Matthew 21:23-32
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So basically, Jesus is getting carded by the chief priests and the elders. They want to know how to make sense of him, what to do with him, the want to figure out who exactly he is and what he is calling the community of faith to…
Its human nature to want a reliable way to identify someone. In Stillman Valley, Illinois, where my Dad grew up, back then it had a population 350 – Saaalute! people were known by name, or at least by face or family – you know, that’s Russ, Tom Gibbs’ boy.
But here in LA it’s a different story. I don’t even bristle when I am asked for a form of identification. I automatically dig out my and fish out the requested card – I know that that stack of cards doesn’t really capture the whole of who I am, at best, they are just slices…
The state of California has issued me a driver’s license – photo id
My Financial resources define me to some extent – money, valid credit cards, checks.
I do have more say in my identity around the affiliation cards, – LACMA, VONS, car insurance, - I even have a card issued by the Presbytery that declares that I am a member minister in good standing.
Even though we know it is a shallow, and inherently limited way of identifying someone, we find it comforting. We like to feel like we can “KNOW” who someone is…. find some points of connection and extrapolate an understanding of who they are – Oh, I belong to LAcma too – so you must value making fine art accessible and relevant to the community….
You can hear it played out on the daily news reports of the presidential candidates – It doesn’t matter if it’s an Obama report or McCain report – they leave my head spinning, trying to cast a particularly flattering impression in my mind that is fairly disconnected that what was done. We participate in that dance just as much as the candidates and their speech writing staff – We assume that people are knowable and predictable – we assume that if we could just say, oh, that’s Ann Dunham’s son, Barack or he’s Roberta’s boy, John – then we would be able to identify them, we would be able to know the truth of who they are.
It’s a common pitfall to confuse our experience of someone with the totality of their being – the longer we know them, the more we expect them to remain as we know them, the more we over-estimate our understanding of who they are.
This happened to me with my Granddad. We grew up with him and my grandmother in the same town, then they moved away to Missouri when he retired, I was just finishing 7th grade, after that we saw them twice a year or so, and in those visits, I guess, I so longed for the close connection I had had before, that I carried forward things from the past that weren’t so much present in his life any more – like coin collecting – my granddad is meticulous and he was passionate about coins which rendered boxes and boxes of heavy binders filled with sheets of coins suspended in plastic holders with hand printed labels. He especially liked the wheat-head pennies – which were rare, but still in circulation back then. Every time I got change, I would flip the pennies over, looking for the wheat motif. I’d bundle them up and send them to him.
Of course a lot of life transpired after they moved to Missouri – my Grandmother’s health declined and then she passed away suddenly, he fell and broke his leg, another wonderful woman entered his heart and they married and moved a few times and created a new life together. I’m not sure when he stopped collecting coins, I never stopped sending them, until about 10 years ago, when he gently mentioned that he wasn’t really interested in them any more. I was crushed, I felt like one of the few connections that I still had with him had been severed. It called into question all the things I thought that I knew him to be and I felt at a loss, like I didn’t know him anymore…and yet, why would I expect him to continue a hobby he started in his 50’s now 40 years later????
We do the same thing with God, we assume that God’s identity is fixed and knowable and mapable. We have authentic encounters with God of course! But then we go on to claim these encounters as an exhaustive description of whom God is. We hold on so tightly to who we knew God to be in a seminal mountain top experience and then we don’t let life go on from there. Just like the chief priests in today’s passage, they didn’t have a category for such an unconvential Messiah; therefore, Jesus’ identity was in question.
We confuse our image of God with GOD (that by the way is the definition of idolatry) Its idolatry when we look to the image, when we look to the ID cards in the wallet as the exhaustive definition of the person of God.
The thing is, God is always, always going to be more than the sum of our encounters and experiences with God.
It’s like my friend driving with 2005 Pilot with GPS. In LA it works great, she lives and works near the city center, nothing much changes with the street layout – its logical to rely on the driving directions the car gives. – But she took the car down to Irvine and the GPS went crazy – warning her she was “_____off road” when she was driving down a paved street lined with Targets, Applebee’s and Starbucks. The GPS wasn’t able to recognize the new reality, so it rejected it and shouted out a misplaced warning. Well obviously she knew that she wasn’t off roading it, but how do we know when we are dealing with an imposter when it comes to our God? How do we know the real McCoy when it comes to our faith community?
