Debie Thomas – Salvaged Faith

Living Proof

Posted on April 18, 2021Leave a comment

Text: Luke 24:36b-48

Did the resurrection actually happen? I know what you are thinking… that’s an awfully strange question for a pastor to be asking. But I wasn’t there. You weren’t there. It happened a really long time ago. If someone asked me that question today, if I had proof that Jesus is alive, what could I show them?

Well, to be honest, I would show them you. We are an Easter people, aren’t we? Our lives are marked by the resurrection of Jesus, isn’t it? If the resurrection is real… if Jesus is alive… then it is our lives that bear witness to that truth.

Let’s back up a bit and explore what that means. In our gospel for today, Luke tells us about how the disciples first encountered the resurrected Jesus. In this version of the gospel, women had traveled to the tomb and the body of Jesus was gone. Instead, they encountered two messengers who told them that Jesus was alive. The women ran back and told the disciples who were mighty confused. Only Peter was willing to take their story seriously and when he went to look in the tomb for himself, he simply found a linen cloth.

Later that day, two followers of Jesus were walking along the road to Emmaus and Jesus showed up beside them! When they finally realized who it was, they ran back to Jerusalem, found the eleven remaining disciples and the rest of those gathered and told them that Jesus really, actually, truthfully, was alive. And bingo-bango… Jesus appears in the room. Without warning. Without doors opening.He just shows up.

Luke tells us that they thought they were seeing a ghost and Rev. Dr. Derek Weber (Discipleship Ministries) picks up on that idea… “They were haunted by him,” Weber writes. “by the idea of him, by the blood of him. They were terrified of their shame, of how they had abandoned him, of how they wouldn’t believe in what he had told them before or what the women said they saw.”

This idea that Jesus would simply appear. And be there. Right there. Standing before them. It was almost too much to comprehend.

And so, Jesus offers them living proof. He isn’t a spirit. He isn’t floating in the air. He’s real. Flesh and blood. Here are my hands, he says. Look at my feet. Touch them. This was about more than just seeing the marks from the resurrection still present on his body. It was also about grabbing on and feeling the blood and the life and the warmth coursing through him.

In our modern English translations, we might read “touch and see” here in verse 39, but Weber notes that in the Greek, the words are more of a command. He is telling all of them – Grab a hold of me! Ground yourselves in my reality. Hang on to it. Don’t just see, but behold! What you are going to touch and experience when you do will change your entire life. Or as Weber puts it: “Grab hold of the reality of Christ and see not just him but you, too. See your path, your future, your mission, and your reason for being.”

And then, to dispel ANY remaining doubts about whether or not he was really real, Jesus eats a piece of fish. Because, ghosts don’t eat, right? Things that are dead don’t eat. I am real. The resurrection is true. Everything I told you is actually happening. And then he goes on to remind them, once again, about what God wants not just for them, but for all people.

As we launch into the summer, we are going to follow the disciples as they travel to the ends of the earth with this message of transformation and life and abundance and hope. We will walk step by step through the ways they lived out the resurrection of Jesus in the world. So we aren’t going to dive into all of that today.

You see, first, we need to appreciate and understand and grab a hold of the truth of this moment. As Derek Weber writes, “the gospel, the life of faith has to be grounded in reality… If we don’t start here, if we don’t watch that piece of fish being eaten, if we don’t grab hold, we won’t see. And if we don’t see, then we are likely to turn our message into one of the hereafter, the sweet by and by and not the here and now.”

Think about it. If all that Jesus did was create a way for us to get to heaven… there would be no need for the resurrection. In his death, he could simply have cracked open the wall that separates heaven from earth enough for our disembodied souls to get in. He didn’t need to come back and walk and talk and eat fish to carry us into heaven when we died. He could have simply sent a messenger, or showed up as a spirit. And the message of the Christian faith would have been something like: everything will be better after we die.

To be honest, that is how I see a lot of Christians walking around and acting. That is the message that is often shared with people. This world doesn’t matter. These people don’t matter. Who cares what is going on in Myanmar or Minneapolis or on the Mexican border, because my faith is about what comes after this life.

