"Born in a Barn"

Christmas Eve Sermon, 2013.  New Life Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE

Isaiah 9:2-7

Luke 2:1-20

"Born in A Barn"

A question that I used to hear when I was a child, was, “were you born in a barn?”  This question was asked when one of my brothers or I left the door open after entering the house.  I never really understood the question.   As I child, I did not have a lot of experience about barns, growing up as I did on Florence Blvd.  But I did know what the adult asking the question meant. It meant get up and close the door, idiot. 

I looked up the phrase online recently and learned the ordinary explanation; that barns were left open so that cows could leave in the morning and come home at night.  

There is also a more historical explanation, that the phrase originally was, "were you born in Bardney?" Bardney a town in Lincolnshire, England was the site of an important monastery, Tupholme Abbey. When the king Saint Oswald was killed his followers tried to bring his bones into the abbey but the monks kept the doors shut.  Afterwards, because the monks had denied Oswald’s sainthood their penance was to keep their doors open, all the time.  Like a Bucky’s or a Kwik Shop. 

Then there is the ugly explanation.  One dictionary said “Often phrased as a question when used to characterize a person who is rude, or displays ignorance and stupidity.” Or as one commentator I looked at wrote, “It means "corn fed and backseat bred."

After weeks of preparations, we’ve arrived.  Millions and millions of dollars spent, millions and millions of songs sung, millions and millions of cookies baked, plans made, gifts wrapped and here were are face to face with the day itself, the Eve of Christmas, the day we pause to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the World, born in a barn.

You and I could think of much better places for the savior of the world to be born.  In a palace, in a nice clean hospital, in a nice clean modest home for that matter!  But according to Luke, great powers had spoken and poor folk like Mary and Joseph had to make do where they could, even sleeping in a stable, their little son, born in a barn, corn fed, using a manger for a crib. 

 

We do well to remember that this night there are poor folk around the world displaced from their home.   In Syria alone, seven million have been displaced by war.  All over this world and all over this country, men and women and their children are sleeping in make do places, shelters, too small apartments and homes with relatives and friends or much worse places. 

But this is Christmas friends; God is born in a barn.  Beyond all the trappings and decorations, the gifts, the traditions, the music, that is what Christmas is: God becomes one of us, in the least likely place in the world, in a backwards town in the middle of nowhere; God is born one of us. God does not just arrive in our midst as a conqueror with an army; God is born to a simple carpenter and his young wife. In a barn.  In a housing project.  In a shelter.  In a transient hotel.

Born in a barn.   Just as dirty and disgusting, just as precious, just as needy and fragile and noisy, as any human baby ever born.  No more or less beautiful than any child in a young mother’s arms.  God Almighty, born for us.  Born as one of us.  Emmanuel.  God is with us forever.  We are not alone.

Someone online joked this week, “What happens in Bethlehem doesn't stay in Bethlehem.”   The baby born in the barn, doesn’t stay in that tiny place, but is everywhere that people are hungry or cold or hated or unwanted or fearful with the promise of justice and liberation. That baby is everywhere that people are full and self-satisfied calling them to act with justice and kindness.  God is everywhere, because God is one of us, part of our DNA, our flesh and blood, our kin.   God is with us, forever.  We are not alone.

Amen.

All of Them Are Alive

Sermon preached at New Life Presbyterian Church, Omaha, Nebraska, November 10, 2013.  

Scripture is Job 19:23-27a, Luke 20:27-38

This sermon shows some distinct influence of my recent reading of "Zealot:  The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth" by Reza Aslan.

My father was fond of saying that when some people get to heaven, God will have to put them in a cage.  Because they will believe they are the only ones there!

People believe a lot of different things about life after life, most of them not Biblical in the least! I have my own ideas about heaven, maybe a combination of a Starbucks and a really, really good Chinese restaurant?   Maybe not.


Well the Sadducees didn’t believe in heaven or resurrection at all.   The Sadducees were the real religious elite, the group that controlled the Temple.  The Temple was the one place that God could be worshiped, where sacrifices of animals could be offered.   The Sadducees were installed by the Roman authorities and the high priest came from their number.   They were the establishment to end all establishments.  


This story takes place after Jesus has entered Jerusalem.    The first thing Jesus did when he came to Jerusalem?  Do you know?  He went straight to the Temple and drove out all the money changers and all the people that were selling things in the Temple.   He broke open the cages and set free the sacrificial animals.  In other words, Jesus directly changes the Temple elite, the Sadducees, saying, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’ but you have made it a den of robbers!”  Luke tells us that, “Everyday he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him.”    So they tried to question him, tried to trip him up. 

And this story that the Sadducees tell Jesus, about a woman who marries seven brothers in succession is not an something that really happened, but the most ridiculous example they can make up to mock Jesus’ belief in the resurrection of the dead.  “Teacher, there was this woman and she married a man and he died, so according to the Law of Moses, she married his brother.  Now he also died and there were 5 other brothers and she married each one in succession, seven in all!  Seven husbands.  Now in the resurrection, whose wife will she be?"

It’s a good thing the Sadducees didn’t ask me this question, because my first response would have been, “What has she been feeding these guys?”   But Jesus is smarter than the Sadducees, smarter than me, fortunately.   He doesn’t fall into the trap to play their little intellectual games.

