THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS
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​ Today’s Epistle lesson is one of the most important excerpts from all of Scripture. You’ve heard the words read, you’ve sung a paraphrase of them. Now hear them again from a different translation, The Common English Bible: 

Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort in love, any sharing in the Spirit, any sympathy, complete my joy by thinking the same way, having the same love, being united, and agreeing with each other. Don’t do anything for selfish purposes, but with humility think of others as better than yourselves. Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others. Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus: 


Though he was in the form of God,
he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit.
But he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave
and by becoming like human beings.
When he found himself in the form of a human, 
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross. 
Therefore, God highly honored him
and gave him a name above all names, 
so that at the name of Jesus everyone
in heaven, on earth, and under the earth might bow 
and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 
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Paul is in prison, in chains for his work spreading the Gospel. The preceding chapter of the Philippian letter expresses an upbeat attitude, even to the point that those who use Paul’s difficulty to gain attention to their own work are at least still spreading the Gospel, talking about Jesus. 

There’s some debate around the poem in today’s lesson. Is it an older hymn used by Paul, or did he write the words himself? Is he paraphrasing the words of others to allow a new hearing of familiar words? We don’t know, because no earlier manuscript of this text predates Paul’s letter. But consider that Paul writes these words maybe as soon as two or three decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus. So even if they are an older hymn, they can’t be that old. The words of the hymn we just sang were written the same year this parish was founded. In the history of the church, that’s not all that old, either. 

The opening words of the poem can be somewhat confusing, starting with the first word. Though he was in the form of God . . . . Consider the choice made by the editors of the New International Version: 

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. . . . 
British Bishop and scholar N. T. Wright wants that sentence to begin with “because,” emphasizing a divine intent. Because he was God, which makes everything else not only possible but very real, as real as “let there be light.” As real as a humiliating death. As real as a glorious resurrection from the dead. 

And it’s more than intent. It’s about ability. Because Christ is one with God, because Christ is with God, working with God from before creation itself, Christ is the only way possible for the redemption of humanity. The one whose activity formed creation is the only one whose action can promise a new creation. This comes by way of choosing to become human, to embrace all by becoming one with humanity even as Christ is embraced by and embraces God. And by doing this, all creation, heaven and earth, is joined as one dwelling place for God’s ongoing work of creating life and offering salvation. 

All this happens not by asserting power and authority, but by bending under the burden of carrying all that is to the altar of the cross, giving all of life back to God as the only acceptable offering that could be made. After all else has failed—laws, miracles, punishments, exiles, losses and gains—only one thing was left to reveal to the world: who God really is, God’s true nature, and God’s reason for creating life in the first place. 

Love. 

Only love can set aside ambition and entitlement and, to use our contemporary transactional language, accounts payable and receivable, in order to invite the unworthy and rebellious to come back home. Only love can forgive past and even future transgressions so that relationships are restored to new and enduring life. 

Only love can look beyond individual aspirations and pervasive greed in order to invite the empty, forgotten, discarded shells of existence into meaningful and, dare I say, resurrected life. And Love itself chose to do this, not in order to gain those final words of today’s poem, but to offer those words as the possibility, the only real hope, to all who hear and are embraced by them. 

Because Christ set aside all that was rightly his alone and became one with and for all of us, we have a share in the glory that is given to him. It becomes ours when knees humbly bend, tongues haltingly confess, and hearts and hands give all we have, all we are to present the only offering we can possibly make. That offering is not things but a confession as deep as eternity itself.

​Jesus Christ is Lord. 
 

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

​ Poor Jonah. Nothing seems to go his way. He’s given a job to do, but doesn’t want it and tries to run away by catching the next boat out of town. His running puts the lives of others in danger, so he’s thrown overboard, only to be swallowed by a big fish. Then, before he figures out how to fung shui the alimentary canal, his presence provides proof that prophets are prone to causing indigestion in many species. He is, you might say, the Rodney Dangerfield of prophets. 

Today’s first lesson is the end of the story, so it needs a bit of explanation. Jonah lived at about the same time as Amos, Micah, Hosea, and the first prophet named Isaiah. He’s from the northern kingdom of Israel, which is under siege by the Assyrian army. Anyone know the capital of Assyria? Ding ding ding. Nineveh. 

The last thing Jonah wants to see is the sparing of Nineveh from God’s wrath. He admits that God is a forgiving being, and that if he preaches repentance to them, they might just take him at his word and do it. Jonah wants to see vengeance, not redemption. But no, that’s not what happened. The closest Jonah gets to vengeance is by becoming what could have been the retaliation of millions of future sushi dinners. 

Of course, there’s more to the story, including the fact that it’s all a metaphor to reteach Israel itself the possibility of forgiveness and redemption even while they’re under siege. It’s also a story of God’s sense of humor. My Old Testament professor in seminary pointed out that the last words of today’s lesson might just be the last time God is quoted as speaking directly to a human being up until the time of Jesus. If you didn’t notice, the very last words are sarcasm. Go figure. 