Except, it’s not. That is not the truth of the Christian faith. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead then our preaching is useless and so is your faith. The good news is that the resurrection life transforms THIS world and not simply the next. It is born out in flesh and blood and love and community right here and right now. Our faith is an embodied faith. Our spiritual lives cannot be separated from our physical lives.

Debie Thomas reminds us in her essay this week that we have a Savior with a body like ours… a body that was nurtured in a womb and who hungers and weeps and gets angry at injustice and who was vulnerable to forces of violence and cruelty beyond his control. And we have a God who resurrects bodies, “The physical resurrection of Jesus is God’s definitive offering of both compassion and justice: all that has been taken, broken, mistreated, wronged, and forgotten, will be restored.”

This truth, this good news, this resurrection is so real that you can reach out and grab a hold of it! It begins right here and right now. It is experienced anytime we feed our neighbors who are hungry. Or advocate for justice in our neighborhood. We behold the resurrection when we cling to the hand of our elderly neighbor or sick friend. Or break bread with an enemy. It is the proclamation that lives matter. Bodies matter. Stories matter. What you are experiencing in this world matters and God wants to heal and restore and redeem anything that has broken or separated us.

As Jesus tells the disciples, huddled together in that room on the day after the resurrection: You are witnesses of these things. You are the proof. The living proof. You bear out the truth of the resurrection in everything you say and you do. Friends, we are Easter people. We are called to practice and embody the reality of the resurrection in all that we say and do.

So in these coming weeks, we, like the disciples, will go back to some of the teachings of Jesus and remember what exactly that means. We’ll practice what it means to listen… and to remain… and to love… With not just our minds… And not just for an hour on a Sunday…But with our whole lives. So that anyone who meets us will know – the resurrection is real and Jesus is alive among us. Amen.

Again & Again, the Sun Rises

Posted on April 4, 2021Leave a comment

Text: Mark 16: 1-8

Three women made their way to a lonely tomb just after sunrise…

Have you ever thought about a sunrise? Scientifically speaking, it happens every single day, at every single moment, somewhere across this globe. Our planet travels each year in an orbit that is 584 million miles in circumference, but every twenty four hours we make a full rotation, spinning at a pace of 1000 miles per hour. And every time we moment we complete that rotation, the sun appears again over the horizon.

The sun always rises. But we often sleep right through it. Or it is cloudy. Or our view is obstructed. Rarely do we experience or appreciate a sunrise in all of its glory.

I remember one visit with my family to the Hawaiian islands. We tried to catch the sunset every single day, but seeing the sunrise was almost impossible. Our location on the island meant that a chain of mountains obscured the view. So we rented a car overnight, got up while it was still dark, and made a 45 minute drive to a part of the island where we would be able to see the sun rise over the ocean… And it was cloudy.

But you know what? The sun still rose that morning. The sun rises every morning. Again and Again, the earth spins and the sun comes into view. Even if we can’t see it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how Mark tells the story of the resurrection. Three women made their way to a lonely tomb just after sunrise. There is no joy in this journey, only profound grief. Another morning is another reminder that their nightmare was real. Jesus was dead and it must have felt as if the earth had stopped spinning and the sun would never rise again. Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome could only face the day together.

Together they were journeying to the place where they laid his body. They were going to mourn. They were going to do what so many of us have not had the opportunity to do in this pandemic… to provide what they thought was a proper burial. Not the rushed and distant goodbye that came on Friday when Joseph of Arimathea placed his body in the tomb before sunset. But a real goodbye. Where they would touch and anoint his body with spices. Where they would weep and mourn and comfort one another.

As they neared the tomb, they began to wonder what on earth they were doing. Were the Romans who had crucified their teacher watching them? If they made it there safely, how would they roll back the stone on their own? But maybe even more than these immediate concerns, they had to be wondering… what’s next? Would they, could they, return to their old lives? With Jesus dead, none of the disciples seemed prepared to continue his work. For all the women knew, those men had scattered in the nights before… maybe never to return again. It all seemed to have ended on the cross. All their hopes. All their dreams. All the promises. It was finished. But despite their doubts and fears, they kept moving forward, step by step, clutching one another’s hands, until they came to the place where he had been laid.

