Generous Landowner

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Matthew 20:1-16, NRSV



Earlier this week I told my house mates what scripture this sermon was going to be about and I got this response: “I know that parable, and I don't like it.” I totally understand why I got that response too. I confess that often when reading the gospels there are stories that I frankly don't like. Some stories seem completely unfair.

The Parable of the landowner is definitely one of them: laborers that work different amounts receive the same pay. Imagine for a second if a corporate executive decided to adopt a similar renumeration policy and started to give every employee an identical paycheck no matter how many hours were worked. Some people would be livid. Others would be very happy. Either way, there would not be much motivation for people to work. If I can get paid for a full eight hour shift by clocking in at four and getting off at five, why on earth would I go to work at nine? The scandal that would result from such a decision would most certainly be epic and the business would probably quickly fail.

Even more drastic would be if employees that only worked for a company for a few days were able to have the same wealth of a loyal employee that worked for a company since its inception. Often with startup companies, the first employees are able to make the most money, especially through employee stock options. For instance, at Starbucks, all employees were offered stock options starting in 1991. An employee making $20,000 at that time received about $2400 in stock offerings. In just five years time that employee could have cashed in the stock options at around $50,000. (From Howard Schultz book Pour your heart into it) Just think what those stocks are worth today! Also, the longer a person works for a company, the bigger their salary gets.

In our world, people that have been working for a long time simply make more money. That's why this parable is so shocking. And it should be! But this parable starts telling us its about something different than the way our world works, doesn't it? Lets take a look at the passage.

Verse one starts out with a connecting word: “For.” There is clearly a connection being made to whatever came before. In fact, Many scholars argue that Matthew 19 and 20 should not be separated:

Warren Carter in his book Matthew and the Margins titles his section on these two chapters: "The Alternative Households of God's Empire." He writes:
The coherence of these two chapters resides in pervasive cultural understandings of households. ... They [Aristotelean tradition, Neopythagoreans, and Hellenistic Judaism] understood the household to consist of four dimensions, namely, three relationships (husband-wife; father-children; master-slave) and the male's task of earning wealth. A power dynamic controlled the relationships in which the husband/father/master ruled over the wife/children/slaves. The household was hierarchical and patriarchal in that the male held power over women and children. It was marked by strict gender differentiation. ...
The sections of chapters 19-20 reflect this household pattern: the husband-wife relationship (including divorce, 19:3-12), children (19:13-15), procuring wealth (19:16-30), being slaves (20:17-28). In addition, 20:1-16 is a parable about a householder administering his estate and hiring workers.
But while the chapters utilize this household structure, they do not endorse this cultural norm. Rather, siding with some other minority cultural views, the two chapters subvert this hierarchical and patriarchal structure by instructing disciples in a more egalitarian pattern (cf. 20:12). Husbands are not to rule over wives but to participate in a "one-flesh" relationship (19:3-12); all disciples are children, there are no parents (19:13-15); following Jesus, not procuring wealth and status, defines discipleship (19:16-30); all disciples are slaves like Jesus, there are no masters (20:17-28). The parable of the householder in 20:1-16 exemplifies God's distinctive and different ways of ordering life. The concluding story of Jesus healing the blind men who beg for mercy offers disciples hope that they too will be enabled by Jesus' power to live this alternative and against-the-grain existence (20:29-34). That is, as Jesus journeys to Jerusalem to die, the chapters provide disciples with instruction on an alternative household that befits the empire or reign of God. [pp. 376-7]
Chapter 19 concludes with the story of the rich young man that approached Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus answer to the young man is to sell everything and give the money to the poor and come follow him. Then in verse 30, Jesus says, “But many who are first shall be last, and the last will be first.” Sound familiar?

Now in Chapter 20, in typical Parable fashion, Jesus begins to describe the Kingdom of Heaven. Its like a landowner-- a rich guy, just like the rich guy that approached Jesus before-- who hired laborers for his vineyard.

Apparently the scene Jesus described would have been familiar. The social structure in the Roman Empire was hierarchically ordered. A few powerful men ruled at the top of the pyramid while at the bottom, the local peasants and businessmen struggled for a meager living. The day laborers may have struggled the most in this society, as the marketplace was a volatile place to look for work. At least slaves knew where their next meal would come from and may have received healthcare because they were at least worth what their master paid for them.