Are the Sadducees, suggesting a heavenly version of polyandry, when a woman has multiple, simultaneous husbands?  No.  They are mocking a belief they don’t share.    They didn’t believe that the resurrection of the dead existed. So they tried to mock a heavenly belief with an earthly problem.
They were trying to drag Jesus down with a problem, whose wife will she be?   
The Sadducees are making an assumption about heaven.  Every joke I’ve ever heard about heaven, makes the same assumption.  Every movie I’ve ever seen that depicts heaven makes the same assumption.  Most things that people like you and me believe about heaven makes the same assumption.

That assumption is that in heaven, we aren’t that different than we are now.  We will have the same problems, the same relationships, the same arguments.  “Whose wife will she be?”  Who will she belong to?”  “Who is better?  Methodists or Presbyterians?” 

Jesus is smarter than that.   Jesus refuses to make an earthly problem a heavenly problem.   Because in heaven, there are no problems!  Jesus says, “Those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.”

Jesus is not saying that we stop loving who we love on earth in heaven; he is saying that love is now perfect.   Instead of just loving the handful of people we love in our lifetime; we will love as God loves, because we will see each other as God sees us.

Jesus is teaching something really dangerous here.   In God’s eyes our worth is not determined by who we are fortunate to marry or who we are fortunate be.  Our worth is determined because we are children of God.  God is not some cosmic bean counter determining who is more worthy, who is more privileged; God is mercy and love beyond any words I can possibly give to the ideas of mercy and love.   Jesus knows this.   Jesus came so that we will know this.   Jesus is this.

The Sadducees caught up in the Temple structure, in the day to day operations of this elaborate place of worship, more richly decorated, more elaborate and detailed oriented and power structured than any church, any temple, any synagogue, any mosque in existence in the world today.  The Sadducees cooperated with the Roman authorities, kept the people in line and were allowed to continue this elaborate system of worship as long as the Romans got their cut.   Sounds like the tax collectors we were talking about just last week, doesn’t it?  Except that the Sadducees got to keep their status in the community.  Jesus, Jesus was a threat, to the Sadducees and to their Roman overlords.  They asked this question to mock this threat.

Jesus is still a threat to the powers of this world.  Jesus is still a threat to those who would keep some people down so others may thrive.   Jesus is still a threat to those who would use others for their own greed.  Jesus is still a threat to you and to me when we believe that our own faith gives us a privilege makes us more beloved of God than God’s other children.   To God, all of us are God’s children.  To God, all of us are alive.

We too, must be a threat to the world.  Not to threaten the world with violence, but with love.  Not to threaten the world with violence and hate, but to threaten the world with what God in Jesus offers the world:  love, understanding, mercy.

Amen.

"Wrangling Over Words"

"Wrangling Over Words"

Sermon Preached at Benson Presbyterian Church, Omaha

October 13, 2013

2 Timothy 2:8-15

In case you’ve been in a coma recently, the US Government has been shut down.   I’ve lost track of the number of days and it started out about stopping the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare as it has been nicknamed.  I’m certainly not going to get into a discussion in this sermon over who is right or wrong in this whole mess or how to fix it or anything like that.   But I am going to quote an authority on this, comedian and late night host Jimmy Kimmel.

According to the Los Angeles Times, “The late-night show host mocked this misinformed opposition by having a camera crew ask several people on Hollywood Boulevard if they preferred the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. Most of the respondents signaled their skepticism of Obamacare while heaping praise on the Affordable Care Act. One woman -- who apparently liked the ring of "Affordable Care Act" --  warned that Obamacare is just one step on the way to a national gun ban.”  I worry about the state of our national discourse when people don’t realize that an act of Congress by any other name can smell as sweet or stink just as badly.  

Timothy is told in this second letter to warn his congregation before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening.  Unfortunately, Timothy’s congregation is not the last congregation to have a problem with wrangling over words.   The problem with wrangling over words is that sometimes we can’t even agree with what those words mean.  

Indeed, this wrangling over words led to the controversy that led to the Council of Nicea and the Nicene Creed.   Christianity was rent apart and literally came to blows by the controversy of whether Jesus Christ was the same substance as God the Father or a similar substance of God the Father.  This little difference is represented in Greek with just one vowel in one word which led my reformed theology professor Dr. Ben Reist, to observe that Christians are those who will fight to the death over diphthongs. 

When the Emperor Constantine converted not just himself but the entire Roman Empire to Christianity it was this wrangling over words and other disagreements that led Constantine to convene the Council of Nicea to codify what Christians should or should not believe.   The council came down on the side of Jesus being the same substance of the Father and the Nicene Creed is the one confession that all Christians Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and any other varieties all hold in common.

It’s good that we hold Nicea in common because we don’t hold much else in common.  We have been wrangling ever since.  Should congregants be able to buy away their sins with indulgences?   Should the Bible be available in churches not just in Latin, but in the language of the congregation?   Should priests be able to marry?  Should Christians be governed by bishops or elected elders?   Should congregations be responsible to a bishop, to each other or should each congregation just go its own way?  I have just it some of the highlights of what Christians have wrangled over down through the centuries, but you get the idea.  In my own family, the idea of when people should be baptized is why we are Presbyterians today.  When my dad met my mom he had been raised Presbyterian, she had been raised Baptist.  Dad did the smart thing any young man should do, he went to his girlfriend’s church.   They loved him!  He sang in the choir, he taught Sunday School, what church wouldn't want him!  They did want him.  But they told him he had to be immersed, that the baptism he had as an infant Presbyterian didn't count!  My dad believed that his infant baptism did count and refused to be in his words, “re-baptized.”  So my parents were married in Parkside Baptist Church, but when they moved to Lincoln, they started attending and joined a Presbyterian Church.