What they find there is clouded… confusing… disorienting. Nothing was what they expected. The stone was gone. Inside, a young man sat on the cold, hard slab just inside the tomb. What was he doing there? And where was the body of Jesus? Where they in the right place? Were they hallucinating? The women huddled together, trembling, speechless…

And then the man spoke: “Don’t be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus, but he isn’t here! He has been raised just like he promised. Go – tell the disciples, especially Peter, that Jesus will meet you in Galilee.” In their grief, and confusion, and weariness, I’m not sure the women heard a single word the man said. Scripture tells us that overcome with terror and dread, they fled from the tomb and said nothing… to anyone…

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus never appears in his resurrected glory. There is no witnessing from the disciples. No sharing of the good news. In part, Mark ends his story this way because all along Mark has been leading us on a journey. Every time the disciples make a mistake and look like bumbling idiots, we learn something about who Jesus is. Every time they fail, we learn more about what it means to follow God. And when the women come to the tomb in their grief, we are invited to bring our grief as well.

And oh what grief we carry… The grief of not being inside our building…The grief of the meals and the celebrations we have missed… The unimaginable loss of life to the coronavirus, not simply the 2.7 million lives that are gone, but also the ones closest to you. We might not feel like shouting Alleluias in the wake of mass shootings or racial tension or the drowning of Iowa State students or the images from our border.

Debie Thomas reminded me in her words this week, “We’ve witnessed and/or sustained losses on a scale we’ve barely begun to register, much less to grieve. We’re weary, we’re numb, we’re bewildered, we’re sad.” (https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay)

And so like Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, we might hear the words of the young man who is sitting in the tomb… “Christ is risen” And in some part of our minds we might know that they are, as Thomas writes, “the most consequential words we’ve ever heard…” Christ is risen! But when we look at the world around us, how can this be true? Maybe it’s not possible to fully wrap our minds around what Thomas calls “God’s incomprensible work of redemption” as it “collides in real time with the broken bewilderment of our lives.”

But then I remember… even on a dark and stormy morning… the sun will rise. Even when our view is obscured… the sun will rise. Even when our eyes are closed or filled with tears… the sun will rise. Even when night has fallen in one part of the world… the sun is rising… always rising… somewhere in the world. Rev. T. Denise Anderson writes, “resurrection still came, even if they weren’t yet able to receive it… Again and again, the sun rises on a new day, often without embrace or acknowledgement. The same is true of resurrection. Whether or not we discern what’s happening, God is literally and figuratively turning the world around!”

Jesus is not cold and dead and lifeless in a tomb, but out there, loose in the world, ready to change everything. In her painting, Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity imagines “what the women see in the moment before they turn to flee from the tomb.” A horizon breaking open… The heavens blooming like a flower… Sacred darkness that lingers… A winding path illuminated with promise… The sun has risen…The Son of God has risen…

“The Promise” , Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity | A Sanctified Art | www.sanctifiedart.org

You know, there are times when the good news of the resurrection of Jesus seems as common to us as a sunrise. We sleep through it. We expect it. We take it for granted. We no longer marvel at the wonder or stand in awe at the miracle. And we say nothing to anyone about it… not out of fear, but complacency…

But there are other times… maybe like these times… when the good news of the resurrection is like a brilliant and miraculous sunrise that we aren’t able to see… and we simply have to trust it is there.

My friend, and the head of Discipleship Ministries for the United Methodist Church, Rev. Junius B. Dotson was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January and died from the disease at the end of February. But in a devotion he wrote during that time he reminded us of Jeremiah’s hope in God’s promises from Lamentations: “We are sick at our very hearts and we can hardly see through our tears, but You, O Lord, are King forever… and You will rule to the end of time.” (Lamentations 5:17,19) Sometimes our eyes are filled with tears and the skies are filled with clouds and we can hardly see the promise. We can’t see the sun rising.

But the good news from the gospel of Mark is that whether or not we believe it. Whether or not we understand it. Even if we can’t see it. The tomb is empty. Death has been defeated. Jesus is alive. And this story is not over. Your story is not over. The Kingdom story is not over.

