"New and Old Wisdom" Pentecost 8A

1 Kings 3:5-12

Saint Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

On election night 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt went to his New York townhouse. The incumbent, Herbert Hoover, had just conceded defeat.  His son James helped into bed and kissed him good night. His father looked up and said, “You know, Jimmy, all my life I have been afraid of one thing – fire. Tonight, I think I’m afraid of something else.” 

James asked him what he was afraid of. 

“I’m just afraid that I may not have the strength to do this job.” 

As Jimmy left the room, his father said to him, “After you leave me tonight, Jimmy, I’m going to pray. I’m going to pray that God will help me, that He will give me the strength and the guidance to do this job and do it right. I hope you will pray for me too, Jimmy.1

I find this quiet, personal, moment to be such a contrast to the usual way we think of President Roosevelt.  We remember those pictures of him in motorcades with a broad smile on his face and a cigarette held at a jaunty angle.  We think of his powerful words in his addresses to congress and his personal approach to his listeners during his fireside chats.  

There is even a great image in Jon Meacham’s book, Franklin and Winston, of him sitting at a specially made bar to accommodate his disability, mixing drinks and entertaining  friends making sure that everyone’s glass was full and that a good time was being had by all.

This is the Roosevelt we think of not the man doubting that he is going to be up to the task of being President and asking for prayer. 

In this day we might wonder if that isn’t the best place, the only place, for someone who wished to govern a great nation to start.  Maybe we would be a lot better off with leaders who were so acutely aware of their shortcomings that they knew they needed to turn to a higher power other than their own.

That is where King Solomon began and he became legendary for his wisdom.

I  love that Solomon starts with a little humility.  He knows that his father, David, was a dearly beloved king despite his shortcomings.  When he left office David had, what we would call, a very high approval rating.

Like Roosevelt,  Solomon may have been afraid that he would not measure up and that his leadership abilities might fall short. 

So, when the LORD comes to him and asks what is the deepest desire of his heart he doesn’t ask to be immortalized with his face on the side of a mountain; he doesn’t ask for a statue; he doesn’t ask for a bronze bust in a prominent place in the state house; he doesn’t even ask for a Post Office to be named after him.  He asks for wisdom.

Here is what he replied to the LORD who is acting like a genie from a bottle and offering to grant him his best wish.

“Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties.  Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number.  So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.”2

What would we do if a candidate said that?  The spin-doctors would be apoplectic. The opponents would have a field day while their supporters might be trying to explain away the “little child” part and emphasize that their candidate didn’t need an understanding heart to know what was right and wrong. They would tell us that he or she had, without a doubt, the most understanding heart in the world and that they already knew what was right and wrong.

Solomon was having none of that!  He knew what he needed and he knew where to get it.  If he was going to be able to lead his people, he would need one thing: an understanding heart that came from his relationship with the LORD.

Biblical Scholar, Jana Childers noted: “An ideal king – and by extension an ideal nation – would be one that operates with a certain levelness or steadiness of focus and a certain humility.”3

Focus, humility and wisdom may be the grace that breaks into our might-makes-right and our loudest voices win systems.  President Eisenhower may have said it best for our age: “Anger cannot win. It cannot even think clearly.”4

Solomon seemed to know that it was the little things like humility and a kind heart that would make him a good king.  

Jesus is talking today about little things as well.

Here he is teaching us “that the kingdom of heaven is qualitatively different from our kingdoms.  Our kingdoms have great, impressive palaces, fortresses, big parades, grand victory celebrations, impressive architecture and impressive human achievements.”5  God’s kingdom is so small it creeps up on you.

Preachers always get drawn to the mustard seed and it is a great example but you’ve heard it a thousand times.  I’m intrigued instead by the woman with the yeast making bread.  For there is wisdom in her efforts.

Today we have countless ways to make bread.  There are bread making machines that do almost everything for you and your bread but butter it.  We can buy packets of yeast at the grocery story for next to nothing.  Bread and yeast are something we take for granted.  

In Jesus’ day the people of that time and place were seldom privileged to have pure yeast.  Instead, they had to remember, be wise enough, to keep a lump of leavened dough from the last batch to leaven the next batch.  Think of it as the starter for sourdough bread.  It required tending.  My preaching professor used to claim that he and his wife hired babysitters for their sourdough bread starters.  

If cared for wisely there is a  lasting quality to bread as well. 