Well, today's the lucky day for a few workers. The landowner approaches the first workers. They agree to a wage-- a denarius-- to go out to the fields to work. Now a denarius is not a lot of money. It was about enough to feed a peasant family for one day with none left to save. So, if the laborers didn't get their denarius for the day, their family didn't eat. To compare the denarius to a current US dollar, historians say that a denarius has the buying power to get about $20 worth of bread (Wikipedia). Comparitively, a laborer working for minimum wage today would be paid $58 before taxes for an eight hour work day. After this agreement is made, the landowner sends the first workers to the field.

Then when the landowner goes back to the marketplace at nine, noon, and three, he hires them and says “You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you what is right.” Notice that this agreement looks very different than the first agreement. With the first workers, there is a specific amount that is agreed upon. Now the landowner simply says he will pay “what is right,” or we could also say, “what is just.” No specific wage is given. Furthermore, Jesus says, “then they went.” The first laborers were sent out to the field. These laborers “went.”

The last group of laborers is hired one hour before the end of the work day, about five o'clock. The owner goes back to the marketplace and asks the people there, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” When I first read this, I thought, “What a jerk!” I mean don't you think that this just adds insult to injury? They say, “Nobody hired us!” I imagine it being like that scene in the movie Fun with Dick and Jane where Jim Carey goes and joins bunch of Latino men outside the paint store waiting for someone to come and offer them work for the day. Only one truck comes to hire someone, so he gets in a scuff and ends up losing his wallet. Then when INS officers come he ends up getting deported to Mexico because he doesn't have “Papers.” We can laugh about Jim Carey's antics, but this parable may speak more than I know to people struggling with unemployment and hearing people say, “why aren't you working?”

So that's the first half of the Parable. The second half goes on to show how they were paid. The evening Comes, and as the law states in Deuteronomy that poor workers must be paid before sunset, the owner (litterally translated 'the lord') sets to have the laborers paid. One thing that puzzles me about the parable is why the owner has the manager summon and pay the workers what the owner feels is “right and just.” If the manage is the one giving the money, is he not the one that must take the complaints for the owner's renumeration? The owner also specifically asks the manager to do the payments in reverse order making it really awkward when the first workers don't get more than the last. I almost wander if the landowner knew that the interaction would be awkward and made the manager do his dirty work. I guess nobody ever said life would be easy or fun...

However, the order of the payments clearly illustrates that indeed the last are first and the first are last. The owner could have easily eased the tension had he simply given the money out in the opposite order. Yet order is everything in this story. The last to work are the first to get paid and the first to work are the last to get paid. Jesus wants it to be clear that the first workers witnessed the generosity of the landowner.

Quickly come the complaints. “Now when the first came they thought they would receive more...” The word 'Nomizō', (nah-meed-zoh) translated as 'thought' here implies that the first workers are making an assumption based on a custom or rule. In every instance 'Nomizō' is used in the book of Matthew, Jesus is challenging the assumption. For instance, Jesus said, “Do not think I came to abolish the law...” Here Jesus challenges the assumption that reward would be based on merit.

In verse 12, “They complained against the landowner, saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat'” There are two complaints here. First, the first workers place themselves into a level above the workers that came later. There is an 'us and them' mentality that has been perpetuated by a society that is dominated by hierarchy. The second complaint is about the grueling nature of working in the sun. Have they forgotten so soon that if they hadn't been invited to work that day their family would not eat that evening? The very invitation to work is a gracious gift from the landowner.

The landowner responds to one of the grumblers. He sarcastically calls him 'friend,' which is evident from the other times that Jesus uses the same word to call someone 'friend' in Matthew, like when he called Judas 'friend' as he was being betrayed.

'Friend' the owner says, 'I have done you no wrong.' He shows that he has kept to the agreement, so there is nothing to complain about. Then, he harshly tells the worker to take his belongings and get out of there. He has chosen to distribute reward based on need rather than on merit. That's his right and that's his choice.

The worker of course doesn't like this, so in his envy, gives the landowner the evil eye. I find this very interesting. These are the reasons I love critically studying scripture. You end up noticing that words like 'envy' are literally translated 'give the evil eye.'

“So the last will be first and the first will be last.” And the first will give you the evil eye.

That's the parable. That's what the Kingdom of heaven is like. What have we learned?