Again and again, the sun will rise.

The Wise and the Lazy

Posted on November 15, 2020Leave a comment

Text: Matthew 25

This morning in worship, we are actually covering the three discussions of the Kingdom of Heaven we find in Matthew chapter 25.

The ten bridesmaids.
The valuable coins.
And the sheep and the goats.

So often when we look at these stories, we examine them in isolation. We look at them one at a time and try to discern the moral of each of these tales.

So in the parable of the ten bridesmaids, we discover a lesson about being prepared.
Ten bridesmaids are waiting for the groom to show up. Five were wise and brought plenty of oil for their lamps. But five were foolish and left the extra oil behind. When the groom finally shows up, the foolish bridesmaids don’t have enough oil and have to run out and buy some and they get back too late. They get shut out of the party.
This is the perfect boy scout parable right? Be prepared.

In the parable of the valuable coins, we discover a lesson about stewardship.
A man goes on a trip and leaves his wealth to his servants. One gets five coins, another two, and the last one… each according to their ability. The first two take those coins and make more wealth, but the last one is afraid and hides the coin. When the master returns, the first two servants are celebrated and promoted, but the final one is thrown out.
Take your gifts and your talents, we discover, and use them, don’t bury them.

And of course there is that familiar passage about the sheep and the goats.
The Son of Man will sit on the throne in the final days and will judge the people. Those who served their neighbor are those who served Jesus. They will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. But those who ignored their neighbors, looking out only for themselves, will sent away to eternal punishment.
We Methodists love this parable. It reminds us that loving our neighbor is just as important as loving our God. Sometimes, we even say that it’s all that matters. That our good deeds will get us into heaven.

Why did Matthew choose to link these three stories about the Kingdom together?
Let’s look at what surrounds it.
Matthew 24 is apocalyptic, describing what will happen at the end of the age, the end times as we like to talk about it today.
There will be signs of trouble, earthquakes, famines, hate and betrayal…
There is a “disgusting and destructive thing” that shows up… a nod back to the apocalyptic visions of Daniel and the abomination in the temple when the daily sacrifice is abolished.
People will flee, the whole world will experience great suffering, the skies will darken…
And then the Human One, the Son of man will appear to gather the chosen ones.
No one will know when this will happen except God, so we should be prepared and keep alert and keep working, like wise and faithful servants.

Okay… so that is what comes before our three stories for this morning.
But what comes after?
Jesus is handed over.
Judas betrays him.
He shares in a final meal with the disciples and then they in turn fall away.
He is arrested, put on trial, and killed.
And after his resurrection, Jesus ascends to heaven.

Sandwiched in between apocalyptic visions and the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus we find these three stories.
Matthew is writing to a community that is living after the resurrection.
He is writing to people whose master is away.
But they are also experiencing trials and persecution and conflict.
It felt like their world was ending and like the Kingdom of Heaven was a long way off.
What should they do in this time of waiting?

On Wednesday, I heard an interview with Thao Nguyen, a musician who wrote a song about her own apocalyptic reality in San Francisco. On September 9th, the skies turned orange from the area wildfires and she tried to make sense of what it all meant:
“It was just this culminating event to capture unspeakable despair and defeat… You can’t help but reckon in a more existential way – to ask, what have we wrought? What have we desecrated? What is sacred, and how do we protect it, and are we willing to? I mean that in the environment, I mean that in people. What lives matter? Where is our grace?”

I think today, we find ourselves in a place where we can really relate to those early Christians who would have first heard the Gospel of Matthew.
With all of the trouble that we are experiencing, it feels like everything is falling apart.
We are weary of this pandemic.
We are weary of working for institutional change in the church and in our society.
We are wearing of fighting with one another.
We want to throw in the towel.
Run to our separate corners.
Focus on ourselves.
Drink an extra glass of wine to numb the world.
But the message Jesus offers here is to not let your love grow cold.
Keep calm.
Keep the faith.
Keep going.
Don’t be distracted.
Don’t give up.
Don’t stop building the Kingdom.