And speaking of the Presbyterian Church, Presbyterians are excellent at wrangling over words.  There is something in our tradition that believes that if we just find the right words it will fix the problem.   I always think of the English Civil War in the seventeenth century.  The Puritans were waging war, rebelling against the English king and the Royalists.  The war was over the King’s authority, but it was also over what form the English Church would take.   So the Royalists and the Puritans were fighting a war and where were the English Presbyterians?  They were gathered at Westminster Abbey, trying to write the write the just the right confession.  They wrote the Westminster Confession, it didn’t stop the war and King Charles I ended up getting his head cut off.   But, while it didn’t stop a war, the Westminster Confession and its accompanying catechisms have provided religious guidance and instruction to Presbyterians through the centuries right down to you and to me.

This wrangling over words can be and often is a good thing.  It’s how we advance in the church.  It is how we have opened ordained offices to women, to gay people.  It is how I as a woman can preach for you this morning.  It is how we have English Bibles everywhere easily available instead of worrying about being burned at the stake for being in possession of one.  It is how we open our churches up, so they are easily accessible for those with disabilities.   It has led the church to take brave stands against slavery, Fascism, apartheid and racial discrimination.   But I think as we go forward, as we wrangle over the issues that shape the future, that shape not just the future of this congregation, this area, our Presbyterian tradition and our wider tradition, we have to be careful how we wrangle.  

We have to realize that we now live in a different world than we were raised in.   I spoke a minute ago about the Westminster documents.   Millions of children learned the Westminster Shorter Catechism.  My father was one of them.  We don’t seem to teach our children catechisms anymore.  For good or for ill, that’s not how children learn anymore.  We don’t live in a world where it is just enough for a church to open its doors and to say “here we are” and expect everyone to come.   We are not in the midst of a baby boom that leads to churches hip deep in Sunday School kids.  Churches that thrive in this world are our in the world, holding services in school buildings, malls, public squares, coffee shops.  Churches that thrive are fluent in new media, webpages, Facebook, Twitter.  Churches that thrive spend their time tearing down walls, rather than building them up.

And that’s where the real tension comes in.   When we wrangle, it is always, always a tension between holding on the past and opening to the future.  We can never give up our tradition; that is why we Presbyterians have a book of Confessions, going all the way back to Nicea.  That is also why we Presbyterians are always writing new confessions, because while we all love Nicea and because God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, our understanding of God is always evolving.   Between the tension of the past and the future, we must live and love and proclaim the Gospel of Christ.   Maybe it is my particular bent, but I believe our wrangling over words is right thing, when it leads us to open more doors than we close, to tear down more fences than we build.  We have to remember what it says in that letter to Timothy, that the word of God is not chained.  We cannot be the ones to chain it up, like Bibles were chained to the pulpits in medieval times. 

We also have to be careful about the message we are sending out as Christians.  I work part time at a call center here in Omaha.   For October our bosses have relaxed the dress code and we can all wear our t-shirts and jeans.   It’s not like people can see us over the phone, after all.  I’ve so far graced them with my, “The Force is Strong With This One” shirt and my “B&G Home of the Loose Meat Sandwich” shirt.   Last week, a young woman was wearing a shirt that said, “La Vie Est Belle.”  When she walked past my station I looked up at her and smiled and said, “Life is Beautiful!”   She stopped short and turned to me and said, “Is that what it means?”   I was appalled.   “Yes, that’s what it means!  Didn’t you know?  It could say anything!”   She shrugged, “I just bought it the other day.”  She walked away.  

When I posted this incident on Facebook or when I told it to family and friends, I got a lot of suggestions about what the shirt could have said, not one of which I can say in church.   What message are we walking around proclaiming?  Is it welcome in the name of Christ?  Is it you don’t quite fit in here? 

Remember, it says in that letter to Timothy and to us, “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel, for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained.”  The Word of God is not chained.  Unless we chain it.  

Amen.  

"A Better Country" Preached at Benson Presbyterian Church, Omaha, August 11, 2013

“A Better Country”

Genesis 15:1-18

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

I want to begin today by sharing with you something that Presbyterian minister and writer Frederick Buechner wrote in his book, “Wishful Thinking.”

“When God told Abraham, who was a hundred at the time, that at the age of ninety his wife, Sarah, was finally going to have a baby, Abraham came close to knocking himself out—"fell on his face and laughed," as Genesis puts it (17:17). In another version of the story (18:8ff.), Sarah is hiding behind the door eavesdropping, and here it's Sarah herself who nearly splits a gut— although when God asks her about it afterward, she denies it. "No, but you did laugh," God says, thus having the last word as well as the first. God doesn't seem to hold their outbursts against them, however. On the contrary, God tells them the baby's going to be a boy and they are to name him Isaac. Isaac in Hebrew means "laughter."

Why did the two old crocks laugh? They laughed because they knew only a fool would believe that a woman with one foot in the grave was soon going to have her other foot in the maternity ward. They laughed because God expected them to believe it anyway. They laughed because God seemed to believe it. They laughed because they half believed it themselves. They laughed because laughing felt better than crying. They laughed because if by some crazy chance it just happened to come true, they would really have something to laugh about, and in the meanwhile it helped keep them going.