I certainly don't think we can ignore the socio-politico-religious context from which Jesus is speaking. In the introduction to the book of Matthew in the Harper Collins Study Bible, Dennis Duling Describes the Roman Empire as
a hierarchically ordered, commercialized, advanced agrarian (peasant) society with no middle class. A few powerful men and their families ruled; and they were supported by bureaucrats, slaves, official priests, and a sophisticated military establishment. Those at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid were local businesspeople, artisans, and-- the vast majority-- peasant farmers and fishermen. There were also a few “expendables,” e.g., bandits, beggars, and prostitutes. With few exceptions, women always ranked below men, and children below both.

Jesus frequently in the gospel of Matthew is portrayed as an advocate for those at the bottom of the society and was thus in tension with the rulers. Jesus message about the upsidedown kingdom of heaven was in direct conflict with the kingdom of Rome.

Jesus also frequently rubbed against the Religious power of the day. The Pharisees were his opponents in Gallilee, and he even called them hypocrites in chapter 23. In Jerusalem it was the saducees he clashed with. Perhaps this parable is a warning to these Jews that they needed to be accepting of the Gentiles, giving up their status as 'chosen people'. AS Paul said in Galations, “...in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3)

A similar warning might go to the disciples as well. As the church grew, the disciples must not try to claim a spot ahead of newcomers to the faith. Later on in Chapter 20, Jesus is asked to place James and John on his left and right in his Kingdom. Jesus answer?
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

In God's Kingdom the last will be first and the first shall be last.

In God's kingdom, the economy is upside down. Reward is not based on work, but on need. Decisions are not driven by time but by love and compassion.

To finish on a personal note, I'd like you to ask yourself who you relate to in this parable.

Some of us may be the workers hired from the beginning. Something I've noticed in some churches I've been to is that people who have been a part of the congregation for a long time-- some 70+ years of their life-- have trouble seeing new people join the church and make changes. Do we treat everyone in church with the same respect or grumble because some people are treated well when we don't think they deserve it? Sometimes life just seems totally unfair.

Some of us may be the workers that waited all day at the marketplace for someone to hire us. Unemployment is a very real issue. In fact a study done in 2006 showed that on any given day, approximately 117,600 workers are either looking for day-labor jobs or working as day laborers . (http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/uicued ) They may be standing in front of paint stores just like Jim Carey's character.

Some of us yet may be the manager of the landowner, doing the dirty work and taking all the flak. Like a messenger with a bad message to give, we're left enduring the reactions meant for someone else.

Finally, some of us may be landowners who try to be generous and make sure everyone has enough but all we get is complaints.

No matter who you relate to, If you're a first or a last or somewhere in the middle, Jesus shows us that we're all gonna eat. In the end everyone gets a denarius!

Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your Kingdom come, your will be done. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not to temptation but deliver us from evil. Yours is the kingdom and power and glory forever.

Amen.

Bin Laden

I just finished watching Obama's public address from last night in which he told the nation and the world that Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Obama is great at making emotional speeches. He talked a lot about the September 11 attacks ("9/11" appears 6 times in the ten minute speech)-- the billowing smoke and wreckage, the heroism and bravery, the empty seat at the dinner table.

He also talked a lot about how our military has been bravely fighting against the evil al Qaeda in order to ensure such an act of terrorism wouldn't happen on our soil again.

Now Bin Laden is dead. "And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror: Justice has been done."

Justice has been done? Really?

I've seen too much evidence to believe that a few guys with box cutters were able to take out two giant buildings, perform a virtually impossible flying maneuver to leave a hole smaller than the plane that was supposed to have made it in the worlds most secure building, and completely pulverize a plane with no identifiable wreckage into a field in Pennsylvania-- all without our nation's air force not noticing. There's a pretty eye-opening documentary about it here.

So I can't help but think that for the last decade we've all been duped into falsely blaming the wrong people for all our problems.

I'm reminded again of the scapegoat mechanism. (btw, that post still gets put in the top 5 results of a Google search) We've successfully dehumanized people from the mid-east and made them the enemy.

Today we can rejoice because our goat has died...

When our president said, "Justice has been done," I think what he meant was, "For decades we've done injustice to the world, especially the middle east, and we've done a lot of work to make sure that Osama Bin Laden looks like the bad guy so that when we killed him it feels like justice has been done."

