Community Parson: Is this a trick question?

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Is this a trick question?

Proper 21 A Sept. 25, 2011

Exodus 17:1-7
Ps. 78:1-4, 12-16

Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32

What do you think?

I think it would be kind of shocking to be in a group with Jesus and have him throw that question out. I would be so afraid he was trying to trick me! Wasn’t that the way that fictional law school professor did it in the old movie, The Paper Chase? A man had two sons; which did the will of the father? How can you win, answering a question like that?

In the peasant economy of Jesus’ day, this question would be nearly impossible to answer. Oh, we know how Matthew wants us to answer: the first son did the will of the father. Even though he snubbed the father and refused, he did then pitch in and do the work. The second was only a surface do-gooder; he really turned out to be a slacker, a mall rat, a fair-weather son.

In the peasant economy of Jesus’ day, neither son did the will of the father totally, but both sons came through with something. In that peasant economy, the survival of the family was, of course, important, but almost as important – almost impossible to separate from survival – was the honor of the family. And so, the first son shamed his father, by initially refusing to go work, although his later change of heart helped the family survive. And the second son honored the father by his words, but then of course, undermined the family’s survival by not getting the work done.

The question then is not which son would the father choose, but with which son would the father be less angry? This parable is a shock to the economy of honor and shame, for the one who appears to honor the family is really on the outside; the one who appears to shame the family is the one who does the work to support it.

The vineyard, is of course, the kingdom of God, and Jesus tells this parable to upset his hearers. The obviously righteous give lip service to what God wants – what God has always wanted – and the slightly seedy and disreputable are the ones who get it. It’s a hard lesson to hear.

Now Jesus does not say that that slick-tongued slacker son won’t get into the kingdom of heaven; he just says that the ones we least expect will get there first. There is plenty of work to do in this vineyard, and really, really, God has a job for all of us, even those of us who are kind of whiny and reluctant and maybe have to be hit over the head with a 2 by 4 before we get it that we, too, have a job to do. God calls all of us to work in the vineyard today.

This lesson makes it obvious, doesn’t it? It’s God’s vineyard, God’s world, and we are stewards of all the gifts God has given us. The post-communion prayer we’ll use for the next few weeks puts it, I think, very well. It starts out with thanking God, once again, for all God has given us. Then it reinforces our marching orders, spells out just what is involved in this work in the vineyard that God has called us to do:

Take us out to live as changed people,
because we have shared the living bread and cannot remain the same.

There is some cost, isn’t there, to this working in the vineyard. We are given bountiful gifts, but God expects something from us.

Ask much of us, expect much from us, enable much by us, encourage many through us.
So, Lord, may we live to your glory, as inhabitants of earth, and citizens of the commonwealth of heaven.

“Commonwealth” is a word out of the 17th century, a word that Puritans used to describe the world that God had put into their care. They understood that word quite literally: the world is the common wealth for all God’s people. We hold all this wealth, this well-being, this welfare, in common, which is what it means to be stewards. We steward this wealth, which is God’s, which we hold in trust, in common, for all of God’s people. For all of God’s creation.

Think of all the things of which we – you – are stewards: our church home, your family home, the town, village, city or county in which you live.

What does it mean, then, to do the will of God in all of these places? With these people, some of whom are slick-tongued slackers and some of whom look like they don’t belong? What does God ask us to do here? What do we give? How are we changed?

It doesn’t matter who gets in first. Only God decides that; there is really no dress code that we can figure out.

What matters is that we are all here.

What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” What would be your answer?

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Missional church and the arts

What if we thought about church in another way, as "a small community that [moves] into a particular area (often one with a lot of deprivation and poverty) ... seeking to follow Christ but their focus is simply helping transform their community -- in arts, environment, in social needs, with youth and so on."

These are churches, as the English church missioner named Jonny Baker, "are not focused on growing big -- but more like the yeast of the kingdom that Jesus talked about infecting the wider batch of dough. ..." Such churches, Baker says, face "the challenge of weaning members off their addiction to consumer approaches to church where they get their fix of worship and teaching and meeting with friends before they could properly engage in this more local, outward-focused community approach (maybe we need a 12 step detox programme for leaving consumer church!?)"

