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Obama and the Ten Virgins |
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Saturday, 08 de November de 2008 |
NO_TRANSLATION_AVAILABLE
The Lessons Appointed for Use on the Sunday closest to November 9
Year A Proper 27 RCL
Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
Psalm 78:1-7
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25:1-13 for the readings click here 
On the Wednesday after the elections I was speaking to our own Wilhelmina D’Lyons, 101 years of age, to find out that media followed her everywhere on election day almost to inside the voting booth, which she insisted in operating herself in a little scuffle with an accompanying nephew. Apparently she was featured on a New York newspaper. I asked her how often she has voted, and her reply was, sharp as always, every time since I can remember.
That got me thinking and did my calculation and research, when Will was born in 1907 women were not allowed to vote until 1920. Furthermore, she was born in Mobile, Alabama and although free blacks were allowed to vote since 1870 almost 100 years after the Declaration of Independence; in the South a great number of qualifications and requirements were enacted that limited the reality of the black vote until the 1960's. With everything from white and colored primaries to intimidation and violence during voter registration making at least in the South voting blacks an exception rather than the rule.
By 1928, when she was of legal age to vote, the family has already moved to Haarlem into a nice brownstone and I assume that she began voting on the Presidential elections of 1928 who were wan by a landslide victory by Herbert Hoover (Republican) against Al Smith.
Although Will voted for a good eighty years and I presume she always voted for hope and betterment of American society, however she never dreamt that in her lifetime a woman will ran for president in the primaries and that a black man will be now President-elect. Twice disenfranchised as a black woman, she kept hoping against all odds.
That is a privilege afforded to a few, I mean to see the end result of long waits, and hard fought hope. Moses was able to just have a glimpse of the Holy Land, Elizabeth Cady Stanton founder of the suffragist movement died twenty year prior to women’s right to vote was granted, Obama’s grandmother died on the eve of the elections and Martin Luther King’s life was cut short by an assassin bullet in 1968 almost 40 years prior. But there is no question in mind, that their hope against all odds was the stepping stones to where we have are today. It all began because someone someday choose to believe.
Regardless for who you voted on Tuesday, you will agree with me as with most people that The-way-things-are is no more a valid argument. I heard in the British House of Commons that America has proven that anything is possible. The-way-things-are, that ideological interpretation of reality that ignores the hidden seeds of change in any given situation, is a powerful argument. It appeals to our most dirty secret, namely that all of us tend to be conservative of what we know and instantly nervous about the future which we do not know.
We have seen it played out in the recent elections and we have seen played in our own lives. In political terms its outcome is apathy since nothing will really change, in Christianity is faithlessness, since the world continues to be hellbent on war, famine and oppression how could they be a God? It is the logical conclusion from the stand point of the-way-things-are. Where is the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached? This seems to be, as always has been, the kingdom with small k of greed and savagery.
Sometimes in our lives, we run out of the proverbial oil and we are basically not ready for when the opportunity comes, and we let it pass us by.
Some observations need to be made about the passage we have read this morning. Firstly, the question of inclusion of the disenfranchised.
Ken Baily in “Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes” believes that the inclusion of women as representatives of the church is not the result of happenstance, but not only women, young single women from the Greek word “parthenos”, as the measure of faith or faithlessness of the young community of believers is most striking. Baily sees it as intentionally Jesus affirming the place of women in his community of disciples as equal of the male disciples. Ten Jewish males were needed for conducting services in the synagogue and other services including a wedding. Jesus has ten women. Quoting a Ibn-al-Tayib, Bailey believes the Jesus was compensating for the gender gap in his own culture.
Secondly, the question of borrowed resources.
The foolish virgins when seen that they have run out of oil want to borrow it from the others. But in Christianity we can not borrow experience. We may borrow information, but relationship, preparedness, maturity, willingness to be a disciple in modern times, has to be a personal decision and therefore untransferable.
Thirdly, we are in for the long haul.
Life in the Kingdom requires it to be in for the long haul. Preparedness, advanced planning and willingness to endure derision by those who want hard and fast “evidence” of a God of power and Mercy most be chosen, or else we will buckle to the pressure of life’s tragedies or cleaver arguments.
And fourthly, the reaction to failure.
When things go wrong due to our own making, the resulting problems can not be solved by shouting “give us some oil”, or pounding at the locked door. Similarly in Lazarus and the Rich man, the rich man in hell keeps demanding of God to send Lazarus in the role of servant to fetch him water or to warn his family.
The message of Christianity is that with God possibilities are endless and therefore disenfranchisement is never a terminal state. For Sin, there is forgiveness, for sickness there is healing, for the excluded affirmation as blessed, for men and women and children, now rightful members of the people of God, for death there is resurrection.
Jesus intended to create an alternate state both of physical boundaries with the church as family of God and state of the heart where you can be at peace, where there is none. You can be free, as Mandela was for 23 years while prisoner of apartheid. You can be dead to the world, and alive to God.
The Kingdom is among us, already here, living in our relationships, prefigured as if were in our sacraments, in our fellowship and our service to the world and simultaneously it is to come, to achieve complete fulfillment. It is at the same time Utopia to be realized and Hope already taking place.