Faith is 'the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,' says the Letter to the Hebrews (11:1). Faith is laughter at the promise of a child called Laughter.”  

I keep thinking about one particular phrase of Buechner’s, “One foot in the grave, soon to have one foot in the maternity ward.”  As I age, some days I feel positively ancient.  Not long ago, I had occasion to call one of my health care providers to change an appointment.   The receptionist asked for my birth date  so I replied, October 16, 1959.   She replied, “Nineteen FIFTY nine?”  As if she could not imagine that such an ancient person could still use a telephone.  That day, I felt like I had one foot in the grave.   Good thing I was going to see a doctor soon!

Having one foot in the grave is a place where we can imagine ourselves when we are tired, discouraged, in pain, afraid, uncertain.   One foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, goes the old joke.  Sometimes, the road we travel, feels like a dead end. 

A song called “Wonder” by Natalie Merchant popped into my head this week as I was thinking about Sarah and Abraham and having one foot in the grave and one foot in the maternity ward.  The lyrics go,

“Doctors have come from distant cities Just to see me Stand over my bed Disbelieving what they're seeing They say I must be one of the wonders Of god's own creation And as far as they can see they can offer No explanation.” 

I wonder if that is what Sarah’s midwife thought when she was summoned to assist at the birth of Isaac to a 90 year old mother? Can you imagine the story that midwife told the next time she sat down with her colleagues?

But we read in the letter to the Hebrews, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  Having conviction in things not seen, that’s the hard part.  You cannot logic someone into faith.   You can’t prove faith.   It isn't logical.  

What kind of logic is it that proclaims that babies born to geriatric cases become the ancestors of great nations?   What kind of logic is it that proclaims that God was born into the world, not in a palace, but in a stable, born not to powerful monarchs or teachers of wisdom, but to a couple of peasants with no place to lay their heads?  Is it logical to proclaim that same baby grew up to be put to a cruel and painful death?  Is it logical to proclaim that death was not the last word?   That Jesus rose and in his life, death and new life that the world is forever transformed?   Is it logical to proclaim that we live not just for ourselves and not just for this present time, but for a better time?  Is it logical to proclaim that what we hope to build is a better country, a more heavenly country?  Certainly not!  But it is faith, it is an assurance of things hoped for, a conviction in things that can’t be seen.    Or as Frederick Buechner wrote, “Faith can't prove a damned thing. Or a blessed thing either.” 

Faith is hard to hang on to when we find ourselves in those “interim” periods in our lives.   It’s easy to be faithful when things are going well.  Faith gives us something to rely on when times are hard.   But sometimes we find ourselves in those times in our lives when we are neither fish nor fowl, but waiting for something else to happen, something to completed, someone else to say yes or no.

I know that for Benson Church, this seems to be one of those times, an interim period, an in between time.  I know this whole process of moving from what you used to be to where you are now, to what you will be has seemed long and drawn out.   But I believe that Benson church is closer to a maternity ward, than a graveyard.    Whatever ministry is born out of this remarkable group of people wherever it is, whatever it is called or whoever joins in, will be a community of laughter and of joy, a community of faith.   God has caused birth and new life in far more unlikely places and times than this! 

It is my hope, my prayer not just for this congregation, but for our denomination, for our sister denominations in the mainline Christian tradition, to realize that our tradition, what has been handed down to us, is a vibrant and living alternative to the dead ends of either judgmental religious fundamentalism or mocking disbelief.  It is my prayer that we not just realize it, but start living it.

Like Abraham and Sarah, like all those others that Hebrews named that we skipped over in our reading today, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Isaac and Jacob and so many others that Hebrews didn't record!  Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Moses, Ruth, Naomi, David, Elijah, Peter, Mary Magdalene, so many others whose names we don’t even know, won’t ever know, who handed down faith to us through the generations, in order to build a better country, a more heavenly one.  People who taught Sunday school, translated the Bible into many languages, who started  and strengthened schools and churches and universities and seminaries, not for themselves, but that you and I, their descendants, not just physical descendants, but spiritual descendants might live in a better country, a more heavenly one.  

And as I speak of them, I would like you remember who your people of faith have been, who have passed faith and light onto you and brought you here today, not for themselves, but to build a better country, a more heavenly one.

That has to be our goal, too.    Not to build this country for today but for tomorrow.   We know we will not see this country in its completion in our earthly lives.   But we can and we must do our part to add our own bricks and mortar and dreams and words to build the City of God. 

Amen.

Luke 10:25-37

Neighbors are Everywhere

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Good Samaritan.   Neither Jesus, nor his audience would have named the hero of his parable a Good Samaritan; that title came in later centuries.   When you are I think of the Good Samaritan, we may think of hospitals, charitable societies or churches.   I got over 14,000 hits on Google when I looked for the Good Samaritan this week.   The Good Samaritan has become any charitably minded passerby who stops to help.   We’ve lost just how radical this story was when Jesus told first told it, how much Jesus would have offended his original listeners.  Let’s see if we can recover some of that.

First of all, Jesus didn’t just tell this story out of the blue.   It was a lawyer who put all this in motion, by asking Jesus a question.  “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”   He calls Jesus Teacher and Jesus acts like a Teacher by answering a question with a question.   “What is written in the law?  What do you read there?”   The lawyer comes back with a really good answer, he recites a verse that sums up the law: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”   Good answer!   Then he adds the second part, something that Jesus talked about a lot, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself!”  Jesus said, this is the right answer!  You get the feeling that Jesus is not really that interested in this conversation and is ready to move on.  

