Scriptural Sermons
New Testament: Luke
Galatians 5:22-23 Luke 21: 1-4 Permit me to boast on my sons Herry and Adam for a bit. We recently vacationed in Door County. We had never been before. Door County is a really awesome place. It’s stunningly beautiful. There are endless fun things to do. And everyone is in a great mood because everyone is on vacation. We were seated at a restaurant. A spirit of bonhomie pervaded the place. I noticed a particularly jovial family at a table nearby. The family resemblance made it clear that the family was comprised of a matriarch, her two sons, and her two sons’ wives. The star of the family, however, was their dog. That’s another really awesome thing about Door County. Dogs are permitted in restaurants. Seated at their feet was a Cane Corso with an official looking harness that closely resembled a uniform. On it was embossed the name Zeus. You may not know anything about Cane Corsos because they’re a rare breed. They happen to be one of the oldest breeds. They served as auxiliary warriors in the Roman Empire, so you can imagine how impressive Zeus was. And he was perfectly trained, staring nobly and impassively ahead of him. What a great family, I thought to myself. But suddenly a minor disaster struck. One of the women picked up her purse upside down and its entire contents fell out, including countless coins which went rolling in every direction. It was as though the boys were seated in ejector seats. They sprang into action chasing down her purse contents and her coins. “Why thank you!” the woman exclaimed, surprised. Her husband called out, “Let the boys keep the coins.” “They aren’t doing it to be rewarded,” I said. “They are doing it because I am raising them up to be Good Samaritans.” “Let them keep them anyway,” he persisted. “They won’t accept them,” I said. And they didn’t. The woman then thanked them again profusely. They boys said, “You’re welcome,” and we returned to our respective meals. A couple minutes later, my daughter May whispered in my ear, “Mom, that woman is beaming at us.” I looked up. She was beaming at us. I am not used to being beamed at. It is a little embarrassing. Her husband said, “Would you like to pet Zeus?” “Yes!” we all exclaimed. “Zeus, free,” he commanded. Zeus dutifully arose and, oozing noblesse oblige, suffered himself to be petted. The woman who had been beaming at us came over and said, “Your boys just made my day.” “You hear so much on the news about how horrible everything and everyone is.” “Well, you made my day,” I returned. “You validated what I am trying to teach my boys, namely that being helpful and respectful goes a long way with people.” From there we chalked up a conversation. “Where are you folks from?” I asked. “Elmhurst, Illinois,” they answered. My jaw dropped. “Where are you folks from?” they asked in return. “Elmhurst, Illinois,” I said. I was raised in Elmhurst, Illinois and lived there for over fifty years before moving to Wisconsin recently. All of a sudden, our encounter became a God thing. Because coincidences are as often as not God things. The Bible talks all about signs. It says they’re real. And one sign is a coincidence. Lest you think I am naïve or gullible on this score, I have Soren Kierkegaard is on my side. And who is Soren Kierkegaard, you might ask? Soren Kierkegaard is one of the greatest theologians that Christendom has ever produced. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Augustine, Athanasius, Luther, Calvin…Soren Kierkegaard is every inch their equal. And Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, “Coincidence is the divine incognito.” I am done boasting on my sons, and even though I love boasting on my sons, there is moral to this story. It is this. You don’t need to move heaven and earth to be a good Christian. You don’t need establish world peace or discover a cure for cancer. You just need, within your sphere of influence, to reflect love, joy, peace, patience, forbearance, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Because think about Jesus for a moment. Did you ever wonder why he taught so often in simple parables? It’s because his audience was the people of the earth, the Am ‘Haaretz as the Bible calls them. The people of the earth were kind of a combination of peasants and farmers. They were the common people. And Jesus didn’t teach them in his parables to overthrow Rome and establish the New Jerusalem. He taught them that they were the salt of the earth. He taught them not to worry so much about the things of this life. He taught them to seek after the kingdom of God. He taught them that their efforts mattered. He taught them to let their light shine. And speaking of Jesus, let’s reflect a little about our New Testament lesson. No, let’s reflect a lot about our New Testament lesson. Because it’s dumbfounding. Jesus was at the temple. Now the temple was a place of massive import. It was at the heart of Jerusalem. It was steeped in historical, political, and religious significance. It was a magnificent building. It was a place to be, so everyone was there. There were the religious authorities, the Sadducees, who presided over the sacrifices. There were those who made the sacrifices. There were pilgrims from all over the Diaspora. There were the people who came to be seen -- the rich and the powerful who made their flamboyant donations to the treasury. There were the people who came to gape at the rich and powerful as they made their flamboyant donations to the treasury. The place was, to put it mildly, a hub of activity. It would be hard to find the story line amidst all that activity. It would be like trying to find the story line at Time Square. But Jesus didn’t have any trouble finding the story line. The story line was poor, elderly, widow who made her way to the treasury to donate her pittance. I am surprised she had the temerity to be there in the first place poor -- elderly widow. She was of such negligible consequence, amidst all those other players. Imagine her standing in line with the rich and powerful. Probably what emboldened her is that she knew she was utterly invisible. But she wasn’t invisible to Jesus. To Jesus she was the story line. Her donation might have been small. It wasn’t going to get a wing of the temple named after her. But that’s not the point. The point is that she gave freely with the little she had. She gave faithfully with the little she had. She gave generously with the little she had. And that was enough for Jesus. And we too can be enough for Jesus if we emulate her example. Amen.
