Ok, here we go. Jesus is about to get as pointed and clear with the religious as he perhaps ever does. But before he does that, he prefaces it with some rationale. He begins by pointing out that the Scribes and Pharisees sit in “Moses’ seat”. Whatever we know about the historical veracity of this literal “seat”, suffice it to say here that what it represents is having authority in teaching. Jesus names that the scribes and Pharisees can and do teach the way of Moses. This does two things: One, it shows us that Jesus is not completely dismissing the religious leaders. And, two, it shows us that Jewish faith, commitment to the Torah, and identifying as Jewish matters deeply to Jesus. He is not dismissing any of that.

But then he moves into the old adage of how they don’t “practice what they preach” (do any of us?!? I’m trying!). He points out the heavy burdens they place on people that they are not willing to carry themselves. He points out how their piety is merely delivered as a display and lacks the authenticity of true spiritual practice. And then comes the verse that haunts me the most: “They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.”

I never thought much of this verse until I went to my first ordination service at our Annual Conference. And in fact just a year or two ago, our bishop preached from this passage in that service to point out exactly what I’ve felt. You see, at our ordination services at our annual meeting as the best seats are reserved for the clergy who parade in donning our robes, stoles, and scapulars. We then go through an elaborate service, which I do find beautiful, but which also clearly marks who is clergy and who is not and which clergy are at which levels and deserving of certain titles. It runs juxtaposed to this passage if you ask me. I cannot help but imagine that if Jesus were there, he wouldn’t be there. He would be somewhere else, loving a hurting person down the block.

At the same time, many of those same clergy people will go back to their churches and humbly, authentically, and holistically engage with their congregations and communities. They will set up food shelves in their church basements, work towards racial reconciliation in their neighborhoods, and help all who cross their path to discover their belovedness of God. It is, to be sure, a mixed bag.

What it comes down to (and which Jesus is about to boldly call out- stay tuned!) is authenticity. I can live with all the pomp and circumstance, but it must be matched with authentic spiritual leadership and humility. It must be paired with a sense of digging in the dirt to create communities which authentically seek to love God, self, and neighbor. If we are in this for the purpose of furthering our careers, gaining power, having news articles written about us, and building our brand, well then, stay tuned, because Jesus has some words for us in tomorrow’s passage.

If the end game of work and is so that one day we will be lifted up, we miss the mark. Terribly. But if we simply seek to do what is right and good for the sake of the betterment of humanity and our world, well then I think Jesus is right along with us.

“Why do pastors so often treat congregations with the impatience and violence of developers building a shopping mall instead of the patient devotion of a farmer cultivating a field? The shopping mall will be abandoned in disrepair in fifty years; the field will be healthy and productive for another thousand if its mysteries are respected by a skilled farmer. Pastors are assigned by the church to care for congregations, not exploit them, to gently cultivate parishes that are plantings of the Lord, not brashly develop religious shopping malls.” -Eugene Peterson

“Love God, love yourself, and love your neighbor”. Why is this so hard? We say it all the time. Preachers mention it and congregations nod their heads. Speakers say it to large gatherings of church leaders and they nod their heads. We talk about the need to simply “love God, self, and neighbor” but we struggle to do it. So we justify ourselves by the occasional outreach project in which we engage; we put together some kind of program, good programs that should not be minimized, and we pat ourselves on the back for loving God and neighbor.

Loving God, self, and neighbor is not a strategy, program or even a ministry. It’s how we are to live. It is a way of life. It is the kind of life we are to live every moment of every day. Sometimes I think our programs, strategies, and ministries actually impede a life of loving God and neighbor rather than fostering such a life, because they teach us that loving God and neighbor has a specific context, location and start and end time. Our programs do to our spiritual lives what I feel like the over-programming of our kids does to them. Kids don’t know how to play anymore. They don’t know how to go outside and make up a game and just run around the neighborhood anymore. They don’t know how to gather the neighbor kids and play stickball in the street with the corners as bases, a frisbee as the pitcher’s mound and timeouts for cars. They need a programmed organized team or they’re paralyzed.

I feel like this has happened to “loving God and neighbor” in our churches. We don’t know how to do it. We know how to show up for a worship service and an outreach project, but we need a program and structure to tell us how to do it as a community in our actual lives. The way my effectiveness as a pastor is literally and specifically measured against how well my church is growing in “love of God and neighbor”.  I just don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind here.

