By What Authority?

The word authority can be confusing.  Authority has to do with power, with reliable information, and with knowledge and experience.  A favorite old bumper sticker says simply, “Question authority.”  How do we know that what we are being told or what we are being asked to do is based on legitimate authority?  Is it authentic and trustworthy?  These are important questions.

Institutional authority has been crumbling all around is.  It used to be that people trusted their institutions, but with gridlock and polarization so rampant throughout our culture, the very existence of our institutions has become questionable.  For example, our infrastructure needs rebuilding: highways and bridges, broad-band technology for wireless communication; climate change issues; and energy resources are among the more obvious examples.

During the final week of his life Jesus had to respond to questions about authority.  Where did his authority come from that enabled him to do all that he did,-- heal the sick, cast our demons, dine with outcasts, tax collectors and prostitutes.  Jesus taught in the Temple at Jerusalem.  While he was there some chief priests and the elders of the people asked him, "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?"  How did Jesus get all the power and authority to do all the things he had done in his ministry?

Jesus’ inquisitors were the legal scholars of his day.  They were the learned chief priests and elders of the community, that is, the ones who should know the answers but they were also testing Jesus.  So in response Jesus said he would tell them if they would first answer his question.  He then asked whether the baptism of John came from heaven, or was it of human origin?"  The chief priests and elders argued with each other:  “If we say, `From heaven,' he will say to us, `Why then did you not believe him?'  But if we say, `Of human origin,' we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet." So they said to Jesus, "We do not know."

Had they said that John was from God, they should have repented as John had urged.  Remember his message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”  However, if they said that John’s authority was not from God but was of human origin they would be afraid of the crowd because they regarded John as a prophet.

When they finally said they did not know, Jesus told them a parable about the two sons who were to work in the vineyard.  The point he made was that people who were known for being corrupt, that is, tax collectors, had turned to God in the way the first son had repented.  The authorities, however, including some of the chief priests and elders, were like the second son who said he would go and work in the vineyard but then did not.  Jesus said to them, "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him."

Jesus taught with authority.  He was completely invested in the message of God's kingdom.  God's cause was his cause, and he acted out of God's own love and compassion.  The problem of our time is that we are often like the chief priests and elders who fear the authority of God's freedom.  We are reluctant to take risks and to care as God cares, to bring life to those whom society rejects and despises.  As Jesus' reputation spread, resistance to him and to what he was doing grew more vigorous until he was judged to be unfit and sentenced to death on the cross.

The Rev. Amy Allen, of Vanderbilt University writes, “Jesus doesn’t attribute his authority to any laws or titles (though, perhaps, he could).  He doesn’t call down the powers of heaven to show his superior force (though, perhaps, he could).  He doesn’t even appeal to the crowds of the people who have been following him, or stake his reputation on John to win popular opinion (though, perhaps, he could).  So what is Christian authority staked on?  Where does it come from?  How does it work?  All Jesus leaves us with is a disobedient son, who turns around and does the work of his father anyway.  In American politics and economics, there is plenty of “disobedience” to go around.  But what might it look like if rather than asserting human authority, indeed, rather even than questioning and undermining it, we turned around and did the will of [God]?  How is God calling us to work in this vineyard?  And how do our claims to authority and moves toward power get in the way?”

As I understand the question of authority it is based on and within the community.  It is within the relationships we share in the Church.  In baptism we vow to put our whole trust in Christ’s grace and love, and to follow and obey him as our Lord.  We also seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. This is the authority we are given by our fellow parishioners in the Sacrament of Baptism.  The same can be said when we ordain a person as deacon or priest.  Our clergy are selected by the community to serve by proclaiming in word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to love and serve the people, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor.

I also add that for us who are Episcopalians, authority is like a four-legged stool.  One leg stands for Scripture, the sacred text about the God of History who creates, redeems, and cares for all of creation.  Another leg of the stool is Tradition, the way we worship and our Book of Common Prayer that informs our relationships to God and one another through the ages.  A third leg is Reason, how we understand our relationship with God and one another, and how we continue as co-creators with God in all the scientific and technological advances we make.  The fourth and final leg is Experience, the lives we live and what we do as followers of Christ in our communities and throughout the world.

