Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, March 24, 2019
Matthew 22:1-14

My first year of high school, I tried out for the girls’ soccer team. Soccer is the one sport I truly enjoy both watching and playing. I had played soccer since I was four years old. I never got into club-level sports, but in junior high I was captain of the team, and a pretty decent middle-fielder. Defensively, my team called me “the wall,” because no ball could get past me. So, it was a bit of a shock when after the tryouts, I looked at the list of who made the team, and I was at the bottom – just made the cut, for the junior varsity, not varsity team. Suddenly, when I thought I was one of the best, I was pretty much one of the weakest members of the team. I still had a great time playing, but I didn’t make varsity until my junior year. It was a humbling experience to think I was good at something, only to realize I had a lot of room for improvement.
When we look back to those formative years of our life in junior high and high school, it’s probably easy to think of a time when we felt included, or even at the top of the pack in one social group, and then just as easily, we can probably think of times when we didn’t fit in, were at the bottom, or worse, left out of the “in crowd.” Maybe there was a time you didn’t make the team, period, there were certain parties you just weren’t invited to, or were teased or even bullied because of who you were or what you were interested in.
Jesus helps us move beyond a high school dog-eat-dog mentality in thinking about who’s an insider and who’s an outsider this morning. He tells a parable about a wedding banquet where the first guests are invited, but don’t show up. They’re too busy, they’re too cool, whatever their reason, they don’t come. They’re the insiders, the people of Israel that Jesus is criticizing for saying they believe in God, but not living their faith. They think they’re at the top in being “in” with God, so much so, that they think it’s not so important for them to show up to this party. So the king expands the invitation to anyone, good or bad. In the parable, God the king invites anyone regardless of talent, ability, economic status, you name it. And all kinds of people show up to the party. It’s another of Jesus’ many stories of reversal where the first are last and the last are first.
This parable is a difficult one. There’s the guy at the end who isn’t wearing the right clothes and gets thrown into hell. The king gets so mad he levels the cities of the guests who don’t show up to the banquet. It’s easy to focus on the violence and angry God of this passage. Matthew is definitely trying to tell us that we ought to be wary of dismissing God’s invitation or taking our membership in God’s kingdom lightly. I think it’s also important, however, not to forget God’s invitation in the midst of the weeping and gnashing of teeth. If we put our fear aside, what is God inviting us to, and why should we show up?
God invites everybody to participate in God’s wedding banquet – the feast that has no end in God’s kingdom work. Like so many things in life, there is no prerequisite, no try-out period, no mandatory interview or background check. All are welcome, and all are invited. The good AND the bad! God’s invitation to join God’s kingdom work is radically inclusive – no one is left out. When we focus too much on God’s severe judgment of those who refuse the invitation, we forget about where God starts – with an invitation more wide open than most of us are capable of. We forget our own exclusive nature to deny people even an invitation or access to God’s kingdom because they are not good enough – they don’t wear the right clothes, they don’t come from the right countries, they don’t have the right sexual orientation, they aren’t the right age group, they don’t know enough about the Bible, they don’t have enough money and the list could go on and on. Jesus’ parable this morning is a mirror for us to look at how we participate in God’s banquet invitation, or not. When have we thought we had more important things to do than to worship the God of the universe who created us and everything else in it? When have we thought that we knew better than God who would be the right kind of people to hang around and invite to church or into a life of faith, or not? When have we actually stood in the way of God’s kingdom work, preventing others from hearing God’s message of good news for all –ALL people?
