Shema

 Another day in the interesting times we are living in.

Another Sunday seeking to be responsible and safe

            in order to provide Eucharist to as many of 

                                                the Nativity Faith Community as possible.

Another Gospel reading taken from that high tension space of time

            between Palm Sunday and Good Friday.

Let’s see what speaks to us over those 2,000 years 

            that is just as relevant today as it was when first written.

 

In the gospel reading for today the Pharisees 

are putting a question to Jesus.

            They are frequently putting questions to Jesus 

                                                                                                            in the gospels.

In reading the context it becomes clear 

            that they feel threatened by Jesus.

 

            This may seem odd 

because the Pharisees were good, moral, religious people.

            These were the ones 

                        who could be counted on for a generous pledge.

            They were people you could trust your children with.

            They were looked up to as exemplary, 

                                                good examples for the whole community.

Why should they feel threatened by Jesus?

            In thoughtful reading of the gospels it becomes clear 

that Jesus, in their eyes, is a bad example for the community.

            

He has a whole different way of looking at morality, for instance, than the Pharisees,

            and he broke the commandments on several occasions.

Sure, there always seemed to be a good reason to do that,

            but that seemed rather cavalier 

                                    to those who had always played by the rules.

            

So in this case the Pharisees wanted to test this heretic

            in order to have some ground for asserting 

that their authority

            derived from their religious observance and the Law

was not so easily cast aside 

                                                by this problematic, iconoclastic Jesus.

            

 “Teacher,” they asked, “which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

            

You know, 

anyone taking the time to reflect on the commandments

            could probably come up with the answer Jesus gave.

            

Deut. 6:4 ¶ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One. 

            The Shema – the Jewish Creed, the Heart of the Jewish Faith

Deut. 6:5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, 

and with all your soul, 

and with all your might.

            

This, the great commandment is essentially a positive restating 

of the first of the Ten Commandments, 

“You shall have no other gods besides me.”

 

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart/mind/will, 

and with all your soul/nephesh/breath/life force/self, 

and with all your might/strength, 

                        with the full measure of your devotion.

You shall love God with your whole being.

 

And then Jesus gives them an extra credit addition:

            coupled with this first commandment 

                        is the commandment from Leviticus 19:18

 “You shall not take vengeance 

or bear a grudge against any of your people,

             but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”

 

These words, the Summary of the Law, are so familiar to us.

For long-time Episcopalians you will remember that 

those words were spoken at EVERY Eucharist in the 1928 BCP

right after the opening Collect for Purity.

 

“Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:

    Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart…” (etc.)

 

This is a very important text, important for both Jews and Christians, 

and, I might add, 

an important text for what is at the heart of mainstream Islam.

 

So let’s take a few minutes to look seriously 

at the two greatest commandments on which hang 

ALL the Law 

and ALL the teachings of the Prophets.

 

You shall love God with your whole being.

 

Ah, yes, you may say, that is a very good intention to have, 

to love God with your whole being, 

but when I am honest with myself, I have to say 

that I love God with a whole lot less than my entire being.

One does not want to appear to be 

                                                            a religious fanatic or zealot after all.

There’s love for God there, but it’s not necessarily 100%.

 

Well, so much for being able to keep the first and greatest commandment!

            So much for keeping ANY of the commandments then.

 

Is that the way we tend to think about this commandment? 

            that it’s an ideal we want to try to aspire to, 

loving God with a bit more of ourselves than we did before?

 

Let me turn this around.

            How is it that God loves us?

Isn’t it with all God’s heart, with all God’s being, with all God’s might?

 

Is not this what Jesus showed us, 

revealed to us about the nature of God, 

revealed to us through how he lived and ministered and died 

and went through death to a Resurrection Life 

that was totally for our benefit?

Can you see how it could be 

that this first and greatest commandment 

is actually a description of God’s relationship with us, 

a relationship of love that is utterly complete 

            in self-giving, self-revealing, and self-surrender?

 

May I suggest to you that we are not being asked to do 

what God hasn’t already been doing in us.

But hear, O Israel, 

the LORD our God, the LORD is One.  The LORD is One.

 

There is only One.

No, this is not saying that there is only one God, 

                                                                        but that there is only ONE.

