June 29, 2008
How Shall We Serve?
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor
Matthew 10:40-42

This morning in your bulletin I’ve provided a copy of chapter 10 of Matthew’s gospel, so that you can follow along with my sermon, if you like. I do this because we’ve been in this chapter for the last few weeks, and today I want to talk about it as a whole. 

This chapter of Matthew is all about service, and it offers four important teachings: 
First, the assumption is that all of us are called to serve, to choose this as our basic orientation towards life. 
Second, we are to serve with some degree of detachment. 
Third, expect conflict as a result of your efforts to help others. 
And last, understand that when you serve, you connect the world together in God. 

Prior to chapter 10, Jesus had been doing his ministry, with the disciples tagging along as spectators. He was very busy healing the sick, casting out demons, and teaching the crowds about the kingdom of God. The disciples watched all this with amazement. But at this point in the story, beginning in the first verse of chapter 10, Jesus turns to his disciples and says Now that you’ve had some on-the-job training for a couple of years, it’s your turn. I hereby give you authority to go and do what I’ve been doing. Now, go!

All of them were sent out, not just some. Every disciple is asked to heal, to teach, to resist evil, to bring hope to a broken world. It’s not like Jesus said “Judas, you’re going to be handling the money” (which he did), “so I won’t have you help the poor and the sick and the troubled.” They were all sent out to serve, and so are we. It’s not a special vocation reserved for a few; it is the basic Christian orientation towards life. 

As disciples, we are asked to cultivate within ourselves the soul of a servant and have this be our primary orientation towards life. We can go through this life seeking all sorts of things: personal advancement, comfort, entertainment…But God wants us to look at the world and ask ourselves in every situation “How can I help? How can I make this world less wretched and divided, happier, freer, healthier, more full of love, humor, and beauty?” 

Every morning when we wake up, every time we glimpse pain or anger just barely beneath the surface in someone we talk to, every time we consider a decision at work or where to donate our time or money, we are to ask “How can I serve others and the greater good?” We can cultivate the soul of a servant as our daily spiritual practice. 

Next in this chapter - starting at verse 9, for those of you who are following along – Jesus speaks about service being grounded in faith and detachment. He asks them to take nothing with them, to trust in God, and to only hang around where they are welcome. 
 
Sometimes we go into service with a lot of baggage. We carry with us our opinions of how the other got into this mess, and how they can get out of it. We have expectations about how the other should respond to our efforts to help – with gratitude and a quick turn-around. We might even bend over backwards, trying to do for them what they can only do for themselves. When we try to serve the world at large, we get all stirred up and angry about issues and try to force others to agree with us. There’s a violence in this kind of service. It is an aggressive, willful effort to remake the world in our own image. 

In verses 9-15, Jesus paints a picture of a servant who is detached from their own baggage and from the results of their efforts. The disciples are to carry no money, no extra clothing, no food, and trust that God will provide. They are also to move on right away if they sense that their help isn’t wanted. Both of these bits of advice are about spiritual detachment. The disciples are to be detached from their own personal baggage and detached from the results of their efforts. 

And so we are to go into service with open hearts, not assuming anything, ready to help in whatever way is needed, improvising as we go, looking for what the other really needs. So trust that God is really the healer, the teacher, not you; don’t worry about the outcome. Don’t try to be all things to all people, and don’t chase after those who really don’t want the kind of help you’re able to offer. In trying to serve the wider world, be passionate, but also be open to the possibility that you might be wrong. Don’t get consumed with improving the world; see the beauty of what already is. In short: leave behind your baggage when you go out trying to be of help. 

At verse 16, and later at verse 34, Jesus then shifts. Now he warns them about the down side to being a servant. They will encounter resistance, and there will be conflict. Families and friends will divide, some of them will be hated for what they do.  

We tend to think that if we take a stance of helping others and trying to bring more love and healing into this world, that we will create a kind of happy, peaceful vibe around ourselves. But this doesn’t always happen. 

Service is not only kindness and charity; it is also action to change the conditions that cause suffering, and this always evokes resistance. When we ask ourselves “How can I help?,” and then follow this question past feel-good band-aid projects, we find ourselves in the belly of the beast. I have often quoted Archbishop Dom Helder Camara on this, who said “When I feed the hungry; they call me a saint. When I ask why they are hungry, they call me a communist.” Jesus knew this, and warned his disciples before he sent them out. 

