Because Sometimes, We Kinda Suck…

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
May 7, 2023
5 Easter, Year A
Acts 7:55-60
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14

Lord of the Streets Episcopal Church

Because Sometimes, We Kinda Suck…

“While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ When he had said this, he died.” As he was actively being killed by an angry mob with rocks, Stephen prayed, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

We see the absolute worst and the absolute best of humanity right there. We see a man who was so full of love and hope, that he did not fight against the mob or kill in order to save his life. He was at peace during his murder, praying forgiveness on his murderers. We also see a violent and angry mob worked up into a lathered frenzy so crazed that they gleefully murdered a young man because he believed something different than they did. 

In this moment of our history, we see humanity’s enormous capacity for good, for selflessness, and for love. At the same time, we see our brutality and mindless rage, and end up having to reckon with the fact that humanity is so hurting and broken that when God became human, it only took us 30 years to kill him. God, who is love, became human, and we killed him in 30 years.

So, we humans are pretty fantastic, and we also kinda suck.

Still, we have the fact of God becoming human. Knowing that we would kill him, God still thought it was a pretty good idea to join with us in our humanity. God thought it was a good idea to become one of us, to join with us in every aspect of our humanity, including our death, and God thought it was a good idea to join with the absolute worst of humanity by allowing us to perpetrate the very worst of ourselves against him. God joined with our lives, our deaths, our goodness, and our hurts and atrocities. Despite the fact that we often suck, God still thinks that we’re also pretty fantastic. God thinks we’re worth saving. 

So, Jesus told his disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus said, because he was going to prepare a place for us to bring us home. 

Our home is unity with God and unity with one another. 

Where’s that? Thomas wanted to know. Where is this home with God and one another? Jesus replied, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” 

Follow in my ways, Jesus was saying. Follow in the ways of forgiveness and love, and you will find your home with God and one another. 

Follow in my teachings, Jesus was saying. Follow in the truths I have taught you, and you will find your home with God and one another. 

Follow in my life, Jesus was saying. Follow me and trust in the life I give, the resurrection life I have given, joining humanity and divinity. 

God thought we were fantastic enough that God became one with us, and Jesus is telling us to trust in that unity with God and then follow and live, recognizing God in every person around us. 

What about if we don’t believe that, however? What if we don’t believe that God is in every person around us? Well, what we believe seems to be less important than how we treat one another. In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus said that whatever we do to one another we do to him. The people in the story Jesus told didn’t believe that they were one with God. They weren’t following Jesus or seem to believe in Jesus. Those who treated others with compassion, respect, healing, and love were told basically, “Welcome home.” 

Treating others with compassion and respect is the way home Jesus talked about. Treating others with healing and forgiveness is the way home Jesus talked about.

Treating others with mercy and love is the way home Jesus talked about.

Come home, Jesus says, to unity with God. Come home to unity with love. Come home to the life we saw Stephen live in our reading from Acts, who even in the face of death, did not kill, or shout, or condemn, but offered forgiveness and love to those who were killing him. Stephen was home already, and after he died, he continued living at home with God.

That is the life Jesus offers us, the peace and healing that Stephen had. 

Just in the last two weeks, we’ve heard of how many murders? Dozens? Some within blocks of here, some near, some far away. How many countless others have there been that we don’t even know about? When I said earlier that humanity often sucks, we know that already. We know that all too well. 

God knows that too, and that’s exactly why God became human, because God sees us. God sees the goodness of humanity along with our brokenness, and God knows we need healing. God knows we need healing of our hurt and our fear. God knows we need healing of our anger and despair. God knows we need healing from our rage and brutality. So, God joined with all of that, so that even at our worst, Jesus is there with us saying, “Come home.”

Come home to peace. Lay aside your anger. Lay aside your need to vengeance. Bring me your hurts, Jesus says, and follow me home to healing. Bring me your anger, Jesus says, and follow me home to forgiveness. Bring me your despair, Jesus says, and follow me home to peace. Bring me your fear, Jesus says, and follow me home to love. 

Wow, That Got Out of Hand Quickly

Brad Sullivan

Proper 23, Year A

October 15, 2017

Emmanuel, Houston

Isaiah 25:1-9

Philippians 4:1-9

Matthew 22:1-14

Wow, That Got Out of Hand Quickly

So this is everyone’s favorite parable.  In a few sentences, Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast went from a king throwing a wedding feast for his son to the guests not wanting to come, killing the king’s servants, and the king utterly destroying their city and killing all of them.  From “Hey guys, let’s have a party,” to total bloodbath in 4.3 seconds, the hearer of this story is left rather breathless, thinking, “Wow, that really got out of hand quickly.”  We’re left stunned, and a bit scared as we hear this parable, and so we often try to clearly define what groups of people Jesus is talking about.