Ignorance is Bliss

Kyle Wetherald
Pittsburgh Mennonite Church
March 13, 2011
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 | Psalm 32 | Matthew 4:1-11

They say that ignorance is bliss. The less we know about the world the less it can hurt us. Just look at the world through the eyes of children. As babies the simplest things make us happy, like the joy of sitting in a box, or the thrill of a game of “peek-a-boo.” But then as we get older and encounter suffering, pain, and death, we find out that some things aren’t as good as we once thought. All those yummy cookies gave me a tummy ache. That girl I had a crush on broke my heart. I found out the hard way that grandparents don’t live forever.

That sort of bliss-loss is what I think about when I read Genesis. Let’s read a little bit again.

Read Genesis 2:16b-17.

God wants good for the human-- there’s plenty of fruit to eat-- but there are a couple of things amiss about the human. First, the human is free-- too free-- to make choices. God does not want the human to lose his innocence, hence the commandment (more of a prophecy really). Choosing knowledge will result in death.

Second, he was lonely.

Read 2:18-25.

What’s interesting here is that Adam, a creature of reason (after all he’s been naming things) does not have a conversation with Eve. He simply makes a statement about “This one...” and then there they are: naked and unashamed, and they become one flesh. Typical... man wanted sex, not a conversation...

Perhaps that was why Eve is so easily seduced by the Serpent. She just wanted to talk. The very next thing that happens in the story is a conversation between the Serpent and the Woman.

“Now the serpent was most cunning of all beasts of the field that the Lord God had made.”

The serpent is an intriguing character. It is one of only two beasts of the Hebrew scripture that can talk, and the only said to be able to independently of God (God caused Balaam’s ass to speak). Serpents, I’ve found out, are regarded in many ancient Near eastern myths as both attractive and dangerous. It’s name given by Adam, ‘nachash’ comes from a root word meaning both ‘shiny’ and ‘enchanting.’ We also can assume that it is at least somewhat upright because it is not until it is later cursed that it must crawl on its belly. The serpent embodies certain human characteristics. Furthermore, the text specifically tells us he’s cunning-- shrewd, subtle, crafty-- and Adam rejected him as a suitable mate. Adam chose sex over reason.

So he sets get back at Adam by winning Eve over to reason and knowledge-- the very thing that God said will lead them to death, separation from God.

Read 3:1-7

There it is-- the Bliss-loss. The serpent convinces Eve that gaining knowledge would make her like God, and God cannot die, so if she ate and knew, she could not die. They ate. Suddenly they knew they weren’t perfect. They weren’t God, and there they were: naked and ashamed, and they made fig leaf loincloths to try to cover their shame.

But the question remains: why is the fruit of knowledge forbidden? Isn’t knowledge a good thing? They say Knowledge is power. For the human to make the choice implies that the human knows-- or thinks he knows-- what is best. That capacity to make decisions based on what is best give humans power and makes them feel like they don’t need God.

As the story shows, too often we feel like we know everything. We think we know what is best to do and we end up making mistakes. When our eyes are opened to our flaws, we feel naked. We feel shame. We try to cover up our vulnerability and hide our pain.

During Lent (if you haven’t figured it out yet, this is the first Sunday of lent) we enter into a story that we all know the ending of. Soon we’ll all be saying together “He is risen!,” But before the story gets there, it’s a story of death and suffering. So, as we enter the story, it becomes a story of blemish, of the mud that is revealed as the snow melts, of our attempts to cover our shame with fig leaves. But at lent, we are

In Matthew we hear an echo of what happened in the creation story. In the serpent’s place is a devilish slanderer that puts Jesus to the test. This ‘devil’ appeals to the human desire for knowledge. “They say you’re the son of God, but don’t you want everyone to know for sure? Try these tests out so that everyone can tell.” The Devil offers the famished man a way to get food. Jesus chooses hunger. The Devil offers him a way to look good in front of a city of people. Jesus chooses humility. The Devil offers all the wealth and power of all the kingdoms of the world. Jesus chooses poverty. Jesus Chooses suffering and ultimately Jesus chooses death.

This year’s theme for Lent is about becoming human.

What I hear in the lectionary scriptures today is that part of being human is that we don’t have everything put together. We don’t know everything. We mess up.