When we talk to an alcoholic about their drinking, they sometimes cut us off. When we protect and give aid to illegal immigrants in our community, other members of our church might get upset; we may even get arrested. When we open our mouth at work in the effort to create a healthier environment for all, we raise hackles. If we choose to be a servant, there will be a cost. 

But this chapter ends on a magnificent note of hope, beginning at verse 28. Jesus encourages us to have no fear. God loves everyone with the soul of a servant, even if you bumble your way through, making mistakes as you go. When you do your best to take a servant stance towards the world, God will bless you.

But Jesus goes deeper than that. In today’s reading, the end of this chapter, beginning at verse 40 – today’s section of this chapter -  he concludes his commissioning of the disciples on a transcendent note. Jesus says that when someone welcomes your efforts to serve, when they receive your love with gratitude, they are welcoming him, they are welcoming God. 

In the act of love, there is an intimate connection between the person in need who is being helped, the servant who is helping, Jesus himself, and God. When we love, when we serve, it is as if all the wires are finally connected together and the current of the Spirit flows freely between all. God, servant, and the served are all one. The servant and the person in need are no longer separated as superior subject and inferior object; they are both essential to the flow of the divine current. 

Jesus says that no gesture is too small to connect this current. When you give even a little thing – a cup of cold water to a man on a broken-down bicycle looking for yard work in your neighborhood; a vote for justice in the voting booth or a check sent to some environmental cause; a brief conversation and quick prayer with a friend who feels as if they are going under – these small things connect the divine current, and when it connects, we are all one in God. 

In that moment, the purpose not only of our individual lives, but the purpose of the universe is fulfilled. All things come alive and are filled with color. Like the dawn of a new day, the earth is suffused with light and is warmed by the sun’s rays. Birds chirp, roosters crow, and we awaken. Life is resurrected. This is your reward for being a servant.

Jesus asks you to be a servant, to be his heart and his hands in the world. Choose to accept this commission, this basic orientation towards life, every day. 

As you serve, bring your passion to it, but also be a little detached. You’re not the savior, and the world is already beautiful. 

Expect trouble; but don’t be afraid of it. 

And remember that this is about far more than being a do-gooder. It is about reconnecting the world to its divine source of love.  

June 22, 2008 Conflict is the Place of Transformation
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor
Jeremiah 20:7-13; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39

People use religion or spirituality for all sorts of reasons. For some, it provides comfort and peace when life seems too difficult to bear. For others, it gives black and white answers in an otherwise gray world. Still others use religion as a way of feeling secure, even superior to others. I’m mostly interested in religion and spirituality as a vehicle for transformation. This isn’t to say that it doesn’t have other legitimate uses; it’s just how I tend to use it. 

Do you hope for transformation? Do you harbor the dream that one day, you will be able to move beyond your fears and self-defeating behavior and live in the light of faith and freedom? Do you long for this nation, this world, to mature to the next level, to break through division, greed, denial, and short-sightedness, and start living with enlightened intelligence and compassion? 

Then you’ll relate to Paul’s words today from the Letter to the Romans. Paul was writing about the transformative waters of baptism. In Christ we are crucified; our old life of enslavement dies; we are resurrected to the new life of freedom. That’s more than religion as comfort, moral boundaries, and security. It’s about complete transformation. 
This is why we pray, isn’t it? Isn’t this why we ask for the Spirit’s guidance, why we feed the hungry and advocate for justice? We hope for transformation. 

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had an opportunity to think about the last 25 years of my life. An incredibly fun party, hundreds of heartfelt messages from you, and a liturgy of recommitment witnessed by a who’s-who of the wider church: all of this external activity stirred up internal reflections and memories.

Among these is the remembrance that I got into this business in order to be transformed. I had the sense that if I were to throw myself with both feet into the life of a priest, God would keep me honest, keep me moving more deeply into the gospel, keep challenging me towards greater purity of heart. 

I also developed the hope, as I got to know you, that together, we could transform this community. We could be for one another the hands and heart of Christ; we could become an inspirational light within our diocese and our city; we could move from being a sleepy little North Valley church to a dynamic village of creative formation and service. Perhaps I even dared to hope that we might do our part to change the world. 

Some of this has taken place. But it didn’t happen the way I thought it would. I discovered that real transformation is a lot harder than I imagined it to be; and it takes us to places we don’t expect because we can’t will it into being – there is this stubborn guiding hand we call “grace” that takes us where it will.  

