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“A Leper’s Prayer”

Robert Montgomery

6th Sunday of Epiphany-February 12, 2012

First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN

Click here for pdf version

 

FIRST READING:   Leviticus 13:1-2; 44-46

The LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: 2 When a person has on the skin of his body a swelling or an eruption or a spot, and it turns into a leprous disease on the skin of his body, he shall be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons the priests.

 

[If] 44 he is leprous, he is unclean. The priest shall pronounce him unclean; the disease is on his head. 45 The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, "Unclean, unclean." 46 He shall remain unclean as long as he has the  disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.

 

SECOND READING:   Mark 1:40-45

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean."  Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!" 42 Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. 43 After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, 44 saying to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." 45 But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

 

I doubt that any of us here today can possibly imagine the sheer terror that the word, “leprosy,” had for people in the times we are reading about today.

But we get a strong sense of that terror every single time we read about in the Bible.

Leviticus, for example, is an exacting book, full of some very strict laws with very severe penalties. 

But in a book noted for its stringent guidelines, the laws about leprosy take up not one, but two full chapters:  Leviticus 13 and 14.  And there is no gray area here—only black and white.  Either you have leprosy or you don’t.  And once you have been identified as a leper, either you have completely and totally recovered from it, or you are a leper for good.  Until you die. There is no middle ground.  No mercy allowed.

Indeed the hammer blows just keep falling on anyone with leprosy. 

Because first and foremost, lepers weret the most vivid symbol and sign of sin and death at work among human beings.

Once identified, more than diagnosed, as having leprosy, lepers are to go about with their hair wild and unkempt and their clothes torn, both signs of mourning and continual, unending grief.  There is no cure for leprosy, even today.  But in those days, the fear that leprosy would spread and affect others was rampant.  And so being a leper was a death sentence.

And not just a death sentence of biology, as dying from a horrible diseases.

Leprosy in the Hebrew Scriptures is a sign of God’s actions.  God uses leprosy as a warning or a direct sign of God’s punishment..

You will remember the first we meet leprosy in the Bible.  It is in response to Moses’ question of how he can possibly expect to convince a hard-bitten, hard-hearted, hard-headed tyrant like Pharaoh that he (Moses) and Aaron are anything more than lunatics.

In reply, God said to Moses, “Put your hand in your cloak and draw it out.”  And when Moses did, his hand was leprous.  And then God told Moses to put his hand back into his cloak and draw it out, and when he did it the second time, his hand was perfectly whole. 

That is a sign to us that leprosy would have been enough to make even the most brazen and “in love  with his own power” person sit up and take notice.   Leprosy is just no joking matter.  It frightens even the most powerful human beings.

In fact, in the Naaman story, that is precisely how the king of Israel reacts when he reads the letter from the king of Aram (Syria) in which he asks that Naaman, the most mighty warrior of that day, be healed of his leprosy:

“When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy?”

Leprosy is simply beyond all human control.   Leviticus 14 puts it in heavy and unmistakable terms:  “The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying:  When you come into the land of Canaan, and I put a leprous disease in a house…”

Leprosy is God’s domain, totally beyond all human healing, power or denial. 

No human being can lift it from anyone.  No human should even touch a leper.  Or have anything to do with one.

So, when Leviticus says that “the priest shall pronounce the leper unclean…the disease is on his own head,” and that “he shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease, he is unclean.  He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.”—when it says that, it is the crushing of all human hope.

If you can imagine for a moment on any given Sunday that when we mention our prayer concerns, that someone is sick, then imagine that as a pastor I would then have to turn to that person and tell them to get up right then and there, and get out of here.  And that we will never have anything to do with them ever again. 

And not only must they get out of this church, but they must abandon their homes, leave their families and get out of town, to go live in whatever area they can find where no one else can see them or stumble across them.

And the second that they see another human being, they must immediately stand up and shout out, “Unclean, unclean,” as a warning to avoid even a passing sight of them. 

You may remember that Miriam was struck with leprosy when she rebelled against Moses.

And that King Uzziah was struck with leprosy in the temple, when he charged in to try to force the priests to put God’s name and the worship of God behind his own political agenda.

And even though he was king, he had to live alone from then on, in a house that no one else touched.

Because leprosy is a sign of rebellion against God, of God’s punishment.

Leprosy, in fact, was to put on death row.  And such a death. 

For the body literally melts and falls apart, leaving a specter of horror behind.

And so we can see why it was pretty hard not to think of any leper as the worst kind of sinner, under God’s own mandate to suffer the worst punishment possible:  divine and human rejection and a horrible death all alone.   Even if one happened to be cured of the disease, or somehow recover –obviously requiring God’s direct action—there  were extensive and expensive sacrifices required to make atonement and be readmitted to the community after the cure.

But cures?   Really, how often did that happen?   

And meanwhile, any priest or God-fearing Jew was absolutely bound to enforce the laws to have nothing to do with them.   Because the whole point of the Levitical laws was to protect the community and its health, even at the cost of all hope, human contact and empathy toward a leper. 

As Leviticus 13: 44 says, “The disease is on his own head,” and that is the end of the story.

So, by all expectations, what we read in Mark’s Gospel today is not at all what we would expect to read.

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling, he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean."  

It is a conversation itself that, by all expectations, should have never taken place.  The leper was never to approach anyone.  As a Jewish leader under the Law, Jesus was never to allow such contact, unless it was to examine him to see if he was already cured.  Otherwise, he should have immediately sent him away. 

But for a moment, if we are willing to entertain at all the idea of a leper praying to God for healing, then I think we could at least expect certain questions to be asked.  After all, this is leprosy, and a leper, we are talking about.  And surely we need to be careful.   

 

At least as a pastor, I can think of several questions I think I would probably want to ask.

So I have gone ahead and actually developed here a little “prayer request” form that I might take to session one day for approval and to have on hand, just in case, we have a replay of this event from the life of Jesus. 

Question 1:  Describe how you came to be a leper.  Be specific, please.

That seems only fair, don’t you think?   We have the whole community to look out for.

Question 2:  What sins are you ready to confess as a condition for being healed?

I think that one is pretty obvious.  No one wants to be hasty with forgiveness.

Question 3:  What evidence can you give us that you believe God is ready to forgive your sins?

It is clearly a serious thing to think about removing a divine curse without God’s permission.

Question 4:  Of all the lepers in the world, why should your request be approved?

It is a matter of making sure that forgiveness doesn’t lower the standards of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Question 5:  Are you prepared to keep all our conversations confidential?

This is only obvious and practical, because you can imagine how many other lepers would come flooding in here if they hear that you have been healed.

Question 6:  What are you planning to do with your new-found health, if your request for healing is approved?

One would not want to waste a healing.

Yes, I would ask these questions, and there is one main reason why.  It is not, I must confess, because I am trying to be careful for God.

It is because lepers frighten me.  People’s problems frighten me.  They overwhelm me, or I think they will, so I try to distance myself and protect myself with fences between me and people with their problems. 

But with Jesus…there are no questions. None.  None at all.

Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!"

Jesus did everything we…well, at least I…don’t expect.

He did everything wrong in the eyes of the Pharisees and the publicans.  He put mercy over righteousness.  He had mercy on a person condemned by the law.  He touched the man.

And he healed him without proper warrant.

Which, of course, is what Jesus did all the time.   He healed people, sinners even.  He forgave people, without their saying a word most times.  Those actions themselves angered and terrified people.  Was Jesus just turning evil loose, letting people off scot-free?  Doesn’t he realize that “the rest of us” have to live with these people?  And if they did it once…they will probably do it again?

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has just been casting out demons, more words that completely overwhelm me.  The very language of “demon possession” is surely a sign of people throwing up their hands in utter despair to say, “I don’t know what is wrong with him.  Nothing we try works.  It is just beyond our comprehension how anyone can be this messed up.  He must be possessed by pure evil, by a demon.”

But it’s my opinion, that as bad as demon-possession was, the saving grace for demoniacs was that they seem to have been considered people paying the price for…stupidity.  You play with fire, you get burned.  You poke a snake, it may bite you.  Demon-possessed people were people who may have just been too naïve or to self-confident for their own good.  They did dumb things, and they got eaten by them. But by comparison, lepers were worse. 

So that, we can find evidence that there were people who claimed to be exorcists in the ancient world.  People still felt that demon-possession could be turned around.  But no one, but no one, would go out to hang up a shingle to cure leprosy. It would be like trying to cure blindness or paralysis.  But surely lepers, of all people, deserve their punishment.   Because leprosy is a sign that God is truly displeased.

And so, in these few words: “Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him,”  

it is all the more clear that here in this moment, the world has changed. 

And thank God, it has changed forever.

Because if a leper’s prayer can be heard, and if a leper can receive mercy, then the Kingdom of God has indeed arrived for all of us, and there is Good News indeed.

This is the Gospel in pictures, in art. This story is a living picture of why the church doesn’t have to tell people to pack up and leave because they are revealed to sinners.

It is why the church can open its doors to the world around us. 

It is why we live by faith, not by law.  By Grace and not by works of righteousness.

It is all because of one reason, and one reason alone.  And it is this:  There is a power at work in Jesus Christ that is greater than all the power of death and hell, greater than all the sins and fears of the whole world, greater than all the powers of all the demons of all times in all the universe. 

In Jesus Christ, God is present.  And God’s mercy and God’s power are more than all the forces of hell can withstand.  They must fall back in terror themselves, for God is reclaiming what has been lost, saving what is dying, redeeming what is under a curse and sentence of death and rejection.

And thanks be to God, I am a pastor and not a priest, not in the sense of a priest under the Law.  I am privileged to seek and pray for all, lepers and blind and sinners, because God’s power of healing and salvation is here!

And we live in the grace and the mercy of Jesus Christ, who knows our sins, and knows just how evil and wrong it is, but whose power of new life is greater than all powers that oppose it.  God’s claim on human beings is greater than the grip of evil on us, despite how very real leprosy and a leper are right before our eyes.

Jesus and his amazing mercy are the reason, the only reason, why I don’t have to point at you or anyone else who yearns for God’s mercy and say, “Get up and get out of here, leave our presence and never return, go live alone with your sins on your own head.” 

It is why I can say, “Jesus Christ has come to seek and to save sinners.”

Jesus heals this leper, this human being, on a single prayer.  A simple plea of faith for mercy.  And Jesus heals him. He asks no questions.  It is pure grace.

Jesus even knows, no doubt, that this man is about to fail again and create even more problems for Jesus once Jesus heals him.  He doesn’t do what Jesus says do.  So I think we can call him ungrateful, or at least insensitive.  The man is not perfect, even after being healed and accepted.

But still Jesus shows him mercy.  Jesus is the reason we no longer call leprosy a curse from God.  He has emptied it of its curse and power by his saving word and touch.

And that is why we call it now a disease.  It is why the church, despite all our fears, has led the world in serving and caring for and now finally healing lepers.

Hear the Good News, my friends.

Jesus Christ has come into the world, God among us, in human flesh. 

The power at work in him is greater than all our fears, all our sins and all the evils of the forces of sin, death and hell.

Pray!  Ask for God’s mercy.  Long for it.  Trust it.  Reach out to Jesus, if it is just to whisper a prayer of mercy or touch the hem of his garment.

He wills the salvation, chooses the salvation of the most discouraged and downcast, the outcast and those who call themselves hopeless, but long for hope. God has come near to us.  We now all can draw near to God.

Spread the word, to lepers of every sort, throughout the entire world.  The prayers of lepers are heard by the Lord of All Creation, and they, we, find mercy in the touch of the love of God in Jesus Christ.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

 

“True Power”

Robert Montgomery

4th Sunday of Epiphany-January 29, 2012

First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN

Click here for pdf of this sermon

 

FIRST READING:   Mark 1:21-28

They went to Caper'naum; and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. 22 They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. 23 Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, 24 and he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." 25 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!" 26 And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27 They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, "What is this? A new teaching--with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him." 28 At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

 

SECOND READING:   I Corinthians 8:1-13

Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that "all of us possess knowledge." Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2 Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; 3 but anyone who loves God is known by him.

4 Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that "no idol in the world really exists," and that "there is no God but one." 5 Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth--as in fact there are many gods and many lords-- 6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

7 It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. 8 "Food will not bring us close to God." We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. 9 But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? 11 So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. 12 But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.

 

“You matter more than the color of the paint on the sanctuary wall.”

“You matter to me more than the kind of car you drive, or I drive.”

“You matter more to me than the political party you favor, or the college football team you follow, or if you follow or play any sports at all.”

Those really aren’t big pronouncements, are they?

You’ll notice that I didn’t say, “You matter more to me than all the money I have in my bank account.”  Or, “You matter to me more than life itself.”

No, Paul wasn’t asking anyone in Corinth to give up all their money, or drop their social standing or identity, or twist themselves into pretzels or throw themselves in front of a speeding train.

No, all he wanted people to say to each other was, “You matter more to me than chopped liver.”

And sadly, he had to ask people to say that, pretty much verbatim. 

The fact that he had reason to ever say it at all is troubling.  The fact that he really urgently needed to say it, write it in a letter, write it in what became Holy Scripture—well, that’s really troubling about the nature of human beings in our efforts, or non-efforts, to live with one another.

“Look, if I want to buy my chopped liver down at the local pagan temple, what skin off your nose, is it?  And if I want a piece of chopped liver, what business is it of anyone else?  If I want a slice of chopped liver, I am going to have a piece of chopped liver, wherever I want to buy it, and heaven help the person who says otherwise.”

Now, that sounds like something I could say.  In fact, that I might say.  Maybe similar to some things I have said—and heard.

“Listen!  You matter more to each other than chopped liver!”   In a The Message sort of vernacular, that is what Paul is saying to his friends in I Corinthians 8. 

The ancient world was not so different from us.  To save time, trouble and money, it just made economic and practical sense to put the local butcher shop next to a big temple erected to some Roman or Greek gods.  Since animals were going to be sacrificed, anyway, in the temple, why hassle with packaging or transportation troubles.  Just open a butcher shop out front, right next to the banquet-style restaurant tables in the main temple hall.

And besides, it helps the marketing and advertising for both.  People have always been willing to travel quite a ways for a good meal, or a good cut of meat. 

So, the neat and cozy relationship thrived, with temples competing not just with their deities, but also their culinary skills and meat products. 

“Come to worship, and go home with the best leg of lamb in town.”  Why wouldn’t it work?

But it did give pause to anyone who might have started to have deep misgivings about the whole enterprise, temple, restaurant and meat market.   That maybe something stinks about idolatry.  That idolatry makes people very, very sick.  And it can bring on a total collapse of one’s humanity.

Perhaps they are actually all wrapped up together in the same dirty paper—and to touch one is to touch them all.  To be touched by one is to be touched by all.  To be defiled by one is to be defiled by all.

So whether it is the temple itself, or the meat market or the restaurant which is also part of the temple functions, perhaps it is all the same food poisoning. 

Which is where the Christians in Corinth come in, because, then as now, knowledge is power.

As we all know.

It always seems incredible to outside observers that human beings can get so upset over things like colors of paint, or where things will be stored, or where we sit. 

But not only can we get upset.  We often do. 

And it is not just a mildly amusing self-awareness that follows.  Instead, it can be an escalating hostility and distrust that cast doubts and accusations against the truly important things in us, namely, what we think, what we believe in, what we are all about as people.  The conversation may have started over what to have for dinner, but if our trust among us as people is like a sand-castle, pretty but fragile, a little cold water splashed in the right place can cause the whole design to cave in on itself.

As it often has, then as now.   Or, rather, now as then.

It all started with where you buy your meat.  And where you eat on Monday. 

Everyone knows, for example, that the best steak tartar may be in the Temple to Zeus, or if you want the best rack of lamb, that is clearly a trip to the butcher shop named, “Chez Diana.”

But like the old joke about Baptists meeting each other in the liquor store, it never seems to fail that you bump into “church folks” in the most awkward places.  Which just might be the Temple of Zeus, with one of you on the way to the restaurant in the temple and the other to the butcher shop attached to the side.

Perhaps it was trying to offload the initial embarrassment first that led to some of the conflict, as the two church members met. 

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, what are YOU doing here?”

“I’m just here to buy chopped liver, but you seem headed into the main temple dining hall.  Don’t you know that is a pagan, idolatrous place in there?”

“No different from the butcher shop.”

“Oh yes, it is.”

Meanwhile, another of the people from church also walks up and sees both the meat shopper and the restaurant connoisseur, only in her mind, it seems confusing to see either of them here for any reason, except the reason that everyone else goes to the temple.  It’s not to just buy food or eat a good meal, it’s to worship Diana, or Zeus or Jupiter, or maybe all three, along with any of a thousand and one other deities, competing for their own crowd of followers, who take not the food, but the religion very seriously indeed.

 

And for this person, idolatry is no unimportant matter.  Idolatry led to abuse and to violence and to hatred and to using people for whatever purpose you wanted. 

And for the moment, it sure could look for all the world, like these Christians are just “bread and wine Christians,”  showing up for bread and wine at the church’s celebrations, the way they show up here for leg of lamb and chopped liver.

And even worse, this third, or second or only other, Christian who sees other Christians here at the temple, may be enticed back into thinking that Jesus is just another deity, another chance for a good meal and a religious party, no different from all the others.  And lose hope and faith in the message of hope and love and faith that they have come to rely on.

“You are worth more to me than chopped liver, or the best baby back ribs in the world.”

That is Paul’s reminder. 

Because what everyone will be tempted to do now that the issue has come up is to blame each other, for either being so “open-minded that his brain fell out” or “being so narrow-minded, the only thing that will fit up there is a sewing needle.” 

Meanwhile, another person is just plainly overwhelmed, period.  And decides to pack it in and just chunk the whole “Jesus experience.”

“You are worth more than chopped liver—to God, to me and to each other,” Paul pleads. 

“Knowledge is power,” but it tends to be selfish and self-serving, if it forgets to open the heart to love before it opens its mouth.

“Now we all know that whatever those people down at that temple think doesn’t matter to us.  All I am after is a good pot roast.  So, get over it.”

“But how are you going to convince people you know that being Christian is very, very different from these Greek and Roman gods, if they see you in the temple banquet hall during the worship, no matter how many times you say that you come here “only for the great mushrooms?”

There is simply no way that everyone is going to get their way, and that should guarantee a good WWF-style church throw-down to see who is right and who leaves limping, who has the best argument, and who is left with no place in the community, once the argument breaks the group up.

“You matter more than chopped liver,” Paul intones.  

Remember what it means to be a Christian.  Remember what the real point is.  Remember the real power of being Christian.  It’s all about love.

