Stop Counting!

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

September 17, 2017

19 Proper A

          When Don and I moved into our house in Hudson, the number of books we brought with us out numbered the available bookcase space by about 10 to 1, or perhaps 20 to 1.  My books all fit on the very generous bookshelves in my office.  Don’s books, however, had come from the entire wall of floor to ceiling bookcases in his office at Wittenberg, and our house does not have an entire wall of bookcases.  So, I went online and ordered several nice bookcases, but they are the kind that come in a small box and turn into 6 foot tall pieces of furniture.  Unfortunately, they neither inflate to that size nor do they expand to that size when immersed in water.  They have to be put together.

          Actually, I do not really mind putting furniture together, so long as the instructions are good and break the complicated project into very small bite size pieces.  There is something satisfying about following the instructions to the letter, from counting and identifying the 432 pieces, to attaching the parts to each other, to finally looking at the finished product, which, so long as I’ve done everything right, will actually stay finished.  Following the instructions exactly pretty much guarantees success, which is very gratifying. 

          Peter just wants just such a set of instructions this morning.  He would like following Jesus to be broken down into simple quantifiable steps so he can be guaranteed success.  “Lord,” Peter says, “If another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?  As many as seven times?”  Peter’s heart is in the right place.  He wants to make sure he forgives the right number of times, and seven is a good Biblical number.  Seven also seems like a very generous number of times to forgive, so I imagine Peter was quite taken aback when Jesus says “Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times.”  Seriously?  Why would anyone forgive seventy-seven times?  The instruction manual that was supposed to simplify life just got very complicated.  Then we hear a parable about a slave who begged for forgiveness from his lord, which was granted, but then refused to forgive someone who asked him for forgiveness.   The lord hands the slave over to be tortured until the slave can pay his entire debt, which will never happen since making money while being tortured is not quite possible.

          When Jesus tells Peter he is to forgive seventy-seven times, what Jesus is really saying is “Stop counting.”  Rather than count, Jesus is asking us to be a community that mirrors God’s forgiveness.   If we want instructions that guarantee success, the instructions are not going to involve numbers and measurements.  The instructions are going to tell us how to be such a community.

          In the letter to the Romans, Paul writes to a community that was in the midst of conflict over the eating of meat, and whether to treat one day as sacred or all days as equal.  In dealing with that conflict, Paul reminds the Romans that as Christians we neither live nor die to ourselves.  If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord.  So, then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.  If those words sound familiar, by the way, they are the opening words of our funeral service.  Paul’s point is that we belong to God.  If we belong to God, we are to mirror God’s forgiveness and live in God’s mercy.  Sometimes we have to mirror that forgiveness and mercy with our actions long before our hearts are ready.  Judgement, we are reminded, belongs to God.

           Paul also reminds us, as does Jesus in his parable, that we are all ultimately accountable to God.  Forgiveness is not about lack of accountability or accepting unacceptable behavior.  When we forgive, whether or not forgiveness has been requested or deserved, we unbind ourselves from what has been done to us so we can be about the work of restoring broken community.  Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison in South Africa, said “Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”  For a broken community to be restored, the first step is to end resentment and practice forgiveness.  When Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive, he is asking how many times should he forgive before just giving up and getting on with life.  Jesus’ answer is that we must never give up on restoring the community to wholeness.

          In Jesus’ parable, the wicked slave failed to show others the forgiveness he had received and the slave was bound to his debts forever.  The instruction manual Jesus gives us for forgiveness is short.  Model for the world the forgiveness we have been given.  If we want a measurement, the measurement is to forgive as much as God has forgiven us.  Jesus makes the instructions simple and clear.  