But the lawyer, not knowing when to leave well enough alone, wants a legal definition, “Ah!  But who is my neighbor?”   The great Presbyterian writer and Preacher, Frederick Buechner said that “He wanted a legal definition he could refer to in case the question of loving one ever happened to come up. He presumably wanted something on the order of: "A neighbor (hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part) is to be construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of no more than three statute miles from one's own legal residence unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter to be referred to as the party of the second part) living closer to the party of the first part than one is oneself, in which case the party of the second part is to be construed as neighbor to the party of the first part and one is oneself relieved of all responsibility of any sort or kind whatsoever."  Endquote.   That was language a lawyer understood and liked.   Jesus gave him something else.

First of all, Jesus said, it was the Jericho-Jerusalem road.   It was always the Jericho-Jerusalem road.  Seventeen miles long, a change of 3600 feet in elevation over those seventeen miles, twisting, turning, climbing, diving road.   Lots of places for robbers to lie in wait along that road.    If you traveled this road alone, you might as well hang a sign around your neck that read, “Rob me, please!”  Hearing about another robbery on the Jerusalem road?   Like hearing about another shooting in Omaha.   It happened all the time.

So it was a robbery on the Jericho road, the man beaten, robbed, left for dead.    But he wasn’t quite dead, was he?   And three other travelers came down that road and this is what they did.  The first one was a priest, the second a Levite.   Both of them were professional workers in the Temple, with a capital “T” in Jerusalem.  The Temple, with a capital “T”, was the place where the people could encounter God, could make sacrifice to and pray to God and make sure than they could be heard.   It was very, very, important that people who worshiped in the Temple, with a capital “T”, and the even more important that the people who worked in the Temple, with a capital “T” in Jerusalem remain pure, uncontaminated.   What was the main source of contamination?   Other people!  People who weren’t so pure, who didn’t wash carefully, women, non-Jews who didn’t eat pure food, and blood!  Blood was a big source of contamination!   Animal blood, other people’s blood, your own blood!   So much contamination! 

So these two Temple, with a capital “T”, workers were traveling along the Jericho road, saw this poor unfortunate beaten, robbed, barely alive, and they did what they were expected to do.  They preserved their purity for the Temple.   They didn’t expose themselves to this stranger’s wounds, his blood, his contamination.  They passed by.  They may or may not have managed a “Tsk, tsk.”    But they kept walking and kept uncontaminated.

And then a Samaritan came by.  Like I said, Samaritan has come to mean something entirely different to us than it did in Jesus time.  To you and to me, a Samaritan is someone who helps out, who lends a hand.  In Jesus time, a Samaritan was not a person that people in Jesus’ circle spoke of glowing terms.

Some of you may remember a few weeks ago when I talked about Ahab and Jezebel and how they built a new capital city for the Northern kingdom of Israel, that capital city was Samaria.   Eventually, Samaria became known as a name for the entirety of the Northern Kingdom, so Samaritans were Jews, but the Jews of the Southern Kingdom, the kind of Jews that Jesus and his disciples and this lawyer were, didn’t think of Samaritans as real Jews, they were fallen away Jews.   Samaritans didn’t worship in the Temple, like real Jews did.  Samaritans were worse than any Gentile could ever be, they were descendants of Jacob, but they were descendants gone bad, spoiled by generations of falling away from the proper worship of God in the Temple with a capital “T”.

But it was a Samaritan, according to Jesus, a dirty, stinking Samaritan who stopped.   And not only did he stop, he bathed and bandaged the beaten man’s wounds, put him on his own animal and took him to an inn and took care of him.  Then, when the next day, the Samaritan gave the innkeeper some money and told he to care for the man.   He also told the innkeeper to keep track of what he spent and when he returned, he would repay whatever he spent.

So Jesus told this story and turned to the lawyer and said, “Now, which of these three was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”   What could the lawyer say?  “The one who showed him mercy.”   Jesus said, “Go, and do likewise.”

Frederick Buechner says, “The lawyer’s response is left unrecorded.”   No kidding.  The lawyer had wanted a legal definition, where does my neighborhood stop?  Jesus gave him a Mr. Rogers definition, neighbors are everywhere?   (Mr. Rogers got his definition from Jesus!)  Jesus has just said quite a lot of very scandalous things in that short little story.  Jesus was very good at that.  First of all, he said that a Samaritan was better than a priest and a Levite, God’s own servants, at showing who God intended for us to love one another.  Jesus was saying that a Samaritan, someone who didn’t even pray in the right place, in the right way, was just as good, no better, at showing God’s good will in how we should treat each other.   That if we truly want to show our love for God, to love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength, we could do no better than to emulate a Samaritan, a Samaritan, than anyone else.

