Reformed What?

Text: Romans 3:19-28 Other texts: Jeremiah 31:31-24, John 8:31-36

This Wednesday is Reformation Day. It is the 490th anniversary of the day that a young Catholic priest named Martin Luther was said to have nailed a list of 95 arguments, his 95 Theses, or propositions, to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. The event has become the symbol of the start of the the Reformation, a major change in the way the church does business. Lutherans especially celebrate this day and event and movement. And so that’s what we are doing this Sunday.

Lutherans can be pretty pompous when it comes to the Reformation. After all, it’s “Luther-ans,” right? Luther, the father of the Reformation, “Here I stand,” and all that. We are fortunately made humble when we realize that for lots of people, the name Martin Luther brings to mind Martin Luther King, not Martin Luther, priest. Luther was a pretty amazing guy and there is much to admire in him, but he would have hated to have a whole denomination named after him.

On this day we read the scripture passages we just heard. They are kind of the model passages for the theology of the Reformation. If the church were a business, these passages would be attached to every press release. Especially Romans, and especially the last verse, verse 28, “justified by faith apart from works proscribed by the law.” Which is like the theological motto of Protestant churches.

It used to be that Reformation Day was a day to bash the Roman Catholic church. The first sermon I heard from one of my Lutheran minister colleagues about ten years ago was his lament that, since Vatican II opened up the Roman church (for a while anyway), he had nothing bad to say about them, and therefore on Reformation Day he had nothing to say at all.

What he mourned was the chance to celebrate the Reformation by belittling other faiths and other ways of faithful thinking. Valuing the Reformation by devaluing something else. He used the motto “justified by grace” as a weapon, or a badge. It let him claim that this verse was somehow exclusively Protestant and exclusively Christian. He would say that the Roman church embraced justification by good works. And he would say that Jews embraced justification by adherence to the law, that is, the Torah.

But to say either of these things is to create straw men, and it misrepresents other ways that people love and worship God. Rome officially agrees with the Protestants on the theology, having written: “good works ...follow justification and are its fruits.” And the Torah is as much a gift as any other sign of God’s grace. It is arrogance to say that the law became worthless through the action of Christ. Jesus said did not come to dissolve the law, or so he said.

The passage in Jeremiah that we heard is often interpreted to mean that instead of a written code of rules, God will make things nice in our hearts. That instead of being guided by the rules we’ll be guided by our pure hearts, which will draw us to goodness somehow. But that is not what God says here. What God says in the words of Jeremiah is that God puts the law within the people, that God will write the law on their hearts. The law does not go away, its place is changed. Or rather, its place is expanded. The law is not erased, it is additionally written in our hearts. The passage in Jeremiah does not diminish the law. It brings it closer to God’s people.

Likewise Paul’s arguments about grace do not substitute grace for the law. He does not say here in Romans: Ok, all you law-types, you can go home now. The game is over. Forget that old stuff; grace is the new way.

What he says is that now, through Jesus, the whole world may be held accountable to God. Not just Jews, but gentiles, too. Pagans and heathens and Greeks. They are in this, too. Because it is not just Jews who can sin, we are all sinners. And who isn’t? There is no distinction, he says. You gentiles, Paul tells them, are not off the hook, just because you aren’t Jews. The Jews had the law to show them about God, but it now God has been disclosed to you folks, too. You know about God, too.

The good news is that God, the God of the Jews and, it turns out, your god, too, is with you on this. That’s what “justified” means; that God is with you on this. You and God are right with each other, in synch, sort of. Not because of who you are or in what religion you were raised or how good you have been, but because God simply wishes to. It is a gift. That’s what grace means; a gift. God is with you because God likes to give you a gift. Justified—OK with God—through the action of God’s grace, a gift. It is God’s doing.

Both Jesus and Luther were reformers, not replacers. Luther was a Catholic priest who hoped that the church would change. Jesus was a Jew and spoke to Jews about their actions and faith. Neither (though I really can’t speak for Jesus; I’m guessing here)—neither had in mind to create either a new faith or a new church.

When we celebrate Reformation Day, we focus on the theology of the Reformation. The theology is important. It is good to know that God is cheering for you even if you are not doing so well at being good. That God’s love for you is unconditional.

But what Luther was most excited about (and Jesus was excited about it, too), was the freeing of faith from the oppressive and corrupt institutions of faith. Luther made the Bible available to the language of the people, he encouraged priests to marry, he denied their power to be heavenly judges, and he opened the liturgy and the celebration of the Eucharist to all, not just a few special people.