Knowledge figures in, to be sure. Two plus two doesn’t equal 5.

And there either are or aren’t other gods, and an idol really does have power, or it is just a chunk of wood or stone chiseled up to make it look like something when it is really just a chunk of wood or stone.

There aren’t other gods.

An idol is just a chunk of wood or stone.  Nothing more.

Knowledge is important stuff, no doubt.  It can save us from many problems, and it can help us solve many others.

But the “necessary knowledge” that Paul mentions is the fact that knowledge is always under the service of something, too.  Either our egos or the power of love.

And for Paul, the true power is the power of love, or maybe the power of love coupled with faithful knowledge.   For that is what Paul trusts, “knows” about God—God knows everything, but God’s knowledge is always in the service of love, not ego.

And so if we have the brains to figure out that “an idol is nothing”  and that there “is no God but one,” and all the rest are figments of someone’s imagination—or worse—then, we ought to be able to figure out that as members of the bodies of Christ, we matter far more to each other than chopped liver, or where we buy our meat products, or what kind of food we eat at all.

In fact, we matter more to each other than “all the tea in China” and all the individual preferences I harbor in my mind and emotions about what I think is absolutely the most correct answer to everything.

This is the growing realization about what really does shock me the most about Paul.

To be honest, I am not sure I would have liked Paul’s personality.

His parents named him, “Saul,” and Saul was anything but a warm, likable guy, if you remember.  And when you name your son after the first king of Israel, a man who was selfish and self-important, you are probably just asking for trouble as a parent.

My point is that I don’t think Paul was a shrinking violet, or even much of a very kind or polite man prior to the Damascus Road.

He seems, in fact, to have believed that he and God are in total agreement about everything, and anything you might disagree with him about would be the same—in his view—as disagreeing with God.

He is, in fact, so cold and locked into his own point of view that he watches a man named Stephen being stoned to death, and he enjoys each rock’s impact.  And he all but says, “Praise the Lord,” as each hits, and a human life is extinguished in front of him.

He is also very comfortable with throwing people in prison, with a potential stoning sentence for each one of them—men, women, children—all because they disagree with his religious views.

Which, of course, are all that matter, because Saul is so convinced that he is absolutely right.

But this is the same man—a man who I think was crusty and abrupt and intellectually bruising if not outright domineering—this the same man who can already sense the words of I Corinthians 13 starting to rise up in him.

“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

Where did that come from? 

This is not Saul the Pharisee or Paul the persecutor or Paul the person who insists that it’s his way or the prison way…no, there is something new in Paul.  It’s the power of love.  True power.

Love is the only power that can cast out evil.

Love is the only power that can turn Paul from a cruel religious man into an apostle of Jesus Christ.

And now words like “love,” and “wounded” and “for whom Christ died,” are now in this man’s vocabulary.  THIS MAN’S!

Anything that could change Saul the Self-Important and Brutal and Paul the Professional Debater into Paul the apostle of Jesus Christ, “who loved us and gave himself for us…”

That is true power.

And that power is love.

The love of God, the God of all power and knowledge, who, above all else, loves us, at the cost of God’s own heart in Jesus Christ.

Love is the greatest power in the world, for “God is love.” 

It is not a weak or self-serving love, a love that is groveling or ingratiating.  It is love, a determination to see things set right among people and with their God, and to pursue the good in ways that are also good, filled with love, which is both courageous and sacrificial.

Paul is an unlikely advocate for love, much less for the God of love in the narrative of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. 

His own ideas are now in the service of love, not his own power or his own preferences and thoughts.

And so with us, we know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has entered our presence when we matter to each other, more than our own preferences or our own convictions about how absolutely right we are sure we are.

No, love takes the other into account, just as God did with us, on our tiny, insignificant, invisible planet.  Earth would never appear on any map of the universe, except that God loves us.

And the Good News is that God does love us, and knows us and we discover what the Scriptures have always said, that the things that are eternal cannot be bought in a store or stored in a vault, deposited in a bank account.

But the delight is the discovery that what is truly eternal can never be taken away, either.  And having discovered the power and the reality of love, love that flows from God, we realize what the true power is.

And the real power is the love of God in Jesus Christ that teaches us and pulls us toward the reality of being brothers and sisters with each other, now and forever. 

For it is also true in God’s universe that love never ends.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

 

 

“Changing Minds”

Robert Montgomery

3rd Sunday of Epiphany-January 22, 2012

First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN

Click here for pdf of this sermon

 

FIRST READING:   Jonah 3:1-5,10

The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 "Get up, go to Nin'eveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you." 3 So Jonah set out and went to Nin'eveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nin'eveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nin'eveh shall be overthrown!" 5 And the people of Nin'eveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

 

10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

 

SECOND READING:   Mark 1:14-20

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

16 As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea--for they were fishermen. 17 And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zeb'edee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zeb'edee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

 

I am not sure what kind of week each of you has had this past week, but I suspect that yours was harder than mine. 

As you may know, Brock, Marv and I traveled to Haiti last Sunday and spent the week in the area around Cap-Haitien in the northern part of the country. 

“Going on a mission trip” tends to sound like you are going to be doing heavy lifting for God, but I think it is time to be honest right here in church and admit that the mission trips that I have gone on have actually been more like celebrity vacations.  Yes, we do go down there with good intentions of doing something good for other people, but we are always, always outmatched by the generosity and hospitality of the people who host us.  These trips can be dangerous.  You can eat yourself to death, if you are not careful.

This trip to Haiti was no different.  We were met at the airport by Pastor Moïse Laurin and by Mr. Dieulin Joanis, who then chauffeured us to Pastor Laurin’s house, where we met his wife, Junie.  And together Moïse and Junie showered us with food, hospitality, comfort and welcome.  We ate their food, took over their best rooms, and Moïse and Dieulin used their vehicles to take us to 7 different sites that need a clean water system and to 1 where a system had recently been installed.

The area around Cap-Haitien did not take direct damage from the 2010 earthquake that devastated so much of the southern part of the country, including Port-au-Prince, the capital. 

What has happened in Cap-Haitien is that refugees from the south have made their way north to Le Cap in very large numbers, much as people moved to Houston after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.  But there is no escaping the impact of the earthquake in a country the size of Haiti.  And the earthquake has both sapped the lifeblood of the country, as well as spreading diseases like cholera across the whole nation.

Clean water is not just an added convenience or assurance.  It is essential for life.  So, we saw why we were there, very, very clearly, and so did our Haitian hosts and all the people we met.  There is a thirst for clean water, literally, in Haiti.

Now, if I tell you even more truth, I have to tell you that I had no burning need to go to Haiti myself.  Mostly, I wound up there because Brock and Marv just wouldn’t let it go, when after our last installation in Guatemala, we were having trouble finding a site for the next install.   In faith, we had purchased our next system—the one you see in Nall Hall—assuming it would go somewhere in Guatemala.

Meanwhile, Marv went to “solar school” as a part of the work of “Solar Under the Sun,” an organizational child of “Living Waters for the World,” where Brock, Teresa and I got our training in clean water systems.   And at “solar school,” there was an urgent appeal for teams to come to Haiti. 

We were open to that idea, but we weren’t necessarily begging for the chance to go, either.  And for a while, we weren’t so sure that we were supposed to go, because our attempts to reach the Solar Under the Sun contacts for Haiti kept coming back empty—or actually not coming back at all, as it were.

But then in a single week, really a single day, we got word back from Haiti that, yes, indeed we would be more than welcome, and that there was a site, no, wait, 2 sites, no, wait, 5 sites, no, 6 sites interested in water systems.  The number finally grew to 9 by the time the week was out, and we just barely touched a tiny area of Haiti the SW side of Cap-Haitien. 

Then  in the same week, virtually that same day, a donor came to us and presented funds to buy a second system.   And with that, we knew we at least had to go and see what we could do.

And that is how Brock and Marv and I wound up at the Cap-Haitien airport, not knowing a soul in the whole country, but simply looking for someone holding up a little “LWW” sign, who turned out to be Pastor Moïse Laurin.  Who is himself a great soul for God and in whom God has poured out a deep river of  love for people.

So, that is also how I wound up bouncing around in the back of a pickup truck on the rough roads of Haiti, being shaken in my bones at times, but being stirred in my thinking about how it is that, despite my awareness of Haiti through my classes in history and geography, somehow we human beings have a really hard time realizing that places and people like those of Haiti really do exist—until we go there ourselves.  And then it becomes dazzlingly obvious that they do, to the point you wonder how it could not have been obvious before the pickup truck ride and the Holy Spirit wake you up to the fact.  After all, the Haiti earthquake has been in the news for 2 years.  We were there almost on the 2^nd anniversary of the quake.

And so, yet once again, I see the trouble that God has in changing minds.  And above all, the trouble in changing mind. 

I have known about the earthquake for 2 years.  I have known about Haiti for decades.  But not until the unlikely, unexpected call of God comes to us do we realize, “oh, you mean, go there?  Oh, so…, these people are actually real human beings, not just words on the page of my mental textbooks?”

This is a problem I have had for years, unfortunately, seeing people as real.  As real people.  As real human beings, just like me.

I am not alone in that, though.  

I know this, because when Emma and I made plans to move to Chicago soon after we married, people we knew began to treat us as if we had been given a death sentence.  They came to us as if they would never see us again.  Chicago wasn’t a city of people—it was a “big city.” 

And one definition of being a Southerner, I suspect, is that we have no use for big cities.

We are like Jonah.  Maybe all Jonah had to hear was, “Go to Nineveh, that great city…” and Jonah was booking his flight with Travelocity, Kayak and Orbitz, and he didn’t care about the reward points.  He just didn’t want anything to do with some place as big and as seemingly bad as Nineveh.

We know how that turned out for Jonah.  And what got Jonah the most riled up, in fact, once he went to “that great city” was that it was full of human beings.  And what’s more, human beings who listened.  And what’s most of all, they listened and then changed their minds and then their lives.

Oh my.  Who could be prepared for that much real interaction with real, live human beings?  Not me, I don’t think.  I have reached—or fallen—to the point that I fear that no one can change anyone’s mind any more for any reason.  Including mine.  We are all dead set on what we know.  We don’t trust anyone to tell us anything different from what we already know. 

So, after all is said and done, and after Jonah takes a boat ride, a quick dip in the Mediterranean, and then takes the first submarine ride we know about, and after his clothes have dried out and he has met the real human beings who lived in Nineveh, we reach the end of the story and discover that it was easier for God to change the minds of a whole city of Assyrians and for God to change God’s own mind, than it is for God to change Jonah’s mind.

And with that, I fear I am sitting right there in the dumps with Jonah. And I have to listen to what God says to Jonah,

“And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

Haiti is made up of 8 million people living in a country the size of Maryland.  You are rarely alone in Haiti. 

At one time, Haiti was fought over by the most powerful nations on the planet, not because anyone wanted the people, but because it was considered the most fertile land in the New World, land able to produce sugar and bananas and coffee. 

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of slaves were brought there as captives and forced labor. 

People whose names we do not now know…but whom God loved and still loves.

Even as God knows your name and mine, and loves each of us.

The deepest religious experiences of my life have come in realizing how wide and how deep and how far-reaching and personal the love of God is for people—for me, of course, but as I have hopefully matured as a human being and as a Christian, I realize ever more clearly how deep that love is for all the people of the world.

I tended to think of Haiti as a place, a block of land, a nameless, faceless crowd of “people.”   But not people with names and faces in my mind—until I met just a few of the very real human beings who are there.

Just as Chicago didn’t remain just a “big city,” where a little Southern couple would be lost and swallowed up by the impersonal masses—but became names like John and Annette, Lew, Rob, David, Thomas, and Ron…”  Real people lived in Chicago.  Who knew?

Bosnia is no longer that place where some strange, un-human beings live and constantly start wars because they are not like me and my country.  No, now Bosnia is the list of people and faces I know there—real people, just like you and me.

It is the same everywhere I go, every time I encounter another “foreign” group of people, no matter what I think separates them from me, whether it is oceans, language, skin color, history, economic status, gender, religion, whatever.

The big discovery of life is that God loves human beings and seeks to save every last one of us from our own inhuman schemes.  And God wants us to make that same discovery everywhere we go, no matter who we meet.

And so now Haiti is no longer “Haiti, that vaguely familiar country somewhere near Cuba, maybe.”  Now Haiti is Moïse, Junie, Pere Noe, Dieulin, Marc, Michel…and a country full of persons, who do not know their left from their right…a country full of children!

I don’t know why it takes us as human beings so long to recognize our own humanity, and the humanity of the creatures who share our own nature, our own DNA, our own flesh and blood.

I don’t know why it is so hard for us as people to change our minds about God, and about others and even about our own lives, especially in relationship to God and to others.

But I know there is a lot of Jonah in me.

When Jesus calls Simon and Andrew, James and John, they are people who I think had precious little interest in anything other than fish.

“Fish” is what they knew.

“Fish” is what they wanted.

“Fish” is all they were looking for.

No one who fishes can turn down even the vaguest hint of “where the fish are.”  Fishing stores are full of equipment and lures and boats all with one purpose:  go find those fish!

So, when Jesus shows up on land, I suspect that those fisherman really didn’t notice.  Nothing on land really interested them.  Their eyes were on the water, on the possible sighting of fish. 

But this voice, not from the water, but from the land—the exact opposite of where they had been looking—said something unusual. 

This person who had never seen them, looked at them and called them—took note of them.  Called them as persons.

And he wanted them—people with names!  Peter, James, John, Andrew!  And he spoke to them and threw a net to draw them in—to personally invite and call them.

“Follow me,” Jesus says to them.

But then he says something really strangely interesting,

“Follow me, and I will make you fish for…people.”

Fish for people?

What can that mean?   It can only mean that you start to train your eyes and your ears, your senses and your instincts all toward seeing the people all around you as…people!  As persons.  As people created in God’s own image.  As people in need of God’s salvation and mercy.  

If you take me out to a lake or a river or even the deep, blue ocean and catch a fish, I’ll likely nod and smile, but inside I am yawning.  I am just not interested in fish.

I can barely tell a crappie from a barracuda. 

But I can tell you most breeds of sheep.

What God is most interested in, however—who can imagine?—is every single person on this planet.

And God knows them all, knows us all, knows you and knows me, by name, by voice, by sight, by heart and by thought, by everything about us.

Because God is out to seek and to save, to rescue and to deliver, to change hearts and minds, to change lives—all for the better.

Because God loves people.  God seeks people.  God has mercy on people.

“And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

God even cares about all the animals of Haiti and of the world, because God is the God of life.  The birds, the fish, the animals of the world, which we barely notice any more—God knows each one of them, too.

And God is out to change all our minds about what life is all about, and what matters and what we should our eyes and ears and hearts open to see.

It is God’s creatures, that’s what.  And especially the creatures we probably least want to see, namely, our fellow human beings around the world, regardless of who they are, where they are, what language they speak or what their story has been.

Countries are not just crowds of nameless masses to God.  The earth is not a plastic globe God keeps on a shelf and occasionally updates with new names of places.

No, this world and the people, the living creatures of this world, are on God’s heart and mind. God’s eye is on us, in hope, and God’s ear is open to every breath and sigh and prayer of each one of us.

Moïse and Junie and Dieulin and Marc and Noe and Maurice were all as real as any of us, long before I met them and became aware of them.

They did not have to become real to me to be real to God.

But thanks be to God, God keeps working to wake us up to the reality of God’s presence and God’s struggle for justice and righteousness, for grace and for mercy and for salvation.

God keeps working to change all our minds toward the thoughts that come from the mind and heart of God.

And thanks be to God, that work, along with all our neighbors on this little planet, are very real to God. 

And the salvation of God, the love of God and the love God puts in our hearts for God and for one another, all that is also real. 

Yes.  When it finally dawns on us, and our minds change and we see people…as God sees people…and we are looking for people because God is looking for people…

Yes.  Thanks be to God.

Amen.

 

 

 

“Where There is Sadness, JOY!”

Robert Montgomery

Third Sunday of Advent-December 11, 2011

First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN

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FIRST READING:   Isaiah 61:1-4; 7-11

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.  […]

Because their shame was double, and dishonor was proclaimed as their lot, therefore they shall possess a double portion; everlasting joy shall be theirs.  For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

SECOND READING:   John 1: 6-8; 19-28

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.  […]

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said. Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

Despite some of the buzz of our son John holding a baby asleep on his shoulder during church a few weeks ago, Emma and I are not grandparents. 

But I am something that makes me feel even older.  I am a great uncle. 

I think that title has that effect on me because the only great uncle I can remember in my own life was “Uncle Cal” who lived at the Lincoln Motor Lodge in Fayetteville when I was a kid.  And on some Sundays we would all “leave out after church” to have lunch with Uncle Cal and then spend a good part of the afternoon with him.  Or, rather, my parents would, while “us kids” roamed around in the David Brown tractor lot behind the motel or went to a drugstore on the square and bought “Big Rock Candy Mountain” candy, courtesy of Uncle Cal’s quarter to each of us.  Being a great nephew was fun, and the Uncle Cal was great, when it came to generosity.  He frankly doted on us.

But Uncle Cal was, in my eyes, also something else.  He was unmistakably ancient.  Uncle Cal was always immaculately dressed, complete with a tie on every day of the week, and he could have been, to my eyes at least, Father Time himself.  He was not Daniel’s vision of the “Ancient of Days,” but he defined what it meant to be really, really old—a “Great Uncle.” 

And now I am a great uncle.  “Great Uncle Robert,” to 3 kids, the same as Uncle Cal. I am only “great” in the technical, relationships sense.  I have a lot of work to do on the doting front.  A lot, to catch up with Uncle Cal.  

So, I am doubly sad to say that I have never even met one of my three great nephews.  I have never seen him, but I do believe he exists.  I have heard stories of him.  And his name is Thomas.

Thomas is the adopted son of my nephew Timothy and his wife Emily.  Thomas was an orphan in Rwanda. 

When Timothy and Emily met Thomas, he had never seen or walked on grass.  He had never seen a cat or a dog.  Thomas never had a consistent language spoken to him, whether Rwandan or French or English.   He may have had an “identifier name” in the orphanage, but it was a temporary one at best.  Because Thomas really had no identity, no family, no past, no present, no future.  From the perspective of the world, Thomas barely existed at all.  

And as you might guess, Rwanda itself was no paradise, no Eden, not for anyone, much less a homeless little boy like Thomas.  And you might also surmise that the adoption process for Timothy and Emily and Thomas would not be easy.  And you would be very right.  It was very challenging and very difficult. 

