June 16, 2013
Pentecost 4 - Father’s Day
1st Kings 21:1-4
Luke 7:36 - 8:3
(prayer)
Yesterday, the Leduc and Minor Football Association hosted an all day pre-season jamboree for all three age levels of our teams.
For some of the 10-12 year old players on the peewee team (that I help coach), it was their first exposure to game action after just a few weeks of practices. To help these rookies (and everyone for that matter) ease into the season to come, the rules for this jamboree were a bit different than what will apply in August:
· The coaches were allowed on the field to call the plays and to help players get into position.
· There was no kicking (punts, field goals, converts).
· No first downs. Everyone got the same number of offensive and defensive plays. If a team scored a touchdown or if there was a turnover and the team still had offensive plays left, the ball was spotted back at the 30 yard line and we carried on.
· If someone went offside or was holding, etc., we didn’t call a penalty - we just used it a teaching moment for the players.
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Most (if not all) sports have a set of rules that govern play. The rules set out how the games is to be played and lay out consequences when it is not played that way. The rules set the boundaries within which the fun and competition is to be had. This is true in organized sports with detailed, published rulebooks; it is also true in card games, floor curling and in the games we make up on the school ground.
And if we use the word “rules” lightly, we must admit that the same is basically true in almost every aspect of daily life - around us all the time are standards and expectations (voluntary and/or obligatory) that govern how we garden, how we behave in fast food line ups, which cupboards the plates go in after they’re washed, what a green traffic light means, whether to put the toilet seat down or not, etc.
At a personal level, the expectations can vary. I have noticed that when I am out with my mother, and we are ‘people watching’, it is clear that the generation gap between us has informed a different set of expectations in some respects of behaviour, and clothes, and phone use, and... oh, the list is too long to go through here.
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The church is not immune to rules either. Well we've got those Ten Commandments. And closer to home, this (hold up binder) is the St. David's United Church Policy and Procedures Handbook. Last Monday evening, I was in the office watching a live internet seminar (a webinar) to learn about the completely revamped United Church Manual that will take effect on August 1st.
There are a lot of rules out there.
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When someone doesn’t meet our expectations, when they don’t follow the rules (as we understand them), we notice. And sometimes, we are moved to highlight the transgression.
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Today’s scripture readings are both about people not following the rules... as understood by someone else.
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The Luke version of the anointing of Jesus is unique from the accounts in other gospels.
The setting is a home where Jesus was an invited guest, not a gathering of his followers.
The woman in question was not supposed to be there. She crashed the party.
The host of the dinner party (Simon, the Pharisee) clearly noticed the flagrant (and fragrant) transgressions of “the rules”:
· First, the woman was not supposed to be there - this was a by-invitation-only event. And the smell of the perfume - completely spoiled the mood.
· Secondly, even if it was an open house, she would still not be welcome. Simon was a respected leader in the community and this woman was a "sinner", unworthy of sharing his company.
· Thirdly, there was the fact that Jesus did not back away from the woman, that he graciously accepted her actions as a gift and (I’m guessing) enjoyed the soothing ointment (ahhhhhh). Simon quickly decided that he had misjudged Jesus as a prophet, because a prophet wouldn’t associate with a woman like that.
Clearly Jesus wasn’t playing by the rules.
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Last week, we read about King Ahab and Queen Jezebel of northern Israel and how they scared the prophet Elijah into a self-imposed exile after he criticized the unfaithful leadership of the king.
Today, Ahab shows his colours again. He decides that Naboth's little farm would be the perfect size and location for a vegetable garden. He wanted it so bad that he was willing to offer a different plot of land in exchange. Ahab assumed that this would be seen as a reasonable business deal. After all, what difference does it make where a farmer farms. But having your vegetable garden by your house is essential.
What Ahab didn't realize was that it was not the act and practice of farming that was most important to Naboth. It was the history and legacy that this particular plot of land meant to Naboth. It was priceless and no offer would be good enough.
This strange way of non-business thinking confused and saddened Ahab. So, he went home, climbed into bed and sulked.
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That was where I ended the reading today. But that's not the end of the story.
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Jezebel saw the king's sadness and she became enraged. "Are you not the king of Israel? Get up and act like it. I will get that land for you."
So, Jezebel sent out a decree in Ahab's name proclaiming a ritual fast in Naboth's city. She made sure that Naboth would have a place of honour at the feast where everyone could see him. Then she arranged for two separate witnesses to accuse Naboth of blasphemy. On the strength of these men's testimony, Naboth was convicted and stoned to death.
Jezebel then told her husband that he could now just take the land because the previous owner has passed away.