And most condemning in Jesus’ parable, is for us to ask the question about when have I (not someone else) shown up to church, but just went through the motions, in that sense not wearing the “right clothes” for a wedding banquet? Let me just dispel something for a minute: this parable is not about whether one should wear jeans or a hat to church. Early Christians received a white baptismal robe as a symbol of their new identity in Christ. Even though all of these other people were invited on the street last-minute and managed to put on the right clothes for the party, this guy shows up in apparently flagrant disregard for the dress code. Jesus uses this metaphor not to criticize this guest’s clothes, but his mindset. This guy has not had a change of heart – he’s there at God’s wedding banquet physically, but his mind is somewhere else, serving and worshipping someone else. Participating in the kingdom of God is both responding to the invitation by showing up, and then working actively in God’s kingdom for the benefit of all God’s people. Your heart, your mind, your soul AND your body have to be about God’s kingdom work, not just the shell. That’s the only way that an insider becomes an outsider for God. To look at how God operates otherwise, the outsiders become insiders, the outsiders are all mixed up with the insiders, so that eventually no one knows but God who was who to start with. Everybody at that banquet is focused on God and doing God’s kingdom work, regardless of where they came from at the beginning when they received the invitation.
As many of you know, I got to spend the last two weeks in Wittenberg, home of the reformation, with 21 other pastors from 19 different country churches, all members of the Lutheran World Federation. One of Luther’s works that I got to re-read was On the Freedom of a Christian, which remains one of my favorites. In this treatise, Luther writes that “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” A Christian becomes a Christian because of faith in Christ, no other requirement. He or she is completely free from any obligation, entrance requirement, etc. to be a part of God’s kingdom. At the same time, becoming a Christian means you are bound by God to love and serve all people – love for all flows from our faith. You can’t help but love others because that’s what faith in Christ causes us to do! I think this short statement of Luther summarizes Jesus’ parable and the guy who isn’t properly dressed. Christian faith in God is both a completely free invitation, no strings attached, and a lifelong commitment to living differently because of the difference your faith in God has made in your life! In God’s kingdom, you are welcomed into a community that truly is a welcome place for all with a standing open invitation; and then God invites you to respond through the love of Christ to serve the neighbor. God doesn’t give us cheap grace, but invites us to a banquet where insiders might become outsiders, outsiders insiders, where God knows us as we truly are and calls us to serve and love as deeply as God’s very own heart. Amen.

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, February 24, 2019
Matthew 14:13-33

This morning, we get to hear two stories that we know pretty well – Jesus feeding the five thousand by multiplying five loaves and two fish, and then Jesus and Peter walking on water. It’s important to know that the story of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fish appears six times in the four gospels – once in Luke and John and twice in Mark and Matthew (feeding the 5000 and feeding the 4000). That means that this is a pretty significant story that every gospel writer was sure to include in recounting Jesus’ ministry. It’s important to realize that Jesus probably did this on more than one occasion – providing food for people who were hungry to hear his words of hope, so much so that they were willing to go without food, yet Jesus feeds them with both physical bread and the bread of life, God’s word. This story tells us a lot about who Jesus is for us and what Jesus does for us.
The way we typically learn stories from the Bible tend to focus on moralisms about what we should do. There are two Sunday School lessons that we were likely taught in learning these two stories, and I want to challenge those lessons a bit by trying to go deeper. The first is the message that we ought to share. The idea is that once Jesus tells the disciples to give the crowd gathered around them supper, they do, and by people opening up to Jesus’ generosity, sharing what they also have, everyone gets enough, in fact, more than enough. Because Jesus asks the disciples to share, we should share, too. God calls us to be generous – this is true, but I don’t think that the moral of this feeding of the 5000 is simply that we should share…that seems too simple. Frankly, as a parent of two toddlers, I’m kind of tired of talking about sharing. And even our 22-month old daughter Grace gets that it’s good to share. Sharing is good, but I think God wants us to go deeper in understanding what Jesus is up to in this story, and I think Jesus is up to something bigger than teaching us about sharing in feeding the 5000.
