September 24, 2017 Matthew 21.23-32

When Jesus entered the temple, the chief priests and elders of the people came to him as he was teaching. They asked, “What kind of authority do you have for doing these things? Who gave you this authority?”

Jesus replied, “I have a question for you. If you tell me the answer, I’ll tell you what kind of authority I have to do these things. Where did John get his authority to baptize? Did he get it from heaven or from humans?”

They argued among themselves, “If we say ‘from heaven,’ he’ll say to us, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But we can’t say ‘from humans’ because we’re afraid of the crowd, since everyone thinks John was a prophet.” Then they replied, “We don’t know.”

Jesus also said to them, “Neither will I tell you what kind of authority I have to do these things.

“What do you think? A man had two sons. Now he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’

“‘No, I don’t want to,’ he replied. But later he changed his mind and went.

“The father said the same thing to the other son, who replied, ‘Yes, sir.’ But he didn’t go.

“Which one of these two did his father’s will?”

They said, “The first one.”

Jesus said to them, “I assure you that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering God’s kingdom ahead of you. For John came to you on the righteous road, and you didn’t believe him. But tax collectors and prostitutes believed him. Yet even after you saw this, you didn’t change your hearts and lives and you didn’t believe him.

***

As usually happens after funerals, I get questions and people pondering if the deceased was saved. Those questioning have this desire to get in the person’s head the seconds before their death and ask, “Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” In turn, it makes the righteous upset, that even the most hardened criminal could voice this statement and, “go to heaven.” Both of these desires put humans in the judging place, and make God likewise, and neither of these attributes for salvation are ones I ascribe to God.

My answer to those questioners, usually goes something like this, “Oh, I am Presbyterian, and we think about these things totally differently,” and they, not knowing the first thing about the differences between dominations say, “Well it’s not about being Presbyterian or not, it’s about the Gospel,” and then I am reassured that this will be an unfruitful conversation about the literal interpretation of the Bible, against an interpretation that seeks to take into consideration things like the historical context in which the Bible was written, or literary devices like parable and metaphor which it’s authors used, or understandings of science which we have now know today. But that is a lot explain when someone is challenging my preaching our imperishability with God, or needing reassurance about the eternal location of the deceased, and so I tell them what I believe. “I believe in an abundantly loving and faithful God who welcomes and includes all.” Often those questioning don’t know what to do with this statement. When you have lived your life thinking that if, “I act a certain way and do all the right things God will welcome me,” or if you have lived your whole life simply believing that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, and therefore you get to go to heaven,” to hear God’s everlasting grace is freely given to all, is a hard statement. But this is the God of my heart, and that is what to believe really means, to belove. 

When I read this scripture I can see the distinction between belief and belove,

“A man had two sons. Now he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ “‘No, I don’t want to,’ he replied. But later he changed his mind and went.

“The father said the same thing to the other son, who replied, ‘Yes, sir.’ But he didn’t go.

“Which one of these two did his father’s will?”

They said, “The first one.”

When I think about this scripture in human terms it doesn’t make much sense. In my house growing up, I would have gotten in trouble for being either one of the sons. I would have gotten in trouble for saying, “No, I don’t want to.” Likewise, I would have gotten in trouble for being the second son and saying I would go, but not going. In my house growing up, my parents were the authority, and to disobey in word or deed, meant you were in trouble. It was how I was brought up, and many of you the same. You did what you were told, and you succeeded, you disobeyed and you got in trouble. And we often like to imagine God just as simply, but God doesn’t work in balance scales, God works in abundance and love. 

In the scripture, the one who does the Father’s will is the one who says no, but then goes and helps in the vineyard. This response to go help is the faithful one. Faithfulness isn’t about doing what you said you would, or wouldn’t, it’s about acting out our love and thankfulness. The first son’s response is of honest love, love that does for others as we would want for ourselves. It is love that is thankful for all the father has done and seeks to return to him a portion of the offering of his sons’s life and labor.  It is loving, and love is what belief really is. Believing is beloving. To believe in is to love. 