But still Timothy and Emily went to Rwanda, and they met this little homeless boy and they claimed him in their hearts as their own.  In fact, they did that before they ever left home for Rwanda.  They were filled with joy even before they got on the plane. 

Once they got to Rwanda, we began to receive e-mails from them that were filled with even more soaring joy as they met and got to know Thomas, whom they named for my own father, Timothy’s grandfather.  But the emails were also filled with scary details of just how difficult the adoption process was actually proving to be. 

But as the emails progressed, no matter how difficult the particular phase of the process was, the joy that was rising up in Timothy and Emily, and the joy that was rising up in the smiles of a little boy now no longer homeless and now no longer without an identity, were obvious in the pictures we began to see. 

Joy began to become tangible, unmistakable.  And it progressed and moved forward, despite all the rubble of an almost ruined country, and despite all the language gaps and despite the cost and the time and the fact that Thomas himself was quite sick, very sick as they learned when they got home—despite all that, the initial joy that Timothy and Emily felt, and that Thomas obviously has learned to feel more and more—that initial, long-odds joy has become the story of their lives.  So much so that I have no doubt that Timothy and Emily believe that Thomas was meant to be theirs from the day he was born—or before.  And I have no doubt that they now believe that one of the biggest reasons they themselves are on this earth is because of that little homeless, hopeless boy they now know as their son, as Thomas, the inseparable brother to their other son, Ty.   Whose own joy is higher because a little boy in Rwanda found his home, at long last.  Thomas has come home.  And joy has spread all around.

I hear echoes of that kind of story in the passage from Isaiah 61.  An old story, an old people.  By this time the Isaiah messages and tradition are very, very old.  From the start of Isaiah 1 before the fall of the northern kingdom to the end of Isaiah 39, when any sign of Israel or Judah as countries is gone.  To the return now from exile 40 years later—this is the claiming of a great promise that was old by the time Isaiah 61 was spoken.  

Isaiah had said all these things would happen, but for years, the promise of a homecoming for the Jews had to have seemed like a hazy, distant dream at best. 

But now, in Isaiah 61, the exiles have come home.  And the old prophecy that they would one day come home is on the verge of coming true.

But the scene that met this struggling, straggling group of exiles as they climbed the last hill and could see down in the Jerusalem valley surely could have sent them back home with heads bowed low.

Before them lay not Jerusalem as they had seen it or as the city described by their grandparents.  Before them lay a pile of rubble.  No temple.  No palace.  Not a building standing.  Not two stones together, except as heaps of rock where jackals lived. 

And it would have been easy for their sadness at what they saw—like a shattered Rwanda—to have stolen their hearts away.  And people being people, I suspect that a lot of them felt exactly that way.

But among them, perhaps from way in the back, came this voice:

 

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. 

 

And people being people, I suspect there were some who heard these words and said to themselves, “Are you kidding me?  This is hopeless.  Do you not see what is plainly in front of you?”

But these words could not be turned back, any more than parents can turn away from their child, no matter how hard it gets, or how difficult the odds or the challenges.  In fact, these words claim that at this very moment, when the city lies in ruins and these homeless exiles are standing there with no tangible proof that the city can be rebuilt—that at that very moment, the salvation of the world is beginning again.  And at least one human heart, the voice speaking these words, is being filled with joy.

And today, we have lighted a pink candle of joy because of these words, and the impact they had and have continued to have on frail human hearts, like those exiles, like untold numbers of unknown people.  For from these homeless people, standing there in on the cold, hard rock rubble of all their history—from them will arise the Messiah whom John the Baptist announces.

The voice of joy, despite all the competing and conflicting voices, prevailed. 

And in spite of all the discouraging facts, the city of Jerusalem was indeed rebuilt, including the temple. 

The joy of a people having come home was enough in God’s mercy to make these words of Isaiah 61 become reality. 

And, in Luke 4, these words were spoken by another Voice, by another Another, by the Anointed One, when several centuries later Jesus stood up in the synagogue of Nazareth and announced these very same words to a new generation as the start of a new chapter of salvation—the ultimate salvation of not just a single city or a single people, but of the whole world—despite all the even longer odds, the greater rubble of human sin and faithlessness.

Now ironically this week as I was getting ready for this sermon on joy, I felt my own sadness try to reassert itself more strongly than I have felt it in months. 

And I can assure you that it is difficult to face the reality of trying to talk about joy when your own heart is being threatened by a sense of sadness.  Let me be clear.  This was not grief per se.  No one close to me died this week, and I suffered no personal loss this week. 

But there were some hard words spoken among people I love this week.

And I heard a lot of stories again this week about problems that I don’t have a clue how to solve. 

And I had moments when I felt that several of the situations facing me and others are just more than we can “realistically” expect to turn out well.  And that my own efforts in trying to solve them are going to wind up failing or being useless.  

And yet Sunday—the third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of joy, the Sunday with the pink candle—was always edging closer, when these words from Isaiah would be read to all of us, and I would be called upon to stand up to say something about them.

Thankfully, God sent words of joy and love to me through people in my life.  And then as I turned to finish the preparation for this very sermon, the words of another ancient document fell in front of me.  They were words from a document from the second century AD, from a manuscript called The Shepherd of Hermas.  And the words read this way:

 

"Remove from you sadness; for it is the sibling of doubt and anger."

"How, sir," say I, "is it the sibling of these? for anger, doubt, and sadness seem to be quite different from each other." "You are senseless, O man. Do you not perceive that grief is more wicked than all the spirits, and most terrible to the servants of God, and more than all other spirits destroys man and crushes out the Holy Spirit…?" 

Wherefore put on cheerfulness, which always is agreeable and acceptable to God, and rejoice in it. For every cheerful man does what is good, and minds what is good, and despises sadness; but the sorrowful man always acts wickedly. 

 

These words fell on me like a personal John the Baptist, telling me that it was time for me to let go of my small-minded thoughts and to trust the power of joy far more than the power of sadness.  The kind of sadness here is not grief that would come at a funeral home or at a death.  It is the kind of sadness that comes from feeling that things simply cannot turn out well.  Sadness may feel serious-minded and realistic, but it has no power for life in it.  And it guarantees, as Hermas reminded me, the very thing its fears.  This kind of sadness is a trap that holds us down and back for no good reason.

It is the kind of sadness that would have kept parents back from Rwanda, because it was all too impossible to imagine that it could all work out.

It is the kind of sadness that would have sent exiles back into oppression. 

It is the kind of sadness that would have caused John the Baptist to quit because people were so hard-hearted, resistant and even hostile.

But John the Baptist didn’t back away from the joy and the hope that had risen up in him.

And despite the challenges of coming home, my great nephew Thomas did make it home in joy.

And the temple was rebuilt through the hands of those very exiles come home, by the power of the words of joy that we still read in Isaiah 61 and. And someone among the exiles even wrote a song to put in their own worship book called the psalms:

 “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like people who dream…”

That language sounds wonderful—and it is—but in all these stories we hear the note of seeming impossibility.  Getting ourselves to believe that God is at work in our lives is harder than building a temple itself.

And Jesus did stand up in the synagogue of Nazareth, and you and I have seen and experienced God’s grace and salvation.

And God is intent, Isaiah reminds us, on bringing exiles home.  

And God is intent, in every age, on renewing the whole face of the earth, and all the peoples of the earth.  Which means that the words spoken over a ruined city are still words we can trust…and as God’s people, indeed, as people of the Anointed One, we ourselves are people sent

 

to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor… to comfort all who mourn;  to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

In the very places where hope and peace are most at risk, there we as the church, and as disciples of Jesus, are called to bring good news, to be instruments of God’s justice and grace, so that in the very place of sadness, there is joy. 

This salvation of God at work in our world, flowing from the power of Jesus Christ, first finds its home, however, in a human heart. God seeks, first of all, for joy rather than discouragement and sadness to fill the human heart.   In mine.  In yours.  In ours.  In the hearts of this church.  

Dear friends, let the joy that God’s Spirit seeks to create in you well up into praise and thanksgiving, into gladness rather than mourning, into freedom rather than the prison of discouragement. 

Jerusalem was rebuilt.  The words of the prophet were made into reality by the goodness of God.

Jesus has arrived in our world, and the final salvation of God has begun.

You and I have heard the good news.  Let us rejoice in it, and let us trust it.

And then let us turn to all the places of sadness, in us and around us, and find “new joy in bringing joy,” in being people sent to celebrate and bring good news of a great joy for all people. 

Amen.

 

 

“Good News At Last!”

Robert Montgomery

Second Sunday of Advent-December 4, 2011

First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN

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FIRST READING:   Isaiah 40:1-11

“Comfort, O comfort my people”, says your God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”

A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.

Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.

SECOND READING:   Isaiah 63:15-17; 64:1-9

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,who will prepare your way;

the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:  ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’”

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

 

I wonder how many people were still listening by the time the words of Isaiah 40 were finally uttered for the first time, and how many of those who heard those words stood there more than half-braced for the other shoe to drop.  I mean, how often does God send a prophet to tell a group of people that they are “doing a fine job, and just keep it up”?   Prophets are not Hallmark greeting cards.  But then again, when do such words as these come to anyone…at any time…?

“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”

Are we hearing what we think we are hearing?   Is it really what it sounds like…

Good news at last? 

How long have we all waited—including God—for Good News at last? 

That’s the way the abrupt change from Isaiah 39 to Isaiah 40 has seemed to a lot of people through the centuries.  Yes, there are some marvelous visions of the future in Isaiah 1-40, some amazing ones, in fact. 

But from Isaiah 40:1 onward, the plane of hope really takes off.  For people who have heard and then lived through bad news, this is news that sounds too good to be true.  Now, after all this time, God is not just sending another prophet.   God is coming personally, in the person of the Servant of the Lord.  And God will put right everything that is wrong, because it will take God to do that.  No human beings alone can do it.  It is Isaiah’s real life telling of a Humpty Dumpty story.  Human beings have broken what cannot be fixed—not without God’s personal intervention.

And the Good News is that God is personally on the way. 

…which means that we human beings are now being met with hope, unimaginable hope, as we talked about last Sunday.  What we human beings can’t fix, God has taken on personally to fix.  

And when God does arrive and enact God’s salvation, what follows is peace. Which brings us to today.

But the truth is that we in the world are not very good at peace, as any news broadcast will remind us. 

Peace in the world, as the angels declared, “Glory to God in the highest and peace on the earth!”

Thankfully, the reality of peace is what God does—God will create peace.  People will live among each other in new ways.  People will live with God and with God’s creation in a new way.  The world will be a safe and just place, because God will be in our midst and uphold this new way of life.

And this “macro” vision of peace, this reality that God is creating with the arrival of God’s own presence in our midst is not in question, at least as far as Isaiah or the prophets are concerned.  What this new inpouring of peace does invite and even demand from me is that I also embrace this peace within me, both for myself and others.

Unfortunately, I personally am not very strong in the whole area of peace.   I tend to stay focused on what problems I am facing, or think that I soon will, so I am generally in the classic “fight or flight” mindset.  At the very least, I live with my heart braced for bad news and my shoulders tensed with stressed muscles ready to react.

The result is that someone often has to put their hands on my shoulders and say to me, “It’s going to be okay.  God is going to handle this.”

And I nod and say, “Right, sure.  I know that.”   And maybe I relax a little, but you would have to look hard to see it.

So, the very same person, or another person, will soon have to do the same thing, place hands on my shoulders and look me in the eye and say, “Look, things are going to be okay.  God is already working on this.”  And I say with a little more assurance and authenticity, “Yes, that’s true.  I believe that.”

But it quite often takes at least the third time, with the hands on my shoulders and with a searching tone in the person’s voice to say, “It really is going to be okay, however this turns out, because God is here and is going to take care of this.”  And often with a lump in my throat, or with a deep sigh from my chest, I feel my shoulders relax at long last, and I breathe in some peace.

So, yes, I can well imagine that both Isaiah and John the Baptist faced people who, like me at least, seem adept at standing at a distance from both the truth about ourselves and the hope that will save us.  

And those two things really to travel together, and we all know it when we are struggling with a problem that genuinely touches us.  I don’t want to hear from a doctor that I have a serious illness, but if I do, I want the next words out of her mouth to be, “But we can deal with this.  There is a solution.  There is real reason for hope.”  Because then, my heart can still cling to that fragile peace that allows me to function.

As much as we don’t want to hear bad news, we all know that what scares us the most is that we may not know about a problem that we do have.  It’s one thing for our cars to fool our mechanics into telling us there is no problem when the sound we have been hearing magically goes away as we drive up to the garage.  But it is another to be unaware or be unable to find anyone who can identify the problem we have within ourselves. 

So it really does take truth and hope together to produce the gift and the grace of peace.  So here are the voices of Isaiah and John the Baptist, neither one the least bit shy about identifying problems also telling us…Good News.  After all the bad news, there is Good News at last.

God knows what our problems and failures are, the things we can’t fix.  And God is on God’s way to put all those things right.  So, yes, it is time to do whatever it takes to get ready for God to arrive and the problems to be solved.

And you would think that surely at Christmas we can do that, wouldn’t you?  Or that at least I as a minister could and should.   What else is Advent but God’s arrival among us to save us? 

But truth be told, I stay tensed in my shoulders, resistant to peace.  It starts the same way each November. Every year on the Friday after Thanksgiving, Emma does the same thing.  Lovingly, and with the joy that arises only in a person of a truly pure heart, she puts out Christmas decorations.  And every year, I do the same thing I do—I Grinch about all the work.  Is it really worth it? 

Is there really going to be peace on earth, as the angels announced?  Will peace begin with me?  With us?

There is a song we sing that has the line, “I’ve got peace like a river,” and it is a wonderful thought. 

But all week as I have tried to coach myself along the path of peace, I have tried to connect with “peace like a river.”  Now some of you have river stories, and the river is indeed a place where you go to find peace, no doubt about it whatsoever. But I don’t have a river story.  I have a pond story, but that involves cattails, as you may recall, and falling backward into the water while wearing waders.

On the other hand, I do have a creek story, and so for me, maybe it is “peace like a creek” that I am aiming for. The creek on our farm runs the full length of the southern border of our property in Marshall County. 

 At one corner of our property there is a bridge. And, of course, all the water that flows in our creek has to pass under it, through the piers of that bridge.

Now last year, I looked down at the creek from that bridge, on  the upstream side and what I saw depressed me.   It was a massive blockage of trees, dirt, rock, tires—and a lawn chair.  Yes, tires and a lawn chair.   And it was such a huge logjam that it was blocking up the creek and backing it up from flowing onto our property.   My brother and I talked about how in the world we would ever be able to clear all of it away, even with two chainsaws and a tractor. 

But you know what?

We didn’t have to, because in one of those really big rains, the creek got up so high and was running so strong that it washed all of the trees and tires and dirt and, yes, even the tires and the lawn chair right out of there.  

Peace is like that.  We think that peace is a nice, sweet idea, when actually it is another word for the arrival of the Kingdom of heaven in our very midst, and nothing, not anything can ever stop that.  We throw up barriers and dams, we find our lives blocked by all the things that get swept into them, but the truth is that our lives are watered by nothing less than the faithful God of all creation, who pours out peace on this world, a peace powerful enough to wash away all the things that would block the arrival of God in our world.  And if you have ever seen just our creek at flood stage, you would know that nothing can hold it back, much less hold back the arrival of God among us.

Now, of course, there were still problems that floated into the creek or fell into.  I mean, tires?   Really, did someone have to throw tires into the creek?  Or a lawn chair?   We human beings trash up our own lives, and yes, we throw garbage into each other’s lives, and we foul the waters of peace and justice that are meant to flow through our lives.

And yes, there are those times when we stop to wonder if God is really on our side—as when a huge oak tree fell into our creek, and yet once again, I wailed from the creek bank, “What have I done that I am being punished with yet another problem?”   I do that all too often, stand on the banks of my own life and wonder aloud if God is really there, or if God is more against me than for me, or is testing me or punishing me. 

But you know what happened, don’t you?  The power of the waters of that creek washed all that away, too.  Or really, what it did was push them to the side of the main flow so that the huge logs helped reinforce the creek bank, and I could reach the tires and the other stuff, to pull it all out and see the creek healthy again. 

I think Isaiah and John the Baptist were promising that the waters of God’s salvation were going to flow, and they would be more than enough to handle our sins and our fears, our lack of faith and our failures.

But the real wonder of wonders on our creek is at the other corner of our farm, where the creek descends into a maze of huge rocks, some of them higher than my head.

It is called, “Rock Creek,” after all, and this is Marshall County we are talking about.

What amazes me at this corner of the farm is what someone did years ago, with a spirit that would make John the Baptist sit up and take notice in the amount of heart it took.  Someone(s) took sledge hammers and chiseled through those rocks and cut a channel maybe 30 feet wide and 4 feet deep clean through those huge limestone boulders.  And it produced the prettiest waterfall on our entire property.   So,Doing whatever it takes to open the flowing of God’s peace, yes…by all means, even if it is hard work on the rock of our lives, let us do it. 

But what always gets me as I stand there in awe of that hard work is the fact that over time, the waters of the creek have themselves dug a parallel channel, so that the waters flow right along that channel over the biggest rocks when the big floods come.   Nothing, not even solid rock, can hold back the waters.

Dear friends, hear the Good News.  Our God’s salvation is here, and its waters are rising and its power is unstoppable. That is the reason our hope is unending, even when our own hearts and spirits break or sag.

And the peace that God is bringing is just as unstoppable, just as irresistible, just as overwhelming.  We may think that the waters of peace run dry, like our creek did for a while, but the waters of life are always building for the next rising, and there is no stopping the arrival of God’s goodness in our world and in our lives. 

It comes as a cleansing, dramatic, transforming flood, and as a gentle, soothing, calm stream.  It is peace because it reveals what needs to be changed and then changes it, because the power of God can and will, when nothing else, even our hardest spiritual labor cannot.

Dear friends, this Christmas, let us do at least one thing.  Relax our shoulders, and breathe in peace, drink it in, and let God refresh us with clear and pure water straight from the wells of God’s grace and salvation.  Let us welcome change, as we see the need, but know that all the changes are for purposes of God’s grace.

Yes, things seem to block that peace, and we do terrible things that threaten to block it.  But the waters of God’s grace and peace are still flowing and the crest is coming because God will personally arrive in our midst in full majesty and revelation.   And God will create the peace we all need.  And give it to each of us. 

Let us accept it, and be people of peace inside and out, within ourselves and with all the people around us.