According to the British Museum.  “In AD 79, a baker put a loaf of bread into the oven, just like any other day in the town of Herculaneum. Nearly 2,000 years later it was discovered carbonised, still inside the oven, during excavations at the archaeological site in 1930.”6

They tested the bread and had a London baker recreate the recipe. It turned out tasting a lot like, every day, modern, bread. 

There was also a tradition among bakers back then that they would stamp, or brand their bread, it could be their initials or the first century equivalent of a logo but it identified who made the bread because they were proud of their work.

That’s the church’s job to be proud of our work as the leaven in the loaf of society.  We are no longer the place to be, with the biggest building in town packing people in our pews.  We no longer have lines down the block waiting to get in every time we open our doors.  In these days of a pandemic we even have to limit our numbers but I think the church has never been better suited to remind people of what is important.  We have been entrusted with words of wisdom that, even though they have lasted through the ages, are new every day. 

If this crisis has taught us anything it is that we need leaders with the wisdom of Solomon.  Men and women who know their limitations but who can also bring out the best in us, helping us to rise above our current circumstances and work for a better tomorrow.

We need the teachings of Jesus to remind us that everything is not always as it appears to be at first glance. 

We need to be the levin in societies loaf living out the words of the recently passed representative John Lewis who reminded us:

"Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopefule optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble."5

Be humble, as was wise King Solomon.  Look for leaders who, like Roosevelt, were not too proud to pray.  Remember that anger can never think clearly. And finally, get in some good, necessary trouble. 

And out of that, Jesus final words for today tell us wisdom’s treasure will bring  both something old and something new.

May God help us as we try to make this so,

____________

1      John Dickerson, “Pray for Me” in The Hardest Job in the World: the American Presidency (New York: Random House, 2020), p. ix-x.

2, I Kings 3:7-9 (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

3. Jana Childers, “Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Teaching 3 (2020): pp. 175-177.

4. S. E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 65.

5 William H. Willimon, “Small Is Beautiful,” Pulpit Resource 42, no. 3 (2014): pp. 17-20.

6. “Making 2,000-Year-Old Roman Bread,” Making 2,000-Year-Old Roman Bread (blog) (The British Museum, July 23, 2020), https://blog.britishmuseum.org/making-2000-year-old-roman-bread/.

7. Joshua Bote, “'Get in Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble': Rep. John Lewis in His Own Words,” USA Today, July 18, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/18/rep-john-lewis-most-memorable-quotes-get-good-trouble/5464148002/.

“No Dopamine” - Pentecost 7A

Romans 7:15–25a

Saint Matthew 13:1-9 & 18-23

It was hard for me to imagine why John Dickerson in his very fine book about the American Presidency, The Hardest Job in the World, would devote an entire chapter to Dopamine which has been described as is known as “the feel-good neurotransmitter.”

Dopamine is the binding agent that locks us to  . . .  consumption – it’s the little jolt of pleasure that humans associate with beneficial actions. The reward comes after each affirmation either in the form of a “like” on Facebook, a little heart on Instagram, or delivery of information that confirms our world view when we turn to Twitter.  Studies show that we will chase the reward of that neurotransmitter dopamine with the passion of a gambling addict or a smoker. 

When there is no immediate reward, we keep hunting. Disappointment makes us more fervent. Like poison ivy, dopamine creates a fever.  Each time we scratch, the desire to scratch grows. 

The cycle saps our ability to concentrate, which invites us to speed up the search-for-reward cycle. Deliver us please from that itchy feeling of being insufficiently entertained.1

Dickerson wryly observes: “Who can remember, much of the time, what they were looking for when they first started that Google search. Studies show that we check our phones about every twelve minutes.”2

This frenzy, not just in the world of politics but the whole of life, got me to thinking about the difference between our addiction to immediate gratification and the patience of the “sower who went out to sow” who, by modern standards, wouldn’t even make a very good farmer.

Two falls ago Lowell arranged for me to take a ride in his brother-in-law’s combine at his farm in northwest Iowa and I’ll never forget the first words out of Gerald’s mouth when I climbed aboard.  “Don’t touch anything!” he said.

I kept my hands in my lap and my mouth shut for fear of demonstrating my agricultural ignorance as we harvested corn in this marvel of modern machinery.

It had a steering wheel but was guided by the aid of GPS that told it to turn when the end of a row was reached.  Next to the steering wheel was a joystick that controlled much of what else went on in the giant machine.  And next to the joystick was a computer monitor that continually kept track of not only how much seed had been planted or crops harvested but the soil conditions for both seedtime and harvest. At planting, seeds would be placed in perfect rows at just the right distance apart for an optimum yield. 