These few weeks we’re hearing Jesus’ teaching not only of the availability of forgiveness, but of the very real requirement of our being forgiving even as we are forgiven. I keep listening for a change of inflection when we repeat the words “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” I haven’t heard much change yet. 

“Forgive us OUR sins AS we forgive those who sin against US.” That’s what we’re praying for. Be careful. It might just get answered. 
Jonah is a personification of Israel itself, and, by extension, a personification of us when we choose vengeance over forgiveness. It’s the same lesson Paul tries to remind the church at Philippi when he says to live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. It may be true that while anger is appropriate when it reveals injustice, forgiveness is the only thing that allows us to stay in relationship. It is, as an advisor once said, “the only thing that allows us to stop trying to live a better yesterday.” 

When we forgive, we remain in some type of relationship with those we forgive. It takes effort, a willingness, and desire to remain in a relationship. Consider that as the reason why God offers forgiveness to all—even the Ninevites among us. It is God’s willingness, God’s desire to remain in a faithful relationship with God’s people, God’s children. The cross of Jesus shows the extreme length to which God will go to do that by submitting God made flesh to torture and death in order to redeem both death and all those subject to it. 

That lesson is at the heart of Paul’s teaching, the very core of the Gospels, and a hard lesson for Jonah to learn. Maybe once Jonah figured out that his whole calling and strange journey was as much about teaching him who God is as it was about being God’s messenger, he can mourn the loss of a bush simply because the bush died and not because he had to sit all alone in his sunny pity party. 
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Maybe we can learn that one, too. 

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

​Paul’s letter to the church in Rome is densely packed with theological arguments regarding the relationship between Christian and Jewish believers. While it’s obvious which side of that debate Paul lands on, he also is an active part of both sides, that is, if sides are actually warranted. 

Today’s lesson from that letter raises a few questions, primarily as to why Paul even broaches the topic. Is he referring to Jewish dietary law and tradition? Is the meat offered at dinner part of a sacrifice made to an idol? Or does he really just crave a bacon cheeseburger? 

For a while I worked as the music director in a large Roman Catholic parish and taught in its schools. There were those who maintained the “no meat on Fridays” rule, even though that restriction had been relaxed except during Lent. The high school football team got energized every Friday when they went to their cars after school on game days and found dead fish on them. While they blamed players from opposing teams, they didn’t stop to think that they, too, were in class when it happened. Their own coaches owned up to the prank, but not before they retired. 

Keeping the rules helps us orient our lives. We learn discipline and structure. We might also learn a feeling of superiority for being faithful to them. That is Paul’s reason for addressing the issue, and his words might result in both a raising up and a lowering down, depending on individual senses of their own ways of life. 

All this goes back to the beginning of the letter. Paul spends a lot of time debating the idea that salvation comes through faithfulness to the law as opposed to salvation being a free gift that came before the law ever existed. Yet, we continue to this day to hear that we must obey certain rules and follow set traditions in order to be “saved” and a part of the family of the faithful. 

And, indeed, we tend to subscribe to that ethos. We just call them nice acceptable words like "constitutions" and "canons" and "bylaws," and my favorite, “we’ve always done it this way.” These documents, and sometimes the traditions, help us maintain some order to our communal lives. They also help us understand where authority and responsibility lie, both for those who are held responsible and for those who might desire to usurp authority. 

But there is one overarching aspect of Paul’s teaching that governs everything else. That is that our life together is governed by one thing—unity in Christ in faithful fellowship, understanding that it is solely by God’s grace that we are saved. Nothing else can usurp that grace, and no demand for adherence to laws and traditions can substitute for God’s faithfulness toward us.

To believe otherwise is to somehow try to replace God with ourselves. To insist that others adhere to our ways of life is to possibly deny not just Paul’s teaching but also the words of Jesus in John’s Gospel, where he tells his disciples that the Spirit will reveal more of God’s truth to them “when they are ready.” And, sometimes, it’s ready or not; here it comes anyway, because our selfish stubbornness wants to strangely inhibit God. We have yet to learn how exhausting those exercises in futility can become. 

The bottom line of all this is that we are not capable of judging others, even though we can point out behaviors and customs that don’t necessarily seem to fit our own. That distinction then leads to a discussion about merging old customs with new expressions while also maintaining the fruitful life of the community. When we judge, we supplant God. When we do that, we risk being atheist in some way, although we more often put ourselves in God’s place without giving it a second thought. 

In our relationship with God, we are all weak. In God’s relationship with us, we are made strong enough to accept our weakness, and the same weaknesses in others. We make no claim to superiority, exorcised of our need to control the behavior of others, even as we meet them so we might learn from each other the benefit of our life together in Christ. 

That life is made more abundant as much by our differences as by our similarities. After all, which one of us can contain the fullness of God, the One who was and is and ever shall be part of all of it? 

Our rules, written and otherwise, might help determine whether we fit in a particular group, parish, or denomination. They do not and cannot determine whether we or anyone else happen to be Christian. The constitutions and canons and bylaws serve to help define and protect the institutional church. At times it seems that they also try to protect God, when, in fact, our rigid boundaries and idolatrous grip on our rule books might instead try to protect us from God’s ongoing creation of new life. 