But the most surprising thing of all on the road of transformation has been the necessary element of conflict. Oh, I always knew, like everyone does, that a pearl is only created by the irritant of sand in the shell, blah, blah, blah…But when it came down to it, I didn’t like that sand in my shell, even if it came from God. In every time of conflict, at least at first, I didn’t believe that there was any good in it.

We hear these words of Jesus our whole life, as we did today: The disciple is not above the teacher. So if I’m maligned and even crucified, you will be too, if you’re faithful to my ways. I’ve come not to bring peace but a sword, dividing you sometimes from members of your own family. If in this case you choose peace instead of my sword, you’ll lose your soul. But if you lose your life for my sake, you’ll find it. So take up your cross and follow me into conflict. It is there that life is resurrected. This is the place of transformation.  

We’ve heard this teaching over and over again, and we say we believe it. But when it happens, we go in kicking and screaming, asking “Why me?” and thinking that somehow, if we had handled things better, we wouldn’t be in this fix. If we were really spiritual, would have been smooth sailing all the way. 

We’re like the prophet Jeremiah, in our first lesson today, who thought that if he was faithful to God and warned Israel of her sins, he would be warmly welcomed. “Oh, great, you’re going to show us the way to God!” Instead, they shot the messenger. Obviously, Jeremiah thought, the rejection and persecution he experienced was a sign that he or God had done something terribly wrong, and he became bitter: Lord, you enticed and deceived me, and now I’m the laughingstock of everyone. I cry out in despair!

But conflict is not some terrible mistake; it is the place of spiritual transformation. Freedom, for me, has come not because I’ve just lounged by and sipped from a refreshing spiritual spring that just bubbled up to the surface. Freedom has come because I’ve been forced to remove the boulders of habit, delusion, and resistance that have blocked that well of life. In my spiritual practice and in my sense of vocation, I’ve had to fight with opposing forces within that argue “This way!” “No, you idiot, that way!” Depth of love and real intimacy has come in my family because we’ve struggled our way through many conflicts along the way. 

And looking back over the last 25 years of our parish history, I see what an important role conflict has played in our continuing transformation. We struggle with the issues of money, buildings and growth, disagreeing over how much emphasis we should give to them; this irritant has resulted in a natural, authentic expansion that wouldn’t have happened if it had been easy. We had a decade-long period of division, persecution and  self-scrutiny in our diocesan life that led to deeper faith, self-confidence, and a remarkable clarity of focus and mission. We have bumped into one another over changes in the liturgy, the use of Spanish in worship, new staff members bringing different ways of doing things, and to what degree political, economic and social issues should be a part of our preaching and ministries. We will no doubt experience some conflicts in the fundraising and building process ahead of us. All of this plays an important role in helping us grow in God’s grace. 

I’ve come to trust conflict. When I’m struggling to remove yet another boulder in the way of grace, I don’t believe any more, like Jeremiah, that this is a sign of something gone terribly wrong. It is a natural part of the process. It is, in fact, a sign of hope. For God must take us through many crucibles on our way to purity of heart. There’s no way around these places of purification. We can only go through them. And by God’s grace, we shall be transformed in the process. This has become my hope when I am in conflict. 

Jesus said that we will, like him, walk the way of the cross. He said that that sometimes a sharp sword will divide and we will lose relationships with family or friends if we are faithful to him. But he also said Do not be afraid. Every hair on your head is counted by God, who sees everything. You are of great value to God, and if you persevere through conflict as faithfully as you can, you will find your life in God. You will be transformed.  

What conflicts do you face today? Are you stuck behind the boulders of personal habit, delusion, and resistance? Are you facing several forks in the road, with no signposts? Are you at odds with someone in your family, and you don’t quite trust that God is actively involved, trying to bring about transformation? Are you anxious about something in this parish not quite being what you want it to be, and do you worry that things will go badly wrong? Are you fearful that the change you hope for in this world may not be realized in this election cycle? 

Do not be afraid. This is the place of the cross, where two opposing forces come together in creative tension. It is the place of potentiality, where the baptismal waters may seem to drown, but in fact irrigate the desert and bring about new life. It is the place where you lose the life you were used to, and gain a new life. 

Do not be afraid. As you endure this crucible with faith, trust in the Spirit. You are of more value to God than you think. For God meets our willingness for change with a grace beyond our control and our comprehension. And in this alchemy, we are transformed. 

