Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost
Proper 25 Sunday October 26th
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Matthew 22:33-46
We all have had people in our lives who have influenced us. Sometimes we’re fortunate enough to recognize years later that a bit of wisdom along the way passed on by one wiser then we, may have stuck and even become a bit of the fabric that is woven into who we are. Such I believe is the greatest complement to those who take on roles in our lives that lead to our betterment. A teacher, a parent, family member, Priest, coach, etc.. Dan Novey was my high school English teacher and coach of the basketball team. In the face of the competition and in life he taught me a foundational piece of wisdom I recognize I strive to live out as part of my fabric. When forces in life, wether on the basketball court or in our daily lives, when things are aligning to confuse, get the better of us, stir our anxieties and fears, provoke the worst in us, his mantra: “Cooler heads prevail”.
“Cooler heads prevail”, stay focused, calm, remember who you are, what you are made of, and move forward with integrity, clarity, and intention! “Cooler heads prevail”! This certainly would have been the mantra for Jesus as he engages a multitude of opportunities designed to confuse him, get the better of him, stir his anxieties and fear, and potentially provoke the worst in him. In the sections of Matthew’s Gospel we have read the last few weeks, we find Jesus fully engaged and at the crescendo of his earthly proclamation of the Kingdom he is enfleshed to usher in.
Remember the engagement! He enters the temple in a fit of anger, he cleanses it, and begins to teach by telling parables that seem to be pointed directly at the authorities of the day, reminding all faithful people of the promise God has entrusted them with to live faithful, compassionate, and just lives, particularly remembering to care for the broken, downtrodden, and despairing of God’s creation! He reminds them through parables about vineyards, and wedding banquets, that God’s craving desire is to have God’s creation live in dramatically just way, and that those who may believe they’ve inherited a place in that equation, just may be missing or have forgotten the essential truths of that promise!
Jesus then finds himself tested, repeatedly (and understandably) by the authorities of the day! First the Pharisees bating him on issues of politics, How do you feel about Rome, and the taxes asked of us to pay. A political question designed to get him either in trouble with the authorities of the day or with those among his audience who may be offended by the tax altogether.
The Sadducees in a part of this progression not included in the lectionary, seek to trap Jesus in a theological conundrum. If one is married and his spouse dies, then remarries, in the resurrection, to whom are they married! The Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection, but Jesus keeping his head, takes the opportunity not to take the bate on the ridiculous notion of having to establish a family court in heaven, but to remind his engagers the Scriptures clearly speak to the “amness” of God, the God of the living! In this life and the next, the very nature of God invites relationship with the living, in this life and the next!
Finally, in today’s Gospel, Jesus is approached by a lawyer, a technocrat and interpreter of the law, who invites Jesus into the opportunity to declare which ONE commandment is the most important! “Cooler heads” prevail in this final engagement as Jesus refuses to take the bate and hang on ONE commandment but cuts to the heart of the matter of God and God’s Kingdom, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind, and Love your Neighbor as yourself!” One these two commandments Jesus says, you will find the prongs from which all of the law and all the writings of the Prophets hang! It is these two commandments that uphold it all in other words!
So, Cooler heads prevail, and out of the engagement the fabric upon which Jesus mission hangs emerges and there becomes that from which all things hang! And so it is for us!
Out of this encounter Jesus leaves those who would follow him and us with the wonderful simplicity of a clear way to live a faithful life! Simple? Love the Lord your God with every piece of your fiber and Love your neighbor as yourself! Seems simple enough, at least until we actually try to live it out! On these two commandments everything else hangs! Oh my.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this life Jesus invites us into as followers of his way. I’ve been thinking of the promises we are asked to make and then try to live! I am mindful that when I preside at wedding for example of the high bar that is set when two people in love dare to set their union in a Christian context! I am more and more mindful of just how ridiculous and demanding the promises are that two Christians make in public as they enter into marriage! Those of you who are married, you remember don’t you? Will you love, comfort, honor and keep, in sickness and in health, and forsake all others along the way. Will you pursue these promises holding them from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, loving and cherishing! Oh to do these things, when things are good, when things are bad, not just when everything is rosy, but even when everything is not so rosy. All the time I’ll pursue these promises, not that there won’t be other offers that come my way, but I promise to forsake them, and not only will I do it when I want to do it, but even when I don’t feel like doing it at all! Oh my! Oh and by the way, this promise we make, is not just for the next 24 hours or even 24 days or months, but until we are parted by death! RIDICULOUS!
And then there is the Baptismal Covenant! What promises we make there! Seeking and serving Christ in ALL persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. Respecting the dignity of EVERY human being! We promise to seek and serve Christ in ALL persons, and respect the dignity of EVERY human? Are you kidding me? We promise so in following Jesus and such promises seem a high bar to meet at least and RIDICULOUS at best.
All would seem very ridiculous out of context, but we do have a context! The context of course is the context in which God chooses to Love us! Ridiculously! We begin our journey into the mystery of faithfulness to God’s dream for our lives and dare to make audacious promises ONLY when we begin to encounter the way God loves us!
Mother Teresa of Calcutta wrote of this mysterious love when she said, “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. Isn’t that the Christian mystery! To be in relationship with God through Jesus Christ is to understand that as we love one another as God has loved us we are invited into the paradox of Love! Think about it! The deepest places of your hearts entrenched with those you most deeply love. I am guessing that this love has invited you on more than one occasion into places of hurt! The deeper you love the riskier it is. WE Know the deepest Loves we experience sometimes hurt, because it touches the deepest places of our hearts and souls. A piece of us is given away, and that sometimes hurts, but when we take the risk to put the chips of love on the table for the growth , betterment, and well being of another, love grows, and the hurt is pale in comparison.
God knew this as he risked in love in Jesus Christ who with us would suffer so that love would have its way!
Frederick Buechner in his work, The Magnificent Defeat, speaks of this ridiculous love this way:
The love for equals is a human thing – of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.
The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing – the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.
The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing –to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.
And then there is love for the enemy – love for the one who does not love you, but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.
I began this sermon with the mantra “Cooler heads prevail”. Jesus invites us into an opportunity to see clearly the Kingdom so difficult to be faithful to. The way in which God loves us gives us the context in which we come to understand and believe we can possibly live into an experience of being loved and loving in powerful ways.
It is the last Sunday in October! The beautiful light on the trees, the crispness in the air, and the multitude of letters and wonderful witnesses also have brought you into an awareness that it is our annual stewardship giving campaign time. This day is “supposed” to be your stewardship sermon. I pray that you have ears to hear that it is exactly that! The heart of the stewardship matter is being invited into a ridiculous love that emboldens us to live ridiculously!
I leave you with the words of Mother Teresa of Calcutta as we continue this journey of faith and dare to live in love of God and neighbor.
Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God - the rest will be given.
Amen.
