silence, simply opening our hearts to God
and saying, “Yes, God. I accept.”
Sermon 10/12/2008