It’s good news at last.  The gift of peace is already here and the full waters of life are coming.  Amen.

 

“With Hopes Pinned on God Alone”

Robert Montgomery

First Sunday of Advent—November 27, 2011

First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN

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FIRST READING:   Isaiah 63:15-17; 64:1-9

Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth before E'phraim and Benjamin and Manas'seh. Stir up your might, and come to save us!

3 Restore us, O God;  let your face shine, that we may be saved.

4 O LORD God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people's prayers? You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in full measure. You make us the scorn of our neighbors; our enemies laugh among themselves.

7 Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

SECOND READING:   Isaiah 63:15-17; 64:1-9

¹⁵Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and glorious habitation. Where are your zeal and your might? The yearning of your heart and your compassion? They are withheld from me. ¹⁶For you are our father, though Abraham does not know us and Israel does not acknowledge us; you, O Lord, are our father; our Redeemer from of old is your name. ¹⁷Why, O Lord, do you make us stray from your ways and harden our heart, so that we do not fear you? Turn back for the sake of your servants, for the sake of the tribes that are your heritage. ¹⁸Your holy people took possession for a little while; but now our adversaries have trampled down your sanctuary. ¹⁹We have long been like those whom you do not rule, like those not called by your name.

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence— ²as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! ³When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. ⁴From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. ⁵You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.

⁶We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. ⁷There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. ⁸Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. ⁹Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.

 

The first Sunday of Advent is a Sunday dedicated to “hope.” 

Like most words, hope can carry a lot of different meanings.  But in the world of Scripture, hope has a very specific content.  In short, “hope” means having your heart and mind and body yearning for a future that only God can create.

It’s as simple—and as complex—as that. 

Because how does one know that our hopes are not just psychological pipe-dreams, magical thinking and building air castles?  How do we know that hope is not just wish-fulfillment at work in us—the idea that because we want something really strongly, of course, we will hope for it. 

Those are interesting questions to me, the psychology of hope.  Human beings have a tendency toward either hope or despair, and in our experience, I suppose they are always somewhat mingled.

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast.  Man never is, but always to be, blest.” 

Alexander Pope wrote that in 1733, and he put to words the fact that we all know that we have hoped for things that have not happened—or not happened yet.  So, we can wonder if hoping is just a way we try to avoid harsh reality.  You may have noticed that “Man never is blest” is Pope’s sentence cut down to its simplest.

Today, however, I don’t think I will change anyone’s opinion on whether to include “hope” in your list of human thoughts or emotions.  I suspect that we will all keep hoping, and we will all question whether we ought to or not. 

So, today what really interests me is the fact that some ancient peoples not only hoped, apparently in virtually the same way that humans always have and apparently always will, but they also hoped—in God.

They, in fact, lived and faced life “with their hopes pinned on God alone,” and that seems to me to be a very specific, very risky, but also very honest, way to live and to hope.

Because to pin one’s hopes on someone that one cannot see—that seems to me to either be the worst form of self-deception or pretending or fantasy wish-fulfillment, OR, and this is a big “OR” it requires courage and a way of “leaning forward” into life that intrigues and, to be honest, both mystifies and scares me a little.

I mean, it’s one thing to hope that our parents will come through as Santa Claus on Christmas morning, but surely everyone would and should shudder at the idea of going so far as to hope that there really is a Santa Claus, despite the letter from Francis Pharcellus Church to Virginia O’Hanlon some years ago in 1897.   Although many would argue that “Church” (ironically enough as his last name) did get the better of the argument on that score.   So is hoping in God, whom we cannot see, like hoping in Santa Claus?  Isaiah, for his part today, would say, “absolutely NOT.”

But Biblical faith does go way out on a limb and argues that there is indeed Someone out there at work on human history, guiding and shaping and creating it, not out of human striving but out of divine love.

And, yes, that thought has always taxed people’s ability to believe, and we are not the first people to face that dilemma.  Paul says about Abraham,

Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So numerous shall your descendants be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.”

Abraham obviously lived with the “impossibility of hope,” we might dare to name it.  He looked at his own body and at his dear wife Sarah and could only draw one conclusion on the “wish fulfillment” front.  If this is something Abraham dreamed up, it is time to wake up, grow up and give it up.

But the other possibility, that human life is impinged upon by hope—namely that there is Another at work in human history, this is the risky and challenging assertion of all Abrahamic faith:  that there is a hope that is pinned on the God of hope alone, and this “hope” means having your heart and mind and body yearning for a future of promise that only God can create.

And the decision about whether religion, or at least of faith as it comes down to us from the children of Abraham is identified most clearly by this:  It creates an outrageous hope in human beings who know too much to be naïve about the real world and about human beings—and this hope grips them, anyway.

The most basic experience of biblical faith is the fact that an all but inexplicable hope flames up in us, even as we see with our eyes all that should, by all odds, prevent this hope from being fulfilled.

Today we again hear this centuries-old claim that one both can and should place one’s hope in this God of hope, who promises to create a future that we did not dream up.  In fact, we probably don’t even want it, when we first meet it, but finally this hope does something seemingly impossible in us.  It changes what we most want, and then creates a yearning to see and experience and witness and join this hope that comes from God alone.

Here is what tells me that Isaiah isn’t just wishing upon a star.  Because the future that the prophets claims that the God of hope is creating is not a fulfillment of human expectations but a contradiction of them.  Rather than encouraging our self-centeredness, which is the core of most human hoping, the God of hope evokes a self-transcendence, a yearning for a world and way of life that is not my natural inclination.

My inclination is to seek a world that caters to my desires and my whims.

The God of hope seeks to lift my desires to a higher plane, and to dare to believe—trust with my very being—that there is a reality of love, of mercy, of justice, of compassion that is greater, more powerful and more joy-giving, more human-affirming than all the dreams that human desires in and of themselves could ever create.

 

The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

This is biblical hope, Abrahamic hope—for two reasons.  On the one hand, it is being said at the very same time that Isaiah can describe the actual, on the ground, current state of Jerusalem this way:

How the faithful city has become a whore! She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her— but now murderers! Your silver has become dross, your wine is mixed with water. Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not defend the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come before them.

Ouch!  Double ouch!  There is going to be hope in this place?  We may think we are mature and sophisticated because we are no longer naïve about how rough and harsh the human world can be, but Isaiah more than matches us in maturity.  He lived through horrendous times, too, more than 40 years of it, at least.  So, he is not dreaming.  He has heard a hope that comes from a difference source, a hope from God alone:

 

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. ⁷The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. ⁸The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. ⁹They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Who would hope for such things left to ourselves?   Blessing the whole world, a little child shall lead them, nations shall not learn war, any more.  With human beings the tendency is to want the blessing for ourselves, for only the most powerful and self-confident to lead and to win whatever wars necessary to survive or advance the causes we think most right.

And here is the other mark of biblical hope.  Not only would we humans never hope for such things on our own, it is also clear, even to the people like Abraham, that no one on earth will ever be able to make such visions of hope become reality. 

These visions require that Someone other than ourselves alone be at work in human history, and in a completely unexpected and transforming way.  In ways that call our egos into check, not expand them with visions of our own greatness.

And yet, when we hear the words of this hope, even if they sound strange and impossible, people with crystal clear knowledge about human beings were gripped by this hope.   And even I, a natural skeptic, when I hear these words, I know they are more than just fantasy, or wishful thinking.  This is real hope—and I know it.  My life has been gripped by an outrageous, all but inexplicable hope that I never dreamed of, and if you search your own heart and mind and body, I believe yours has been, too.  And that is largely the reason any of us keep on keeping on as much as we do, especially as Christians.

So, here we find ourselves as human beings in an unexpected situation, as far as our human desires are concerned.  The most natural thing in the world is for me to want God to be Santa Claus, to give me what I want.  I grow impatient when God does not do what I ask—only to then be met by the words of the God who shows me a very different hope right and calls me to trust in it more than what I set out to want and to have.

I am invited to take a blessing that falls on the whole world, a salvation that included sinners and a world in which I am not the center and my normal ways of “wining” are off the table.

And yet I want this hope.

Which finally means that I want this God, this God of hope, this hidden God, Isaiah calls him. 

“I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.”

“Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.”

This God of hope is about the creation of hope, a future that is above us and beyond us, but is altogether “for” us.   It affirms life, and yet it resists our egos, while winning our hearts and minds and bodies.

And we come to pin more and more of our hopes on this “odd God,” who does not play ego games.  God, in fact, is only going to get one thing out of all this hope.  It is not much of a prize.  God gets us.

Indeed, rather than dominate us with a divine ego, this God hides so that we may seek God and learn to trust the hope that this God creates.  We will never lay hands on this God or turn this God into a genie or an idol.  This God is the God of freedom and of self-forgetful love, the God of joy who finds genuine and deep joy in loving and in blessing, all without an ego rush.

This God does not say, “Look at me, look at me!”  Instead this God, evokes a hunger and a longing and yearning in us for love and then draws us gently but relentlessly toward a hope that is above hope, a love that is above love, a future that is beyond our most far-reaching dreams.

And our hopes become increasingly drawn out into a hope that we know is not possible with us alone—no, all faith remains like Abraham’s.  We know that it is not possible in the world of human achievement.  We are clear on that, but we hope for it, anyway, because a vision of love has caught us and inspired us.

And it goes so far, that we hope against hope, even when it does come when we think it should, in the ways we think it should. But with a hope that is not our own doing, we also begin to realize that it will not come by our own doing or on any time schedule but its own.

And so our own personal hope becomes as outrageous in its boldness as the outrageous hope that has gripped us.

“But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself. we transgressed,”  Isaiah laments to God.  Did you really expect us to turn into better people without you, God??!!  Our only hope is in you!! 

This is more than most nice, neat religious sentimentality can stand.  God is righteous, so we are supposed to be.  And if we fail to be, it’s just our own fault. 

But neither the psalm reading and Isaiah are religious sentimentalists.   They are people who pin their hopes on God, in good and in bad, when we are most in tune with God and when God feels distant, when we feel the most holy and when we feel utterly and hopelessly sinful.  The whole meaning of hope, that in every way imaginable our hopes are pinned on the God of hope, whose compassion is greater than any we would ever dare conceive or affirm, whose love is greater than our sins, even though our sins strike deep at the heart of the God of hope. 

No, in hope, against hope, we hope in the God of hope, and we yearn for a future that only this God can create.

If people say it is impossible, we can readily agree.  We are, to say it again, always with Abraham.  The human hope of creating, of ourselves, this outrageous hope  is dead and gone.

But Abraham had a son, and the power of the hope inspired by the God of hope still rises up in human hearts, even though this hope is not our original dream or desire.  It rises up despite the fact that we cannot lay claim to this God’s presence and anchor our own egos in this God’s ego, as if God is simply here to prove that God is greater and better than anyone else.  No, the God of hope seeks hope for everyone, even those who are sinners, even those I want to call my enemies.  God’s hope includes those, especially those, who are sinners, weak and seemingly hopeless.

For the God of hope also yearns in God’s own heart for this future that only God can create, all so that God can bless us and bring us home. 

And this God promises to do just that, and without use of worldly power, has set about to do just that.  And the fact that we are met with hope, despite all the reasons to abandon it, and this hope speaks to the real world of all us sinners, and to the real me and you—well, that is a reminder that hope will not let us go, for the God of hope will not let us go, either.

This is the hope on which Christmas is founded.  Hope for the world we know, despite ourselves, with our hopes pinned on the God of hope, and the God of hope alone.

Dear friends, trust the God who has gripped your life with outrageous hope.  Trust this God and this hope, come what may.  All the prophets say so.   Abraham and Moses and Mary and all the apostles say so.  And if you listen, even with your knees knocking and your voice trembling and your sins still showing, you’ll still hear it.  Your own heart says so.

So, then trust in God.  Be at peace.  Take heart.  Rejoice. Hear the Good News. The hope that even you and I find it hard to believe—that hope is real, and so is the God creating it.   Amen.

 

“The Opportunity of a Life-Time”

Robert Montgomery

Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost—November 13, 2011

First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN

Audio Version

pdf version

 

GOSPEL READING:   Matthew 25:1-13

“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.

“The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

“After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’  And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’

“Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”

 

When I think about my life, several people come to mind who have had a major impact on my life, to bring me to where I am today.  It’s a long list, in fact.

One person on the list is a man by the name of Tommy Gore, who was the first person to suggest to me that I think about going into ministry.   I was a history major at the time, with my degree program well underway to be a history professor somewhere.  But Tommy suggested to me that I take a class called, “Systematic Theology” and that I take Greek as my foreign language requirement.  My life has never been the same since.

There is another name on the list, Harvey Floyd, who taught both Systematic Theology and Greek, the very classes Tommy suggested, and he made good on Tommy’s description of those classes and all the Greek and theology classes I took after those first two.   My life has definitely not been the same after I received what I received from Harvey Floyd.

There is also Thomas McComiskey and John McRay, both of whom I met in Chicago and both of whom took a strong interest in me and gave me their time and advice and the benefit of their experience and education. 

There is Lew Mudge, the Dean of McCormick Seminary, who all but insisted I get my seminary education at McCormick, and he opened the doors of the seminary and piled my arms high with both hospitality and generosity and, yes, a whole new world of theology.  And, Oscar Hussell, the then-dean of Columbia Seminary, who matched Lew stride-for-stride when it came to piling my arms even higher with yet more Presbyterian hospitality and generosity.

Then there is also Rob Smith, who took a risk on me and gave me my first “real job” as a campus minister at Purdue University, and Mac Dauphin, who called from Birmingham and gave me a chance to learn ministry in the intense theological laboratory of Greater Birmingham, Alabama.

And then more recently, there are Milton Nesbitt, chair of the PNC of this church and Phil Leftwich, then-Executive Presbyter of this presbytery, who gave me the opportunity to come home to the Presbyterian Church and to become the pastor of this church here in Pulaski.

So, here in the long shadow of Thanksgiving Day, you can already guess what I do every so often with each and all of these people. 

That’s right.  I sit down, and I write them a letter that goes something like this:

“I hope you’re happy that you have made my life such a heavy burden by charging into my life with all your heavy expectations and demands.  Sheesh, if I had known that you were such a rude, inconsiderate, hard and demanding person, I would have never gotten within 100 yards of you.   You told me to do things that I didn’t want to do, and you have made my life miserable.  If I could figure out how to go back and never to have met you, I would do it in a heartbeat.”

You can see why I would do that, right?   Surely you do.

But really, there is one person that every year, on or about December 9, that I make a point to find.  And her name is Emma Armstrong Montgomery, and I look her in the face and I say to her every year, “I hope you’re happy for ruining my life.  I was a lonely and sad individual, when I met you, but little did I know just how hard and ruthless a taskmaster you really are.   You insisted that I wear clean clothes, and eat good food, and have two children and live in an orderly house.  Here’s this blasted wedding ring you laid on me like a hangman’s noose back in 1978.  I’ll gladly give it back to you, if you would just take it off my hands.  Not that I think you will be that considerate.”

Now all of you know Emma, so you must surely know why I would say those things to her—don’t’ you?  When you meet Emma the ruthlessness and cruelty are just so obvious, aren’t they?   She clearly terrifies dogs and small children…surely you can see that as clearly for yourselves as I do?

I think that line about Emma terrifying small children is about the same unbelievable “credibility gap” that exists between the one talent (talant!) man and the intention and motives of the man who puts his whole life’s fortunes into the hands of three of his employees.

He intended it as a sign of deep trust and confidence.

Two of them were grateful for the opportunity.

One saw it only as a millstone around his neck, dragging him down into the depths of the sea.

And that leaves us to decide which decision we ourselves will make about the God who entrusts to us opportunity after opportunity for us to use what we receive in our lives—or not.

In the immediate context, Jesus himself is this great treasure in a very real sense.  People listening to him are standing in the very presence of the promised Messiah and salvation of the world.  They are given the opportunity to hear him, receive what they hear and do something with it in a way that will both express and further what Jesus is doing.  And Jesus promises that rather than a religious burden, the Kingdom of heaven is about the experience of joy, now and in the world to come.

But human beings are quick to see God’s gifts as nothing more than either inadequate or as bothersome.  And the easiest thing to do with them would be to leave them where we find them.  But for fear of looking too shameless in the eyes of God, we pick them up, take them home and then sneak out into the backyard and bury them.  We don’t exactly throw them away, because someone might spot them in the trash, or God might.  But we aren’t going to do much with them, because they would disturb our lives or cause changes in us or they would require us—and here is the thing, I suspect—to love something or someone more than we love ourselves.

This may be why we actually listen so strongly to the one-talent (talant!) man, to the point that the res of the parable tends to disappear. 

The man who owns everything puts his whole life’s property into these three people’s hands.  And most people would say, “Man, he must really trust these guys.”

Because here we need to do a little linguistic math about this word, “talent.”

The Greek word here is “talant” with an “a”.   The Latin translation turns it into the word we know as “talent” with an “e”.   But the word here in Greek is a measure of weight.  And a talant (with an “a”) was anywhere from 35 lbs to, by the time of Jesus, something on the order of 130 lbs.

Which would mean that the 5-talant, the 2-talant and the 1-talant servants were actually being entrusted with massive sums of money.  

I think if I told you that we would be handing out 130-pound-bags of money, your ears would perk up.  We have an expression about “sacks and sacks of money,” or “stacks and stacks of money.”  Well, that is the language of talants. 

These people are not being handed a few pennies and expected to make a profit or avoid a loss.  These people are being entrusted with stores or whole businesses or divisions of businesses.  One estimate is that a talant might be equivalent to $2 million today. 

So, imagine being called in by a person who is running a large business or a large farming operation and being told that you are one of the three people who have been selected to run the operations while the owner is away. Now, we are in the math and language of “talants.”

This, I think, just might turn the numbers of 5, 2 and 1 on their heads, because I think I would actually appreciate only having to run one division of a major operation, and not 2, much less 5.   I think I might consider myself fortunate to be able to focus on only 1 task.

But two of these people see this as an opportunity to use the “talents” they have to fulfill the trust of the owner in them in how they use the “talants”, the massive resources they have been given.  Like when I was installed as the pastor of this church.

But one person, the one-talant person in all of us quite possibly, sees the gift of divine trust and calling as only something to be avoided, while trying not to look like we are avoiding it.   It is like not coming to the wedding feast when the day comes, even though you got an invitation from a king or queen of Great Britain.  Or, it is like only doing the socially acceptable minimum when you are invited to be a key participant in a once-in-a-life-time event of someone’s wedding.  It is like Kierkegaard’s man walking backward while waving and saying to the people in front of him that he will see them soon.   We look for back doors out of the room when God calls us into active service in the Kingdom of God, quite possibly because we fear it will be more trouble than it is worth to us.