Then, immediately after this feeding miracle, Jesus goes up to a mountain to pray by himself, and the disciples go out to sleep in a boat. I’m not sure why they want to sleep in a boat, but some of them were fishermen so maybe they did this all the time. A storm comes up, and Jesus comes toward them walking on the water. Peter gets out of the boat and also walks on water, except when he looks down he loses his nerve and begins to sink, so that Jesus has to save him. We were also probably taught at one point that Peter doesn’t have enough faith in Jesus so he sinks. If we just believe hard enough in Jesus’ power, Jesus might do miraculous things for us. While Jesus can and does do miraculous things for us, it’s problematic when we place the responsibility for those miracles back on ourselves and our ability to believe. It’s this teaching that can really hurt people when someone they love is sick and they don’t turn around, even though everyone prayed really hard for a miracle. Or think of the millions of us who have prayed to win that lottery and lost…prayed for an end to financial burdens and debt, etc. We could think of numerous ways in which if we think this is how God works – we pray or believe hard enough and God grants us our wishes and works miracles – that God disappoints us. It’s harmful to think this way because that can lead us to not believe in God and his promises, it can lead us to doubt and blame ourselves as unfaithful when we really are, and it really treats God like the Genie in Aladdin rather than the one true God of the universe, creator of all.
In reality, these two miracles stories – Jesus feeding the 5000 and Jesus walking on water, are about what God can do through Jesus Christ and not about what we have to do for God. In fact, if you look at what the crowds and disciples do in the story, they don’t do much at all, apart from hanging around Jesus. Jesus asks the disciples to give the crowds supper, and they bring him all that they have, which isn’t much. It’s Jesus who takes the bread and fish, blesses them and divides them up and gives it to the disciples to distribute and gather leftovers. It’s Jesus who comes to the disciples in the midst of a terrifying storm (which had to be bad because they have experienced fishermen on board, remember), Jesus who comforts them, Jesus who saves Peter when he starts to sink. And in the gospel of Matthew, this is the first time that the disciples get it – after they witness these two miracles, they realize for the first time that Jesus is the Son of God. And they give him this title because they know that no one BUT God can multiply fish and loaves and definitely defy physics and walk on water and calm storms. We are not responsible for working miracles. We can’t feed all the world’s hungry or solve global poverty. Apart from water-skiing, we still can’t walk on water, nor can we control bad storms (hurricanes, tornados, blizzards, or otherwise!). And we definitely can’t save ourselves. These things are all God’s jobs.
It’s good to pray and believe, to put our trust in God and even hope and believe in miracles. It’s good to strive to be generous, to share, to offer lavish hospitality. However, the foundation of our faith in Jesus Christ is that he saves us…not the other way around. When we are overwhelmed by the storms of life around us, scared out of our wits, not knowing what to do or if we’re even going to make it, Jesus gets into that boat with us and says, “Take courage. It’s me. Don’t be afraid.” When we are at the end of our rope, out of whatever resources we need – physical, emotional, spiritual, Jesus takes whatever we still have left, our crumbs, our little loaves and fishes, blesses what we have and feeds us, nourishing us with the bread of life that doesn’t run out. Jesus makes what we have enough so we don’t have to.
God doesn’t put conditions on his love for us. Jesus doesn’t say, “First share what you have and then I’ll give you something to eat.” He doesn’t say to Peter on the water, ”Come ahead, but if you sink it’s your own fault.” He doesn’t let Peter drown! In fact, it’s often in spite of ourselves that God loves us anyway, forgives our silly mistakes and efforts to be our own gods. And often, in spite of our little faith in anything – faith in ourselves, faith in God, God has more faith in us! Jesus trusted that Peter could walk on water and was perplexed when he started to sink. Jesus knew the disciples could feed the congregation if he gave them what they needed. For me, this morning’s gospel reminds me to stop short of thinking it’s my responsibility to help everyone else and save the world by Friday. I can’t fix the dying church. I can’t solve the problem of world hunger and darn it, I can’t even walk on water, which sounds really fun. Really, truly, only God can do any of those things. As a follower of Jesus, as a disciple of Jesus, all I have to do is what Jesus asks me to do…sharing what I’ve been given, picking up the leftovers, being brave at times to get out of the boat and letting Jesus catch me when I start to sink.
Thank God it is not up to us to save the world. We could never do it. Thank God that Jesus is the son of God, who DOES save us, who FEEDS us with his very self so that we will never be hungry, who gets right in there with us in the boat to guide us through the storms of life. Jesus, our miracle worker, our teacher, our healer, and our Savior, is enough. Amen.