It was amazing!  

I have been pondering that experience this week in light of the carefree sower in Jesus parable who just took some seed and let it fly. This guy didn’t need dopamine, because he was  extremely enthusiastic about his job.  He turned his task into a party by just flinging seeds this way and that apparently caring little about where the seed landed or the condition of the soil.  Instead of riding in a machine that carefully calibrates the placement of a seed to a fraction of an inch this dude is walking around throwing handfuls of seed into the air.

Some of it falls on the road where the birds come along and eat it up, but really, what would you expect when you throw seed on the road? And some of it falls on gravel where it sprouts after the first good rain but then withers and dies because it doesn’t have any dirt to put its roots down into. What would you expect? Some of it falls among the weeds and thorns where it gets choked out by the competition, but again, what would you expect? The only surprise in this story, really, is that this reckless sower  manages to get some of the seed onto good soil where it produces a miraculous yield of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much grain.3

Because we tend to make things all about us want to make Jesus’ pithy little teaching all about us.  We see ourselves as the seed. 

There are people, we know them and tend to avoid them at all cost, who have no doubt that they are good seed.  They’ve got this faith thing all figured out and, not only that, their life is a perfect balance of faith and works.  There is no doubt in their mind that they are good seed and, if asked or even if not, they will be happy to tell you just how good they are.

Most of us see ourselves as the other kind of seeds.

Sometimes we fall and fail on the road of life and it’s like we are just being eaten alive. Sometime, when the road gets rocky, we begin to feel ourselves withering. Sometimes it just feels like the weeds of life are just going to choke the life out of us. 

We can almost hear ourselves saying with Saint Paul.  “No matter which way I turn I can’t make myself do right. I want to but I can’t.  When I want to do good, I don’t; and when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway."4

In thinking only about himself, Saint Paul is focused on his own troubles, his own failings.  In thinking of ourselves as just the seed we will be trampled down by the anxiety of this age.

Even though he had no idea he was doing it Saint Paul gives us the key to understanding Jesus’ little story.  “Who will rescue me?” he asks. And then it dawns on him, “I thank God,” he says, “there is a way out through Jesus Christ our Lord.”5

Jesus is the sower!  He is the one who is foolishly casting seeds. 

Some of it will fall in places where it gets a good start but doesn’t last. Some of it will fall in places where it gets choked out by competing interests. But some of it will fine finds good soil, and grow, and produces a bumper crop. 

That is where we come in.

Our temptation, that dopamine that has taken such hold of us, is we want to control the reward cycle.  We want to know exactly what kinds of seed to plant in exactly the right places and us want to know where and when to plant it.  We want to take over Jesus’ seed sowing business and get it down the science of a modern day farmer.  

But Jesus keeps telling us that since you can’t predict just how or where the seed is going to fall, or when or if it is going to produce, you scatter it wherever you can and hope for the best. 

That’s the good news moment amid the cares and anxieties of our world. 

Now there is one less thing for us to have to worry about to decreasing our dopamine levels. 

Unless you are a farmer whose livelihood depends on bumper crops of seeds well planted and carefully harvested, don’t waste time counting the seeds or trying to figure out what kind of seed you are.  

Understand that this parable is about God who, revealed in Jesus, is wastefully gracious.  God just wants us to scatter that grace all over the place and he wants us to help.  He wants us to toss God’s grace around.

He wants us to fling it, throw it with a mighty arm. Cast God’s grace freely, far and wide.  Help others and ourselves discover the real dopamine rush that comes when we realize that God’s love is abundant, it never runs out, and there is always more than enough.

Thanks be to God who tells us for certain that this is so.  Amen. 

__________

1. John Dickerson, The Hardest Job in the World: the American Presidency (New York, NY: Random House, 2020), p. 336-337.

2.     ibid.

3. James Sommerville, “The Reckless Sower,” A Sermon For Every Sunday, July 7, 2020, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Jim-Somerville-The-Reckless-Sower.

4. Romans 7:18b-19. (TLB) [TLB= The Living Bible. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndall House, 1971)]

5. Romans 7:25. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English: a Translation (London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1960)]

"What Do We Really Want?" - Pentecost 5A

Saint Matthew 11:16–19 & 25–30

John Adams, who really believed that July 2nd was the day when colonial independence should have been celebrated.