The spirit of God’s compassionate love and the authority that comes with it is alive among the people of God.  It is alive wherever two or three are gathered in God's name.  It is alive here in our midst, in this community, and everywhere throughout the world.  The prophets of old, and the prophets in our day, those with the authority of God's compassion for all people, are alive and well.  The authority they speak about is experienced whenever and wherever life and goodness are fostered and death and suffering are resisted.  If the authority of God's word is to be heard in our world it must find voice in the way we live, in our values and commitments, and in our decisions.  That way is never clear-cut, and we inevitably make some mistakes, but we gain greater insight when we focus on God's compassion for everyone.  It is for us to call upon the same transcendent power that guided John and also enabled Jesus to teach with authority, to heal the sick, to work for peace and the end of violence in all its forms, and to proclaim God's love. Amen.

God’s Infinite Compassion

As you can see there are a few changes happening with respect to our worship space.  Major scaffolding has been erected both outside and here on the inside in order to repair the casement and windowsill of our Sanctuary window.  The casement wood and the windowsill have rotted, and repairs will take several weeks.  We hope the work will be finished by the end of October.  It is costing thousands of dollars, but it is essential that we do this work to keep our beautiful and invaluable window from falling down. 

During the first century in the time of Jesus’ life and ministry poor economic conditions existed. The normal working day in Palestine was from six in the morning until six at night.  A denarius was the normal wage for a day worker.  Our story about the laborers in the vineyard is familiar, and all kinds of sermons have been preached to justify a broad range of issues: social security, full employment, equal pay for equal work, guaranteed income, or free enterprise in a capitalist market. 

As the story goes the owner of the vineyard made a contract with the laborers he hired early in the morning.  He agreed to pay them a denarius for their day’s work.  Later during the day when he hired others to work for six, three or even just one hour he was very generous.  He gave everyone a full day’s pay.  At the end of the day in the presence of all the workers he paid the last one hired first.  By doing this he built up a false expectation among those who had worked more than just one hour.  They likely thought they might receive even more than what they had signed on for at the beginning of the day.  But the owner stuck to the contract he made with each laborer and paid them exactly according to their agreement.

It was a double standard and a fairly common one.  How many times have you thought that another person was getting more than they deserved, more than their fair share?  When have you thought a companion worker, or someone working for the government as an example, got a better deal than they deserved?  What about a colleague who had a better working environment and more income than you thought they should?  Life is not fair.  Perhaps you feel you are not as lucky as others.  Or, maybe you feel you were never in the right place at the right time. 

Some people get what they deserve or negotiate for in a contract.  Others seem to benefit because of a more generous standard.  Since we never know what we can expect we have to be ready for either possibility.

Jesus in telling the story of the laborers in the vineyard wanted to show how inconsistent it was for laborers, and then he wanted his disciples to understand the need for consistency -- for generosity, for grace, for extravagance.  One biblical scholar said, “it is an intolerable situation from the workers’ viewpoint.... The employer has chosen arbitrarily to treat one group according to their rights and another group according to his (or her) generosity.... If the employer acts both on the basis of rights, legalistically, and  generously, then the situation becomes intolerable.  By analogy, if God accepts someone on the basis of merit and others on the basis of forgiveness, the situation is similarly intolerable.  Either all must work out their own salvation in fear and trembling, or all must rejoice in the goodness, kindness, and mercy of God. “

Among the things we can learn from this parable are first, God does not play by our rules; second, God’s love is unconditional; third, the mystery of God’s love is that everyone is accepted; and finally, trusting in God’s grace and compassion results in changing our relationships.

We need to understand that God does not make decisions according to our rules.  Jesus said as much in this parable of the laborers in the vineyard.  God’s justice is not a form of distributive justice, spreading about in some equal fashion all the burdens and benefits that come to us.  Nor does God give to each person according to what he or she has earned.  Instead, God’s justice is like that of a person who pays the same good wage to those who work only an hour as to those who toil for a full day.  God’s very being is love and abundant mercy.  There is no question about who is deserving of that love.  God simply gives to those who are worthy and to those who are not.

It is in and through Jesus’ life and ministry that we are brought to God.  Jesus preached a message of God’s unconditional love and faithfulness.  It was love with no strings attached.  Jesus made this loving relationship concrete by the manner in which he was with people of every race and class, especially the outcasts, the failures, and those who were marginal according to the social and religious standards of his day.  Jesus’ commitment to this way of life met with opposition and eventually led to his death by crucifixion.

The parable of the laborers in the vineyard points to the mystery of God.  Theologian Paul Tillich said the mystery of grace lies in the realization that you are accepted -- beyond your wildest imaginings you are accepted.  This realization is so affirming of your life and worth that it transforms us from mere creatures who are solely dependent to creators, to people who are free and interdependent, to people who are truly in the image of the Creator. 