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Ahab believed that the rules of proper conduct would be for him to obtain the land through a mutually agreed-upon sale. Jezebel believed that the main rule was that the king can do anything he wants, take anything he wants. From her perspective Naboth simply wasn't playing by the rules.
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The biggest news stories are always the scandals - catching people not playing by the rules. Politics is full of them:
· Mike Duffy's claiming a housing allowance as an out of town senator even though he has lived in Ottawa for years and the Prime Minister's chief of staff giving him $90K out of his own pocket and out of the goodness of his heart.
· Toronto mayor Rob Ford alleged cosy relationship with a mid-level drug and gun selling street gang.
· And was Barack Obama born in Hawaii or Kenya. Even though all of the evidence shows Hawaii, Donald Trump keeps telling me that it is an on-going scandal of rule breaking. Oddly I haven’t heard The Donald say the same thing about potential republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz of Texas who has admitted that he was born in Canada to US parents... but I’m sure that the same rules will apply.
· And of course there has been all the talk about the huge amount of routine data that is being mined by US (and Canadian) authorities as part of the war of terror: emails, phone records and who knows what else. The scandal is not so much that this was a breach of the rules; it's that no one seemed to have noticed that the rules had been changed to make this broad-brush espionage legal.
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The purpose of rules is supposed to be about providing a societal framework to ensure that everyone has the same access to justice, fairness, opportunity, honesty and inclusion.
Sadly, there are people whose sole career is to find ways to get around the rules to give only certain people a competitive advantage.
Maybe you have seen this picture scrolling through the announcement slides before church.
What do you think Jesus would say about that? And I bet it wouldn’t be “hey, you can’t watch from behind the fence, go buy a ticket!”
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As some of you know, I had the gracious opportunity to visit the city of Boston in early May, barely two weeks after the Marathon bombing. I walked along the Boylston Street sidewalks where the bombs went off.
There was almost no sign that anything had happened there (except some boards over some second floor windows and obviously new cement in some areas of the path).
I took a picture of a sign on one building near the bombing sites.
The modus operandi for a terrorist is to motivate people to change their lives based on a constant state of fear. The theme of Boston Strong says that people are going to look out for each other - that community, not fear will rule the day.
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There is a great quote by Mahatma Gandhi that says:
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it – always.”
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So, with that in mind, with-respect-to the story from First Kings, should we model our lives after the rules of Jezebel and Ahab or of Naboth. Yes, the tyrant king and queen got their way through violence and force, because one of their rules was that the powerful can do whatever they want, no matter the cost to human life or decency.
Or do we see a rule for faithful living in Naboth’s attitude:
The land is not merely a commodity of mine to be bought and sold to the highest bidder - it has a history to be honoured and a future to uphold.
As a private garden, Naboth’s land would satisfy only the royal court. As a vineyard, it would provide sustenance for many more people than those in his household.
As an asset to be bought or stolen, the land’s purpose is short term. As a legacy and promise, it is part of God’s creation and the tillers of the soul are more a-kin to stewards than owners.
A rule for faithful living from First Kings is that “the earth the LORD’s and the fullness thereof.”
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Now, what is there for us to think about in the Luke passage? Do you think we should follow the rule book of Simon, the Pharisee or of Jesus of Nazareth.
Simon’s modus operandi was to wall off the world between the welcomed and the outcast, between the worthy and the unworthy. He was interested in what Jesus could do for him and his reputation, not what he might be able to do for Jesus and Jesus’ ministry.
When the woman entered, she was drawn to Jesus - his reputation of welcome had preceded him and she willing risked crashing the party to express her welcome for Jesus.
She offers him the gift of comfort - openly extravagant. Jesus’ focus is not on her alleged sinfulness or a judgement of worthiness. Jesus looks at her gift, he graciously received it and enjoyed the moment of sharing. The party could wait - there was a lesson to be learned.
Gratitude is a wonderful thing to express. The woman was grateful - the implication between the lines of the story is that whatever “sin” Simon knew she embodied had already been set aside by Jesus, even before she met him in person. That is why she is grateful: because Jesus had already shown her true welcome and inclusion - she knew it would be alright to barge in on his dinner party. And in turn, Jesus was grateful for her actions. In the end, everyone present to a lesson away from that evening about what it means to be gracious and forgiven.
So, some rules for faithful living from Luke are: to live with welcome, with gratitude, with inclusion; to set aside judgemental grudges, “to love your neighbour as yourself”.
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When the rules of justice and inclusion are not followed, it means we still have work to do.
And they are justice and inclusion are not the rule in many parts of the world and communities in which we live.
People of God, let us take the rules of our faith with us and show them to the world in how we play the game!
Let us pray:
Gracious God, instil your spirit deep within us that we might find the courage to take risks in living your message. Amen.
#12MV “Come Touch Our Hearts”
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