                                                                             Amen

Anniversary

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

September 10, 2017

18 Proper A

          If you were to come into the church early on a Sunday morning, well before the 8 o’clock service starts, you would likely hear the strains of music coming from somewhere in the building.  This music would not be the music Valerie creates on the organ.  The music might be great hymns of the church coming from the rector’s cell phone, but there is a good chance the music coming from her phone is some great country music.  I have lots of favorites, from “God is great, Beer is good, People are crazy,” to “If you’re going through hell, keep on moving,” to my absolute favorite, “Always be humble and kind.” But the country song that comes to mind today is Tim McGraw’s song “The next 30 years.”  The song begins with the words “I think I’ll take a moment, celebrate my age, the ending of an era and the turning of a page.”  Then he sings “Now it’s time to focus in on where I go from here.  Lord have mercy on my next 30 years.”  McGraw sets some goals for his next thirty years, most of which can be summed up with his line “Find a world of happiness without the hate and fear, figure out just what I’m doing here in my next 30 years.” 

          Today, we are taking a moment to celebrate our age.  I don’t know that we’re celebrating the end of an era as much as we are looking to build on a rich past, but we are always looking to see what new page God is turning in our midst.  I have to admit that, a few weeks ago when I looked at the scripture readings for today, I was less than amused.  They seem to be another verse of what could be a country song: “I don’t pick ‘em, I just preach ‘em.”

          But, as often happens, a deeper look at those readings revealed a bit more connection with today’s celebration.  In the reading from Exodus, the people are told how to remember an event that has not yet happened.  All of the instructions about the preparation of the lamb are to help the people remember the mighty work which God will do to lead the people out of bondage in Egypt.  There is a curious mixture of past, present, and future in this passage as God prepares the people for what is ahead.  And there are a number of troubling aspects to the story as well, as God plans to kill every first born in the land of Egypt, both human and animal.  I don’t have an answer to that.

Why does God want the people to remember the Passover and the Exodus in perpetuity?  If we read further in Scripture, we see that the purpose in remembering is not to glorify the past, but to remember what God has done for the Hebrew people in the past so that they can see what God is doing for them in the present and trust in what God will do for them in the future.  As we celebrate the 175^th anniversary of this great parish today, we do not celebrate in order to glorify the past, as if we want to go backwards and be something we once were.  We celebrate to remember all that God has done for us.  We remember how God has both led this faithful and tenacious parish through waters that threatened to drown us and guided us on new adventures, both of which have happened any number of times since 1842 according to our history.  We remember what God has done in the past so that we can see what God is doing in our midst today and trust that God will act in our future. 

          But there are some ground rules.  As we look to our next 175 years, or our next 12 months, the reading from Romans reminds us of God’s very simple, although perhaps not easy, command for our life together.  “Love your neighbor as yourself.”   How do we show that love to each other, to our neighbors in Hudson, our neighbors in Texas, Florida and out west, and our neighbors around the world, especially those who face difficult times?  What about our neighbors who join us in this building week after week such as First Presbyterian Church, the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, SAGE, AA, and Music from the Western Reserve, to name just a few?  How do we treat them as neighbors and not just as people who have a key to the building?  Part of our “finding happiness and figuring out what we’re doing here” in our next chapter will have to do with how we connect with and love all of our neighbors.

          Jesus wants to make sure we know what he means by loving our neighbor.  In the gospel reading, Jesus seems to be giving us the steps we have to take before we can finally cast out someone who offends us.  However, Jesus is actually teaching us how we are to be in community together, even with those who offend us.  Jesus is teaching us not to hold grudges but to restore relationships so that we can model a different way of dealing with offenses for the world.  If, after trying a variety of ways to connect with the offender and bring about resolution, the offender still doesn’t listen, what are we to do?  Treat that person as a Gentile and a tax collector!  Does that mean we can treat the person as unclean and cast the person into utter darkness?  Actually, no.  How did Jesus treat the gentile and the tax collector?  He dined with them and called them to be his disciples.  This does not mean that all behavior is acceptable in the church.  Jesus has high standards for our behavior.  But as a wise colleague told me years ago when I was wrestling with some bad behavior in another church, “All people are welcome; all behaviors are not.”  Jesus did not give up on people, and Jesus calls us to be equally persistent.

          Today, we celebrate the rich history of this parish and we remember all that God has done for us over the last 175 years.  We remember our past so we can see God at work in the present, calling us to love each other and our neighbors with the same love we have experienced from God.  And we look to a future in which, whatever we do, we know that our call is to model the love God has for us, in a world that desperately needs to hear the Good News.  Together, we will figure out how God is calling us to do that in our future years, for a world that certainly needs, in the words of the great country song, “to find a little happiness without the hate and fear.”