I think the lynchpin for interpreting the three stories we find in Matthew 25 is actually a little parable about faithful servants at the end of chapter 24.
The ones who take care to keep fulfilling their responsibilities while the master is away, unlike the bad servants who think, eh, it will be a while, and focus on their own selfish objectives.
What are our responsibilities at the servants of God right here and right now?
What is sacred and how can we protect it, fight for it, live into it?
How should we faithfully wait?

Let’s go back to those parables…
In the parable of the bridesmaids, I find the reminder to hang on to the truth that there really will be a wedding someday.
We are coming near to the season of Advent where we wait for the coming of Jesus and we aren’t simply preparing for Christmas. We are waiting for the day that Jesus will come again to bring the Kingdom of Heaven about in all of its fullness.
We can’t simply go about our own business while we wait – we are called to be bridesmaids, getting ready for that day.
I notice this time around when I read the text that ALL of the bridesmaids, not just those labeled as foolish, fell asleep on the job.
Waiting and working for the Kingdom can be tiresome work.
But we have to keep laboring in God’s name.

I also start to notice the fear in the parable.
First, the unprepared and foolish bridesmaids were afraid.
They were afraid that they would be found wanting. That they were inadequate. That they had to have it all together to be included.
And so they run off and turn away and leave their responsibilities in order to try to compensate.
I begin to wonder… what would have happened if they had just stuck around? If they showed up just as they were?
On the other hand, the “wise” bridesmaids were filled with fear, too.
You see, they thought if they shared their oil, there wouldn’t be enough for them.
They forgot the whole purpose of the coming celebration was to be together.
And when they let fear and scarcity rule their hearts, they turn away from mercy and hospitality and it leaves five of their friends out in the dark.

Suddenly this parable is not about making sure we are prepared so we can get into heaven but is a call to actively wait, to show up as we are, and to share what we have so that all can experience God’s Kingdom.

Okay… what about the parable of the talents?
Well, the first thing I notice this time is that this isn’t a separate story.
If we look at the Greek, it is actually a continuation of the previous one.
For like a man who is absent calls in his servants and entrusts everything he has to them, we are called to actively wait for his return.
We are called to build upon what Jesus has left to us.
Two of these servants do this, but the third is afraid.
Ahh, there is fear again!
This servant was given incredible responsibility, but neglected to do their part.

You see, the Kingdom of Heaven is not a gift that we are given when we accept Jesus, only to hide and hoard, waiting for the day the master finally returns.
The Kingdom of Heaven is about what we are building with that gift right now.

This point is driven home in the final of these three stories.
We get a vision of what will happen when the Son of Man finally appears.
When the master returns home.
When the Kingdom of Heaven arrives in its fullness.
And we find a sort of parallel of the less familiar story at the end of Matthew 24.
Those who inherit the Kingdom are those who have been faithful servants.
In her weekly reflection, Debie Thomas writes, “the coming of God’s kingdom in all of its healing, justice-making fullness is the yardstick against which we must measure all of our own healing, justice-making efforts. The wedding feast is our ideal, our goal, our destination. Without it, we have no standard. No accountability. Nothing to lean into, nothing to work towards, nothing to anticipate as we labor in God’s name.”
In other words, everything we do right now should be held up to what we expect to find in the Kingdom of Heaven.
This parable isn’t about earning a ticket into heaven.
It is about embracing the Kingdom of Heaven right here and right now.
The fullness of life, true aliveness, eternal life is ours.
Not just living as if it our reality, but claiming it AS our reality.
Not being afraid of judgment, or imperfection, or scarcity, but simply being faithful.
Putting one foot in front of the other every day.
No matter what happens.
Wars or earthquakes or famine or persecution…
All of that is temporary and none of it excuses us from the work that is before us.

Those who are shut out of the Kingdom of Heaven, you see, are the ones who simply have failed to live within it.
The bad servants who said to themselves, eh, I’ll worry about that later.
No, now is the time.
Now is the Kingdom.
All around you is heaven.
Let’s get to work.