We may benefit from thinking this way, as we explore how to connect our treasure, which is the Celebration of the Arts, into parts of the community that could use more art.

Thanks to the Patheos blog for sending this thought my way ...

"A prayer book even an atheist would love"

It does seem a teensy bit arrogant for a 21st century author to claim that he "edited" The Book of Common Prayer, but Brian Cummings seems to have added considerable value to familiar red book we find in our pews. In this 2011 volume (Oxford University Press), we can find the full texts of the 1549, 1559 and 1662 Prayer Books, along with introductions, explanations, notes and glossary. The review in the September 2012 issue of The Atlantic, gives the book a glowing recommendation -- both in its edited and "explained" form and in the original, which as the book upon which all prayer in our language is based "shaped the inner life and branded the tongue of the English-speaking peoples. Its phrases and rhythms did not merely enter the language. They largely defined the language. " Read more of the review here, and if you read it, let us know how you liked it!!

What I read - 2012

FINISHED:

At Simon's INSISTENCE I read The Hunger Games. Some parts I had to skim through, because the depictions of these young people fighting each other to the death was at times too gruesome, but it was overall well worth the read. NOW I have to get on with # 2 in the series

Dennis Lehane's A Given Day. Everything comes together in a slightly staged but effective way in 1919 Boston: anarchists, molasses, racism, repression and the Boston police strike. J. Edgar Hoover makes some unflattering cameos. I must say it is kind of Ragtime as it would be dramatized by Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg and Ben Affleck. It was in the days when you could tell what Boston block someone grew up on by the accent. The Irish don't come off all too well. Southie is a place to avoid in this prelude to The Depahted. It's good, though a little too graphically violent and written like a movie script. Let's just say Whitey Bulger came by his proclivities naturally.

Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman

quite charming and lovely; a peek into the modest domestic life and extraordinary yearnings of a summer community of Orthodox Jews in the Catskills

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Also saw the Swedish version of the first book.

The reminders of domestic terror in the most intimate sense are deeply unsettling. The author reminds of the percentage of Swedish women who are abused, beaten, left for dead, even. It is an all-too-steady drumbeat beneath human society.

Meanwhile, I found a new collection of stories, that is easier to read before bed. I heard the most astounding story on Selected Shorts: "The Mappist" by Barry Lopez. You MUST read it. Before you know it, you are in another world, that shines the most wonderful light on this place we inhabit and how we live in it.

I had a brief flirtation with a few of Joyce Carol Oates short stories. Bracing. I am always on the look-out for her perceptive comments about upstate New York.

Done with Cheever, and LOVED it. Again. If you read nothing else, read "The Death of Justina." Then again, I also like, "Goodbye, My Brother." Cheever; the chronicler of a world falling apart.

This summer ...
Middlemarch by George Eliot. This wonderful story of the intertwined lives of villagers contains the requisite English characters of pompous rectors, impoverished strivers and beautiful young women. It's like reading Trollope: you'll find someone you know in Middlemarch.
and
The Collected Stories of John Cheever. A perennial favorite. Poignant stories of families in mid-century middle America. Reading it again is a bit like Mad Men, where you are glued, almost in horror, at the train wreck you know is about to happen in these people's lives.

Responding to the Unspeakable

The shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, in the days right before Christmas, with the deaths of small children and the people trying to protect them, wrench our hearts like nothing else. However we respond to this tragedy -- with silence, with weeping, with anger, with resolve to work so that something like this will never happen again -- all of our reactions are understandable. We need ways to regain our footing and imagine how we will live in the world as it is now, in this world in which we experience yet more grief and sadness.

On Sunday, December 16, the Prayers of the People at St. David's Church were in the words of parishioners and preachers, some from the very day of the tragedy. Find the text of those prayers on our Forming Disciples blog.