This translation is a lot closer to how the people in Biblical times would have understood Jesus than we do today, and I want you to listen to the difference in these statements, firstly, in today’s words, 

Jesus said to them, “I assure you that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering God’s kingdom ahead of you. For John came to you on the righteous road, and you didn’t believe him. But tax collectors and prostitutes believed him. Yet even after you saw this, you didn’t change your hearts and lives and you didn’t believe him.

Now listen to them in words closer to their original meaning,

Jesus said to them, “I assure you that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering God’s kingdom ahead of you. For John came to you on the righteous road, and you didn’t be-love him. But tax collectors and prostitutes be-loved him. Yet even after you saw this, you didn’t change your hearts and lives and you didn’t be-love him.

Faithfulness isn’t about what we say in the moments before we die, or the ways we have checked off the boxes of being a good person throughout our life. Faithfulness is to love, to love God and to love one another. It is to see this love and change our hearts and lives. It is to be transformed, and in this transformation is brought the kingdom of God. It’s what the tax-collectors did, it’s what the prostitutes had, it’s what those who listened to John the Baptist heard, it’s what Travis had when he was with his children, it’s what Jodi had in her interactions with others, it’s what Pat Fessel had in spunk, it’s what Kim Berry had in sass and hospitality, it’s what Jean Geddes has when she writes you a card, or Sharon Defrees when she decorates for a service, or Dotty when she delivers a meal, it’s what Karen has when she dedicates her heart to the Mission of the church, it is Gary Yeoumans and LaVonne’s love and faithfulness to one another, it is Dale and Shirley still giggling like school kids, it is the way Silas and Sydney lit the candles this morning to a smiling Clarissa or the way Jake McClaughry helped as liturgist, it is in the crisp fall blue juxtaposed with the sun still warm on my face, or the wonder of the first snowfall. It’s what I tell those that want some sort of assurance after death, that I have seen the kingdom of God already. I don’t have to wait for moments before death, because I see all around me, and this is proof enough of a loving and gracious God whose kingdom has already broken in and surrounds us now and always. I believe in a be-loving God. Amen.

September 17, 2017 Matthew 20.1-16

Ephesians 2:14-18

For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, 16 and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.

***

Matthew 20.1-16

“The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. After he agreed with the workers to pay them a denarion, he sent them into his vineyard.

“Then he went out around nine in the morning and saw others standing around the marketplace doing nothing. He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I’ll pay you whatever is right.’ And they went.

“Again around noon and then at three in the afternoon, he did the same thing. Around five in the afternoon he went and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you just standing around here doing nothing all day long?’

“‘Because nobody has hired us,’ they replied.

“He responded, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the workers and give them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and moving on finally to the first.’ When those who were hired at five in the afternoon came, each one received a denarion. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more. But each of them also received a denarion. When they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, ‘These who were hired last worked one hour, and they received the same pay as we did even though we had to work the whole day in the hot sun.’

“But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I did you no wrong. Didn’t I agree to pay you a denarion? Take what belongs to you and go. I want to give to this one who was hired last the same as I give to you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with what belongs to me? Or are you resentful because I’m generous?’ So those who are last will be first. And those who are first will be last.”

SERMON (PASTOR)

I remember leaving the volunteer night shift at the homeless shelter in downtown San Antonio with my dad, and as the dawn was rising on W. Commerce and N. Frio streets, dozens of men huddled against the dew and freshly cool air of the city that had been sleeping, as most of it still was. Yet they were there, my dad said, as day laborers looking for work. I, exhausted from being up so early, had a hard time comprehending how these men rose and were ready for work just as we were heading home before the sun had even risen over the horizon. I didn’t know much about immigration papers or the struggles of cartel corruption countries, or the deaths across the border but I have a feeling these men wanted work more than I have ever known. 

Article in the San Antonio Express News details more of their reality. 