Luke 19:29-41 The first Palm Sunday, was, to put it mildly, a travesty. Yes, the people cheered him. Yes, the people praised him. Yes, the people honored him. But as a military deliverer. The people were at the time occupied by the Romans. Occupation is something that we as Americans have never experienced and likely never will, but you never know. History has taken some strange turns. At any rate, occupation is something we’ve never experienced, but we can imagine it if we try hard enough. An enemy conquers us. And conquers means conquers. New York City, Chicago, Los Angelos, Washington D.C. all in ruins. Our military vanquished. Our institutions decimated. And so, we surrender to our enemy. Our enemy establishes a military presence and takes complete control. We are without rights. We are persecuted and violated with impunity. So, the people were at the time occupied by the Romans. They were desperate for a military deliverer. Jesus was, by that time, the man of the hour, so they took Jesus for their man. Now Jesus could not have made it any clearer that he was not a military deliverer. He made no secret to his disciples that he had come, rather, to die. In fact, he spelled it out in detail on countless occasions. He did not spell out all the details – that his death would be a sacrifice for human sin. He trusted that they would eventually piece that together. But he made no bones about the fact that he had come to die. There’s this. Then he began to teach them that he must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed. And there’s this. Jesus and his disciples went on from there and passed through Galilee. He didn’t want anyone to know it, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “I will be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill me. And there’s this. Note the detail. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying “See, we are going to Jerusalem, and I will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn me to death; then they will hand me over to the Gentiles. They will mock me, spit on me, flog me, and kill me. But despite all this, the disciples took him for a military deliverer. Everyone took him for a military deliverer. Denial is when you hear what you want to hear and see what you want to see. So, everyone was in denial. And their denial was utterly impregnable. If it were not, the whole scene would have tipped them off. Jesus processed into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. Donkeys were symbols of humility. Where was his steed? Where was his chariot? Come to think of it, where was his armor? Where were his weapons? Where was his army? And yet they cheered him. And yet they praised him. And yet they honored him as a military deliverer. A complete and utter travesty. And how do you suppose that made Jesus feel? Once again, you can imagine it if you try hard enough. How would you feel if, with everything at stake, you were willfully misunderstood? Sad? Frustrated? Lonely? Hopeless? One thing is certain. It would add to your burden. Yet flip that on its head for a moment. How would you feel if you were fully understood? Happy, Relieved? Grateful? No longer alone? It would lighten your burden. And here’s the most amazing thing in all this. They had the power to add to his burden or lighten it. This is Jesus Christ we are talking about – he who the Psalms praised, and the prophets foretold. The Alpha and the Omega. The King of Kings. The Prince of Peace. The Word Made Flesh. The Son of God. They had the power to add to his burden or lighten it. And so do we. When we understand that he came to die and that his death was a sacrifice for our sin, his burdened is lightened. And not just because we understand him, but so that when we do understand him, he can bequeath to us eternal life. So, ride on, ride on in majesty, and implant in our hearts this Palm Sunday the true nature of that majesty. Amen.