We can try and “map” God, but God’s very nature is mystery – what do we do with that? Do we push back and try even harder to make our experience of God manageable? Over the years, the church has employed the strategy of creating lists of core attributes of God and then see who measures up in terms of religious leaders and faith communities. Do we attempt to minimize the chaos by creating a matrix of rules about who is “in” with God and who is “out”?
No, that is not so helpful. We need to open ourselves up to the possibility that the identity of God will continue to unfold
– that God will be true to our encounter with the holy that we had in Mrs. Johnson’s 3rd grade Sunday School class
– AND God is still in that moment in college when our heart broke with God’s when we learned how many “good” people looked the other way during the holocaust
– AND that God is probably going to surprise us with something new next week….
In today’s text Jesus throws out a scenario – The dad asks his kids to do something, one kids says no, I won’t, then does it. The other kid says yes, yes, of course and then doesn’t do it.
Obviously that plays against the backdrop of the ideal when the child would say yes and then do it, but we all know that is rare in real life and Jesus is a real life kind of guy so he goes for the murkiness of real life…
He asks the religious leaders, which of these two kids is just carrying their God card in their wallet? And which of these kids is living out what God desires?
It’s a deceptively easy answer – a slam dunk, really
The one who said no at first and then got up and did what was asked – There’s the kid who is doing what his father asked of him.
Exactly, says Jesus. And then he pulls two rugs out from under their self-righteous feet.
The first rug has to do with God’s People: Jesus pushes them hard –
The people who you have labeled as living out of bounds, the people who you have identified as being beyond redemption – these are the people who are in. Not because they carry a magic id card, not because they are passing them selves off as saints but they are in because of what they do – they are responding with action to God’s call on their life!
And you, you who thought you had Platinum Gold Medallion status, free upgrades to first class and priority boarding for life, put your card back in your wallet and step aside, these other folks are boarding ahead of you. Your ID cards mean nothing if they aren’t validated by your action.
This makes me uncomfortable, because as I translate myself into this passage – I find myself loosing my balance like the rest of the religious leaders. I had thought I was in – Have you seen my religious resume? I have that card from the stated clerk of the presbytery?
Jesus is pointed out the difference between faith affiliation and faith community.
This is the edge that we must continue to seek no matter how extensive our church resume is.
The best of knives get dull and require sharpening, so too does our understanding of how we gather as God’s people.
Words come so easily – Especially once we learn the politically correct vocabulary – we have our own lexicon here at Immanuel – struggling for justice, marginalized, inclusive, diversity, peace, Our Father-Mother God who art in heaven….
So if we can say the prayer that Jesus taught without stumbling over the 1st phrase does that mean we are truly a member of the faith community? NOPE
Jesus is teaching here that we must live out those words, we must act out those words…are we doing that? Are we just saying “oh yes, I am committed to caring for the environment – but we power through bottled water as if there is no tomorrow – do we declare our concern for violence against women – but we don’t make sure the near by domestic violence shelter has enough funding…. Are we doing what God is asking us?
We are a political people, and when faced with that question, we know how to spin our response, we know how to build our case – but this isn’t about convincing a jaded electorate, Jesus reminds us…the question comes from God – God in whom all is known, nothing is hidden. God in who love and grace abound. God who like a loving parent asks of us these things that will transform us, experiences that will call forth the fullness of who we are.
In this context we are free to be fully honest with God and ourselves.
We can ask God to open our eyes so that we can see our actions more clearly.
We can ask God to animate our desire, to ruffle our complacency.
Maybe we tumble to the floor with the rest of the religious establishment when Jesus pulls the rug out, but in God’s grace we can get up and open ourselves to the possibility that God is more than what we have experienced before….
So that takes us to Rug number 2.
Rug number 2 is definitely a subtext in this discourse between Jesus and the chief priests. They are going back and forth about who God sends – John the Baptist, Jesus and who God welcomes into the kingdom – prostitutes and tax collectors ahead of the chief priests and elders…. clarity on who God sends and who God welcomes bring clarity to who exactly God is.
What Jesus laid out in his story about the two sons is as unsettling to us as it was to the chief priests because we thought we knew who God is. But come to find out, God isn’t setting up a bouncer to check for Presbyterian id’s in the narthex. God’s going around to the alley, inviting the woman who’s slept in the doorway to come get a good seat upfront.
Jesus is challenging us to take another look at who we assume God to be – maybe God has given up coin collecting. Maybe the terrain has changed and our GPS is out of date.
I’m not saying that the character of God is inconsistent. I am not saying that God’s waffling on the issues – voting for the war, now against the war….
We need to keep a hold of our experiences with God – AND we need to cultivate openness to new experiences with God.
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