 

We indicate this One Being by the noun God, 

but we also need to remember 

that this is not a separate being from ourselves.

Rather all creation exits within the Heart of God, so to speak.

There is no way we can be apart from God, 

dwelling as we do in the created order, 

that is utterly held in the bosom of God.

 

We are asleep to this most of the time.

That is why for centuries, millennia we have been told 

that the classic and ultimate goal of all spiritual practice 

is to realize union with God.

It is not to attain union with God, 

as something to be achieved, 

but to realize the fact of union, the unity of all being, 

to experience this at the heart of our being, 

far beyond intellectual understanding.

 

There is only One, 

there is God loving us, 

and we in the heart of God, 

and an expression of faith 

that we too can awaken to full surrender in love to God.

Love God and love your neighbor.

To love God is to love your neighbor.

There is only One.

            

I used the word surrender.

We may not particularly shine to that word, 

but it is a good word for us to use.

One definition of the word faith, 

a definition which I think is very practical, is this: 

faith is surrender in trust. 

Does that not describe what it is to have faith in something or someone?

            To surrender in trust.

That means letting go of ourselves into trust.

            

To love God in this full and complete way 

is to be a living sacrifice to God and neighbor.

To love in this way is to move beyond self-possession and self-concern.

            

I said that this text of the two greatest commandments 

is very important for both Jews and Christians, 

and, also for what is at the heart of Islam.

The two fundamental principles of Islam are 

surrender to God and generosity with others.

            

If we were to live our lives this way, 

that is, without self-concern 

and in this full generosity of self-giving for others, 

what an incredible difference that would be.

            

The power of love would dismantle all the positioning for seizing power,

            all the political divisions,

all the violence done in the name of religious beliefs, 

all the greed that leads to huge economic inequality, 

all the exploitation of others and of the planet, 

all the labeling of another as an enemy.

 

So this Gospel lesson for today is very apropos 

            as we enter the last week before a very important election

                        fraught with complications and questions:

                                                what is truth?

                                                who can we trust?

            And so much of it all out of our control.

 

Hang onto this:

            Love God with all your heart and soul and might

and you will be able to love your neighbor as yourself.

 

There is only One.

            God is Love.

                        Trust that Love.

                                    You are loved.

Another Way of Looking at a Difficult Parable

 The Gospel reading for today – 

We have a matched set here of two parables folded into each other,

             particularly nasty stories with gruesome outcomes.

This is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like?!

            What IS this about?

            Why in the world would the lectionary have a reading like this?

 

First let me say something about the role of the Bible

                        in the Episcopal Church 

            as a context not only for this tough Gospel,

                        but also for addressing the larger issue

                                    about how to read and interpret the Bible.

 

The Episcopal Church is a Bible Church.

 

We take the Bible seriously.

We say we believe that 

the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments 

to be the Word of God 

and to contain all things necessary to salvation.

Our liturgy, the words of our worship, the prayers, 

are full of biblical references and direct quotes.

 

The lessons we read each Sunday come from 

an expanded three year cycle of readings designed to cover 

all the Gospels, 

most all the Epistles, 

and as much of the meatier parts of the OT as possible.

We don’t allow a casual selection of just those portions of the Bible 

that are pleasing to the eye.

We do read the beautiful comforting passages, 

but we also read the confronting, cold-water-in-the-face, 

                                                            wake-up-call passages                                                 

                        that push us out of our comfort zones.

We take the whole Bible seriously.

 

So here we are with appointed readings for the day

first with a story of a king and his subjects

            -- and something is wrong in their relationship. 

 

When the king has a wedding banquet for his son, 

the heir to the throne, 

his subjects choose to ignore the summons 

preferring to go back to work 

than to go to a big royal wedding with a free feast.

They are so alienated that they prefer not to go 

            if they have to be in the king’s presence. 

 

When the king pushes the issue with his subjects 

                        he is clearly revealed as a despot:

things turn nasty, and there are murders and burning cities.

 

The Kingdom of Heaven is like this?!

 

Now what I am going to say may be different 

from what you may have heard before about this passage.

I’m not going to talk about allegories, 

or suggest that this story is a warning about what might happen 

if people don’t accept the invitation to come to Church!