“When a large white pickup wheeled into the empty lot of the Golden Star Cafe, a group rushed over and began beseeching its occupants in English and Spanish for a day job.

“You got work, bro? I’ll go, homey, you’ll get a straight shooter. I can use a pick,” a man in a red hoodie pleaded to the driver. On the other side, others made their case in Spanish to the passenger.  But after a bit of back and forth, no one was hired, and, their hopes crushed, the workers drifted back to the curb. Before pulling away, the pickup driver explained why things hadn’t worked out. “We’re leveling a house. It’s foundation work, but none of them know how to use the tools, how to do it, so we couldn’t hire them,” said Gustavo Hernandez, who said he pays $100 a day plus lunch.

And so, as the rest of San Antonio rushed to work early Wednesday, thinking of turkey, football and Black Friday, those on the bottom rung of the employment ladder were hunkered down on the rough side of town.  Although most of the day workers are undocumented immigrants, they fear tickets from the police more than they do being picked up by the Border Patrol, which last year closed its San Antonio station. Asked about the day laborers, a spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Antonio said the agency’s enforcement focus is on “serious criminal aliens” and human trafficking organizations.

Several of those waiting on Houston Street were U.S. citizens, among them the desperate man in the red hoodie, who shared his hard luck tale. “I get a disability check. This girl I’m with took my check and kicked me out. I almost went to jail. That’s why I’m here,” he confided, asking that his name not be used.

Such is the life of San Antonio day laborers, who regularly wait around for many more hours than they work and sometimes go a week or more without landing a $10-an-hour job. During two visits by a reporter this week, few employers were seen stopping, and most of the men looking for work went home with empty pockets.

“We get here at six. I’ve been here for two hours already, but there is no work, no one is coming by,” groaned Javier Gallegos, 48, a native of Michoacán, Mexico, who has been doing this for years. “And then the police will come by and chase us away,” he said. Like many others, Gallegos is not a U.S. citizen. And, he said, for people like him without proper documentation, day labor is one of the few chances to find work. “Most of us are from Mexico and Central America. A few have papers, but the majority, no. That’s why we’re here,” he said.

Down the block, Jose Lopez Escobar, 47, a small, grizzled man from Monclova, Coahuila, described some of the perils of the life, learned the hard way over six years on the curb. “A lot of us are looking for work to eat. I come out here seven days a week. I might get two or three days of work,” said Lopez, who does roofing, painting, masonry and tile work. On the top of his list are abusive “patrones,” as the employers are known. “They’ll say, 'We’ll work all week, and I’ll pay you at the end,’ but then after a couple of days, they don’t come back and you don’t get paid,” he said. Others, he said, put workers in harm’s way without a care. “Painting and roofing are the worst. They put you on a ladder several stories up, and pay you $8 an hour to risk your life. If you get hurt, it’s just too bad,” he said.

Another curb veteran, Camilo Silva, 47, who said he is a U.S. citizen, was still feeling the pain of the latest ticket he received. “I went to court and told the judge that all I was doing was looking for work, but he fined me $300. I’ve got six months to pay,” he groused. “But I have no choice. If I put in an application somewhere, no one calls me. Maybe it’s because of my age. They want younger people.”

Asked about the city’s policy toward the day laborers, a spokeswoman for the Police Department said by e-mail that problems can arise with traffic or private property. “If the sidewalks are being blocked or traffic is affected, then citations such as impeding traffic or pedestrians in the roadway can be given,” Officer Misty Floyd said. Those who prompt complaints by loitering on private property can be given a warning for criminal trespass or even arrested for that offense if they do not leave, she said.

One of those waiting for work Wednesday lamented that San Antonio does not have a system like Austin, which manages a day labor center with a bilingual staff. The system matches workers with employers, who can request a specific worker or even make arrangements online. In San Antonio, workers are entirely on their own, and they spend as much time watching out for the law as for prospective employers.