I attended a funeral recently. It was for my high school math teacher. He was one great guy. Everyone loved him. He taught math at my high school for forty years, and he also coached wrestling. By the time he retired, he had become something of a legend in his own time. The funeral was upbeat, not like so many funerals that are so very sad. He lived a full and long life, and we gathered to celebrate that. But for one man – a classmate of mine who wrestled for him. He was absolutely devastated. I approached him in the parking lot after the funeral and asked if he was okay. He broke down. “That man was everything to me,” he said. “I was O.K. so long as he was in the world.” Then he shared his story. His mother died when he was very young. His father was a physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic. By the time he was in high school, he was far down a bad road. He hadn’t the support to do well at school, so he didn’t. He was very angry, so he was a behavior problem. The only friends he could make were kids like himself, so he hung out with a tough crowd. And he had begun to dabble in drugs. He was pretty much a lost cause at the age of sixteen. Enter my math teacher. He approached him one day out of the blue and told him he could tell by his gait that he was born to wrestle. This could only have been a ruse to intervene. Even I, who knows nothing about wrestling, am suspicious that you can identify one born to wrestle by his gait. At any rate, the ruse worked. He intervened. And he made him into a great wrestler. On top of that, he made him into a great young man. His advice, understanding, and support were unwavering. He helped him to deal with his past in such a way that it didn’t destroy him. He filled his present with new found responsibility, purpose, structure, and discipline. And he paved his way to a future. After graduation he went to college on a wrestling scholarship and eventually became a doctor. “I feel so lost,” he concluded his story. “What am I going to do now?” While he was sharing his story, I could not help but think how hard life can be. We here are generally prosperous and privileged, so we can afford to put up a front. But behind that front life can be hard. Because it’s out there -- loss, abuse, addiction, and a host of other afflictions. It’s enough to make you lose your way. And as I said, we here are generally prosperous and privileged. What if the loss, abuse, and addiction are compounded by poverty or racism? Then it’s all but a foregone conclusion. Your way is lost. Yes, life can be hard. Life takes casualties. Lots of them. It can make us feel helpless and overwhelmed. We want to make things better, but what could we possibly do? The answer is no farther away than my late math teacher. What could we possibly do to make things better? We could reach out, like he did. And what is in view here is not merely a good example, although we must never underestimate the power of a good example and must always strive to be one. But there’s more in view than that. It has to do with the Bible. The Bible may seem like a forbidding book. For one thing it’s thousands of pages long. It makes War and Peace look like a short story. For another thing, it’s unimaginably ancient. The Bible’s story begins 2,000 years before the Common Era. I just read that a sizable portion of millennials don’t know what the Holocaust was. To them that’s ancient history - a mere 75 years back. The Bible is more than 4,000 years back. That’s unimaginably ancient. For yet another thing, it traffics in extremely complicated and sophisticated theology, plumbing in its unfolding the depths of such mysteries as our nature, the predicament that our nature has landed us in, and the means of our redemption. And it does so all the while purging itself of false starts or conclusions. So it may seem forbidding. But at the same time, ironically, the Bible lends itself to succinct summaries. Here’s one: God lives. Here’s another: Good triumphs over evil. And another: Love triumphs over fear. And another: Practice universal justice. And another: Love one another. And here’s one that’s right on point: Reach out. The Bible can be summarized in just two words. Reach out. Think about it. That’s what God did. God reached out. God reached out to Abraham and told him that from him would one day issue a nation, and not just any nation, but a nation that would somehow bless all the nations by bestowing upon them redemption. God reached out to Moses and bequeathed him an ethical law so that God’s people could bear his righteousness. God reached out to David and told him that from his descendants would emerge one who would embody that redemption. And that one in the fullness of time emerged. God reach out to his son. He told him that if he would make a great sacrifice, the greatest sacrifice, it would be the means for all people to reach out to one another. In a real way. A way that advanced God’s own being and cause. And his son made that sacrifice. And in his brief ministry that preceded that sacrifice, he reached out to everyone. And I mean everyone. Lepers. Prostitutes. Beggars. Even a bitter little man perched up in a sycamore tree. So reaching out is not just a good example. It is nothing less the mechanism that God that employs to bestow redemption. Yes, life can be hard. Paul knew this. “We would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” But Paul goes on. “So we must make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.” And this means reaching out. “I feel so lost now. What am I going to do?” asked my grieving classmate. I told him that his coach had already showed him what to do. I told him to reach out. Amen.
Jesus was always one to bring the party. All he had to do was show up, and lots of others showed up too -- eager for engagement, eager for excitement, eager for something new. It was little wonder. Here at last was someone who had something to say. Something different. Something provocative. Something truthful. Jesus had a way of uttering truths that had never been uttered before, but at the same time, were strangely recognizable. And it was happening once again. Once again, Jesus had brought the party. He showed up at the house of Mary and Martha, and suddenly the place was filled with men who immediately took their place at his feet. This gesture was an indicator that they were ready and willing disciples. They wanted him to teach them. And so he began to teach. That was Martha’s cue. She sprang into action. After Jesus’ teaching, it would be fellowship hour, and as we all know, fellowship hour is predicated upon food. And in ancient times, you couldn’t rely on your reserves from Costco. Feeding a room full of men was labor