Christians have long tried to define themselves as the riff raff collected from the streets who accepted the king’s invitation, and Christians have then tried to define the Jews as the initial guests who killed the kings servants and were then killed by the king themselves.  Not so fast crazy Christian.  At the time Jesus told this parable, there weren’t any Christians yet.  Jesus was an itinerant Jewish Rabbi telling a parable to his disciples in the context of the priests and the  Pharisees trying to discredit him and his ministry while at the same time exalting themselves.

So, Jesus tells a parable about God’s judgment and God’s grace, and there is tension there which the Pharisees and the priests wanted to ignore.  Pharisees and priests followed the law of Moses, so much so that they became certain of their own righteousness before God not because of God’s grace, but because of how well they followed the rules.  They felt justified in God’s eyes as if they had earned his good graces.  That’s now how grace works.

In Jesus’ parable, no one earned anything.  People were invited to a party.  The king invited his people to the party, and they didn’t want to come.  In fact, they were so dead set against going to a party, that they would literally rather kill people than go to the party.  How crazy is that?  “I invited you to a party, and you chose to murder people instead?”  The king says.  So, at that point, yeah, the king kills those people and kills ‘em good, burns their town and leaves nothing but ashes.  

Then he invites whoever is left, the riff raff, and all is well.   They come to the party, and being riff raff, being the good and the bad, the whomever the king happened to find out among the streets, these people didn’t have fancy clothes to wear to the wedding.  In fact, it wouldn’t have mattered if they did, because at a wedding like this one, the king would have provided even the initial guests with wedding garments.  They were the kings guests, and they would wear what he provided, rather than showing off their own splendor and mocking those with less. 

So the riff raff is having a great time at the party.  Crazy uncle Earl is making a bit of a spectacle of himself, but that’s ok.  Music is going, the wine is flowing, and then the king sees this one dude without his wedding garment.  Did the kings servants mess up and not give him one?  Did he refuse to take it?  Did he sneak in through an open window and crash the party?  We don’t know, and that’s what the king wants to know, and rather than fess up, the man just stands there not saying anything.  From his initial entry without accepting the wedding garment to his refusal to speak to the king, the man is making one thing very clear.  “Sure, I’ll be here at your stupid party, but I’m going to be here on my terms.”

That’s now how the party works.  That’s not how grace works.  Grace is freely offered, and you just say “yes” and “thanks.”  If the guy in the story had just spoken up, he’d have been ok.  When asked “Why you don’t have a wedding garment?”, just admit that you’re a self righteous prat.  Just admit that you’re still broken and messed up and trying to earn your way or trying to place yourself above others.  If the guy without the wedding garment had just spoken up, the king would have said, “Oh, you misunderstood.  The party is a free gift, you don’t have to earn it.  You don’t have to be better than anybody else.  Here, take this wedding garment, and let me get you a beer.”

The story isn’t about being better than anybody else or being prepared, it’s about saying, “Gee whiz, thanks,” to God’s grace.  Often when we hear this parable, however, we make it about something else, and we try to define who has accepted the wedding garment and who hasn’t?  Do we, as the church, worry about our family and friends who reject becoming Christian, reject being a part of the church?  Possibly we do, but whoever said “the Church” are the ones who have accepted the invitation and put on the wedding garment?  Sometimes, in the church, we take our faith in Jesus and turn it into our own clothes, trusting in our faith in Jesus as a rule, rather than simply trusting in Jesus.  We take our faith in Jesus and turn it into our own terms.  We take Jesus and turn him into an institution.

Sometimes folks reject the church as the institution and reject the faith of the church as the faith of that institution.  They’re searching for truth, searching for a way, searching for life.  They are searching for God’s grace, for what we understand Jesus to be, but they aren’t finding what they are searching for in what we proclaim about Jesus nor in how we live out Jesus’ way.  Perhaps those who reject the church are being called to the wedding banquet from the streets, and we have unknowingly rejected the invitation, or accepted the invitation but done so on our own terms?

There is always that tension, that we take Jesus’ invitation and turn it around and accept it, but accept it on our own terms.  “The invitation is free, but I’m accepting it as a good and righteous person,” some may think, or “Now that I’ve been invited, I’ll earn my invitation by being such a good person from now on.”

There is always the tension between following Jesus and his way, the importance of living as Jesus taught, and the free gift of grace, the invitation that continues to be offered regardless of our actions, regardless of how good we are or how bad we are.  There is tension between the free gift of grace and the command to love one another as Jesus loves us, and the man in the parable who tries to go to the wedding feast on his own terms reminds us that we don’t get to resolve the tension. 

“I thought God wanted me to be a kind and decent person, loving others?”  Yes, he does. 