I read online this week a story about a test being given at the Harvard Divinity School.  It could be at any divinity school or seminary, I would hope not San Francisco Theological Seminary, but this test was at Harvard. Here’s the story.   “It was a very clever test.  Now, when you go to Harvard, you have to be smart, and these smart theological students took a course entitled, “Christians and Society.”  The professor had created a test that was three hours long.  It was a tough test on “Being a Moral Christian in An Immoral Society.”  Half way through the test, he arranged for a break, where the students could take a ten-minute break.  The students were to leave the room for ten minutes, get fresh air, and then come back and take the last hour and a half of the test.  The students were writing as fast and furiously as they could, writing down all their knowledge of morality, what does it mean to be a moral person in an immoral society.  But now it was break time and the students went out into the courtyard, where there was ice tea and cookies.  Out there in the courtyard was another part of the test, although the students didn’t know it. This was the real test. There was a man, all beaten up, there in the courtyard.  He was there, and the students looked at him and drank their tea and ate their cookies and said to themselves, “What should we do?  We have this test to take.”  All the students went back into the classroom to finish the written part of the text.  The professor flunked them all.”   Endquote.  They failed the test, because they missed what the real test was.  The real test was not what they could write down on a page, the real test was what they would do when confronted by the sight of someone who had been waylaid on the road to Jericho.

We don’t have to be clever Harvard students to miss what our faith requires of us when it is staring us in the faith.   We can all get so wrapped up in studying that we miss the real test.

Last night as I put the final touches on this sermon, the news broke in the George Zimmerman case.   And I could not help but think, of two people who encountered each other on a road, late at night.    How you reach out to a person you encounter with a fist or a gun or a helping hand, can have a very different effect on the outcome of the meeting.   And as I read through of all things my Twitter feed last night, I found a quote from of all people, Tom Crabtree, tight end for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  “How cool would it be to live in a world where George Zimmerman offered Trayvon Martin a ride home to get him out of the rain that night.”  Endquote.  How cool would it be to live in a world where Samaritans and Jews and Whites and Blacks and Asians and Hispanics could all live as if we are all children of a loving God who created us all to be neighbors.   Go and do likewise, that meddling Jesus tells us.  Go and do likewise.  Amen.

Sermon Preached at New Life Presbyterian Church, Omaha, Ne

June 30, 2013

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

I found a story on the Internet this week about a famous preacher who was a bit of a fraud, because the sermons were great but no one ever realized that in fact they’d all been written by the staff assistant. Finally the assistant’s patience ran out, and one day the preacher was speaking to thousands of expectant listeners and at the bottom of page two read the stirring words, “And this, my friends, takes us to the very heart of the book of Habakkuk, which is…” only to turn to page three and see nothing but the dreaded words, “You’re on your own now.”

Those are dreaded words, aren’t they?  You are on your own now.  I am getting to a stage in my life when more and more I notice that I am on my own now.   In the four plus years since I lost my mother, I have thought of countless times when I have wanted to tell her something or ask her advice about something.  But, I am on my own now.

In the past month I have attended the funerals of two men, both World War II vets, both in their nineties.  One was my mother’s cousin’s husband, the other, Rev. Howard Svoboda, a member of this Presbytery, his daughter Beth, a member of Benson Church is a very dear friend of mine and has been for many years, since we were both teenagers.  More and more as the people who were my adults pass away; I realize we are the adults now.  We are on our own now.

That’s how Elisha must have felt when he realized that Elijah was about to leave him.   When Elijah the prophet fled for his life from the murderous Queen Jezebel, he went to the Horeb, also called Sinai, the mountain of God, the mountain where Moses encountered God and received the law of God.  There, Elijah received his marching orders, to anoint two new kings, one for Syria and one for Israel and also, to anoint his own successor, Elisha.

Elijah found Elisha working in his parent’s field, plowing with twelve oxen.  Elijah threw his mantle over Elisha.   Elisha ran after Elijah and said, “Before we go, let me kiss my mother and father goodbye!”   Elijah replied, “If you’re coming, let’s go, If not, goodbye yourself.”  So Elisha made an over the top gesture to show that he was breaking off from his old life completely to show that he was following Elijah.   He slaughtered the twelve oxen, cooked them and gave the flesh to the people who happened to be around and they ate it.  Then he followed Elijah.   Presumably, this all took more time than it would have for Elisha to say goodbye to his parents, but it was an over the top gesture that proved the new disciple’s devotion to his master.   It becomes clear that Elisha is all about the over the top gesture.

Elisha displays another over the top gesture in our reading today.   The master, Elijah, asks his disciple and successor, Elisha, if there is one last thing that he can do for him.  Elisha makes a request, let me inherit a double portion of your spirit.  One commentator I read wrote that, “Elisha assumes that he is half the man Elijah is and that he will need twice his master’s spirit just to break even.” Endquote.   Elijah tells Elisha that he is asking for a hard thing, but if Elisha sees Elisha taken up, it will be granted.  The time comes and Elijah is bodily assumed from the earth by a whirlwind, in a chariot of fire.   And Elisha cried out, “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!”    He had seen, he would inherit a double portion of his master’s spirit.  Then he tore his clothes with grief.

But, there was much work now ahead for Elisha.   He picked up Elijah’s mantle where it had fallen and he used it, just has Elijah had to part a river so he could cross, cross back to the path that he had been called to by God.

I mentioned earlier that I had recently attended the memorial service for Howard Svoboda.   It was a service that was very fitting for someone who had served God’s church so long and so faithfully.   The Presbytery was well represented; everyone from the retired pastors to the active pastors, including Dwight Williams, your session moderator.   The service was led by the honorably retired Keith Cook, for many years pastor of Church of the Master.   Keith is a genuine character and also presided at my mother’s memorial service at her request.  Actually her command, she said to Keith one day, “You know you are doing my funeral!”  Mom was a bit of a character too.