Both Jesus and Luther spoke not for the priests, people in power who in both cases had used the law and works to control and exploit the people. Luther and Jesus spoke for the rest of us, the ordinary people. What marked Jesus and Luther, among other important things, was that they were on the side of the ordinary. Or maybe better to say, they celebrated the extraordinary that was in the ordinary.

Those in power rule by fear. And the most vicious and fierce power they have is the power to make people afraid for their lives. Or the lives of those they love. The fear of sin is the fear of death, the fear that sin leads to death. The notion that if you mess up, you are gone. You are done for. Don’t step out of line, buddy, or else.

People in power were afraid of Jesus. Not because they thought he was God—they didn’t. Jesus frightened those in power because Jesus was not afraid of them, even though he knew the consequences, and that Jesus taught others—us—to not be afraid either.

In the Gospel of John Jesus tells the crowd that they do not have to be slaves to sin. He is telling them, among other things, that they can make mistakes, even according to the rules of God. And that no one, no human being, can tell them otherwise, no priest, no church, no doctrine.

Sin boldly! Luther said. Not because Luther wanted people to sin. It wouldn’t matter—people sin regardless. But because Luther wanted people to act boldly without fear, to be free as Christians can be. To act, we ordinary people, in trust. That is what faith means: to trust. Knowing that we are justified by faith through God’s grace. Trusting Jesus that God is with us, no matter what. And that we are free.

On Praying

Text: Luke 18:1-8

It is not always clear what Jesus means to say when he tells a parable. But it sure is clear in this one that we just heard. This parable is about prayer.

You might hear other things in the parable. It might be about justice, and it might be about persistence in general. But to Luke, who is telling a story about Jesus telling a story, it is about prayer. Jesus told them a parable, it says, about their need to pray always and not lose heart.

And it is a parable, not an allegory (as you’re probably tired of hearing me say). That is, we can’t make the judge to be God and the widow to be us. They are both well-drawn characters: the judge is a sleazy scum-bag and the widow is brave and aggravating. They don’t stand for anyone in particular (in fact, the story starts out: there was some kind of judge in some kind of city).

The story is an example of Bible-logic, reasoning that was common then. It reasons from small to large. From less to more. If the judge, who was a jerk, responded with justice to the entreaties of the woman, how much more will God respond to our pleas for justice? “Listen to what the unjust judge (the lesser) says, and will not God (the greater) grant justice?” So it is a parable about prayer that contains an argument.

It is about prayer, but a particular kind (probably the most common kind). It is about prayer that asks for things, which in church jargon is called petitionary prayer (because we are bringing petitions to God). There are other kinds of prayer. A friend says there are three kinds of prayer: wow, thanks, and help. Petitionary prayer is the “help” kind. There are other kinds, too, especially the kind where we don’t yap away at all but try to stay quiet, listening for God to speak. So this parable is about praying for something we want. Which today I’ll call just “prayer.”

Prayer is a kind of conversation. In the parable, the widow and the judge have a conversation. They have a relationship, they engage one another and what one does is influenced by the other. Not all conversations (or relationships for that matter) go very far. They need to be powered. Three things power the conversation between the judge and the widow, and the same things power our prayers. They are hunger, humility, and hope. And I want to talk about each of these today.

First, hunger. The woman is hungry for justice to be done. There is no prayer (we are talking about petitionary prayer, remember)—there is no prayer of this kind without hunger. We come to prayer needing something. Something big and meaningful like reconciliation of a broken marriage or healing from disease or something small like finding a parking space or getting a paper in on time. Something in us wants something. Even something that is not for us: the end to war and violence, the eradication of poverty, a joy-filled life for a new-born child. We pray to God with the same motivating ache and longing that makes us turn to the pantry when we are hungry. When we pray, we admit we are hungry. There is no point in praying if all of our life is satisfactory and satisfying. If all is totally complete. When we pray, we admit we have longings, desires, and needs. All of us, of course, have those needs. Praying, we acknowledge that to be so.

Second, humility. The woman comes to the judge for justice. She cannot make things right by herself. She is powerless in the face of her adversary’s privilege. Powerless by herself. When we pray, we acknowledge that we are powerless by ourselves to deliver whatever it is we hunger for. We cannot fix what is broken, or feed what is starving, or set right what is out of kilter, by ourselves. When we pray, we admit that we need something, which is tough enough to admit. And then we pray that we cannot meet that need without some assistance from God. Just as there is no reason to pray if we are completely satisfied, there is no reason to pray if we are on top of things. If everything is pretty much under control, if we think all it needs is a tweak here or there, or if we think all it needs is for us to be a little smarter, more energetic, more focussed, better. Why pray if we are going to take care of things by ourselves sooner or later. But experience, if nothing else, teaches us that there is not much, if anything, we can control. Praying, we humble ourselves to say so.