Look at what happened to the laborers in the vineyard.  Feelings of anger and resentment got hold of them and made enemies out of their fellow workers who worked for as little as one hour.  They also became angry toward their generous employer.  Anger and the fear happen when people cannot trust God’s steadfast, unconditional, and life-affirming love.  Instead they rely on material possessions and the accumulation and of wealth as a substitute.

The meaning of this is that trust in God’s grace is intended to radically change our relationship to God, to each other, and to those who do not belong to the Church.  Our communities of faith are to respond to people on the basis of God’s free grace that goes beyond our standards of fairness. 

God’s grace is expansive and free enough to encompass all sorts and conditions of humanity.  The problems we have with issues of gender, race, religion and class are of our own making, not of God’s.

Jesus reveals to us a compassionate God full of kindness, mercy, and grace beyond any measurements we might contrive.  We are to be vehicles of that grace risking whatever is required in order to live generously, compassionately, openly and freely in extending the love of God to others.  We then grow in the knowledge and love of God’s gracious and compassionate goodness.  Amen.

Forgiveness

The story in Exodus about the Israelites’ deliverance from Egypt is an ancient historical narrative.  A thousand years later when Matthew wrote his gospel account of the parable of the unforgiving servant he undoubtedly knew this story.  When asked by Peter how many times he should forgive another, Jesus said we are to forgive seventy-seven times, in other words, always.   Jesus told the parable of the unmerciful servant who, even though he was forgiven a very large debt, could not forgive another who owed very little by comparison.

I remember back in the late 1950s when the Cecil B. DeMile movie, The Ten Commandments was one of the most popular religious epic films ever produced.  It dramatized the Exodus story of the life of Moses who became the deliverer of the enslaved Israelites, and led them through the Red Sea to Mount Sinai, where he received the Ten Commandments.  I took a very elderly Episcopal minister to see this film in a theatre in Cincinnati.  Dr. Lynch was in his 90s and I as a young college student looked up to him since he had served in my home church on various occasions over several years.  We enjoyed the movie; it was in Technicolor, had a great cast, and it was a thrill to see the waters parted so the Israelites could escape.

The Pharaoh had his chariots prepared for battle.  The appearance of the Egyptian army struck fear in the Israelites. They complained about Moses’ leadership.   They preferred slavery to what seemed to be certain death.  But Moses calmed the people and assured them they would be rescued if they didn’t panic.  God commanded Moses to divide the sea.

The biblical text says,  “Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided.  The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.”  Imagine what this looked like on a large movie screen.  It was revolutionary at the time, although with computer technology today it was just a prelude of things to come.

The Exodus story presents a dilemma.  To read it as a literal account of what happened is probably not completely accurate.  Ancient stories were told from one generation to another and, in the telling, stories were often embellished and naturally taken out of context.  The story also refers to God as vengeful and punitive, a God who destroys the enemy by drowning.  However, it is also a story about the judging and redeeming drama of God’s presence in human life.  God in this story judges the Egyptians and redeems the Israelites.  Just how it happened is not as important as is the point of redemption and liberation.

One of the commentaries about the Exodus story says, “Dwelling up there within the utter mystery of the fire and the cloud that separates Israelites from Egyptians is an unpredictable God – not a God who is endlessly biased toward one people at the expense of another, but a God who is steadfastly preoccupied with a gracious horizon that we cannot comprehend.  God is, quite simply, bigger than us and our agendas.”

So in the story of the unforgiving servant the message Jesus proclaimed focused on God’s call to forgiveness rather than revenge.  It opened the way to lives of mercy and compassion.  He invited his followers to go beyond the legal principle of “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” and to eliminate personal revenge. 

Jesus knew what God intended when he told the parable of the unforgiving servant.  As a seminary professor of mine wrote many years ago, “To deny the validity of the principles of mercy, forgiveness, and patience in our human affairs is to deny the nature of God himself and to shut ourselves off from the operation of his love.”  God’s grace is uncalculated.  “Just as we cannot earn our way into God’s favor, neither can we appropriate his mercy if we insist upon calculation in our dealings with others…. The parable [of the unforgiving servant] speaks more clearly than any words we may use in an effort to draw out its meaning.

Jesus modeled a way of forgiveness and trust rather than calculation, a way of hope rather than despair, a way of courage rather than fear, a way of health rather than violence, a way of abundance rather than hunger or poverty, and a way of new life rather than death.  Jesus was all about building relationships with those who were not normally accepted in his native culture. With people who were considered untouchable or a threat, he chose love and forgiveness, building relationships in place of alienation and estrangement.

Practicing compassion and forgiveness; befriending the enemy, choosing love over fear, building relationships instead of isolation or separation are the qualities of Christian faith and practice.  In the midst of all that happens in the events of the world around us we do well to pray the Collect chosen for today:  “O God, because without you we are not able to please you, Mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts.”  Amen.