Has the American Church become so embedded in capitalism and the free market that “love of God, self, and neighbor” has become a programmed commodity that we buy and sell? What does a community fully and wholly committed to a simple but robust way of loving God, loving ourselves, and loving our literal and metaphorical neighbor look like? Let’s paint that picture. And then let’s live it.

“Whose head is this, and whose title?” Another translation says “whose image is this, and whose inscription?” The Greek word for image/head here is εικον (icon), and is defined as, “an object shaped to resemble the form or appearance of something”. The coin has been shaped to resemble the form of Caesar, the emperor. His image is on it, therefore the coin belongs to him. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He follows it up with “…[give] to God the things that are God’s”. What Jesus doesn’t clarify is exactly what belongs to God. So the natural question is “what does belong to God?” The answer to that question lie in the question, “what bears the image of God?” Answer: Humanity. We are created in the image of God.

So give your coins to whatever image it bears. I believe that does mean that as we approach April 15th, don’t fret about giving your “George Washington’s”, “Andrew Jackson’s” and “Abraham Lincoln’s” to whom they belong. But more so, this means give yourselves to God. Give your entire self over to God. This is a radical statement, for Caesar demands ultimate allegiance. Jesus essentially says, “give him your money, but don’t give him yourself.” There are two tough teachings in this one statement. One, you don’t need money. Release it. It doesn’t define you or sustain you. Two, don’t give yourself or “pledge your allegiance” to anything but God because that is to whom you belong.

Jesus masterfully takes a question about taxes that is meant to trap him and spins it around to trap us. He forces us to answer the question, “In whom or what do you trust? To whom or what are you giving yourself, pledging your allegiance?” This is a difficult thing. Friends, the United States of America is not where our ultimate allegiance lies. Our allegiance is to the kingdom of God, not to any kingdom of this world. God created us in God’s image, to actually be God’s reflection in the world. So may we enter into the journey of growing more fully into just that- the image of God. An image which transcends all borders, boundaries, and banners. Contrary to what many politicians claim, the United States is not the “hope of the world” or the “city on a hill”. No, the hope of the world is the triune God manifested in the world through the Body of Christ, which is the “city on a hill”, and which spans across the entire globe with no borders and no limits.

May we grow more and more to reflect the beauty of this triune God, the one whose image we bear.

This is a difficult parable. It was quite interesting hearing it read from the innocent voices of 5th and 6th graders on Sunday. A couple of things to keep hammering home about parables: One, remember they are not told to teach us theological lessons as much as to get each of us to reflect on our lives. Two, context! These parables are not morality fables that stand all by themselves as timeless tales. They come in a context. Jesus has a specific audience, here and it’s the religious leaders of the day. So perhaps I, more than most of you, should be doing some deep inner reflection on this parable.

If you’d like to hear me flesh this thing out more, you can catch my sermon from last Sunday here at about the 35:00 point. But suffice it to say this for this post. Jesus begins this parable, as he does so many, “the Kingdom of Heaven is like…” He’s comparing this wedding banquet to the Kingdom of Heaven, and remember that the Kingdom of Heaven is “at hand”. That is, it is near, within grasp, available now. While this is a parable about the “end times” our our “end time”, it is also not. It’s about right now. It is saying to us that the Kingdom of Heaven is present and available for us to step into right here, right now.

The harshness of the end of it is to say, “are you dressed for the Kingdom of Heaven? Or are you dressed for another kingdom? Are you participating in it? Are you in the spirit of it? Are you “dressed” in a way that honors the king and the king’s party? Or are you just there, doing your own thing? Are you living in the spirit of the Kingdom of Heaven or the spirit of the kingdom of this age?

As I said in my sermon on this, if we want to see what the proper wedding gown for the “chosen” is, just see Colossians 3:12-14. Meditate on that, pray through that, put this passage on when you get up in the morning and head out to your day. Join the party.

Jesus has entered Jerusalem to proclamations of Messiahship, he has turned the tables over in the temple, he has cursed a fig tree as a metaphorical condemnation of Jerusalem, and now the religious established is furious. They come to him and ask him “by what authority” he does these things. Jesus responds in such a way that they’re not going to get that answer.

In chapters 21, 22, and 23 (just wait for chapter 23, it’s Jesus’ “Steve Martin needing a rental car” moment), we get some of Jesus’ most pointed and harsh words, words filled with condemnation and judgment. It is vitally important to understand who Jesus’ audience is in these words: The Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the scribes. That is, the religious establishment.  Many of these verses have often been pulled from their context and used by religious leaders toward the crowds in efforts to control and manipulate people into some kind of restrictive religious expression.