“But doesn’t he want me to show that off at his party?”  Nope.  You didn’t get to the party by being so awesome.  God invited you out of grace.

See God wants to have a party, all the time, and at the end of all time.  In this life, God wants us to love each other.  God wants us to accept his grace and to give his grace.  God looks at us and thinks, “Man, y’all are messed up.  Just admit it, and quit with this silliness of thinking you have to be better than each other.  That ain’t how I work.  Y’all are all messed up, and I want to have a party with all of you.”  That’s how grace works.  The judgment is that we don’t buy it, or rather than we think we have to buy it.  When we think we have to buy it, that’s when things get out of hand really quickly.  The truth is, we don’t have to buy God’s grace or earn God’s grace.  We don’t have to fight with each other to try to get enough of it.  We don’t have to claim ourselves as having it and others as not.  That’s keeping our own clothes on.  God’s grace is God’s grace.  It’s a free gift, and there is plenty to go around.

Setting the Bar Kinda Low

Brad Sullivan

6 Epiphany, Year A

February 12, 2017

Emmanuel, Houston

Sirach 15:15-20

Matthew 5:21-37

Setting the Bar Kinda Low

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”  That’s where we left off last week in Jesus’ sermon in Matthew chapter 5.  At a first hearing, it sounds like Jesus is giving a major, “you’ve got to be good enough for God” kind of statement.  “You’ve got to be righteous enough in God’s eyes in order to be good enough for God.”  That’s certainly where my teenage brain took this passage when I read it back in high school.  “Man, I’ve got to be even better that the religious leaders in order to be good enough for God?”  Yikes!

Well, I’ve got a few critiques to that particular understanding of Jesus and the Gospel.  The first is, let’s face it, if Jesus wants us to be better people than the scribes and the Pharisees, he’s setting the bar kinda low.  Just about any time Jesus mentions the scribes and the Pharisees, he’s saying not to be like them, calling them hypocrites.  So, not too much of a high standard of perfection there.  The second critique of the “You’ve got to be good enough for God” understanding of Jesus’ sermon is this:  “You don’t have to be good enough for God.”  Striving to be good enough for God, striving to be righteous for one’s own sake is missing the point of Jesus entirely.  Jesus is much more concerned with people’s well being than he is with people’s righteousness.  That’s the lesson I get from our story in Matthew’s Gospel today, not reward and punishment, but Jesus’ genuine concern and care for the well-being of people. 

Several years ago, I was gently pushing our then three year old son, Rhys, on a tire swing in the front yard of our house.  We were having a lovely time, and then our neighbor’s granddaughter came over.  She was about six, and she asked if she could push Rhys.  To be honest, I had some trepidation about the prudence of allowing such a young girl to push my son, but not wanting to be an overly protective helicopter parent, I decided to just let them play.  That worked really well for a about 20 seconds, after which time, she spun the tire swing too hard, and Rhys fell off the swing, breaking his collar bone.  Way to go, Dad.

Amidst Rhys’ crying and my checking to see if he was as hurt as I feared, the little girl began apologizing profusely, the fear in her voice and face communicating two things:  “I’m sad I hurt Rhys,” eclipsed almost totally by “It was an accident; I’m so afraid that I’m in serious trouble.”  For my part, I had almost forgotten that our neighbor’s granddaughter was still even there, focused exclusively on Rhys and what appeared even by looking at it to be a broken collar bone.  I was certainly not interested at all in my neighbor’s granddaughter being in trouble.  I knew it was an accident, and my only concern was for my son’s well being, not the girl’s being in trouble or not.  Assuring her that it was ok, I quickly scooped Rhys up and took him to the hospital. 

What strikes me about that story is or neighbor’s granddaughter’s concern about being in trouble eclipsing her concern for Rhys’ well-being.  Now, to be fair, she was a little kid.  Of course that’s how she felt.  She didn’t know what else to do or how else to deal with the situation, so no chastisement of her intended in any way.

But, now imagine that the little girl was an adult who had just accidentally hurt someone, and imagine this adult is more concerned with being in trouble or even worse, being righteous in God’s eyes, than this person is concerned with the well-being of the other person.  That is the situation I find when we hear Jesus critiquing the religion and way of life of the scribes, Pharisees, and other religious leaders of his day.  Be it the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the religious leaders pass by on the other side of the road when they see someone hurt, or be it the actual practices of the religious leaders in which they are shown to take money from poor widows in order to pay a temple tax, or pray about how wonderful they are compared to those around them, we see a group of religious leaders concerned with their own righteousness before God, worrying about being in trouble, while having almost no concern for the well-being of the people around them.