He firmly believed that formal separation from England took place when “the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia voted to approve a motion for independence put forth by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia” on July 2nd 1776.

  It was not until July 4 that the “actual Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress.”

Interesting enough the “city of Philadelphia, where the Declaration was signed, waited until July 8 to celebrate, with a parade and the firing of guns. The Continental Army under the leadership of George Washington didn’t learn about it until July 9.”1

Adams not only had strong feelings about when the celebration should take place but how independence should be celebrated. He wanted more than just the firing of a few rounds into the air. 

Writing to his wife Abigail on July 3 he outlined what became the formula for our celebrations.

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shows, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.2

And so it was until this year.  This year there are no grand gatherings of hundreds of thousands of people along Chicago’s lakefront or the Charles River in Boston to watch massive firework displays.  (Although I believe that all of those extra fireworks were bought up by the people in my neighborhood who have been firing them off over the entire extent of Adam’s proposed celebration with glee.) This year there are no symphony orchestras or community bands blasting out Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” accompanied by cannons and carillons.  This years’ parades in communities large and small have been scaled back if not outright cancelled.

On this rare, quiet, celebration of Independence – without the boom and bang of fireworks, without the floats and flotillas of parades, without the hot dogs, hamburgers, brats, and beers of barbeques – maybe we can take a moment to think about one sentence from John Adam’s great statement and thinks about how we can commemorate . . . [this] as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty.  

United Methodist Pastor James Howell wondered once:

When did the  . . .  nation the Founding Fathers, who were highly educated, philosophically wise, and respectful people, conceived become a battleground of ideologies, ignorance in constant combat with ignorance, where the loudest, shrillest rancor wins the day? When did patriotism get whittled down to nothing more than anger, heady feelings about wars and weapons, and an edgy bias against people who are different?3

When did this generation become like the generation that exasperated Jesus?

I love the way The Living Bible paraphrases Jesus’ words:

“What shall I say about this nation? These people are like children playing, who say to their little friends,  ‘We played a wedding and you weren’t happy, so we played a funeral but you weren’t sad.’ For John the Baptist doesn’t even drink wine and often goes without food, and you say, ‘He’s crazy.’  And I, the Messiah, feast and drink, and you complain that I am ‘a glutton and a drinking man, and hang around with the worst sort of sinners!’ But brilliant men like you can justify your every inconsistency!”4

Every inconsistency comes from not knowing what you really want.  

I am currently reading and recommending a book, The Hardest Job in the World, by John Dickerson about the American Presidency. In it he points our inconsistencies. 

We say we want strong leaders but not too strong.  We say we want leaders who will protect our rights but not infringe on them.  We say we want leaders who will give us direction but only if that is in the way we think we want to go.  The only thing we are certain of is that we don’t want a leader who calls us to sacrifice.  

We want a leader who is a success, a Bill Gates or a Sam Walton. 

Jesus would not have made a good presidential candidate he didn’t tell the people what they wanted to hear but what they needed to hear.  He summoned them to follow their better angels.

You probably don’t know this but our Independence Day celebrations occur in the midst of two other major events in United States history.  The first shows us how far we can fall and the second shows us how good we can be.

The first was the Battle of Gettysburg which began on July 1 and lasted until the evening of July 4, 1863 when General Robert E. Lee, of statue fame, withdrew. The Army of the Potomac was too weak to pursue the Confederates, and Lee led his army out of the North, never to invade it again.”  Even though the Battle of Gettysburg was the turning point in the Civil War it had no real winner.  And it came at great cost with “23,000 union soldiers killed, wounded, or missing in action. The Confederates suffered some 25,000 casualties.”5  

Even though it inspired one of the greatest speeches ever given by any President the Battle of Gettysburg was one of the darkest days in American history.

A brighter day came on “July 2, 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the historic Civil Rights Act in a nationally televised ceremony at the White House.” It “prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education and outlawed racial segregation in public places such as schools, buses, parks and swimming pools.” 6

It was a bright day when the nation began the struggle that continues to this day to end our divisions.

As you know, as a part of the ceremony Presidents traditionally give away pens that they use to sign their names.  Johnson gave one pen to Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, the Democrat who shepherded the bill through the Senate and another to Everett McKinley Dirksen, the Senate minority leader, a Republican from Illinois without whose help passage would not have been possible.

See what can happen when we dance together!

Jesus invites us to remember that we are inextricably connected to each other.