But we don’t have to cover our shame. And on Ash Wednesday, we put ashes on our foreheads as a sign that we realize we mess up. Like the mud revealed as the snow melts, our sins are rubbed as dirty marks on display for the whole world to see. A metaphorical act of confession.

The best news offered in the lectionary is offered by the psalmist. We don’t need to sulk, and here’s why:

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah

Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD," and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah

Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them.

You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. Selah

Confession puts our sins in the open, but grace preserves us and delivers us.

There’s a short story written by Canadian writer Alice Munro that really evokes many of the same feelings as the lectionary passages. I haven’t read the story, buy essayist Barbara Pitkin, recounts the story in a beautiful way. I’d like to read part of her essay:

Canadian writer Alice Munro is one who consistently achieves the delicate balance between the fatedness of a narrative with the freedom of discovery—as a reviewer of her 2004 collection of short stories observes, “The third thing that is so compelling about RUNAWAY is a powerful sense of fate, chance, destiny—the exact word is unimportant.” We watch as Munro’s characters — complex, “endearingly ordinary,” and predominately female — lose themselves in myriad ways but also, ineluctably, through “often through devastating twists and surprises of plot,” cannot escape their appointed but unknown ends.
Munro’s “Trespasses” plays ironically with this, opening with what turns out to be the closing scene. The ring composition enfolds the tale of Lauren, her parents Harry and Eileen, and Delphine, an employee at a small town hotel. The reader has a dim sense of where the story is going to end up, but less a knowledge of what is going to happen and more an unspecified mingling of fear and foreboding. What brought these four characters to this place just “far enough” off the road, at midnight, in the dead of winter? Does this bode evil for Lauren, in the backseat, wearing her pajamas?
The ensuing narrative unfolds as a flashback that relates Harry, Eileen, and Lauren’s recent arrival in the town and their first encounters with the initially unnamed woman who works at the hotel. Harry, who has taken over the town newspaper, wants to write books and shares this bit of advice with his daughter: “The thing about life, Harry told Lauren, was to live in the world with interest. To keep your eyes open and see the possibilities — see the humanity — in everybody you meet. To be aware. If he had anything at all to teach her it was that. Be aware.”
Eyes wide open, like the man and the woman after eating the forbidden fruit, Lauren becomes aware of the mysterious, “oddly light” cardboard box among her father’s boxes of papers. Her interest in humanity leads her into a clandestine friendship with Delphine. The box and Delphine share a secret, and as Lauren begins to piece together the truth that binds them together, her own identity and fate are thrown into doubt. She no longer knows who she is: is she the child of Harry and Eileen? Or is she adopted, and is Delphine her biological mother? And the human remains in the box: do they belong to Lauren, Harry and Eileen’s adopted daughter, or to Lauren, their biological one? So distressed that she becomes physically ill, Lauren finally tells Eileen and then Harry, but goes to bed fearing that the revelation will lead to one of Eileen and Harry’s violent rows — fights that Lauren now suspects have to do with the buried secret that she has uncovered.
Instead, however, her actions lead to resolution, at least for the adults. Delphine comes for proof about the death of the daughter she gave up for adoption; Harry wakes Lauren and explains, finally, the whole story. But one chapter is still unfinished: “So tonight as a family,” he said, “tonight while everything is all wide-open, we are going to go out and do this. And get rid of all this — misery and blame. Delphine and Eileen and me, and we want you to come with us — is that all right with you? Are you all right?”
Standing in the snow, just far enough off of the road, each of the adults takes a handful of the ashes. Eileen begins the Lord’s Prayer, but Harry interrupts, “This is Lauren, who was our child and whom we all loved — let’s all say it together.” And they all do, ending with “And we say good-bye to her and commit her to the snow,” with Eileen adding hastily at the end: “Forgive us our sins. Our trespasses. Forgive us our trespasses.” The ending of the story for Lauren is more ambivalent. Like the painful burrs clinging to her pajamas, and then her legs and fingers, the words “hers” and “ours” stick painfully in her ears: is she not more than someone’s possession?

Mortality. Ashes. The desire to be rid of misery and blame. Prayers for forgiveness from sins, trespasses. These elements constitute the end of Munro’s story and the beginning of the Lenten one. Yet perhaps these familiar beginnings can open up an extraordinary journey, one that resists the temptation to take the usual path. One that is open to the possibility of losing one’s self along the way. Be aware. We are being shaped by testing.