God will have no part of that, and probably just moves on to plant the seeds of the Spirit in more fertile ground. All of Paul’s letters, and the Gospels that come a bit later, point us to that fact. Read them again with that in mind, and give thanks that, like today’s Gospel tries to teach us, God’s number of times to forgive is as infinite as God’s grace. Just don’t take that for granted. Go and do it yourselves, because that's what God does for us. ​

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

I once faced a group of children and asked a question. “What’s it like to be Christian?” One kid spoke up immediately. “It means to be nice.” This was in that very wide Bible-belt region where many who claimed the title “Christian” were more likely to condemn those who weren’t just like them than they were to ponder whether they themselves offered an image of the risen Christ. 

I wasn’t sure what I might have heard as an answer to my question, but as I think about it now, it seems like I was given an easy out. I say that because many of our ideas of “being nice” mean we give in to many of the ways that enable and support conflict, just so we can avoid it. 

So, let me ask another question. How many of you here really enjoy conflict? 

I ask that in full confidence that I’m not preaching at the Red Mass, with a congregation of legal professionals whose livelihood often entails engaging in conflict. I also ask that as one who must confess an avoidance of conflict as much as possible. It’s something I learned watching my own mother, who shied away from any conflict. 

I also ask that question in full confidence that I am standing before a congregation that is conflict averse, and who avoid any open expression of conflict in favor of appearing “nice.” You might have discerned that I’ve outgrown a bit of my conflict avoidance by now. 

I once attended a workshop to help us learn how to deal with conflict. It didn’t hurt that it was in Honolulu in February, where conflict seemed to be washed away by the surf on Waikiki Beach just on the other side of our windows. Our greatest conflict at that point seemed to be with distraction. 

We were taught how to “handle” those who thrive on conflict. I learned soon after that the techniques we discussed didn’t really resolve conflict; instead, they seemed to require reinforcing the box we tried to place the sources of conflict in. 

Call it God’s will, karma, or God’s sense of humor, I shortly found myself as rector in the most conflicted parish in that diocese. They didn’t like female clergy but had a female bishop. They didn’t like the ordination of LGBT persons. There was a hidden history of clerical abuse related to that, but I didn’t know that yet. I soon discovered that they really didn’t like each other all that much sometimes, either. It seemed like when they had a choice of biblical persons to imitate, they chose the Pharisees. 

Today’s Gospel gives us a lesson in how to deal with conflict. Telling someone they’re headed for Hell isn’t in the syllabus. Neither is playing nice and letting abuse and bullying win the day. 

The Gospel teaches us that conflict resolution is first and foremost based in relationship. A wounded person is to go to the one who caused the wounds and explain their perspective in a way that is honest but not threatening. The conversation occurs in the spirit of reconciliation, not vengeance. If reconciliation does not occur, then a witness is added. If that doesn’t work, then the whole congregation is informed, still, mind you, in a spirit of reconciliation. 

If all that is ineffective in restoring the relationship, then the offending person is to be treated “as a Gentile,” an outsider. This is not, at least at first, what we might call excommunication, but rather an opportunity for evangelism. It is an opening to teach again the reconciling love shown to all of us on the cross and an invitation to share in its humility in a desire to also share in the resurrection to new life. 

If reconciliation comes about, we then have to admit that the new relationship will be different from what it was, at least for awhile. We cannot forget, nor can we pretend that the wounds have not occurred, especially when scars remain visible. Maybe that’s one reason why Jesus showed his amazed disciples his own scars after he was raised from the dead. 

We cannot avoid conflict, and to say there is no conflict is to live in denial, no matter where or who we are. I’ve said many times after several decades of church work, where two or three are gathered, there are probably at least five opinions. I sometimes experience conflicting opinions in my own household, and I live alone! 

Living in the love of Christ means we hold each other to some form of accountability. In fact, we can only do that, hold each other accountable, when we love each other enough to help ensure we are faithful to the truth given to us in the Word made flesh. 

To deny accountability, to avoid speaking the truth in love in order to avoid conflict, is to deny the possibility of redemption for both of us. As I told a friend one evening regarding that avoidance, if we deny redemption, we might just remove ourselves from possibilities of salvation. 

The effects resulting from that conversation are that conflict continues to endure in the minds of some. And as a result, we are outsiders to each other. Children of God, gathered together, the work continues. 

That work includes our accepting that, from a Christian perspective, conflict resolution is not a “win/lose” proposition according to cultural standards. If we must use competitive terms like "win" or "lose," the Gospel teaches us that the only “win” is to restore the relationship in some life-giving way. If that does not, or cannot happen, then everyone loses. 

This holds true for personal relationships, parish health and growth, and even for a nation that has chosen to ensnare itself in “forever wars” ever since victory seemed like a forever gift after 1945. 

And while we treat competition as a game, when it comes to relationships, it’s life and death, not life or death. Moses set that choice before us. Wisdom continues to await our making the correct choice. 
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As I said, the work continues.