What Kind Of Soil Am I… Today? (07/13/08)

(Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23)

Perhaps you saw the article in the AJC this past week.  A woman, who was pregnant at the time, recalled passing by the campus of Atlanta’s Morehouse College, years ago, while construction was under way, when her eyes suddenly fell upon a mound of red clay.  “My mouth watered,” she said.  In fact, she yearned to eat that clay, said the article; a craving she apparently had had since childhood.  Only now, during her pregnancy, she finally succumbed to it.  Not only that, but today – some 26 years later – she still consumes about 12 ounces of red clay every day!

This practice of eating clay, or dirt, while certainly not common, is not unheard of, however.  And while it most often affects children, women may also develop these unusual cravings during pregnancy.

In fact, the medical condition is called “pica” (pike-a), a term that comes from the Latin word for “magpie,” a type of bird known to eat almost anything.  And people with pica may eat everything from freezer frost to metal coins, said the article.  But the specific practice of eating clay or soil is called “geophagia” (jee-a-fay’-jee-a) or “earth eating.”

Most prevalent in rural, or preindustrial, societies, this craving or desire to eat “earthy” substances, such as clay, apparently develops as a way to augment a scanty or mineral-deficient diet.

Yet the practice endures to this day.

So at the Sweet Auburn Curb Market in downtown Atlanta, for instance, Ziploc bags filled with white chunks of “kaolin,” (Kale-in) that go for $1.49 a pound, are located behind the produce at one vendor, and next to the cigarettes and over-the-counter medications at another.

Kaolin, a type of clay found right here in Georgia, was also formerly the key ingredient in Kaopectate – the anti-diarrhea medicine.  And one of its side effects, apparently, is alleviating nausea; which, of course, is why it then might appeal to pregnant woman.

See – you can learn something new every day!  But eating dirt or clay?  Yechh!

On the other hand, it does remind me of the fact that, according to Genesis 2 at least, human beings were actually made from the earth.  “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7)  In fact, the name “Adam” literally means “man of the red earth.”

And then on Ash Wednesday, of course, when we receive that smudge in the shape of a cross on our foreheads, we are reminded, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Or, even in everyday parlance, when someone is plain and practical and unpretentious in their approach to life, what do we say?  We call them “earthy,” or “down-to-earth.”

I guess what I’m saying here is that, biblically and otherwise, we have something of a symbiotic relationship with the earth and with the soil.  For tens of thousands of years, in fact, we (meaning human beings) have toiled in it.  We have plowed and planted the earth, and then cultivated and harvested the crops that grew from it for our food and sustenance.

If there was one thing, therefore, that people down through the ages could understand and identify with, it was the soil; the soil from which (it was believed) they literally came; and the soil in which they labored for their very survival.

And so if there was one thing Jesus’ audiences could also easily understand and identify with, it was the soil as well.  In fact, in today’s gospel reading Jesus actually tells them that they, themselves, are soil; at least in terms of God’s Word working in their lives.  And he does so, through a parable…

But first, I think, we need to set up the context for this parable.  Dale Allison, a professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, does an excellent job reminding us of the flow of Matthew’s gospel.

For instance, the first four chapters of Matthew, says Professor Allison, introduce us to the main character, Jesus.  “They tell us who he is… how he came into the world, how his ministry got started, etc.”

Then we have chapters 5-7, commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Mount, which is a collection of Jesus’ ethical teachings.  Next come chapters 8-9 where the focus now shifts from “words” to “deeds” and we are introduced to Jesus’ acts of compassion and healing.  Following them is chapter 10, “the missionary discourse where Jesus commissions his disciples and instructs them to say what he has said and to do what he has done…”

Then these chapters on the words and deeds of Jesus (chapters 5-9) and the words and deeds of the disciples (chapter 10) lead up to chapters 11-12, which record primarily the response to both John the Baptist and Jesus.  “Unfortunately,” writes Professor Allison, “it all adds up to an indictment: many of the people, under the sway of their hard-hearted leaders, have decided not to join Jesus’ cause.”

This, then, finally leads us to chapter 13, and today’s gospel, where, according to Professor Allison, the burning question is:  “How is it that so many in Israel have rejected the Messiah?  That is, “How did his own (people) receive him not?”  And chapter 13, which opens with today’s gospel reading – the Parable of the Sower – then addresses this very issue.

But one last point, before we take a look at the parable itself.  In the verses that are not included in today’s reading (that is, verses 10-17), the main issue is the question of why Jesus chose to speak in parables in the first place.  Which then leads into a conversation, as well, about the relative difficulty of understanding Jesus’ parables.

Tom Long, who is a professor of preaching at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, claims that Jesus used these often “confusing” parables in order to force people to think more deeply about the meaning of the gospel.  In others words, Jesus did not want to have people grab the gospel too quickly because such a “quick grab” almost invariably results in a shallow faith that does not last – one of the points that Jesus actually makes, of course, within the Parable of the Sower itself.

To support this claim, Long tells the following story.  The great preacher, George Buttrick, was once flying on an airplane.  And as he sat there, he had a legal pad in front of him on which he was furiously scribbling some notes for Sunday’s sermon.

The man sitting in the seat next to Buttrick noticed this and inquired, “Say, what are you working on there, sir.”  Buttrick answered, “My sermon for Sunday – I’m a Christian preacher.”

“Oh,” the man replied.  “Well, I don’t like to get caught up in the complexities of religion.  I like to keep it simple.  You know, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’  The Golden Rule; that’s my religion.”

“I see,” said Buttrick, “and may I ask what do you do for a living?”  And the man responded, “Why, I’m an astronomer.  I teach astrophysics at a university.”

“Ah, yes, astronomy,” Buttrick shot back.  “Well, I don’t like to get too caught up in the complexities of science, myself.  ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.’  That’s my astronomy.  Who would ever need any more than that, eh?”

Touché.  Point well taken.  Shallowness of any kind, whether in religion or science, or anything else for that matter, is not a good thing.  And so it behooves us, this morning, to give Jesus’ parable here something more than a “quick going over.”

Although actually, at first, it’s really not too hard to understand.

“A sower went out to sow,” said Jesus.  Pretty straightforward, and it doesn’t take too much brain power to figure out that God is the sower here.  And that the seed he’s sowing is his Word.

The first problem, however – especially for modern listeners – is the apparent wastefulness of the sowing.  By that, I mean the sower appears to be throwing his seed around rather indiscriminately, doesn’t he?

Scott Hoezee writes that, today, we might have the same reaction if we heard a story about a farmer who hooked up his planter to the back of his tractor, but then threw the switch to activate the planter even before he was out of his driveway!  “There he is putt-putting down the country lane with corn seed scattering everywhere he goes.  It bounces on the road, some flies into the ditch.  When he finally gets near his field, he first has to cut through a weedy and thorny patch with corn seed still flying out loosey-goosey from that planter that, by all rights, had been switched on way too early.”

Hoezee’s point here, of course, is that no farmer in his right mind would be so careless in the scattering of valuable seed.  It would be the kind of wastefulness that a “frugal and economically-minded farmer would never tolerate.”

Yet, this is exactly what God chooses to do with the seed of his Word.  Jesus says that God is just such a foolish farmer.  “He’s got (apparently) more than enough seed to go around, and so throws it anywhere and everywhere, the odds of success notwithstanding.”

Now the ability of the seed to do what it was intended to do, even under adverse conditions, is something I want to come back to

a little later.  But what I’d like for us to focus on at this point, instead, is the third key element in the story after the sower and the seed; that is, the soil.

Four types of soil, of course, are mentioned: hard-packed soil, rocky, shallow soil, soil filled with thorns, and finally good soil.  And as he sat there in that boat, looking at the crowds packed along the shoreline, it was as if (someone has noted) Jesus was able to “scan” their hearts with a kind of “spiritual MRI.”  In other words, he could see “the hard hearts, the shallow hearts, the thorny hearts, and the pure and unencumbered hearts.”  And so to such an audience he now tells his story…

The “hard-packed soil” on the path is those “hard-hearted” people, isn’t it?  People who have completely shut their hearts and minds to the possibility of God working in their midst.  In Jesus’ day these were undoubtedly the people who found it difficult, if not impossible, to conceive that God might be doing something new and wonderful in the world through his Son, Jesus Christ.

In our own time, it’s perhaps a little different.  The hard-hearted people, in our day, are more likely to be the people who have completely ceased to believe in the possibility that God even exists, much less can actually make a difference in their lives.

Recent best-selling books, written by self-proclaimed atheists, who attempt to make the age-old claim that there simply is no God, are just one example.  But hardness of heart can also be found among those who reject God on intellectual grounds, as well; those who mistakenly believe that a commitment to knowledge or to science somehow precludes any kind of faith.  And, sadly, it can also be found among those people who have been hurt deeply in life, sometimes by the church itself, and now they wonder – even if there is a God – how such a God could have allowed these things to have happened to them in the first place…

Next there’s the “rocky, shallow” soil.  Then, as now, people can often get “side-tracked” by the superficial things in life.  Two items in the news in recent days caught my attention.  One is that the latest statistics show that while serious skin cancer has decreased among young men, it has actually increased among young women.  The reasons aren’t completely clear yet, but the greater likelihood for young women to want to be tan in the first place, even frequenting tanning salons during the winter in order to keep their tans year round, has been cited as one of the possibilities.  The other news item are the reports that people were lining up all over the country, even waiting for days in some cases, in order to buy the new iPhone that has just hit the market.

At a time when global warming, the risk of terrorism, the horror of genocide on the African continent, the AIDS pandemic, rapidly rising gas and food prices, the collapse of the housing and now the banking industries in our own country, all threaten the world and life as we know it, it never ceases to amaze me just how silly and shallow and superficial we can be, at times, as a society.  That is, staying tan and having the latest techno-toy are apparently more important, for many of us, than any of these above-mentioned threats to our planet and to our existence.  Furthermore, there was actually more press coverage, it seemed, of Christie Brinkley’s nasty celebrity divorce than there was over the travesty of justice and threat to democracy and self-rule perpetrated by Robert Mugabe’s regime over in Zimbabwe.

Shallowness, or the lack of real depth in one’s life, is a serious issue, of course, when the tough times come.  Edward Markquart, a Lutheran pastor who grew up in Minnesota, tells the story of working as a canoe guide during his college summers.  And among those they would take on these canoe trips were reform-school kids who had gotten in trouble with the law.  Tough and worldly on the outside, they, nevertheless, had very little experience when it came to the outdoors.

Markquart relates that they would often camp beneath tall pine trees, some reaching 65 feet in height.  But when storms would come and the winds would blow, they would hurriedly get the tents and canoes away from these tall trees.

The reform-school kids would naturally ask why.  And Markquart would tell them, “Because it’s dangerous.  Underneath all this ground is solid granite; and the top soil is only a few inches deep, which means that when the wind comes, it blows these 65 foot tall pine trees right over because they don’t have any roots.

It’s the same with some people, says Markquart.  Inside they’re just as shallow, they don’t have any deep roots, and so when the hard times come – and they will, for all of us – they simply can’t stand up to them.

The third kind of soil is filled with thorns and weeds.  Scott Hoezee says these people “are just plain busy and crowded.” He writes, “These hearts are neither calloused nor shallow.  In fact, there is some real depth to them.  Lots of stuff grows here.  But in the end, it’s too much.  The seed of the gospel comes in and sprouts just fine, but faces stiff competition for light and warmth and nutrients.”

Hoezee goes on to suggest that concerns about 401k retirement plans, Roth IRAs, the kid’s college fund, and their stock market portfolios “absorb a lot of nutrients from the soil of their hearts.”  In addition, youth sports, community involvement, the PTA at school, politics, neighborhood associations and socializing with friends – and it’s mostly all good stuff – still makes people busy, often too busy, he contends.  And so the seed of the gospel simply gets choked out…

Finally, of course, there’s the “good” soil, the soil in which God’s Word can sprout and grow and produce the kind of “fruit” Jesus hoped his followers would always produce.  But these aren’t very good odds, are they?  One out of four; only one soil out of four soils (according to Jesus’ story) produces the kind of growth God is looking for.  Remember, just a little less than one out of four at the plate got Jeff Francoeur sent down to the minors.  And the truth is: it’s not such a hot batting average for Christians either…

And then, of course, we have the inevitable question, don’t we?  Which is simply: What kind of soil am I?  Am I the kind of person who’s become so jaded, or has been hurt so deeply at some point that my heart has been completely “hardened” against the possibility of God working in my life?  Or am I a “shallow” sort of person who jumps at every latest fad, and takes my cues in life from celebrities and whatever else is the most popular thing going at the moment?  Or is my life just so busy, even with good things sometimes, that faith doesn’t even have a chance to grow?  Or is it somehow possible that I am basically “good soil”; that the seed of God’s Word has actually found a place in my heart and, even as we speak, is growing in my life?

The tendency – and the temptation – of course, is to assume that it has to be one of these four possibilities; that we’re either hard-packed, shallow, thorn-infested, or good soil, and that’s it.  One of the above, and nothing else.

But what I would suggest to you this morning is that you and I have been all of the above at one time or another.  That there have indeed been times when our heart was hardened, or times when we have been shallow and superficial, and other times when we were just too busy for God, and yet also times when we were prepared for and even receptive to God’s Word – and that it, therefore, found a home in our hearts.

So the real question then, for me, is not simply “What kind of soil am I?” but rather “What kind of soil am I… today?”  The realization and acceptance of the fact that we are not always good soil for God’s Word, that we actually fall victim to those soil conditions that make it next to impossible for God’s Word to take root.  But also that the soil of our hearts changes as we change, and as we face the various challenges and temptations and difficulties of life.  Which takes us back to the ability of the seed to do what it’s intended to do; a topic I said we’d get back around to… eventually.

I once came across a story about some archeologists who were excavating, a number of years ago, in the courtyard of a medieval monastery.  And during the period of time while they were digging, some seeds that had been dormant for over 400 years had actually begun to grow.  King Henry VIII had closed this particular monastery back in 1539, and the herbs tended by the monks had died.  But now they had sprouted to life again after the archeologists has disturbed the earth in which they were buried.

The point is this: if seeds in nature can do it, why can’t the seed of God’s Word?  In other words, if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that sometimes we’re not very good soil for God’s Word to take root in and grow.  Maybe even for a long time, we aren’t.  But then something happens, something to change our heart and our mind, and the seed that has lied dormant in our lives suddenly, and finally, begins to sprout.  When that happens, it’s called grace.

Fred Craddock, another well-known preacher, tells a story about the time he got a phone call from a woman whose father had just died.  She had been a teenager in one of the churches he had served as pastor some 20 years before, and he would have sworn that if there ever was a person who never heard a word he said – it was that teenage girl!  She was always giggling with her friends in the balcony, passing notes to boys, and drawing pictures on her bulletins.

But yet when her father died, she had looked up her old pastor and gave him a call.  “I don’t know if you remember me,” she began.  “Oh, yes, I remember,” thought Craddock.  “When my daddy died, I thought I was going to come apart,” she continued.  “I cried

and cried and cried.  I didn’t know what to do.  But then – I remembered something you said in one of your sermons…”

And, at this, Craddock was simply stunned.  She had actually remembered something he had said in one of his sermons?  It was proof enough to him that you can never tell how the seed will fall, or where it might even take root.

Maybe it’s also a reminder of why the farmer in Jesus’ parable kept lobbing seeds at even the unlikeliest of targets.  As Scott Hoezee writes, “It’s not that the farmer doesn’t understand the long odds.  It’s just that when you’re talking about salvation by grace, it’s not finally about the odds, but about the persistence of the Holy One who won’t stop (trying).  Ever.”  Amen

 

The Fulfillment of God’s Will… In Spite of Us! (06/22/08)

The Fulfillment of God’s Will… In Spite of Us!

(Genesis 21:8-21)

Now you’ve probably all heard the expressions: “Truth is stranger than fiction,” or “You can’t make this stuff up!”  Consider the following example.

In yesterday’s AJC there was an article about Gloucester, Massachusetts, a small town up in New England which has been particularly hard-hit by declines in the fishing industry.  Besides the serious economic problems they are facing, it also seems that within the past year seventeen teenage girls have become pregnant out of wedlock.  And town officials were, at first, hard pressed to explain it given that, on average, only four girls per year normally turn up in the “family way” (as they used to say).