“The authorities here won’t let us look for work. It’s pure discrimination. Here we are struggling to survive and send money home to our families,” said Isaiah Vasquez, a towering, middle-aged Colombian with a teardrop tattoo beneath his right eye.

“I was a dangerous man. I killed someone in self-defense, but now I am a Christian,” said Vasquez, pulling a worn black Bible from his backpack. Even on Thanksgiving, some of these weathered, hungry men will likely be found waiting on West Houston, hoping to put some money in their empty pockets. “I’ll be here tomorrow. There might be work. Maybe moving furniture. I don’t have any choice. I’ve been broke for a year,” said Gallegos of Michoacán.

“All of us will be here. We don’t have money to buy a turkey. Maybe someone will come by, and bring some turkey for us,” he said with faint hope.”

This is whom I imagine in the payment line at the end of the day when the owner tells his managers, to give them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and moving on finally to the first.’ 

Those who were hired at five in the afternoon came, maybe they were undocumented immigrants, maybe they were older and out of work, maybe they were formerly criminals and now Christians, maybe they had relationship troubles and had no place to stay, maybe they had a kid who was sick, or legal fees simply from looking for work. Maybe someone in their family struggled with alcoholism or addiction and their saving had been traded for rehab centers and legal fees. Maybe they were the disabled, maybe they were developmentally delayed, or spoke a different language, or mentally ill. Maybe they were the now adult kids from Open Door who show up early because their home life is bad, or maybe they are those who received backpacks filled with food for weekend. Maybe they are sitting in our pews as hard workers, or amazing musicians, or writers, or caregivers but the right truck hasn’t pick them up for the day, until late, at five in the afternoon, they were hired for an hour’s work after standing for eleven. Those are the ones in the beginning of the line and they are paid a denarion. Enough for one day’s food for a small family. Shouldn’t everyone be given the opportunity to work for their pay and feed their family? 

If the opportunity is lacking, let us be generous. Let us be generous and go through the Safeway line before Thanksgiving and give money toward Turkey bucks no matter to whom the feast goes. It is more likely to go to the Baker City version of people in that San Antonio day labor line, than the line shaking hands out our sanctuary door. Moreover, let us be generous and try to change the system, to make systemic change, like the employment center in Austin which matches people, their skills, with employers, who need laborers for their field? Let us be generous with those seeking to work the potatoes or the wheat. Let us be generous with our countries borders, so that more, rather than less can find a place for safety and for work. Let us be generous desiring universal healthcare to be available for the elderly poor who day-labored their whole life, as much as those of us who were able to save at the end of the day? Let us be generous, as we do programs like Open Door which makes sure each middle-school kid has a chance to eat breakfast before a day of learning. Let us be generous, in our love and support of all youth a children who call this church home and we their family no matter from what background they come. Let us be generous as we show up providing for families after illness and death. Let us be generous in our time and skills filling boxes at the Food Bank and through other nonprofits in town. Let us be generous in our love for our church, our community and our world. Let us be generous, so, "those who are last will be first. And those who are first will be last." Let us be generous because we have a generous Lord. Alleluia. 

September 3, 2017, Matthew 22.15-22

Then the Pharisees met together to find a way to trap Jesus in his words. They sent their disciples, along with the supporters of Herod, to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are genuine and that you teach God’s way as it really is. We know that you are not swayed by people’s opinions, because you don’t show favoritism. So tell us what you think: Does the Law allow people to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

Knowing their evil motives, Jesus replied, “Why do you test me, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used to pay the tax.” And they brought him a denarion. “Whose image and inscription is this?” he asked.

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

Then he said, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” When they heard this they were astonished, and they departed.