Maybe the one-talant man was afraid of failing, so he hid what had been entrusted to him for fear that he would do something stupid and get in trouble for it.  

But in the perspective of this parable, if we want to do something really stupid, then we cowtow to the fear of failure, to what a friend of mine calls the “internal stupid” that assaults us with the thoughts that we either are too stupid or will wind up feeling that way if we try to do more than just the minimum. 

Entrust a person or a church with a sum of money, and it is likely that what will rise to the top of the ensuing discussions is trying to figure out how we “won’t do something stupid with it,” even more than trying to figure out how to do something faithful with it.   It is just a fact of church life everywhere.

And with individual Christians, certainly the ones like me.

Maybe the one-talant man was irritated by the fact that he didn’t get as much responsibility as the other two, and if couldn’t be top dog, he didn’t want to run with the pack at all.  So, maybe he was swollen up and pouty with envy, so he decided that if he couldn’t have it all, he didn’t want any.

Or maybe he was, as in the words of the owner, just flat lazy.   He had always been watching to see whenever the owner was gone or out of sight, so that he could just sit down and “do his own thing” and not be bothered with the owner’s business, his instructions or his trust in him as his employee.

I don’t know.

But I do think that this parable is another stark picture of how easily and how often we human beings can and do resist the love and grace of God.  We always expect God to be Pharaoh, to be wanting something from us, when, as in this parable, the only one putting money on the table is the owner, i.e., God.   We are talking about using and spending not our own money, but God’s, in this parable.  And in every financial decision we make with our faith at all awake and involved.

Somehow we human beings would rather be on our own, to not be “beholden” to anyone.  I think we are sorely tempted to appear righteous and strong and independent, while also secretly prizing our stubbornness and self-centeredness, with our self-respect tied to the fact that we either don’t need anyone’s help or that one day we will get to that point, where we literally won’t even need to listen to anyone else.

Yikes!  That would mean that the very Messiah of God could be among us—and we would find ways to avoid him as unnecessary for us—or as a bother to us.  Which is exactly what Jesus is warning the hearers of that day not to lapse into doing.

But all those things we human beings prize—testy independence, self-achieved self-respect, a desire to be left alone and do things our own way, as we choose and when we choose, because no one can tell me what to do—none of those things lead to mercy and love and fellowship, which are the very core of the Kingdom of God.

I can see the call of God as a bother and an intrusion, the arrival of a self-centered God in our midst, handing out assignments that we don’t want or need.  There are times I have done that, and sometimes I still do, when I am asked to take the treasures of grace and mercy that I have received and use them to help someone else.

But I can also see the gift of the Kingdom of God as…well, my life itself.  The very reason I am here, the very reason we are all here.  The Kingdom of God is not an encroachment on all my free time, but the very thing that makes me feel free at all, because I am free to be the person that I see Jesus calling me to be, enabling me to be, full of joy, confidence, faith, mercy and love, because God will provide all I need to do that.

When I was 7 years old, my father put me on a tractor by myself for the first time and told me to “ease the clutch out” as I started out with a sickle mower in a hayfield.  I had sat with him on that same tractor for as long as I could remember, watching him make every shift, every adjustment, every move, every turn.  In my mind, I imagined the day that I would be able to do just those things.

The Kingdom of God is about, by the time we reach Matthew 25, a group of people who have watched Jesus make all those moves, do all those marvelous things and then turn to them and say, “Now, it is your turn to join the party, to put your hand to the plow, to have your own hammer with your own name on it, or your own chef’s hat with your own name on it—because God believes that we can do it, all with God’s resources and God’s help.

The one-talant man failed.  It wasn’t because he tried and failed.  No, the one-talant man would have succeeded.  All he had to do was to keep doing what he had long been doing while the owner was actually present.  All three of these people knew what they needed to know—just keep doing what they did with the owner when the owner was with them.  And if he had gotten into a hard spot, he had two other people to ask for help.

But like the older brother, the one-talant man had apparently been dreaming of the day he would finally be free of the owner and start his own operation, or just be free to do what he wanted.  He actually got that opportunity when the owner left.  But surely he missed the opportunity of a life-time—his life-time.

He missed all the fun and joy of seeing his own hands doing what they were skilled and gifted to do.   He missed the joy of making decisions, of trying and of knowing it was never his own money at risk.  He missed the joy like the joy of being a personal participant of something important and real and crucial to both heaven and earth.  He missed, no, avoided and deliberately dodged…joy. 

What he saw only as a bother was actually an invitation to feel joy in living and in loving.

I see that man in me, all too often, my friends.

Tell your fears of failure to pack their bags and hit the road.  You never fail in anything done in God’s name.  Tell your “internal stupid” to pipe down and watch as the power of love eclipses all else, like the sun coming up and banishing the night.  And tell your laziness to quit kidding itself into thinking that collapsing onto our own selfishness will lead us to joy.  Joy comes from love and love comes from mercy, and all three come from the God who loves us, and seeks only to lead us into all three.

Dear friends, God has given us all life, and no matter how beaten or battered or tattered or shattered we may think our lives are…God still trust us with this life and trusts us with gifts that are meant to lift our faces from starting down at the ground or studying our shoes or our navel or our bad memories from the past.  And these gifts open our eyes to the possibility of what can be done in God’s name, big and small, as God’s providence and Holy Spirit reveal it to us.

And our lives are meant to be lived in joy and to be led into it, because we are invited to the wedding feast, we are participants in wedding of the Bridegroom of heaven, we are people and a church gifted with both talents and talants—and God has given us each just the mix of gift and call that when we live life in God’s name, it becomes impossible to tell the difference between the two.  What we are given creates in us the excitement to use what we have been given.  And what we are called to do is never a burden, because what God asks of us, God also gives to us. 

That’s a guaranteed opportunity of a life-time, with a life-time guarantee.  That’s pretty hard to beat. 

Let’s  not turn it down.  Let’s accept the gifts of joy, love and mercy—and use them to give what we have been given.  Amen.

 

 

 

“More Than a Rainy Day”

Robert Montgomery

Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost—November 6, 2011

First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN

Audio Version

pdf version

FIRST READING:  Joshua 24:1-15

Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Long ago your ancestors—Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac; and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I gave Esau the hill country of Seir to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt with what I did in its midst; and afterwards I brought you out. When I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, you came to the sea; and the Egyptians pursued your ancestors with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. When they cried out to the Lord, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians, and made the sea come upon them and cover them; and your eyes saw what I did to Egypt.

Afterwards you lived in the wilderness a long time. Then I brought you to the land of the Amorites, who lived on the other side of the Jordan; they fought with you, and I handed them over to you, and you took possession of their land, and I destroyed them before you. […]it was not by your sword or by your bow. I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards that you did not plant. “Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.

Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

SECOND READING:   Matthew 25:1-13

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

 

I am going to spend most of the time for this sermon on the Matthew text this morning, even though I think it may be the harder of the two in front of us.  Not that the Joshua text isn’t challenging—it certainly is.  But the Joshua text is about as direct and clear as words can be already.

“Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

And the words of Jesus in Matthew are just as searching, just as urgent and just as powerful.  And the Joshua reading is powerful background interpretation.  Jesus is clearly trying to get people like us, disciples, people on this side of the arrival of the Kingdom of God to make a choice, a clear one and a serious one.

But I think we do have to think what Jesus is trying to say to his hearers without using direct address.  Direct address only works when people want to listen.  Jesus uses parables to get people to decide if they want to listen at all.

The parable is simple enough in its plot.  There is a wedding, and 10 young, unmarried women have been asked to serve as bridesmaids.  In that culture, the bridesmaids didn’t start out with the bride.  Instead, they waited at the edge of the town, or at enough distance to form a wedding procession around the bridegroom.  And the procession would usually be at night, so that the lights of the lamps that the bridesmaids carried, and the lamps that would be used to light the wedding area itself would shine and flicker.

In that day, light was the wedding music of our day.

So, these lamps were not just a luminary corsage for the bridesmaids.  This was the signal that the wedding was starting, and that everyone should wake up, gather around and prepare for the long-awaited celebration.

The problem in this case, as we see, is that the bridesmaids—these ushers, bridesmaids, light and sound organ players of their day—these people on whom the bride and the groom are counting to be such an important part of this once-in-a-life-time event…well, they take different attitudes toward the wedding, the bride and the bridegroom.

Half the group brings their lamp full of oil—and half bring only the lamp.

Now in the world of criminal justice, this hardly seems to be a capital crime.

So, here is where I think we have to spend a little time, because by the time the parable ends, the second group is shut out of the wedding entirely, and they can’t get in, no matter how much they plead.

That is a scary ending, and I suppose it is meant to be.

But I think there is a tendency in many people to say, “See, it’s not possible to be a Christian.  Those girls forgot a cruse of oil and they are going to hell!

Or, “All of you better pay attention.  You better be careful.  One slipup, and God is through with you.  Boom, bang.  You’re in hell.”

We Southern Christians, in particular, are really prone to go Chicken Little on God and each other, given half a chance.  And we are all expecting a hell-fire sermon every time we come to church.  So, for all of you out there craving a good hellfire and damnation, I probably can’t change your mind.  But I would ask you to take just a breath before you jump into the flames in the hopes it will polish your Christianity with the emery cloth of fear.

Now, there is urgency in this text.  I am not trying to diminish that at all.

But the whole point of a parable is not to close the door as soon as the speaker says it.  The point of the parable is to feel now what you might wind up missing later, if you and I don’t pay attention now.

So, that brings us to this question, “What is up with the 5 who don’t bring extra oil?”

And what did the 5 who did bring extra oil know that they didn’t?

Or was it not at all about what they knew or didn’t know?

We like to think that if we knew when something was going to happen, we would be ready.

My taxes will be due on April 15, plus or minus a day or so, in 2012.  I should save some money to pay those.

Winter is coming.  I should turn my thermostat from cool to heat.

I should see if my car has anti-freeze.

I should look at the weather report for fog, and snow and ICE!  Did someone say, “ICE???”

Ice is the hell-fire and brimstone equivalent for people who drive during the winter.

But here is the thing.  None of the bridesmaids knew when the bridegroom would arrive.  None of them.

But half of them made a decision, took an attitude and a course of action the other 5 didn’t.

And it wasn’t about what they knew.

It’s how much they thought about the wedding—and what they thought about it.  That’s it, pure and simple.

All of us have gone to weddings, odds are, where we went to put in an appearance.  We brought no oil of joy with us.  We just dragged our bodies over to the wedding, smiled and put in an appearance, looked the room over for friends we might like to talk to, took a glance at the food and the cake to see if there was anything to hold our attention—and if not, we leave at the first socially easy moment.

All of us have also gone to weddings and stayed…but the only reason we stayed was because we felt obligated to be there.  And heaven help you if make me stay one minute longer than I had to.

Meanwhile, there is an entirely different story going on around the firebox of the wedding.  There is a full-on, hold nothing back, full-speed ahead locomotive of a family and community event hurtling down the tracks, and the people who are on board with the wedding are bending their backs to shovel everything that will burn into that furnace of excitement.

Meanwhile, a group of reluctant passengers can only watch the second hands on their watches to see just how much longer this is going to take.

And when people have to wait very long, they do one of two things.  They complain, or they sleep.  Sometimes both.

So, they all sleep, some because they were worn out with the preparations, and some because they couldn’t find anything else to do.

But then what happens is this.  The bridegroom then, the bride now, shows up, and the steam whistle blows and the wedding train is moving.  And everything is all about that wedding.

We had a reception for John and Ruth here, a couple of years ago.  We thought maybe 100 -125 people might be here.  We bought for 200. 

You think you might need 5 liters of Diet Coke. You buy 10.  You worry about what to do with the extra later, if there is a later.  

Because all that matters when the wedding train is coming is getting on board the wedding train and having gobs and gobs, heaps and heaps of anything and everything you might possibly need.

All this for a crowd that may very well be half and half.  One half truly excited and into the celebration of the family and friends.  And one group ready to get out of their tuxes, or bridesmaid’s dress and get on the road pronto.

One group brings all they are to the wedding, and one group just wants to scrape by without looking bad.

Now I have helped host a wedding, and while I have often been one of the 5 virgins who didn’t bother with bringing extra oil, I do know that when it is “your wedding” or your child’s wedding, it really is a big deal, and you want people to look at it that way.

But even if I saw that some people who came—I’m talking out in TX now, not here.  No not here—I didn’t ask God to send people to hell for being grumpy or bored or just there for the food, like the guy with no wedding garment.  And I didn’t pronounce condemnation on anyone for cutting out early to do something they thought was more important.

And really, I don’t think I am more merciful or patient than God, do you?

No.  Let’s get realistic.

But here is what is a hard, icy cold fact—or a blistering truth, depending on your outlook.  The wedding doesn’t wait for anyone, except the bride or the bridegroom. 

And when it’s over.  It’s over.  And there is never another wedding day for that wedding.  For those guests to that wedding.  For the groomsmen and the bridesmaids invited to that wedding.  It’s over and in the books.

And if you missed it, you REALLY missed it.  

Time does not go backward for anyone.

When we were at John and Ruth’s wedding, I wanted to film it with our video camera.  I managed to remember to bring it with me.  I thought I had charged the batteries.  I had even thought I brought an extra. 

Extra oil.  Wise virgin.

I set it up, and I lined it up. I plugged it into a power outlet, just to make sure.

Because I was presiding at the wedding, I had to leave, though.  So I turned it on and put it on “pause,” so that all someone needed to do was to hit that button again, and it would start.   I asked a friend to do that.

And I left.

But what I forgot was that the camera had an automatic shutoff after 10 minutes if you leave it in “pause” mode.

So it turned itself off.  The friend tapped the button, as I asked, but nothing happened.

It recorded nothing.  It missed everything.  The door was shut, and no matter what I said or how badly I wanted to have a recording of my older son’s wedding—I didn’t.   And I don’t have it to this day.

I never will.

It was a once-in-a-life-time event.  And in one way, I missed.

Thankfully, I didn’t miss the wedding.  I was there.  I was in it.  And was I ever into it.

I nearly cried every sentence or two, because this was a day unlike any other.  And for John and Ruth, it would never come again.  And it wouldn’t for me, either.

That is why the door is shut, and it can’t be opened.

Yes, God has set a day for the full consummation, the full arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven.  God is setting a date.  We can think of it as a deadline, I guess.  But it’s no more a deadline than you see on every wedding invitation.  Hopefully, instead of a deadline, we see a day, and oh, such a day.  A day never to come again.

If you are in on a wedding, you look at that day as a deadline, but the point is to get absolutely as much together before that day as you can, make all the plans you can. 

In short, when you are in on a wedding, you are all in.  Heart, mind, soul, pocketbook, patience, you name it. 

And while it may scare you, you wouldn’t take anything for it all.  You bring all the oil you could possibly need—and then some, for good measure.

Meanwhile, the challenge, of course, is that most of us are also concerned about another day…the proverbial rainy day.   What happens if I need that money my son wants for his wedding to fix the plumbing, or replace my car or have surgery?

Yes, there is the dilemma.  Wedding day versus rainy day.  Wedding day versus trying out new oxen or sighing heavily that you have to show up at a wedding to keep from looking bad. 

Only to discover that this really is a big deal, and you are not ready.

It’s not that you have planned to do anything wrong.  No. 

The point is that you only get one life, my friends.  I only get my one life.

And if I miss it, I miss it.

And there is one promise at the center of life, as far as Jesus is concerned, and if you or I decide not to do anything about it, then there just isn’t a way to go back and live our lives over.

Nothing could be more crushing than to reach the final destination of our lives and wish we had lived them differently, because we didn’t think this day would ever come, or it just never dawned on us how close to dawn it now is, or how far spent the night.

I have sat with people as they thought back over their lives—as they themselves grew old, or they faced their mortality, or they sat in the funeral home, or yes, at a wedding, and they realize how fast time is moving.

Dear friends, if we have plans to do anything with our lives, now is the time to get on with it.  Holding ourselves back in thoughts of a rainy day, to try to keep all our options open, not spend too much or give too much of ourselves or our resources because one day we may need them…

Well, the one day that is the day to plan toward is the day the Kingdom of God arrives in all its majesty, power, beauty…

Like the most amazing wedding you have ever seen or heard of.

That’s the day you want to be ready for…because, dear friends, we just really, really, really don’t want to miss one minute of it.

Start getting ready for it now.

It’s coming.

Praise God.  It’s coming.

Amen.

 

“Real Warnings and Real Prophets”

Robert Montgomery

Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost—October 30, 2011

First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN

Click here for pdf version

 

FIRST READING:  Micah 3:5-17

Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry “Peace” when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths. Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision, and darkness to you, without revelation. The sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them; the seers shall be disgraced, and the diviners put to shame; they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God.

But as for me, I am filled with power, with the spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin. Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob and chiefs of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong! Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the Lord and say, “Surely the Lord is with us! No harm shall come upon us.” Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

 

SECOND READING:   Matthew 22:34-46

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.

But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

 

 This is an awkward sermon to try to give today—because in one sense, it is like a private letter , a private text, addressed to, well, me. 

After all, these two texts today are both specifically aimed at—specifically sent as a warning from God to people, like me, people who dare to stand up and speak in God’s name. 

Such people get respect, maybe even admiration, which seems only right, since the people who give such respect or admiration are, in theory at least, people who want to show respect and admiration for God.  So people give that respect and admiration to people who speak for God.

And all that might seem simple enough.  But it’s not.  Not according to Micah.  Even more so, according to Jesus.  Jesus doesn’t generally go about issuing warnings from God—that is more John the Baptist.  Jesus holds out the promise and the offer of salvation.  Warnings come only when people show themselves particularly hostile to God and the promise of salvation, and when that hostility leads to the harm or neglect of other people. 

But today, there is no mistaking that there is a warning—two warnings—really a whole list of warnings in these two texts for people like me.  So it is as if I am at God’s restaurant, and it is a table for one.  And the menu has one item on it.  There is no mistaking who is supposed to sit down and hear what God says.  And it is unmistakably and undeniably, among us here in this sanctuary this morning—ME.

But it doesn’t stop there.  There is, from Jesus, a warning too to people like you, about how you think about showing respect or giving admiration, and that there can be a conspiracy between speaker and hearer to make sure that the Word of God never really falls on us.  The prayer for illumination each week is designed specifically to remind us that we have all kinds of ways of not hearing the Scriptures, not hearing the Word of God.  And today we get some specific content in that area—ways that people, like me and like you, to go backward in the Kingdom of heaven, even while claiming to move forward.