As disciples of Jesus, master of All truth we need to prepare carefully for the long haul, putting away oil for later while the Bridegroom delays in his wedding procession through time and space to meet us and to include us in his joy and feast. If we were to fail in our preparation, if we became faithless disciples, if faith is lacking, our response is not frantically to demand or to attempt to live vicariously through others but to assume our responsibility for our failure and to deliver ourselves to His mercy through repentance.
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The Crash of 2008 and the Golden Calf |
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Saturday, 11 de October de 2008 |
NO_TRANSLATION_AVAILABLE
The Lessons Appointed for Use on the Sunday closest to October 12
Year A Proper 23 RCL
Exodus 32:1-14
Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14 for the texts clikc here
On Sunday, October 27 there were sermons suggesting that a certain measure of divine retribution had been visited on the Republic and that it had not been entirely unmerited. People had lost sight of spiritual values in their single-minded pursuit of riches. Now they had had their lesson.
Almost everyone believed that the heavenly knuckle-rapping was over and that speculation could be now resumed in earnest. The papers were full of the prospects for next week's market.
Stocks, it was agreed, were again cheap and accordingly there would be a heavy rush to buy. On Monday the real disaster began.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Great Crash of 1929"
Almost to the day 79 years ago, the crash of 1929 marked the beginning of one of the longest recessions in United States history. The images we have imprinted in our minds are of long lines of unemployed men, soup kitchens and a great deal of misery. Was I ever anxious for Friday to end? I mean the market to close, I thought the Dow was to lose the bottom. My retirement took a hit and the church investments too. What this means to us in the short term, I do not know. Not even the pundits know for sure. Distrust abounds more than money.
We do not know where are we going with this situation, I am already working of a Plan "B" that will ensure our ministry here at Redeemer to continue, now more than ever needed. I suspect that many of you like me, know not much about the market and the only thing we may remember is that it will back up again. Furthermore, market crashes are part and parcel of the cyclical nature of American economy as some of you are survivors of the Great Depression and may have many life lessons to teach everyone of us. However, whether affected or not, we all breathe the same anxiety that is percolating throughout all segments of society, wether people have money invested or not. Yesterday, I saw Gus, corner shop owner calling home to check every few minutes on the market situation.
Unlike the preachers of yonder, I see the crash of 2008 not as Divine retribution, but rather like light in the middle of the darkness. It is a sobering light lit in the middle of the sewer of connivance of “Wall Street” and “The Beltway.” As any light in the middle of such methane emanations, it also has the potential for greater disaster. I hope that the American people votes in November guided by what they “see.”
In the precedent’s readings from Exodus we have the foundational myth of Israel. The people and God entered into a partnership and they left Egypt to test in the desert their loyalty to that partnership. It is in the desert where the relationship is forged and where a band of former slaves becomes a Nation.
So during the Exodus narrative we are going to see the People of Israel, with refreshing candor, both at their best and their worst. If one could dare to sum up the story in few words, the words than come to me, are words like loyalty, faith, partnership. It is in the blazing days and long freezing nights that Israel and Yahwe relationship develops and deepens. Along the way, like a couple on their first year of marriage, the divine will on one hand and Israel desire for autonomy on the other clash. Like a good novel, it is toward the end that Israel and God make out The Promised Land in sight.
The passage from Exodus is not about the worshiping of riches, but about Israel’s betrayal of God’s trust prompted by fear that eventually leads them to the sin of idolatry. It is also about Israel worship of the good old days, if we are to take that the Golden calf was the Egyptian god Apis, when they albeit slaves in Egypt could eat all they wanted. It is a return to the backside of History.
This God that has offered himself to be alongside with Israel in its perilous and protracted march through the barren landscape. He provided them with guidance, a cloud in the day and column of fire in the night, providing them with food for the day only.
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Big Fish eaten by bigger fish |
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Sunday, 05 de October de 2008 |
NO_TRANSLATION_AVAILABLE
Sunday closest to October 5
Year A Proper 22 RCL
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Psalm 19
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46
In July 1998, Irene Silverman upscale bed and breakfast owner in Manhattan's Upper East Side disappeared to be never found again. Later on Sante and Kenny Kimes, mother and son and also Mrs. Silverman's tenants were found guilty of the crime in an incredible attempt at swindling Ms. Silverman of
her townhouse after her murder. This is a case of wicked tenants.
Life of tenants in New York and their relationship to their landlords is far from easy, unless you have huddles of money. The population density is high, the apartments scarce and expensive, the rooms small and landlords often abusive, scheming and some plain evil and greedy. While, people like Helen for instance has a good relationship with her landlady for many years.
In the passage today, we have again a relationship of landlord and tenants. In order to understand the cast of characters one has to pay attention to the fact that the Vineyards is the result of the initial labor of the landowner, "planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower." This puts this passage in the context of Isaiah 5ff "Song of the Vineyard" where Israel is the Vineyard and God the owner. For the people who were listening to Jesus the connection was clear. Except that the tenants were not the people of Israel, as a whole but the leadership of Israel, the Temple people who were listening to him. Who have questioned his authority and who have started to scheme against him after he threw the money changers on Palm Sunday. The people of Israel, are those who stand idle in the corners waiting for someone to hire them, for Jesus the People of Israel are the poor, the victimized, the sick, the needy. The tenants were a class upward from these, they are the leadership.