***

It’s hard not to be thankful. It’s hard not to be thankful with the car packed driving smoothly past vast stretches of America, be they the barren landscapes of I-10 West where barbed wire cuts the dishwater-yellow desert into a three point perspective drawing of leading lines and nothing. Its hard not to be thankful edging up the California coast on Route 1, skirting danger and decadence by glimpsing windward toward Big Sur slamming against it’s sharp mesa-ed cliffs and churning back out to sea. Its hard not be thankful on the way just from Baker up to Anthony cornering the edges of near ripe potato fields with their curved leaves changing sun colored, when you look the other way and tufts of butter-hued sheep now in their late Summer childhood still bound toward their mother. It’s hard not to be thankful for the ease of vacation voices heard across a lake in the dim silver mirrored light of gloaming just before the bats skim the surface and side-eye you, and anything else that moves. It’s hard not to be thankful for Labor Day, for that last bite of summer, when the corn is ripe and the watermelon hallow to the thump, and the edge of seasons bring both an exploding bounty and an anticipation of the quieting autumn to come. It’s had not to feel thankful, for a country to explore and call home and for the freedom to do so.

I feel thankful because I know that I am afforded this grace by very little I have done. I neither surveyed the roads nor designed the curve of their safety, nor set the smoothness of their ride. I did not stretch the barbed wire, nor cut its raw heune post, the simplicity of which keeps the livestock off the interstate on which I love to feel the wind pass by. I do not know when to plant the potatoes or when to wean the lambs, but I know the taste of twice-baked and butter, and local shanks cooked in wine. Likewise, I did not have anything to with deciding that this late summer weekend would be an homage to all those who labor in this country. Yet, 130 years after its inception began in this state, I don’t think I am any less thankful, and perhaps I am more. Because in that time I too was granted the right to vote and thus to work, and to live out my calling, just as you have done and do likewise. I know that I am fortunate to be born into a nation of relative peace and prosperity and overwhelming power, and this too, has nothing to do with anything I did but instead from the greats and the little who have gone before me. It’s pretty easy to remember this on Labor Day weekend.

Maybe then, it shouldn’t be in mid-April when we pay our taxes, when the canned and dehydrated jars of fruit have become boring to the taste and avocados as non-existent as peach juice running down your chin. Nonetheless, I must admit, even when I am riled up by different aspects of the state of our country, even when it’s April in Baker City, even when I have just gone through Advent and Christmas, Epiphany, Lent and Easter, working without stop, I don’t particularly mind paying taxes to Uncle Sam. Because I do believe that I give to Caesar what is his own. It’s easier to see and to count. 

Yet, neither Caesar nor Uncle Sam made the sun rise to grow the mint which running by makes even late afternoon smell as fresh as morning brushed teeth and my energy likewise. How do I give back, for sun, and smell, and legs that run? Even Caesar and certainly Uncle Sam could have predicted the time when the moon covered the sun, but none of us could know how we would gasp in awe and cheer in joy, and speak for weeks to come about the wonder of the eclipse. How do we give that back, our cheers, our gasps, our excited revelry? Neither Caesar nor Uncle Sam are the giant Texas trucks hauling any boat they have lining the highways into Houston, so they can join in, rescuing strangers of any color, and animals of any fur, still stranded from the floods. The President has visited, and FEMA will come, but those who give back now are not they, they are giving back something more precious than gold. Neither Caesar nor Uncle Sam were the one who called every day when you were in the hospital working through your diagnosis, nor are they the one you cried to more times than you could count during your darkest hour. It is easy to wonder how you can every repay such a debt given out of this type of love, but it is easier to know from whom this type of love ultimately comes. 

The pharisees among us try to relegate this gratitude to one entity or another, to Caesar or the Emperor, or to Democrats or Republicans, to our leaders or the working person, and to great degree, to them gratitude is due as there is a lot for which to be thankful, especially on this Labor Day weekend, and even in late April, but for that which we cannot quantify, or count, or measure, we return to God in like manner. From the gratitude of this experience of life, its greatest joys, its humbling wonders, its audacious justice, its boundless compassion, its belly hearted laughter, its falling loves, its abundance, from this we return to God, all that is God’s own. Alleluia, Amen.