Even more disturbing than the four-fold increase in teenage pregnancies, however, was the startling revelation that, apparently, these girls had made a “pact” between themselves to purposely get pregnant, and then raise their babies together!  According to yesterday’s article, this story exploded after Joseph Sullivan, principal of Gloucester High School, was quoted by Time magazine as saying that the girls – all 16 years old or younger –actually confessed to making just such a pact.

In the past, of course, a typical teenage girl who suddenly discovered that she was expecting would immediately worry about what to do next, and how she was going to support this child if she decided to keep it, and whether or not she was going to be able to finish school. But none of these traditional concerns seem to have fazed these young women.

And in trying to understand and explain this startling, sad, and strange episode, Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk noted the recent glamorization of teen pregnancy in pop culture.  Similarly, Sarah Brown, the chief executive of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancies, suggested that some of the blame lies with the nation’s Hollywood-obsessed culture.  “It’s not surprising,” she said, “that teenage girls can get confused or even seduced by the allure of celebrity pregnancy.”  Which is to say, perhaps, that these girls were merely imitating celebrity examples like Ashlee Simpson or Jamie Lynn Spears…  

Well, just to show you that issues related to pregnancy and family planning are not unknown to the Bible, and that, even in scripture, “truth is often stranger than fiction,” we have this morning’s first lesson as a perfect example.  In fact, after reading through it the first time, my initial reaction was, “You can’t make this stuff up!”  Moreover, you wouldn’t!

And what I mean by that is simply this: if the Bible was pure fiction, and if the writers were just making this stuff up as they went along, I seriously doubt they would have ever written a story that is first so disturbing, and second casts those classic biblical heroes, Abraham and Sarah, the patriarch and matriarch of our faith, in such a bad light!  Yet here it is in living color, out in the open; a troubling and tragic tale…

Now how many of you have ever heard a sermon about Hagar and her son Ishmael (although you may have noticed that he is never referred to by name in our passage this morning)?  I certainly haven’t.  Nor have I ever preached one before (which was actually part of the attraction this time around, I have to confess.)  That’s because I can’t ever remember this passage being part of the lectionary.  As a matter of fact, it’s only the alternate reading even today.

But there was something compelling, albeit troubling, about this particular story when I looked at it again this past week.  Not only do these towering biblical heroes, Abraham and Sarah, come across as being so obviously human, they are also portrayed as utterly lacking the faith and understanding that we normally and automatically ascribe to them.  In other words, not only are they just like us, in some respects they are actually even worse than us!

However, in order to get a complete picture of what we’re talking about here, we have to backtrack a few chapters in the story to see how the events in today’s reading actually came about.

It’s back in Chapter 12, for instance, that we are first introduced to Abraham (then known simply as “Abram”), and learn that God has called him to leave his country and his father’s house, and journey to a land that God will show him.  And it is here, says God, that he will make a great nation of Abraham, and make Abraham’s name great, and, in so doing, also make Abraham a blessing to others.

Now that’s all well and good; but there was just one little problem, wasn’t there?  Abraham, and his wife Sarah, had no children.  Even more than that, they were now too old; for both of them were well beyond the normal childbearing age.  So how was God going to make a great nation from them if they had no offspring and no heirs?

So, therefore, in Chapter 15 Abraham points out the obvious to God, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?  …You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.”  Without much luck in the “getting pregnant” department, Abraham naturally begins to assume (and also to regret) that apparently a mere slave is actually going to be the vehicle through whom God will make of Abraham this great nation.

But God immediately takes Abraham outside, and shows him the night sky, and challenges Abraham to count the stars – if he can. And then God simply says to him, “So shall your descendents be.”

Then some more time passes, but still no child.  We can safely assume that Abraham and Sarah, despite their advanced age and decreased stamina, were still having fun doing their best to conceive – it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it! – yet nothing.

And so it’s at this point that they begin to lose patience with God and even go so far as to decide to take matters into their own hands.  And by doing so, they actually sow the seeds for what was to come in our lesson this morning.  You see, instead of “hanging in there” and trusting that God would somehow make good on his promise to them, Sarah says to Abraham:  “This just isn’t working.”  And so she convinces Abraham to sleep with her Egyptian-born slave-girl named Hagar saying, “You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children… it may be that I shall obtain children by her.”

Now this sudden turn of events is completely foreign to us, I know. But it was not at all unusual in the ancient world.  Indeed, these kinds of relationships, such as the one between Hagar and Abraham, were both an accepted and legal custom at that time.

Therefore, it was a perfectly legitimate and reasonable way of supposing that the promise that Abraham would have an heir might be fulfilled.  It just wasn’t what God had planned.

Now do you remember my sermon series back in Lent about the “will of God”?  At that time, using the insights of Leslie B. Weatherhead, an English pastor during World War Two, I suggested that one way of thinking about this is to consider that God’s will is not a single, all-encompassing, master plan, but actually can be broken down into God’s intentional will, God’s circumstantial will, and finally God’s ultimate will.

As we noted at the time, God’s “intentional will” is simply what God intended for his creation from the very beginning.  But because God gave us the gift of free will, and therefore, we have the opportunity, as well as the ability, to resist God’s will, it is also possible for us to talk about God’s “circumstantial will” in which God is forced to respond to the circumstances, we ourselves have created – and not all of them are good.

For instance, Weatherhead dealt with the question of whether Christ’s death on the cross was God’s original intention.  Probably not, he concluded.  Rather, the cross was clearly the result of human rebellion and sinfulness. However, God took these circumstances; that is, the human evil which then led to the cross, and then completely transformed the event bringing victory out of defeat, love out of hate, hope out of despair, and life out of death.  And in so doing, God also brought about, and revealed to us, his ultimate will – which absolutely nothing we do can ever change or deny…

Well, I think Weatherhead’s attempt to understand the will of God in this way is also helpful here.  You see, the Book of Genesis makes it perfectly clear that it was God’s will for Abraham and Sarah to have a child, a son from whom there would descend this great nation.  Not a household slave.  Not even a son born to Abraham and a servant-girl.  But a child born to both Abraham and Sarah.

But, again, when Sarah proposed that Abraham father this child and heir through Hagar, not only were they revealing their lack of trust in God, they were also taking matters into their own hands and creating an entirely new set of circumstances for God to deal with; circumstances that were not a part of God’s original plan.  And the interesting thing for us, now, is to see how God actually dealt with these circumstances.

One more note before we reach today’s lesson itself.  According to Chapter 16, Hagar became pregnant almost immediately which resulted in two things.  Number one, since Hagar had no difficulty getting pregnant it was now obvious that the problem was with Sarah, not Abraham.  And number two, it was pretty much inevitable, then, that Hagar would now hold this pregnancy over Sarah’s head.  “…when she saw that she had conceived,” says the Bible, “she looked with contempt on her mistress.”  (That is, Hagar, herself, is not without blame in these events.)

The irony here, of course, is that all of this was Sarah’s plan – no one else’s, although Abraham was certainly a willing co-conspirator.  She brought it all upon herself, so to speak; she had no one else to blame.  As the Bible says, “what you sow, you shall reap.” And that was exactly the case for Sarah.

Fearing, now, that Hagar might take her own place as mistress of the house, and ancestress of that great nation of God’s people he had promised them, Sarah goes to Abraham to complain, and to his detriment he tells her, “She’s your slave-girl.  Do with her as you please.”  (Abraham’s not such a nice guy at this point either.)

And so Sarah “dealt harshly” with her, says the Bible, forcing Hagar to run away.

Now that might very well have been the end of it.  You see, if Hagar had simply run away and never returned, we never would have had the events which were recorded in this morning’s reading.

But even though these were circumstances of Sarah and Abraham’s making, and not God’s; God, nevertheless, intervened in a loving and gracious way.  Knowing that she was unlikely to survive by herself, pregnant and alone in the wilderness, an angel of the Lord found Hagar by a spring of water, and told her to return and to submit to her mistress.  But this angel of the Lord also promised Hagar that she would have a son, and that his name would be “Ishmael” which means “God hears” for “the Lord has heard of your misery.”  And that, through this son, her descendants would be too numerous to count.  Almost the very same promise that God had made to Abraham and Sarah.

In response to God’s mercy and grace, Hagar refers to God as “the God who sees me,” and, in a delightful play on words, she exclaims, “I have seen the One who sees me!”

We are told that Abraham was 86 years old when Ishmael was born, and now more years go by during which Abraham and Sarah still remain childless.  Finally, one day, God, in the form of three strangers, approaches Abraham’s tent.  And after Abraham feeds them and allows them to take their rest under a tree, they ask about Sarah and then one of them says, “I will surely return to you in due season and your wife Sarah shall have a son.”  Of course, Sarah, listening from just inside the tent, and knowing that this was impossible, given her age, can’t help but laugh at the preposterous idea that she and Abraham might actually become parents after all.

But as Chapter 21 opens, we hear that, in fact, “The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised.”  And so Sarah conceived and bore Abraham’s son in his old age. Abraham was now 100 years old.  And Abraham named this son, Isaac, which means “he laughs.”  Sarah laughed at the idea of giving birth to a son in their old age, but God had the last laugh…

And so finally we’ve have reached the point in the story recounted in today’s passage.  As we heard, it was time for Isaac to be weaned, which – in the ancient world – meant that he was now about three or four years old.  And during the party that Abraham has thrown to mark this happy milestone, Sarah suddenly notices Ishmael “playing” with her son Isaac.  So, once again, she goes immediately to Abraham and demands that he now get rid of both Hagar and her son.

“What gives?” you might very well ask.  Granted there has been some bad blood, insecurity, and jealousy over the years; and in the past Sarah has been pretty touchy about anything having to do with Hagar or her son.  But to demand that Abraham kick them out just because Ishmael was playing with his little step-brother?  Come on.  That’s a bit much – even for Sarah.

Yet, as is so often the case, the issue here hinges on a translation – in this instance, the word “playing.”  For example, there are scholars who see the word as referring to some sort of “rough-housing,” and therefore propose that Sarah is merely concerned for her young son’s safety.  Keep in mind that if Ishmael, as previously noted, was born when Abraham was 86 years old, and Isaac when he was 100 years old, and this is some 3 or 4 years later, it would then make Ishmael 17 or 18 years old at this point.  A little too big and strong, especially if he wasn’t careful, to be horsing around with a little pre-schooler.

But the problem with this interpretation, however, is that Sarah’s reaction and remedy are undeniably a little extreme.  After all, all she had to do was simply break it up and then warn Ishmael to be more careful around Isaac.

Probably the best explanation I’ve read comes from Mark Throntveit, Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at Luther Seminary.  Dr. Throntveit points out that the word translated as “playing” in verse nine, is – in other instances – often translated as “laughing.”  Now that seems pretty harmless as well.  But then Dr. Throntveit reminds us that Isaac’s name, “he laughs,” comes from this very same word.  “We might literally translate ‘playing’… as ‘Isaacing,’” writes Dr. Throntveit, “that is, Sarah saw Ishmael ‘playing the part’ of Isaac, pretending to take Isaac’s place as heir of the promise.  Certainty is impossible,” he adds, “but the view that Ishmael was pretending to be Isaac and usurping his future role would explain Sarah’s actions.”

If this explanation is correct, then Sarah clearly saw Ishmael as Isaac’s rival.  Sarah Buteux has written, “all her old fears and her old hurts rose to the surface.”  And as long as Ishmael remained in Abraham’s household, he would forever be a threat to Isaac’s inheritance.

So Sarah demands that both Hagar and Ishmael be sent away.  And actually her demand was not without precedent.  In her culture, she was well within her rights as the primary wife, now that her son had survived the early years of life.  Furthermore, in some parts of the ancient world, the children of slaves – who were not made heirs – were actually required to be set free in order to give them an opportunity to make a life of their own.  So what, at first glance, seems utterly cruel and heartless on Sarah’s part was not really all that unusual under the circumstances.  Although it still doesn’t make it right.

There’s that word again, though, circumstances. God’s original plan and intent was simply for Abraham and Sarah to have a son from whom there would emerge this great nation that he had promised them.  But they had a problem believing in this promise, they lost patience with God, and they finally took matters into their own hands.  And now they’ve created, not only a complete mess of things, they have also created a set of “circumstances” to which God must, once again, respond.

Because, you see, the simple, undeniable fact is that Abraham loved Ishmael, his first-born son.  What father wouldn’t?  “The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son,” said our lesson in understated fashion.  Another way of putting it is that Abraham was truly torn over what to do.  You see, Ishmael was never second best in Abraham’s eyes.

But Abraham was, nevertheless, being forced to choose.  There was Isaac and Sarah and God’s promise on the one hand, and then Ishmael and Hagar and the love he had for them on the other.  And apparently Abraham simply wasn’t able, or willing, to choose between them.

But then, as we heard, God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed… whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you.”  In other words, even though Abraham and Sarah have made a complete mess of things, God now repeats his promise to Abraham and reminds Abraham of his ultimate will – and that not even these unfortunate circumstances can, or will, change it.

And yet God’s words to Abraham are not without grace as well.  Ishmael must go, it is true, but “I will make a nation of him also,” says God, “because he is your offspring.”

So Abraham rises early in the morning, either to simply avoid Sarah or to perhaps give Hagar and Ishmael a head start while it was still cool out, and he sends them away.  And once again, just as we saw earlier, it all could have ended right here.  In fact, Hagar actually feared and, frankly, expected that it would.  After wandering aimlessly in the desert, she and her son ran out of bread and water.  Leaving Ishmael behind under some bushes, she then walked away from him so that she would not have to watch him die.

But once again, God heard the cries of Hagar, and the voice of Ishmael, whose name, remember, means “God hears.”  And God opened Hagar’s eyes to a well of water, and she gave her son a drink.  And then God, we are told, “was with the boy and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow.  He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.”

As Sarah Buteux has written, “And so, in Hagar (and Ishmael’s) story, as awful and tragic as it might be, we actually find hope.  Hagar brings us face to face with our God, a God who sees us, a God who hears us, a God who does not, who can not, who will not turn away from our pain.  We know, through her experience, that our cries do not go unheeded.”

We also see in this story the fulfillment of God’s will… even, at times, in spite of us.  God’s intended and ultimate will was for Abraham and Sarah to be the parents of his chosen people.  It was an honor for which they were hardly prepared, and, as we saw this morning, completely unworthy.  But that’s the nature of God’s grace.

And it is also the nature of Gods’ grace that when we lose patience, and take matters into our own hands, and totally screw things up, that he will respond to the unfortunate, and sometimes tragic, circumstances we create with love and with mercy and with caring.

Amen

 

God’s Big Backyard (06/15/08)

God’s Big Backyard

(Exodus 19:2-9, 16-19; 1 Peter 2:9-10; Matthew 9:35-10: 8 )

Today’s sermon theme, of course, was also the theme of this past week’s Vacation Bible School. Forty children were enrolled and by Friday, I’m told, we had even more children than that. Usually, you see, it works the other way. That is, you lose students as the week progresses. But we gained! Which is a testament to the hard work, and superlative efforts, of our Director of Family Ministries, Emilie Bush, and her dedicated staff. And so it also seems fitting, therefore, that a week of bible school with a theme like “God’s Big Backyard” would then culminate, as it has today, in a worship service out here in God’s creation.

John Ortberg, in his book The Life You Always Wanted, once offered an “alternate version” of the bible’s creation story. In Ortberg’s version, in the beginning God went to work because it was nine o’clock and he had to. And the first thing God did was to fill out a requisition form to separate the light from the darkness. That completed, God considered making stars to beautify the night, and planets to fill the skies, but then reconsidered. It sounded like too much work; and, besides, God thought, “That’s not my job.” So God decided to knock off early and call it a day. And he looked at what he’d done and he said, “It’ll have to do.”

On the second day, God separated the waters from the dry land. And he made all the dry land flat, plain, and functional, so that – behold – the whole earth looked like… Idaho. Now God thought about making mountains and valleys and glaciers and jungles and forests, but he decided that it wouldn’t be worth the effort. And so God looked at what he had done on that second day and said, “It’ll have to do.”