intensive. Animals had to be slaughtered and dressed. Bread had to be baked. Water had to hauled. Martha went directly to work, expecting Mary to fall in place behind her. But what did Mary do? She went and sat at Jesus’ feet with the men -- shirking her role, defying expectations, and leaving Martha to shoulder the burden alone. I can imagine Martha’s frustration. I can imagine her passive aggressive attempts to get Mary back in the kitchen. Staring daggers at her from the threshold. Uttering loud sighs as indicators of her strain. Dropping pottery on the floor to startle Mary to awareness. But Mary took no notice. None whatsoever. Martha should have counted to ten. How much strife could be averted if we could all just remember to count to ten, or perhaps twenty. Martha for her part shot like a rocket from outrage to outburst. “I’m doing all the work in here Jesus, while Mary has yet to raise a finger. It’s hardly fair. And have you even noticed? Do you even care?” And there was doubtless more to it than the fact that Martha had to provide all the hospitality on her own. There too was the fact of what Mary was doing. She not day dreaming or singing idly out the window. She was sitting at Jesus’ feet. She was in there with the men. Martha was doubtless chagrined and embarrassed that Mary did not know her place. It certainly did not reflect well on the family. But Jesus did not vindicate Martha. Jesus chastised her, “Martha, Martha,” (and when someone says your name twice, wait for some kind of a correction to follow) “Why are you so distracted and stressed and scattered? Let it go. Mary’s right where she should be.” We’re left to wonder how Martha felt at that point. I bet she wasn’t happy. She simply didn’t get it or she would not have reacted that way in the first place. Now normally this text is interpreted as a caution against busyness. Martha with all her busyness is a prototype that we should avoid. Not that productivity is a bad thing. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop after all. But there’s a certain kind of busyness that’s not good. It’s when we become enmeshed with worldly or personal concerns and address them with obsessive application – application that mixes with pride, competition, insecurity. It becomes a kind of self-perpetuating force. And it causes us to lose all perspective. It causes us to become disoriented. We forget that we’re supposed to be at Jesus’ feet – his disciples, listening to him. And this is a fair enough interpretation, but I think there’s something else here. An elephant in the living room. Mary was right where she should be. She was at Jesus’ feet, his disciple, listening to him. But Mary was, obviously, a woman. Women did not seat themselves at the feet of rabbis. Women were not disciples. All they needed to know was taught to them by their mothers. Women did not sit side by side with men learning. It was unheard of. It was forbidden. And yet Jesus told Martha that Mary was right where she should be. Her place was with the men. Really Jesus? A woman’s place is with the men? Really Jesus? In first century Judaism? Jesus was a revolutionary and a radical, and don’t ever forget it. All down through history and even to this day there has an unspoken and inviolable code. It could be expressed as a variant of a line from the wedding ceremony. What society has divided, let no one unite. And Jesus was saying the polar opposite. A women’s place is with the men. Think about what this means by extension. Women, your place is with the men. Men, your place is with the women. Whites, your place is with blacks. Blacks your place is with whites. The wealthy, your place is with the poor, and the poor, your place is with the wealthy. The powerful, your place is with the powerless. The powerless, your place is with the powerful. The old, your place is with the young. The young, your place is with the old. Jesus was smashing down all dividing walls. His disciples are to be completely and utterly integrated. This is simply too radical, simply too revolutionary. But that’s who Jesus was. This is why he brought the party. It’s because he spoke God’s truth. Disciples are to be completely and utterly integrated, and this in service to humankind that is to be completely and utterly integrated. That all should be one. But this is so radical and revolutionary that it is very seldom approximated. It’s too hard. But is it really? Is it really that hard to forge the way? Is it really that hard to reach out? Is it really that hard to cross the aisle? To be vulnerable? To be risky? To be open? To be accepting? To be understanding? One thing’s for sure. It’s a lot easier than hanging on a cross in faith it could be so. Amen.
I would like to talk to you this morning about Joseph of Arimathea. Doubtless, you just stifled a yawn. Doubtless you just thought to yourself, “Joseph of Arimathea? Really? With all the tribulation in the world today? She’d like to talk to us this morning about Joseph of Arimathea? Who the heck is Joseph of Arimathea, anyway? I barely even heard of him.” But yes, I would like to talk to you this morning about Joseph of Arimathea. He is featured in our gospel lesson, after all. So I will give you a moment to stifle a few more yawns, then I will proceed to talk to you this morning about Joseph of Arimathea. Actually, we don’t know that much about him. We know that it is highly likely that he actually existed. We know this because he appears across all four gospels. When someone or something appears across all four gospels, that makes it fairly indubitable. This is because of John’s gospel. Mathew, Mark, and Luke are pretty much the same gospel. This means they depended on each other. Not John. John is independent of them. A full ninety percent of John is absent from the other three. So if something appears across all four gospels, it’s highly likely it happened. So it’s highly likely that Joseph of Arimathea actually existed. Beyond that, all that is known of him is what is recorded in the short paragraph all four gospels devote to him. They tell us that Joseph of Arimathea was a member of the “Council”. That is to say, he was a member of the SanHedrin. The Romans permitted the Jews to govern themselves, and they did so through the SanHedrin, which was composed of their religious authorities. It was the SanHedrin that found Jesus guilty of blasphemy and condemned him to death. But Joseph of Arimathea, to quote, “didn’t agree with their plan or action.” In other words, he saw through them. He saw through their jealousy. He saw through their resentment. Above all, he saw through their outrage. They, like so many people today, lacked the moral and mental clarity to know when to be outraged. Joseph of