Keith had meant to bring his robe to wear at the service, but he had forgotten it.  But Howard’s family had brought his robe to be displayed along with pictures and other items from Howard’s life.  So it was agreed, Keith should wear Howard’s robe at the service.

I thought of that this week when I read about Elisha taking up Elijah’s mantle.   In a way, it is our job to take of the mantle of the previous generation, to wear the robes that are left to us.  

Howard, like my parents and maybe your parents or grandparents or maybe you yourself was a member of what we now call the greatest generation.  They struggled through the Great Depression, they fought and won World War II and then went on to see the expansion of the American dream through economic prosperity and the Civil Rights movement, the women’s movement and even the advancement of rights for gay and lesbian people.    I often fear that our generation has not inherited a double portion of their spirit.

My father was drafted into the army in 1942.  He and my mother had just had their first baby, my brother Tom.    Pop never made it overseas, he served only 90 days in the Army.   He caught influenza and it was discovered that he had a heart murmur that made him unfit for service, so he received a medical discharge.  He spent the remainder of the war, working in the bomber plant in Lincoln.

I asked Pop towards the end of his life what it was like.  He hadn’t been married that long, he had a new baby; he didn’t know that he wouldn’t have to go overseas.   What did he think?  How did he feel?  Pop just shrugged his shoulders and replied, “Everybody was in the same boat.”

If there is one attitude that is lacking in our world today, it is that we are all in the same boat.  We live in time that is far too divisive.   In America today, we are far more likely to think of our society as us and them.  We know what this has led to:  political gridlock and a society where the advancement of civil rights for one group is seen as an affront to another group.  Please believe me, I do not intend to sugar coat that greatest generation, they also lived with segregation, sexism and other ills that we would not tolerate today.  But yet, we need to come to the realization that we are all in the same boat.  I don’t want us to go through another Great Depression or fight another World War to realize it.

Paul wrote to the church in Galatia that they should avoid the works of the flesh.  Fornication, impurity, licentiousness, 20idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, 21envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. He didn’t write this to the Galatians because everything was going well there.  He wrote this to them because they were fighting.  In fact, he warns them to be careful of biting at each other, lest they devour each other.  The church at Galatia was made up of both Jews, who had been circumcised and Gentiles who had not been circumcised.   Some of the Jews thought than when the Gentiles joined the church, they should be circumcised.   But Paul points out that in Christ, circumcision does not matter.  Paul writes, “The only thing that matters is faith working through love.” 

Paul goes on to write, what the fruits of the Spirit are.  And it is all good:  Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.   This is what the Galatians and we are to strive for, the good things of faith working through love.  We are to realize that no matter where we come from, what color our skin is, what shape our families take, we are all in the same boat.

The thing about taking up a mantle is that we have to know what to take up and what to leave behind.   Leave behind the works of the flesh, the things that concentrate only on me and mine.  Go forward with the works of the Spirit.  Go out into the world with the mantle of service and love. 

Amen.

The Problem with Greed

The Problem with Greed
Sermon preached at Benson Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE, June 16, 2013
1 Kings 21:1-21

This is one of those times when we are reminded that the Bible would actually make a very good soap opera, or maybe just a tragic opera.   This story has everything:  Naboth, the noble and innocent farmer, Ahab, the pouting King, Jezebel, the ambitious, foreign and dishonest queen, Elijah, the prophet who brings the words of doom.  And let’s not forget, the character that never shows up in any soap opera, God, who sees every greedy act, every dishonest word.

The story starts with what seems like a reasonable offer from King Ahab, to Naboth.   Naboth owns a vineyard, that is right next to Ahab’s palace, in Samaria.   If remember your Biblical history, you will remember that after the death of King Solomon, the kingdom that David and Solomon divided into two different kingdoms, Judah, in the south, continued to be ruled by descendants of David and Solomon.   Israel, in the North, was ruled by a series of dynasties.    Ahab’s dynasty built a new capital city in Samaria, so his royal palace was literally built in the middle of farm fields, like much of West Omaha.  

So Ahab makes what seems to be a reasonable offer to Naboth, let me have your vineyard.   It’s right next to my palace and I need a vegetable garden, I need I’m tired of having to have my servants schlep to the market all the time.   I will treat you fairly, Naboth, I will give you an equally good, no, a better vineyard or if you prefer, I will give you money, name your price!  Now you or I might have one thought if the king came to us with an offer like this, “Ka-ching!  Time to cash in!”

But Naboth, was not someone motivated by money.  “The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.”  My ancestral inheritance.  This plot of land had been worked by Naboth’s family going back for generations.    Samaria had been taken from the Assyrians during the time of King Solomon and had been given to the tribe of Joseph, so Naboth’s family had probably owned this vineyard since the time of the legendary king.   It had been cared for and worked by Naboth’s ancestors so that he might pass it on to his children and they to their children.

Have you ever heard a person from rural Nebraska or Iowa speak of the home place?   That place that had been in their family, where their grandparents and parents had worked and struggled to pass on a legacy, this vineyard was Naboth’s home place.    To Ahab, it was just a convenient plot of land.    To Naboth, it was like the king was asking him for his heart or his right arm.

So Ahab does what all too many of us do when he doesn’t get his way, he pouts.   He goes and lies on his bed and turns his face to the wall, he won’t eat.    That’s when Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, enters the picture.