And then God made a pigeon to fly in the air, and a carp to swim in the waters, and a cat to creep upon the dry ground. God also thought about making millions of other species of all sizes and shapes and colors, but he couldn’t drum up any enthusiasm for these other animals. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t even too crazy about that cat. Besides, it was almost time for the Late Show. So God looked at all he had done and God said, “It’ll have to do.”

And so it went for the rest of that week of creation. And when it was over, God was seriously burned out. So he breathed a big sigh of relief and said, “Thank Me, it’s Friday!” And then God rested from all his labors on the Sabbath…

Of course, the book of Genesis doesn’t describe creation in this way – fortunately! Instead, it describes God taking great care, and being wonderfully creative, and exhibiting a true sense of joy and satisfaction in all that he had made. At each step of the way, in fact, rather than simply concluding, “it’ll have to do,” the bible says that God stopped and surveyed what he had just created and saw that, “it was good.” In fact, when it was all finally complete, God saw everything that he had made and, indeed, “it was very good.”

And, thus, it was into this “very good” creation that God placed us, and called us to be caretakers of it. That is, to “care for” and to “protect” everything God had made: the mountains, and seas, and forests, and jungles, as well as all the plants and animals and creepy-crawly things which inhabited these various ecosystems.

But even more than that… God also gave us a “special” calling; a calling he first extended to the people of Israel. As we heard in our first reading, after God had delivered the Israelites from bondage and led them out of Egypt into the wilderness – out there, out in that wilderness, out in God’s big backyard, if you will – he said to them, “if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession… you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.”

“Imagine how the Israelites must have felt hearing these words,” writes Judith Carrick. “Out of all (the) nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests… Against all odds, and surely even against their own expectations, God had allowed this group of slaves to escape the domination of… Egypt… Now here they were, at the foot of Mt. Sinai, after three months of hard travel, hearing through Moses the unbelievable words from God himself, telling them that they were chosen and precious in his sight.”

Then, over a thousand years later, the letter of 1 Peter encouraged and inspired the early Christian community with virtually the same words, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people…” And then our reading from 1 Peter also reminded us exactly why we have received such a calling; that is, “in order that you may proclaim the might acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

Which is simply to say, that with this “special” calling came a “special” responsibility. The reason why this priestly people and holy nation has been called and set apart by God is so that it can proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom and what God has done (and continues to do) in Jesus Christ.

And so we also heard this morning how Jesus summoned his followers and gave them authority to cast out unclean spirits and to cure every disease and every sickness, and then he sent them out into God’s big backyard to love and to serve in God’s name.

This past week, the children in our Vacation Bible School learned, through the daily bible stories, that we are called to love and to serve in a variety of ways and a variety of situations. First, they learned that we are called to “serve family” and then to “serve friends.” But they also heard that we are called to “serve our neighbors” and to “serve our community” as well.

Last, but not least, we are called to “serve Jesus.” But as I tried to remind the children in our closing on Friday, when we serve our family, friends, neighbors, and community we are serving Jesus. Because Jesus taught us, over and over again, that the very best way we can possibly serve him… is to serve others.

We’re special people, you and I. Now there are those who remind us of this all the time. Almost every day, in fact, when I come home from church and check the mail, or the phone messages on our answering machine, I keep hearing how truly special I really am. “Edward, you’re a winner! You’ve been chosen to receive a free, all-expense paid trip to Disney World.” Or, “Mr. Kroppa, would you please take a moment and complete a survey for us in order to get your special prize.” Or, “Mr. Edward, call now and we’ll send you and Mrs. Edward on that dream vacation you’ve always wanted to take.”

Three or four times a day, I hear that I’m a pretty special guy.

So are my kids. Ever since she graduated from high school, our daughter Sarah has been hearing weekly from the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, as well as the reserves and National Guard. I guess she’s pretty special, too!

But, of course, these kinds of letters and phone messages are simply a marketer’s ploy to make us feel special or important, so that we can do something for them; buy their product, or answer their survey, or, in the case of our daughter Sarah with the armed services, fill their quotas.

However, it doesn’t work that way with God. God, the creator, the owner of this “big backyard” we know as earth, called the Israelites and told them they were special – even when they had absolutely nothing to offer him! They possessed absolutely nothing that the creator of this universe could possibly have desired from them!

In a sense, God said, “You can’t do anything for me. But I can and will do something for you. Out of all the peoples in the world, I will make you my treasured possession. Out of all the peoples in the world, I will make you a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.

I will bless you. And even more than that, if you keep my covenant, I will make you a blessing to others as well.”

And, in Jesus Christ, God simply repeated and expanded this promise: to bless us so that we could then be a blessing to others. So whatever it is that we have to offer the world as the church, it is not something we possess. Rather, it’s something from God that we are called, and privileged, to share with others.

As Mike Wilkins reminds us, “The church is not a religious institution, it is not a service provider, it is not a retail outlet: it is a community of faith. The word for church in the Bible is ‘ecclesia’ from which we get the word, ‘ecclesiastical.’ It comes to us from two other Greek words, ‘ek’ for ‘out’, and ‘klesis’ for ‘a calling.’ (So) when the Bible calls us the ‘ecclesia,’ it is calling us the ‘called-out community.’ …The ‘ecclesia’ is not an organization or an institution, it literally means a gathering of the people – a gathering of God’s people! Church is not a place – it is a people.”

And it is a people who, through absolutely no talent or effort of their own, are nevertheless sent out into the world to serve God, and to proclaim his mighty deeds.

Now what does this mean? Well, it means that being the church and serving God is not about us. It’s about the God who called us out of the darkness of our own making… and into the light of his marvelous love and grace.

It’s about not taking ourselves too seriously. After all, keep in mind, as I pointed out earlier, that we have absolutely nothing that God could possibly want from us. Because, remember, once we were not a people. We were of no account or consequence. But now we are God’s people. Once we had not received mercy,

and we were instead mired in the muck of our own sin and unworthiness. But now we have received mercy. In other words, we should never take ourselves too seriously because – whatever it is that we have, whatever it is that we are – comes from God, not us.

There’s a story told about Pope John XXIII. One of his advisors, apparently, was constantly nagging him to fix this problem or that problem. This official lived as though he alone saw the severity of the challenges facing the world and the church, and that, without, his warnings and efforts, the entire world would collapse. Finally, the Pope had had enough. So he took this hyper-conscientious advisor aside and confessed that he, too, was sometimes tempted to think and live as though the fate of the entire world rested on his shoulders. He said he was helped, however, by the angel who would occasionally appear by the side of his bed and say, “Hey there, Johnny boy, don’t take yourself too seriously.”

After all, the people God calls and then sends out into the world are not necessarily the “cream of the crop,” if you know what I mean – popes included. Instead, keep in mind that the people God has chosen, and continues to choose, are often very flawed.

For instance, in a quick review of some of the great men and women in scripture, we find one who confessed that he was willing to give his wife to another man to sleep with. Another plotted to kill the husband of the woman he lusted after. Still another murdered a man and then had to run from the law. One was a prostitute. Another had a lifestyle marked by violence. And still another cheated his own brother out of that brother’s inheritance. And, finally, one not only persecuted the early church, but actually stood by as the first Christian martyr was stoned to death.

So what do Abraham, David, Moses, Rahab, Samson, Jacob, and Paul have in common? Despite their many sins and shortcomings, and obvious flaws – God still managed to use them to further and to fulfill his gracious will.

Well, it’s no different with us. We are not worthy of the calling to which we’ve been called. But worthiness has nothing to do with it. It’s all about mercy. And what better way for God to communicate his mercy than to illustrate it through the lives of those to whom he has been merciful…

The second thing to keep in mind is that, since it’s not our own talent or ability or righteousness at work when we serve God, the only thing God requires and asks of us is commitment and dedication. When Jesus sent his disciples out to heal the sick and to cast out demons, it was his power and his authority at work – not theirs. They were, and today we are, simply “laborers” sent out into his harvest.

Once, at a meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Bobby Richardson, the second basemen of the New York Yankees back in the 1950’s and 60’s, expressed this kind of commitment and dedication in a prayer marked by both its brevity and also its poignancy. “Dear God,” said Richardson, “Your will; nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Amen.”

The implication here, of course, is that we have to stake everything we have, and everything we are – on God’s call. As someone once pointed out, a husband or wife who is only 85%, or even 90% faithful to his or her spouse is not really faithful at all.

What’s needed, instead, is 100% devotion and faithfulness. It is said that when Julius Caesar landed on the shores of Britain with his Roman legions, half a century before the birth of Christ, he took a bold and decisive step. Ordering his men to march to the edge of the cliffs of Dover, he commanded them to look down at the water below. To their utter amazement, they saw every ship in which they had crossed the channel from Europe engulfed in flames. Caesar had deliberately cut off any possibility of retreat. Now that his soldiers were unable to return to the continent, there was nothing left for them to do but advance and conquer.

Nearly 1600 years later, the Spanish explorer, Hernando Cortez, did the very same thing. Landing at, what is today, Vera Cruz, Mexico in the spring of 1519, he set fire to the 11 ships which had brought him and his 700 men from Cuba. Like Julius Caesar before him, the commitment and dedication of Cortez was absolute…

Can it be any less for us? God, the creator of the universe, this “big backyard,” has actually chosen us – as unworthy as we are – to be his priestly kingdom and his holy nation. Therefore, can we even contemplate anything less than 100% devotion in response?

Fritz Kreisler, the famous violinist, once said, “Narrow is the road that leads to a violinist. Hour after hour, day after day, and week after week, for years, I lived with my violin. There were so many things that I wanted to do that I had to leave undone; there were many places I wanted to go that I had to miss, if I was to master the violin. The road that I traveled was a narrow road and the way was hard.”

In fact, a woman once came up to Fritz Kreisler after one of his concerts and said to him, “I’d give my life to play as beautifully as you do.” To which Kreisler replied, “I did.”

You know, you can almost substitute the word “disciple” for “violinist” in that passage written by Fritz Kreisler and come up with something very similar to what Jesus had to say about the way of life for those who dared to commit themselves to following him. The way is not easy. It is not without self-sacrifice and single-mindedness. The road to be traveled is, indeed, a narrow one.

But the rewards are unmistakable… and they are eternal.

For Fritz Kreisler, of course, it was all about the opportunity to master a musical instrument, and to be acclaimed throughout the world for his prowess. For the average Christian, the rewards – at first glance – would certainly seem to be much more modest. But when you step back, and stop to think for a minute, you realize how untrue that really is.

Because, for the Christian, even the average Christian, the reward is this:

• knowing that you have contributed to a cause greater than yourself – to God’s cause,
• that you have been a blessing to others simply by sharing the blessings of God with them,
• that through the power and authority of Jesus Christ you have helped make this world – in the here and now – a better place,
• and that you have lived your life as that good and faithful servant whose real treasure still awaits in heaven.

God created us and set us loose in his big backyard. But God also called us with a “special calling” to serve others. And to make that big backyard a better place.

Amen

 

The Untouchables (06/08/08)

The Untouchables

(Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26; Hosea 5:15-6:6)

After doing this for about a quarter of a century now (preaching, that is), I’ve been at it long enough to know that sometimes sermon writing, like any kind of writing, can be difficult.  In fact, the late Red Smith, a famous N.Y. Times sportswriter of a generation ago, once described writing this way: “There’s nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter… and open a vein.”

At other times, however, the sermon practically writes itself.  Again, I’ve been at this long enough, week in and week out for over two decades now, that my mind has been trained to think theologically and my powers of observation conditioned to be ever on the lookout for sermon ideas and sermon themes and sermon illustrations.  Which is simply to say that, if you do something long enough, it will eventually become second-nature to you…

And such was the case, once again, this past week.  On Monday afternoon, when I took my first look at the scripture lessons assigned for this morning, all it took was a single glance at today’s Gospel.  As soon as I read through it that very first time, two words immediately popped into my head – the two words which then, soon afterwards, became today’s sermon theme: “The Untouchables.”

Now, if you’re a baby boomer like myself, the words “The Untouchables” probably trigger flashbacks of car chases and machine gun battles from the late 50’s/early 60’s crime drama of the same name, starring Robert Stack as Prohibition Agent Eliot Ness who waged war against Al Capone and organized crime in Chicago back in the 1930’s.  The TV show was, in turn, based on the autobiographical memoir of the real life Eliot Ness, and his experiences leading a special team of agents known as the Untouchables.  They had received this nickname because these handpicked agents were incapable of being bribed or corrupted.

Therefore, since they were out of the gangster’s reach, they came to be known as “untouchable.”

But if this is the image that immediately popped into your head when you first heard these words (as was the case for me), stop right now and put it out of your mind.  Because these are not the kind of untouchables I want you to be thinking about this morning.

On the other hand, if when you first heard “the untouchables” you thought of the “caste system” in India (which was my second thought, by the way), then you’re absolutely correct.  Because this is the sense in which we’ll be examining the term in today’s sermon…

For those who may not be familiar with it, there has existed

in India, for the past 1,500 years or so, a system of social stratification that follows a basic precept (one which is the very antithesis of our American understanding): namely, that “all men are created unequal.” You see, the ranks or classes in Hindu society come from a legend in which the main groupings emerged from a primordial being.  From the mouth, came the priests and teachers.  From the arms, came the rulers and soldiers.  From the thighs, came the merchants and traders.  And from the feet, came the laborers.  Finally, there is a fifth group, whom the primordial being does not claim.  So they are the outcasts, also known as… “the untouchables.”

These people, today over 160 million in number, are considered too impure, too polluted, to rank as worthy beings.  Prejudice defines their lives.  They are shunned, insulted, banned from temples and higher caste homes, and made to eat and drink from separate utensils in public places.  They suffer from a form of racist and economic bondage that has been compared to the apartheid system that once existed in South Africa.  And it’s an extreme version of what we, ourselves, experienced in this country during slavery and even up through the days before the civil rights movement in the second half of the 20^th century.  (Which, regardless of your political persuasion, is what makes the apparent nomination of Barack Obama so significant.)

So where’s the connection?  Well, when we read this morning’s gospel, we have to remember that in Jesus’ day, and in the society in which he lived, there were also untouchables; people who were similarly shunned because they were thought to somehow be impure.

For example, there were the Samaritans.  These were the distant, (some would say “illegitimate”) cousins of the Jewish people who were descended from the colonists that the Assyrians brought in after they defeated the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C.

and simultaneously deported much of the native population.  Consequently, by the time of Jesus, there was a good deal of antagonism and hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans.  Which is what made Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan so powerful and so moving; not even the bad feelings between these two peoples stood in the way of the Samaritan coming to the aid of that injured Jew.

And then in our passage this morning, we have represented three other groups who were also shunned and/or considered impure; three other groups of so-called “untouchables.”

The first were the tax collectors and sinners; in other words, Matthew and his gang.  Tax collectors, even more so than today, had a negative reputation in the ancient world.  You see, Rome sold the contracts for tax collection to the highest bidder who, in turn, typically overcharged the people in order to make a profit.

Linked together with the tax collectors in our passage are those the gospel writer (presumably Matthew himself) simply refers to as “sinners.” We aren’t given any more information about them than this.  But the apparent common denominator here between them and the tax collectors, the implication if you will, is that these groups do not observe the Jewish law.  And, as such, a good law-abiding, law-observing Jew would normally have avoided any kind of social contact with them, including table fellowship.  In other words, Jesus is depicted here as eating with the wrong kind of people.

Who you choose to eat with, even today, is an important means by which community is established and social status is demonstrated.  Those who eat together generally share the same values and social position.  (For example, just think back for a moment to your high school cafeteria and tell me that there wasn’t a “pecking order” that governed who ate with whom; the jocks and popular kids at their own tables, for instance, and the nerds and geeks at theirs.)

So, naturally, by eating with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus raised more than a few eyebrows, especially among the Pharisees who took these things very seriously.  That is, regulations having to

do with food and purity were very important to them.  Not surprisingly, then, the Pharisees immediately questioned Jesus’ disciples about this behavior.  But Jesus overhears their question, and, quoting from Hosea (our first reading this morning), he challenges their objections by saying, “Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”  (More about this later.)