Choose Life

Choose Life
Pittsburgh Mennonite Church
February 13, 2011

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself;
And earthly power doth then show like God's
When mercy seasons justice.

Here’s how I understand the story:

In Genesis God created the universe. Chaos turned to order. It was good, but it didn’t take long until death entered the picture. Sibling rivalry turned into murder. Man started to become more and more separate from God as violence, arrogance, and wickedness continued to creep into the picture. It got so bad that God decided to take drastic measures like flooding the entire earth, and scattering all people and confusing their language. In these stories we see people that tried to take the freedom they had to choose their destiny and muck it up by trying to be apart from and even equal to God.

Then God chooses a particular family. Abraham’s descendants become God’s chosen people for how God is going to bring creation back to the peaceful order in which it started. God promises this family a land for wondering migrants, children from a barren womb, and blessing for the nations that would come from them.

They get a little lost on the way and end up as slaves in Egypt. Their lives got pretty miserable, but God called Moses to lead them out of the mess and back to that land God promised them.

After some pretty miraculous events, these chosen people finally get out of the slavery in Egypt, but before they can go to that prized land, God lays down the law and Moses gives it to the people. Now they can be on their way and God leads them in the right direction, through the desert.

But then they get lost again. After grumbling about being in the desert, they lose their direction and wander in the desert for about 40 years. Then they all reconvene near the promised land and Moses delivers the law again. This is Deuteronomy—the “second law.”

At the center of the law is one commandment—the greatest commandment—

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength (Deut. 6:4-9).

The majority of the book of Deuteronomy is Moses giving these speeches that lay out all the rules. Then in Chapter 30, Moses defines the covenant:

If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.

But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them,

I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess (30:15-18).

Basically there are two choices. You can go the God way and you will end up with abundant life. Or, you can go the evil way. Then you will surely find death.

God Says, “Choose Life.” That's what the covenant is all about.

This was typical of an ancient near eastern covenant. There were two parties that came to a binding agreement. The interesting thing about this covenant, though is the witness. Vs. 19: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.” Callie Plunket-Brewton, an instructor at the University of North Alabama notes:

these witnesses are not divine beings as in many of the ancient Near East covenants. Here one can see that the monotheistic perspective one finds in the Old Testament has changed the nature of the witnesses from gods, so that the earth itself testifies to the agreement.

I imagine this had a big implication. If the entire created order were witness to this covenant, the Israelites couldn't go anywhere without the witness being present. EVERY action they did would be watched.

What often makes me uncomfortable about the Old Testament is that it seems to portray a deity that rules with an iron fist. At face value, this covenant relationship seems no different. However, the Law laid out in Deuteronomy is ultimately not oppressive, Again, Callie Plunket-Brewton writes:

In the first place, Deuteronomy upholds the value of human life, in particular, the value of success and flourishing community. These joys of human life are honored as gifts from God and to be treasured as such....

In other words, the law isn't just a bunch of rules to be followed, but an invitation to the good life by making positive decisions every day.

Last year when I worked with youth at Peabody high school, I knew that my students were faced with decisions every day. Drugs were easily accessible to them. They could choose to go to class or they could choose to skip and get high. There was constantly pressure to have sex. They could choose to stay safe or choose to risk getting std's or becoming pregnant. In the neighborhoods which they lived, gang violence ruled the streets. There was a choice of joining the violence or staying safe and risking their social image.

The choice for life or death became very real when I was working with the youth in the 206 project. Choosing not to follow the rules could affect the rest of their lives and ultimately could result in death.

All too often the youth of our city choose death. Oh how I wish the youth of our city would choose to take the invitation to the good life.

...

The New Testament reflects this invitation to the good life as well.

In the Sermon on the mount, Jesus tells the crowd around him that he did not come to do away with the law of Moses, but to complete it. Here’s an example he gives from today’s reading:

"You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, 'You shall not murder'; and 'whoever murders shall be liable to judgment'( Matt. 5:21).

The people would have known the law and what it said about murder. Jesus goes on:

“But I tell you...But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire (5:22).

What Jesus words here tell me is that what's on the inside matters. Yes, murder is bad and makes for bad relationships, but so are anger, bitterness, and insults. Our thoughts and emotions matter in the Kingdom of God.

