Prayer

Lord as we ponder your words open our hearts that we may understand and know you. Amen 

Sermon    

 I can remember seeing a clip of a Mom serving her children some Macaroni and cheese.  The kids start fighting over how one got more than the other.  Mom insists that they are the same.  The kids continue to argue.  Mom says fine then takes away both of the bowls puts everything into one bowl gets a chop stick and starts to dish it out one piece at a time.    The Kids chorus  “Not fair fair.”  

When you look up the great book of life no where will you find that it says that life has to be fair.  

Life is not fair.    The good person who lived life well was kind  becomes gravely ill and dies and all say that is not fair.   The not so nice person who was cruel and greedy dies.  Not fair?   Well he Gets his comeuppance.   What goes around… you know.   No, it is still tragic.    Life is not fare.  

This brings us to the gospel.  A vineyard owner is looking at the harvest the time is now.  Goes out in the morning hires some workers, needs more by mid day goes out hire more, needs more goes out late afternoon hires more last hour of day goes out hires more. 

Come quitting time he calls them all in and pays everyone the same wage.

You do know that this did not go over well.  I work fifteen hours, and buddy works one  and we get paid the same.   Stop the bus on that dime!  The lesson is not about fairness or injustice. The lesson is that God looks upon all his creation in the same light.  God does not choose who he will love more or love less for God is love.     

This is not an idea that has been lived within the faith.   

  Christian history is one that does not reflect this idea of God’s love is for all.   

Paul’s words from last week seem to resonate even more so with todays lesson  

  Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds.  Those who observe the day, observe it for the Lord. Also those who eat, eat for the Lord, since they give thanks to God, while those who abstain, abstain for the Lord and give thanks to God.

  For we do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.  If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.  For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

God does not make a distinction between the perceived deserving and not deserving and yet Christian history has. 

For me this Not a crisis of faith, as much a crisis of conscience. I was watching a series and one of the main characters is encouraged to visit the holy center of the Viking faith called Upsalla.  She is told to go before the Christian wave washes it away. 

There came a point in our Faith’s history when we went from the persecuted to the persecutor. 

   Beginning when emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity and making Christianity the state religion , the followers of the Christ have perpetrated gruesome acts of violence under the sign of the cross. Over the centuries, the seasons of Lent and Holy Week were, for the Jews, times of fear and trepidation. Muslims also associate the cross with violence; crusaders' rampages were undertaken under the sign of the cross." 

The statement attributed to Jesus "I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword" has been interpreted by some as a call to arms for Christians. Mark Juergensmeyer a sociology professor argues that "despite its central tenets of love and peace, Christianity—like most traditions—has always had a violent side. The bloody history of the tradition has provided disturbing images and violent conflict has provided a road map for theologically justifying the violence of contemporary Christian groups. 

 The concept of the Just War theory that holds that a conflict can and ought to meet the criteria of philosophical, religious or political justice, provided it follows certain conditions.   From a Christian standpoint war a violent act that contradicts Christ teaching but if a war meets the certain conditions then it is justifiable and therefore forgivable.    The theory dates back as far as the writings of Plato and Cicero the Romans and then influenced by Christianity by theologian like Augusts of Hippo. 

The Church took this one step further.

In 1095, at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II declared that some wars could be deemed as not only a bellum iustum ("just war"), but could, in certain cases, rise to the level of a bellum sacrum (holy war).  Jill Claster, dean of New York University College of Arts and Science,  characterizes this as a "remarkable transformation in the ideology of war", shifting the justification of war from being not only "just" but "spiritually beneficial".  another scholar Thomas Murphy  examined the Christian concept of Holy War, asking "how a culture formally dedicated to fulfilling the injunction to 'love thy neighbor as thyself' could move to a point where it sanctioned the use of violence against the alien both outside and inside society" 

 The religious sanctioning of the concept of "holy war" was a turning point in Christian attitudes towards violence; "Pope Gregory VII made the Holy War possible by drastically altering the attitude of the church towards war... Hitherto a knight could obtain remission of sins only by giving up arms, but Pope Urban invited him to gain forgiveness 'in and through the exercise of his martial skills'." A holy war was defined by the Roman Catholic Church as "war that is not only just, but justifying; that is, a war that confers positive spiritual merit on those who fight in it".

In the 12th century, Bernard of Clairvaux wrote: "'The knight of Christ may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently; for he serves Christ when he strikes, and saves himself when he falls.... When he inflicts death, it is to Christ's profit, and when he suffers death, it is his own gain."