But the truth is that these verses are directed to the system. Jesus isn’t talking to the crowds here. He’s talking directly to and about not the people in the pews or in the marketplace, but to the pastors, the elders, the bishops, and popes. It even explicitly says in verse 45, “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.”

To those of you who sit in the pews every Sunday and/or head out into the marketplace every Monday-Friday, there’s a message here for you: Love and serve your church, but watch it with a critical eye. Do not be afraid to ask hard questions to those in charge, like me. Do not just sit blindly in the pews every Sunday trusting anything and everything we and the systems to which we are attached say and do. Love your church by getting involved and helping to ensure that it is operating and leading authentically and honestly.

To those of us like me, who are pastors and leaders, there is a message here for us in the form of a question: To what degree am I married to the system in which I’m a leader? Am I willing to look deeply into it and name its dysfunctions? Am I willing to let it die for the sake of true renewal? Can I envision myself living out my call without this system? As we move through these pages, I think if we’re answering no to those questions… woe to us.

In chapter 3 John the Baptist said to the Pharisees, “bear fruit worthy of repentance… Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” In chapter 7 Jesus echoed John’s words at the close of the Sermon on Mount, warning the people about false prophets (7:19). And here as the relationship between Jesus and the system and those who represent it heats up, the message is the same. The Gospel is good news. But for those of us in power, it may not feel like it.

“Hosanna in the highest!”, “Save us!”, kids waving palm branches, donkeys, yay, it’s Palm Sunday, everybody’s happy… except Jesus. The very next verse in the story has Jesus going into the temple and driving out “all who were selling and buying” there, and he turned over the money changers’ tables. I promised you civil disobedience and here it is. But I also promised you non-violent civil disobedience, and, well, there’s a degree to which Jesus is violent here.

Dismantling oppressive systems is never pretty. It’s not nice and diplomatic and peaceful. It requires anger intentionally expressed and strategically applied. These systems are so embedded in whatever culture in which they exist, that the work to dismantle them necessarily upsets their defenders. One of the most effective defense mechanisms for those who benefit from the system is to try to sedate the overturning work by calling for all to “play nice”. But that only works on a sports-balls field where (presumably) there is equality in the power dynamic. It is disingenuous for those in power to call everybody to nicely “play by the rules” when the rules favor those in power.

Jesus knows this. It’s time to expose the system for what it is, and so he does. He makes some noise in the temple, turning over the tables, and then quoting the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah saying, “My house shall become a house of prayer [Isaiah 56:7], but you are making it a den of robbers. [Jeremiah 7:11]” Let’s be clear. This work can easily be (and often is) spun into anti-semitic theology and practice. This is wrong. Jesus is not anti-Jewish here. He is Jewish. This is not about a specific religion. This is about systems that oppress and exploit. It would be wrong- very wrong- to apply this story to Judaism. It would be wrong- very wrong- not to take it as a call for us to examine the systems in which we live now and wonder about the ways in which they oppress and exploit. That’s what this is about.

So the Chief Priests are furious with Jesus at this point with what he has done both in and out of the temple. Jesus drops his mic and leaves. He heads to his Airbnb a few miles out of town in Bethany to get some sleep. Tomorrow is a new day.

But it’s not. The oppression is of course still alive and well. And it’s here we get a strange, but also powerful little story. He returns to Jerusalem and sees a fig tree by the side of the road that is bearing no fruit. Remember, trees bearing fruit is one of the key running metaphors in this Gospel, and here we are, toward the end, with a literal fruitless tree. Jesus curses the tree, and it dies. Herein is “Hangry Jesus”. That’s what he is. He’s hangry.

He hungers to see “his father’s house” bear beautiful fruit in the world, but it doesn’t. Not only does it not bear good fruit, at this point, but there is little to no hope that it will. It’s time for that system to die. In all honesty, I think this is the United Methodist story right now. It’s sick, not bearing fruit, actively doing harm, and we may be at that point where we need to let God wither it away like the fig tree. Let it die so that the SPirit can get ahold of it completely and raise it into something we never imagined. Systems and structures are important, but that’s all they are. When they stop working for us, it’s time for them to die and be reimagined. We can come to love our structures and systems, and it can indeed be hard to let them go, but sometimes we must, for that’s all they are- structures and systems. The good stuff, the stuff we love and that is truly good? That will go back into the soil and give birth to new life. But first it must die and go back into the earth.