When Andrea and I were first dating, I went with her to a church in Canton where her dad was preaching that week. He was talking about how easy it is to have surface-level relationships when so much is happening in our hearts and minds. Often when something happens to us we can find just the right things to say to make people think things are alright, but inside we're feeling angry and bitter. At one point in the sermon he looked directly at me and asked, “how is it in your heart?”

I melted and started sobbing, thinking about the things I held hidden inside while on the outside I acted like nothing was wrong.

In 1 Corinthians Paul is writing to a church that is experiencing a schism. Some people are following Paul and others are following Apollos. Paul says that their actions are “of the flesh” and even calls their jealousy and quarreling “infantile.” According to Paul, we are to be living radically different lives than what he calls, “mere men.”

So what does that radically different life look like? Instead of living like a pagan, Jesus said later in the Sermon on the mount, “Be Perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect” (5:48), a reflection on Leviticus 19:2, “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.”

This creates quite a conundrum for me. Perfection is something that I don't feel like I can do. In a blog post about this scripture, Dan Clendenin writes:

Perfection? For mere mortals? That sounds ideal, but isn't it impossible? Isn't the quest for perfection the voice of the oppressor? Doesn't perfectionism lead to self-righteousness, a need to be right and to be seen as right? Doesn't it tempt us to edit our real but fallen selves and instead to project a false and sanctimonious self — to our own selves and to others?

Dan's thoughts remind me of my father in-law's sermon...

What Dan offers as a solution to the conundrum is looking at the parallel text in Luke-- the sermon on the plain. Here, the way Luke records it, instead of “Be perfect,” Luke quotes Jesus in saying “Be Merciful, as your heavenly Father is merciful.

Now mercy is something I can do.

Just imagine if in every decision we made, we made it with mercy in mind...

What would our marriages look like? If mercy was extended by both sides of a married couple, could some divorces be prevented?

If, when someone is so deeply hurt and angered by something their response was mercy, could murder be prevented?

If mercy were extended between national enemies, could wars be prevented?

If we could all extend mercy to ourselves, could depression start to be healed?

If when we are bitter we could extend mercy to those we do not think deserves it, could relationships be reconciled?

Perhaps the most radically life changing thing we could do is to give some of that divine mercy to ourselves.

It could be as simple as forgiving yourself for something you've done (or not done). There's actually a WebMD article on forgiving yourself. Here's part of that article:

Sharon A. Hartman, LSW, a clinical trainer at the Caron Foundation, a drug and alcohol treatment center in Wernersville, Pa., deals with the need to forgive every day. "These are such shame-based diseases," she says. "Forgiving oneself is of the more difficult parts of recovery."

A chronic state of anger and resentment interferes with life, Hartman points out. Countless studies also show stress and anger can cause or worsen diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, and various autoimmune disorders. "When resentment is interfering with your life, it's time to forgive yourself," she says. "So many people have a constant, critical voice in their heads narrating their every move." She says she calls her critical voice "Gertrude" and tries to counteract Gertrude's eternal litany with positive affirmations -- that she is getting better, that she is less angry. "Forgiving doesn't mean not being angry with yourself, but not hating yourself.

"No one," Hartman adds, "can beat us up better than we beat ourselves up."

...

Or maybe you don't feel like the person you are is good enough. It's easy to look at the way other people look, or the things that other people do, or even the things that other people have and get jealous. Sometimes being merciful means looking in the mirror and saying...

“Awwwwww Yeah! I look Good!”

or stepping back to look at the things we've done and saying....

“MMMMMHMMM! That was me!”

or facing the guilt you’ve been holding on to and finally telling yourself...

“I forgive you.”
…

The poem I read when I first stood up here was actually a quote from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” I think the metaphor of mercy being rain falling from heaven is absolutely fitting. After all, where there is no rain, there is no life. I also like how Portia mentions that mercy “is an attribute of God himself.” I believe that mercy is life-giving and I believe that mercy is the way of God. So the challenge then, is to choose mercy. In doing so, we will be choosing life.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown.

His scepter shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.

But mercy is above this sceptered sway;

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;

It is an attribute of God himself;

And earthly power doth then show like God's

When mercy seasons justice.