                                                                                      Amen

         

          

Ordinary

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

September 3, 2017

17 Proper A

          Don and I have friends who always take their shoes off when they enter our home.  If the weather is cold, they bring comfortable indoor shoes to slip on.  The same friends request, but do not require, that anyone entering their home remove their shoes as well.  I have always thought that the practice of removing one’s shoes when entering a home was about not tracking dirt into the house, which makes a lot of sense.  But I wonder if this custom is also about something deeper that has more to do with receiving hospitality.   When I take off my shoes in someone’s home, I indicate that I intend to stay a while and be focused on the occasion at hand.  To leave will require some effort.

          This morning, Moses is out beyond the wilderness tending his father-in-law’s flock when God calls to Moses from a burning bush and tells Moses to take off his shoes.  The ground on which Moses is standing is holy ground, which means that Moses is on ground where God is present.  I wonder if God is offering Moses a certain kind of hospitality.  Perhaps God  wants Moses to stop and be fully present to God, rather than having one foot out the door while he worries about the flock.

          When we last saw Moses, he was a baby.  Last Sunday, we heard the story of his birth and how he was hidden from Pharaoh until he was three months old, because Pharaoh wanted to kill all the Israelite male babies.  When his mother put him in a basket in the river, one of Pharaoh’s daughters found him, took him as her own, and hired Moses’ own mother to nurse him.  Now, Moses is grown, married, and working for his father-in-law. That’s a lot of growing up in a week!  And between last Sunday and today, Moses has killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew and fled for his life. 

          So, let’s get this straight: This morning, God is asking Moses, a fugitive on the run, to return to the scene of the crime and ask the person who most wants his life, Pharaoh, if he can please release the Israelite people, who we know Pharaoh fears losing because that is why he enslaved and oppressed the Israelites to begin with.  No wonder Moses protests “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”  God’s plan makes no sense whatsoever. 

          Jesus’ plan makes no sense whatsoever to Peter this morning.  Last week we heard Jesus ask the disciples “Who do you say that I am?”  And we heard Peter reply “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”  This week, Jesus predicts his own suffering, death, and resurrection.  Jesus’ words do not fit with Peter’s plan for Jesus at all.  When Peter responds “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!”, Jesus’ rebuke cuts to the bone.  “Get behind me Satan.  You are a stumbling block to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”  Peter, who last week was given the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, is now being called Satan.

          Moses and Peter have two things in common.  Both are flawed people who are asked to do big things by God.  Moses killed someone and Peter is so totally wrong about who Jesus is that Jesus calls him Satan. Yet God still intends for Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, and Peter still holds the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.  Secondly, both are setting their minds on human things rather than divine ones.  Moses cannot wrap his head around the idea that he should be the one to lead the people out of Egypt, not understanding the power of God to work through him.  Peter cannot imagine that the Son of the Living God would suffer and die, not understanding what God will accomplish through Jesus’ suffering and death.  Both are focused on human limitations rather than divine possibility.

          God asks us to set our minds on divine things, not human things.  We can easily think of Moses and Peter as the superheroes of the faith with some super faith power we don’t have.  But that is setting our minds on human things.  Moses and Peter are examples of the way God uses ordinary flawed people to accomplish extraordinary things.  On this Labor Day Sunday, we stop and stand on this holy ground, figuratively barefoot if not literally, fully present to God as we ask God to bless the labor of our lives, so that God can use our ordinary work to accomplish extraordinary things.   Sometimes those extraordinary things are things that look extraordinary to human eyes.  We have certainly seen examples of extraordinary work this week as people risked their own lives to rescue others from flood waters, opened their homes to strangers, and gave generously to help others rebuild their lives. Sometimes those extraordinary things are extraordinary only to the divine eyes.  Paul calls us to let love be genuine, hate what is evil, and love one another with mutual affection.  Mother Teresa of Calcutta said “Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.”  When we do small things with great love, God’s love, things that seem small become extraordinary.  God calls us to offer our ordinary lives to become extraordinary.

                                                                                      Amen.