Here we go. Palm Sunday. Now it’s all happening, right? But you might be asking, “is not Easter for another month? So how are we at Palm Sunday already?” Well, one of the things about Matthew, in particular, is there is a lot that happens between Palm Sunday and Easter. So this text comes early in Lent for us so that we can tend to all that happens between here and Easter. When we get to actual Palm Sunday in worship, we will move back to this story.

This is a long celebrated story, also referred to as the “Triumphal Entry”. Jesus comes into Jerusalem, with Passover approaching, and people are recognizing him for just who Matthew continues to construct him to be: The Messiah. They lay down their cloaks and wave branches, something you do for a king. It’s a kind of literal way to “prepare the way” as John the Baptist called us to do in chapter three. And they cry “Hosanna”, which means “save us”, and the label him “Son of David”, which is a Messianic title. It is one of the few Sundays of the Church Year when we actually act out the story. Why don’t we do that more?

There is a more than one blog worth of material in this story, but suffice it to say this: There’s one little problem in Jesus’ so-called “Triumphal Entry”. Everything about it indicates that Jesus is this powerful king who will liberate the people. He is like a knight in shining armor who’s come to rescue. Except for one thing: Knights and kings ride horses, not donkeys. Jesus is coming in as a king, but just what kind of king? This is not a king who rides in on a horse as a warrior. This is a king who rides in on a donkey, a beast of burden, because he is a king who isn’t served but is one who serves.

Jesus will liberate not by wielding military power over an enemy. No, he will liberate by standing in sacrificial power with the oppressed. The dismantling of oppressive systems that Jesus has been about throughout the Gospel happens not through the usual political means. It comes in a whole other kind of way. It will come through the humble strength of solidarity and sacrificial nonviolent acts of civil disobedience.

Just stay tuned. You’ll see. Hosanna. Hosanna in the highest.

Jesus was “Moved with compassion” (Matthew 20:29-34). The Greek word for compassion here (and in most places) is among my favorite Greek words (because of both its meaning and it’s just fun to say). It’s σπλαγχνίζομαι, and it’s pronounced “splagnizomai”. Try saying it out loud. It’s fun. But this word is rooted in the same word for the “inward parts of the body, the viscera, the entrails.” Or, I think one could say, the bowels. The compassion that Jesus feels is one he feels in his body, it stirs something in him physically.

I love the way Jesus is connected to and aware of his body. He lets his body speak to him, and because of this he always seems to obey those nudges, even if it will get him in trouble or even if he simply doesn’t want to do it. His heart breaks- his stomach literally churns- for people and he can’t not do something. Jesus is on a mission here. He’s got somewhere to be (just wait for tomorrow’s story. It’s a biggie). Jesus wants to take his movement forward, but his body tells him to pay attention to the cries of the marginalized on his way.

As a pastor, it’s easy to get swept up into what I need to do to “move the organization forward”, an to do that, but to what degree and at what expense? Sometimes I feel too much like a leader of a non-profit organization and in so doing end up leading a non-prophet faith community. Because of the pressure to move the organization forward, we pastor types often don’t have the time and even vision to pay attention to those nudges, to listen to our bodies. But deep down the nudges are there.

What if we, like Jesus, were so moved by things that we couldn’t not respond, no matter the risk? What might the Church become? I think attendance may drop or simply not grow. But I also believe that engagement may increase. I think more disciples might be made. I think the Church might begin to matter in its culture again. I pray that as I grow in my ministry I might pay more attention to that which moves me with compassion and respond. May we never move our organizations forward at the expense of those along the path on our way.

Once again the disciples are concerned about being the greatest, although the “sons of Zebedee” (James and John) stoop to a new level here. They send mom. To be fair, maybe mom up and went of her own accord, but they did not stop her. When Jesus says, “are you able to drink the cup I am about to drink” (a “cup” which he has just described in verses 18 and 19), their response is a quick, “we are able”, which indicates that they certainly endorsed their mother’s question. So whether it was of her own accord or their prompting, James and John are glad she asked. Yes, there were helicopter parents even in first century Israel.

It’s a strange scene, and I wonder how their mom responded to this. We don’t get her reaction. I wonder if she was stopped in her tracks at the thought of her sons drinking from the same cup as Jesus. The cup of being handed over, condemned to death, mocked, flogged and crucified is nothing a mother would ever wish for her children. Yes, he also said, “yet on the third day he will be raised”, but I would be willing to bet that mom’s ears stopped at words like “death”, “”mocked”, “flogged” and “crucified”. I have a hunch she didn’t hear “raised”, and I don’t know that I would either.