Then we have the second group of untouchables.  While Jesus was saying these things, a leader of the synagogue suddenly came up to him and told him that his daughter had just died.  Then he pleaded with Jesus to come and lay his hand on her so that she might live.  Jesus gets up and goes with him, but before he even gets there – while he’s still walking – a woman suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years, we’re told, comes up and touches his cloak, saying to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.”

In those days, of course, a women’s monthly menstrual flow rendered her ritually unclean and temporarily impure.  And so

for someone, like this particular woman, whose bleeding was continuous – not only was this condition painful and debilitating, preventing her from marrying or having children – but her impurity was, therefore, virtually permanent as well.  Not only that, but anyone who touched, or was touched by, her was also made unclean.  Needless to say, this practically insured that she would have been ostracized by the community.

Yet notice how Jesus responds when he feels her touch.  He turns and says to her, “Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well.”  Instead of recoiling at her touch, for fear of becoming unclean himself, he instead welcomes it, and instantly she was healed…

Finally, Jesus arrives at the home of the man whose daughter had died and there we have the third group of untouchables in our passage.  And, once again, Jesus is risking ritual defilement.  Here it’s helpful to remember how the priest and the Levite (in that parable of the Good Samaritan I mentioned earlier) walked right past the beaten man beside the road.  Since it was difficult for them to tell if he was still living or not, they were naturally concerned about becoming defiled or unclean themselves by touching a corpse.  According to Jewish law, any person who physically came in contact with a dead body was unclean for a week and required ceremonial cleansing on the third and seventh days.  Or else risked being completely cut off from the Jewish community.

But once again Jesus emphasizes mercy, this time over legality and purity regulations; just as he emphasized mercy over social status and reputation in the case of Matthew and his friends.  Even though physical contact with an unclean person, or even just touching things that the unclean person had touched, was thought to transmit that impurity; and even though contact with a dead body made that individual unclean – Jesus did not hesitate to receive or, in this case, to actually initiate such contact himself.  Dismissing the mourners, saying, “…the girl is not dead, but (simply) sleeping,” Jesus went in and immediately took her by the hand, and, as we heard, the girl sat up…

Three groups of “untouchables,” then, three groups of people – both the living and (in one case) the dead – who were to be avoided; the outcasts of society; people that no law-abiding, deeply religious, or self-respecting person would want to have anything to do with – if possible.  As Pastor Luke Bouman has written, “…they were people without place, future, dignity, and in a very real sense, cut off from life, though only the little girl is dead.”

However, in a society, and in a faith, where these distinctions and prohibitions were considered important by many, Jesus chooses to show his followers another way.  David Watson has noted that, “Matthew’s Jesus cares deeply about the Jewish law, but he interprets it differently than his opponents do.  He gives priority to (those) elements of the Jewish law that emphasize concrete acts of love and mercy.”  As Watson observes, “(Jesus) enters into the messiness of everyday human activity and offers righteousness, community, and healing.”  In stark contrast to the so-called religious people of his day, Jesus actively seeks out the sinner, the outcast, and those considered unclean.  And in modeling this kind of behavior, Jesus not only sets an example for his disciples to follow, he also gives us a glimpse into the very nature of God…

Earlier I indicated that there would be more to say about Jesus’ desire for mercy, instead of sacrifice.  As I noted at the time, he was quoting from the prophet Hosea here.

Hosea’s story, of course, is a very interesting one.  You see, God decided to show the people of Israel – through Hosea – what God was really like.  And so, if you remember the story, God commands Hosea to marry a prostitute; a woman named Gomer.

(I had a male cousin named Gomer, which I always thought was a funny name for a guy.  And, similarly, this was certainly a strange name for a woman, as well!)

Moreover, the circumstances of their marriage were equally strange… tragic even.  For even though Hosea was good to her, and gave her children, before very long, Gomer leaves Hosea and resumes her previous life with great gusto.  And, in doing so, she makes Hosea look like a fool.

But therein lies the teaching moment.  Because God then says to Hosea, and to all of Israel, “This is what its like to be me.  For you, my people, have been unfaithful to me, and have gone after other gods instead of me.”

Then comes the unexpected, the unthinkable really.  God tells Hosea to take Gomer back; to actually buy back his adulterous wife, and to reaffirm his love for her and his devotion to her.  Heaven knows, she didn’t deserve it.  Nor does it miraculously make her a better person, or help Hosea win any friends or somehow enhance his reputation.  The fact of the matter is, everyone knows full well what she’s done, and they probably think he’s insane for bringing her back.

But God was trying to make a point here, with Hosea’s life.  Hosea is commanded to take Gomer back because that’s what it’s like to be God!  It’s not about justice or fairness or what we might think is right. Rather… God is all about steadfast love and mercy and grace.  You see, how God instructed Hosea to deal with his wife Gomer, is precisely how God deals with us, and our unfaithfulness, and our sinfulness.  In Jesus Christ, God redeems us.  In other words, God buys us back and reaffirms his love for us and his commitment to us.  Because if it was about justice, or fairness, or what’s right… we wouldn’t stand a chance, would we?

…And so, in Jesus, we see God reaching out to the outcasts and even touching the untouchables.  In Jesus, we see God welcoming those who are shunned and ostracized because of who they are, or how they live.  In Jesus, we see God embracing those who everyone else has intentionally avoided and completely written off.  Why?  For the simple reason that God is a God of steadfast love and mercy…

Of course, there’s a final question to be asked, isn’t there?  An uncomfortable question…  That is: Who are the untouchables today… in our lives?  Who are the people that we find revolting and repulsive, for whatever reason?  Who are the people we automatically recoil from?

Tony Campolo tells the story of walking one day down Chestnut Street in center-city Philadelphia and encountering a homeless man who was approaching him on the sidewalk.  This bum was covered with dirt and soot from head to toe.  There was filthy stuff caked on his skin.  His beard hung down almost to his waist and there was rotted food stuck in it.

The man was holding a cup of McDonald’s coffee and the lip of the cup was already smudged from his dirty mouth.  And as he staggered towards Tony, he seemed to be staring into this cup of coffee.  Then, suddenly, he looked up and yelled, “Hey mister!

Ya want some coffee?”

As Campolo writes, “I have to admit that I really didn’t.  But I knew that the right thing to do was to accept his generosity, and so I said, ‘I’ll take a sip.’”

When Tony handed the cup back to him, he said, “You’re pretty generous, aren’t you, giving away your coffee?”  And the old man looked him straight in the eye and replied, “Well, the coffee was especially delicious today, and I figure if God gives you something good, you ought to share it with (other) people.”

Upon hearing this, however, Campolo became a little cynical, and thought to himself, “Oh, man.  He has me really set up.  This is going to cost me five dollars.” So Tony said to him, “I suppose there’s something I can do for you in return, isn’t there?”

The homeless guy thought about that for a second, and then said, “Yeah!  You can give me a hug.”  (“To tell you the truth,” writes Campolo, “I was hoping for the five dollars.”)

So the bum put his arms around Tony, and Tony put his arms around the bum.  And then Campolo realized something, “He wasn’t going to let me go!”  Here, people were walking by on the sidewalk, staring at them.  And Tony, all dressed up in a suit and tie, was hugging this dirty, filthy bum.  And he was embarrassed.

But how long had it been since another human being had embraced this untouchable?  And how many other untouchables are out there; cut off from and shunned by society because of the way they look, or they way they speak, or the way they act, or the color of their skin, or even their lifestyle?

Laurel Dykstra, writing for Sojourner’s Online, says this, “Jesus asserts that whatever purity means, it is not threatened by occupation, outsider status, failure to conform, or type of body.  That is good news indeed for those of us who because of sexual orientation, transgender identity, HIV status, a lack of address, mental illness, prostitution, addiction, immigration, and many other reasons, are considered not quite clean.”

“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” asked the Pharisees.  When Jesus heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”

In the 19^th century, a Roman Catholic priest was sent to minister to the lepers who had been quarantined on the island of Molokai in the Hawaiian chain.  This priest was sent to serve these scorned and sickly people; these untouchables. But even though he tried for years to reach out to them with the love of Jesus Christ, as best he knew how, he never quite succeeded in connecting with these people in a way that led them to respond to his ministry.  So, finally, he decided to give up.  He sent word to the people on Oahu to send a boat for him and also to find someone else to take his place.

But on the Sunday he was scheduled to leave, as he stood there on the dock waiting for the boat to arrive, he happened to glance down at his hands and noticed several white spots.  And in that moment, he suddenly realized that he, himself, had become a leper.  This meant, of course, that he wouldn’t be able to take that boat back to Oahu, for now he also belonged in the leper colony.  However, this isn’t the end of the story of Father Damien.

You see, when he left that dock, and slowly walked back up the hill to the little church he had tried so hard to serve, he suddenly discovered a church full of people.  Somehow the word had spread, and they had finally come to hear their priest.  That’s because he was no longer an outsider.  He had become one of them. And so

he stayed on at that leper colony for the rest of his life, touching thousands with the love of Jesus Christ…

Jesus reminds us that there are “untouchables” all around us; people we shun and avoid all the time, and for all sorts of reasons.  But he also reminds us that – in spite of the risk –  to be a Christian is to reach out and dare to touch these untouchables in tangible and concrete ways, with the steadfast love of God.  In God’s eyes, you see, mercy trumps everything else.

Amen

 

Comments

Pastor Ed welcomes ALL comments and thoughts. Click on the red comments link under the title of any sermon entry and let him know what YOU think.

 

Servants and Stewards (05/18/08)

CONSECRATION SUNDAY 2008: Servants and Stewards

(1 Corinthians 4:1-5; Matthew 6:24-34)

As I mentioned at the outset of our worship this morning, we traded our readings today with those for next week.  That is, instead of celebrating “The Holy Trinity,” as the church calendar calls for, today has been designated instead as “Consecration Sunday” here at All Saints, and I have chosen to use next week’s lessons because they were a better fit.  Of course, next Sunday, then, we’ll simply go back and observe Holy Trinity.

Now I know that such an exchange probably irritates the liturgical purists among us, but, as I shared with our Marianne Zotti, our congregation president when I originally proposed this switch, I suspect that Jesus more than likely would have observed that “the lectionary was made for man, not man for the lectionary.”  At least I certainly hope so!  Nevertheless, what’s done is done.

And, regardless of whether the switching of lessons is liturgically correct or not, the reason for the switch should have been obvious to you when you listened to them.  Because “Consecration Sunday,” of course, is all about stewardship, and commitment, and our faithful response to God; themes that our new lessons this morning (especially the second reading and the gospel) are very much concerned with.

The dictionary tells us, for instance, that to consecrate is to “dedicate,” or “devote” something “to a sacred purpose.”  As you know, this morning we have been asked to make an estimate of financial giving for the coming year, which now begins on June 1 and runs through the end of next May.  It is this giving that directly supports and funds the work of God’s church, both here in our own congregation and synod, and then also throughout the world.

And these lessons, I believe, have something important to say to us as we prayerfully consider our response and our commitment this morning.  So what I’d like to do with you now is take a brief look at two of them, again the second reading and the gospel, beginning with today’s passage from Matthew…

The headlines in USA Today this past week said it all.  The front page of Thursday’s edition read, “Foreclosures take toll on mental health.”  And then, only adding fuel to the fire, the first page of the “Money” section announced, “Foreclosures skyrocket 65% in April.”  Then the weekend edition, which came out the very next day, simply reinforced this heightened anxiety, and the growing sense of worry and dread among Americans, with a cover story entitled, “The Incredible Shrinking Nest Egg: Paltry stock returns, lower home values, dim the view for retirement.”

It’s clear that we are living in “uncertain” times.  Even as the experts argue with each other over whether or not we’re in a true recession, or how long this economic downturn is likely to last, everyday people – like ourselves – simply have to deal with the reality. And we know, all too well, that rising food and gas prices, the sagging housing industry, and the overall ripple effect of these dramatic and significant changes to our economy are a cause for concern.  And, of course, close on the heels of these unsettling economic realities, there comes that increased sense of worry and anxiety.  Largely, I’m afraid, because most of us tend to define ourselves in financial or economic terms.

John Updike once wrote a short story entitled The Wallet. It was about a retired broker, named Fulham, “who had assembled a nice life after thirty years of marriage, a handsome white house in the older suburbs.”  Fulham spends his time in retirement managing his own investments and also those of a few favored and long-time clients.  Every morning now, he goes to an upstairs room in his house, with his Wall Street Journal and a second cup of coffee, and he looks contentedly out the window at his neatly manicured lawn; surveying and enjoying the life he has created for himself…

Then, one morning, disaster strikes.  He suddenly can’t find his wallet.  He looks everywhere; under chairs, beds, he even goes through the pockets of suits he hasn’t worn in months.  Updike writes that Fulham’s wallet was a “reminder” of his life, “containing charge cards for Bay Bank, Brooks Brothers, Hertz, American Express… and cards signifying his membership in the country club, (and the) Museum of Fine Arts…”

So Fulham panics. He even goes a little berserk.  His wife says to him, “I’ve never seen you like this.”  And he asks her, “How am I?”  And she says, “You’re wild.”  To which he responds, “It was my wallet. Everything is in it.  Everything. Without that wallet, I’m nothing.”

Or consider the newspaper account from a few years back which read, “When the landing gear of US Airways Flight 479 collapsed last Friday, and the crew ordered an evacuation down the emergency slides, almost half the passengers reacted by grabbing their carry-on luggage…  One man grabbed two bags.  Another struggled with a large bag.  A woman blocked the aisle struggling to get a garment bag out of an overhead bin.”

Now tell me, do we define who we are… or do we somehow let our possessions do that for us?

With these examples of contemporary attitudes and inclinations in mind, we now turn to this morning’s gospel.  “…I tell you,” said Jesus, “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

I’m reminded here of that old Bobby McFerrin song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”  (It’s hard to believe that it came out 20 years ago.  Boy, am I feeling old!)  In one verse he sang, “In every life we have some trouble.  But when you worry you make it double.”  He then concluded with, “Don’t bring everybody down.  Don’t worry.  It will soon pass, whatever it is.  Don’t worry… be happy,”

Sounds a bit like denial to me.  And is that what Jesus is saying here as well?  Simply ignore the troubles and the problems, and that eventually they’ll go away?

Jesus, of course, then goes on to encourage us to consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.  The birds neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, he says, yet God nevertheless feeds them.  And the lilies neither toil nor spin, he points out, yet not even King Solomon, in all of his glory, was clothed like one of these.

Which then begs the question, what exactly does he mean here?”  Does he mean, for instance, that we’re supposed to just kick back and simply trust that God will somehow take care of us?  Isn’t life, at least for us humans, so much more complicated than that?  Don’t we have to do something?

Writing in the current edition of The Christian Century, Tom McGrath responds to such questions by observing, “…it’s easy to misunderstand Jesus here.  We may be tempted to dismiss these examples, thinking that if flowers and birds are carefree, it’s because they’re oblivious and unaware of what might be in store for them.”  McGrath then goes on to conclude, “I sense that Jesus points to the birds and the lilies as examples because they unselfconsciously participate in the life of God, life which is pouring forth through all creation.  Undue worry blocks that participation, which is why we humans often feel distant and disconnected from God.  Fear closes down our hearts; worry puts up a barricade to grace.  The birds and the lilies and all of nature have lessons to teach us about being unobstructed channels for the flow of God’s grace,” he says.

Participate in the life of God, and become unobstructed channels for the flow of God’s grace…  Jesus put it this way, “…strive first for the kingdom of God, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

I guess it comes down to a matter of perspective.  Former coach John McKay of USC once came into the locker room to address his football team after they had been humiliated by Notre Dame by a score of something like fifty-one to nothing.  He saw a group of beaten, worn-out, and thoroughly discouraged young players who were not accustomed to losing.  “Men,” he said, “let’s keep this in perspective.  After all, there are 800 million Chinese out there who don’t even know that this game was even played!”  In other words, keeping score, whether on the football field or in the financial arena… doesn’t really matter in the end.

But it’s also more than that.  Putting things into perspective, according to Jesus, also involves setting priorities and understanding just what is important.  So if we focus on the kingdom of God and strive for it, says Jesus; if we focus on trusting God; we will then be able to see more clearly what’s truly important in life, and moreover also be able to order our lives around these priorities.  For, as he made perfectly clear, no one can serve two masters.

