Read After Ten Years at the following link:

This week we hear one of my favorite parables in the whole New Testament, the so-called "parable of the laborers (or workers) in the vineyard," Matthew 20:1-16. I encourage you to read it for yourself and sit with it for a few days before church.

The story is of a house-master ("landowner" is our translation but it's not quite right) who goes out to the marketplace to find workers for the vineyard. He hires a group at 6 a.m. ("the first hour") and goes back to hire more at 9 a.m., noon, and 3 p.m. To the first group he promises a denarius, the "usual daily wage," and to the subsequent groups he promises "what is right." Finally he goes back at the eleventh hour (5 p.m.) and hires the last of those without work, sending them in to the vineyard for the last hour of the workday. Then he instructs the manager to pay each worker the full day's wage, starting with those hired at 5 p.m. This causes some resentment in those who worked all day; even though they were paid exactly what they expected, they do not appreciate the latecomers getting paid the same. 

My perspective on this parable shifted at a synod assembly (of all places) when a pastor led a Bible study on it, retelling it from the perspective of the laborers who couldn't get hired all day and had to wait to the point of giving up before getting a last chance at work. It's easy enough to identify with those hired first, who work longest--we often feel that we are in that position. And it's easy to identify with the last hired, in an unreal way, as we sometimes feel ourselves to have received grace by the skin of our teeth. But hearing the story from the standpoint of actual day labor, where your family's ability to eat in the days ahead is dependent on being hired, made me feel differently about it. It's not actually easy to be looking for work and not finding it. And as a society, we tend to value the lives and welfare of those who are not working at a lower level than those who are (unless the people not working are living on investment income, in which case we tend not to object).

The parable confronts us with a scenario in which the house-master has chosen to honor the daily need of the workers rather than the hours they worked. No one would have objected if he'd pro-rated the wage for those hired later. It would be, in our world as in his, a kind of shrewd dealing and good stewardship to keep a lower but still technically "fair" wage for them. But the master in the story accepts both the hit to his "bottom line" and the resentment of the people he hired first in order to give a living wage to everyone.

It's worth running through this story a few times, putting ourselves in different places. How would we feel if we were the first hired? Or those hired mid-day, or at the last hour? How would we look at this scene--imagining a marketplace that always seems to have unemployed men looking for work--if we were the house-master? How would we interpret the master's command if we were the manager, handing out pay at the end of the day? The power of a parable is not that it makes a single point with a story, but that it invites us into a scene that has many possible meanings. We learn about ourselves and the assumptions we make when we hear it. And in that learning, Jesus is trying to show us something of the Kingdom of God.

We're resuming the outdoor celebration of Holy Communion on Sunday at 10:45 a.m. in the courtyard. In June and July our first attempts at celebrating and distributing the Sacrament went very smoothly and safely. Masks are required of everyone, and we ask everyone to maintain six feet of distance between households. I thoroughly wash and sanitize my hands beforehand, and I wear gloves for the consecration and distribution of the elements.

We don't want anyone who is uncomfortable being in a group to feel obligated to participate. We believe we have a very safe and responsible procedure that also preserves the reverence and power of the Sacrament, but we all have to make the best choices we can about where and how we go out these days. It can help to bear in mind that the coronavirus is a respiratory virus. People contract it by breathing it in; food does not seem to be a source of transmission. This appears to be a disease we give each other directly, by proximity, rather than through a medium like the host or the chalice.

That said, we are being still more cautious, and so to minimize contact we are for now distributing only the host and not the chalice. I'm confident that we can find a good and safe way to include the chalice, but we will read up and plan out how best to do that before we make any changes.

A few people have mentioned this product to me as a possible answer, so I thought I'd share my reasons for not wishing to use it:

These pre-filled and sealed packages have become more popular recently among Lutheran churches. Previously they would have been more common in denominations that take a purely symbolic view of Communion. I've refrained from using them for two reasons:  first because Holy Communion is essentially a shared meal. The community would bring the gifts, which the presider would then consecrate with the Word of God and prayer before distributing to those present. Originally this was in the form of a single loaf broken and shared, and a single cup from which everyone drank. The important thing was that it was an experience of real unity and sharing (this is the reason I touch each vessel during the words of Jesus). This was a difficult aspect of early Christianity, as Paul's first letter to the Corinthians made clear. By sharing one bread we become one Body with Christ and with one another. I don't think that works if each worshiper is getting an individual, pre-divided "dose" of the meal.