A Feast of Terror and Abundance

Posted on November 8, 2020Leave a comment

Text: Matthew 22:1-14; Isaiah 25:1-10

So, all month long in our daily devotions we are focusing on where the Kingdom of Heaven shows up in the gospel of Matthew.
What we discover is an awful lot about how we should live right here and right now.
The Sermon on the Mount is filled with ethical instruction about how we treat one another in the Kingdom… which is often the opposite of what the world expects.
We’re called to put all of this teaching into practice in our lives and get out there and start sharing the Kingdom of Heaven with everyone we meet by healing and teaching and building relationships.
And then, we get to the parables.

This coming week we are going to talk each day about some of the shorter parables…
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, or leaven, or a net thrown into the ocean…
But for the next two weeks, I want to focus on some of the big and complicated parables we find in this gospel.

Parables, as I shared in yesterday’s devotion, are stories about ordinary things that draw people in, but have a meaning that is often hidden from plain sight.
They are meant to provoke us, to get under our skin, or as Debie Thomas puts it: “show us things we don’t want to see.”
Because they are stories, they have layers of interpretation, not just one way of seeing them. Jewish rabbis in the time of Jesus would have debated and wrestled and turned a scripture upside down and inside out and every single time would have discovered something new within it.
That is how we are invited to dive in… with open minds and willing spirits.
We are invited to dig into the history and the context that surrounds these simple narratives to try to grasp how the crowds around Jesus might have heard them.
And then we are supposed to ask how God is working to challenge the assumptions we bring into the story.

So today, we have the parable of the wedding banquet.
Now, usually when we look at this parable, we imagine that the King is God, right? God has invited the chosen ones to the party, and when they refuse, God throws open the doors to anyone else who might come.
Well, that is the sanitized version of that story.
Because it skips over all of the terrifying parts.
This is not a happy and blissful scene, but something that is straight out of a horror film.
When the invited guests don’t show up, in his rage, the king has them all murdered and sets the whole city on fire.

Then, the king pulls in everyone who is left – good or bad, rich or poor – and in essence, forces them to attend the party.
I mean, if they refuse, they might turn out like those initial guests, right?
All of these leftover nobodies show up, probably with fear and trembling.
Then, when the King looks out at the crowd, he sees one person who isn’t wearing the right thing and has him thrown out into the darkness.

Debie Thomas asks us:
“As Christ’s followers, do we really believe in a God as petty, vengeful, hotheaded, and thin-skinned as the king in this parable? A God who burns an entire city to the ground in order to appease his wounded ego? A God who forces people to celebrate…while his armies wreak destruction right outside? A God who casts an impoverished guest into the “outer darkness” for reasons the guest absolutely can’t control? Obviously the answer is no. Of course we don’t believe in a God as monstrous as that. Do we?”

One of the things that I remember my grandpa saying pretty clearly is that he didn’t understand the God of the Old Testament.
The God he found there was violent.
The God he found there punished the people.
But the God of the New Testament was full of grace and mercy and forgiveness.

But I think we can only say that is true if we selectively read through the scriptures and we skip over interpretations of parables like this.
And I’m reminded that it also requires us to skip over the promises and visions of abundance and love we find in the Torah and Prophets and Writings.
In fact, in the back of my mind, I’ve been thinking about not the wedding feast of terror from our reading today, but the feast of abundance in Isaiah 25 and 55.

Isaiah cries out…
…the Lord of heavenly forces will prepare for all peoples
a rich feast, a feast of choice wines,
of select foods rich in flavor…
He will swallow up on this mountain the veil … swallow up death forever.
The Lord God will wipe tears from every face;
he will remove his people’s disgrace from off the whole earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
They will say on that day,
“Look! This is our God,
for whom we have waited—
and he has saved us!

All of you who are thirsty, come to the water!
Whoever has no money, come, buy food and eat!
Without money, at no cost, buy wine and milk!
Why spend money for what isn’t food,
and your earnings for what doesn’t satisfy?
Listen carefully to me and eat what is good;
enjoy the richest of feasts.
Listen and come to me;
listen, and you will live.