Micah opens the sermon today, and people like me get a heavy warning:

Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry “Peace” when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths. Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision, and darkness to you, without revelation. The sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them; the seers shall be disgraced, and the diviners put to shame; they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God.

And the most basic problem is equally obvious.  If you pay me, I’ll say what you want to hear—in God’s name.  If you don’t, I’ll curse you in God’s name. 

It is easy for a prophet to see how the respect that people accord to God’s word, even if they never listen to it, can be turned into personal profit scheme. 

Micah 3 is the indictment against the people who have helped create the situation described in Micah 1 and 2.  The people feel justified in their idolatry, pursing any god who suits their plans.  Like hiring a contractor to build according to their whims.  And the prophets have figured out that if “you give the people what they want,” they’ll come back—and buy tickets, and buy you dinner and shower you with gifts. 

But if there is no dinner and gifts, the message changes.  The prophets are profiteers.

Which is the bitter irony because the main problem for the audience of the prophet Micah is that they have become selfish, greedy and focused on themselves.

And the very people—the prophets—who are there to be the white blood cells in the body theologic are now teamed up with the disease.  They have caught the same virus as the king and the powerful.  They are all out for themselves.  And they grind up God for their coffee to serve, their drugs to push, their “schtick” to offer.  They are “God-people for hire.” 

And they get a real warning from the real God, and it is not just a warning to the profiteers masquerading as prophets—it is a warning to everyone who listens to them, pays them or advertises for them with offer of a tidy sum for a neat (favorable) message. 

Not that it doesn’t produce a prophet.  It does.  But it also produces this:  an outrage from the God of prophecy, a real warning to real people from the real God, and that the situation is so dangerous that the whole nation might never hear another word from God and collapse, all because the first and last line of defense against the virus of selfishness have themselves been turned around fighting for the wrong side.

You know that real prophets show up and you know they are real because they always ask what is happening to the poorest and weakest people, what is the message being sent about God relative to justice for those least capable of defending themselves, least able to speak up for themselves.  When those who cannot speak up are abandoned or attacked by the very prophets whose charge is to speak up for God and for the least of God’s people, then you know you are in serious trouble.  And if you are one of those prophets—ouch!

Now as hard as Micah is on people like me, it is really Jesus who makes me sweat today, because as usual, he goes beyond just the outward appearance of doing right to asking what is really going on in the human heart.  And he has mine under the microscope, the MRI, the CT, the EKG and the cardiac probe all at once.

Why does anyone who dares to speak for God do what he or she does?  Why?   Jesus asks that question of us all the time.  Why?

And he goes even farther.  He asks why you are listening to someone like me, what you hope to have happen, what you hope to hear or get out of listening.

So, it’s a table for me, a personal text message from both Micah and Jesus today, sent to my own PDA heart—but there is a warning to each of you, as well, as you listen to someone like me.

And the warnings start with this: 

The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.

We can hear the old warning we all know, “he does not practice what he preaches.”  Jesus is more far-reaching:  “they do not do what they say.”  It’s pretty hard to dodge that one, no matter how many words we look for as an escape.

People like me, to be blunt, are supposed to me—no, MUST BE—the same on the inside as the out, they—I—must be the same at all times with all people.

And lest you think it is only about me, Jesus puts on people like you a responsibility not to hide behind people like me or just lay your responsibility off on me, as if backing the right horse in the theological horse race of life among churches or preachers is the point.  It simply is not.

Here is where I personally fall into the hands and sight of not just of Micah and Jesus, who are tough enough, but also into the clutches of Soren Kierkegaard, who was a Christian “layperson” a few centuries back, who is any serious preacher’s worst nightmare, as he was to the priests and pastors and bishops of his day, especially the bishop who was his own father’s best friend. 

Kierkegaard found it all too easy to be a hypocrite in a country like Denmark that was officially and legally a Christian country, and where theoretically everyone was, upon birth, a member of the national church.   He saw that it was possible for clergy and laity alike to conspire to congratulate each other for their Christian virtues, while the truth was that very few people were taking his or her own Christian commitments very seriously.  Because, as he said over and over, there was no need—everyone was Christian already!  But to him that meant that it took more than saying you were a Christian—it took being one, when most people would quickly tell you that it wasn’t really necessary.

Kierkegaard turned his greatest salvos on Christian clergy, who were indistinguishable in his mind, from the marketers, profiteers and political favor-seekers all around the circles of power in Denmark.  And he believed that the clergy were constantly being seduced, not by the Word of God, but by the admiration of the people.  And the people, rather than being hungry and insistent on the Word of God, were content to admire the most gifted speakers and the most sophisticated ministers. 

This led him to talk about the vast difference between an admirer and a follower—and he cuts me to ribbons here, every time I hear him. 

For one thing, Kierkegaard said this, “So venturesome a thing it is to be the ‘I’ which preaches, to be the speaker, an ‘I’ who by preaching and in the act of preaching puts himself [sic] absolutely under obligation, lays his life so bare that if were possible one might look directly into his soul”   (Training in Christianity, Princeton, 1941, 229).

He also says things like the preacher is under an eternal obligation for every word he speaks in God’s name, for even if the church were empty when the words were spoken, the obligation would still stand, because God is the audience of every sermon.

But lest you think that Kierkegaard has only words for me, here are some for you…

Jesus, he says, has no interest in being admired, much less cultivating admirers.  For the admirer is only fooling himself or herself, and is at risk of becoming a very dangerous person, in fact.  “The admirer is not willing to make any sacrifices, to give up anything worldly, to reconstruct his life, to be what he admires or to let his life express it—but in words, verbal expressions, asseverations, he is inexhaustible in affirming how highly he prizes Christianity.   The follower, on the other hand, aspires to be what he admires.”

Ouch! The ego of every preacher craves to be admired, as sign of God’s approval, just as listeners give admiration to preachers, in the hopes of showing how much they appreciate God.  And on the most innocent level, it really is innocent.

But there is still  a temptation, all the same, to forget that the real test of every sermon, the real test of every preacher and listener, is whether we all move toward imitating what we hear and not just admiring it or giving our approval to it. Neither Jesus nor his words need our approval, and giving our approval to Jesus’ words does not curry the favor of God.  Instead, what God seeks is for us to heed the words of Jesus and to not subscribe to a doctrine but to live a life shaped by those words.

This invites us to shy back or rush forward, depending on our temperament, with regard to the whole issue of works-righteousness.  But here is the saving message:  the words of Jesus are, above all else, unmistakably and unapologetically about mercy, about love, about the open arms and heart of God, who knows our lives, could reject them in every way, but who has instead sought to bring us back home, to live as people who know mercy, love and who extend open arms in the name of the Kingdom of God to keep filling up the banquet feast of the Kingdom of God, because the whole point is that God wants US, not our stuff, or our allegiance, or our words or our guilt or humiliation.

God is seeking to create a community of merciful, faithful, loving people who every day participate in a way of life that is genuinely what God wants it to be and genuinely what we say we want it to be.  A new heaven and a new earth, a new way of living and relating, of living and even of dying.

But to be that, we have to be that.  We cannot just say we are and be done with it.

Because to say and not to practice what we say finally leads to cruelty,

They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.

They declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths.

Which means those who have no money to give them a bribe. 

Being a hypocrite isn’t just disgusting, it is cruel, because in order to maintain the appearance of being something we are not, the people who genuinely need the Kingdom of heaven the most, the weakest, the least admirable, the least powerful, they are going to be offered stale bread or sent away with a slap, if what we want is to be around people we admire and to have people admire us.  Having people like tax-collectors and sinners admire you is not admiration in the eyes of the world.  It is an embarrassment.  The only fun is in telling them what sinners they are by comparison with “us” and telling them to get their lives together before they ask to come sit with “us.”

Jesus’ life was actually not “admirable” in the way we think of it.  Jesus lived his life among the sufferings, the sins, the pretenses and the deceits of human beings.  He spends his time among lepers, the demon-possessed, the outcast, the blind, the lame, even the treacherous.

So, it is all-so-easy to admire Jesus as a way of saying “we sure don’t want to do that,” and a preacher who tells us that we can safely admire Jesus from afar while making no move to follow Jesus, to imitate him, to become the kind of person Jesus lays out the pattern for us to be, well, that preacher will be popular, but Micah, Jesus and Kierkegaard are not going to give the sermon a passing grade. 

Instead, what should happen in us is that we should feel the challenge of what Jesus says, we should feel a gap open up in our minds between what we are and what we are called to be, and what should happen then is that we should develop empathy for those carrying heavy burdens, because sin and evil and cruelty and lack of love are hard on people.  They are merciless, in fact.

So, if I believe in the Kingdom of God, if I believe in Jesus, and if mercy is what Jesus preaches—“go and learn what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice” then I have to be a person of mercy.  But I also have to be an honest person, I have to let the Word of God fall on me, I have to let the word of mercy fall on me and become the reason I exist.  It has to be a true mercy, not a condescending pat on the head on people I would prefer not to touch at all.

Because I need this same mercy, and you do, too, because we are all the untouchables from the vantage point of heaven.  And trying to pretend I am something I am not, trying to curry your admiration as a cheap substitute for loving mercy, doing justice and walking humbly with God and neighbor, well, it’s of no value. Indeed, it brings God’s warning because we can start to quickly treat cruelly those we refuse to love, refuse to touch, refuse to see as people whom God seeks to bring into the circle of mercy just as much as God ever wanted me there.

This is why we do not seek to exalt ourselves, because that is inherently to begin the road toward cruelty, with people needing God’s mercy but instead finding a cold rebuff among those who claim to be God’s people.  The preacher who fails to stand up and to take a stand for God’s mercy, to admit that she or he is in deep need of it, who cannot confess his or her own sins, who cannot see in the eyes of every person she or he meets the same humanity, the same lost sheep of God that I am, well, that preacher has lost all reason to be a preacher.  Worse, they may be working for the wrong side.

I know I myself am subject to judgment in wanting to be popular while being more shy about the fact that the Kingdom of God does ask much of me, much of us all, particularly in losing my ego in thinking I am a righteous person or that you think I am a good pastor.  But it is a demand shaped and formed and issued by mercy, a way of trusting what God is doing and making it the highest priority of our lives, so that every word I say is a word that says God alone is God, and we are all children of God, called to be a community of faithful love and deep compassion, of truth-telling, and of forgiveness, of as few pretenses as we can be, and of as much generosity as possible. It will bring us into close relation to people our human egos want to avoid.  It will bring us into clear view of the things about ourselves we wish we could avoid.

But those who humble themselves, who get down off their high horses and walk alongside every other human being as a child of God, all equally dependent on mercy and all committed to a community of love and truth—well, they will find themselves exalted.  Not because we will be lifted above other people, but because God lifts us all to a higher way of life, where we will finally grow weary of just talking about the Kingdom of God.  We will want to live in it and let it live in us, like the very breath we breathe.  Amen.

 

“Is Love Enough?”

Robert Montgomery

Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost—October 23, 2011

First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN

Click here for a pdf version of this sermon

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

 

FIRST READING:  Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land: Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negeb, and the Plain—that is, the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees—as far as Zoar. The Lord said to him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants’; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.”

Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command. He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day. Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated. The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the period of mourning for Moses was ended.

Joshua son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands on him; and the Israelites obeyed him, doing as the Lord had commanded Moses. Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.

 

SECOND READING:   Matthew 22:34-46

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”’? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

 

 We have two fascinating texts in front of us, both of which bring us to the end of a prophetic career.  Moses dies by the command of God in Deuteronomy 34, and in Matthew, Jesus essentially ends his public ministry.  From now on, the life and the death of the prophet will be in God’s hands alone. 

So, it is intriguing that in the Matthew passage the all but final conversation that Jesus has in his ministry is with the Pharisees—and they raise the issue that is the central issue:

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

It could seemingly be just something of another routine theological question, one that we can all answer ourselves.  Quick quiz:  “What is the greatest commandment?”  As disciples of Jesus, we already know the answer.  “Love God and Love Neighbor.  Next question.”   In fact, it is all too easy to move on to the “next question,” quickly dismissing what Jesus said at the end:  “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  In other words, not only are these the first two greatest commandments, everything that we ever envision doing is to flow from these two.  There are no 3 and 4, where we can go to find something more “practical” or more “relevant.” 

No, these two are really all the commandments, and if any commandment is pursued in its own light alone, we may be abusing the commandment, even as we think we are fulfilling it.

In fact, that is precisely what the Pharisees are doing.  They are quoting or calling on the law for very unloving reasons, both un-loving toward God and toward Jesus, who, whatever they may think of him, he does remain their neighbor at least.

But what I want to look at this morning is the fact that Jesus quotes these two commandments under duress, under the threat of death, no less.  I have preached when I thought people were bored, confused, frustrated, tired, sad, sleepy, happy or grumpy.  But I have never preached when my life was on the line and people wanted to kill me.

I don’t know about you, but I think that is a fairly significant distraction. 

And yet, Jesus gives the same answer he has given at other times.  The answer is, in its shortest form, love.   Love of God and love of neighbor.

Yesterday Emma and I went to Birmingham for the funeral of a friend.  I was to speak at the funeral, so I was feeling some pressure about what to say, how to say it and how to relate to people.  I found those to be both essential parts of the day, but they were also distractions from simply saying as best I could what I believed God had done through the life of this dear woman and to give thanks to God for her life. 

But as the morning started, Emma and I had set up a full schedule, only to have it all interrupted by the fact that there was a major accident on I-65 South near Cullman.  And traffic crawled.  And as the traffic crawled, my blood pressure rose and my patience fell.  Even though human beings had been injured in an accident, all I could think of was how much longer this was going to take.  In fact, it wasn’t until I caught sight of the wreckage that it really hit me that there were people going through far more than I was, and that God would be more concerned about them than about my schedule.  I finally managed to offer a prayer for the people hurt (or worse) in that horrific accident.

But by the time I got to the funeral home, my distractions had returned.  Trying to think through what I would say, and then meeting all the people who I had not seen in a while, reconnecting with all their stories and trying to recover a little sense of my Birmingham relationships.  I couldn’t help but think about how people seemed to relate to me and what they thought of me.

So, once again I had to try to come home to why I was there and what I was there to do. 

Then on the way home, trying to think through this sermon about love, I endured one distraction after another on the road back. 

It started with getting off at Walker’s Chapel Road to go into Best Buy for a quick purchase, I hoped.  But the prices seemed high, and I felt a little pressured by the sales person, so I left.  I tried Target next, but every salesperson I tried to ask a question seemed to be pre-trained to turn and walk directly away from me once I got within 20 feet.  I threw up my hands and left the store, ready to get home to Tennessee. 

But, of course, getting back to I-65 was virtually impossible, as was getting in and out of a Chik-Fil-A when we decided we might need to eat before we lost our lives or our patience in that shopping area.  I was ready to snap at the sound of a butterfly wings’ flapping.

You might think that finally getting back onto the interstate would have at least been progress, and it might have been, except for a person in the left lane who, as you approached, would slow down to 45 or so, and tempt you to pass on the right.  To keep you from staying behind him in the left hand lane, he would make things a little more exciting by turning on his right turn signal, just to keep you guessing.  So, the trap was set either way, but finally the clear option was to pass on the right. The second you did that, however, you realized that you had been baited into a drag race, with the finish line being the rear bumper of the next car ahead in the lane you just entered.  I came up behind the car and fell into the trap.  At 90, Emma told me I had to back off.

I never was so glad as to see the new Tennessee welcome center just across the state line.  We had to stop there just to recover. 

And that was yesterday, so when I woke up this morning, I had to think about what it would mean to preach a sermon on “Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor.” 

So, the final preparation for this sermon was when I arrived at the church this morning and found that there were things left from the events the day before here in our church.  And I had to swallow hard and breathe deeply, do some cleanup work and then try, try to put my mind back on “Love God and love neighbor.”

All those were aggravations and distractions, but none of them rose to the level of someone wanting to kill me.

But in the midst of one aggravating, distracting and lethal discussion  after another with the religious leaders of the day, Jesus is pressed at the very end to answer the question, “What is the first and greatest commandment?”

If it had been me, looking at those people glaring at me, not really wanting to hear anything but something they can tear apart and build into a death penalty case against me, I am pretty sure I would have answered,

“Thou shalt not kill!”   “How about that one, guys?”

“Or, thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor?   How are you feeling about that one today?”

Jesus knows in this situation that no matter what commandment he picks out of what is generally considered to be 613 commandments in the Old Testament—23 pages in this printout I have with me today—whatever he picks will not matter to them.  It will be what commandments he doesn’t pick.

If he says, “Do not kill,” then they will say, “So, you see no value in the Sabbath, is that it?”  “Or circumcision?  Or the temple sacrifices?”

These are people, who just as there is a temptation to do today, looked for the most obscure rules or the most detailed information as a way of making it seem as if they cared more than everyone else.

So knowing which letter of the book of Isaiah and what importance that letter must have had because it was the first letter of an equally important word…well, all that showed who was really pious and who wasn’t. 

And somehow the more obscure the more holiness it must have taken to have found it and recognized it. 

When the truth is that it really is what are the obvious commands that matter most, but we want to obey the least.

’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Some scary part of me wants to say, “well, of course, those are the two great commandments, but no one can do those anyway, so let’s move on to something we can do.”

Or some part of me wants to best these hyenas at their own game and pull up some command that they would have to admit they didn’t even know existed, or put some novel interpretation on a commandment so they would have to admit that I am the Messiah, if I am Jesus.

But, thanks be to God and in mercy for all of you, God did not make me the Messiah, and I am decidedly not Jesus. 

I struggle to obey the first and greatest commandment on days when the worst I face is bad driving, a delayed schedule and immature drivers.

Here in his last public appearances, Jesus faces his most vicious critics and opponents and when asked what is the great commandment, answers with words virtually an echo of the first public sermon he ever preached.  It was love then, and it is love now.  Love is always enough. It is always the right thing to do. 

Indeed, it is always the first and greatest thing we can do in any situation, including when people are out to do you in or kill you.  That is the marvel of Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

And I marvel even more at these next words, because Jesus doesn’t have to speak them at all.  He can stop with loving God, and more or less cling to those words, not bothering with the rest.  He could give himself a free pass on loving his neighbor at the very moment his neighbors are plotting to kill him.  But he doesn’t take the free pass.

And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

There is a case we could make that Jesus adds those words to the original question precisely to sting the Pharisees with the truth of what they were doing:  trying to assassinate a neighbor, certainly not love one.