Second, I've avoided these products for the less theological reason that I dislike the waste. One problem with having a lot of individual packages rather than a single shared meal is that it leaves a lot of plastic to be discarded. Apart from the environmental concerns, it's spiritually and aesthetically discouraging to have to throw away a lot of packaging after celebrating the most important aspect of Christian worship. After spending many years watching little buckets fill with plastic cups, still coated with what we were just calling the Blood of Christ, it's not something I think communities should be doing.

One challenge of this period has been thinking through changes to our life together, as worshipers and in many other ways. One problem with Christian worship (especially among Lutherans, for whatever reason) is that the exception can very quickly become the rule. We've been careful about doing things in worship or education that we wouldn't be comfortable with under normal circumstances, if only because it's easier to establish an expectation than it is to take it away.

So I greatly appreciate your patience and cooperation as we continue to do the best we can, faithfully, reverently, and safely, to share the fullness of God's grace in Word and Sacrament.

For those interested, some further reading on the Sacrament:

"The Use of the Means of Grace," a 1997 ELCA document that gives helpful guidance on baptism, preaching, and the Eucharist (including the indication that the sacrament should be individually administered by the pastor, and all the gifts placed on the altar together).

From the Apology of the Augsburg Confession on the Sacrament of the Altar

I've written about Holy Communion here (with specific reference to the sealed packages, it turns out), and early in the pandemic when many churches were trying "virtual" communion. It's also Chapter 3 of my book, which I'll post here for anyone interested (please be a dear and don't download the whole thing; if you'd like a copy and the price will put you out, just let me know and I'll get one to you).

Next week we're starting a four-week discussion of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. One of Lewis's most famous books, Screwtape takes the form of letters from the titular senior demon to his nephew, a junior tempter tasked with corrupting and winning the soul of a young man for Hell. It's a clever book and full of powerful insight on humanity as seen from the imagined perspective of our spiritual foes. You can order it here, or on Amazon, or anywhere else you buy books. And of course you can get it from the library. We'll start our conversation on Wednesday, September 9 at 6:30 p.m. You can join us at this link (open it in Chrome or Edge web browsers, or download the free Microsoft Teams app).

We're going to look at Letters 1-7 at our first session, which cover topics like "modern" thought, Christians, family relationships, and war (a lot of big topics get touched on in a few pages, which makes the book so fun to read). But as I read ahead to reacquaint myself with this book, which I hadn't picked up in a dozen years or more, I was struck by a moment a little later on. Screwtape talks to his nephew about tempting humans away from both what they enjoy (sinfully or harmlessly) and what they are obligated to do:

This experience doing neither what one wants nor what one should is something Christian monks identified sixteen centuries ago as acedia. It's a kind of sullen, restless boredom that haunts all human effort. For Lewis it's in a way worse than actual pleasurable sins, because even a wicked enjoyment relies on some gift of God. This vacancy of thought and enjoyment and intention doesn't even offer that glimpse into God's goodness. 

As I read this passage again I was struck by how much more true and urgent it seems today than it could have even for Lewis himself. Acedia is not just a destructive quirk of human personality now. It's central to the business model of much of our lives. When I think about how much time we can spend watching Netflix shows we only half enjoy, engaging in online conversations we only barely care about with people we don't really know, or watching an endless queue of YouTube videos chosen for us because we had a momentary interest in a topic or a game, I feel the shudder Lewis is trying to provoke here.

There are moments like this strewn through this little book. It's got its problems too (which I will probably talk about more than anyone wants to hear), but even those are very interesting. This is the kind of book than can get us to rethink some important questions, assumptions, and habits in our lives. So don't miss out! See you on Wednesday!

Perhaps you've seen this graphic or one like it recently. It shows the countries closed to American travelers, open to American travelers, or those open only with restrictions (including negative COVID tests, two-week self-quarantine upon arrival, and so forth).

I'm not much of an international traveler--I've been out of the country five times this century--but I have to admit these graphics have caught me up short. As an American, I'm accustomed to being part of a nation that puts a great deal of effort into deciding who may or may not enter my country, and on what terms (dubious as much of this effort may be). But as I preached way back in my first sermon at Christ, on Lazarus and the rich man's gate, you can't build a wall to keep others out without also locking yourself in. And because of our disastrous failure to contain the novel virus, that's exactly what has happened: we are, for the most part, stuck here.

This week we hear part of Paul the Apostle's famous depiction of humanity under the Law. In making his case that Jews and Gentiles, by different routes, are included in God's promises, Paul says that "God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that hey may be merciful to all." That word, which our version translates as "imprisoned," seems to have made translators and commentators squirm a bit. The King James scholars say "concluded," the New International Version says "bound over," the Revised Standard Version says "consigned." We have tended to hear it with two overriding concerns: am I really trapped in disobedience? And to what extent has God willed this imprisonment?

