Year A
Exodus 32:1-14
Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14<\/p>\n\n\n\n
May the words of my mouth O God\u2026 speak your truth\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My brother carries a gun\u2026 no\u2026 not everywhere he goes\u2026 only when he provides security at a Washington, D.C. area synagogue\u2026 I’m not sure when he took firearm training\u2026 and got a gun license\u2026 and began doing this\u2026 we don’t really talk about it\u2026 it may have been after the shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018\u2026 when the shooter murdered eleven people and wounded six\u2026 it may be because of threats his synagogue received\u2026 I don’t know\u2026 I don’t condone it\u2026 but I understand some of it\u2026 ] for us though\u2026 the diocese doesn’t permit any clergy\u2026 staff\u2026 students\u2026 volunteers\u2026 or visitors\u2026 to carry a weapon on the premises of any church property\u2026 though trained and licensed peace officers may\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And while I believe that Israel\u2026 and Ukraine for that matter\u2026 have a right to defend themselves from unwarranted attacks and violent aggression\u2026 I grieve the thousands of innocent Palestinian and Israeli women\u2026 children\u2026 and men who have\u2026 and will be\u2026 wounded or killed\u2026 or become collateral damage\u2026 and last week’s statement from the Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations affirms that\u2026 the actions of Hamas\u2026 and the Israeli response in Gaza\u2026 in no way advance peace\u2026 but rather cause loss of life and harm\u2026 and grief and devastation\u2026 not only to the individuals affected\u2026 but also to the legitimate cause of the Palestinian people in seeking an end to the decades long occupation and blockade<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And in a Friday afternoon statement from the ELCA\u2026 Presiding Bp. Eaton wrote\u2026 in part\u2026 for the past week we have borne witness to the horrors of the escalating crisis between Israel and Hamas\u2026 we also watch a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza as Israel blocks food\u2026 water\u2026 fuel and medical supplies\u2026 and as airstrikes continue to cause unbearable civilian casualties ahead of a just-announced ground assault\u2026 we see Israelis and families around the world in the agonizing wait for word about the fate of loved ones killed or taken hostage by Hamas\u2026 we are in anguish… grieving and praying for all people who are living in trauma\u2026 fear and uncertainty<\/em>\u2026 I won’t condone this violence\u2026 though I can understand a small bit of it\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Rev. Dr. Jay Johnson writes\u2026 we’ve come to this horribly messy situation because of deeply complex power games\u2026 historical struggles… colonial interference\u2026 U.S. political pressures\u2026 oil\u2026 and good old-fashioned human revenge\u2026 ] and what I think is very difficult for us to understand\u2026 and what is far too easy to minimize and dismiss\u2026 is the subtlety and interconnection of these realities\u2026 and how they form us\u2026 and that multigenerational trauma is expressed not only in a people’s history\u2026 in their stories\u2026 but this trauma actually becomes a part of our physiology\u2026 passed down through the generations\u2026 in mitochondrial DNA\u2026 which can be called genetic memory\u2026 not just as a thing remembered\u2026 and not the result of an over active imagination\u2026 but as an inherited and unshakable feeling\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n In our reading from Exodus\u2026 when Moses was delayed coming down from the mountain\u2026 the Israelites gave up on God and God’s promises\u2026 and sought to create a false god of their own\u2026 from the gold on their wive’s\u2026 son’s\u2026 and daughter’s ears\u2026 and they brought offerings and sacrifices to their golden calf\u2026 ] and God and Moses did\u2026 what parents sometimes do when their children behave badly\u2026 they pointed fingers at each other\u2026 as to just who it was who brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt\u2026 God’s anger burned hot against them\u2026 and Moses reminded God of the ancestral promise made to this people\u2026 and for the second time\u2026 God changed God’s mind about the disaster that God planned to bring on the people\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then in today’s Gospel\u2026 in yet another parable about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like\u2026 a King\u2026 God\u2026 invites people to partake in the fullness of joy\u2026 at a time when his son\u2026 Jesus\u2026 will marry\u2026 and just who the Son will marry begins as a mystery\u2026 Fr. John Shea writes that while it’s the religious leadership who’s really invited\u2026 they go about as if nothing special is happening\u2026 their farming and their businesses demand their attention\u2026 ordinary time consumes them as a special time eludes them\u2026 ] and how do they treat the King’s slaves who are sent to remind them about the wedding feast\u2026 with telling echos of last week’s parable about the tenants treatment the