Surrounding these passages are mentions of God’s judgement.
Of walls being trampled and people being destroyed.
But here is the thing about the prophets.
They were speaking to a people who were actively experiencing their own ruin.
Their cities were being overrun and burned to the ground by occupying forces.
Their neighbors were being killed.
And they had to try to make sense of what was happening.
How could God have let them down?
Why weren’t they protected?
And what the prophets proclaimed in this moment is that the rulers and the people needed to acknowledge their own sin and complicity and failures.
But every single time, the prophets also spoke of Gods redemptive love.
They set forth a vision of abundance and grace and restoration.
You see, the God proclaimed in these texts is not petty or cruel… no, God’s steadfast love endures forever.
God is patiently waiting, with the banquet table always abundantly set, ready to swallow up death forever.

How do we reconcile that vision with our traditional interpretations of this parable?
Maybe we start by asking new questions.
I was a bit blown away when Debie Thomas posed a question in her reflection:
“What if the king in the parable isn’t God at all?”
“What if the king embodies everything we’ve learned to associate with divine power and authority from watching other, all-too-human kings and rulers?

This king, after all, acts a whole lot more like Herod that the God we find in scripture.
You know, the one who went out and murdered infants because he felt his rule was threatened.
This king acts a whole lot more like the Roman Empire, which has subjugated the people of Israel.

Perhaps, Jesus tells the parable in precisely this way because he wants to challenge the assumptions we have about the kind of Kingdom he is bringing.
A parable, after all, shows us things that we don’t want to see.
Not about God, but about ourselves.
This parable comes on the heels in Matthew’s Gospel of his triumphant entry into Jerusalem.
There were some there, who wanted God’s reign to come with violence. They hoped for an overthrow of the Roman empire.
But there were also those like the religious leaders who believed that God’s reign was exclusive and filled with judgment. They sought to arrest and kill Jesus because he was not playing by their expectations and rules.
What is Jesus trying to get us to see?
If God is not the King… where do we find the Kingdom of Heaven in this parable?

In the parables we will explore over this next week in our daily devotion… Jesus tells us the Kingdom of Heaven is hidden. It is quiet. It is blossoming. It is unexpected. It is contagious. It is inclusive. It can’t be stopped.

When I hold those Kingdom of Heaven values up to this parable, I come to a surprising insight.
What if the Kingdom of Heaven is centered not on the powerful ruler, but the one person who has the courage to stand out?
The one who refuses to follow the rules of the party, the empire, the world.
As Debie Thomas puts it, “What if the ‘God figure’ in the parable is… the one brave guest who decides he’d rather be ‘bound hand and foot’ and cast into the outer darkness of Gethsemane, Calvary, the cross, and the grave…?”

After all, just prior to this parable, Jesus challenges the religious leaders quoting scripture to them:
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The Lord has done this, and it’s amazing in our eyes.”

The Kingdom of Heaven is not a feast of terror where guests are forced to attend by the threat of sword and fire.
The Kingdom of Heaven is a feast of abundance that turns upside down our notions of power.
It is where tears are wiped away.
It embodies the kind of love the Apostle Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 13.
The Kingdom of Heaven is patient.
The Kingdom of Heaven is not easily angered.
The Kingdom of Heaven keeps no account of wrongs… not taking pleasure in wrong doing, but rejoicing in the truth.
The Kingdom of Heaven endures all things… even the threats and violence of the world.

In fact, it is the rejection by this world that lays the cornerstone for God’s will to be done among us.

Last week, we compared the values of the kingdoms of earth and the Kingdom of Heaven.
Today, we are invited to imagine ourselves as those invited guests…
Will we allow fear and intimidation to keep us in the world?
Or are we willing to take up our crosses and stand against the forces of evil, injustice, and oppression?
It was a decision that the disciples would have to make just a few days after Jesus shared these words.
Some of them betrayed Jesus and handed him over.
Some of them fled.
Some of them tried to fight.
Some of them denied who he was.
You see, standing against this world feels almost impossible.

Almost.
Because even our rejection cannot stop the Kingdom from taking hold.
Even our hesitation cannot stop the Spirit from moving.
God’s steadfast love endures forever.
And God is patiently waiting for us, with the banquet table always abundantly set, ready to swallow up death and fear and oppression forever.
All we have to do accept the invitation.