Here, as in most places, I prefer the more shocking and unpleasant translation. And the map above may explain why. Part of Paul's argument in his letters is that, Jew or Gentile, we tend not to know that we are imprisoned in disobedience. Day to day I just don't think about where I can go outside of the country. But faced with the grim reality--I am, in fact, more or less trapped here--it makes me think differently. Freedom can't come until we recognize that we are not already free.

Paul's harsh and stirring word here connects the Old Testament and the Gospel. Isaiah promises a time when God will gather not only his own people but others; and a Gentile woman pleads with Jesus to make this promise a reality for her. It is not that she is better or worse than the Jewish followers of Jesus. It is merely that she stands outside of the people to whom and through whom the Law and the Prophets speak. She is imprisoned in disobedience in her own way, as all the Gentiles are, but she makes the act of faith in pleading with the Messiah to heal her daughter all the same.

We live in a world full of unjust distinctions. Imprisonment is a powerful metaphor because we in America can be particularly cruel to the incarcerated on the grounds that they have somehow deserved that cruelty. Even prisoners approved for parole in Texas are being kept behind bars during a pandemic hitting those facilities especially hard. Humans tolerate cruelty like this because we can convince ourselves that the imprisoned are categorically different from us, deserving of a lower standard of dignity and humanity.

But Isaiah, Jesus, and Paul all remind us this week that our prison bars are just not visible to us. God saw fit to make confinement a universal human condition, so that all of us would need and call upon God's even-more-abundant mercy.

"You shall not covet your neighbor's house." Or, for that matter, your neighbor's "wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." So end the Ten Commandments, on what may sound like a doubly sour note.

First, to state the obvious: there is nothing good to say about a list in which "wife" is included among possessions alongside oxen and donkeys. And while there were meaningful differences between slavery as practiced in the the ancient world and as it was practiced in the Americas starting in the 17th century, it is lamentable that slaves were likewise listed alongside livestock as possessions not to be coveted.

Second, and rather less obvious: how exactly are we to refrain from not stealing our neighbor's possessions, or slandering our neighbor to get them, or harming our neighbor to take them, but from wanting to have what is theirs? What kind of religion polices not just your actions but your desires like his?

Paul the Apostle, writing to the church in Rome, gives us an answer:

For Paul, God's mere act of naming the sin of covetousness shows him that he's doing it. And the more we focus on the disposition to want what is not ours, the more we find it. This, Paul insists, is why the grace of Jesus Christ is no necessary and overwhelming: because we cannot bear the Law in its infinite majesty on our own, we need a savior who will fulfill it for us, and impute his righteousness to us for the sake of faith in him.

Coveting is a very subtle sin. It's not coveting to say "I wish I had a nice house like my brother's," though that can be spiritually corrosive as well. It's coveting when we say to ourselves, "my brother's house should really be mine." Covetousness happens at a paradoxical intersection of resentment and admiration, hostility and envy. It can be worse than straightforward greed or acquisitiveness, because it involves telling a story about both ourselves and our neighbor. Not just "I want this" but "I deserve this;" not just "hers is nice" but "hers belongs rightly to me."

One of the unexpected ways this plays out in our world is in the controversial topic of Native American sports mascots. On one hand, people insist that a team name like "Redskins" or a mascot like Cleveland's Chief Wahoo is demeaning and offensive. On the other hand, defenders of the teams insist that no one names their team after something or someone they hate. And in a sense both are correct: the names and mascots are demeaning and admiring at the same time. Even in the 19th century Americans started to express a kind of nostalgia for the peoples our nation had conquered and replaced. The indigenous peoples of the Americas were identified with a noble simplicity, an authentic connection to nature, and all kinds of virtues we "modern" people had lost touch with. If you remember movies like Dances with Wolves or Little Big Man you may see what I'm talking about.

It is a very strange thing on its face to envy the people one conquers and even destroys. But that's how covetousness works: I want what I think you have, but I don't want you to have it.

By contrast, the parables we hear in this week's Gospel passage are about acquiring the Kingdom of Heaven in a much different way. A man finds treasure hidden in a field--by someone, at some time, for who knows what purpose--and instead of pilfering it he sells everything he owns to buy the field. A merchant searches for fine pearls and finds one so great that he gives up everything else to get it. The message of these parables seems to be that there is no shortcut to God's kingdom. You can't scheme it away or talk yourself into deserving it. It requires everything of us, without resentment or hostility, without envy or admiration for any human being. But instead of eating away at our souls, it makes us rich beyond compare.