Third, hope. The widow comes to the judge assuming that he is able to hand her justice. She comes in need, she comes asking for help. And she comes with hope that her petition can be granted. Prayer is the concrete expression of our conviction that things do not need to be as they are. When we pray for peace, we are declaring that war is not everlasting. When we pray for health, we are declaring that illness is reversible. When we pray for rescue, we are declaring that we can be freed. We do not pray for the impossible. They is no point. We do not pray out of hopelessness, there is no inspiration. (When we are nearly consumed by hopelessness, we pray for hope, a self-fulfilling prayer.) Prayer is refusing to concede that tomorrow is just today over and over again, that the way things are has to be the way they always will be. In that sense prayer is powerful imagination coupled with trust that through God the future is still open.

Prayer therefore is not so much an action as a stance. It is not some exercise or chore or transaction or duty. It is the way. It is the way we approach God and life. Though we from time to time find ourselves to be self-satisfied, self-important, or hopeless, we know that in those times we are off-center. Our center is hunger, humility, and hope.

In the parable, Luke says that Jesus is teaching the disciples to pray always. And one of the mottos or slogans of the New England Synod is “pray without ceasing.” These might mean to mutter prayers under your breath in every waking moment (people have even tried that). But praying always is not some kind of super-piety. To pray always, without ceasing, is to remain mindful of our center. We pray with God who feeds our hunger, who holds our lives better than we can, who creates our new future.

All Were Healed

Text: Luke 17:11-19

Martin Luther was a young catholic priest. He worked hard at being good. But he was tormented by his conviction that he would never be worthy of God. He was, after all, only human, just a sinner, an imperfect being. Yet he felt that scripture was calling him to be better, better even than anyone could ever be. He felt that scripture was condemning him.

He wrote at the time: I hated that word, “justice of God,” which, I had been taught to understand [as] that justice by which God punishes sinners and the unjust.

“I couldn't be sure that God was appeased by my [efforts]. I hated the just God who punishes sinners. I said, “Isn't it enough that we miserable sinners, lost for all eternity because of original sin, are oppressed by every kind of calamity? Why does God heap sorrow upon sorrow and threaten us with his justice and his wrath?”

He felt that way especially about the writings of the apostle Paul. Paul was a thorn in the side of Luther, and Paul’s writings made Luther miserable.

Looking back at Luther from a platform 500 years later, you might find Luther’s agony a little excessive. You might think: He is a little too riled up about this. Or maybe you might not. Maybe you feel condemned by the Bible, too. Maybe when you hear in some Bible story about someone messing up, you think that passage is about you. Maybe you hear a lot of “shoulds’ in the Bible.

Maybe when you hear today’s Gospel story about the lepers being cured, you think: Those ungrateful lepers (the nine who just walked away without a word of thanks to Jesus). Maybe you think: This passage is telling us that we should be grateful for God’s gifts. It is telling us that we should realize who it is who provides our lives and health. Maybe is telling us that we should be more faithful. Maybe it is telling us that faith rewards us by making us well, or worse, that if we are not well it is because we lack sufficient faith.

If you thought that, you would not be alone. Many readers have seen in this passage praise for the one Samaritan (who even more amazingly was an enemy of the Jews, Jesus’ people)—the Samaritan who turns back to Jesus in thanksgiving and condemnation for those who leave without so much as a howdy-do.

Luther, after much violent thought (“I was raging with a wild and disturbed conscience,” he later wrote), came to see things differently. “I saw the whole of Scripture in a different light. The work of God, that is, what God works in us; the power of God, by which he makes us powerful; the wisdom of God, by which he makes us wise; the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.” So maybe you are like the second Luther, and see in the story of the lepers not what the lepers do and do not do, but what God is doing.

Ten people went to Jesus looking to be transformed. They had leprosy. They were considered unclean, disgusting. They were forced to live at the edge of the village, not in it. And by law they had to cry out to all who passed near: Unclean, unclean. They cry out to Jesus, “have mercy on us.” Help us. They cry out to be transformed. To have a new life.

Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priest. To let the priest see them. It is not that the priest has any healing powers. But the priest is the judge of who is clean and unclean. It would be the job of the priest not to make them clean, but to announce that they were.

Somewhere on the way between Jesus and the priest they were healed, made clean the text says. It is not clear where exactly all this happened. It was not clear, it seems, how this happened.