Arimathea, for his part, knew when to be outraged. He was outraged by the SanHedrin. He realized they had just lynched an innocent man. Joseph of Arimathea had admired Jesus, but what could he have done on his behalf in the face of the SanHedrin? Nothing. Nothing as yet anyway. As Jesus hung dead on his cross, he approached Pontius PIlate and asked him for his body, Mark's version adds the word “boldly” to his request. He approached Pilate “boldly” and asked for his body. Mark is right to add the word. Because think about it. Pilate sentenced Jesus to death, assumedly, because he judged that Jesus deserved the sentence. In asking for Jesus’ body, Joseph of Arimathea was in essence challenging Pilate’s judgment. It was an act of subversion, really. In other words, he was putting himself at risk. Fortunately, Pilate’s indifference to the whole matter won out. Joseph of Arimathea then proceeded to remove Jesus’ mangled and bloody corpse from his cross. Try to imagine that. This would have involved crow bars, ladders, and lots of sweat. But above all it would have involved a mangled and bloody corpse. We have a native aversion to corpses. It’s hard enough for us to glance at them when they have died of natural causes. That’s why we dress them up with makeup and wigs and make them into mannequins. That’s all we can handle. What Joseph of Arimathea handled was downright sickening. And he didn’t need to do any of it. He didn’t need to do any of it because he was rich. He must have been rich because when he removed Jesus from the cross, he wrapped him in linen. Linen was exorbitantly expensive in those times. So he was rich, and the rich generally are freer to do what they want to do and not constrained to do what they need to do. He didn’t need to do any of it. No one else in the world bothered. Finally, he laid Jesus in his own tomb; again, a rich man’s tomb, hewn from rock. And for his efforts, Joseph of Arimathea set the stage for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He set the stage for the resurrection of Jesus Christ -- an event, the event, that transfuses worldly tribulation with divine triumph. To say the very least of him, Joseph of Arimathea was a hero. He was one who advanced the good. He was one who defended the truth. He was one who set the example. He was one at the ready to sacrifice. He was one who made the world a better place, Yes, Joseph of Arimathea was a hero, but at the same time, he was an unsung hero. We stifle our yawns at the mention of his name. And here’s the whole point. There should be no unsung heroes, in the past or in the present. That expression should not even exist. Could we be so dull, so indifferent, so blind, so careless, so complacent, so jaded, so selfish, that we do not notice the heroes that we have been bequeathed and that surround us? Because read theologically, and a Christian must read everything theologically, they can only be God’s gift to us. They can only be God’s gift to us because for their contributions they redeem worldly tribulation. So we must be ever alert to them and endow them with the honor they deserve. We must sing their praises at the top of our voices. One of my favorite people, Fred Rogers, who himself was an unsung hero until recently, knew this well. He once said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” Amen.
I was at a holiday gathering last week with a group of women friends I made around the time our children were born. My eldest is now in her thirties, so we have been friends for a good long time. Now that our children are grown, we don’t see each other as much as we did when they were young. In those days we saw each other nearly every day. We needed each other’s company and support during the uniquely taxing business of raising young children. And besides, were interesting to no one except each other. Raising young children, the all important questions have to do with the likes of nursing, naps, teething; and, of course, those tiny little developmental milestones that at the time seem so significant. Who else would find all that interesting except another mother of young children? There’s been much water over the damn since then. Most of us, at least those of us who did not adopt a second round of children, are now empty-nesters. Some of us have remained at home. Others of us have retooled and rejoined the work force. One of my friends became a pediatrician. It’s no surprise. She is smart and driven, scientifically minded; and she loves children. When I saw her at the gathering I asked her about the ongoing drama in which she was involved wither receptionist. She hired as her receptionist a woman whose husband had died recently. Having been a wife and mother nearly forty years, she was lonely and aimless and hoped that a job would help her to reconnect to life, would bring her some structure and purpose. She was a very decent person, but did not belong I that position. She talked on and on to patients, and worse, did have a sense of appropriate sense of confidentiality. In this day and age, that can get you into trouble. She drove my friend increasingly up the wall, but big-hearted as he was, she couldn’t bring herself to let her go. “I finally let her go,” my friend said, “And those were, without question, the hardest words I’ve ever had to say in my life. “I have to let you go.” “Those words wouldn’t be hard for me at all,” said another friend, whom I would describe as self-assertive and driven to control all that is in her sphere of influence. Appropriately, she is a crossing guard. “Anyway, it was for her own good,” she said. “Why treat her like she is exempt from reality and responsibility?” That’s no favor to her overall. The hardest words for me to say,” she said, “are ‘I’m sorry.’ I had to apologize to someone last week, and I’ve vowed never again to be in the wrong so I’ll never have to apologize again.” “Good luck with that,” I said. The conversation then shifted to word that are hard to say. What we came up wit was about what you’d expect, - “I love you.” “You hurt my feelings.” And, above all, ‘No.’” As the conversation proceeded, I found myself biting my lip. My friends, have, on more than one occasion, on several occasions in fact, informed me that I have the annoying habit of not offering my own opinion, which would probably be annoying enough, but instead offering the biblical witness’ opinion on the subject. “The biblical witness would label that double minded,” I’d say. Or, I’d say, “The biblical witness would take issue with that sort of apathy.” Or, “The biblical witness forbids this kind of idle chatter.” I can’t think why they find it so annoying. I was itching to offer the biblical witness’ opinion on the hardest words to say, but, as I said, I had been warned that I was annoying. Of course, when people warn us that we are annoying, it doesn’t automatically remove the desire to continue to be annoying. I really wanted to have my say. Suddenly, I thought of a brilliant ploy. Instead of simply offering the biblical witness’ opinion on the subject, I asked a preliminary question. “Are you interested in the biblical witness’ opinion on the subject?" I asked. If they said no, that would certainly not reflect very well on them. They were churchgoers, after all. And if they said yes, I could have my say. I can boast my ploy was brilliant, of occurs, because I am really only in effect boasting on the Lord. I borrowed the ploy form m. If you recall his exchange with the chief priests and elders, they asked Jesus, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority.?” Jesus said to them, ‘I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin? And they argued with one another, ‘If we say from heaven, he will say to us, “Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid do the crowd, for all regard John a prophet.” Thanks to the biblical witness, I had my friends between a rock and a hard place. I finally had my say. According to the biblical witness, the hardest words to say are, “Here I am.” Here I am – the words with which God’s prophets answered God’s call to witness to him. “After these things God tested Abraham. God said to him, “Abraham!” And Abraham said, “Here I am!” Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, can came to Horeb, the mountain of God. Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a us; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consume…God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And Moses said, “Here I am!” “The Lord called, ‘Samuel, Samuel.’ And he said, ‘Here I am!’ “The Isaiah heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And Isaiah said, “Here I am!” But why should these be the hardest words to say? If you think about it, the answer is not long in coming. It is because witnessing to God is terribly difficult work and generally not welcomed by the world. And the words, “Here I am,"represent a kind of reporting for service, represent a kind of front end commitment to witness to God, come what may. And indeed, it was not easy on the prophets. God called Abraham to leave everything he knew, to go from his country, his kindred, and his father’s house to an unknown land on which would some day exist the nation he would father. And when Abraham at the age of one hundred finally fathered a son, God demanded his sacrifice as a s test that Abraham’s faith was in the God who could do the impossible, and not in Abraham’s own flesh and blood. Abraham passed the test, and God spared his son, but only imagine Abraham’s anguish as he raised that knife to his son’s neck.. Or Moses, a humble man, slow of speech, slow of tongue. God called him to enter the court of the most powerful man in the world and demand the release of his enslaved countrymen; and then to lead them, they who gave no evidence of being God’s people at all, for forty years through the wilderness to the threshold of their Promised Land. Or Samuel, whom God called to preside over the newly found institution of the kingship, an institution that Samuel had renounced and resisted for all he was worth, and then stand by and watch as the king that God had called him to anoint generated into a madman – jealous, paranoid, murderous. Or Isaiah, who was called too to prophesy to kings, kings from whose line God had be this time declared the Messiah would come, but who only encountered faithless kings who refuse to listen to the word of God and led the nation to the brink of destruction. Yes, “Here I am” must have been the hardest words to say. All of this renders nothing less than amazing, nothing less than mind boggling, what we heard in this morning’s gospel lesson. A young woman, little more than a girl really, of no imaginable note – obscure and undistinguished; and probably too, like most of her people, rather poor – was visited by the angel Gabriel who said to her, “’Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. May said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy, he will be called the Son of Man….’ Then Mary said, ‘Here I am.’” And with those words that young woman, with nothing but her faith, added herself to the company of the great prophets of Israel – absent, of course, any pride or arrogance, absent any self-assertion whatever, and absent too any self-abnegation, any evasion or irresponsibility because of her low and unlikely station, and knowing it had not been easy on those who had responded this – with nothing but her faith, she added herself to the company of the great prophets of Israel. And it was not easy on her either. In fact, it may have been harder on her than it was on any of them: to be made pregnant our of wedlock, to give birth in a stable in a distant land, to live in obscurity for nearly thirty years, waiting, wondering what was in store for her son, then as her son finally embarked upon his ministry to hear him say and do things that she didn’t anticipate and couldn’t comprehend, and things that caused him to make very dangerous enemies, then to witness her son, her beloved son, tortured to death on a cross. I’d say that young woman proved herself the equal of the great prophets of Israel. Here I am. Such hard words, and such a hard life that inevitably issued from them. One wonders whether any of them had any regrets about saying them. The biblical witness does not say if they did or not, but I, at least, am certain that they did not. I am certain because that same faith by which they said those hard words – by which they reported for service, by which they made front end commitment to witness to God come what may – makes regret impossible. For faith does not seek ease or comfort; not does it require outcomes. Faith simply holds fast to God’s promises and makes witness to him. It is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Faith need not receive the promises, because it sees them from a distance and greets them. Faith then banishes regret. Friends in Christ, God may not have called us to witness to him in such clear and commanding ways. He may not have spoken to us through a burning bushy, or through his angel Gabriel, but he has just as surely called us to witness to him. He was called us through the waters of baptism by which we have received the Holy Spirit. It is now ours to respond, “Here I am,” But the prophets who have gone before us, and we may consider Mary among them, prove that the hardest words we will ever say are too the greatest words we will ever say and live. Amen.