And that may be the best explanation. 

But I think the simplest answer may also be right.  Jesus was as committed to love of God and neighbor at the end of his ministry as much as at the start.  And nothing that has happened or will happen will or can change that.

Love that has never been tested may not really be love—not yet, anyway.

Love that has faced no threats, felt no heat of adversity or rejection…love that has never found it walking with the wind in its face is probably no love, either.  Not yet.

Love that hasn’t tried and been tried, love that not faced adversity and temptation, love that has not been pressed to give up or to break down, love that has not fought for something good and loving, and yet lost, this may not yet be love.

Love is far more than a polite wish.  Love is anything but a selfish power.

Love faces life, as it really is, and meets life in the power of God’s own love.  Love is the redemptive will of God that seeks to redeem and reconcile human beings, as God’s creatures, back to God.  If God sought to find ways to be distracted from the ways of love, God wouldn’t have to look far.  We human beings create not just distractions from God’s ways of love, we are out and out obstacles. 

God has as much reason, as Jesus did that day in Jerusalem, to opt out of love and make anything else the reason for that day, including vengeance or destruction.

But Jesus chose love again, as the first and highest call on his life, and if anyone wonders if Jesus meant it when he said, “Love your enemies,” here is Jesus practicing it.

This is how Jesus began his ministry, and it is how he ends it.  Jesus knew what the obstacles were before he started out in Galilee, and here in Jerusalem he has faced them again and again.  But still his mind, his will, his heart, his strength, his soul are all stayed on God, and on loving others.

This is the highest calling there is, and in loving, in each moment of our lives, not just when someone asks us which are the greatest commands, we live into the salvation of God and spread it.  For Jesus, the first commandment in his words is also the first commandment in his heart.  And the second is like it.

Moses dies by the command of the Lord.  It is true he does not reach the Promised Land.

But Moses has lived his life loving God and loving the people he was called to love and serve.  Geography really has little to say in all that.  It is the geography of the human heart, the human mind, the human soul, the human will and the human strength to live.

Moses himself broke one of God’s commands, and he does not enter the land of Canaan.  But Moses has long since entered the Land of Promise toward which we all are journeying, the land in which love of God and love of neighbor reign supreme, and nothing, not anything can distract or stop it.

Today, I found myself ready to delay love and move it down the list of my priorities below my own ideas of what was important.  Some of those things were good things.  But many were just my own selfish wants masquerading as “commandments.”  There was actually nothing commanding me except the call to love, and that is never a harsh command.   Far-reaching maybe, but harsh never.

So, today, remember this, and help me remember it, too.

The most important thing we can do in any circumstance regardless of who or what we see in front of us is indeed to love.

Thanks be to God, this is the Good News.  God looks at us, and loves us with all of God’s heart, mind, soul and strength, and in Jesus God loves us even more than Jesus as God’s love incarnate loves his own life.  This is truly amazing love.  Let us love God and others, with all the love we possibly can.  For no matter how much we may doubt it, by God’s grace and Spirit, love is always enough.

Amen.

 

 

“God’s Sure Provision”

Robert Montgomery

Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost—October 16, 2011

First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN

Click here for a pdf version of this sermon

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

 

FIRST READING:  Exodus 33:12-23

Moses said to the LORD, "See, you have said to me, "Bring up this people'; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, "I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.' 13 Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people." 14 He said, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." 15 And he said to him, "If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth."

17 The LORD said to Moses, "I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name." 18 Moses said, "Show me your glory, I pray." 19 And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, "The LORD'; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But," he said, "you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live." 21 And the LORD continued, "See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; 23 then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen."

 

SECOND READING:   Matthew 22: 15-22

Then the Phar'isees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Hero'dians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. 20 Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" 21 They answered, "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." 22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

 

 

 I have a question I want to ask this morning, but as soon as I ask it, you will know that it is really a question I have been asking myself, based on my sense of renewal that has been going on in me for the last several weeks.

The question is simply this:  “What can make us forget the grace of God?”

“What can make us forget the grace of God?”

Grace is my foundational story.  It was the revelation of God’s grace that changed my life, irrevocably, for all time.  It is why I ever went into ministry at all.

And when it came to working for churches, the central question I always had was whether what they said they wanted to hear was “the grace of God.”   I came specifically and intentionally, in fact, to the Presbyterian Church when I was looking for a home, not simply because of past history or sentimentality, but because the Presbyterian Church stakes everything on grace.

That is what we say, anyway.

Read any Presbyterian Confession, and you will hear a clear and full-throated statement about grace—and grace alone.   The Reformed Tradition is unequivocally and unashamedly anchored in grace, and nothing but grace. 

So, you would think it just wouldn’t be possible for me to forget the grace of God.  But I did.

It’s a lot like my glasses.   As I told the Wednesday evening class last week, my glasses are so essential that I lose them every day.

What?

My glasses are so essential, so of course, I lose them every day. 

You can ask why that is, but all I can tell you is that every day I have to go looking for my glasses, because without them, I am nearly helpless. And you would think that because my glasses are so essential, I would be a great pains never to lose them or misplace them.  I should know where they are at all times. 

But instead, I take them off, sleep or shower, or read something carefully up close with them off my face, and I promptly forget where they are.  Emma can be a witness.

So, here I am at age 55, seminary-educated, living out of a profound memory of grace that motivated me to go toward God and toward theology and finally toward ministry—yet what has dawned on me over the last several weeks is just how far I have managed to misplace my awareness of and confidence in the grace of God.  I want to thank all of you for helping me find my theological glasses.

Somehow I had managed to misplace it under all the papers on my desk, the obligations I think I have, the schedule I think I must keep, the subtle but deadly sense that it is what I do, and how well I do it, that is the make or break of life and maybe of this church, if I let my ego and fear start running bridle-free.

Which is why this morning, I want to pause and ask us, “What is it that can cause us to forget the grace of God?”  And to look at part of the list in this passage from Matthew and another from Exodus.

This passage from Matthew is a good one, and it is a good Middle Tennessee conversation. 

“There are only two things certain in life….death and taxes.”   And this passages brings them both together.

The Pharisees and Herodians—normally two groups that barely tolerated each other, if that—are out to kill Jesus.  They are the agents of death here, and it is certain. 

So, to kill Jesus, they, let’s see here…they bring up…taxes. 

Taxes?  They bring up taxes?  Why in the world would they bring up taxes in a series of conflicts with Jesus that have largely focused on what God is doing to save the world and who gets to say who can come to the banquet.

And even more, how does bringing up taxes fit into a plan to kill someone like Jesus?

The answer is actually not hard to find.  Human beings have been arguing about taxes since time began, and we will be arguing about them until Jesus comes back.  Of this I am certain.

But the clue here is in the fact that it is the Herodians AND the Pharisees colluding together against Jesus.  The Herodians were the people with a vested interested in keeping Rome happy, and, in fact, keeping Rome in charge.  Because they were the beneficiaries of the current Roman occupation, and essentially Rome promised their military backing to the Herodians so long as they kept the local people in line.  The Pharisees were essentially the day-to-day leaders of the very people that Rome and the Herodians wanted kept in line, but the Pharisees were passionate Jews, with a fierce and passionate commitment to all things Jewish—and only Jewish. 

So, by posing the seemingly innocuous question of “is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” these two groups are putting Jesus in a pincer move.  

If Jesus answers “no,” then Jesus becomes the darling of the Pharisees and every group even more radical than the Pharisees.  He would essentially be throwing down the Maccabean gauntlet.   “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!”  comes to mind.  To refuse to pay taxes is to stir a people’s passion for independence, freedom and manhood—but very likely also for rebellion and violence.   So, Jesus’ polling numbers would have gone up yet even more…a Jesus Maccabeus with miraculous power no less to crush the Romans.

But none of that would have a chance to take place, with Herodians as witnesses.  Because they would have made one quick “ancient world phone call” and Jesus and his followers would have been on a cross by 3 o’clock that same day.

On the other hand, if Jesus says, “yes,” then the opposite takes place.  The Herodians leave happy, but the Pharisees now have Jesus in their jaws.  With a “yes” Jesus becomes a Roman stooge, a subversive Gentile agent, undermining Jewish righteousness with loose talk about forgiveness and salvation, when the real plan is to destroy Jewish zeal and commitment.  They are ready already with their “Crucify him, crucify him!  Crucify the traitor to the law, the temple and all that makes us Jews!”  And the same nationalistic zeal that would have catapulted Jesus to fame and glory in the minds of the popular thinking with a “no” would have turned and tried to tear him to shreds as a traitor.

Only two things are certain…death and anger over taxes.

For down deep, what the Herodians and the Pharisees are trying to exploit is people’s fear of scarcity and powerlessness.  Taxes seem to make us feel small and weak, as if someone is draining the life out of us.  And whatever I pay in taxes may as well have been loaded in a rocket and shipped off to Mars, never to return.  Taxes take our lives and put them in a deep hole never to return, or so we feel.  And whatever went into taxes pushed me that much closer to the brink of survival or starvation, which, of course, means that there is precious little, if anything, left for God.

“Give to the emperor what belongs to the emperor, and to God what is God’s.”  

Jesus is on the brink of giving away his whole life to God in a seemingly useless endeavor.  Dying on a cross seems about as big a waste of human life as one can envision.  Yet Jesus believes that not only will his life not be wasted, it will not even be lost.  Because the power and the sure provision of God in both life and death makes it silly to worry about pieces of paper and metal and what is printed on them.

Maybe we should go ahead and accept the full sentence of “Only two things in life are certain:  death and taxes…, the grace of God…not so much.” 

Money, power, narrow nationalism, control, fear of death, fear of scarcity, fear of being alone and defenseless…these things can indeed make us forget the grace of God, God’s sure provision. 

It is an echo of Exodus, in fact, where Moses comes to God worn down by another version of death and taxes, only this time it has an even longer list of things that can make even Moses forget the grace of God.

What can make someone like Moses forget the grace of God?  Well, people can, that’s what, or who.  People.  God’s people, no less.

And even today, when we look at the church, it doesn’t take long to forget the grace of God.  Our divisions, our arguments, our loss of social prestige—at least in our own minds—our seeming loss of great leaders, our fears over the state of the world—only one thing is certain, the church is in trouble.

“the grace of God, well, not so much.”

Moses has just come out of the Golden Calf scene.  Up on the mountain with God, Moses seems barely out of sight and earshot before the people go nuts.  They feel weak, defenseless, leaderless, abandoned, bereft.  They are nobodies camped around a mountain seemingly without a future or a direction, and they know that they are vulnerable to hunger, scarcity, attack.  They are surrounded by nations more powerful than they, with all the trappings and machinery that make a nation a nation—a king, a mighty army, powerful weapons, a structured society and consistent basis for food, water and housing. 

Forget, of course, that they have just been delivered by the grace of God from the most powerful nation on earth—all that matters is that they don’t have those things. 

So, the people are so desperate that they tax themselves and then sell themselves over to an image of power that is only a hunk of metal.  But they cast onto that image the hope of nationhood and protection and power, a focal point for their anxiety and a focal point for their hungry desires for life that feels normal for them, which is a form of slavery, at this point.

And now Moses has come out of the wreckage of that moment to stand before God and to say, “I feel all alone, and I am at the end of what I can do.”

Moses comes to God out of his fatigue and his frustration and he essentially says to God, “You have said that I have found favor in your sight, that I am doing your work and that these people matter to you, but right this minute, I feel overworked, overcome and all alone.  So, I need you not to say nice words to me.  I need help.”

And God says, “Okay.”

But Moses can only see the ½ mile around him at the moment as if it were the whole universe, and so he says essentially to God, “No, God, you don’t understand.  I really need you to be with me.”

And God says, “I will do precisely what you have asked.”

But still Moses hasn’t remembered the grace of God, so he says again, “Look God, I need to see you to be sure of you, and I need you to end my anxiety one way or the other.  I want to please you but I need help, and I need to know whether you are really there or not.  I need to see you.”

So, God says, “Okay, but not as your anxiety demands, because you have forgotten who I am.  No one can see my face and live.”  It is just too much to see the true glory of God, unfiltered.

And if you have ever looked at the computer program Google Earth, you can get a little sense of what is about to happen to Moses.  On his screen, he has zoomed in to the street level, down to looking at the cars in the driveway, when suddenly cause scrolls the computer mouse, and Moses’ vision goes out the infinite view, and the planet earth becomes just a tiny, then invisible dot, among the vast cosmos of the universe.

God goes from being Jiminy Cricket on Moses’ shoulder, or a tiny little angelic voice beside his ear, to the Sovereign Ruler of all that exists. And it would have put him in the total awareness vortex and his mind would have melted from trying to take it all in.

So, instead, God shows grace to Moses’ frail creaturely mind and existence, and first of all takes no offense at Moses and his weakness and his frustration, and he places him in the cleft of the rock to both protect him and reassure him, and then God says this:

"I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, "The LORD'; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.

It is an intimidating pronouncement, overwhelming Moses’ vision of God that he had been operating with not 30 seconds before. 

But what is most clear is that God is the God of all goodness, and God is the God of all grace and all mercy.  That is plainly and simply who God is, no matter how often we forget that.

I find this such an illuminating reality for me, because I slip into forgetting God and the grace of God as soon as I start to feel pressure, or need, or anxiety, or threat, or fear, or scarcity or anger.  

There is a long, long list of the things that can make me forget the grace of God.  My own fatigue or impatience, my frustration with myself or with others, my self-important notions about leadership in God’s name, the latest news report about turmoil or catastrophe in the world.  The latest wrinkle in my skin, or bump on my face.  The latest checking account statement from my bank, or the phone call from my car repair shop.

Maybe the truth is that anything and everything can become a reason for us to forget the grace of God.  A conversation about death or taxes, much less both.  A conversation about the future of our church, or my child or your child.

Someone’s fear of the end of the world, or someone’s fear of the people across the street or across the globe.

But here is the word for the Pharisees, the Herodians, for Moses, for the children of Israel and for us:

"I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, "The LORD'; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.

God is the God of all grace.  At the very core of who God is, how God names God’s own identity is this word, “grace.”

No one has to tell or convince God to be gracious.  No one has to coerce or bribe God to be good or merciful. God is those things, in God’s very being.   We know God because we know grace.  And vice-versa.

So, perhaps we humans are always in the process or the moment of forgetting God’s grace, no matter how many Red Seas we cross or how many fish we have caught or how many fears we have survived and no matter deaths we have escaped.

But no matter.  God cannot and will not forget God’s grace, for God’s grace is who God is.

And even with sinners like you and me, especially sinners like us and the rest of the world, God’s grace is never at an end.  God is at work in this world, drawing people toward life and health and fullness and joy, toward hope and toward faith and especially toward love.

And God’s grace is relentless, because God’s name is faithfulness and graciousness and mercy.

The things that are wrong in this world are real.  A golden calf, idolatry, nations in turmoil and nations in danger and nations that are dangerous.  Hunger and scarcity can be real.  I will pay taxes this year.

But what is most certain in all of life, more certain than all those things and anything else you or I can name in all of heaven and earth, what is most certain of all is God’s grace, God’s sure provision, God’s very nature as the God of all grace and glory and mercy and justice and ultimately of peace and justification.

And despite all our fears and all our long lists of things that worry us, God’s sure provision, God’s grace is always here, ready to be discovered, and always, always more than sufficient for all our needs. 

Thanks be to God, the God of all grace.  Amen.

 

 

“God’s Two-Fold Problem”

Robert Montgomery

Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost—October 9, 2011

First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN

Click here for a pdf version of this sermon

 

 

FIRST READING:  Isaiah 25:6-10

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.

It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain.

 

I want to ask you to keep this image from Isaiah 25 in your mind, as I read this next Scripture reading for the day, since it would seem that with the promise of a free, exquisite banquet meal, complete with the end of death and the wiping away of all tears by the finger of God’s own hand—well, it just seems that would be something people, people like us, would want to hear about.  And if we got a personal invitation, it seems that we would want to go…

 

SECOND READING:   Matthew 22:1-14

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.

Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

 

If you were here on Sunday night during our days of spiritual refreshment, then you heard John Todd preach a marvelous sermon on Mark 5—the story of the man, or the demon, named Legion.  And to begin that sermon, John told it two ways.  The first time he told the story with all of the troublesome parts removed—the Bowdlerized version, as he called it after Thomas Bowdler.  And the principal part that he omitted was the peculiar and somewhat puzzling part about the pigs.  Jesus sends the demons into a heard of 2,000 pigs, which immediately rush down to the sea and are drowned.  

But the pigs are there, perhaps as John said, to remind us of the cost of mission—is it really worth 2,000 pigs to put one man’s life together?

And today, it seems to me that there are some pigs that we have to face in this extended, three-part parable that Jesus tells. 

Only instead of pigs, this time it is a burned city, destroyed people and  words about “binding hand and foot,” “outer darkness” and “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Now indeed the pigs are there in Mark 5.  There is no way around that.  But if we focus all our attention on the pigs, as my mind would be inclined to do—why are those pigs in this story?  What is the point of letting those demons have their way even for a second, all those kinds of thoughts—then we miss the main point of Mark 5.  A man utterly hopeless is healed.  A man utterly hopeless is healed!   That is worth all the pigs, which was John’s point.  But not to his neighbors, who thought the price too high, so they asked Jesus to leave.

Now in this story today from Matthew, I am suspecting that some of us are going to be so tempted to zero in on that smoldering city, those dead murderers, the weeping and gnashing of teeth that we will miss the main point of the story—there is a king trying his best to have a wedding banquet.   The king didn’t wak up and say that he thought a bunch of people ought to be killed.  And he didn’t wake up with an itch to go burn someone’s city.  So if you are convinced that God is out to punish you or that God does not love you, or that God is out to reject you—then I want to plead with you to walk past that herd of pigs and stay with the story.  Stay with Jesus.  Because while the pigs are there, until you see the point of the story, you will mistake your own ideas for what Jesus is saying. 

And let us remember that Jesus never burned down any city while he was here visible in the body.  He never rejected a single person for not being “good enough” for the Kingdom of heaven.  And he never bound up anyone and threw them out into outer darkness.  It is true that he says words like that here—and he has a reason for saying it, to be sure—but he is not saying for the reasons we may be inclined to impose on this story out of our own fears and past religious experience in church.  It is important, crucial in fact, to stay with what Jesus is actually saying. 

And what Jesus is saying is that there was a king who was spending enormous time and money to have a an unforgettably good banquet fears and to invite people to come—all for free.