There were ten people cured, but only one man who seemed to notice. The Samaritan. That man’s life was transformed. When the text says he was made clean, it uses a word that is like the modern word “cathartic.” Some major thing had happened, some definitive break with the sorry past. Some refreshing view of a hopeful future. Recognizing his new life, he praises God and runs back to Jesus to thank him.

What of the others? We don’t have to think them to be particularly dense. There are lots of reasons to deny what’s in front of your own eyes. There are lots of reasons to deny transformation. You might not think that you are worthy enough. You might not think you are ready enough. You might think it unlikely and you don’t want to get your hopes up (what if they had come to the priest and he said, “nope, not quite, not really, not enough”). You might not welcome it, for transformation can be disruptive. Even though they asked to be healed, perhaps they held a stake in the familiar.

But the man sees. And his sight leads him to gratitude. And his gratitude leads him to faith. He has been healed, made well, says Jesus. He has a new life.

God gives the man three gifts. The gift of sight, the gift of gratitude, and the gift of faith. Unearned and unearnable gifts. To see God’s hand in our life. To be thankful for what God has given us and showed us. To trust God.

This man is the more fortunate of the ten others on account of these gifts. But he is not the better of them. They all are healed, grateful at the time or not. They all receive something for nothing. They all are transformed, like it or not. Or maybe: like it and not.

We who like to see people get what they deserve, we who respond well to “should” (you should, they should, I should), we who know there are no gains without pains, we hear in the story that Jesus is a little put out. Like, I cured all ten of you. I mean, nice to see you here, Mr. Foreign Samaritan, but where’s the other nine? What’s up with that?

But this story is not about us so much as it is about God. Not so much about how we mess up but about how much God gives us even so. If we think of the ungrateful nine, we imagine all that they might have done better. If we think of the grateful one, we think he might be a model for us doing better. But if we think of the gracious one, the healer, Jesus, we think only of our generous God. I don’t think Jesus is annoyed at the nine who walk away. I think he is amused. I think he looks on them with affection and understanding.

Jesus does not heal these lepers because Jesus wants something back. The Samaritan is not the model; he’s the gravy (if I can mix metaphors here). It is great that he comes back to thank Jesus, and I’m sure Jesus appreciates it, but his gratitude is not the point. It is a little extra (it is an extra gift for the man). The point is that Jesus heals all the ten who cry out to him from the side of the road.

Many people live their lives seeking ways to be criticized. It is weird but true. We look for “shoulds” and we respond to them. But of course as Luther knew, we never can do all we “should” do, so we are always a bit—or a lot—behind in time and results. But there is no need to walk in shame. As Luther realized and then publicized, there is one who does not expect accomplishment and gratitude, but gives them to us as gifts. One who prefers healing to judgment. One who, as Luther saw, judges us with more generosity than we judge ourselves.

Come All You People

Text: 2 Timothy 1:1-14 Other texts: Luke 17:5

Note: This is a short homily introducing a special combined worship of three churches that make up the Faith community.

I am grateful, my brothers and sisters, when I think of you.

So writes the author of the 2nd Letter to Timothy. Grateful for all the new followers of Jesus, grateful for the churches in different parts of the land, grateful that God had gathered them together, people of all different sorts.

Don’t you feel the same way? Aren’t you grateful that God has gathered us all together today, and has gathered these three congregations, these three communities of faith, into this church home?

Who would have thought it? In a time when Christians are as known for their bickering as their solidarity, known for exaggerating differences, known for even praying that their Christian enemies might be cursed, who would have thought we would gather here in common worship and affection for God and for one another, brothers and sisters?

Each of us comes here for reasons of his or her own, but all the reasons seem to amount in the end to “God brought me here.” We are called, the letter to Timothy says, not by our own works—that is, our own schemes of one thing or another—but according to God’s own purpose and grace. God’s grace, which either means God’s charisma, or God’s gift. You can think of it either way (or both), whichever feels true to you.

We have come to be fed by the word of God, by the sacraments, by prayer and song and silence. We have come, in the words of this epistle, to rekindle the gift of God that is within us. To feed that fire, that metabolism that keeps us moving toward God and to care for each other. God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, it says, but a spirit of power and of love and of steady mind.

We come, some of us, because we were raised in a certain tradition. We are here because, as the letter says, we are reminded of the faith of our grandmothers and mothers, who invited us to come to church with them, or made us come. But others come because once a friend invited us to a church, or someone we were courting. Or we passed by in front of the church and saw the sign and felt that this was the right time to check things out. Or we were alone or frightened and the church seemed safe, or safe enough.

