As I was reading the gospel text for last week, I had one of those familiar waves of embarrassment wash over me as I read the text aloud. It’s not that I hadn’t read the text before, but that in my reading and study through the prior days, I was focused only on the sermon I would preach. With a famous line about forgiving “70 x 7 times,” I was focused in my writing about the radical nature of forgiveness being articulated by Jesus. To embody this practice of forgiveness was to renounce a culture of retribution and punishment that benefits the rich and oppresses the poor. After that sermon, I felt so clearly (in what we might have called conviction of the Holy Spirit in other times): I am comfortable talking ABOUT the radical nature of God’s love and the revolutionary consequences of following the Jesus path. But I am much less comfortable doing the radical and revolutionary work.

Then I read the words of Matthew 18:21-35 (though this has happened with many other texts at many other times), and I was mortified to be casually speaking the word “slave” out loud in a context of worship an in the illustration of a parable without a critique. Suddenly I’m knee-deep in a muddy mess of ancient text but not acknowledging how our sacred text has been used to exploit, dominate, and in the hands of white people, justify our role as dominators and exploiters. Most often when this happens, I am physically standing in the pulpit with a microphone in front of me and feel utterly self-conscious about stopping mid-sentence to say, “this is deeply problematic. I’m embarrassed to be mentioning the reality of slavery without commenting on it or calling attention to the problems with our sacred story.”

And so, knowing what little Koine Greek I know and a dash of knowledge about interpretive choices scholars make, I recognize to myself that the word being translated is doulos and is often translated “servant” just as it is “slave.” And even if the English word in our New Revised Standard Version says “slave,” I will change my reading to, “servant.”

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Grace abounds in today’s Gospel reading. I need the slow breaths of this text and the invitation to play in the preposterous, extravagant forgiveness of God. In today’s text, Jesus tells a parable to give the disciples some space to consider what forgiveness really is. Lost to time, we don’t hear the playfulness and ridiculous example he lays out. It’s like saying, “Suppose someone owes a billion dollars and gets it wiped clean but then turns around and has someone arrested for owing them 20 bucks.” Breathe out the extravagant, preposterous love of God in your every day, walking around life.

See, Jesus’ work is about restoring the world around him to a state of flourishing—the kind of flourishing we read about in the dream-like poetry of Genesis 1 as God breathes a world into being. Our congregation tends to hold to Matthew chapter 25 pretty closely as a guide for what our Christian faith calls us to do in the world. And we are right to do so for sure! Give water to one who is thirsty, food to one who is hungry, welcome to one who is a stranger, humanity to one who is incarcerated. We know those verses give us a lifetime of work to do and, sadly, still leave plenty of work left for our children and our children’s children.

But here in chapter 18, Jesus is talking about a different kind of flourishing that is connected to a hidden, even invisible world. The kind of work Jesus points to here is the kind that lives deep within our hearts but has the power to take over every thought and action we have, if we ignore the work and stubbornly push on. I think it is grace to come to this text today in the midst of so much happening everywhere on every front—the disasters of fire to the West, another hurricane to the Southeast, continued urgency on pretty much every social justice issue that we deeply value, and this weekend marking six months of COVID lockdown and physical distance from one another.

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Sacred text is replete with dynamic, romantic stories of how the Divine moves in rhythm with humanity. In the Garden, while everything is still good and very good and just as it should be, the Lord walks with humans through the garden in the cool of the day. That sets a tone of expectation for us readers and students of sacred text—the ideal is a closeness and perceived realness in relationship that matches something of the east of a lover’s walk at sunset. (Talk about setting the bar high for the goals of a spiritual life!)

In hearing the story of Moses tending sheep in the middle of the day, we take our shoes off and imagine ourselves in the story with him. Oh, to be met by holy presence in the flames of a bush! We press into the earth with bare feet and feel the four corners connect into the ground beneath us. Is this how God will move for us? Through us? With us? In Moses’ story, we are challenged to a state of awareness that transforms noticing into an invitation of holy presence. And from that holy presence, we are then called to go and do in the name of God. It has both rhythm and sequence. The lover’s walk has instructions for when and where and how we should go.

In Elijah’s story, he is running for his life, seemingly unaccompanied by holy presence. Then angels appear to tend to his needs and protect him in his rest. He rests beneath a miraculously grown broom tree. And when he is tempted to let his rest turn into altogether giving up on his calling and just living out his days hiddenly instead, God comes to him directly to call Elijah out again—not in the earthquake or the fire but in the gentle whisper.

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I know I’ve said this almost every week for half a year, but what a week! We watched TS Marco become a Cat 1 Hurricane but turn and float along the coast instead. Then we watched TS Laura become a 1 a 2 a 3 a 4 and wondered if she would make it to 5. The cone shifted west then east again then west. The storm surge was predicted to be “unsurvivable.” And many of you, like me, stayed alert throughout the night for signs and warnings of tornadoes.