Jesus's then asked the question: Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? It is the audience that provides the answer and here I find the key to understand this complex text. The audience is the same who allied with the Roman occupation will put him to death. The
political punditry of Israel is keeping an eye on the religious zealots and they will put in place the machinery that will take Jesus to his death. It is the Temple establishment. This time they rally to provide the answer of what they themselves will do. "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time."
Jesus has set for them another logical trap and they have walked into it and this is the source of the irony for the Jesus retort: Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. Indeed, a few years later of Jesus's prediction, in 72 the Temple was destroyed and with it the sacrificial-money-making machine of the priestly order disappeared. To this day, the Kohanites, the descendants of the priestly class play a very minor role in the Synagogue worship.
Their guardianship of Jewish society stands under divine judgment precisely because of their socio-economic exploitation of the peasantry. By being naturally inclined, as members of the governing class, to condemn the peasants for their illegal withholding of the rent fund and their violence of murdering the landlord's slaves and especially his male heir, they would have no difficulty in justifying his revenge, but ironically at the same time they would be pronouncing judgment on themselves for the injustice and violence which they were perpetrating as the tenants of God's vineyard.
Ingeniously, Jesus has succeeded in confronting the guardians of society with their own injustice. The retribution which the tenants suffer at the hands of th landlord and which they readily affirm will be inflicted on them. As they have dispossessed, so they will be dispossessed: "And he will give the vineyard to others." Without this ironic conclusion the story is incomplete and therefore cannot function parabolically.
During the Vice-presidential debate the other night, Governor Palin quote a speech by Ronald Reagan before he was president, ironically said in an ad where he was advocating against Medicare in the name of freedom. The gist of it is that freedom is a legacy not an inherited genetic predisposition, interestingly said on the eve of the Senate passing the legislation to bailout Wall Street, but that is matter for coffee hour.
My point is that she is right, she is right in the sense that faith, like freedom is not an inherited genetic predisposition. Faith is rather the renewed response to the permanent invitation of the owner of the vineyard to collect the fruits of faith.
We, people from the reformation, sometimes resting too heavily on the principle of sola gratia, only grace needed for salvation, forget that for Jesus (see my last week sermon on the parable of the two sons) faith and its fruits are one and the same thing, that intellectual orthodoxy, or even right worship, is not the ultimate measuring cup by we all shall be judged, rather, right doing, orthopraxis is the ultimate criteria for the Judgement of the Nations as we find in Matthew 25.
What are the fruits of the Kingdom? They are the result of breaking way aided by grace from the centripetal forces that pushes us inwardly to a life of selfishness. The fruits of the Kingdom are the plenary evidence of lives lived eccentrically, recognizing the importance of the self and keeping it in a precarious balance with the importance of The Other. The fruits of The Kingdom are evident when we walk over this earth gingerly, not with swagger of the owner, but with care for something borrowed.
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saying the right thing, doing the right thing |
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Saturday, 27 de September de 2008 |
NO_TRANSLATION_AVAILABLE
The Lessons Appointed for Use on the Sunday closest to September 28
Year A proper 21 RCL
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16
Philippians 2:1-13
Matthew 21:23-32 click here for the texts
While walking down the street one day a female senator is tragically hit by a truck and dies. Her soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance. "Welcome to Heaven," says St. Peter. Due to the credit meltdown, the place is getting a little crowded. Gas free for eternity, you know! I must inform you that there are new rules in place. The senator quizzes Saint Peter at the pearly gates and Peter says here is the deal: you have to spend a day in hell first and then a day in Heaven and then you decided where do you want to spend eternity.
And with that, St. Peter escorts her to the elevator and she goes down, down, down to Hell. The doors open and she finds herself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a club and standing in front of it are all her friends and other politicians who had worked with her, everyone is very happy and in evening dress.
They run to greet her, hug her, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at expense of the people. They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster and caviar. Also present is the Devil, who really is a very friendly guy who has a good time dancing and telling jokes.
They are having such a good time that, before she realizes it, it is time to go. Everyone gives her a big hug and waves while the elevator rises.
The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on Heaven where St. Peter is waiting for her.
"Now it's time to visit Heaven." So 24 hours pass with the senator joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.
"Well then, you've spent a day in Hell and another in Heaven. Now choose your eternity." She reflects for a minute, then the senator answers: "Well, I would never have said it, I mean Heaven has been ok, but I think I would be better off in Hell with my friends."
So Saint Peter escorts her to the elevator and she goes down, down, down to Hell. Now the doors of the elevator open and she is in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage.
She sees all her friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags. The Devil comes over to her and lays his arm on her neck. "I don't understand," stammers the senator. "Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and club and we ate lobster and caviar and danced and had a great time. Now all there is a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable.
The Devil looks at her, smiles and says, "Yesterday we were campaigning for your vote. Today we already got it!"
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