A television program, preceding the 1988 Winter Olympics, once profiled blind skiers who were being trained for slalom skiing…

as impossible as that may sound.  Paired with “sighted” skiers, these blind skiers were first taught, where the terrain was level, how to make right and left turns.  And then, when that was mastered, they were taken up to the slalom slope where their sighted partners skied beside them, shouting out directions, “Left!” or “Right!”

As they followed these commands, they were able to negotiate the course successfully and eventually cross the finish line.  They depended solely on the word of the sighted skiers.  It was either complete trust… or catastrophe.

“What a vivid picture of the Christian life!” writes Robert Sutton.  “In this world, we are in reality blind about what course to take.  We must rely solely on the Word of the only One who is truly sighted – God…  (God’s) Word gives us the direction we need to finish the course.”

Jesus’ final observation in today’s gospel was, “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.  Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

A tourist once visited a cathedral where an artist was working on a huge mosaic.  A vast empty wall stood before them, and the tourist asked, “Aren’t you worried about all that space you need to fill up, or how will you ever finish it?”  The artist replied that he only concentrated on what he could actually accomplish each day.  Each morning, he said, he simply marked off the area he intended to complete, and he didn’t allow himself to worry about what lay outside that space.  He just took one day at a time, and he trusted that one day the mosaic would be finished.

So often we approach the challenges and the obstacles we face in this life like they were that empty wall.  Of course, we can either worry endlessly about the final picture we hope to create and how we are going to accomplish it.  Or… we can simply start to fill in the space (as Arthur Caliandro has written), “with wonderful unique images – the imprint of our lives – by doing the very best we can with each day we are given.”

Now the reason why we need to understand this, the reason why we need to strive first for the kingdom of God, put things into perspective, set godly priorities, and then take only one day at a time, is that God apparently has big plans for us.  As St. Paul wrote in our second lesson this morning, we are to think of ourselves as he himself did; that is, “as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries.”

That’s quite a job description,” observes Tom McGrath, who goes on to ask, “What kind of stewards will we be if our minds and hearts are closed to the very mysteries we are meant to share?”  And then he draws this helpful analogy, “A trustworthy wine steward,” for instance, “has the full run of the master’s house.  He descends into the wine cellar and brings up the finest wines…  Attuned to the ways of the master and the needs of the guests, the steward matches the wine to the occasion – to the food, to the mood, to the meaning of the moment.  As stewards of God’s mysteries,” McGrath concludes, “we are meant to incorporate those mysteries… but not keep them to ourselves.”

Now when Paul was talking about God’s mysteries here, he was primarily talking about the gospel itself, and our stewardship, or “management,” of the good news of God’s unfailing love and incomparable grace.  But the word “stewardship,” of course, also reminds us (especially today) that we are called to be “managers” of all of God’s blessings; the material as well as the spiritual.

The story is told of a very wealthy man who once stood up at a church meeting to tell the rest of those present about his Christian faith.  “I am a millionaire many times over,” he said.  “And I attribute it all to the rich blessings of God in my life.  I remember the turning point in my faith.  I had just earned my very first dollar and I went to a church meeting that night.  The speaker was a missionary who told about his work.  Now I knew that I only had that one dollar, and that I had to either give it all to God’s work or nothing at all.  So at that moment, I decided to give my whole dollar – everything I had – to God.  And I believe that God blessed that decision, and that’s why I am a rich man today.”

His heartfelt gratitude, however, was marred only by the fact that this earlier generosity had not really been as evident during the subsequent years of good fortune and great wealth.

But, nevertheless, when he was finished, there was an awed silence in response to his testimony.  You could hear the proverbial pin drop.  He then made his way back to his seat, and as he sat down, the little old lady sitting next to him in the pew – somehow sensing that his current behavior, perhaps, did not quite match his earlier generosity, and in response to his claim of having once given everything he had to God – leaned over and whispered to him, “I dare you to do it again!”

“From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required,” said Jesus.  Now the mistake of that millionaire was not that he didn’t attribute his good fortune to God’s blessings – he certainly did.  But he apparently forgot that we are blessed by God to be a blessing… to others.  That is, these blessings from God are intended to be used for a cause greater than our own.

In stark contrast to that millionaire, there is the life of John Wesley, the founder of the movement that eventually became known as the Methodist Church.  A few hundred years ago, this great preacher and evangelist showed us another way.  Just like us, Wesley lived in economically uncertain times.  Yet, from humble beginnings, he became so famous and in demand that his income eventually reached 1400 pounds a year; a sum that would be worth more than $300,000 dollars today.

So what did he do with all this wealth?  Did he tithe it?  No.  Wesley went way beyond tithing.  In fact, he disciplined himself to live on just 30 of those 1400 pounds he earned each year.  In other words, he gave away 98% of all that he earned, and lived on just 2%!

More importantly, he once had this to say regarding money, “It is an excellent gift of God…  In the hands of his children, it is food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, (clothing) for the naked… It gives (shelter) to the traveler and the stranger (some)where to lay his head.  By it we may supply the place of a husband to the widow, and of a father to the fatherless.  We may be a defense for the oppressed, a means of health to the sick, of ease to them that are in pain; it may be as eyes to the blind, as feet to the lame…

According to Wesley, there were but three simple rules to guide our response to money, “Gain all you can, save all you can, (but then) give all you can.”  The first of these, “gain all you can,” comes pretty naturally to most of us, doesn’t it?  The second, “save all you can,” is normally a little bit harder – unless, of course, we’re saving for ourselves.  But, in Wesley’s mind, these first two only matter in as much as they make possible the third, “give all you can.”

And not only did he strive to live out these principles himself, but he also once commented, “If I leave behind me ten pounds… you and all mankind (can) bear witness against me, that I have lived and died a thief and a robber.”

But, as Paul suggested in that second reading this morning, our stewardship, nevertheless, goes far beyond our use of money.  You see, our stewardship has to do primarily, again, with the mysteries of God’s mercy and grace.  As servants and stewards, we are called to be Christ’s presence in the world.

Certainly, the proper use of our money, and the material blessings we have received from God, are an important way in which that presence is felt.  Every time I read that the ELCA has sent a generous gift in response to domestic or international disasters, I know that God’s is there, and that Christ’s love is being shared.  But sometimes… that presence of God can only be felt when we are physically present.

Tony Campolo tells the story, shared with him by his good friend the late Mike Yaconelli, of a church deacon who just didn’t know how to “deak!”  That is, he just didn’t know what he was supposed to do as a deacon.  So Tony’s friend, Mike, finally said to this deacon, “I have a group of young people that go out to the old folk’s home and put on a worship service once a month.  Would you drive them over there and at least do that?”  The deacon agreed.

The first Sunday the deacon was at this old folk’s home, he just stood in the back of the room with his arms folded as the kids were doing their thing up front.  All of a sudden, however, he felt someone tugging at his arm.  He looked down and there was this old man in a wheelchair.  Not quite sure what to do, he simply took the old man’s hand and held it throughout the rest of the service.

The next month it happened again.  The man in the wheelchair came and the deacon held his hand.  So, too, the next month. and the next, and the next.

Finally, one month, the old man wasn’t there for the service.  So the deacon went looking for him and was told, “Oh, he’s down the hall, right-hand side, third door…  He’s dying.  And he’s unconscious…  But if you want to go down there and pray over his body, that’s alright, I guess.”

The deacon went down to the old man’s room, and there were tubes and wires hanging out all over the place.  The deacon reached out and took the old man’s hand and prayed that God would receive him, that God would bring the man from this life to the next, and give him eternal blessings.

As soon as he was finished, the old man squeezed the deacon’s hand and the deacon knew that he had been heard.  He was so moved by this that tears began to run down his cheeks.  He stumbled out of the room and, as he did so, he bumped into a woman.  She said, “You know, he’s been waiting for you.  He said that he didn’t want to die until he had the chance to hold the hand of Jesus one more time.”

The deacon was amazed and puzzled by this, and asked, “What do you mean?”  She said, “Well, my father would say that once a month Jesus came to this place.  ‘He would take my hand and he would hold it for the entire hour.  And I don’t want to die… until I have the chance to hold the hand of Jesus one more time.’”

“Think of us in this way,” wrote Paul, “as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries.”  As much as anything else, that’s what I think Paul was talking about here when he spoke of being stewards of the mysteries of God.  Does God use our money and financial resources to make his presence felt in our troubled and hurting world?  Most certainly.

But even more importantly, God simply uses us; the touch of a hand, the warmth of an embrace, that word of encouragement in the midst of confusion or despair.  Today is Consecration Sunday here at All Saints.  We are being asked to make a financial commitment to God’s work.  And that’s important, to be sure.  But what I think God is really asking for – in our response and in our commitment – is everything, not just our money.  That each of us might participate in the life of God, and become unobstructed channels for the flow of God’s grace.

Amen

 

Beware of “Eyes in the Skies” (05/04/08)

Beware of “Eyes in the Skies”

(Acts 1:6-14; 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11; John 17:1-11)

At the beginning of this current academic year, a woman by the name of Wendy Gonaver was offered a job teaching American studies out at Cal State Fullerton. And she was even more excited about having the opportunity to talk about one of her favorite themes: (that being) protecting constitutional freedoms.

But the day before the class was scheduled to begin, her appointment as a university lecturer ended rather abruptly, and ironically over the very kind of issue she undoubtedly would have discussed in her course. You see, she lost her job, reported the

Los Angeles Times just the other day, because she declined to sign a “loyalty oath” swearing to “defend” the U.S. and California constitutions “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The oath in question dates back to 1952 and the height of the Cold War, and was added to the California state constitution to root out “communists in public office.”

Now, at first glance, the taking of such an oath certainly seems rather harmless – especially for a patriotic citizen. But here’s the problem. Wendy Gonaver is a Quaker and a lifelong pacifist. That means her religious faith and beliefs prohibit her from taking up arms for any cause or reason.

Consequently, she offered to sign the pledge if she could simply attach a brief statement expressing her personal views, including her commitment to non-violence; a practice apparently allowed by other state institutions, by the way. But Cal State Fullerton, which has a stricter interpretation of the law, rejected her offer, and insisted that she would have to sign the oath if she wanted the job. Needless to say, Wendy Gonaver did not teach at Cal State Fullerton this year, although she is still hopeful that California’s loyalty oath will either be eliminated or at least modified.

How do you feel about “loyalty oaths”? If you’re like me, you’ve probably never even thought much about them.

Furthermore, are you even aware that this past Thursday was actually a legal holiday here in the United States? Not many people are – I certainly wasn’t. And almost nobody observes it.

But May 1 is actually “Loyalty Day” in this country; a day set aside by an act of Congress on July 18, 1958 for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom. Much like California’s oath, Loyalty Day here in the U.S. dates back to that era of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

However, the obvious question to be posed, and the question I want to explore with you a little bit this morning, is simply this: What is the relationship between our loyalty to country (any country), and our loyalty to God; in other words, between faith and patriotism?

Interestingly enough May 1, this year, was also another holiday: “Yom HaShoah,” or as it’s more commonly known “Holocaust Remembrance Day.” It is observed as a day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews who perished during the Holocaust during World War II; a program of intentional genocide, also known as the “final solution,” that was perpetrated by the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler.

Now, again at first glance, you might not think that there is any connection between these two holidays. After all, what possible connection might there be between a nation’s “Loyalty Day” and the Holocaust?

But what we have to remember here is that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party rose to power in Germany; a Christian nation, and as we also sadly know, largely a Lutheran nation as well. That is to say, during the 1930’s in that country, largely inhabited as it was by Lutheran Christians, a demonic leader and government came to power; a government which tried to exterminate the Jewish people and which ultimately thrust the entire world into a global war.

And tragically they were able to do such horrific things, in large part, because Christians in Germany, including Lutheran Christians, valued their patriotism over their faith. In other words, they allowed their loyalty to country to take precedence over their loyalty to God. In fact, on April 20, 1938 the official Reich Church government actually decreed that, as a birthday gift for Hitler after the invasion of Austria, all pastors should take a personal oath of allegiance (in other words a loyalty oath) to Adolf Hitler.

Already by this time there was the so-called Confessing Church made up of those who were attempting to the resist the process of (quote unquote) “nazification,” and initially these pastors refused. But then, during the course of that following summer, almost all of these pastors took this oath on the grounds that such an oath was not forbidden if the State (i.e. the government) required it.

In other words, their loyalty to the State was ultimately deemed more important, and thus more binding, than even their ordination vows. And, as such, their behavior offers a “cautionary tale” to all others, including us, who may be tempted at times to put their own sense of patriotism above their faith…

How, you might well ask, did the Christians living in Germany at that time, including those who were Lutheran, and also including some of the greatest theological minds of that period, ever make such a tragic mistake, and have such a glaring lapse in judgment? Clearly, there isn’t enough time this morning for me to give you a detailed answer to that question, but it’s fair to say that, in the aftermath of Germany’s defeat in World War I, the heavy war reparations they were then required to pay by the Allies, the resulting economic depression and political upheaval throughout their society, and the perceived weakness and ineffectiveness of their government, many people in Germany – including Christians and intellectuals – longed for a strong leader who would restore law and order, and more importantly would restore German pride.

There existed, you see, a very powerful sense of the German volk, or “people”, although the word “people” doesn’t really do justice to what they meant by that term. It meant much more than the people, themselves. Instead, it included their sense of national pride and tradition, as well as their sense of national destiny. And it was these very feelings that Hitler was able to tap into, and manipulate, and then use to facilitate his rise to power.

Now, certainly, there were those in the church who understood immediately what Hitler was up to and recognized the evil that was at work in their midst. Theological giants such as Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were among the first who publicly opposed the new Nazi regime. But Barth and Tillich were both forced to leave Germany because of their views, and Bonhoeffer, who stayed, was eventually arrested, tried, and executed for taking his opposition to the next level, having become involved in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler.

But these men – and this is critical – were the exception, not the rule. Instead, there were actually learned and cultured men and women, including gifted and renowned scholars, who actively supported Hitler and the Nazis, sometimes even becoming willing party members themselves. However, their stories are far less well known – and for obvious reasons!

Two weeks ago, long before I ever sat down and started to think about this morning’s sermon, I visited the Cokesbury Christian bookstore with a 25% gift certificate in one hand and gift money from my recent birthday in the other. And among the stacks, I noticed a book I’ve been interested in reading for years now. Written by Robert P. Ericksen, currently the Kurtis R. Mayer Professor of Holocaust Studies at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, the book is entitled Theologians Under Hitler. In it, Professor Ericksen tells the story of three well-respected scholars who incredibly saw no problem, whatsoever, in being faithful Christians and active supporters of the Nazi regime at the very same time.

Gerhard Kittel, one of the three, was the editor of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, or TDNT for short, which even today is still the standard reference work in its field. In fact, he continues to be so linked to this work that often it’s simply referred to as “Kittel.”

The son of a Hebrew-scholar, whose own early career was spent befriending the Jews, he later changed his mind stating that his love was actually for biblical Judaism, not the contemporary Jewish community. Kittel eventually came to believe that the Jews were a problem in Germany and the source of many of his country’s woes. In a lecture entitled “The Jewish Problem,” he advocated the removal of Jews from their employment, especially in the universities, the government, and the press, and also their complete separation from the rest of society. It’s no wonder, then, that he made many friends among the Nazis, or that, because of his reputation as a scholar, his writings gave legitimacy to the Nazi agenda. Kittel once wrote, unapologetically:

We must not allow ourselves to be crippled because the whole

world screams at us of barbarism… How the German volk

regulates its own cultural affairs does not concern anyone

else in the world.

A second of these theologians, Paul Althaus, was a renowned Luther scholar. One of his books The Theology of Martin Luther was required reading during my seminary days and still sits on a bookshelf in my office. But, unbelievably, Althaus, someone so familiar with Luther’s Christ-centered theology, greeted Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 by observing, “Our Protestant churches have greeted the turning point of 1933 as a gift and miracle of God.”

He also wrote, “So we take the turning point of this year as grace from God’s hand. He has saved us from the abyss and out of hopelessness. He has given us – or so we hope – a new day of life.”