We can continue to do our own thing, live the way we want, and hope for the best. The rising rate of the Covid virus shows us what a terrible idea that turned out to be.  But we can also see what happens when we pull together, share the load and sustain each other. 

Jesus says that joined to him and joined to each other we will be able to manage  the latest load that is placed upon us.  More important of all we are being told that he wants to share that load with us.  

We are the invited ones today as we continue to struggle with the exile experience of the corona virus.  In a time when social distancing tells us to keep six feet away from each other Jesus is still finding ways to bring us together.

Some of us are back together in worship for the first time since March 29th. Since that time Jesus has been holding us together through Zoom meetings and YouTube worship.  In our confusion, despair, impatience, and distractions he has been with us, yoked to us.

According to William Barclay in one of his famous bible commentaries, "there is a legend that Jesus made the best ox-yokes in all Galilee, and that from all over the country men came to his carpenter's shop to buy the best yokes that skill could make.”7

If that legend isn’t true it should be.

While we are dancing around trying to figure out what it is that we want Jesus is telling us that joined to him we may not always get what we want but we will get what we need.  

Yoked to him we can be united not divided from one another.

Yoked to Jesus our meager efforts at unity are redeemed.  

Yoked to Jesus our struggles bring us closer to him and closer to each other.

Yoked to Jesus our smallest efforts become part of God’s new creation.

Yoked to Jesus we see each other as equals. We see each other as  sisters and brothers.

Yoked to Jesus we discover that there is someone by our side, tethered to us to help us bear our burdens and carry our loads.

Yoked to Jesus we will hear no less than Almighty God say, “become my yoke mate, and learn how to pull the load by working beside me and watching how I do it. The heavy labor will seem lighter if you let me help you with it.”8

Yoked to Jesus we discover what freedom really is.  It is knowing that through everything God is right next to us, by our side, yoked to us.

Isn’t that what we really want?

__________

1. Valerie  Strauss, “Why July 2nd Is Really America's Independence Day,” July 7, 2015, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/john-adams-was-right-2-july-is-really-americas-independence-day-10361356.html.

2. Jessie Kratz, “Pieces of History,” Pieces of History (blog) (The National Archives, July 2, 2014), https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2014/07/02/john-adams-vision-of-july-4-was-july-2/#:~:text=The%20Second%20Day%20of%20July,of%20Devotion%20to%20God%20Almighty.

3. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say July 5? 5th after Pentecost.” (blog) (Myers Park United Methodist Church, July 3, 2010), http://revjameshowell.blogspot.com/2010/07/jesus-and-july-4.html.

4. Saint Matthew 11:16-19. (TLB) [TLB= The Living Bible Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers Inc., 1971]

5. “Battle of Gettysburg Ends,” History.com (A&;E Television Networks, November 24, 2009),https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/battle-of-gettysburg-ends?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2020-0703-07032020.

6. “Civil Rights Act of 1964 Signed,” History.com (A&E Television Networks, November 24, 2009), https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/johnson-signs-civil-rights-act?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2020-0702-07022020.

7.     William Barkley, The Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1957), p. 12.

8. Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996).

“Divine Inscrutability” Pentecost 4A

Genesis 22:1-14

Saint Matthew 10:40-42

For churches a tale as old as time was played out in the pages of last Sunday’s New York Times.

First Baptist Church of Williams, Alabama had called 35-year-old Tim Thomas to be their preacher.  It may not have been the best fit right from the beginning but the fissures grew greater when one day he was in his office “when several African-American children were playing basketball outside. One of them came to ask to use the drinking fountain in the church and Mr. Thomas pointed the child toward the door where the water was.

When a congregant, who was white, saw the black child approaching  . . .  he pulled the door shut not to allow the boy inside.  The pastor was upset – it wasn’t the first time he’d seen that behavior.”

Because most Baptists’ don’t follow any standardized set of reading Mr. Thomas began choosing some really radical stuff to form the bases for his Sunday morning messages.

One Sunday he chose the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” one says.  But then Mr. Thomas added his own translation, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst and have the door shut in their face.”

Then he decided to preach on our gospel today, “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”1 Suddenly, the relationship between the people and the pastor was showing strain.

You know how this goes.  A meeting was called and a disgruntled group came to confront their pastor.  He had, as they say in the south, “stopped preaching and got to meddling.”  