 

Instead I want to put this reading back into its context, 

look at what comes before and what comes after in Matthew’s Gospel,

for that is the way we understand scripture in the Episcopal Church – 

            we look at the whole of scripture

            and the consistent witness throughout.

 

In Matthew’s Gospel this reading is part of 5 chapters 

            of parables and teachings that Jesus gave in the Temple 

in the time setting between 

the triumphal entry into Jerusalem – Palm Sunday – 

and Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion on Good Friday.

Last Sunday’s reading immediately preceded today’s reading.

 

Just to refresh your memory, for those of you who were here, 

            last time the Gospel was the parable of a landlord 

having trouble collecting the rent from the tenants in his vineyard.

It was a story aimed at the chief priests, Pharisees and religious leaders,

             about their rejection of the One whom God had sent.

They wanted to arrest Jesus, 

but feared the crowds because they held Jesus to be a prophet.

 

It is an understatement to say that there was a lot of alienation 

between the religious authorities and leaders, and Jesus.

 

So for them the invitation from God in the form of Jesus, 

            the invitation into the transforming life 

                                    of the Kingdom of God,

is seen as a threat to the way they lived out their religion.

For them what Jesus was revealing to them about God 

was a radically different perception 

that made all their admirable religious observance moot.

 

It wasn’t, Jesus was saying, a matter of keeping all the rules, 

or being morally respectable, or living a successful life.

It was a matter of recognizing the condition of the heart that needs 

            the grace that flows in abundance from the Creator to all beings,

providing life in abundance, eternal quality life.

 

This life is a free gift that liberates us from the illusions we have, 

illusions that have lead us into dead end paths 

of trying to be self-sufficient without God, 

                                    or worse yet, before God,

for that is like saying to God no thanks to the mercy and grace.

            “I got this – I can do this on my own.”

This is trying to be our own gods.

                        Does this come closer to home now?

 

So in today’s parable Jesus was reflecting to the Pharisees 

and all those comfortable in their own opinion of themselves, 

                        their condition of alienation from the Creator 

                                                                        and the One whom God had sent

            in this story about subjects extremely alienated from their king.

 

This parable therefore is full of irony and is provocative.

Those hearing it, the religious know-it-alls of their day, 

            could see themselves left outside the Kingdom of Heaven, 

and the riff-raff off the street get in to take their place.

“For many are called, but few are chosen.”

                                    There is a warning for us in all this.

 

Now there is the second parable tagged onto the first, 

            tucked in before this final verse of called and chosen.

This parable is about someone without a wedding garment 

            someone who is speechless when interrogated 

about not conforming to the dress code, 

someone who is silent before his accuser.

He is bound hand and foot, 

and cast out into the place of weeping and mourning, 

and the place of angry gnashing of teeth, 

outside the city wall in the darkness.

 

There is an eerie parallel here, a shadow of familiarity, 

and since this Gospel event comes as it does 

between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, 

during the time when all this conflict comes to a head 

and precipitates the final playing out of the scene with Jesus’ death,

one may wonder if maybe, perhaps, this is another foreshadowing, 

                        that Jesus may be alluding to himself.  Compare Isaiah 52 and 53.

 

Jesus did not present himself in anything he said or did 

as the religious leaders did.

Instead Jesus served,              

            he took on the role of a servant.

Jesus took off his robe and laid it aside to wash his disciples’ feet.

 

People came to hear him: 

he preached and taught and told stories – for hours, all day. 

People got hungry: he fed them.

People came to be healed: 

he healed them, every one of them, 

even those not specifically asking to be healed, 

and those who wouldn’t ask directly 

but would reach out and touch his clothes

-- and here we come to the absolute core of our faith;

            this is the big deal.

 

            His ultimate act of service and self-giving 

was the complete self-giving of his life, even to the extent of death.

 

And then his serving did not stop even there with death, 

but went right through death, 

to Life, Resurrection Life.

 

And this Resurrection Life was not even for his own benefit,

            as if he might say, “Oh, relief, now I’m alive again!”

No, his coming to life again was for the purpose of 

                                    continuing to serve by bringing life to all beings.

 

Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled…

            In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.

            If it were not so, 

would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

And…I…will take you to myself, 

so that where I am 

there you may be also.”

 

Jesus speaks of undertaking death 

when he says that he goes to prepare/create a place for us.