The third of these theologians under Hitler was Emmanuel Hirsch. It has been noted that “Colleagues and students of Hirsch… spoke with wide-eyed amazement about his brilliance, his linguistic proficiency and his prodigious memory.”

At the very center of Hirsch’s theology was that concept of the German volk which was even more important to him than democracy. (Moreover) “There is absolutely no contradiction to make it difficult as a German to be a Christian or as a Christian to be a German,” he insisted. In fact, Hirsch, just like Althaus, greeted Hitler’s rise to power with great enthusiasm, referring to it as a “sunrise of divine goodness.”

How foolhardy and dead wrong these three world-renowned scholars turned out to be! How tragically flawed were the positions and conclusions drawn by these brilliant minds! How un-Christian did these well-respected Christian leaders turn out to be in the end! Again, how was such a thing even possible?

Well, besides being Loyalty Day here in the United States, and Holocaust Remembrance Day throughout the world, May 1 was also, as you may know, Ascension Day, the church holiday that celebrates Christ’s ascension to heaven; an event described for us in our first reading. But what I want to call your attention to this morning are verses ten and eleven.

As Jesus was being lifted up, says Acts, the disciples “were gazing up toward heaven.” But suddenly two men in white robes stood among them and said, “…why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

Now, perhaps, these words can be taken in several different ways. But for our purposes here this morning, I would contend that what these angels were reminding the disciples is that they dare not keep their “eyes in the skies” while their feet are still planted firmly on the ground. In other words, their faith should not distract them from the realities and the concerns and the problems and the challenges of this world. Rather, it is precisely their faith in Christ, and soon the power of the Holy Spirit, which will actually guide and inspire them as they live out their daily lives.

One of the problems, perhaps, of the German Church during the 1930’s was that there was just such a “disconnect” between their faith and everyday lives. With their “eyes in the skies” they were able to ignore, or overlook, the evil that was taking place in their midst. With their “eyes in the skies” they didn’t realize that there could be a serious conflict between their commitment to their country and their commitment to their faith; between their loyalty to their government and their loyalty to God.

In today’s gospel, Jesus prays to his Father, “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God….” That is to say, our future and our ultimate salvation are not to be found in a nation, or a leader, or even a form of government, but only in God, and in the Son whom he has sent. Moreover, at the conclusion of today’s gospel, Jesus further prays, “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world… Holy Father, protect them in your name…”

Finally, our second reading this morning from 1 Peter warns all Christians, of every time and place, that: “Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.” Blinded by their sense of patriotism and their commitment to their country, the German people – including German Christians, even Lutheran Christians – did not recognize the evil that was Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. And as a result, they were unable, as 1 Peter exhorts, to “Resist (the devil), steadfast in your faith…”

There was another German Lutheran pastor of note to come out of the Nazi era. His name was Martin Niemoller. Originally, Niemoller apparently shared the anti-Semitism of Kittel, Althaus, Hirsch, and many others in Germany at that time. In a sermon from 1935, Niemoller reportedly asked: “What is the reason for (their) obvious punishment which has lasted for thousands of years? Dear brethren, the reason is easily given: the Jews brought the Christ of God to the cross!”

However, unlike Kittel, Althaus, and Hirsch, Niemoller eventually reconsidered and then repented of this earlier position, and began to actively oppose the Nazis. He was arrested in 1937 and then imprisoned in concentration camps until the end of the Second World War in 1945. But Niemoller later realized that his opposition came too late. As he wrote in his famous poem:

First they came for the communists,

but I was not a communist, so I did not speak out.

Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists,

but I was neither, so I did not speak out.

Then they came for the Jews,

but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out.

And when they came for me,

there was no one left to speak out…

But Pastor Ed, you may be thinking to yourselves at this point, what does all this possibly have to do with us; with Americans living in the year 2008 and so far removed from the Nazi era? In answer to that question I simply offer you a few lines from the final paragraph in Professor Ericksen’s book Theologians Under Hitler where he considers whether or not such a thing could ever happen again, such as in our own time.

The scenario to fear… (he writes), is one in which a combination of crises makes life difficult: a lost war, economic collapse, shortage of oil, shortage of food… Then we will hear calls for toughness, for law and order, for national unity. We will be tempted to sacrifice some democratic principles and civil rights for national wellbeing. In short, the crisis will begin to resemble that of (Germany in the 1920’s).

Ericksen wrote these words in 1985, long before 9/11 and the war on terrorism, and the protracted fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. He wrote them long before gas prices began surging toward four dollars a gallon at the pumps, before growing concerns about illegal aliens crossing our borders, and before global food shortages. He wrote them before the “Patriot Act,” and concerns being raised over the interrogation methods being used on suspected terrorists, and the possible misuse of domestic spying by telecommunications companies working at the behest of our government…

Now I am not The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s former pastor. I love this country and I still believe that the United States is the greatest nation on the face of the earth. But I am not so blind or naïve as to think that we are infallible. I am not so blind or naïve as to think that what happened in Nazi Germany could never happen here. I am not so blind or naïve that I do not realize that there is a distinct difference between my loyalty to my country, that is my patriotism – and my loyalty to God, or my faith.

As some of our recent scriptures have reminded us, as Christians we live as “resident aliens” on this earth. Our true home is with God, and our citizenship is in heaven. And that is precisely where our ultimate faith and allegiance must also be found.

The problem may well have been that, in the 1930’s, people saw themselves primarily as “German Christians,” with the accent on being German. In contrast, I prefer to see myself as a Christian who just happens to also be an American. Because my ultimate allegiance must always be to God…

Edith Cavell was a British nurse during World War I. The daughter of a pastor, her strong religious beliefs compelled her to assist all those who needed help – whether a member of the Allied forces or the German forces. “I can’t stop while there are lives to be saved,” she said.

She was also responsible for helping hundreds of Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium, and for this she was executed after her capture by the Germans. On the night before her death, she was visited by an Anglican chaplain, Father Gahan, whose church she had regularly attended in Brussels. He had been allowed to come and bring her Holy Communion. And during his visit, she said to him, “…standing as I do in view of God and eternity. I realize that patriotism is not enough; I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.” These words are now inscribed on her statue in Saint Martin’s Place, near Trafalgar Square in London.

Patriotism is never enough. As Christians we have received a higher calling, a holy calling. And when our Christian faith comes into conflict with our patriotism, we have no other choice but to choose our faith. As Peter and John said to the authorities who ordered them to stop speaking or teaching in the name of Jesus, “Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Amen

 

Always At Our Side (04/27/08)

Always At Our Side

(John 14:15-21)

I love words!  And I agree wholeheartedly with Eddie Cantor who once said, “Words fascinate me.  For me, browsing in a dictionary is like being turned loose in a bank.”

As a pastor, of course, words are the “tools” of my trade.  So much so that the late Joseph Sittler, perhaps the preeminent American Lutheran theologian of the 20^th century, once even claimed his purchase of a dictionary as a “business expense” on his income

tax return.  This apparently occurred many years ago, when such deductions were not as common.

He had purchased the Oxford English Dictionary which had every single word in the English language, and included illustrations from English literature starting in Chaucer’s time and continuing up to the present.  As Sittler noted, “It (was) a magnificent piece of work.”  And at the time (again many years ago), it cost $300 secondhand.

Well, the Internal Revenue Service took exception to Sittler’s deduction and eventually called him downtown (he taught for many years at the University of Chicago), where a young man seated behind a desk seemed to have, wrote Sittler, “a particularly fussy interpretation of that law.”  The IRS agent challenged him, saying, “What’s this?  You bought a bunch of books costing $300.  You can’t deduct books under the meaning of that law.”

So Sittler said, “Well, why not?  If I were a plumber, you would expect me to deduct the cost of wrenches and threaders and elbows.  I’m a teacher; words are my business.  They’re the only tools I have.  And if I’m going to do it right, I’ve got to have the best dictionary I can get.”

The young man from the IRS stared back at him in astonishment.

“You know,” he conceded, “you almost sold me.”  To which Sittler replied, “Well, I want to sell you completely.”

“He grew tired of my argument, I guess,” noted Sittler, “because he finally said, ‘Get out of here.  It’s OK.’”

As Joseph Sittler well knew, words are important.  In fact, the prominent 19^th century preacher, Henry Ward Beecher once said, “All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”  And Mark Twain added, “The difference between the almost-right word and the right word is really a large matter; it’s the difference between the lightening bug and the lightning.

Ernest Hemingway further observed, “All our words from loose using have lost their edge.”  Similarly, the reformer, John Calvin, is reported to have said, “I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.”

Obviously, in order to be effective in communicating the ideas behind them, words have to be understood.  Sometimes, however, that’s difficult, even when we’re speaking the very same language.

For instance, I came across this piece on the Internet entitled, “Words Women Use and Their Meanings”:

FINE: this is the word women use to end an argument when they’re right and you need to shut up.

FIVE MINUTES: If she is getting dressed, this is half an hour.  Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given 5 more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

NOTHING: This is the calm before the storm.  This means something, and you should be on your toes.  Arguments that begin with “Nothing” usually end in “Fine.”

GO AHEAD: This is a dare, not permission.  Don’t do it!

LOUD SIGH: This is not actually a word, but it is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men.  A “Loud Sigh” means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you over “Nothing.”

THAT’S OKAY: This is one of the most dangerous statements that a woman can make to a man.  “That’s Okay” means that she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

THANKS: When a woman uses this word, she is actually thanking you.  Do not question it… or faint.  Just say, “You’re welcome.”

But the importance of words becomes even more critical when it comes to translating them from one language to another.  Hence, these examples:

In 1972, when Standard Oil of New Jersey, then known as Esso, was looking for a new name, among the finalists were Exxon and Enco.  Just before a final decision was made, however, researchers were horrified to discover that Enco was a Japanese term that could mean “stalled car.”  Enco, therefore, was quickly dropped and Exxon ultimately became the corporation’s new name.

In a similar situation, when General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova to South America, they found that they weren’t selling any cars.  Apparently they were unaware that, in Spanish, “no va” means “it won’t go.”

Or how about when the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan “finger-lick’n good” was translated into Chinese?  It came out as “eat your fingers off.”  Or in Taiwan, when the Pepsi slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation,” came out as “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead.”

Then there was the hotel elevator in Paris where the following reminder was posted in English: “Please leave your values at the front desk.”  Or, how about the one found in a laundry in Italy: “Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time.”  And, for men, the sign in a Bangkok, Thailand dry-cleaners announced, “Drop your trousers here for best results.”

In a Copenhagen airline ticket office there was the following announcement: “We take you bags and send them in all directions.”  And on the door of a Moscow hotel room was the following, “If this is your first visit to the USSR… you are welcome to it.”

As a company called “Transperfect” notes on their website, “Good translators know that it’s not just about translating word for word…  Accurately conveying the meaning when translating from one language to another is absolutely critical.  Depending on the subject matter, sometimes this can mean sticking closely to the source text and other times it requires a looser translation in order to best deliver the central meaning.”

Well, all of this is also, and particularly, true when translating biblical texts from their original languages.  In English, for instance, we have a single word: “love.”  And, therefore, when we say we love something, we can mean everything from chocolate ice cream, to puppy dogs, to our country, to our spouse and children, even God.

But the Greeks had at least three words for love.  First, there was Philos (PHIL-aas).  This is the love we have for dear friends and family members.  And it’s the word that John 20:2 uses in describing the disciple (you may remember) who ran with Peter

to check out the empty tomb on Easter morning: that is, “the one whom Jesus loved.”  It’s also found in the name of the Pennsylvania city, Philadelphia, or the “city of brotherly love.”  “Adelphos” being the Greek word for “brother.”

Then, there was also Eros (ER-aas) which expressed passionate love and desire.  This, of course, is where the English word “erotic” comes from.

And finally, there was Agape (a-Ga-pay).  This is the special love that God has for us, the love of John 3:16, “For God so loved the world…”  It’s the kind of love that is willing to serve – to give all.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  And, so, when Jesus told us to love God and love others, when he told us to love as we have been loved by God, the Bible uses this word agape…

On the other hand, in contrast to the situation just described where one English word can be used to translate three different Greek words, there are also times when one Greek word can only be properly and fully translated by using multiple English words.  And a case in point occurs in our Gospel reading this morning.

As we heard, Jesus once said, “And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.”  The Greek word here is parakletos (par-ak’-lay-tos) or paraclete which means “the one called alongside of another,” or “someone called to one’s aid.”  And it has been translated, at various times and in various versions of the Bible, in at least four different ways.

But before I share these, and briefly comment on them, I think it’s important for us to keep in mind the context here.  These words in today’s gospel were spoken by Jesus during his so-called “farewell discourse” following the Last Supper and the foot-washing on Maundy Thursday.  They are part of a larger address in which Jesus shares, among other things, that he will be leaving them.  And this was understandably troubling for the disciples.

As one commentator has noted, “to their hearts, Jesus’ talk here about going away and leaving them sounded like bad news.

Even his promises to come back to fetch them one day couldn’t overcome the sorrowful fact that very soon, apparently, they

were going to lose their master and their friend.  (So) Jesus must reassure them.  He has to tell them that this is not abandonment.  He is not leaving them as orphans…  Another would be sent…  Another would come who would allow them to still ‘see’ Jesus, albeit in a different way…”  Or, as Father Andrew Greeley has put it, “He will send another to be their inspiration and guide.”

In our passage, Jesus adds, “This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

And this “Spirit of Truth,” of course, is none other than the Holy Spirit.  But to truly understand the role of the Holy Spirit in our faith and in our lives, we have to go back now and “unpack” that Greek term paraclete.

Remember, it literally refers to someone “called to one’s side,” or “called to one’s aid.”  Quite often, then, it’s translated with the English word “counselor.”  A counselor is, in fact, someone who comes to our aid and often stands by our side to support us in a time of need.  Today, of course, the term “counselor” typically refers to a professional; a psychologist or therapist who has specialized training and experience.

A woman was once suffering a long period of feeling “flat” and “low,” when her husband took her to see a counselor.  After talking to the couple for a while, the counselor finally said, “I think I see what’s the matter here.  The solution is really quite simple.”  And with that, he stood up, walked across the room, took the woman in his arms, looked adoringly into her eyes, said, “I think you are a beautiful woman,” and gently kissed her on the lips.  Well, the woman blushed bright red, but at the same time her face lit up and she beamed a happy, although embarrassed, smile.  The counselor then turned to the husband and said, “See, that’s all your wife really needs.”  To which the clueless husband replied, “Great, can I bring her in on Mondays and Thursdays?”

In this case, of course, the counselor’s point was completely missed, but the role of a counselor was nevertheless accurate;

that is, someone who assists us in times of need or perhaps in making important decisions, who may offer us advice, and who tries to understand and support us.  English word number one: counselor

Number two is the word “comforter.”  Sometimes paraclete is translated with this English word.  A “comforter” is someone who typically comes to our aid in those times of greatest need; who stands by us and with us when we are almost inconsolable.

Once, during the reign of Queen Victoria of England, she heard that the wife of a common laborer had lost her baby.  Having experienced such deep sorrow herself, she felt moved to express her sympathy.  So she called on the bereaved woman and spent some time with her.  After she had left, the neighbors asked the woman what the queen had said.  “Nothing,” was her reply.  “She simply sat down next to me, put her hands on mine, and we silently wept together.”

In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul once described the role of the Holy Spirit in this way, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”  Paraclete: someone called to one’s side, someone called to one’s aid – a comforter.

Number three is the word “helper.”  Jackie Robinson, you may recall, was the very first African American to play major league baseball.  Breaking baseball’s color barrier, however, was a very difficult task.  Robinson faced jeering crowds in every stadium

he visited.  At times, the pressure was overwhelming.  However, the turning point, it is said, occurred one day at his home ballpark

in Brooklyn.  Jackie committed an error in the field.  The fans, predictably, began to ridicule him.  He stood there at second base, utterly humiliated.  Then shortstop Pee Wee Reese, a white ballplayer born and bred in the South, came over and stood next to him.  He put his arm around Jackie Robinson and faced the crowd.  The fans quickly grew silent.  And Robinson later said that this moment, and the offer of help and encouragement communicated by Reese’s arm around his shoulder, probably saved his career.

Paraclete: someone called to one’s side, someone called to one’s aid – a helper.

