In 2010, I worked at United Way in Seattle. They had a great ad campaign that year, with each ad featuring two identical pictures, with two different captions. Below the pictures and captions was one tag line, “Choose the way”. The implication was that you, the viewer and donor, could be the difference in the in someone’s story. You could be the difference between the narrative of Homeless or Housed. Abused or Safe. You choose the Way. The ads were on billboards and busses. They even make cameo appearances on the walls of the elevator scenes on Grey’s Anatomy, to give the show an authentic Seattle feel. The ads were everywhere.
One was a particularly grey December day, my bus pulled up with another ad in the series on the side.
This was two identical pictures of a beautiful and simple young woman. Beneath the pictures, the captions read, Hungry. Filled. This ad did not make me think of United Way. Because of the imagery and the choice of words and the time of year, it reminded me immediately of the song of Mary we read together earlier.
He has filled the hungry with good things.
The song of Mary is a beloved and beautiful song that Mary delivers during a pretty exciting time in her life, which we hear about and celebrate today, the fourth Sunday of Advent.
In the Gospel reading, we hear the account of the angel Gabriel arriving and telling Mary that she will bear a son. Mary is a teen ager, unmarried and poor. “But how will this be?” Mary asks. Gabriel responds that the power of the most high will “overshadow” her. The whole episode sounds unnerving and risky. To this kind of request, Mary could have responded with fear, or with sarcasm, or with anger. She could have responded with all of those responses we know too well, that we offer when we are afraid, or scared, or feel at risk. We respond that way when others scare us, and we respond that way when God asks us something hard.
Instead, Mary responds with the gracious and simple words, : “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."
Wow. What a response. Simple. Mary willingly and obediently received God into her life, despite the risks and difficulties that it most certainly would bring to her, an unmarried, poor teen.
Obedience is not something we tend to value in this culture and at this time, but look at what obedience looks like in this story of Mary. She is asked by God to do something hard, and something counter-cultural, and something risky. And with unimaginable grace and trust in God, she says, I am a servant of the lord. She basically is saying, yes, I’ll be obedient. Not only obedient, but blank-check obedient. Let it be with me according to your word. In other words, whatever you say.
Maybe Mary’s obedient response comes from Gabriel’s simple opening line, Do not be afraid. Or maybe it comes from a deep seated faith in God that preceded Gabriel’s visit. Or perhaps it came from Mary’s willingness to accept God’s grace which includes the gift of faith. She said yes to God, in an unambiguous and obedient way. And while obedience is counter-cultural, when it comes to God calling us, obedience is surprisingly easier than resistance. Like Mary, obeying and affirming what God is calling us to do can be hard, and equally can be beautiful and freeing.
Mary’s response to Gabriel is simple and powerful. I am a servant of the Lord. Let it be with me, according to your word. And we could do well if we could learn this kind of simple, unambiguous, obedient response to God.
After this surprising exchange, Gabriel tells Mary she is to go see her relative Elizabeth, by now an old woman, who also was to bear a son, John the Baptist. Mary heads off to see Elizabeth. Given the distance of about 100 miles, the journey would have taken her about a week on foot.
While Mary’s thoughts on the journey are not recorded, she surely had some, and I imagine she played the recent events over and over in her mind. Did God just send me an angel? Say I’m going to have a child – and not Joseph’s child? And did I just say yes? Did I say “let it be with me according to your word?”
When she sees Elizabeth, she has much more to say than her original response to Gabriel. To Elizabeth, she fills in details about her response to Gabriel. This is the Song of Mary, also known as the Magnificat that we read earlier in the service.
And where Mary’s response to Gabriel is powerful, simple and demonstrates obedience, what she says to Elizabeth is powerful, complex and demonstrates defiance.
She starts by providing insight into her initial and visceral response to God’s request. She tells Elizabeth that her soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and that her spirit rejoices in God. When God asks us to do something hard, something risky, what is our response? What does your soul do in God’s presence? Does it rejoice and proclaim God’s greatness?
She then proclaims the great things that God will do to turn the world back right-side up. This is where her defiance and power are shown. She speaks about two traits that she, an unmarried poor teen girl, didn’t have. Two traits that had turned the world upside down, and separated people from God. And these two traits contribute to a third that is equally problematic, and Mary speaks to that too. She names the ill, and what God will do.
She speaks to power. God will cast down the mighty from their thrones.
Power without compassion corrupts. It creates inequities and imbalances. Power without embodying God’s love of all, creates the lowly. When the powerful believe they are entitled or better than others, with that power, we intentionally or unintentionally create the powerless. Mary speaks to this imbalance created from unchecked power. God will lift up the lowly. Not because the lowly are better than the mighty, but because they are no worse. God’s love is equal, and if doesn’t look equal on this earth, Mary is proclaiming that God will fix what human power has broken.
She speaks to wealth. God will send the rich away, empty.