Jezebel has picked up a bad reputation over the years; her name has become synonymous with a bad or fallen woman.   She deserves that reputation.  I don’t think that the women we have referred to as “Jezebels” throughout the centuries deserve the comparison, though.   Jezebel wasn’t a just a bad woman, she was a terrible, amoral person.   Jezebel was a foreign princess, the daughter of the King of Tyre.   She was used to kings taking what they wanted with no arguments.   Jezebel promoted the worship of Baal, a god who did not call for justice and righteousness, but a false god, who promoted prosperity and ambition.   Baal was created by Jezebel’s people in their own image, a god who rewarded tyranny and who despised the weak.

So Jezebel came to Ahab and said, why are you pouting?   And when she heard it was such a small thing, just Naboth, who denied the king, she a princess of Tyre would show Ahab how a real king worked.    “I will get you Naboth’s vineyard,” Jezebel promises her husband.

So Jezebel arranges for Naboth to be accused of cursing God and the King, she arranged for false witnesses, she arranged for Naboth to be drug outside the city and stoned and she arranged all this in King Ahab’s name using King Ahab’s seal.   Then she went to Ahab like a child with a good report card and said, “Look what I did!  Naboth’s vineyard is yours!”  So Ahab didn’t ask any questions, but he stopped pouting and started tearing up the centuries old vineyard so he could plant his vegetables.

Of course, God is not a false God and has seen everything that has transpired.    God sends Elijah the prophet to give Ahab his comeuppance.   Ahab knows why Elijah is there before he even opens his mouth, “Have you found me, my enemy?”  

God is not a false God and God is not a God who believes that greed and power are the best humanity has to offer.   God created us to act justly, to protect those less powerful than us, to not put our own needs above everyone else.  We are not to thoughtlessly benefit from the suffering of others, like Ahab did.  We are not to brutally ignore what is righteous in order to get what we want, like Jezebel did.  Elijah tells Ahab, “You have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord.”  In sinning against Naboth, Ahab has sinned against God.  That’s the problem with greed, it’s not just a sin against the person our greed hurts; it is a sin against God.

So what does that mean for you and for me?  I’m certainly not an ambitious queen, not one of you is a powerful king.    Not one of us is ever going to be in position to bear false witness against someone so that we can steal their ancestral land for our own private garden.

And yet, I cannot ignore that I live so much better than most people on this planet.   I don’t make a lot of money right now and I share an apartment with my brother, but I’m not living in a mud hut or tenement or a homeless shelter.    I get good medical care when I need it and I have plenty of nutritious food to eat.  Something I have to face as an American, as a member of the most privileged society in the history of the world, there are others who suffer to keep me going.

I wrote this sermon at a Starbucks.   One thing I don’t have at my current home is a desk, so I like to go to Starbucks to work.   For about four bucks worth of coffee, I get two or three hours of electricity and Wi-Fi.  (Wi-Fi being necessary to look up things like when Solomon conquered Samaria!)

But, what about the people who grew and picked the coffee beans?   Were they paid fairly?   Do they have good health coverage?  What about the people who waited on me?   I saw a story on CNN recently that Starbucks baristas have to share their tips with their managers.   Is that fair?  

It’s not just coffee, the produce we eat and enjoy is grown in far off places and harvested by people who are poorly paid and then shipped tremendous distances so you and I can enjoy fresh orange juice or fresh strawberries or bananas.   One commentator I read this week wondered if we as Americans are turning the whole world into our personal vegetable garden?

What about the clothes on our backs?  I looked at the label of the Wal-Mart shirt I had on when I was writing this, it was made in Honduras.   My Old Navy pants were made in Vietnam.    What kind of conditions are people working under so I can have cheap clothes?    Listen to this report from the BBC about conditions in Bangladesh.  “Two months after the collapse of a factory in Bangladesh, new building inspections have revealed that six out of every 10 factories there are unsafe.  More than 1,000 people were killed when pillars supporting the Rana Plaza factory building gave way.  Most of the clothing produced in Bangladesh is sold in Europe and the US but, factories that have been declared unsafe are still full of workers.”  End quote.   I like a cheap shirt as much as the next girl, but is it worth the blood of others?

It’s overwhelming, isn’t it?   I don’t know about you, but I feel powerless in the face of all this.   But you know what, alone, I am powerless.  But as a Christian, trying to live in God’s justice, as part of a worshiping community that tries to live in God’s justice, I am not powerless.   As Christians, it is our responsibility to live intentionally and to call this wider community we live in to live intentionally.  It is our responsibility to call this society we live in to justice, to see the rest of the world not as our garden to be exploited, but the home of our brothers and sisters, equally entitled to God’s justice.

A funny thing about Ahab:  after Elijah threatened him with disaster, Ahab repented.   He didn’t do this because he was sorry; he did this because he was scared.  He put on sackcloth and went about dejectedly.   A funny thing about God:  God forgave Ahab.  God said to Elijah, “have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before me?   Because he has done this, I will not bring disaster upon him, but will bring it upon his sons.”   Ahab was allowed to die honorably in battle, but Jezebel and her sons by Ahab died very gruesomely.   You can read all about it in 2 Kings 9 and 10 if you like, I wouldn’t recommend it if you have a nervous disposition.

That’s the problem with greed; God doesn’t like it, not one bit.   That’s the problem with injustice, false witness, unbridled tyranny; God doesn’t like it, not one bit.   But the amazing thing about God is that there is forgiveness, even for Ahab.  Even for you and for me.

Amen.