Then there is the fourth, and final, word; the word that, in fact, actually appears in our lesson this morning, the word advocate. Now an “advocate” is someone who pleads the case of another, one who defends or maintains a cause, one who supports or promotes the interests of another.  And, as such, it is often used in a legal sense to describe the role of a lawyer – which is the case in today’s gospel as well.

Needless to say, however, lawyers don’t always enjoy the best of reputations these days.  As someone once said, “The actions of 99% of lawyers ruin it for the rest of them!”

Apparently this assessment is not just a recent phenomenon either.  Lloyd Lewis, a biographer of General Ulysses S. Grant, tells the story of a chilly winter evening when the general came quietly into a tavern in Galena, Illinois.  A group of lawyers was sitting in a tight circle around the pot-bellied stove, discussing an important case.  One of them noticed Grant and commented, “Why here’s a stranger, gentlemen, and it looks as though he’s traveled through hell itself!”  Grant shivered and said, “I have indeed.”  The lawyer then chuckled and asked, “And how did you find things down there?”  To which Grant replied, “Much the same as here… all the lawyers were nearest to the fire.”

But Friday evening, on an episode of NBC’s Dateline, I saw the legal profession from a completely different point of view.  A woman by the name of Cynthia Sommer had been convicted of the murder of her husband Sgt. Todd Sommer, a Marine, who died mysteriously back in 2002.  Initially ruled a heart attack, subsequent tests of his liver reportedly showed extremely high levels of arsenic.  This, coupled with the widow’s unusual behavior immediately following her husband’s death, led directly to her conviction even though she always maintained her innocence.

Recently, a new lawyer took the case on her behalf.  First, he won her a new trial by arguing that she had inadequate legal counsel at the first one.  And, then, he had her husband’s tissues re-examined and, this time, experts could find absolutely no trace of the arsenic which had played such a critical role in her original trial and conviction.  In fact, with the revelation of this new evidence, the San Diego district attorney had no other choice but to drop all charges against Cynthia Sommer and order her immediate release.

And there on television Friday night, showing some of the recent court proceedings, was her lawyer – her advocate – standing right there alongside her, pleading her case before the judge.  In this instance, then, this lawyer truly was her paraclete; her counselor, her comforter, her helper, and her advocate.

Laurel Dykstra of Sojourner’s Magazine reminds us that the whole of John’s Gospel can actually be read as a lawsuit – a courtroom drama, if you will.  So it’s not surprising that, at their last meal together, Jesus promises his disciples an advocate.  She adds, “Activist, Bible teacher, and former lawyer Wes Howard-Brook says the Greek word paraclete is a secular court term that indicates both an attorney for the defense and a comforter in suffering.  So Jesus is sending not just a lawyer, but a good lawyer, one who cares and whose caseload is not so overwhelming that there is time to make that caring real.”

So when, as Christians, we need understanding and inspiration, direction and guidance; when we need someone to stand beside us in the difficult and challenging and sad times; when we need assistance and support; and when we need someone to plead our case and intercede for us – that’s where we’ll find the Holy Spirit.

Knowing full well the death that awaited him, and just as he was about to leave them, Jesus promised his disciples that another advocate would come to take his place.  Up until then, Jesus had been their advocate; their counselor, comforter, and helper.  But now another will take his place.  As Jesus says a little later, in John 15:26, “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.”  Therefore, as John Donohue writes, “The Advocate… is, then, the enduring presence in the church of the departed Jesus…”

“I will not leave you orphaned,” said Jesus.  Indeed, through the Holy Spirit: our counselor, comforter, helper, and advocate, he will always be with us.  Amen

 

Homeward Bound (04/20/08)

(John 14:1-14)

(The sermon begins with the playing of

“Homeward Bound” by Simon & Garfunkel)

I’m sitting in the railway station.
Got a ticket to my destination.
On a tour of one-night stands my suitcase and guitar in hand.
And ev’ry stop is neatly planned for a poet and a one-man band.
Homeward bound,
I wish I was,
Homeward bound,
Home where my thought’s escaping,
Home where my music’s playing,
Home where my love lies waiting
Silently for me.

Ev’ry day’s an endless stream
Of cigarettes and magazines.
And each town looks the same to me, the movies and the factories
And ev’ry stranger’s face I see reminds me that I long to be,
Homeward bound,
I wish I was,
Homeward bound,
Home where my thought’s escaping,
Home where my music’s playing,
Home where my love lies waiting
Silently for me.

Tonight I’ll sing my songs again,
I’ll play the game and pretend.
But all my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity
Like emptiness in harmony I need someone to comfort me.
Homeward bound,
I wish I was,
Homeward bound,
Home where my thought’s escaping,
Home where my music’s playing,
Home where my love lies waiting
Silently for me.
Silently for me.

Thirty-three years ago next month I was finishing up my first year of college, as well as my first extended period of time away from home in my entire life. Born and raised in New Jersey, I had chosen a Lutheran college out in Columbus, Ohio, over five hundred miles away. And in those days, long before cell phones and e-mails, and instant messaging on the computer, my only contact with home was a once-a-week call from my parents which I had to take on the pay phone way down at the end of the hall in my dorm; the only phone, in fact, on the entire floor.

So, needless to say, back in 1975 when May finally rolled around

I was beyond ready to go home! As were all the other students, especially those, like me, from out-of-state. And I can still recall, quite vividly, those last few days of finals as the clock on that school year slowly wound down. One by one, we finished off our courses and took our exams and began to pack. And then we just waited… until it was time to leave.

One of my friends, Duke Spiker, from Youngstown, Ohio, had a stereo. And setting the speakers in his open dorm-room window he kept playing Simon & Garfunkels’s “Homeward Bound” over and over and over and over… again. I don’t know it for a fact, but I believe that he literally wore out that poor record, and maybe his stereo as well. Because, for two and a half days, before he finally left to return to Youngstown for the summer, he just sat by himself in his room playing that song! And every time it finished, he would merely reach over, lift up the needle, return it to the beginning, and then play it all over again.

Now, you would have thought that it would have at least bothered or annoyed someone. But, to my knowledge, he never even got a single complaint. And I can only imagine that it was because everyone else on campus was feeling exactly the same way that he was… Homeward bound, I wish I was, homeward bound…

Our daughter Kristyn flew back to the United States yesterday after her semester studying abroad in London. And in recent days we could tell from our conversations with her, and from her e-mails, that she was ready to come home; excited and anxious to finally be… homeward bound. In fact, it’s said that Paul Simon actually wrote the song “Homeward Bound” while waiting in a railway station over in England, and longing to return to his home back in the States.

For over a month now, Jeanette and I could both tell that Kristyn was homesick; that yearning, restless, desire for familiar places, faces, and voices…

Many years ago, once again in England, a circus elephant named Bozo was very popular with the public. Children, in particular, especially loved to crowd around his cage and throw him peanuts.

Then, one day, there was a sudden change in Bozo’s personality. Several times he tried to attack his keeper, and now whenever the children came near his cage, he would charge in their direction, as if trying to bust loose and trample them.

Because of his erratic and dangerous behavior, it was decided that the elephant had to be destroyed. The circus owner, a greedy and crude man, decided to make the execution public, and to even sell tickets to it, as a way of recouping some of the cost of losing such a valuable animal.

Well, the day for the execution finally came, and the huge

circus tent was packed. Bozo was in his cage in the center ring. Marksmen, with high-powered rifles, stood ready nearby. And the owner, standing in front of the cage was about to give the order to shoot, when out of the crowd came a short, inconspicuous man wearing a brown derby hat.

“There’s no need for this,” said the man. But the circus owner brushed him aside, saying, “This elephant has gone bad. He has

to be destroyed before he hurts or kills someone.”

“But you’re wrong,” insisted the man. “Give me two minutes alone in the cage with him and I’ll prove it to you.” The owner shook his head “no.” “You’ll be killed,” he said. “I don’t think so,” replied the man. “Do I have your permission?”

Well the owner was not the kind of man to pass up the opportunity for such a dramatic spectacle. Even if the man were killed, he figured, the publicity alone would be worth millions. “All right,” he finally said, “But first you have to sign a release absolving the circus of all responsibility.” And the man quickly agreed to do so.

As the man removed his coat and hat, preparing to enter the cage, the circus owner announced to the people what was about to happen, and a hush fell over the crowd. The door to the cage was unlocked and opened, and the man stepped quickly inside.

At the sight of this stranger, the elephant threw back his trunk, let out a might roar, and then bent his head as if preparing to charge. The man, however, stood perfectly still, a faint smile on his face as he began to talk to the animal. The audience was so quiet that those nearest the cage could hear the man speaking, but couldn’t make out the words; although it sounded like a foreign language.

Slowly, as the man continued to talk, the elephant raised his head and then uttered a pitiful cry. Still talking soothingly to the animal, the man approached confidently and began to gently stroke the elephant’s trunk. Every bit of aggression, that had been building up for weeks, suddenly seemed to have been completely drained from the elephant. Docile as a puppy dog now, he wound his trunk around the man’s waist as the two of them walked slowly around the ring. The astounded audience could no longer bear the silence, and immediately broke out in a barrage of cheers and clapping. After a lap around the center ring, the man bade farewell to the elephant and left the cage.

Walking up to the owner, the man said, “He’ll be all right now. You see, he’s an Indian elephant and none of you, apparently, spoke his language, Hindustani. I would advise, therefore, that you immediately hire someone who speaks Hindustani. The only the wrong with your elephant is that he was homesick.

And with that, the little man gathered up his hat and coat, and left.

Dumbfounded, the circus owner then looked down at the slip of paper he held in his hand, the one which the man had signed, agreeing not to hold the circus responsible if anything bad were to take place when he went into the elephant’s cage. The name the man had signed was… Rudyard Kipling, who, if you have children or grandchildren, you may recall is the English author and poet who wrote “The Jungle Book,” which Disney eventually turned into one of their classic movie-length cartoons.

The point is… even animals can get homesick. (Come to think of it, you should have seen our two dogs when we picked them up at the kennel last Sunday, after being away for spring break, and our cat, as well, who we had left alone by herself in the house!)

But if homesickness is, indeed, a universal experience, for animals as well as humans, the next question is this: Where is home? Is it

simply where we live, like a house or an apartment? Or is it a physical place in terms of a city, or a region, or even a country?

The other song from my youth that I kept hearing in my head this past week was “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” by The Temptations, especially that first line of the refrain, “Papa was a rolling stone, wherever he laid his hat… was his home.”

And just recently I was counting up all the different places where

I have lived up to this point in my life (today being my 52^nd birthday, by the way) and I was amazed when I realized that I have actually lived in 15 different communities (for those of you who heard me, I was wrong this past Wednesday night when I said it was only 13), and 15 different houses and apartments and dorm rooms, that have been spread across 7 different states. So which one of them is my home?

Or is, in fact, our home something, or somewhere else? Something other than merely our residence, or a place where we may have lived for a time in the past, or where we may yet live in the future?

Another way of thinking about “home” was suggested by Robert Frost who once wrote that, “Home is the place where – when you have to go there – they have to take you in.” Similarly, Bill Cosby once noted, “Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home.” And someone named Vernon Baker once observed, “Home is where the heart can laugh without shyness. Home is where the heart’s tears can dry at their own pace.”

As Joseph Pagano, an Episcopal priest, recently pointed out, a home doesn’t have to be a physical place at all. Rather, it can simply be wherever people build and share a life together. A place where husbands and wives and families share the hopes and hurts, and the joys and sorrows of life; a place of solace and comfort; a place where you feel safe and whole.

And Father Pagano also reminds us that, however we understand it, “home” has a special place in the human heart. “It seems,” he writes, “as though we are all longing for a place to call home… Whenever we feel lonely or abandoned, we want to go home. Whenever we are filled with doubt or despair, we want to go home. Whenever we feel cut loose, or lost, we want to go home.”

Indeed, there is a restlessness in all of our hearts; a yearning and a longing for home….

But even if we primarily think of “home” as family, or the people we love, instead of merely a physical place, what happens when they die? If we think of home in terms of people, what happens to our sense of home when they are no longer with us?

Maybe, then, our true home is still something else yet… Many centuries ago, the early church father, Augustine, responded to the yearning and restlessness and longing of the human heart for home in this way, “O God, you have made us for yourself,” wrote St. Augustine, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”

Perhaps home is not a place, or even the people we love. Perhaps a true sense of home goes even deeper…

An elderly missionary couple, after many years of faithful service overseas in Africa, were returning home to retire. On the very same ship was then-President Teddy Roosevelt, who was returning from a hunting trip in Africa. As the passengers disembarked, there was a crowd of admirers waiting to greet the President. A band was playing, and the cheers of the crowd were deafening.

But when it came time for the missionaries to step ashore, there was not a single soul to meet them. (It turns out that a small reception committee from their church had actually been confused about the exact day of their return and thus missed them.) Nevertheless, thoroughly discouraged, the husband buried his head in his hands and moaned, “God, I didn’t expect a band or a parade, but you could have seen to it that someone was here to welcome us home.” To which, upon overhearing this, his wife gently reminded him, “But dear, we’re not home yet!”

Indeed, this is the very point Jesus was making in today’s gospel. We’re not home… yet. However we may define home in this world, and in this life, or wherever or whatever we may choose to designate as our home – the simple truth is that we are still not really home.

However, says Jesus, I go to prepare a place for you. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

Now, at first glance, Jesus still seems to be talking about “home” here in terms of a physical place; a house or (in earlier translations) a “mansion.” Moreover, he talks about dwelling places, or “rooms,” within the Father’s house.

But the interesting thing about the Greek in which the gospels, including this one, were originally written, is that the word translated here as “house” can also mean the “family” or “household” who lives there. Just as “dwelling place” can also imply a relationship; that is, not simply a physical place but also one’s inclusion within the family or household.

In other words, then, Jesus isn’t necessarily talking about a physical place here at all, heaven or otherwise. Rather, what he seems to be talking about is our relationship with God, and our inclusion and participation within the community and the family of God.

Raymond Brown, the noted New Testament scholar, once wrote, “This special house or household where the son has a permanent dwelling place suggests a union with the Father reserved for Jesus the Son and for all those who are begotten as God’s children by the Spirit that Jesus gives. Thus, there would be some precedent for reinterpreting “many dwelling places in my Father’s house” parabolically as possibilities for permanent union with the Father in and through Jesus.”

Or to put it yet another way… When I was going through confirmation, I’ll never forget, my pastor defined heaven in this way: “It’s simply being in God’s presence for all eternity.” Now we may use all sorts of descriptions and analogies, as clearly Jesus himself does here, of houses, and mansions, and rooms, or, as in the book of Revelation, even the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven. But all of them are merely trying to convey the simple truth that, in the end, what we’re really talking about here is reunion with God. Or, again, as Augustine expressed it, “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in thee.”

We may not know where that home will be, or what it will look like. But this much we do know – wherever it is, it will be with God.

Now, of course, the novelist Thomas Wolfe once wrote a book entitled “You Can’t Go Home Again.” And if we’re talking about home here in terms of places or people, then he’s absolutely correct. We can’t return to these homes again because places and people change – nothing ever stays the same – and it’s pointless to even try.

If, however, on the other hand, we think of home exclusively in terms of God and God’s presence, then that statement is false. Because the very essence of today’s gospel, and the very hope and promise of our Christian faith is, in fact, all about going home again – going back home to God.

John Todd was a young boy when both of his parents suddenly died. He had several siblings, and, as was the custom in those days, the children were farmed out to relatives, including John. One of his aunts offered to take little John and she sent a servant, by the name of Caesar, to go fetch him.

Upon arriving, Caesar hoisted the boy up onto the horse with him, told John to wrap his arms around his waist to hold on, and off they went. And as they set out for the aunt’s house, young John was full of questions; questions that revealed his deepest fears and anxieties.

“Will she be there?” he asked Caesar. “Oh, yes,” the servant assured him. “She’ll even be waiting up for you.”

“Will I like living with her?” the boy asked next. “My son,” said Caesar, “you fall into good hands.”

“Will she love me?” And the servant was patient and soft in his reply, “Ah, she has a big heart.”

“Do you think she’ll go to bed before we get there?” John wanted to know again. “Oh, no” said Caesar, “Like I told you, she’ll be up waiting for you. You’ll even see when we get out of these woods. You’ll see her candle in the window.”