No matter though. We are bound together now. What binds us together is a search to know God, to be with God and God with us. There is no reason why you or anyone has to be here. No one is making you come. (Maybe the Holy Spirit is). We are bound together by the seriousness of a quest, and in that quest there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, woman or man; we are all one in Chris Jesus. So says Paul. We want to be able to say, as the writer of this letter to Timothy says, that we know the one in whom we put our trust.

The gospel reading for today (from Luke, chapter 17) says this:

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had the faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

It doesn’t take too much to be started off on the quest. Just a tiny amount of trust (which is another way to translate the word “faith”) just enough to get us going. And then we are off.

This epistle to Timothy is one of the three letters in the Bible called the Pastoral Epistles. That’s because they were written concerning pastors. But except for these few introductory remarks and a few prayers, you won’t hear too much from the pastors here today. The church is the people who show up. That means you. Today persons from each congregation will speak to us about their own experience with God, perhaps about their own quest. And perhaps how it is that of all the places they might be today, they are here, now, gathered into one community of faith.

Dishonest Wealth and the Children of Light

Text: Luke 16:1-13

The scripture passages we hear in the readings each week are chosen by a committee. A big committee, with representatives from the many denominations that use what is called the Revised Common Lectionary. The lectionary is a list of selections from the Old and New Testaments—the Hebrew and Greek portions of the Bible—and the psalms. The lectionary lists readings for three years, called imaginatively years A, B, and C. We are now in year C. In this book are all the readings for year C, and we have similar books for years A and B.

You might ask whether the lectionary readings cover the whole Bible. That would make sense in a way. After all, for Lutherans the Bible is the final source of authority. But if we did read the whole Bible in three years, we would have to allocate five times the amount of space in worship than we do, because (by my informal reckonings) the lectionary readings cover a little less than a fifth of the Bible. And it actually is smaller than that, because some readings are repeated.

There are two main reasons for a lectionary or list of readings. First, the list is supposed to contain a lot of the important readings, as judged by the committee. So we won’t miss them. And second, the list disciplines the preacher, who cannot just get up and say “Hi, here’s some interesting things that I was thinking about this week, and I’ve picked a few Bible verses to beef up my argument.” That is, we are supposed to start with the Bible.

The problem with a lectionary is that, if you don’t read the Bible on your own, you’ll miss 80% of the Bible even if you attend worship every week.

Often the lectionary readings simply reinforce things we already know. They are familiar passages, or they state the scriptural basis for some theological position, or they tell the central stories of Christianity that all Christians need to hear to keep in touch with Jesus. But some days I think the readings are chosen just to keep us honest, you and me, to keep us on our toes. And to remind us that there is some pretty weird stuff in the Bible. And that we should not discount it. Some days, and today is such a day.

The reading from the Gospel of Luke today is a parable. Parables are never straightforward. They come to things sort of sideways. They are designed to surprise you, to shake you up and get you thinking. The story of the Good Samaritan, for example, is surprising because a man in troubled is rescued by an unlikely helper. Or the parable of the Mustard Seed is surprising because Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is like this tiny seed.

Parables are not allegories. That is, things and people in them do not stand for other things. The father in the story of the Prodigal Son does not stand for God, though the way he welcomes his lost son might make us think of the relationship between God and sinners. Us.

The parable for today in Luke is certainly surprising. It is supposed to make you think. But maybe all it makes you think is: “Huh? What’s with this? What is going on here?” There are a lot of strange parts to it, and it raises a lot of questions. As one scholar said, a many “interpreters have struggled to make sense of this parable.” Parables like this one make pastors want to suggest a hymn sing in place of the sermon.

The parable tells a story of a steward—like the site manager or operations officer—who is accused of cheating his boss, who is rich. The boss fires him. But first, the steward cheats the boss some more in a clever scheme in order to gain favor with the boss’s debtors. The steward is called both dishonest (he’s a bad guy) and shrewd (he’s a good guy). But there is so much here we don’t know.

Like, for example, who calls the manager shrewd? In our translation it says “And the master commended the dishonest manager.” But the word for master and the word for lord (as in Lord Jesus) is the same in Greek. Could it be Jesus who is commending this guy? And if so, why? And if the master is, why is he praising the man who cheated him? And is the master telling the steward to make friends by dishonest wealth, or is Jesus telling the disciples to (which is how most scholars read it)? And why would he say that? Is this good advice for Christians?

