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.