St. Michael’s Episcopal Church 
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Sunday June 8, 2008  Proper 5 A  
Preacher: Christopher McLaren 
Occasion: Commissioning of New Deacons, Judith Jenkins and Daniel Gutierrez 
Text: Matthew 9: 9-26 
Theme: Calling and a Day in the life of a Messiah 

The passage from Matthew today is a slice of life or one might say a-day-in-the-life-of-a-messiah piece.  Jesus is described as calling one of his disciples, Matthew, from among the ranks of the scum-bag tax-collectors, eating dinner with not only Matthew but other disreputable folks while being seemingly indifferent about protecting his delicate reputation. Jesus deals with a rather pesky religious sort who wants him to explain himself and the company he keeps. Dinner is interrupted by a synagogue leader who is desperate for Jesus to do the impossible in raising his daughter to life again.  As if all that weren’t enough for one day in the life of a Messiah, Jesus finds himself healing a woman who had suffered for 12 years and who had effectively been cut off from the community through her ailment.  One has to say that Jesus is on his game today, he is able to affirm the faith of this desperate but faith-filled woman, restoring her to the relational context of her life, and he raises the girl from what others thought was sure death bringing her back to health and life.  With days like this it is little wonder that his fame spread throughout the countryside.  

Today is a special day at St. Michael’s as we celebrate the recent ordinations of both Daniel and Judith.  It is a proud and giddy day for us here at St. Michael’s as it has been quite a spell since our life in the diocese has included such blessings. 

As we celebrate the ordinations of Daniel and Judith, I wonder what it is we might be looking for in their example and lives.  We are not, I’m sure, looking for them to be messianic in our lives. That job is already taken. We are, I think, looking for them to point us toward the healing presence of Christ in our lives, to encourage us to reach out to God in our need, sure of God’s loving care. I believe we want them to challenge us to accept those different from us by looking deeply into the life and ministry of Jesus.  Jesus was willing to lose his respectability for the sake of others, and our lives, if dedicated to following Christ, will also offer that opportunity. We are hoping that in their humanness Daniel and Judith will help us to see that we are God’s beloved, flaws and all, and that we too are worthy to be healed and touched and called into service by Jesus, just as they have been called into service through their ordination vows.  

Daniel and Judith were not ordained because they are so very different from all the rest of us, they were ordained because they are just like us, they are called to do the work God has given them to do and in doing so to tease out of the rest of us our respective callings.  We are all called by God. We all have a vocation to fulfill in Christ, and today Judith and Daniel remind us of it.  It is not meant to be a high and lofty and unapproachable thing, this calling business.  No, it is quite simply listening for the voice of God saying, “Get up and follow me, come with me and do this.”  It is Matthew leaving his money table behind, it is Peter dropping his nets, it is you showing up at the food pantry week after week because it gives you joy, it is you taking that difficult case because you know it is right, it is you working at patience with your children, it is you renewing your relationship because you know it is in that direction that your growth lies, it is passing by the promotion because your life is full of grace right where you are, or perhaps it is taking that promotion because you know that it is what you were meant to do and where you can do the most good. 

Today as we celebrate Daniel’s and Judith’s call to ordained ministry we are asked to look more deeply into our own vocation as people of God. The word vocation comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work one is called to by God.  There are all kinds of different voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to discern which of the voices is God calling you and not Society, or Self-interest, or Ego.  There is a good rule to figuring this out.  The kind of work that God usually calls you to is the kind of work that (a) you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs done.  As Frederick Buechner says, 

If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b).  On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping your patients much either.  Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is that place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.  

We celebrate today because we believe that both Daniel and Judith have found a place of calling that will bring out their great gladness while at the same time doing something to meet a hunger in this world that is real. 

This day is about calling for us.  And in the gospel passage Matthew, the scum-bag tax collector is our example.  There he is minding his own seedy business and Jesus has the nerve to call him to follow.  It is a rather amazing story really -- a stranger walks by, says “Follow me,” and Matthew gets up and does just that.  If you are like me it raises all sorts of questions.  Could I do that? What kind of a disciple would I have made? What if a clear call came to me?  Would I be willing to leave my keys dangling in the ignition, to walk down the street with a strange but confident rabbi? 