A branch of local Baptists – and remember that in the South there are more Baptists than there are people – anticipating the recent Supreme Court decision starting hiring gay people for clerical positions within the fellowship.  (Not clerics, mark you, but support staff like clerks, and secretaries, and business managers.) “It was like kicking the top off of an anthill.” Mr. Thomas said.

But he was determined to keep talking about what Jesus talked about. Things like  a disciple needs to be hospitable, welcoming to everyone. 

You know what happened.  A meeting was called because people were upset.  Mr. Thomas reported that “They more or less said, ‘Those are nice, but we don’t have to live by them.’”2

In a sad way, it is odd what upsets people and what doesn’t.  Perhaps Mr. Thomas would have been better off and would have still had a job if he had stuck to simple, easy to understand stuff, like today’s Old Testament where the LORD speaks to Abraham and doesn’t ask him to be hospitable but to take his son, his only son, whom he loves, up to a mountaintop and kill him.

Now those are words to live by!

Abraham heard a lot from God and nothing that God had ever asked of him was as easy as offering a drink of cold water to a thirsty young basketball player.

The first time Abraham ever hears from the LORD it is with the radical request: “Go from your country, your people, and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.”3

On the bases of those words alone Abraham leaves everything and follows.  This led the late Dr. Lewis Smedes to observe that if Abraham “were his neighbor and he said, ‘God came to me last night and told me to go to the Los Angeles airport and that he would tell me which airline to go on and what destination to go to, and I’m never coming back.’ I would say to him, ‘Either you’re crazy, or God is doing something very peculiar.’”4

God’s relationship with Abraham was peculiar, in fact, it is almost inscrutable. 

One commentator called God’s demand “completely incomprehensible: the child, given by God after long delay, the only link that can lead to the promised greatness of Abraham’s seed is to be given back to God in sacrifice. Abraham had cut himself off from his whole past; now he must give up his whole future.”5

This he does without a word.  Nothing is said to his son nor his servants as they set off on their journey.  What does one say?  What can one say when one is about to sacrifice one’s whole past, present, and future.

It is said that the servants had to be jettisoned because had they been there they surely would have staid Abraham’s hand.  So what we are left with is a father and son journeying on in silence.  

It has also been said that “Abraham’s attentive love for the child [is shown] in the division of the burdens. He himself carries the dangerous objects with which the boy could hurt himself, the touch and the knife. The words ‘they went both of them together’ let’s one suspect that the boy may have broken the oppressive silence only after awhile.” 5

Isaac words shatter the silence and must have broken his father’s heart.  “Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘Father!’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ He said, ‘The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’”7

Abraham does not tell Isaac all he wants to know because Abraham himself does not know. He does not know at this moment if Isaac is God’s act of provision. He does not know that God will provide a rescue for Isaac. It could go either way. Abraham does not know but he trusts unreservedly. 

What he says has been translated for us as “God will provide” but in the original Hebrew it is really “God will see.”9

God watches along with the rest of us as the pace of the narrative slows.  

The details are described with frightful accuracy.  Abraham builds an altar by gathering rocks and stones.  He places wood on it.  He binds his son, his beloved boy.  His hand is stretched forth and a knife is raised.  The world holds it breath.  A voice breaks the silence.  It is a voice that Abraham knows all too well.

“Abraham! Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”9

Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.

Whew!  And we thought being nice to someone different from US was tough.  We thought that giving a cup of water to a stranger was a sacrifice.  We might say with some people, “This is a nice story but we don’t have to live by it.”

Biblical scholar, Dr. Walter Bruggemann reminds us:

The problems are especially acute for those who seek a “reasonableness” to their God.  Faithful people will be tempted to want only half of it. Most  . . .  will want a God who provides, not a God who tests. God tests to identify his people, to discern who is serious about faith and to know whose lives he will be fully God.10

Some Christians suffer from what one writer called a “Disney Princess Theology” in which they are the hero of every story.  Today they would have been Abraham not Isaac.  Today they would have been the giver of the cup of water rather than the one who is thirsty.  We would have welcomed the prophets rather than being the ones who send them away.

And if the current times have taught us anything it is that our view of ourselves is not true.  

Some rebelled at having to wear face masks in public because it infringed on their individual freedom.  

Some rebelled at the crazy notion that something as simple as social distancing was an answer because nobody had the right to tell them they couldn’t snuggle up to some stranger at the corner saloon.

Some rebelled against staying at home when we wanted to go out and  be with friends not so much risking their lives but the lives of their parents and grandparents.