Riches without compassion corrupts. Riches without embodying God’s love of all, creates the hungry. When the rich believe they are entitled or better than others, with that wealth, we intentionally or unintentionally create the hungry. Mary speaks to that injustice created from uncompassionate wealth. God will fill the hungry with good things. Not because the hungry are better than the rich, but because they are no worse. God’s love is equal, and if it doesn’t look equal on this earth, Mary is proclaiming that God will fix what human wealth has broken.
Finally, Mary speaks to pride. Pride comes when we feel personally responsible for something good. For our advances, our accomplishments, our wealth, our power. Pride has the risk of obscuring our reliance and understanding of God’s role in our life. After all, it is God’s grace and love that allow us to advance, accomplish, gain wealth and power. Mary speaks to pride, and the distance it creates between us and God. God will scatter the proud in their conceit. Mary is proclaiming that God will fix what human pride has broken.
In less than a week, we celebrate the arrival of the human God in our human lives. Today, we are given some powerful examples of how to respond to that arrival, and I’d urge you to think about your response this week.
Are you more apt to have the strong simple response, like Mary’s response to Gabriel? If so, what is your response? Here I am. Enter here. Re-read the Gospel reading today and think about how you would have responded. How you would want to respond. How you will respond to Christ’s arrival.
Are you a person of more words? Is your response more like Mary’s song? What would you say about how your soul responds in the presence of God? Does your soul sing? Is it quiet? Is it on fire?
What injustices would you name, and what do you believe God will do about it? Racial tensions. War. Hunger.
We are in the same place as Mary was in the readings today. God is inviting us to make room, to invite God in our lives.
In the next five days, think about how you would respond to God’s invitation to enter your life. I’d even encourage you to write your own canticle. The song of Shari. Song of George. Is it long or short? It doesn’t matter what it looks like. It matters that you think about God’s arrival, and that you think enough about your response that you actually have one. Because in less than a week, we are invited to let Christ enter our lives again. Actually, in about 20 minutes, we are invited to let Christ enter our lives again in the Eucharist. Every week we are invited to let God into our lives. Every week, we can practice our own song.
If you put some thought into your response, into your Magnificat, several things happen. For starters, you have a response. You are an active participant in the incarnation story. The other thing that happens is what happened to me in Seattle. You begin to see God’s hand everywhere, even on billboards on the side of the bus. In songs, notes from friends. God’s hand is everywhere, even in the craziness and busyness of the Christmas season.
Today, let’s obediently, powerfully and defiantly follow Mary and prepare our own personal response to God’s invitation to enter our lives once again.
Amen.
Sunday, December 21, 2014
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Proper 19A - September 14, 2014
We pick up the story today, with Peter, bold impetuous Peter having the audacity to ask Jesus just exactly how many times is he supposed to make up, how many times is he’s supposed to forgive. We hear some of Jesus’ most audacious exaggerated examples.
My father was an engineer, and a wealth of interesting – and useless information. Early in my childhood, He taught me the definition of Googol. Googol was a number equal to 10 to the 100th power, or 10, with 99 more zeros. He said that it was a made up word, made up by a mathematician who wanted to name the biggest number imaginable. This word, this concept, was created to define the undefinable, the farthest reaches of big numbers. It is rarely used in calculations because it’s so big. So googol is a real number that represents the end reaches of an infinite number system. The actual number, 10 to the 100th power, is less important than the concept it represents. I mention all of this because there are examples in today’s Gospel that are equally symbolic of the end reaches of something, and they mean more than the numbers in the story.
Peter asks Jesus, How often should I forgive? Seven times right? Seven was a number that symbolized more than just the number between 6 and 8. Seven was a number that signified the completion or perfection of something. God made the world, and on the seventh day, it was perfectly completed and God rested. Peter was probably asking a question he thought he knew the answer to. I should forgive someone 7 times – until it’s complete. But Jesus answers in a way that is one of these exaggerated, iconic answers. You see, if seven represents completion, 77 represents the perfectly completed, and then some. 77 is a number that signifies more times than you can count, more times that you can imagine. Don’t bother even trying to count. Jesus is telling Peter that Peter should forgive more times than he could ever imagine, more than he could count so he shouldn’t even try. Forgive, endlessly. Forgive infinitely.
And in case that exaggerated point was not sufficient, Jesus adds a second.
Jesus tells the story of the 10,000 talents. A slave owes his master 10,000 talents. The master is ready to sell the slave to repay the debt, and the slave says, “Have patience with me, and I will repay you everything”. And the Master forgave the debt.
After this slave is forgiven his debt, he encounters a fellow slave who owes him 100 denarii, which is significantly less than 10,000 talents, and says to him, “pay what you owe”. Again we hear the plea, “Have patience with me and I will repay you everything”. But this time, the recently forgiven slave does not forgive the debt. When the master hears of this, he hands the first slave over to be tortured until his entire debt is repaid.