The place is in him as Resurrection.

 

Where he was going to prepare the way for us was through death, 

so that in the Risen Life he could be in us, 

and we in him, and he in the Father,

and so we would become the dwelling places themselves,

                                                            the Father’s house.

 

The ultimate service of love and devotion 

expressed by Jesus to ALL of us 

is this sacrifice of himself, this total self-offering 

that we might have Life that is full, 

rich with peace and love 

and the tremendous sense of being all right with God, 

of full unconditional acceptance, 

of heart-piercing blessing.

 

And he himself, Jesus, is the Door, 

the servant holding the door for you to pass through 

into this Realm of abundance of Life,

the Kingdom of Heaven.

 

There is another wedding feast in the Bible,

            an ultimate wedding banquet,

            the one the Father is preparing for his Son,

the marriage Supper of the Lamb of God,

the One who offered himself as sacrifice that all might live.

 

Here is a wedding invitation you wouldn’t want to pass up,

an invitation for all who hunger and thirst for authentic spirituality,

            for real life,

for a quality of relationship 

            that is compassionate, mutually supportive and loving.

 

Everyone gets invited and included at this banquet: 

the rich and the poor, 

the prominent and those unknown, 

the healthy and the sick,

the good and the bad.

And it’s here – at this Holy Table.

 

And here is the surprise - 

Who wears the wedding garment?

We all are the bride, each of us is the Beloved.

 

Welcome to the Supper Table where all are included,

            where we are clothed with Christ himself.

The Apostle Paul, St. Francis and Where We Are Today

 Listen again to the words from today’s epistle reading: Philippians chapter 3

7   … whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss 

because of Christ. 

8   More than that, I regard everything as loss 

because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. 

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, 

and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 

 

This is a description, not only of the Apostle Paul, who wrote these words,

            but also St. Francis of Assisi.

He too had been overwhelmed by the Love of God,

            and so for him anything else looked like rubbish in comparison.

 

Today is the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi,

and, as usual, we hear 

            about a lot of different churches celebrating this saint,

                        mostly with blessing animals.

            like what we will do this afternoon.

 

As a Franciscan who deeply values the example of St. Francis,

            I always appreciate the opportunity to help others

                        to see more in Francis than the blessing of animals.

Not that this is unimportant!

            It’s just that we humans desperately need to get over our species bias,

                        our racism that sees the human race

            as more intelligent than other creatures, and therefore more important.

We need to get it that we are a part of the whole ecosystem,

            dependent on the other components of that ecosystem,

and, honestly, the ecosystem could get along just fine without us,

                        and probably a whole lot better.

 

Now, there is nothing trivial about blessing animal companions, or pets,

                                    especially this year,

            when amidst the Corona pandemic, quarantine and stay at home orders,

these four footed companions were the ones 

            who did not observe the six foot rule,

            who gave unconditional love,

            who helped us keep our sanity 

                        and were medicine for the depressed and grieving soul.

 

That being said, I want to point out 

            that Francis knew the interrelationship of all living beings in creation

            and expressed that in such a way that it impacted the theology

                                    about the created order and our role in that,

                        shifting the emphasis from domination to interdependency.

Not that everyone got that message however.

 

Still, Francis is the ecological saint par excellence,

            the one who saw the intrinsic connection between us humans 

                        and all the other creatures, indeed the whole planet,

                                                                                    the entire ecosystem,

                        the interrelatedness of all life forms,

                        the interconnection that binds up all our destinies together,

            so that with our four legged and winged brothers and sisters,

                                    and our sister Mother Earth,

            we must both honor them and serve them for the sake of us all.

 

This includes every living being from the largest whale

                                    to the tiniest microbe,

            and that, I need to say, includes the COVID virus.

 

We need to see that connection between us humans, 

                        including mosquitoes, ticks, parasites, and viruses.

 

I haven’t even mentioned the climate patterns that are shifting,

            the huge numbers of species that are threatened with extinction,

                        or the very real question 

                        of what our children and grandchildren will inherit.

 

But Francis with his emphasis on the brother/sister relationship

            with beings other than us humans

humbles us to see that we are not in control,

                                    that we cannot continue exploiting Mother Earth,

                                    that we too can be threatened with extinction.