Free food, free alcohol (Presbyterians can rejoice that one day…) and the end of death and sadness.  A party that not only is fun for a few hours, but a party that celebrates the end of ever feeling bad again.  How good can this get?

And, of course, that makes for the first set of real pigs in this story, namely, why people don’t come.  Why?  Why in the world would people not come to the banquet of Isaiah 25?

I have belabored this point, because what I want to remind everyone is that it is not that the people invited failed to pass some test at the door.  They didn’t ask to come in but get a “no” from God. 

No, people are actively invited—all for free—and they are the ones who decide to reject the invitation and certainly not the case that they weren’t “good enough” to come, not in the sense of who is worthy or not worthy.  It is strictly at the level of who wants to come and who doesn’t. 

And why would anyone NOT want to come?

So, let’s let go the imaginary pigs of assuming we are all going to be burned by God for our unworthiness and round up the real pigs of why in the world anyone would turn down a completely free, completely amazing meal.

Imagine being invited to the best restaurant in Paris, all expenses paid, to the best meal that Parisian cuisine can offer.  Imagine being invited by the Presidents of the US and France and any other nations you care to name.  All expenses paid, remember.

And you decide not to go.

Can you ask yourself why you or anyone else wouldn’t go?

I can only think of a couple of reasons, really.  And the problem is that I can think of these two reasons very quickly, and they might just be enough for me not to go.

First, I may have gotten a peek at the guest list, and I don’t like being included with the people that are being invited.  Or in Middle TN terms, “if you think I am going to go sit down around a table and pretend that I like those people, you have another thought coming.” 

This is precisely, of course, what Jesus has said about the Pharisees.  “The prostitutes and the tax-collectors are going into the kingdom of heaven ahead of you,” Jesus says just a few verses earlier.  It really doesn’t matter what Jesus says is the reason.  The very fact that the prostitutes and tax-collectors, much less the Gentiles later on, are coming to party is enough to keep some people away. 

Can you imagine anyone that petty?   To refuse to come to a party, because of who else might be there?

Well, actually, yes I can.  All too easily.

Which leads to the second reason I can imagine not coming to an all-expenses-paid party at the best restaurant in Paris…I don’t like the one who is going the inviting.

Now it may be nice that the meal is free, but if I don’t like the host, I am probably not going…and in this case, the reason why people seem to not like the host of the banquet is because he fails to respect the difference between my dignity and your dignity.  I belong up front at the dais, not at the table with the serving help.   Even more, the people invited to this banquet are irritated that the king seems to have more interest in the serving help than the respectable people.   Jesus says that the first will be last and the last first.  This won’t be a party where you can tell who the most important guests are.

It will be a major replay on a cosmic scale of the inauguration of Andrew Jackson, when the Tennesseans showed up to the horror of the fashionable people of Washington, DC.   It is still a story found in the history books, the day the Tennesseans showed up for an inauguration of a president of the United States.  They were cooking bacon on the White House lawn and the corn whiskey was flowing.  And people overstayed the official time allotted.  Jackson was seen as a backwater clown by many from that point forward. 

To be associated with a President who loves those kinds of people and gives them access to the best of the best?   What kind of President is that?   What person in their right and respectable mind would be associated with Tennesseans? 

You see that is a parable of the Kingdom of heaven where God invites everyone—EVERYONE, all for free—but some people take it as a bad joke, a farce, a waste of time and energy to even bother with that kind of event.  And if you press them to say why they are not coming, then they may let their real feelings out, which is that they resent the implication that they would be expected to associate with any part of this kind of event.  Whether invited or expected, they want no part of this kind of open-handed generosity or this kind of insulting and degrading spectacle.

But the truth is that the Kingdom of God is that open, open to anyone, and people are invited for free, and the people who are invited feel crowded by a belief that God’s goodness can transform anyone because God’s goodness is the only reason anyone has what they do.  But some people don’t see it that way, and this invitation would assume that they see it the King’s way.  And they just don’t, and they don’t appreciate anyone who implies they should see it that way is asking for trouble.

This is the unmistakable herd of pigs, this problem that the King has with a group of people—all because he set out to invite them to a free banquet.  This is the first of God’s two-fold problem with us as people.  We don’t mind a free meal, but it has to come to us on our terms, in ways that make us feel better about ourselves than we feel about some other people and it has to indicate that God respects us more than God respects someone else.

And God refuses to play those ego games with us.  But our egos can either lead us into ignoring or rejecting the invitation to a free banquet complete with salvation from death and sorrow—or lead us into hostility to the very idea that if God is going to lower God’s standards that far, to include and even to welcome the likes of “people like that,” I’ll tell him what he can do with his invitation.

So, the story of God’s grace and mercy could stop there, with a firm, “not interested” or an even firmer, “how dare you!” from the people who should by all odds best understand exactly what party they  are being invited to attend.

But God’s grace won’t stop. 

So, the king sends out his servants to invite in the very people that the first group of invitees feared would be invited all along.  The first invitees were right about this, because the King wants a full house, not a few choice guests, so it was inevitable based on the attitude of the King that the “great unsaved” would be invited. 

But the invitation to everyone goes out, and if you have been chasing imaginary pigs in your mind, thinking that somehow you are not worthy of being invited by God, if you think that someone you are not worthy of the Kingdom, then here is the part of the story for you—only there are no pigs here.  Not yet. 

Because the King instructs the servants to invite anyone and everyone they can, and horror of horrors in the minds of the Pharisees in Jesus’ presence—“both the good and the bad” are invited and welcomed. 

The worst fears are confirmed.  Jesus thinks sinners can be saved rather than admitting what we all know.  Sinners must be shunned and rejected, otherwise moral standards count for nothing.

But Jesus is undeterred.  He actually agrees that human moral standards do count for nothing, because they are shadowy covering for human ego and human pride, for human hatred of other people. 

And this is the moral of the first part of the story.  Anyone whose religion is just a cover to hate or despise other people is going to have a head-on devastating collision with the Kingdom of Heaven, because the Kingdom of Heaven is God’s work to save and embrace the very people we may most enjoy despising—and daring to call ourselves God’s people while we do it.

So, no, God is not into cruelty or despising of other people, much less having it done in God’s own name.  And the proof that this parable is not a Pharisee parable in Jesus-clothing is the fact that the good and the bad are there.  The king is fine with that,  because the wedding will itself take care of what needs to be changed—in everyone invited. That brings us, at long last, however, to the last greased pig in this story.  The man with no wedding robe. 

Aha!  See the wedding really isn’t free, after all, our egos whisper.  See, God is just trying to get you to eat crow, all while God is going to be measuring your every fault.  It’s a two-fold humiliation.  First, God tells you to be happy and to love everyone.  Then God lowers the boom on you and throws you out at the first minor infraction.   That’s what our egos whisper. wedding robe, after all. 

Does this man really need to be bound hand and foot and thrown into hell over a wedding robe?

But here’s the second part of the king’s two-fold problem.  First, God must convince us to walk past our egos and maybe our fears to join the wedding feast. 

But the second problem is just as daunting.  Once we get inside, we may start to act just like the first invitees, only interested in what we can get for ourselves rather than actually joining the wedding feast.

Wedding robes came in two forms.  One was the robe that any Jew would wear during any Jewish feast.  A simple white robe called a kittim.  They were the ultra-simple part of any Jewish wardrobe.  They were the least expensive, least flashy, least fancy article of clothing imaginable.  They were meant to deflect attention from the wearer onto the event of the day.  In this case, a wedding.  The other form of the wedding robe was this:  a free white robe, in case you couldn’t afford one.  And, in fact, in the case of a royal wedding, the guests would have all received one at no cost.  At NO COST.

So, here we arrive at a dilemma for the king, whose only intention was to throw a free meal for everyone in joy and celebration over his son, and the guests either take offense at the invitation, for utterly indefensible reasons, or once they are invited, they start to act as if the party is only for them and everyone else can just fend for themselves.  At the very least, the man with no wedding robe is an incredible ungrateful guest.  He is eating food he does not deserve, but he is in such a rush to grab whatever he can get for himself that he can’t even slow down long enough to offer even minimal respect for the generosity that has brought him to the table.

He is the guest who is invited to a wedding without an invitation but simply because the bride and groom felt compassion for him, only to see him rush the food table and eat the wedding cake with his bare hands while ordering the servers to bring him better food and something stronger to drink.

Selfishness is an ugly, ugly thing against the backdrop of divine grace and generosity.

There is the pig, the real pig, in this story that no one can ignore.  The first herd of pigs is tragically gone by their own selfishness and cruelty.  And now this man decides that he prefers his own private party to a wedding feast of free food, free drink, the end of death and the end of suffering—for everyone.

And sadly, there is a man with no wedding robe in me.  I would rather just be invited to a private lunch with the king, or better yet, be sent a gift certificate in the mail for one massive lunch just for me and my few friends at the best restaurant in Paris.  What the king, what God is trying to do for everyone, is less important than my own ego, comfort and private sense of importance.

God has a massive two-fold problem with us human beings.  We receive a free invitation and find ways to make it all about us.  We receive God’s goodness and decide it is a reason for greed.

But thanks be to God, the wedding feast is still set.  The hall will be full.  God’s grace is relentless, and human selfishness will not stop its music or its joy.  The question is in no way about human worthiness, only about divine generosity and human willingness to accept the free gift without demanding to replace the Son as the guest of honor.  For after all, we don’t ever pay one cent of the cost of the party, while the Son, the Son paid the full price for us, at the cost of his own life.

Thanks be to God the Father, Father of all mercies, and to the Son, the Giver and Source of all grace and joy.  And to the Holy Spirit who delivers God’s invitation to the banquet of all banquets, to each one of us and to everyone in our world.  Amen.

 

 

 

“God’s Grace: even humanity’s hardest heart can’t frustrate”

September 25, 2011 U Exodus 17:1-7 & Matthew 21:23-32

Milton Nesbitt

 

Perhaps, you have already picked up on the theme between the two passages of scripture this morning.  This is a test.  Personally, I prefer administering tests rather than taking them.  I wilt under the pressure of taking tests … maybe you do too.  But, today’s connection involves testing; the Israelites are putting God to the test once more while Jesus is put to the test by the religious leaders of the day. 

This week’s Old Testament scripture reading is a companion text to last week’s reading.  I don’t like cliffhangers like who shot J.R. and you have to wait all summer to see who pulled the trigger.  Robert’s sermon based on the Exodus reading last week was somewhat a cliff hanger.  I couldn’t wait to see what would happen this week as I dove into text on Sunday afternoon.  The sermon’s theme was … we may not know what is lurking in our future but we know it includes God at work … so stay tuned. 

Or, as Paul Harvey would say, ‘and now the rest of the story …’  Today’s text is about how expectations weren’t met.  That is what happened to the Israelites.  I truly believe there is only one body of people who have shorter memories than Israelites in the wilderness and that is bankers.  Yes, I said bankers.  We are in the midst or just coming out of the great recession of the 21^st Century depending on which economist you are listening to at the time and bankers are already back to their old ways of making bad loans, which will in turn result in a future credit crunch. 

As for the Israelites, last week they sat beside their fleshpots and ate their fill of bread complaining it would have been better to have died by the hand of God in Egypt than to have been led out in the wilderness by Moses and then to die of starvation.  And yet, God provided manna and quail to sustain them.  The point was God rescued them from bondage with a miracle crossing of the Red Sea and would not send them out into wilderness to perish … ye of little faith. 

Now their thirsty!  I feel like I am reading about a parent putting a toddler to bed.  “I’m hot.”  “I’m scared.”  And now it’s, “I’m thirsty.”  It’s always something isn’t it?  You just can’t be happy?  What is it about complaining that is so enjoyable?  I certainly like to do it while I hate it when it is my mother in the middle of the restaurant about an undercooked meat.  It feels so good to get that complaint of our chests, all that pent up pressure that needs to expand even further.

Now I’m being a little facetious I realize that.  It’s hard not to have some sympathy for the Israelites given their condition; a hot desert setting totally isolated from other inhabitants, little water and no lush vegetation anywhere in sight. 

Last November I went on a hike.  The weather was pristine.  The high was mid 70’s the wind was blowing and there was not a cloud in the sky.  We began our journey at an overlook of a gorge.  The panoramic view was 240 degrees of glorious landscape.  We descended into the valley with a drop in elevation of 500 – 700 feet with a 35 pound backpack on large rocks with slippery leaves on top.  We walked at a leisurely pace after lunch until we got to the watering hole, a nearby running creek.  The temperature was comfortable but when I do physical activity, I sweat like a hog over a fire.  I had sucked down all my water and was taking on more at the creek.  Our last mile was out of the valley back up a steep path to the rim and it was grueling.  The last half mile was straight up.  Our back packs were still full and we were tired and we couldn’t stop until we made camp, some quarter of a mile from the edge of the rim.  I know what the Israelites felt like on that day.  I know why they were complaining.  I had it easy compared to them.  It was only one weekend for me, not 40 years.  There is no worse feeling to me than being parched.  I would rather be hungry as thirsty.   When hungry, that feeling may go away.  When thirsty, it will stay with you and make you feel like a dried crisp or a crunchy leaf on the ground. 

Even further, I think I can identify with the plight of the Jews.  Last April and early May after the storms passed through North Alabama we had an invasion.  Our resources and supplies were being consumed in mass quantities.  I looked out my window at work and noticed long lines at the gas pumps.  What if Pulaski runs out of gas inventory?  What if we don’t have enough food?  Deep down I was having these thoughts wondering what kind of panic would occur if we had to travel to Lawrenceburg or Columbia for food. Do we have enough gas to get there? What if they ran out and now we had to go to Nashville?  That is a pretty unsettling thought. 

The Israelites were sure in a pickle.  Hot, tired, thirsty, and the lack of apparent supplies is enough to mess with any faith and cause severe complaining.  Furthermore, with no end in sight, how long was this misery to last?  This isn’t exactly what they signed up for and I can imagine how miserable they must have felt. 

The question being raised by the author of the text is why do the Israelites feel God has abandoned them?  Why do they view God as unreliable or even worse unfaithful?  So they test God one more time with a request of water. 

The answer to these questions is say they have lost their comfortableness.  We all enjoy our comforts.  We long for things that are familiar to us.  Humanity really doesn’t like change.  We desire and crave things that are consistent, steady and stable.  Think about people whose jobs it is to develop product branding.  When you see a lawn mower or tractor and it is painted green maybe with a little yellow on the wheels or seat, what do you think of and which company’s product is it?  What does the color make you think of in terms of quality?  What about that dark cola invented 150 years ago bottled in 6 ounce bottles in shapes of an hour glass or aluminum cans painted in red with white wavy letters?  A LOT of money is spent in bringing familiar experiences and conjuring up warm feelings and good emotions to the consumer. 

But what happens to the public perception and sales of those products if you change something.  What if all the sudden John Deere started painting their lawn mowers or tractors in orange?  People would be confused with this kind of statement.  It would hurt sales because no one would relate the high quality of product to the new color.  Would this represent a lower quality of product?  Most of you probably remember the marketing nightmare Coke created in the 1980’s when the “New Coke” came out and changed its formula.  What a disaster and business case study on what ‘not to do’ when changing your product line. 

And so it is with God, who consistently reveals himself as the One to be relied upon and trustworthy through the life of the Israelites in good times and bad.  God has been the one that has always delivered whether it was to Abraham as he had the knife over is son and the ram appears in the thicket or delivering Noah from the flood.  But we take God for granted since we don’t see him, taste him, and experience him in our times of trouble.  We think we are left alone to defend for ourselves as we don’t see the invisible plans of God at work in our lives which carries us to our New Testament lesson in the Gospel of Matthew. 

God’s kingdom becomes more visible as God incarnate Word comes to earth in the form of a man, Jesus.  Jesus’ teachings are a little glimpse into the glory of God’s heaven, where the way things are on earth will not necessarily be how it will be in heaven.  The religious authorities at the time questioned Jesus’ authority to teach.  The real intent of the question might have been under whose apprenticeship did you serve since it was not one of the recognizable religious leaders at the time because Jesus’ teachings were so different, not that they were bad according the ruling elders but that they were certainly thought provoking.  In other words, the message didn’t sound familiar.  The lessons Jesus taught were not comfortable to the ear of the religious authorities.  The barrier of laws created by the Pharisees were things that made them feel comfortable but was being broken down by Jesus’ teachings so that the religious leaders probably were infuriated by the buzz created by Jesus’ messages and the strong following of people. To add salt to the wound, Jesus was in fact also healing people; something the Pharisees couldn’t do themselves that helped Jesus’ ministry even more.  So, Jesus storms on to the scene like a new and upcoming rock star that everyone wants to see; cramping the style of the church leadership who revolts against change. 

Jesus doesn’t get into the debate about his mentor or his theology and points directly to God without saying it.  Therefore, he sidesteps their question with a question of his own.  While they see the trap they’ve laid sprung, in other words, their test of Jesus has failed, they also entered into Jesus’ trap … a test they do not want to take.  They save face initially by answering Jesus with an ‘I don’t know’ response in regards to the authority under who Jesus speaks. 

Jesus doesn’t let them off the hook either.  He immediately goes on to tell them a parable that requires an answer.  This time they have to answer whether the first or second son was the one who did the will of the father.  They obviously choose right. 

The point Jesus is making is they don’t understand what the kingdom of God looks like.  For them, their pious leadership is steeped with high tradition and exclusiveness for the ordinary Jew.  Jesus says, the true Way is one in which lives are changed by the preaching and hearing of God’s word much like the tax collectors and prostitutes.  They have responded while the religious authorities have heard and not believed.  Jesus doesn’t say they can’t enter heaven.  Jesus invites them to rehear John’s message and be open to the reversal the message urges.  This is the same, consistent message that Jesus preached earlier to repent, the kingdom of heaven has come near.  God’s kingdom allows access to all who believe and repent.  That can be a hard thing to do, but anything worth having is worth doing well. 

So there we have it.  Two sets of people that God looks at and shakes his head in bewilderment.  God’s message has been sent that he will deliver us.  No matter how hard hearted or stubborn we become, no matter how long we stay in the center of our own universe, we still can’t shake the grace and mercy God gives us.  We can’t frustrate God whose love for us extends well beyond any bad behavior we might do.  Friends, God forgives with a heart much greater than all of us combined in a way we still can’t understand.  As you leave this place today, remember God is great and we are not.  Not believing in God’s ability to work when we can’t see it only creates stumbling blocks for our own personal growth and doesn’t hurt or impact God in any way.  We only hurt ourselves.  As my dear friend Grant Vosburgh says so often, “let go and let God.”  Amen.