And sure enough, when they emerged from the woods and neared the house, John saw a candle in the window and his aunt standing in the doorway. As he slid off the horse and shyly approached the

porch, she reached down and kissed him and said, “Welcome home!”

Young John Todd grew up in his aunt’s care. And she loved him as if he were her own son.

Years later, when the time came for him to select a profession, John Todd followed a calling into the ministry. And some years after that, the roles were reversed between him and his beloved aunt. You see, one day she sent word of her failing health and impending death. She was frightened by what she knew she would have to face.

Here is what John wrote in reply:

My Dear Aunt,

Years ago, I left a house of death, not knowing where I was to go, whether anyone cared, whether it was the end of me. The ride was long, but the servant encouraged me. Finally, I arrived to your embrace and a new home. I was expected; I felt safe. You did it all for me.

Now it is your turn to go. I’m writing to let you know, someone is waiting up for you, your room is all ready, the light is on, the door is open… and you’re expected!

(This version of John Todd’s story can be found in Max Lucado’s book, “John 3:16”, starting on page 111.)

…There is a longing and a yearning for home in every heart.

There is a restlessness of the human spirit that can only be quenched by our return to God. And the good news of Jesus Christ is that we can go home again. In fact, he promises it! For, in Jesus, we are all homeward bound.

Amen

 

Strangers and Aliens (04/06/08)

Strangers and Aliens

(1 Peter 1:17-23)

Well, it’s good to be back! As most of you know, I just returned from my trip to visit our daughter Kristyn in London. I actually returned on Friday – not Thursday as originally planned (more about that in a moment)!

And it was a great trip; my very first overseas. In a previous sermon, when I discussed the possibility of going, I referred (you may recall) to the fact that I had taken a lot of English history courses as an undergrad. So I had a lot of fun seeing in person many of the places I had read and studied about back in college.

Of course, Kristyn took me to see a number of the famous landmarks in London including Buckingham Palace and also 221B Baker Street, which, of course was the residence of that famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. Today it’s actually the location of the Sherlock Holmes museum, and although we didn’t pay to go inside (Kristyn had heard it was not really worth it), we did, however, get our picture taken outside with me wearing a replica of Sherlock Holmes’ hat and holding a pipe, and Kristyn wearing the type of derby worn by his ever-faithful companion and collaborator, Dr. Watson.

I also got to see Picadilly Circus (which is comparable to “Times Square” in New York City), the Tower Bridge, Big Ben and Parliament, and Trafalgar Square. In addition, we took guided tours of the infamous Tower of London, as well as Westminster Abbey (which were fascinating); and a boat trip down the River Thames; and then a train trip up to Warwick to tour Warwick Castle, which, although somewhat commercialized, nevertheless gives you a pretty good idea of what life was really like back in the medieval period. (While there, we even saw a demonstration of a full-sized “trebuchet,” which was a medieval siege machine similar to a catapult, but more like a huge “sling shot.”

And just a block or so down from our hotel was the British Museum that we briefly visited so I could see the famed “Rosetta Stone”; from which they were able to learn how to translate the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

But I also had a lot of fun just listening to people talk, as well as reading the posted signs over there, and then realizing how many differences there are in everyday words and phrases between the U.S. and Great Britain. In fact, I even carried around a pen and small notebook with me in order to record many of them.

For one thing, the sentence construction over there is, at times, somewhat unusual – at least it was for me. For another, the British are just so darn polite. As an example, after our flight landed in London and we prepared to go through Customs there was a sign posted above where the line began which read: “We extremely, seriously discourage the intimidation of our staff by aggressive behavior or the threat of physical violence”

Now here in the States, of course, we often use multiple adjectives, as in “long, hot summer.” But I had never before seen the use

of multiple adverbs. Apparently, not only do they seriously discourage inappropriate behavior on the part of those going through Customs, but they “extremely seriously” discourage it!

Of course, here that same sign would probably just read: “Inappropriate behavior will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” Short and sweet and to the point.

I saw another example going into the men’s room at a restaurant. The inner door was obviously broken. Here in the U.S. (if there was even a sign at all), it would probably just say “Careful, broken door.” But, again, the English are so polite – almost apologetic even. So the sign I saw read: “Please be aware of the door. Action is being taken.” Thus, not only did they want to be sure that a person knew there was a problem (which was pretty hard to miss as the door was barely hanging on its hinges), but at the same time they further felt compelled to inform us that it was also being taken care of in a timely manner!

And, then, just outside of where the House of Parliament meets, there was this sign posted: “This is a protected site under Section 128 of the Serious Organized Crime and Police Act of 2005.” In the U.S. it would have simply read: “Government Property. Keep Out!”

While getting around London, and then taking that train trip up to Warwick and a second one up to Leeds to visit my aunt and cousin, I encountered a few more examples. For instance, they use the phrase “This train is for…” instead of simply saying “Destination.” And “Calling at…” refers to the train stops along the way. When you’re getting off the train or subway, it’s “Mind your step” instead of “Watch your step.” If the bathroom onboard is being used, you are informed that it is “engaged”, instead of “occupied.” And to tell you the final destination of a particular train, they say “This train terminates at” such and such a place. At first it sounded to me like the train was suddenly going to explode upon arrival! And finally Jeanette’s favorite. At the stations, instead of seeing signs that say “Exit,” they say “Way Out.”

Then, there are also the individual words that are different or carry a different meaning. For instance:

a “cashpoint” is an “ATM”,

a “push chair” is a “wheel chair”,

restaurants offer “take away” food, instead of “take out”,

a “washeteria” is a “Laundromat”,

a “toilet” is the entire “bathroom,” not just a bathroom fixture,

and they don’t go to the “bathroom”, they go to the “loo”,

a “lift” is an “elevator”,

a “flat” is an “apartment”,

a “que” is a “line”, as in “there’s a long que waiting for the bus”,

(I saw this one on television): “nappy rash” is “baby rash”,

the “tube” is a “subway”

and a “subway” is the tunnel leading to the “tube”,

a “rasher” of bacon is a “strip” of bacon,

and for breakfast, we were also offered a choice of “white” or

“brown” bread (not “wheat”)

a “match” is a “game”, as in the headline I saw in one of the

newspapers: “President Bush throws out the first pitch of the

baseball match”,

“chips” are “French fries”,

a “jacket” potato is a “baked” potato,

and, finally, a “mobile” phone is a “cell” phone.

But then there was a word I heard which perfectly summarized

my entire experience over there in London, especially my return trip. Because I had flown over on a “buddy pass” from John Calhoun who works for Delta (which made it very economical, of course), I also flew “standby” which meant that I had no assigned seat, and only got on a flight if and when there was room for me. And also if there were no other standbys with a higher priority.

(By the way, at London-Gatwick Airport they take the word “standby” literally. While those with assigned seats are immediately checked-in to a waiting area with comfortable chairs, those flying standby are kept outside of that area in the hallway where there is no seating at all. That is to say, you either have to sit on the floor, or again literally “stand-by”)

Now my flight over went smoothly. I got on the earlier flight leaving that evening – the one I had hoped to get on (there are only two going over each day, and two coming back). And I was even upgraded to first class!

But it was when I was preparing to return this past Thursday that I ran into a problem. Unbeknownst to me back when I was scheduling my trip (not that it would have mattered because this was really the only time I could get away), the week of my return just happened to coincide with “spring break” for schools all across England. Which meant that seemingly (at least judging by the mob scene I witnessed at check-in) every single family in Great Britain had plans to go to Disneyworld this week. Which further meant that if they were flying Delta, they were also flying first – you guessed it – to Atlanta!

So that morning, when I arrived 2 ½ hours early to check-in, the place was already packed. And when I finally got to a ticket agent to check my bag, and he saw my ticket (and the fact that I was flying standby on a buddy pass), he just shook his head slowly, then sighed, and said simply, “Good Luck!” He then proceeded to inform me that the flight that was severely overbooked, and further implied that my chances of getting on it (or even the second flight later that morning), were about as good as a “snowballs chances in you know where!”

As predicted, even though I patiently “stood by” at the check-in gate for the first flight to Atlanta that morning, there were absolutely no seats to be had for those flying standby. A total of five of us didn’t get on. And it was at this point that I heard the word which so perfectly described my, and their, situation. I overheard the senior ticket agent at the gate, upon recognizing the fact that there were a total of five of us hoping to fly standby to Atlanta that day, reporting to his supervisor, “I’ve got five nomads here this morning.”

Nomad… Webster defines a “nomad” as someone who has no fixed residence, but who moves from place to place; that is, an individual who roams about. Now I don’t know whether this was an English expression, or an industry designation, or just simply a Delta slang term. But whatever the case – it perfectly fit us, and our situation, that morning. We were, in fact… nomads.

This word “nomad,” of course also has biblical connotations as well. The Israelites, you may remember, actually started out as nomads – a pastoral people who did not live permanently in any one location, but rather who moved their herds of sheep and goats from place to place. In fact, it was this nomadic existence, moving to wherever the land could support them and their flocks, that eventually led them to live in Egypt. And we see this reflected in Deuteronomy 26, verse 5, which reads, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.”

It’s also in Deuteronomy where we hear that the Israelites should care for the aliens and the sojourners (another commonly used word in the Bible) who live in their midst. “Love the sojourner…,” says Deuteronomy 10:19, “for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”

Later, in the New Testament, various writers, including Paul, took this history of the Israelites, and the concept of a wandering people, and applied it in various ways to the church and the followers of Jesus Christ – both before they became his followers, and also afterwards.

In Ephesians 2, for instance, Paul writes to these Gentile Christians about their earlier situation by saying, “…remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise… But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far of have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

Later in that very same chapter, he adds, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”

And then Peter (if, in fact, he was the author of the New Testament letters which bear his name), also gets into the act, so to speak. However, in Peter’s case, the terms “stranger” and “sojourner” and “alien” and even “exile” do not refer to a Christian’s status before coming to believe, but after. And here they refer to a Christian’s relationship to the world and to society.

In 1 Peter 2, he writes, “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.” In other words, Christians should live as aliens and exiles in opposition to the temptations and the sinfulness of the world around them and, similarly, in the first verse of our second reading this morning, Peter writes, “If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile.” Or, as the New International Version translates it, “live your lives as strangers…”

Again, the point being made here is that Christianity is counter-cultural. We are not to be conformed to the world around us, as Paul once said, but rather transformed by the renewing of our minds which helps us then to discern the will of God, and to do what is good and acceptable and perfect. Or as Jesus once reminded, as Christians we are to be in but not of the world.

Which is simply to say that, while we live on this earth, we are always to live as if we were nothing more than aliens and exiles. We were meant to be strangers and sojourners here on earth – not permanent residents. For as Paul once wrote, “…our citizenship is in heaven.”

Back on Thursday, as I waited at the airport in London for a flight back to Atlanta, I was a so-called “nomad.” I was a stranger and sojourner in a foreign land; an alien and an exile. London and Great Britain were not my true home. They were only the place that I had come to visit, and where I was temporarily residing until it was time to return to my true home…

After that first Atlanta flight had been completely filled, the ticket agent warned us that it only looked worse for the second of the two daily flights, later that morning. And so he offered, instead, to get us on the very next Delta flight back to the U.S. which was headed for JFK in New York, where we could always get a connecting flight to Atlanta, he said. Of the five of us who missed that 9:00 a.m. flight to Atlanta, three got on the one to JFK.

Another ticket agent then recommended to me, and to the other gentlemen with me, that now our best bet was to try and get on the flight to Cincinnati. So we tried. The other man got on… but I didn’t.

Finally, they tried to get me on the fourth, and final, flight that day back to the States – once again flying to Atlanta. But the earlier predictions were absolutely correct. And once again, I failed to get a seat.

So now I was escorted back through British Customs, and taken to where I could pick up my baggage, and I was told that I could try again the next day. It was only about 11:30 in the morning at this point. And there I was stranded at the London-Gatwick Airport with nowhere else to go, and no real prospects for at least another 20 hours or so.

Oh, and when I went to have my ticket reissued for the following day? The ticket agent said that both flights to Atlanta on Friday were, once again, overbooked.

Talk about being a nomad! For awhile I just wandered around Gatwick Airport, lugging my suitcase and two carry-on bags full of stuff I was bringing home for Kristyn. I was even beginning to feel a little like that Tom Hanks character in the movie The Terminal. Was I ever going to get home?

And when I discovered that a single night at the Hilton there at Gatwick ran about 233 pounds (or more than 500 dollars!), I ended up renting an 8 foot by 9 foot cubicle equipped with a bunk bed (with a plasma TV mounted at my feet), a pull-out table that was fastened to the back wall, a folding chair attached to the door, and, finally, behind a sliding glass partition, a toilet, sink, and shower combination unit.

It was pretty cool, actually. As I e-mailed Jeanette later that evening, I could just about shave, shower, and go to the bathroom simultaneously!

Anyway, it was clean and comfortable, and for the next 19 hours it was to be my temporary home. I just couldn’t tell if it felt more like the living quarters aboard a submarine… or a prison cell!

Well, after a short nap that afternoon, I then left my luggage and even my coat behind in my so-called “home away from home,” and went back to the terminal to eat and do a little exploring. Now I really felt like Tom Hanks while I was wandering around! Still, it was quite an adventure, though.

And instead of getting angry or upset about the situation, I just tried to make the best of it. I treated myself to a nice dinner (including a couple of glasses of authentic British beer), did some window-shopping, spent some time in an Internet café, and finally bought some snacks before the stores closed to take back with me when I returned to my cubicle to watch TV…

I guess I remained calm for two reasons. Number one: I still had my passport which identified me as a citizen of the United States. I may have been temporarily stuck in a foreign country, but it was not my permanent home.

And number two: I also still had my “buddy pass” standby ticket. While it couldn’t guarantee which flight I could get on to take me back home, it did guarantee, however, that eventually there would be a flight. (As it turned out, I didn’t make the Atlanta flight on Friday either, but flew first to JFK and then caught a connecting flight from there, finally arriving back at our house at around 10:00 p.m. Atlanta time, or approximately 44 hours after I first embarked on this odyssey. But without my luggage which didn’t arrive until yesterday, and, as of last evening, still hadn’t been processed. So guess where I’m headed after church today?)

When you think about it, though, is it any different for us as Christians? For now our home is here on earth. And rather than complain about it, or get all worked up, we should try and enjoy ourselves, as best we can, while we’re here.

Of course, there will always be challenges and disappointments and frustrations – just as there were for me the other day. (For instance, when I finally got to JFK and tried to get a boarding pass for a connecting flight on to Atlanta, the ticket agent there discovered that when they reissued my ticket in London, they mistakenly set it up so that I could only go as far as JFK and no further. He asked me where I wanted to go, and I said Atlanta. And I was just waiting for him to ask how long I’d been traveling, because I had my response ready. I couldn’t wait to say, “Let me put it this way, when I started out I was clean shaven! (I recently grew a mustache and goatee.)

At first, it looked like I was going to be stranded there at JFK. But after sweating it out for several minutes, an emergency call by the ticket agent got someone higher up on the food chain to re-open and unfreeze my account in the computer so they could then issue the requisite boarding pass.

But as my paternal grandmother used to like to say, none of this is permanent – especially the difficult times. Instead, life here on earth is more like a vacation – and someday we’ll be going back home.

In the big picture, then, and in the grand scheme of things, we’re just “strangers” and “aliens” here on earth. It’s not our true home.

Rather we’re more like “nomads” and “sojourners” – just passing through.

And, once again, we can think in these terms for two important reasons. Number one: our true citizenship is in heaven, just as Paul said, not here on earth. And our baptism into Christ is our passport. That is, as we say in the baptismal service, we’ve been “marked” (or stamped) with the cross of Christ forever.

And number two: we all have our own “buddy pass”: a friend who helps us to make the journey; in fact, who makes the journey even possible! As our second reading this morning reminds us, the ticket back to our true home with God, was already bought and paid for with “the precious blood” of Jesus Christ, the best friend, or “buddy,” one could ever have…

Now we may not exactly know when we’ll get to make that final journey back home to God, but this much we do know: in Jesus Christ, the return trip is guaranteed! Amen