While the storm surge did not become as wildly dangerous as feared, the hurricane crushed towns in Southwest Louisiana where residents of Lake Charles face as much as 8 weeks without power and a potential 4 weeks without water. All of this anxiety and watching and preparing came in the countdown to 15 years since Katrina and the subsequent levee failure. So many of you are marking and remembering where you were 15 years ago today. What you were wondering, asking, doing. The months of distance. The irreversible change of your city.

And then there’s the shooting of Jacob Blake. The response of deadly violence at the hands of a teenager in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The protests in Portland that escalated just this weekend. The rallies and move toward final months leading to the presidential election.

Friends, I know I am an open-hearted empath who feels it all. I have to work mindfully to shut out the emotional influx of news and life events and the stress and trauma my neighbors are feeling. Even if you are not highly attuned to the emotional energy of everyone around you, I suspect the constant inundation of news mixed with personal life timelines is just so much. So so much.

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As you know, the COVID times have allowed us to hear and see folks from all over the U.S. and Canada in our worship. From attendees on the screen to liturgists and prayers of prayers to preachers, we’ve been able to enjoy the many perks of worship without travel. I was invited to speak to another congregation mid-week at some point along these weeks, and they wanted to know about how we created the St. Charles Center for Faith + Action as well as the work we do through Together New Orleans and Together Louisiana. I talked about the industrial tax exemption, knocking on doors in advance of the gubernatorial election, advocating for substantive change to the criminal legal system, anti-racism work, climate change, you name it. And among the many questions I fielded that night, one person asked, “But what happened to the separation of church and state? Are you just throwing all of that out now? It doesn’t matter anymore?”

I talked about the free exercise and establishment clauses of the first amendment. The good, important work of the BJC (on whose Board I proudly serve.) The definition of electioneering and the limits on both houses of worship and non-profits to endorse and campaign for candidates. I explained there are no legal restrictions in this country on people of faith and people of conscience getting involved in public processes that serve the common good; especially when that direct involvement is rooted in the sacred stories that guide those people of faith. And I was reminded again how long our white churches (especially moderate churches that prided themselves on being neither progressive nor conservative) lived so comfortably in our privilege that inaction on issues of justice was held up as a virtue—we are neutral on politics because we gather around something higher and greater than that lowly stuff.

Now don’t get me wrong. I think we do gather around something higher and greater, but those descriptors aren’t enough. I would also say this “thing” we gather to do and experience and seek together is simultaneously beneath us and around us as the foundation of a strong house or the banks of a strong river. And it is the house itself and the water itself. It is the air we breathe that fills our lungs and gives us life.

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In the age of TikTok, YouTube, and iPhones, kids are amazingly savvy. I realize they are technology natives in a way my generation was, but I am still impressed by what creativity + modern tech can generate. My friend’s daughter is quick and clever when it comes to making videos, and she has started to use these skills to make persuasive arguments to her parents for all kinds of things. She’ll make a video outlining the reasons a guinea pig makes a great pet and guaranteeing the easy care and maintenance children can offer for their new guinea pig. She’ll partner with a best friend to highlight the benefits of a sleepover and why the girls very much need more time together than just an afternoon hangout. She’s determined enough and creative enough that these videos often impress her parents and win the day. Well, except for the guinea pig.

My friend is equal parts impressed by her daughter’s skill, amused by her fierce determination, and genuinely swayed by the case her daughter lays out. Again, except for the guinea pig. I’m carrying this uniquely modern perspective into today’s text because it doesn’t land well for my August 16, 2020, ears to hear Jesus refusing to help a woman in need and speaking to her in a metaphor that places her squarely in the role of a dog on the floor beneath his table. I need to be in the mindset of a loving and delighted parent who is being dazzled and amazed by her growing child because I don’t like hearing the words of Matthew 15 in a dismissive and disrespectful tone that Jesus initially seems to take. And I’m not particularly comfortable when Matthew’s gospel has Jesus focusing so singularly on “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” because I know that language oversimplifies Jesus’ participation in the very real rabbinic debates of the early 1st century AND has been used to support centuries of anti-semitism from and Christian superiority within the Church.

So. We have a story before us today that very much ends in healing a child and spotlights the dogged determination (bad pun) of a mother who loves her daughter. But the story is not so much about the healing part as it is the way the woman’s determination changes the mind of Jesus. She is taking on the adrenaline-fueled posture of a mama protecting her child and appears unconcerned with whether or not she belongs in the room or at the table. She is also stepping into the role of a peer and arguing with Jesus in a rabbinical tone the way we would expect Jesus to spar with other Pharisees and religious leaders.

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