However, what I don’t want you to do is to get to hung up on the idea that this is all about your choice.  We Americans are really into choices.  In fact sometimes I think we are paralyzed by the number of choices we have.  I call it death by options. Now don’t get me wrong, the choices we make are important, about what we believe, how we will act or live, where we will live, what we will study, who we will love, what we will spend our energy doing.  But not all of life is simply about our choices.  For instance, take the story of Matthew, the tax collector. This is not a story about the power of human beings to change their lives, to leave everything behind and follow. This is a story about the power of God to walk right up to a tax collector, the scum of the earth, and work a miracle of creating faith where there was no faith, creating a disciple where there was none just a moment before. 

This is not a story about us.  This is a story about God. And about God’s ability not only to call us but also to create us as a people who are able to follow – able to follow because we cannot take our eyes off the one who calls us, because God in Christ interests us more than anything else in our lives, because he seems to know what we hunger for and because he seems to be food.  What I’m trying to say is that there is a dimension to the spiritual life that is more than the sum of our choices.  There is the possibility that being called is less like us making a decision and more like something happening to us, something strangely beyond our control.  Something we sense is right without a great deal of analysis and deliberation. 

Just to ease your anxiety a bit, I am not sure that following Jesus is always a matter of leaving everything behind. That may have been what it meant for Matthew the tax collector or Andrew and Simon the fishermen. That may have been what it meant for their particular lives. But if the story is about being swept into the flow of God’s will and giving ourselves over to it, then it seems to me that it will be different for every one of us in our particular lives. 

Sometimes it will mean staying home.  Sometimes it will mean setting off on the adventure of a lifetime to an unknown place.  Sometimes it will mean doing the hard work of repairing a relationship.  Sometimes it will mean quitting that miserable job that gives you no joy at all and finally doing something you can love and really give yourself to. Sometimes it will mean becoming truly generous with the resources you’ve had and trusted in all your life so that you can begin to depend upon God again and not on your portfolio.  Sometimes it will mean getting off the treadmill and sitting quietly listening for the still small voice of God that you’ve never really heard or forgotten what it sounds like. It may simply mean that you need to do less every day so God can be more for you. 
It may mean recognizing that your growth, the growth God wants you to have, is right in front of you by learning to cope with the losses you’ve suffered, or caring for that aging parent or spouse, or choosing to love that child you’ve almost given up on.  Calling can mean so many different things, but the one thing it isn’t is you deciding, it is you listening for the voice of God in Christ, saying this way to the kingdom.  It is finding the flow of God’s will, allowing yourself to trust in God’s power to save, letting yourself fall in love again with the one who made and loves you and is “for you” in the truest and deepest sense of the word. 

So that is what deacons are here to remind us of. That we are all called, we all need to be slapped upside the head, to have God get our attention, or to have our heart shattered by the beautiful and terrible love of God, that will draw us into the flow the kingdom, into that place where our deep gladness and the world’s deep need match up and make life a joy and not a chore. 

June 1, 2008
Blessing and Curse
3 Pentecost Deuteronomy 11:18-21, 26-28; Matthew 7:21-29
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Many of you know that at least two of our members are running for public office. In light of what’s taken place in the last couple of months in the presidential campaign, I’ve suggested that they might want to reconsider their affiliation with St. Michael’s, given that all my sermons are available online. 

It was the passage we heard this morning from Deuteronomy that got Barak Obama’s former pastor, The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, in such hot water. In his sermon on this text, he went right over the top; it was broadcast over and over in sound bytes as “God damn America!” 

I thought the sermon was going along just fine until that moment. He was saying that if you follow this passage from Deuteronomy, God doesn’t bless everything that any person, or any nation does. In it, Moses says that God will bless what is consistent with God’s will, and condemn what is contradictory to God’s will. “See, I am setting before you a blessing and a curse; the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God…and the curse, if you…turn from the way I am commanding you today.” 

Jesus repeats this theme in the gospel for today. He says “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Those who call upon God’s name may or may not be connected to God. 

But those who act upon Jesus’ words, those who live according to God’s ways, do live in God. They are wise; they have a solid foundation, having built their spiritual house on solid rock. They will survive the storms of life. Those who are foolish, who do not act on his words will find that, when the storms come, the houses they have built upon sand will crumble and fall. Jesus, like Moses before him, sets before us blessing and curse, and it is our choice. 

Christians have often looked at these kinds of passages in ultimate terms of reward and punishment. If you are obedient to God’s laws and the teachings of the Bible, you’ll get the reward of heaven. If you are disobedient, you’ll get the punishment of hell. One of many problems with this approach is that we end up thinking that we are saved by our works – we earn our way into God’s favor. St. Paul was very clear that this isn’t our way. We will always fall short of the glory of God, but God loves us in our imperfection – always calling us to a higher life, to be sure, but still accepting us as we are. We don’t have to earn God’s love. It just is. 