II Samuel 18:9-15, 24, 32-36 Luke 8:1-12
Genesis 1 Colossians 1:15-19 Luke 8:22-25
Since Halloween is coming up, I thought it would be fun to watch the movie classic Frankenstein with the girls -- the 1931 version starring Boris Karloff. I figured that it wouldn’t be too scary for them because of the old, or perhaps better to say, ancient special effects. I figured that the monster would be no more frightening to them than Ming the Merciless was to me when I, at about their age, watched Flash Gordon. The minute Dr. Frankenstein descended to his laboratory; however, they were terror struck and scrambled into my lap. Within minutes they were screaming at the top of their lungs to turn it off. I grabbed for the clicker filled with soothing explanations, but they’d have none of them. That night we all slept together. Not one to admit defeat readily, I decided to try again. I procured, with some difficulty, the 1910 version of the film. I even previewed it before we watched it together. It was a “silent” movie, but for the ridiculously dramatic piano music pounding in the background. The exaggerated gesticulations and facial expressions of the actors were downright laughable, but the bigger joke was the special effects. The monster came to life after various ingredients were added to a bubbling cauldron. First his two skeletal arms emerged. You could see them moving up and down on wires. After some more thundering piano crescendos the monster appeared, fully stewed. He looked like the deranged cousin of Gargamel, who, if you don’t recall, was the antagonist on The Smurfs. I judged that no one of any age could possibly be scared of this version of the film. The girls, however, judged differently. They were even more terrified than before. “Turn it off!” they screamed again. It was then that it dawned on me that my plan backfired because I presumed that the old special effects would make the films less scary for them. The old special effects, as it turned out, made it more scary, more real in a way, because it depicted the realm where, their imaginations had taught them, real monsters dwell. Needless to say, we all slept together again, but this time sleep, as Scripture puts it, “fled from their eyes.” “I am staying up all night,” Avi pronounced. “Why!?” I asked. “Because I am afraid of that monster.” Before I could respond, Gao chimed in. “And I am afraid of earthquakes.” Her orphanage was relatively near the epicenter of China’s earthquake, which occurred shortly before I adopted her. She didn’t experience the earthquake firsthand, but she experienced it through the horror of her caretakers. May then chimed in too. “And I’m afraid something bad will happen to you, Mommy.” I said all the things Mommies say when their children are afraid. Avi then said. “I’m sorry we’re so afraid,” Mommy. “When we’re grownups like you, we won’t be afraid anymore.” When we’re grownups like you, we won’t be afraid anymore. Then was not the time to explain to her that we grownups have our own fears, fears not unlike theirs. We may not be scared of Frankenstein’s monster, or werewolves, or mummies, or vampires, but we are scared of demythologized monsters like serial killers and shooters and terrorists. We too are scared of natural disasters, whether they take the form of earthquakes or tornadoes or hurricanes or tsunamis, or even whether they take the form of disease, which is a kind of natural disaster if you think about it. And too we are scared that something bad will happen to those we love, especially our children. For me this is my greatest fear. I think it’s every parent’s greatest fear. We may put up a better front than they do; we may employ more mature powers of rationalization; we may be slightly less vulnerable; but we grownups share their fears, especially when the danger that elicits them rears its head. And you know, I think we grownups actually do children one better on the fear front. We have one fear that they don’t seem to have, at least not my girls -- but I think it holds true for most children. I guess some fears have to be learned, or they grow with us to maturity. We grownups fear that others who are not like us do not share our basic humanity. If others are or a different race, a different culture, a different religion, a different political party, a different sexual orientation, a different national origin, we fear they do not share our basic humanity. And this fear may be, of all the things we fear, most to be feared. This fear may be, of all the things we fear, the most pernicious and destructive, especially when it is, as it so often it has been, co-opted by demagogues who pose as our leaders. Believe it or not, it is for this reason the book of Ruth was written. It was written to offset the fear that others who are not like us do not share our basic humanity. Ruth, after all, was a Moabite. To put it mildly, the Israelites did not like the Moabites. From the minute the people of Israel took possession of their Promised Land and encountered the Moabites in the vicinity, they did not like them. Why? Because the Israelites had lots of impressions about them, impressions based upon the fact that they didn’t look like them, didn’t talk like them, and didn’t act like them. From what they thought they saw, the Israelites concluded that the Moabites were a dissolute people. They were fast. They were loose. They were low lives. They were the kind of people who couldn’t be trusted. They were the kind of people who were bad influences, who were threats to good and decent and upright society. In short, the Israelites feared that the Moabites did not share their basic humanity. In fact, aside from the book of Ruth, all other depictions of Moabites in