I am Christian

Proper 24A, St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, Moses Lake; by Sr. Annette Fricke, OP The early church had no building, no money, and no political influence; and they turned the world upside down. JD Greear Imagine you are a man or a woman on your way to work. As you drive over a bridge, you notice a dog in the water that appears to be alone and struggling. There is no other animal or human around. There is no hint as to how the dog got into this situation. The clock is ticking away. The dog is having difficulty keeping its head above water, appearing exhausted. What would you do? Would you strip down to underwear and shirt and swim out to get the dog, even if the water is very cold? What will happen if you don’t act? If you just ignore the dog and drive on to work without even making a call for someone else to rescue the dog? What will your boss say or do if you tell the truth as to why you are so late for work? What if it was Jesus who came upon this situation? What would Jesus do? How does it change things as a human, not Jesus? That is what the Gospel lesson is about. How do we live with the tension of living in this world, yet owing everything to God because God has given us the world for which to care? How do we determine our priorities to distribute justice to all the created world? There is always room for improvement. There is always room to care enough to act. There is always room to change our priorities both collectively and personally. This is what life presents us. There are many dilemmas which we find ourselves in as we go through life. Again, and again different situations call for us to decide and cause us to think about the statement Jesus made, “Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s.” There are some choices in life that we choose differently depending on the context and what age we are, what we learned along the way. We don’t think the same as we did when we were a few years younger. That is what keeps this text from Matthew fresh. That choice is always before us as we live day to day. What belongs to the government and what belongs to God? Jesus seems to imply that we should give to both. We will have divided loyalties as citizens of the United States and Christians, loyal to Christian teaching which calls for social justice. When there is a moral conflict between the two, we should side with God, what we believe is right in God’s eyes. There are two groups that are trying to trap Jesus. His answer is very clever in that it totally avoids being trapped. They are unable to trap him at this point, so they go away. He can neither be accused of betraying the Roman government nor encouraging others to rebel against Rome. As Ellie mentioned last Sunday, the United States is one of the first countries to be established without a monarchy. We didn’t like the taxes imposed by King George III. We chose to be independent and make our own rules and regulations. If we had remained a British Colony, our money would not have our presidents and other important people on it, it would have a monarch of Great Britain on it, like Canada has. Our government is for the people and by the people, which means we have elected officials working for us and have the right to tell them what we want or vote them out of office. We have a conscience guided by our loyalty to God. The values we hold as Christians should take the lead in what we do in relation to our government. As to our church, we are called to be faithful to God and vote also for those we want as leadership as well as what we want in our mission statement to be as well as how we are choosing to follow that mission statement. It is expected that we will evaluate what it is we want in the mission statement and how we will support that mission statement to the end that God is the one who has the glory. May we always focus on doing God’s work in the world today and into the future. May we always be ambassadors of God’s love. The early church had no building, no money, and no political influence; and they turned the world upside down. JD Greear *This sermon is meant to start as a children's sermon with a dialogue about US coins, asking first whose picture is on each of the coins. I was going to give the Canadian penny to the youngest of the children just to see if he/she noticed that it says "Canada" on it and is a picture of Queen Elizabeth II.

God's Continuous Invitation

Proper22A, St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, October 8, 2023, by Sr. Annette Fricke, OP In today’s Gospel text, God is the landowner who builds a vineyard. The tenants are the religious authorities like the Pharisees, chief priests, and elders for example. The slaves are the prophets, and the son is Jesus himself. During Jesus’ time, the tenants would contract to give the owner an agreed-upon portion of the crop, keeping for themselves what was left. This parable is known as the Parable of the Wicked Tenants or Treacherous Tenants. God’s expectation of the tenants is that God and the tenants will enjoy the produce, but this simply does not happen, God is ultimately disappointed. What will God do? Notice the similarity to the Isaiah passage I read today. This text asks the question, “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?” God is pleading the people to be faithful stewards, has even provided all the means to do it, yet the people continue to fail to bear fruit. In Isaiah, the expected grapes are wild grapes. In Matthew, God has a solution to the failure of the tenants. God will take away the kingdom of God from Israel and give it to a people who will produce the fruits of the kingdom. The problem with parables is that interpretation is difficult. Parables about vineyards do not always give the same picture which can make them confusing. You cannot say that that all the parables about vineyards are alike. God is very generous in the vineyard story of chapter 20, but in this one, God appears to be mean and ineffective in getting results. God talks about taking away the kingdom and giving it to others. Is that an allusion to Israel being the chosen, but since they rejected Jesus, it will be given to the Gentiles, the non-Jews? Throughout the Old and New Testaments, we hear about bread and wine as well as the ingredients used to create them. They were a common staple, much the same as bread and milk not many generations ago. Common and essential. In the Old Testament, “Vineyards” seem to have been a frequent metaphor for a lover, an example of that is found in chapters 7 and 8 in the Song of Solomon just in case any of you might be interested in studying this subject further. Think about the Isaiah and Matthew texts as God is the owner and the Church is the vineyard. God loves the vineyard very much, so much that God tries to protect the Church by setting up a fence or wall and built a watchtower. God reaches out many times but is continually rejected. God’s own people fail to be faithful to God and what God wants. The idea is not that God is rejecting Israel; they are still the chosen people of God by way of covenant. It is not that God is rejecting the leaders of Judaism, but their behavior. They are continually sent prophets and teachers and always could listen to and heed God. But they chose to plot Jesus’ arrest. I think the most helpful way of looking at this parable is to think of it in the context that Jesus is getting closer and closer to crucifixion. The parable is a look into the future, a glimpse of what rejecting Jesus looks like. Unfortunately, it appears to be predictive of violence. Jesus is divisive simply by being God’s son. He is born into a world where each faction of Judaism has their own teachings and beliefs. Nicodemus is thought to believe that Jesus may indeed be the Messiah but wasn’t known to commit. Belief is never forced. St. Thomas Aquinas explains it this way: “We love God for himself and everyone else as they are in God or capable of being in him. We love God in loving our neighbor when we love others as they are related to him. Love of God with our whole hearts does not diminish but should enhance our love of others because we will also want the greatest good for our friends and because the love of God enables us to be friends with others all the more, as it is the source of those feelings that are part of friendship.” In this parable, God reminds us of who we are—that we are “responsible for what God has given us.” Even though we will never be the faithful Christians God envisions, and that we will continue to struggle with our baptismal vows, God still beckons us to follow the example Jesus has shown us. Jesus does not promise us an easy life but does promise to walk with us. God is a landowner who owns a vineyard. New Proclamation, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN; 2005, p.210 The Gospel According to Matthew, Barbara E. Reid, Liturgical Press, 2005., p. 109. Selman, Francis, “Aquinas 101: A Basic Introduction to the Thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas,” 2005. New Proclamation, Ibid., p. 215.