Who are the children of light? Why aren’t they so shrewd? Is that good or bad? What are eternal homes (a phrase which appears nowhere else in the Bible)? Why should your handling of wicked wealth (and why are you messing with wicked wealth in the first place)—why should that affect your handling of true riches? What does Jesus mean by true riches anyway?

Many interpreters of this text try to answer all these questions in a sensible way. They try to make what looks like a broken puzzle fit together to make a nice picture. But I’m not sure it can be done. They have to trim the pieces to make it work. They have to add a little notion here and ignore a little word or two there. There is a lot we do not know in this parable.

But there are some things we do know.

We know that this parable sits with a bunch of others in this part of Luke, and that most of them have to do with the way things will be, are, or ought to be in God’s kingdom. We know that some of them have to do with money. We know that Luke thinks that possessions are a problem for those who profess to follow Jesus.

We know that there are some things this parable of the steward have in common with some of the others near it in Luke. This parable, and the parable of the man who has to build extra barns to hold his extra stuff, and a parable that we’ll hear next week about a poor man named Lazarus, all start out “there was a rich man.” The parable of the man with the barns, the parable of the Prodigal Son, and this parable all have a main character in trouble or crisis of some kind. And when they are in trouble, they all mutter, trying to figure out what to do. And they all talk to themselves and make a decision. “I will do this: I will build larger barns,” says one. “I will get up and go to my father,” says another. “I have decided what to do,” says the third. I, I, I. None of them turns to God.

You cannot serve God and wealth, Jesus says. Why all this attention to money? Because wealth is incredibly attractive. It is also incredibly distracting. The complications of wealth make it hard to manage, but they also make it interesting to manage. The problems that wealth presents are just hard enough to be intriguing but just easy enough so that very clever people—shrewd people, you might say—can solve them. Rich people like to solve them, and like people who like to solve them, l suppose like the steward who is commended, in my reading, by the boss he cheated.

The Bible is the story of God’s relationship with us. It is often complicated because our relationship with God is often complicated. The Bible has weird parts because we have weird parts.

You cannot serve two masters, Jesus says. But we in our lives feel like we have many masters, not just two. And we make not just one permanent decision about whom to serve, but many daily ones.

God draws us near. We long to be drawn near. But God is not the only thing pulling us. There are lots of distracting attractions. When we are in crisis, when we are not sure where to go, how to deal, what to do, to whom do we turn?

Forgetful God

Text: Luke 15:1-10 Other texts: Exodus 32:7-14, Psalm 51

Humans are designed to forget. Unlike in some models of the mind, our brains are not mechanical or electronic machines. We notice some things but not others. We remember some things for years, others for just moments. Mostly, though, all our memories fade.

Until recently, that is. Now we have a huge repository of information, the global web, that remembers pretty much perfectly pretty much forever. If you did something not so pleasant a decade ago, the net will remember. You cannot outlive your mistakes, and their impact does not fade with time. This development worries people, because forgetting is important to us, individually and collectively. Forgetting makes forgiveness possible. It is not the same as forgiveness, and you can and usually do forgive someone without forgetting what that person did to you. But unless there is some trauma, you don’t remember everything exactly. And as we pull away from events over time, it makes room for reflection, reconciliation, and redemption. We are built to be forgetful.

In our relationship with God, it is easy to get confused about who does what. We get especially confused about repentance. In normal life, repentance is something we have to do to have someone say “It’s all right.” (I’m sorry, I won’t do it again, I messed up. Well, OK, it’s all right.) And if people don’t repent, that’s grounds for refusing to forgive them. Why should I forgive you, you’re not even sorry.

So when we hear Jesus talk about the joy in heaven over the one sinner who repents, it makes us wonder. Is repentance a requirement with God as it seems to be with us? Do I need to say I’m sorry before God says “It’s all right”? Will we lose our blessings unless we agree to change our ways for the better? Is it something we have to do to be favored by God, as it is to be favored by people?

The Israelites deserve God’s anger. God, through Moses, has just told them all the things they should do as God’s people, and in particular just told them that they are not to pay a lot of attention to other gods. So the very first thing they do is build this calf out of gold and start worshipping it as their lord. So God—our God and theirs—is ticked off. I have had it with these people, he says. And he threatens to zap them. But Moses intercedes. He argues with God. The Egyptians will laugh at you. Why did you lead all those people out of slavery, just to kill them in the desert. Change your mind, says Moses. It is hard to know whether God was nervous about being embarrassed. But whatever the reason, God does change God’s mind. That is, God repents. God turns back—which is what the word repent means—God turns back to the original plan: Israel onward to the promised land.