Celebrate the Solstice

I'm not sure why I never made this connection before, but Christmas falls only a few days after the Winter Solstice. The days have been getting increasingly shorter and the sun has gotten lower and lower in the sky every day, but on Tuesday, that's all going to turn around. The sun is going to start rising once again and the days are going to start getting longer.

I think in the 21st century it would be easy for us not to notice the days slowly getting longer again and the sun getting higher each day. Winter, if we are honest, is often not difficult. We can still travel very easily because of salt on the highways. We can still stay comfortable because of heat in our buildings. We can still eat produce because it gets shipped to our grocery stores from the south. Life, if we're honest, doesn't change that much.

That would have all been different for ancient aboriginal peoples. Once the sun went down for the winter, they could no longer rely on their gardens for food. They had to rely on stored food and any animals they could catch. They no longer had a comfortable place to sleep and had to work very hard to get heat from fires. No longer did they have a lot of daylight to do the work needed for survival.

So I can imagine that the winter solstice was very important.

Just look at some of the religious monuments around the world:

Art, engineering, astronomy, physical exertion, social organization, and mysticism - such categories are rigidly distinct in our time, each a separate university “discipline,’’ different buildings, if not quads. Yet imagine how those skills came together, say, in the construction of New Grange, the man-made hill in Ireland that was assembled out of huge stones some 5,000 years ago. Defining a mound that probably served as a tomb, the small inner chamber has a narrow opening to the sky that was calibrated so precisely as to admit a needle of sunlight only at dawn on the winter solstice. The light, lasting minutes, illuminates delicately carved triple spirals that would, over millennia, be seen as triune symbols of male, female, child; birth, love, death; eventually of the Trinity, foreshadowing the Irish shamrock.

The megalith structure in Ireland was created by “primitives’’ whose lives were hemmed in by ghosts and goblins, predating perhaps even Druids, yet it was, in fact, a sophisticated scientific instrument, carefully scaled to register the event that happens again today. The landscape of Earth is likewise marked with such massive measuring devices, each of which comes into its own on the solstice, from Stonehenge in England to Aztec pyramids in Mexico. Right through the Middle Ages, religion and science were paired in the quest for such usable knowledge, with even European cathedrals aligned to serve as solar observatories...

(That was from an article from the Boston Globe December 21, 2009 called "Religion Science and the Solstice" by James Carroll.)

You really begin to see themes of light and dark; life, death, and rebirth... It's no wonder that we celebrate the birth of a savior a few days after the solstice. Life is cold. It's dark, but light is coming.

I suppose one connection that we could make these days is that of the seasonal depression that seems to hit so many of us every year. It's been dark the weather has been nasty. There may be several more months of cold weather before spring, but at leastthe solstice gives us hope that the days are going to start getting loner again. We're living in darkness now, but light is on its way.

If you didn't know already, I've started working at Pittsburgh Mennonite Church as a leader to the youth. One thing I've been trying to work on is a sort of Identity for the High School Youth group. They've already voted on a name for the group: SAG (short for Sunday Afternoon Gang because we meet every Sunday afternoon). It seems like most things that you might think of as "saggy" are depressing at best and inappropriate at worst. For instance, a Google search for the term "saggy" brings up links to websites about certain body parts that droop with age, while "sagging" brings up links to websites about the hip-hop culture's trend of wearing pants below the waist, therefore exposing much of the underwear a layer below. You might also read an article about the sagging economy or hear the woes of a homeowner whose porch or roof is sagging.

That's a tough name to get a positive identity from...

In a world of saggy things, though, the Winter Solstice reminds us that there is hope. Life as a teenager can be pretty hard, but like the solstice, the church is always there to remind us that the strong, bright sun we've missed is coming.

Another thought I had is about downward mobility. I recently read a transcript of a story from American Public Media about Shane Claiborne where he talked about Downward mobility as a way of coming into relationship with the poor. What Shane was calling for is not charity but relationship. Because charity allows us to keep a distance from the poor, but relationship with the poor makes us stop and work for real change for our friends. Shane says that the church should be with the poor, not giving the poor things at a safe distance. It is in the margins of society that we'll find Christ.

Perhaps our youth group could be about how we can allow our social status to SAG into the margins.

Any thoughts on a good mission statement or visual identity? I think having a clear focus fro the group could be very helpful.

To end this post, I wish you comfort and joy, and I wish PEACE to all people everywhere-- no matter how this time of new light is celebrated.