Scripture are negative. There’s even a story in the book of Genesis that the founder of the Moabites was born from a drunken and incestuous union between a father and his daughter. The book of Ruth then advanced a bold and controversial, if not to say downright unpopular, thesis. It advanced the thesis that others who are not like us do in fact share our basic humanity. Sometimes in fact they may even serve as role models for us. Sometimes, in fact, we can even learn from them about how to be better people. Consider Ruth herself. Ruth was a Moabite who married into a family of Israelites. It wasn’t by the choice of the family of Israelites. It was by necessity. There was a famine in Israel and this particular family of Israelites was forced to emigrate to Moab or to starve. They were detained there by the famine for so long that the sons came of marrying age. It was either marry a Moabite or not marry at all, and not marrying at all meant the cessation of the family line. So the family held its collective nose while two Moabite women married into the family, one of whom was Ruth the other of whom was named Orpah. In a series of coincidental tragedies, all the men of the family died, leaving just the Moabites Ruth and Orpah and their Israelite mother-in-law, who was named Naomi. After the famine ended, Naomi suggested that each return to their familial home. Orpah did, but Ruth declined. It would have been the easier course, but Ruth knew her mother-in-law needed her. As much as Ruth had lost - a husband, Naomi had lost more - a husband and two sons. Ruth couldn’t leave Naomi all alone with no one to care for her. She may not have been much, but she was better than nothing. She could at least tend to Naomi’s basic needs until she saw her safely placed in her familial home. So Ruth opted to accompany Naomi and go live among a people who looked down upon her because she was a Moabite. When they arrived back in Israel, Ruth provided for them both by gleaning behind some harvesters in a barley field, which was basically an indirect way of begging. The Law of Moses demanded that harvesters leave some of the harvest behind to provide for the poor. When the owner of the field noticed there was a Moabite gleaning on his property, he kept an eye on her. What he discovered was a courageous, selfless, industrious young woman, a woman who so impressed him he eventually took her for his wife. And even after he did, Naomi’s care remained at the forefront of her mind. When she bore a son, it was her greatest joy that she could provide Naomi someone to love again after all the loss she had known. Yes, the book of Ruth was written to advance the bold and controversial thesis that people who are not like us do share our basic humanity, so much so they could well be our kindred. It was written to advance the bold and controversial thesis that they want the same things we do - to be able to provide for themselves, to care and to be cared for, to belong, to be acknowledged and respected for who they are. And it is indeed a bold and controversial thesis precisely because of the fear that seems to be perennial that those who are not like us do not share our basic humanity. Jesus too of course advanced that bold and controversial thesis. You tell by the people he gravitated towards, Jesus too of course advanced that bold and controversial thesis. You can tell by the people he gravitated towards, “others” who were not like the rest - lepers, prostitutes, carriers of contagious diseases, adulteresses, tax collectors, and all those vulnerable, marginalized, and scandalous. But he cast the net even farther. Consider the Centurion. He wasn’t vulnerable, marginalized, or scandalous. He was the commander of a hundred in the Roman army. He was, as he put it, a man “set under authority,” and it was the authority of the oppressor, since the Romans then occupied Israel. But Jesus heeded the Centurion’s appeal, and in doing so learned that the Centurion had a deep love for the Israelites, even built for them a synagogue; and that his appeal to Jesus was out of concern for the welfare of a slave. Jesus advanced the bold and controversial thesis that we need not fear others who are not like us because they do share our basic humanity, but even he was surprised by the Centurion the extent to which this is true – “I tell you not even in Israel have I found such faith.” No one sympathized with our common condition better than Jesus; and it was that sympathy that led him to take up his cross. After the girls finally fell asleep last week, I was wide awake, so I watched my favorite movie, To Kill a Mockingbird . Now that movie is too scary for children to watch, if you recall the near murder of the little girl named Scout. It’s almost too scary for me. In my favorite scene, Atticus defends a black man falsely accused of rape in the Jim Crow South. During the trial, the courtroom is packed, with the black people segregated in the balcony. The black man who was falsely accused of rape is found guilty of course, even though everyone in the courtroom knew he was innocent. As Atticus walks from the courtroom, the black people in the balcony silently rose to their feet to acknowledge the truth that Atticus had attempted to defend -- that others not like him shared his basic humanity. “Stand up,” someone whispered to Scout, who had snuck up to the balcony to watch. “Your father’s passing.” It is one of our crucial jobs as Christians to renounce the fear that others like not us do not share our basic humanity. And if we do not renounce that fear, both within and around us, we may protect ourselves from many fearful things, but we will never help to make a world that is safe for everyone. Amen.