After a two-week break for my pulpit exchange with Fr. Matt of St. Christopher's, we'll come back to the Ten Commandments. But first a word about the readings for Sunday, which are powerful and well worth your time to read and ponder in preparation for worship.

First, we're hearing from the Wisdom of Solomon, part of the Greek version of the Old Testament (sometimes called the Second Canon or the Apocrypha, which just means hidden or obscure writings). The full passage is here, though we're skipping verses 14-15 for some reason. I love the Wisdom of Solomon because it is both very philosophical in an ancient manner, influenced by Greek thought and culture, and very devout. This week we will hear about the way God's power and God's mildness interact:

"Your sovereignty over all causes you to spare all": God does not need to demonstrate strength or overcome any rivals, so God is free to judge with mercy. Just as the farm owner in the Gospel passage says to allow the field to grow together until the harvest, God's power is the power to be patient and merciful.

Our passage from Romans is about hope, among other things, and the creation groaning in travail until the delivery of the children of God. This is an image Christians have mulled and meditated over for many centuries. The creation has been subjected to futility, for the sake of hope--this is a strange thought. Our world of universal mortality is, in Paul's words, pregnant with something new, and we groan along with the world as we await our redemption. Indeed we "suffer with [Christ] so that we may be glorified with him." This hope, however, is a secret thing. If we hope for what is seen, Paul says, what kind of hope is that? We hope in the unseen--unseen but yet somehow known and sensed within this world of groaning.

Jesus, in a characteristic parable, puts this matter of hope in a very different way. A field is sown with wheat, and at night an enemy comes and sows it with tares. For many historical commentators and artists, this is the key moment in the parable: while the workers sleep, the enemy is at work, following, mimicking, and ultimately marring the work of God. God never builds a church but the Devil sets up a copy of it next door, as Luther put it (more or less). Modern commentators and preachers tend to focus more on what comes next:

The farm owner here is showing patience. It is often pointed out these days that wheat and tares are very hard to tell apart. The point of the parable being, then, that we do not know whether someone will turn out to be a wheat stalk or a tare. We don't know so we should allow God's patience to work and leave judgment to the end of the age.

But the early hearers of Matthew's Gospel may have been listening to something else in this. Yes, they had to contend with divisions in the church (and in the wider Jewish community of which they were still probably a part), which they understood to be the work of a demonic power. But they had no power to uproot the "weeds" around them, being a small and weak community. They needed to understand God's forbearance, and they needed to hope that they would ultimately be vindicated--that among the weeds of the world, they would not be finally choked out of existence.

I must admit that lately I have been struggling with hope as our Scriptures and theology use the term. I am not especially hopeful--using the term casually, I suppose--about the future course of the coronavirus pandemic or, for that matter, the unfolding crises of climate change that the pandemic seems to be mimicking in a miniature, sped-up way. I don't see a way that our institutions will address the problems adequately, our culture and expectations adapt to deep and enduring changes, and our networks of inter-dependence sustain us. I ask myself what my work or anyone else's will mean as we sail straight into what threaten to be major storms ahead.

So it helps to remember that Paul and, in a different way, Jesus are talking about hope in a sense that really excludes the possibility of envisioning its fulfillment. I am dissatisfied by my own preaching and writing when I am left using "hope" as a box stuffed with IOUs, or as a spot on a draft saying "[add more examples here]." Everything else I can talk about practicing or picturing--as something we can do or imagine. Hope is more like an acknowledgment of God's freedom--that God is active in history and in current events and in every detail of our lives, both good and bad, but also beyond them all in ways we cannot comprehend. And just as a cell in a body wracked with labor pangs does not know what will come, and just as an ephemeral flower at the end of its bloom does not know the place it has in a vast and mortal creation, we don't know what God has laid up for us. 

Finally, we'll take a look this week at the seventh and eighth commandments: against stealing and bearing false witness against our neighbor. I find myself especially moved by Luther's explanation of the false witness prohibition:

I added the emphasis there because that bit is hard. Luther talks about using our words like a cloak to throw over the weakness of our neighbor. And I wonder how to do that while preserving, for example, a necessary accountability in relationships of trust (the condemnation of "gossip" has been used to keep plenty of abusive clergy in positions of power). But be that as it may: there is something here of hope, I think. We are to protect our (unworthy) neighbor's reputation because he, for all his flaws, may prove to be the wheat that must not be torn up before its time. We are told to value our neighbor in ways that go beyond what we can see and know, into the realm of trusting God's goodness when we do not see it at work in front of us. This is hard but it is, I must admit, a way to practice hope.