On the surface, we understand the idea that the first slave should have forgiven the debt, as he had been forgiven. And that’s without even understanding the second crazy exaggeration in this story. A talent was a weight measure for gold, equaling about 75 pounds of gold. In today’s worth, one talent would be somewhere in excess of $700,000 dollars. 10,000 talents would be a really really big number, somewhere around 160,000 years of wages - more money than a slave would ever be able to repay or even initially borrow. Like the number googol, the number isn’t really the point. It’s a really really big number that the slave owes. Bigger than the slave could imagine. What Jesus is saying is that the slave owed an impossibly large debt. Unimaginable. And the master forgave the debt.
After this forgiveness of the unimaginably large debt, the first slave runs into a second slave who owes him a sizable debt, but not unimaginable. But unlike the master’s forgiveness, he does not forgive the debt of the second slave.
And today we’ll use a big definition of debt, bigger than just a financial obligation. In various translations, the Lord’s prayer reads, “Forgive us our debts”, “Forgive us our trespasses”, or “Forgive us our sins”. While each of those words means something specific, and narrow, each is used in the Lord’s Prayer. The point is that we owe something, we regret something, or we’ve done something. That’s a debt. That’s what I'm talking about today.
In this story of exaggerations for the purpose of illustration, Christ is telling us two important things about debts.
First, God will forgive you your debts or trespasses. It doesn’t matter what you owe. You are forgiven. If you owe 10,000 talents, you are forgiven. Forgiven for trespasses bigger than you can handle. Bigger than you can imagine. Don’t bother counting it up. The number or the size or the gravity. You are forgiven. Period.
Second, you should forgive the debts, or trespasses of others. Period. Not seven times. Not a number you can count. More times than you can imagine. Period. And it doesn’t matter how big their debt. Forgive others for everything and anything. Period.
We get so caught up in the great sin ledger of ourselves and others, we lose sight of the immeasurable grace and forgiveness given freely. I’ve been horrible, and can’t be forgiven. I don’t deserve God’s love. God couldn’t possibly love me for what I’ve done, so I’ll hide it. But the problem with holding on to our own sin, with thinking we can’t be forgiven is as CS Lewis points out, “If God forgives us, we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.”
And we carry that higher tribunal further, and decide that we get to determine who is to be forgiven, for what, and how often. I can’t forgive him for what he did. I can’t forgive her. Again.
We have been forgiven 100,000 talents worth of debt. Again and again. From this place of unbelievable, unimaginable grace and forgiveness, we are asked and expected to extend the same forgiveness, unbelievably and unimaginably. In exaggerated iconic ways. 77 times, forgive 10,000 talents.
Following Jesus’ lead, here are some exaggerated and yet very real modern day examples.
Unimaginable forgiveness looks like the peace vigils held by Sikhs in Eugene and throughout the nation after an mentally ill veteran entered a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and killed 7.
It looks like the grandfather of an Amish girl killed in Pennsylvania urging the nation to have compassion for the killer, and it looks like the Amish family that consoled the family of the killer.
It looks like the only surviving shooting victim in a post 9/11 hate crime fighting for the killer’s stay of execution and saying “His execution will not eradicate hate crimes in this world, and we will simply lose another human life”.
If such radical forgiveness is possible in these circumstances, it’s possible in my life. In my world, I can and must forgive myself for past wrongs. To do any different would be to set myself on a higher tribunal than God, who has already forgiven me more than I can ask or imagine.
In my world, I can and must forgive those close to me who’ve hurt me in little and big ways. That’s not to say I must forget, but forgive. Infinitely and unceasingly.
And for our society’s sake, we can and must forgive those segments of community that routinely do things that aggrieve us. People who behave in ways that genuinely seem evil or wrong. People with opinions too right, or too left. The panhandlers downtown, and the corporate businesses. City, state and federal elected officials, those responsible for 9/11.
Whoever you think you cannot forgive, they cannot possibly owe you more than you’ve already been forgiven. Because we are forgiven, we are asked to forgive. Immeasurably.
Not forgiving someone, by holding that little ember of anger or resentment or disappointment affects us today, and tomorrow. It affects us moving forward. And yet, what we stubbornly hold on to always focuses on something that happened in the past. We cannot change the past and it does no good to will it to be different. Forgiveness isn't forgetting the past but it's letting go of the idea that it should have been different, according to Lily Tomlin.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean we’ll immediately love the other person, nor even like them. But it is a release of the expectations we so stubbornly hold, expectations about a past we cannot change. And it is through God’s immeasurable and continual forgiveness and grace that we have a chance to forgive so impossibly.
Shortly, we’ll confess our sins against God and our neighbor. We’ll name our own 10,000 talents and ask the master to forgive them. Again. Then, we will pray that God will forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
And because it's such a daunting task, we will have the opportunity to be fed with the spiritual food that gives us a glimmer of hope to actually carry that forgiveness forward. We do that week by week, because it’s central to our health and communion as the body of Christ.
Identify what needs forgiveness in your life, ask forgiveness and acknowledge you need to forgive others, and seek the grace through the Eucharist to actually do it. Week by week. 10,000 talents worth. A googol times.
Amen.
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