Even some parents and grandparents rebelled by saying, “I’ve lived a good, long life if it’s my time it’s my time.”

Americans don’t sacrifice well. 

What we can learn from today’s scriptures and today’s crises is that it is necessary to be a follower of God.  God sees, God provides, and God will see us through but only if we are willing to sacrifice and care for each other. 

In this moment, especially in this moment, God is calling us to test the limits of our boundaries and throw open the doors of our hearts to the will of God that is often inscrutable but never-the-less divine. 

__________

1.    Saint Matthew 10:42. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

2/ Nicholas Casey, “The Walls of the Church Couldn’t Keep the Trump Era Out,” The New York Times, June 30, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/20/us/politics/evangelical-church-trump-alabama.html?referringSource=highlightShare.

4. Genesis 12:1-3. (NIV) [NIV= The New Revised Standard Version]

5. Bill D. Moyers, Genesis: a Living Conversation (New York, NY: Broadway Books, 2002). p. 160.

6. Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: a Commentary (London: SCM, 1991), p. 234.

7. Genesis 22:7. (NRSV)

8. Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (Louisville, KY: Westminister John Knox Press, 2010), p. 188.

9. Genesis 22:11-13. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

10.  Brueggemann, op. cit., p. 192-193.

"Watching from Empty Seats - Pentecost 3A

Jeremiah 20:7–13

Saint Matthew 10:24–39

The photograph you have just seen is of The Very Reverend Randolph Marshall Hollerith the very fine Dean of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.  It was taken on Pentecost Sunday of this year and he is looking out over approximately 4,000 empty seats.

I have been watching online and every Sunday it has been like that for him and his staff and they lead worship  in a virtually empty church.  The organists are still there as are the lectors.  There are a few choristers spread around to lead the singing at appropriate social distances from each other.  Other than that, the place is empty as is ours.

Here is a picture of what Our Savior looked like yesterday taken from the pulpit.  We have fewer empty seats but all of the seats are empty never-the-less.  

All of us pray that in a few weeks that won’t be the case when some of us make our way back to worship with preventative measures still in place to keep everyone safe.

For now worship is still on-line for most churches and some are able to master the craft better than others. 

Some churches have been “live streaming” for years and they are quite good at it.  In their current offerings there is still congregational hymn singing recorded on some far off date.  The choir and soloist still offer an anthem or a solo that was either pre-taped during the week or comes from an early worship service.

Sometimes, like Dean Hollerith, the sermons are preached from the pulpit with the occasional glimpse of lots and lots of empty pews in front of the preacher.  Other churches shift, too disconcertingly for my tastes, from prerecorded music to the pastor’s home where he or she preaches and prays.

Even with that judgmental statement being made I try not to be too critical because all of us are in uncharted waters.  

This caused me to think of what it must be like for Joel Osteen and the other prosperity gospellers.  Not only does he have 16,800 empty seats on his hands but he is committed to messages that God wants to bring heath, wealth, happiness and victory to your life.  

I wonder how that message is working for him and his people in the midst of a global pandemic, an economic meltdown and racial strife.  

Osteen is just one of the many preachers, mostly in mega-churches with vast and expensive television ministries who have given in to what Dr. William H. Willimon has termed North American Christianity.

We North American Christians keep thinking that somehow we have found a way to follow Jesus without getting hurt. Being a Christian is roughly synonymous with being a sensitive, compassionate, and caring American. Jesus [God] is the one who keeps families together, who confirms our highest and best values and institutions.1

Then along comes the prophet Jeremiah and Jesus and suddenly we are confronted again with the uncomfortable reality that God has a very different way of looking at things than we do.  

If we start to proclaim that things should be the way God thinks they should be we probably won’t be needing a converted basketball arena that seats close to 17,000 fans but might just find as alone as Dean Hollerith looks as he waits for the crises to be over.

The dear Dean may have felt – as I do sometimes – a little like the prophet Jeremiah when he cried out angrily to God: “O Lord, you deceived me when you promised me your help. I have to give them your messages because you are stronger than I am, but now I am the laughingstock of the city, mocked by all.”