So how can we understand these texts, when Moses says that God will bless those who obey and curse those who don’t, when Jesus says that only those who do the will of his Father will enter the kingdom of heaven? 

This may come as no surprise to you, but the one area of my ordination exams that I had to retake was ethics. So I’m not terribly educated in this field. But I think I’ve learned that I’m pretty much what some call a Consequentialist when it comes to ethics. Just like we tell our children, there are consequences when it comes to behavior. That’s different from reward and punishment. Consequences are the natural result that come from our actions. 

When a child breaks a window, a consequentialist won’t punish with a spanking; they have the child work to earn enough money so that they can pay for the window to be replaced. When a teenager drives a car for awhile in a responsible manner, a consequentialist says “Now you are obviously ready to stay out later, to drive longer distances.” 

Our relationship with God is similar. But the consequences happen naturally, rather than being decided upon and imposed case by case. If we hate others, we will be unhappy and isolated. If we love, we will experience joy and harmony. 

I don’t think that at the end of our life, God weighs all our life’s actions and finds them tipping the scales towards heaven or hell. Instead, if we live in a way that is helpful and healthy, we will experience God’s blessings; we will dwell even now in the kingdom of heaven. If we live in a way that is self-centered and destructive, we will be, in a sense, cursed; we will be disconnected from God. It is a law of the universe. 

For Jesus, the kingdom of heaven is about a way of living in this life that extends into the next life. It is a quality of life that has to do with connection to God, and it is characterized by joy, compassion, and peace. This morning’s gospel, in fact, is directly preceded by one of Jesus’ clearest teachings on the qualities of the kingdom of heaven. He has just given the Sermon on the Mount in the previous chapters.

How blessed are the meek, the pure in heart, the merciful, the peacemakers. If you have something against your brother, be reconciled to him. Do not exact an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; if anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer them the other cheek as well. Do not hate your enemy; love them, forgive them. Don’t make a show of your religion; connect with God in the secrecy of your heart. Don’t try to serve God and wealth, and don’t worry about your food or your clothing, or even about tomorrow. God will provide. Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find. 

This is what Jesus referred to immediately afterwards when he said that everyone who acts on these words will have built their spiritual house on solid rock, and will enter, even now, into that quality of life he called the kingdom of heaven. When we seek to be humble and kind, merciful and forgiving, trusting and seeking, we will have the foundation that we need when the storms of life come. We will experience peace of mind, harmony with others, and the love of God. We will find that God will provide us what we need. It’s not a question of reward and punishment, just a natural consequence. This is how I understand God’s judgment.

All of this rests upon the premise that the universe is made this way. All of creation, including our very lives, is made up of the molecular energy of love and goodness. The Spirit infuses all, and so when we live in harmony with God, when we follow Jesus’ teachings, we live in harmony with all creation. The teachings of the Bible, the laws of God, the wisdom of all authentic religious traditions – they all offer us a vision of how to live in harmony with God, creation, and one another. They all show us the path of life, the way things are made to work. 

Years ago, Woody Allen made a movie called “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” based on one of his favorite moral quandaries. A man hires a hit man to kill his lover, who has threatened to tell his wife about their affair. Afterwards, nothing happens. He isn’t caught, he suffers no remorse, and he prospers financially. Poor Woody is horrified, looking into the camera and asking “What kind of perversely unjust universe do we inhabit?” 

My sense is that in real life, our actions do result in consequences, either material, emotional or spiritual. Evil produces curse, and good produces blessing. Living according to Jesus’ teachings, we enter the kingdom of God. Disobeying God’s will, we enter some other kind of kingdom. 

If we pay attention to the teachings of our scriptures at all, there’s no great mystery about what the will of God is, or what the teachings of Jesus are. The Sermon on the Mount makes it pretty clear. The mystery, of course, is how do we live into God’s will, given that we, as humans, are so complex and conflicted? That’s the subject of most of my other sermons. But sometimes, including today, we need to remember that it is a simple matter of choice. 

Shall we head in the direction of humility, mercy, reconciliation, and trust? Shall we take a step in the direction of the kingdom of heaven, now, as best we can? Whether we do or not, there will be consequences. God sets before us this day, and every day, blessing and curse. Jesus sets before us the option to be wise or foolish builders. Which shall you choose today?