Fulfilling the Law

This past week I came across an article in the current issue of The Christian Century (September 3, 2014) that referred to a book I read a few years ago.  The book is titled The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. The author, A. J. Jacobs, is a Brown graduate who wrote this book in 2007.  It is both humorous and serious.  Jacob’s goal was to discover what it would be like to keep all the commandments and the more than 600 laws enumerated in the Bible.  He assembled a committee of ecumenical advisers and attempted this for a full year.  Imagine how his wife felt while he did this.  He mentions her in his book.

A review in Publishers Weekly states, Jacobs “didn't just keep the Bible's better-known moral laws (being honest, tithing to charity and trying to curb his lust), but also the obscure and unfathomable ones: not mixing wool with linen in his clothing; calling the days of the week by their ordinal numbers to avoid voicing the names of pagan gods; trying his hand at a 10-string harp; growing a ZZ Top beard; eating crickets; and paying the babysitter in cash at the end of each work day…. In his attempts at living the Bible to the letter, Jacobs hits the road in highly entertaining fashion to meet other literalists, including Samaritans in Israel, snake handlers in Appalachia, Amish in Lancaster County, Pa., and biblical creationists in Kentucky.”

The Christian Century article quotes what Jacobs had to say during the first month of his effort to live the Bible literally: “In college I learned about the theory of cognitive dissonance.  This says, in part, if you behave in a certain way, your beliefs will eventually change to conform to your behavior.  So that’s what I’m trying to do.  If I act like I’m faithful and God loving for several months, then maybe I’ll become faithful and God loving.  If I pray every day, then maybe I’ll start to believe in the Being to whom I am praying.”

With this background let’s look at our lectionary readings today from the Book of Exodus, the Gospel of Matthew, and Paul’s Letter to the Romans.  Taken together they contain a lot of directions and rules or ordinances for living a good religious and spiritual life. 

The Exodus story is about the Jewish Passover.  It is an account of how God acts in history.  Following the persecution of the Israelites by the Egyptian Pharaoh God instructs the chosen people to take a lamb for each household and to keep it until the fourteenth day of the month.  The whole congregation of Israel shall then slaughter the lamb at twilight, roast the lamb over a fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, and then eat the lamb that very night.  This is a celebration “as a festival to the Lord.” It is the origin of the Passover commemorating how God rescued his chosen people.  It is a day of remembrance that is to be observed as a perpetual ordinance throughout the generations.

The Gospel reading from Matthew discusses how one should act if a member of the church sins against you.  It involves an ascending order of ways to work for reconciliation and mutual forgiveness. The first way is a private conversation with the offending person.  If this doesn’t work, involve one or two additional people “so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.”  Should the offender still refuse to listen, then take the matter to the whole congregation.  Then, “if the offender refuses even to listen to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”  In other words, have nothing further to do with him.

Finally, in the letter to the Romans Paul summarizes the ten commandments and discusses his instructions about ethics and what it means to “love your neighbor as yourself.”  He echoes what Jesus said about love being the fulfillment of the law.

What really matters here is how do we fulfill the law by living in loving relationships.  God’s love, and the love that Jesus displayed is both radical and inclusive.  The statement in Romans tells us how much better it would be for the author of The Year of Living Biblically if he would recognize that all “the commandments are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

This is not to say that loving one’s neighbor is any easier that trying to keep all those biblical laws, those rules and regulations that A. J. Jacobs tried to live by for a year.  Telling us that that love is the fulfilling of the law Paul neglects to say exactly how we are to do this.  There is no easy way, no specific guide or rules to follow.  It is up to each of us to wrestle with the question of how we are to act in loving relationships.  What constitutes love?  What does love include?

The article I read in The Christian Century correctly states, “Love requires vulnerability, hospitality, forgiveness, risk, and trust.”  In other words, love is not easy, especially in the context of a community of people who are different from us.  Ours is a multicultural and multi-racial community.  Our cities and towns are like that, and our church reflects it.  Jesus taught us that love transcends all the laws, rules and regulations we can devise.  God is love, and the love of God is always present as we understand what it means to be compassionate toward the needs of others.

Listen to the words of this hymn by Charles Wesley.  It is about this love:  “Love divine all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down…. Jesus, thou art all compassion, pure, unbounded love thou art; visit us with thy salvation, enter every trembling heart.”  Wesley concludes his lyrics by stating that love is transformative: “changed from glory into glory, till in heaven we take our place, till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love, and praise.”  Amen.