Jesus, in his constant healing of people; in his care for the orphan, the widow, the downtrodden, and the outcast; and in his preaching, including the sermon of his that we hear today, Jesus showed how much he cared for people’s well being, and how interested he wasn’t in people being righteous before God for their own sake.  Our being righteous before God, being good enough to please God, Jesus took care of that on the cross.  Jesus’ desire for us was then not that we would continue to be worried about being righteous or good enough before God, but rather that we would love God and love people.  From a place of fear about our own righteousness before God, Jesus sent us on a quest to love God and love people without fear.  That quest of love is what we hear Jesus teaching about in his words that we heard today, a far more complicated, rewarding, and beautiful understanding of life than simple reward and punishment.

In the teaching that we heard today, Jesus was basically going through the 10 Commandments, saying that on the quest of love, a basic rule based keeping of the 10 Commandments is not sufficient.  Some probably hear his words and are rather disheartened.  “Not only can we not kill people, we’re not even supposed to hate them?  No fair, that’s way too hard!  Not only can we not cheat on our wives and our husbands, we’re not even supposed to fantasize about it?”  From a trying to be good enough standpoint, no we can’t live up to that.  We’re not perfect.  We’re not going to be.  Jesus is teaching that the point of the commandments is not to be perfect, not to be righteous before God for one’s own sake.  Rather, the point of the 10 Commandments is to live in such a way that your life is a quest of love, a quest of loving God and loving people without fear. 

See, the 10 Commandments are a pretty good start to things, but you can keep all 10 of them and still be a pretty terrible person.  Imagine talking to someone who makes sure to keep the Commandments.  This person worships God, has no idols, goes to church on Sunday and does no other work, has never committed perjury or lied about someone to get them in trouble; he doesn’t talk back to his parents; and he’s basically content with what he’s got and doesn’t steal from others.  He sounds like a pretty good guy.  Now let’s say he then starts talking about how righteous he is, and you call him on it because you’ve noticed some rather less than wonderful habits of this person. 

“So, I hear you saying how righteous you are, but you’re also kind of a bully.  You routinely beat people up when they anger you, and are constantly insulting and verbally abusing others.”

“Well, yeah, that’s true, but hey, at least I haven’t killed anybody!”  Check, commandment kept. 

“Uh huh.  Ok, well how can you be so righteous, considering how terribly you treat your wife?”

“Hey, I don’t have to treat her well, I just have to not commit adultery.  I haven’t.”  Check, commandment kept.

See, there are all kinds of ways we can be really terrible to each other and still keep the Commandments.  Even in following Jesus’ more stringent code, we can find ways to hurt each other.  “Ok, Jesus, I got it.  No adultery, no ogling other women, and no divorce.  Beyond that, I can be as big of a prat to my wife as I want.”  Far from giving us a more stringent set of rules for us to follow in order to be righteous before God for our own sake, Jesus is showing us that the whole point of the commandments, is to care about the well being of others as God does. 

Now, there’s still this part where Jesus says that if we treat people terribly, we should be thrown into the hell of fire.  He’s saying we should be thrown into Gehenna, the burning garbage dump outside of Jerusalem.  Have you ever known someone who was such a horrible louse that they seemed like human garbage?  That’s what Jesus is talking about.  People matter so much to Jesus, and so he taught that if you treat people terribly, you’ve turned yourself into human garbage, good for nothing but the burning garbage dump, metaphorically speaking.  Far from actually wanting us to cut off our hands and pluck out our eyes, Jesus is teaching that even small practices of treating others terribly can lead to an entire life of treating others terribly, so stop with the seemingly insignificant practices in which you treat others without love so that you don’t end up living your entire life treating others without love.

Jesus is showing us the heart of God, a heart not interested in keeping rules for one’s own sake, a heart not interested in fear and  punishment, but a heart interested in using the rules to show us how better to love people and to care for their well being.  Jesus really is far more concerned with people’s well being, fare more concerned with love than he is with people’s self-serving righteousness. 

Jesus is inviting us to follow him in a life that is a quest of love, a quest to give and receive love.  In this quest, we have our eyes and our hearts open to check in with ourselves and ask, “am I really living as a loving person?  Am I full of anger and resentment?  Maybe I’m generally ok, but need some help with loving right now.  Maybe I should seek that help.”  In this quest of love that Jesus has given us, we don’t go it alone.  Love cannot be a solitary venture. 

We’re on this quest with each other, we have our eyes and our hearts open to the people around us.  Are they doing ok?  Do they have enough?  Do I have enough?  Do I have more than I need?  Is the path that my life is on serving only myself, or is the path that my life is on also being a light of love for others?  Is the path that our lives are on serving as a light of love for others.  That is the path of the quest Jesus has set us on, a quest in which we care not about our own righteousness before God for our own sake, a quest not of reward and punishment.  Jesus has set us on the quest of genuine concern for the care and well-being of others, the quest in which we love God and love and serve people without fear, the quest of love. 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.