It is God who repents in this story, not the Israelites. There is no “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again” in this story. The repenting here is something God does, not something people do in order to have God do something in return. There is no “in return.”

The Israelites certainly deserve what God threatens to do. People like to see people get what they deserve. That’s one of the reasons some people don’t like the story of the Prodigal Son—in the next chapter in Luke—where neither son gets what he deserves. And why should the lost sheep of today’s passage get rescued, when by wandering away he puts the whole flock in jeopardy. But it seems like the words “God” and “what you deserve” don’t fit in the same sentence. God doesn’t seem to care much about who deserves what. The wandering sheep gets saved, the wandering brother gets a party, the adulterous woman gets freed, the workers who come late get paid the same as the ones who have worked all day, the beggar gets twice what he asks for, the Good Friday executioners get forgiven.

God gives too much away. In the parables that Jesus tells, no one asks for forgiveness. But they are forgiven anyway. No one repents. But they are welcomed by God anyway. The parables are not about how great the repent-ers are. They are about how great God is.

Sometimes I think the Gospels should be called “101 Jokes by Jesus.” He says these things with a straight face that you know are absurd. So today, he tells his listeners that the heavens welcome the one repentant sinner more than the 99 righteous people. But where are you going to find a crowd of 99 sinless people, one of whom repents? You’d be lucky to find one totally good person in a hundred, much less 99. We are all sinners, which we know by theology and by experience. If you’ve never done what you shouldn’t have or left undone something you should have, cool for you. The scribes and Pharisees grumble that Jesus eats with sinners. Good thing for us, I’d say. If Jesus only ate with the sinless, he’d eat at a table for one most of the time. If he wants to eat with me—and I want him to—I’m glad he eats with sinners.

We speak a lot about what God hopes we’ll do, what God says we should do, what we think God wants us to do. But our relationship with God is not so much about what God demands. It’s about what God gives. Even if we feel like we don’t deserve it, or don’t even feel bad about what we’ve done. Jesus eats with sinners not because they promise not to sin any more, but because Jesus wants to eat with them. This kind of hanging around with not-the-best sort of people is probably the most obvious part of Jesus’ ministry and for his contemporaries, and even for some folks nowadays, the most troubling. It is a scandal.

The psalm for today, a version of which we sang, is thought to have been a lament by King David after he slept with Bathsheba and then had her husband killed to cover it up. In the psalm, David says essentially: I would really appreciate it, God, if you’d just forget the whole thing.

I don’t know if God is more like the Internet or more like our brains—most likely not at all like either. We have a hard time forgiving, much less forgetting. But God evidently finds it easy. We worship a God who rejoices in the act of forgiving. Joy in heaven, the verses say, joy among the angels, when the ones who are lost are found.

Though made in the image of God, we forgive imperfectly, all messed up with thoughts of people getting what they deserve and accountability, or needing to receive an apology first, or just being unable to drop it. But we worship a God who forgives perfectly, and whether it is actually so or not, seems to perfectly forget. Which is good for wandering sheep and stiff-necked people. Good for us.

Choose Life

Text: Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Other texts: Luke 14:26

I set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you may live.

The Israelites sit on the border of the land of Canaan. They sit like kids on a seawall, contemplating the ocean, side by side, imagining their future. They have been traveling forty years to get to this place and this time to take the land they have been promised by God. They have been led here by Moses. They have been given the law to follow. They have made an agreement with God. God is their God. They are God’s people. The land of God is ready for the people of God.

Now Moses, near death, preaches to them for the last time.

I have set before you life and death, Moses tells them, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you may live.

These words can guide us. They can be, as they have from time to time been for me, a touchstone against which we prove decisions. Is what I’m about to do a blessing or a curse? Will it add life to this world or diminish it? Will it help others, or harm them? Will what I do cause pain or peace?

But these wonderful words, wise and powerful, can turn to mock us. They make it sound so easy. Just turn away from death. Just turn toward life. As if choosing were so simple. As if we didn’t already know that blessings are better than curses. As if we didn’t already know that life is better than death. Who among us would on purpose choose death? Who among us wouldn’t choose life if we could?

I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you may live.

It’s not easy.

It’s not easy because it is not always clear what’s a blessing and what’s a curse. Things that look good on paper turn out to be disastrous in fact. Things started for good reasons turn out to cause suffering. We start in love and end in sorrow. We start in hope and end in frustration.

The morning glories twist and grow and delight us with their blossoms, but they twist the necks of the marigolds and choke them to death. Life or death, blessing or curse?