Being a prophet was a tough job.  Prophets  . . .  functioned as social critics and had the unfortunate task of delivering God’s insight and message – usually critical – to the people and those in power. They, in short, had the job of scolding the community about its mistakes. As a result, they were frequently, though not always, the bearers of bad news. Jeremiah complains that the only messages God gives him to convey to the people are negative ones predicting doom and gloom.3

The implications that Jesus lays out for discipleship are equally grim.  The one whom we know as Prince of Peace says: 

“Never think I have come to bring peace upon the earth. No, I have not come to bring peace but a sword! For I have come to set a man against his own father, a daughter against her own mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be those who live in his own house."4

Oh swell.  That’s good news for these tumultuous times, more tumult. And, by the way dads, happy Father’s Day.

The gospel can divide but sometimes for the wrong reason.  That happens when it is used as a club.  

Billy Graham used to include in all of his altar calls: “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, he will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, he will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.”5

I have no doubt that Graham was well-meaning but what he was doing was scaring the people into not making the busses wait any longer and coming forward to confess Christ.  The thinly veiled implication was that those who remained in their seats while the organ played and the choir sang “Just As I Am” for the umteenth time were going to be, if not toast,  at least in deep trouble on the day of judgement.

The always wise Dr. James Howell reminds us that this is not the double-dare you predicament the in which one of Billy Graham’s altar call places us.   Jesus wants to be acknowledged, not denied.

What does denial look like in 2020? Myriad stuff, like conventional living, fitting in, letting a racist slur slide on by, on and on. I wonder if piety can be a paradoxical denial of Jesus? You make sugary but harmful theological remarks (“God doesn’t give you more than you can handle,” or “Everything happens for a reason”) – which deny the more robust reality of Jesus who doesn’t deny but embraces suffering?6

What Jesus and Jeremiah were talking about was something far more radical than personal salvation.  They are telling us that confessing faith in God, faith in Christ may lead to persecution.  

While preachers proclaim a “what’s in it for me Gospel” where the temptation is to focus on what we can get rather than how we are to act. They attract big crowds.  They have big homes and draw huge salaries. They may get a little grief every once and awhile when the finances don’t add up but for the most part they are living the dream, the American dream.

But the followers of the living God are called upon to do what Jesus did – – expose evil, challenge power, demand change and undermine the status quo.   

Followers of Jesus and the living God call into question corrupt corporations whose executives  bail out on golden parachutes leaving behind broken business and abandoned employees.  

Followers of Jesus turn their back on those politicians who make decisions based only on reelection considerations rather than the good of the nation.

It is so easy for a follower to become discouraged but there is a promise tucked  away in this text that has sustained God’s people for years.  It is better known to us is the lyrics of a song than the exact verse of scripture.

In 1905 Civille Martin wrote a song  that became a staple for artists like Ethel Waters and Mahalia Jackson in the mid 20th Century and has lived on in ours in recordings by Gladys Knight, Whitney Houston, Jennifer Holliday, Marvin Gaye whose common experience helps them put real feeling, real meaning in the words “His Eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me.”

As you might have noticed, I’m a white guy and I do think I have any business commenting on the experience of others but I will lift before you what one friend said to me that helped me think again what a difference skin color can make.  He said, “You have to realize that I am one illegal left-turn away from having my life inalterably changed.”

What’s so lovely about the hymn is that it doesn’t pledge or expect a quick fix or any fix at all. It’s not God will do what I ask, or God will repair everything tomorrow. It’s simply that God cares. God sees. God sees the sparrow, and you and me. And it’s not just a passing glance.

That is the hope for all of us individually and it is our hope for our common life together.  It is to see each other in the same way God sees us, as precious, worthy, loved, and people to be respected.  That is what we are to proclaim as powerfully as the prophets who came before us.  

We don’t have to proclaim it by shouting it from the housetops but in the living out of our lives.

When the Cathedrals and churches are full again may we remember this time -- this tumultuous and painful time – and remember just how much we needed each other to get through this.  

When we meet again, may we meet as better people and more committed followers of Jesus who promises to care for each and every one of his children and asks only that we live out that care for each other in return.

____________

1. William H. Willimon, “Disruption,” Pulpit Resource 36, no. 2 (2008): pp. 49-52.

2. Jeremiah 20:7. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible.  Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1971]

3. Song-Mi Suzie Park, “Jeremiah 20:7-13.  Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 3 (Louisville: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): pp. 26-29

4. St. Matthew 10:34-36.  (PHILLIPS) [J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (London: HarperCollins, 2000).]

5. St. Matthew 10:32-33.  (KJV) [KJV=King James Version]

6.     James C. Howell, "What Can We Say?  Pentecost 2A." January 1, 2019, 
https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.

7.     Ibid.