This “being like Jesus” thing is not a call to fame, fortune, success, and power. It is not a call to be “great”. It is a call to servanthood, sacrifice, and humility. To be like Jesus, to go where he goes and do what he does, is to do the risky, hard work of empowering the powerless, embracing the outcast, including the disenfranchised and serving the servant. It is the hard work of dismantling oppressive systems. And such a life is not one usually celebrated by those with power. It is a threat to them, and because this risky for us.

And so it does not lead to fame, fortune, success, and power but it leads to its opposites. This is what led Christ to the cross. Many atonement theories will argue that the cross was God’s plan for salvation, but, though that may be, we must remember that the “powers that be” did not put him there so that their sins would be forgiven. They put him there because he upset their power and fortune. We have learned much in that last 2,000 years, and so we can rest knowing that, in most countries anyway, following Jesus will likely not cost us our lives, but it may cost us our livelihood.

The call to follow Christ is a call to hard stuff… but it’s also the good stuff. It is hard but it is good, and it is right, and to it, we must commit ourselves. For it is the work of the Kingdom, which is at hand, and which we are called to work with God to expand. For people like me, I think it means actively laying down my privilege to make space for others who do not look like me to lead. It means getting more women, more people of color, more immigrants, more people of non-heteronormative identities, more people other faiths in positions of power.

The system is designed to favor me, but in so doing it marginalizes others. To “drink from the same cup” as Jesus is necessarily to do the work of dismantling such systems to bring about a more truly equitable world. It’s not easy. And it comes at a cost to us. But it’s the good work. In the small ways that I’ve stepped into this work in my life, I’ve found that I too am liberated through it. Protecting systems is anxious work. It traps us. We become the servants of the system rather than the system serving us. The more I work to dismantle marginalizing systems, the more alive my spirit becomes.

It’s hard work, though. It’s scary. It’s uncertain. But it’s life-giving. Try it.

“Not fair.” That’s a common response to this parable. As Americans we have this idea of fairness pounded into us, particularly when it comes to things like incomes, wealth, and economics. And in defending our free market economy, we too often land in the place of defending whatever the status quo is: “The market always works,” we say. “Trust the free market,” we say. This parable really isn’t about economics, but it also kind of is. It’s about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like, but economics is in the mix here, because the Kingdom of Heaven is about the breaking down of oppressive systems, and economies are most certainly often oppressive systems.

From my suburban American perspective, I read this and respond, “not fair!” as the workers who only worked an hour get the same pay as those who worked all day. Verse 10 says, “but each of them also received the usual daily wage…” We get angry and cry “not fair” at everybody getting the “daily wage”. Let that in. We think it’s unfair that everybody got what is necessary to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. We think we are entitled to more than our “daily bread”, as we worry not about today but tomorrow as well.

All the while what we slip right passed verses 6 and 7: “…and he said to them, ‘why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.'” It’s unfair that people got a living wage, but it’s not unfair that not everyone got hired?

We can debate the merits of a free market economy, I suppose, but one of the things this parable does is expose the ways in which the privileged benefit from it. Privilege is one of those things today that many of us like to deny exists. We think we got what we got merely because of our hard work, without recognizing that we got what we got because a system is in place wherein we got hired “early in the morning”. Those people who showed up late don’t deserve what I got. Our cries of unfairness do not expose an unfair God, they expose our own privilege and sense of entitlement. This parable doesn’t match up perfectly with the “equity/equality” concept, but the same point is in it: The Kingdom of Heaven is a place where the systemic barriers are removed.

God is not unfair here. God is doing “whatever is right” (verse 4). There is a whole heap of other things that this parable is about, but one of its overarching themes is the way in which we so often won’t let God be God. We fall right back into the serpent’s temptation in Genesis 3: “…for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” We don’t trust God to be God. We think we know what’s best, what’s fair, “whatever is right.”

The word for “right” that Matthew uses here in terms of the wage the later laborers will receive is the same word often translated “righteous”. When we take control of what is “righteous”, we take the fruit of the forbidden tree as we seek to be like God. We question the landowner, and we live lives full of envy because of the landowner’s generosity. Let us let God be God and us be us. We are laborers in God’s vineyard. Our job is to help plant, grow, and harvest grapes that God will turn into a beautiful, complex, full, vibrant wine for the world. Let’s let God do that. And let’s recognize that God will continually go back out to find more laborers to help in this work. Let’s welcome them into the work with us with open and generous arms, rather than minimize and marginalize their work with us with clenched fists of envy.