vineyard owner’s son\u2026 some are seized\u2026 mistreated\u2026 and killed\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And in response\u2026 in his outrage\u2026 the King sent his troops\u2026 destroyed the murderers\u2026 and burned their city\u2026 and as a result\u2026 the guest list of the elite becomes a guest list of the indiscriminate\u2026 there is now no ethnic\u2026 gender\u2026 age\u2026 or health requirement\u2026 there is not even a moral requirement\u2026 the wedding of the Son has become a beggar’s feast\u2026 a gathering of those who simply hear and accept the invitation\u2026 and while the invitation itself did not name the bride\u2026 we now realize that those called in from the streets were not invited to merely witness a wedding\u2026 they were not invited simply to observe\u2026 they themselves were invited to be married to the Son\u2026 the only requirement is the wedding garment and an eagerness to be united to the Son\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the man who came without a wedding garment\u2026 was not thrown out because of his clothing\u2026 he was escorted out because he had no intention of marrying\u2026 he was bound hand and foot\u2026 because he would not eat with his hands\u2026 or dance with his feet\u2026 and he would weep and gnash his teeth\u2026 instead of laughing and singing\u2026 and people with this kind of inner disposition not only exclude themselves from community\u2026 they may live with regret\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are some Christians whose singular concern is salvation\u2026 whether they’ll get into heaven or not\u2026 there are some Christians who believe that baptism earns them a Get Out of Jail Free card\u2026 but baptism\u2026 like a wedding garment and being married to the Son\u2026 is just the beginning of discipleship\u2026 just the beginning of understanding and acting on Jesus’ teachings\u2026 of making them our own\u2026 and whose offspring will be acts of justice\u2026 compassion\u2026 and love\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cities in Israel and Gaza\u2026 and elsewhere\u2026 are still burning\u2026 we’ve made the same mistake as those in our reading from Exodus\u2026 and for that matter\u2026 as millions of others throughout history since then have made\u2026 by giving up what is honorable\u2026 just\u2026 pure\u2026 pleasing\u2026 commendable\u2026 excellent\u2026 and worthy of praise\u2026 qualities in today’s Epistle which Paul exhorts us to pursue\u2026 we continue to believe that we can cast our own idols\u2026 not from gold earrings\u2026 but from carbon steel and gunpowder\u2026 thinking that bullets and bombs can save us\u2026 but as history has demonstrated with crystal clarity\u2026 they’re incapable of doing in the long run\u2026 and only serve to feed multigenerational trauma\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t know how these armed conflicts will unfold… like many of you\u2026 I think they’re likely to get worse before they get better\u2026 because those who refuse God’s invitation\u2026 can find destruction in their lives\u2026 and if you’re going to begrudge God\u2026 who invites everyone\u2026 you may\u2026 in your own hot anger\u2026 forget your wedding garment\u2026 and by doing so\u2026 exclude yourself\u2026 but the Good News is that God is more concerned that the wedding banquet is full\u2026 than what guests are there\u2026 that God’s need for relationship is so great\u2026 that God came to be one of us\u2026 and that God will never give up on us\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Year A Exodus 32:1-14 Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23 Philippians 4:1-9 Matthew 22:1-14 May the words of my mouth O God\u2026 speak your truth\u2026 My brother carries a gun\u2026 no\u2026 not everywhere he goes\u2026 only when he provides security at a Washington, D.C. area synagogue\u2026 I’m not sure when he took firearm training\u2026 and got a gun license\u2026 and began doing this\u2026 we don’t really talk about it\u2026 it may have been after the shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018\u2026 when the shooter murdered eleven people and wounded six\u2026 it may be because of threats his synagogue received\u2026 I don’t know\u2026 I don’t condone it\u2026 but I understand some of it\u2026 ] for us though\u2026 the diocese doesn’t permit any clergy\u2026 staff\u2026 students\u2026 volunteers\u2026 or visitors\u2026 to carry a weapon on the premises of any church property\u2026 though trained and licensed peace officers may\u2026 And while I believe that Israel\u2026 and Ukraine for that matter\u2026 have a right to defend themselves from unwarranted attacks and violent aggression\u2026 I grieve the thousands of innocent Palestinian and Israeli women\u2026 children\u2026 and men who have\u2026 and will be\u2026 wounded or killed\u2026 or become collateral damage\u2026 and last week’s statement from the Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations affirms that\u2026 the actions of Hamas\u2026 and the Israeli response in Gaza\u2026 in no way advance peace\u2026 but rather cause loss of life and harm\u2026 and grief and devastation\u2026 not only to the individuals affected\u2026 but also