How can we know all things? How can we control all the variables? How can we see all the ways our actions will affect all other people and this earth?

We cannot.

Issues that we deal with as a society are difficult because we can’t figure out, much less agree about, what’s going to happen. Does stem cell research fall on the life side or the death side? How about military intervention to stop a genocidal war? How about abortion? How about locking someone up in prison for life? It’s not that some folks are on the side of death and the others on the side of life (even though our politics sometimes makes us think so). It’s that both sides are trying to figure it out. What is the blessing here? What is the curse? Where is life? Where is death?

It’s not just large world-wide issues, but personal ones. We ask ourselves: should I, middle aged parent, move across country to care for my ailing and frail mother or stay where I am, where my popular daughter is in junior high school and my shy and difficult son is in fifth grade. Should we, a young couple in our late teens, raise our unexpected child ourselves or put it up for adoption? Should I, recent law-school graduate with lots of student loans, go for the big-bucks big-firm job for a while, maybe forever, or go back to my small hometown as I had planned? Should I, successful entrepreneur, whose son hates school—should I push him to work harder because I believe that success in school leads to success in life? Which is blessing? Which is curse?

I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you may live.

It’s not easy.

It’s not easy because the consequences are often hard to take. Jesus’ harsh words about hating one’s family are shocking. They make no sense coming from someone who advises us to love all, including our enemies. To love our neighbors as ourselves. To obey the commandments, including the one about honoring one’s father and mother.

They make no sense unless we imagine that Jesus is describing what is, not proscribing what ought to be. To disagree with those we love and who love us is not a recipe for discipleship. But it can be a result. People get angry and hurt and frightened. To follow Christ—to be my disciple, Jesus says—to follow Christ into life means putting Jesus ahead of all else, even family, even if it causes hurt. It is a horrible decision. How did Zebedee feel when new disciples, his sons James and John, abandoned their father and the family business and took off after Jesus?

I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you may live.

It’s not easy.

It’s not easy because it doesn’t end with one decision.

It might seem that Moses is asking the Israelites to make one final choice. But no such luck. The Israelites will have to make that choice over and over again.

The decisions we make, make our lives. Too often it is not a menu of choices that face us, but a choice between two alteratives. One or the other, no chance to back up. We have to do as Yogi Berra said, “when you come to the fork, take it.” And there is not just one fork in the road, but one after another. The forks we choose define our path.

Moses asks the Israelites to choose a life, a way of living, that aligned with God’s hopes. The book of Deuteronomy is about Israel’s covenant—their agreement—with God. When Moses asks them to choose life, he is asking them to put that agreement first in their minds and in their hearts. He is asking them to make God and God’s law the focus of their lives. He is asking them to be foremost, before all other things, people of God. He is asking them to think of themselves that way before all other ways.

And in the same way Jesus asks his disciples to choose. Jesus asks the crowd to hate mothers and fathers, wife and children, brothers and sisters, even life itself. The word “hate” here does not mean “have bad feelings toward.” The words are like legal terms. Love means “be loyal to” as one country might be loyal to a treaty with another country. When Jesus tells his listeners to hate life and family, he is telling them not to cling to these things above all. Like Moses, Jesus is asking the crowd to put God first before all things. Their first loyalty is to God, not to even important things like their families.

The book of Deuteronomy is formed as a book of laws, but in it’s 600+ laws, is a book of the heart. It is guide to responding to the experience of God’s love for a people. It is a guide to a way of living with God first in mind.

The Israelites stood on the border, just one step away from Canaan, the promised land. They stood on the border, just one step away from a prosperous future. They stood on the border, one step to complete their freedom from Egyptian slavery.

I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you may live. Living with God, Moses adds importantly. Loving God, obeying God, and holding fast to God.

Yet in this passage, unlike others in the Torah, the Israelites do not choose. The book of Deuteronomy ends with the people still on the border, still ready, waiting. The story doesn’t end. The offer remains for all people. And all people, including us, may accept it or not.

Will we? We often stand at some border, waiting, wondering what to do, nervous and confused. Wanting to choose blessing, afraid we will choose curse. At the fork, what path will we take?

To choose life and blessing is, as Moses says, to choose to walk in God’s path. God’s path is the path on which God walks. It is the path that God enjoys. It is the place where God is, where God is likely to be found. It is where God roams. God roams there waiting for us.

I will be your God, and you will be my people. That is God’s promise. God asks us to take one hesitant step onto God’s path. And when we do, God comes to greet us. God comes to take our hand. And as we walk step by step, day by day, God comes to walk with us.