 

So where is the good news of the Gospel for us here this morning?

            We desperately need some.

So much has been happening to shake up our sense of security.

 

Each day seems to bring something else to complicate the dis-ease we feel.

As my daughter put it after the sudden news of COVID in the White House,

            “Plot twist!”  

We can’t figure out what comes next.

 

Listen again to the words from today’s epistle reading: Philippians chapter 3

7   … whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss 

because of Christ. 

8   More than that, I regard everything as loss 

because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. 

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, 

and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 

 

Both the Apostle Paul, writing this Epistle from prison,

and St. Francis nearly 1200 years later

            had found the pearl of great price and had sold all to gain it.

 

Knowing Christ Jesus was a value that surpassed everything else.

 

Knowing Jesus was worth more and offered more 

            than anything else could offer.

 

Knowing Jesus was the anchor of hope: 

            the anchor of hope for Paul in prison in the Roman Empire

                        where he was eventually to lose his life as a martyr,

            the anchor of hope for Francis during a time of great changes in Europe,

                        a time of petty wars between towns 

                        and a time of the violence of the Crusades.

Unstable times, and yet both Paul and Francis were solidly anchored in a faith

                                    that could carry them through.

 

Let me tell you one more story of Francis:

Francis was the son of Pietro Bernardone, a cloth merchant,

            who had built up a fortune 

                        buying fabric in France and selling it in Italy.

Pietro was grooming his son to follow in his footsteps in the family business,

            but Francis kissed the leper and encountered Christ,

and he began to give alms so generously that this alarmed his father,

            especially since much of this giving to the poor 

            and rebuilding of derelict churches

                        was from Pietro’s own business gains.

 

On April 10, in the year of our Lord 1206, 

in a dramatic showdown in the town square of Assisi

            Pietro Bernardone dragged his son before the bishop

                        complaining about his son’s profligate behavior

                        hoping to get something back that had ended up 

                                                                                                in the church’s hands.

The bishop turned to Francis and said,

            “You have scandalized your father.  

            If you wish to serve God, return to him the money that you posses.”

For Francesco this was the decisive moment.

He immediately gave back the purse of coins he had in his pocket

            and then gave back the clothes he was wearing also,

                        products of his father’s business,

            stripping right down to the skin.

And he said, “ Listen, everyone.  

            From now on Pietro Bernardone is no longer my father.

            From now on I can say with complete freedom, ‘Our Father in heaven,’”

And indeed from then on 

            Francis lived like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.

He begged for his basic needs and gladly did without

            counting it all joy, living in radical trust that God would provide.

 

What Francis discovered in following the example of Jesus

            was that in possessing nothing, he had the whole world.

                                    in possessing nothing, the whole world was open to him.

 

Well, how does that address the situation that we are in the midst of today? 

This is a time of intense anxiety and precariousness for many.

 

Sometimes we get stripped clean of our possessions

            such as when wildfires burn it all away

            or thieves break in and steal

            or when investments drop down in value to nothing 

            or the world has become so chaotic

            or when the dreams you once had are no longer possible to be realized

 

Francis chose to strip himself of possessions as a voluntary act

            in response to that great spiritual discovery:

                        owning nothing the whole world was his.

 

Well, all this is not to say that we should try to literally be like Francis 

            in his example of radical poverty

but it is important to know that following Jesus 

                        is a path of spiritual renunciation 

            that leads to realizing union with God.

People like Francis provoke us to reexamine 

            our relationship with money and material possessions.

 

This path of spiritual renunciation lead Paul to write these words in Philippians 3:

10   I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection 

and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 

11   if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 

 

And Francis’ own prayer to share in the sufferings of Christ

            ended in the stigmata, the wounds of the crucifixion in Francis,

                                                            the marks of the nail prints in his flesh.

 

Continuing with verse 12 in the Epistle:

“Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; 

but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. “

 

So I give you this question to ponder today:  where can we apply this 

            in our current societal situation and our individual lives?

Where are we in terms of our trust in God, our faith in Jesus?

 

Here is a way in which we can have our awareness transformed

            so that when we know that all living beings are our brothers and sisters,

                        when we truly know that we are all related

                        and interdependent with one another,

then without possessing it, the whole world is ours,

            and we are freed to be of real service to one another in love.