to the legitimate cause of the Palestinian people in seeking an end to the decades long occupation and blockade\u2026 And in a Friday afternoon statement from the ELCA\u2026 Presiding Bp. Eaton wrote\u2026 in part\u2026 for the past week we have borne witness to the horrors of the escalating crisis between Israel and Hamas\u2026 we also watch a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza as Israel blocks food\u2026 water\u2026 fuel and medical supplies\u2026 and as airstrikes continue to cause unbearable civilian casualties ahead of a just-announced ground assault\u2026 we see Israelis and families around the world in the agonizing wait for word about the fate of loved ones killed or taken hostage by Hamas\u2026 we are in anguish… grieving and praying for all people who are living in trauma\u2026 fear and uncertainty\u2026 I won’t condone this violence\u2026 though I can understand a small bit of it\u2026 The Rev. Dr. Jay Johnson writes\u2026 we’ve come to this horribly messy situation because of deeply complex power games\u2026 historical struggles… colonial interference\u2026 U.S. political pressures\u2026 oil\u2026 and good old-fashioned human revenge\u2026 ] and what I think is very difficult for us to understand\u2026 and what is far too easy to minimize and dismiss\u2026 is the subtlety and interconnection of these realities\u2026 and how they form us\u2026 and that multigenerational trauma is expressed not only in a people’s history\u2026 in their stories\u2026 but this trauma actually becomes a part of our physiology\u2026 passed down through the generations\u2026 in mitochondrial DNA\u2026 which can be called genetic memory\u2026 not just as a thing remembered\u2026 and not the result of an over active imagination\u2026 but as an inherited and unshakable feeling\u2026 In our reading from Exodus\u2026 when Moses was delayed coming down from the mountain\u2026 the Israelites gave up on God and God’s promises\u2026 and sought to create a false god of their own\u2026 from the gold on their wive’s\u2026 son’s\u2026 and daughter’s ears\u2026 and they brought offerings and sacrifices to their golden calf\u2026 ] and God and Moses did\u2026 what parents sometimes do when their children behave badly\u2026 they pointed fingers at each other\u2026 as to just who it was who brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt\u2026 God’s anger burned hot against them\u2026 and Moses reminded God of the ancestral promise made to this people\u2026 and for the second time\u2026 God changed God’s mind about the disaster that God planned to bring on the people\u2026 And then in today’s Gospel\u2026 in yet another parable about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like\u2026 a King\u2026 God\u2026 invites people to partake in the fullness of joy\u2026 at a time when his son\u2026 Jesus\u2026 will marry\u2026 and just who the Son will marry begins as a mystery\u2026 Fr. John Shea writes that while it’s the religious leadership who’s really invited\u2026 they go about as if nothing special is happening\u2026 their farming and their businesses demand their attention\u2026 ordinary time consumes them as a special time eludes them\u2026 ] and how do they treat the King’s slaves who are sent to remind them about the wedding feast\u2026 with telling echos of last week’s parable about the tenants treatment the vineyard owner’s son\u2026 some are seized\u2026 mistreated\u2026 and killed\u2026 And in response\u2026 in his outrage\u2026 the King sent his troops\u2026 destroyed the murderers\u2026 and burned their city\u2026 and as a result\u2026 the guest list of the elite becomes a guest list of the indiscriminate\u2026 there is now no ethnic\u2026 gender\u2026 age\u2026 or health requirement\u2026 there is not even a moral requirement\u2026 the wedding of the Son has become a beggar’s feast\u2026 a gathering of those who simply hear and accept the invitation\u2026 and while the invitation itself did not name the bride\u2026 we now realize that those called in from the streets were not invited to merely witness a wedding\u2026 they were not invited simply to observe\u2026 they themselves were invited to be married to the Son\u2026 the only requirement is the wedding garment and an eagerness to be united to the Son\u2026 And the man who came without a wedding garment\u2026 was not thrown out because of his clothing\u2026 he was escorted out because he had no intention of marrying\u2026 he was bound hand and foot\u2026 because he would not eat with his hands\u2026 or dance with his feet\u2026 and he would weep and gnash his teeth\u2026 instead of laughing and singing\u2026 and people with this kind of inner disposition not only exclude themselves from community\u2026 they may live with regret\u2026 There are some Christians whose singular concern is salvation\u2026 whether they’ll get into heaven or not\u2026 there are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[224,223,159],"class_list":["post-2214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","tag-discipleship","tag-kingdom-of-heaven","tag-relationship-with-god"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2215,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214\/revisions\/2215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}